Saturday Hike

spring has finally sprung in portland and i could not be happier about it! husband and i have been itching for warmer weather and sunny days and this weekend was perfect.

we took full advantage of the 64 degree weather this weekend and headed out on a short little hike in forest park. here are some pictures from our day:

i officially have a baby bump! 

how cool is this guy we met on the way back?!?!! a real life spotted owl!

happy weekend!

Magnolia Bakery Cupcakes

who has been watching the olympics?? while the 2014 winter olympics have been surrounded in contraversy...i can't help but get sucked in. the opening ceremony was pretty great (minus a malfunction or two) and there's something about athletes from all around the world coming together to compete in healthy sporting events, when the world can, at times, appear to be a little crazy.

we watched the opening ceremony with some friends this past friday, and i decided to get a little festive and make some team usa cupcakes. and, what better cupcake to make than magnolia bakery cupcakes?

for those of you who live under a rock, magnolia bakery is a cupcake bakery in nyc made famous by a little show called sex and the city starring sarah jessica parker. my girlfriend's and i, after a night out on the town, or sometimes to start the night out, or simply just because, used to venture into the city, new york city that is, and snatch up the world's best cupcakes from magnolia. it's one of the things i miss the most about living in nyc.

so you bet my pregnant little heart that when i found the recipe for magnolia bakery cupcakes from their  the magnolia bakery cookbook, i was determined to find an excuse to make these. you, however, don't need an excuse to go make these. i mean they are magnolia bakery cupcakes. winter olympics or not, these need to be made. do it.  

Magnolia Bakery Vanilla Cake with ButterCream Frosting
1c unsalted butter, softened
2 c sugar
4 large eggs at room temperature
1 1/2 c self rising flour
1 1/4 c all purpose flour
1 c Vitamin D milk
1tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350F.

Line two 12-cup muffin tins with cupcake wrappers.

Cream butter until smooth and gradually add sugar. Beat until fluffy. Next, add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.

Combine flours and add to mixer in four parts, alternating with milk and vanilla.

Bake 20 – 25 minutes, until cake tester comes out clean. Cool completely on wire rack.

Magnolia Bakery Buttercream Frosting

1 c unsalted butter, softened
8 c confectioner’s sugar
1/2 c Vitamin D milk
1tsp vanilla
Your favorite food coloring (optional!)

Place butter, milk, vanilla and 4c confectioner’s sugar in mixer and beat until smooth and creamy.

Add remaining confectioner’s sugar 1c at a time, until frosting has reached a spreadable consistency.
Add food coloring if desired.

Depending on the level of cupcake to frosting ration you like to use (I like lots of frosting to my cupcakes ;0p) you may (or may not) have frosting leftover. This will store for up to three days in an airtight container or one month in the freezer.

For more Magnolia Bakery yumminess check out The Magnolia Bakery Cookbook: Old Fashioned Recipes from New York’s Sweetest Bakery.

Best Ever French Onion Soup

my absolute favorite soup in the whole wide world is french onion soup. there's something about the carmelized onions topped with crusty bread and heaping amounts of melted cheese that just makes me go yum!

so i was ecstatic when i was reading Lunch in Paris and found the best recipe in the whole wide world for french onion soup. the best part about it...is that if you have some time (it takes about 4 hours total to make) it's the easiest thing in the world.

all you do is slice up a bunch of onions and toss them in a dutch oven with some butter, evoo, thyme, salt, pepper and a bay leaf and let the onions carmelize on their own in the oven.

chop 'em and leave 'em. what's easier than that???

this is the perfect dinner to make on a lazy sunday (when you're stuck inside watching football with your husband all day ;0) ) and especially a lazy cold sunday.

what's your favorite fall (or anytime of year) soup?

Best Ever French Onion Soup
Serves: 8

8-10 medium onions
4 tbsp butter
2 tbsp evoo (extra virgin olive oil)
sea salt
a few twigs fresh thyme
1 bay leaf
1/2 c dry sherry
8 cups chicken broth
8 slices stale baguette or sourdough bread (if you don't have any stale bread around, you can dry yours out in a warm oven in about 20 min. just set the oven to warm (about 200 degrees) and set your bread on the oven rack)
8 oz grated gruyere cheese
8 oz grated comte cheese

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. In a dutch oven combine the onions, butter, olive oil, salt, thyme and bay leaf. Cook, covered in the oven for 1 hour.

