Kendra's Bridal Shower

I got to play hostess just before Christmas at my sister's bridal shower. Of course my main duty was to take care of the invites while the other hostesses did a great job with the food & decorations!


I screen printed (with my yudu, of course!) the doily/snowflake pattern onto grey stock and ran that through my printer for the black text.

I also made some simple recipe cards that people filled out and brought to the shower to help Kendra & Stephen start a good collection of recipes from their loved ones.

Now... to get cracking on those wedding invites!

Canning Confession

I like pickles.
I know some people that would die of shock if they heard me say that. But let's be clear. I like my pickles. They're pretty delicious and I might have eaten a whole jar by myself for a snack. While I was making dinner.

They took a good 3 weeks before they were ready. The pickled okra are fantastic as well—also a 3 week wait. I tried to eat some okra (just to test them) before the 3 weeks and they were really tough and I couldn't really bite through them.

We're in vinegar heaven.

Canning: part 3

I finally had some friends over for a little canning party on Saturday. It was a lot of fun and we ended up meeting at the Greenmarket in Grand Army Plaza to pick up some fresh goods before hand. We made these spicy okra, these spiced pickles and another batch of more traditional pickles via a mix that Caitlin brought. We also ended up with too many okra for what our original mix made so we decided to make some okra with the spicy pickle mix. I'll let you know how everything turns out!

The zucchini pickles from 2 weeks ago are really amazing, by the way. They are very mustardy, which I love. We still have a big jar left but I can't wait to make more.

We had every intention of making jalapeño jelly as well but found fruit pectin to be a little difficult to find that afternoon. I got some and we're all set to try our hand a the jelly later this week. (I'll share the recipe then!)

Part 1 of (hopefully more than 1!)

I've been doing my research, scouring the farmer's markets and NYC Greenmarkets... I've been reading and collecting recipes and tips. This year will be my first adventure into canning. My Grandma Decker's basement always had a rack of shelves under the stairs (& I'm sure much more than that when she was raising her 13 kids on a North Dakota farm!) with homemade sweet pickles, jellies, jams, and other delightful preserves that she or my Grandpa had grown.

I'm thinking that I'll be doing some of these summer squash & zucchini pickles (I'm notorious for hating traditional pickles.) Some more traditional spiced kirby pickles for J. Possibly some peaches and this recipe for spicy okra. My Aunt Connie has a Jalapeño jelly recipe that I'm trying to track down at the moment as well.

I've never tried anything like this before and I found the How-to section of Fresh Preserving to be the most helpful resource so far.

If you have any recipes or advice please do share. I need as much help as I can get!

*typography adapted from a recent article on Home Canning that I worked on for my day job.

Summer Fest 2009

1. I love food. I love shopping for it, preparing it, smelling it, eating it!

2. I love finding new seasonal, delicious recipes to make with J and share with our friends and family.

3. I love sharing these ideas with others... like minded or not. Maybe I can help them see that cooking at home doesn't have to suck. Or that eating seasonal isn't really a burden, it's a blessing!

4. I love MattBites. I find Matt to be insightful, hysterical & a real source for inspiration as an at-home cook & especially because I'm a designer for a food magazine! His food photography & his husband's styling skills are some of my all-time favorites.

All of these things said. I'm really excited to keep up with Summer Fest 2009 to learn what other bloggers and foodies are doing with Summer's bounty! (They'll feature herbs, stone-fruits, beans-and-greens, & a whole week dedicated to tomatoes... yes please!)

*Do yourself a favor and read Matt's post on herbs in cocktails. I already bought my rosemary to make a Rosemary Salty Dog. A Greyhound is one of my all time favorite beverages but I rarely drink them anymore having moved on from vodka + juice combos. I can hardly wait to get home and mix things up with a new take on an old friend!

yep.

We don't have a t.v. // we don't care about sports (not even a little bit) // we eat kale on pizza because it's our fav. (try it with walnuts and blue cheese, so good!) // we ride our bikes everywhere, even in the winter. // our first date was at Choo Chai. // we love to make bread together // we sometimes hate leaving brooklyn because manhattan is a rat race.

*via here.

I heart bklyn

I'm going to spend the weekend outside—taking photos of spring in Brooklyn, riding my bike & going to the park! And maybe we'll make some Micheladas too!

for the love of Irish Beer!

I think I've mentioned that we shop at the Co-op... and I love to bake. I picked up a Guinness Bread mix as a little surprise for J. I made it this weekend. It's dense. Almost ridiculously so. It's a fun idea but I can't say that I recommend it.

*OH, and Happy St. Patrick's Day! Personally, I'm only about 1/16th Irish, but I married a McNamara! Cheers!

at long last...

Yes, I'm alive...busy, but alive.
some projects coming soon(ish).

*please forgive questionable photography. I literally held my computer up above the cake to take the picture with my fancy new MacBook. (thank goodness I didn't drop it!)

Pistachio cake by my friends at Baked.

Christmas Dinner // Island Fish Stew

About 3 days after I graduated from high school I traveled to Martha's Vineyard with 2 of my friends, we lived in an old lady's attic for $25/week...for the whole summer. It was HOT. We had no way to do laundry. The only laundromat was out of town & we didn't have a car...so we did laundry maybe 3 times in 3 months. We each worked 2+ jobs that summer. I did everything from working at the Black Dog General Store in Vineyard Haven to working in a fancy Brazilian restaurant right on the water, to babysitting & yard work. It was wonderful. We were always tired but the vineyard was something that certainly set the tone for the way I would plan all of my summers – go away for the whole summer & work your tail off while you do something totally new and different.