Stir onions and leave the lid slightly askew and continue to let cook for an additional 1.5 hours.

Transfer the dutch oven to the stovetop and cook until all liquid is evaporated (about 20 min). Add the sherry and cook for 5 minutes. Add the broth and make sure to get all the bits of the bottom of the pan. Bring to a boil, turn down and let simmer for 30 minutes.

Spoon the soup into 8 oven safe bowls and top with the baguette and a generous amounts of cheese. Pop in the oven under the broiler for 1-2 minutes or until the cheese is melted, browned slightly and nice and bubbly.

Enjoy!!

Weekend Reading

i'm not sure if anybody remembers, but way back here....i said i was going to read at least one book a month and report back. well i was really good about it here, here, here and here.

and then, well, i don't know what happened. i kept reading. i promise i did. i just wasn't so great on the "here's what i'm reading now" posts.

but i made a little trip to powell's recently to make up for it. (side note: if you live in portland, have been to portland or have even heard of our little city portland, and you're a book lover, you know exactly what powell's is and you love it).

i picked up six books in a single trip for a whopping $19 (winning!) and because i purchased more than five books, they threw in a cute little bag for free (double win!).

so, needless to say, in between running errands, drinks with the husband, and a friend's bbq (yes we PNWers bbq in November and no we're not crazy) i did a lot of this, this weekend.

hope everyone's weekend was as fun and relaxing as mine!

Weekend Family Fun

guess what happened this weekend?? after living in the pdx for more than a year, my parents finally came to visit! and while it was short and sweet (a total of 36 hours and counting) we had so much fun!

our weekend was full of drinks, good food (duh!) walking the streets of portland and good conversation.

mom and dad also treated husband and i to one of the restaurants i've been wanting to go to since we moved to the pdx...laurelhurst market. it was SO good!

and after touring portland, restuarant by restaurant (my favorite thing to do)....i think i'm sufficiently stuffed. and they are too.

excited to see the fam bam in a few short weeks for another food holiday! turkey day is right around the corner.

happy monday!

The Big 3-0!

last monday i turned 30. at first i was a little...wait, this can't be happening, but then i got over my mini meltdown, which consisted of a lot of: why don't i own a house? i'm supposed to have kids by now! i was going to be way more well-travelled at this age! and a host of other woulda, coulda, shoulda's that, at the end of the day, don't really matter all that much.

turning 30 was a little scarier than i thought it would be. maybe i hyped it up too much. who knows? in the end, it was pretty perfect. husband took me to an awesome dinner at blue hour (one of my  must-go-to restaurants from this post), followed by the best ice cream ever at salt and straw and then this past weekend, we went out and got my birthday present!

which, i have been boasting about ever since. i got a big kid car. my first car that wasn't just a base model, but was outfitted with fancy schmanzy things like leather seats, and butt warmers and a sun roof. i still am in a little bit of shock and husband is laughing at the grin that just won't seem to wipe itself of my face. needless to say...i had to share pictures of my new baby. 

isn't she pretty?!?!! 

i think so. (p.s. presents like this make turning 30 not so bad after all ;0)) 

Football Sunday and Pumpkin Chili

sundays are turning into football days. like all day football days. don't get me wrong, i'm a fan of watching football, but in the past it's been a little less sun up to sun down football around here.

on the plus side, i get lots done around the house. laundry, house cleaning, cooking, baking, gym, grocery shopping...you get the idea. it's amazing what you can get done when your husband has taken over the television...and the couch ;0)

this past weekend...i made some pumpkin chili to go with our football sunday and it was so good! you actually don't even taste the pumpkin in the chili, it just makes it a little thicker and a little creamier, which in my opinion, is a good thing.

our csa basket had pumpkin in it, so i made my own pumpkin puree, but canned pumpkin will work just as well, and save you time! although, you won't have those tasty little pumpkin seeds to snack on while you're waiting for your chili to get done :)

Pumpkin Chili

1 1/2 pounds ground beef
1 can kidney beans
1 can black beans
2 (14 oz) cans pumpkin puree
1 (28 oz) cans diced tomatoes

1 (14 oz) can diced tomatoes

2 c fresh tomatoes, chopped
4 c beef broth
1 onion, diced
1 pepper, chopped
4 cloves garlic, diced
3 tsp cumin
2 tsp chili powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper

1 tsp crushed red pepper
2 teaspoons dried oregano

Optional Toppings: 

Sour Cream

Cheese

Chives

Green Onions 

Directions: 

In a large stock pot, add ground beef, salt and pepper and brown meat. Add diced onion, diced pepper and garlic. Cook until translucent.

Add kidney beans, black beans, pumpkin puree, tomatoes, beef broth, cumin, chili powder, red pepper flakes and dried oregano. Stir well. Bring soup to a boil and reduce to a simmer. Adjust seasonings to taste. Simmer far at least 1 hour, stirring from the bottom every 10 – 15 minutes.

Top with your choice of toppings and serve! 

Enjoy!

Make Your Own Wine!

remember way back here...when i mentioned that husband and i were making our own wine? well, we finally went back to bottle it this past week!

we went back to tigard wine crafters to bottle up our merlot we made back in july and it was so much fun. making your wine is a two step process (well probably a lot more than two steps, but you partake in two main steps).

on your first trip, you'll taste test a variety of wines and choose which one you want to make. when we went, she had three reds: a merlot, a cabernet and a blackberry merlot (we chose red but there's also white!) for us to taste and decide which one we wanted to make. we chose the merlot. we mixed everything together and she sent us on our way with instructions to design our very own label and come back in about 8 weeks. this allows the wine time to ferment and turn from essentially grape juice into wine.

this past wednesday, after returning from our mini anniversary moon  we headed back down to tigard wine crafters to bottle, cork, label and take our wine home! the wine continues to age in the bottles for the next 6-8 months and then it's ready to drink! we thought these would make great christmas presents for some of our friends and family back home, but i also think they'd be great as wedding favors or party favors too!

we chose to label our wine with the number "one" in honor of our one year wedding anniversary. inside the number one is the word "one" in as many different languages as we could think of....

if you're in the portland area, i highly recommend hitting up tigard wine crafters to make your very own wine! rumor has it there might be a living social deal for this sometime in november ;0)

Smitten Kitchen's Carrot Cake Cupcakes

i am learning that when it comes to desserts, my husband likes two things...no LOVES two things. cookies and carrot cake. if i can find a way to turn carrot cake into a cookie, i think he might marry me all over again. i'm working on it ;0)

i had some spare time on my hands this past weekend (read: it was Sunday, which meant husband was watching football) and we had all the ingredients on hand for carrot cake (thanks CSA basket and your never ending supply of carrots) so i whipped up a batch of carrot cake cupcakes for husband to take to work with him (so i didn't eat them all myself).

they were delicious. but of course they were because i used the recipe from smitten kitchen, and well everything i make from her is mouth wateringly good. i skipped out on the nuts and raisins (i'm not a big fan of nuts or dried fruit in my desserts) and made a simple cream cheese frosting instead of the maple cream cheese frosting (only because i think cream cheese frosting is sweet enough on its own).

husband came home with rave reviews from his co-workers (score one for the home team!) and i may or may not have scored a back massage out of the deal. :)

head on over to smitten kitchen for the recipe!

A Mini Anniversarymoon

as i mentioned here, husband and i just celebrated our one year wedding anniversary. i can't believe how fast a year flew by. it feels like yesterday, we were packing up and moving to our new city and getting ready to get hitched. ;0) time really does fly when you're having fun!

to celebrate, husband and i took a mini vacation to my parent's beach house on hat island. a small island, located about 45 minutes by ferry from the everett marina up in washington state. there's nothing on the island except private residences and a little golf course. so when i say nothing, i mean nothing. no gas station, no grocery store, no restaurant or bar....i like to call it glorified camping (you know because it comes with perks like a roof over our heads, indoor plumbing and a kitchen).

it was awesome to get away and relax. we sat in the sun (for the one afternoon it decided to grace us with its presence), read books on the porch, went kayaking, took walks on the beach, watched lots of movies (husband watched lots of football), built fires and ate and drank to our hearts content. husband entertained me wanting to stage a photo shoot every step of the way (he's such a good sport).

we ate the top of our wedding cake (surprisingly still sooo good! drank fancy champagne (thanks Amy!), and read what people wrote on our puzzle guest book) and then put the puzzle together! it was pretty perfect. and we're lucky that we have a place to escape to that is so beautiful.

all in all it was a pretty great long weekend. one for the books. and i can't wait to celebrate many more anniversaries.