[maybe that was an unnecessary preface to this recipe. oh well, I like sharing stories.]

J & I spent Christmas in Boston's fabulous, Italian, North End. I literally felt like I woke up Christmas Eve in Italy...everyone was speaking Italian (even J with his theatric & throaty "Ciao Bella's!") and the area had a wonderful old-world charm. We went from tiny shop to tiny shop searching for all of the ingredients for our Christmas Dinner – Island Fish Stew in the Black Dog: Summer on the Vineyard cookbook.






*If you can't read the recipe fully & would like it, just leave a comment or shoot me an email, I would be happy to get it to you!

Sushi on Sunday

My dear friend, Beth, gave me a sushi-kit for Christmas...(ahem, last year, cough)...& we busted it out for the first time tonight. With the help of some vegan sushi recipes from the Post Punk Kitchen it eliminated the risk of preparing raw fish at home.

*you can probably tell by rice stuck to my fingers...& J's "angry sushi face" that our efforts were successful & oh so very yummy!

note: we live above a sushi restaurant so the smell of it (mostly the smell of old rice) in the apartment at any given time has proven to be a bit of a turn-off as of late...until tonight!

Secret's out!

Friends, believe it or not, but I have a day job (sometimes it's more of a crack-of-dawn job).

Thanks to the Baked Blog, the secret's out – I've gone back to my roots where tasty, homemade treats & espresso collide. Stop by & say howdy sometime!

photo by Renato Poliafito of Baked...on his trusty iPhone!

Worth the wait!

You may remember this post with the brief lament at the end about my constant search for a scalloped-edge cookie cutter. My search is finally over! J & I stopped in one of my favorite neighborhood consignment stores Saturday evening and this little beauty was just sitting there waiting for me! An antique for $2, I could not be happier! Now, I'm off to find the perfect recipe to try it out on.

Does anyone have any pumpkin or spice cookie recipes that they want to share? please!

Matt Armendarez + Martha

Ooh, can you just imagine my delight when Matt posted his spot with Martha on his blog! (We have no T.V. so in the rare instance that there is something I want to see it's difficult.)

I can't wait to make these Alfajores cookies!!!

O Fall, how I do love thee!

I'm getting jittery just looking (and drooling) over these lovely fall images at Matthew Mead. It seems everyone has been feeling autumn's arrival...(even if it's just with football games, for my Texas friends!) I was at Target yesterday and it's just evil the way they have the Halloween candy displayed in giant monster-mouths! (Did I say "evil" because I meant awesome! I did resist, for the record.) It's only September people, can't we hold off on the Halloween stuff for a few more weeks!?

I'm thinking a fun, fall-inspired project is on the horizon...not sure what (I am liking the funky wall art above via Matthew Mead)...but with this much excitement I must do something!

What are you doing to celebrate the fall, even if you can't feel it yet? Are you working on any fun recipes or projects?

*I already bought a pie pumpkin for baking and cooking...I would cook with pumpkin year around if it wasn't kind of faux pas.

top image by me.
bottom image via Matthew Mead.

Great-grandma's Banana Bread

Finally, the long awaited banana bread recipe!
Ever feel bad tossing those over ripe bananas? Put them in the freezer until you get a chance to make this bread. Just thaw the bananas, they get really gooey but the results are worth it!

Other things to throw in just for fun...chocolate chips, cinnamon, nutmeg, coconut flakes, flax seeds. It's hard to mess up so experiment at your leisure. Enjoy!

Holy Heavenly // ANZAC cookies

If you haven't already noticed, I'm a pretty big fan of 101 Cookbooks. I love the recipes & the photography is killer. I have yet to make anything too complicated (sometimes the ingredients were difficult to come by in Lubbock, but I made some substitutions) and it's always worth the extra step or ingredient. She really sticks to healthy and whole foods as well which is great if you want something not-as-southern-as-your-mom-made-it & usually always vegetarian or even vegan. I made these ANZAC cookies tonight for my dinner. (yes, I said dinner.) ANZAC stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, you can get the cookie-lore here for a little background info. What I'm trying to say is I highly recommend this recipe. They were filling, fantastic & I didn't feel the urge to eat the whole pan. I also didn't use the orange blossom water that she suggested, I substituted with a little vanilla.

(Don't worry Mom, I ate the orange that I used for zest with them so that's not all I had for dinner!)

note: I can't & wasn't about to compete with Heidi's incredible photographs of her cookies. (besides hers are heart-shaped & mine were blobs.) So here's a shot of our lovely Kitchen Aid mixer, (a wedding gift) in pink for the Susan G. Komen Foundation...and the great evening light in our kitchen.

Baby Shower Invites // Miss Ella

I've been meaning to post these for awhile, I made them a few months ago... Now Miss Ella is almost 3 months old! I will be taking a trip down to Texas in a month to go see her (okay, & her parents) can't wait!

My main inspiration when I was working on the design were these cookies. No, really, I had recently made them and had been searching in vain for a scalloped edge cookie cutter for MONTHS. I had been wanting to use my old scalloped scissors on something but hadn't found the perfect project until Nicole's mom asked me to make these shower invites.

a note on the paper for you design-y types out there: I used a craft card stock for the backing and an ivory Wausau paper with matching 100% cotton, #10 envelopes, also in ivory.

*note: I still haven't found the scallop-edged cookie cutter, please enlighten me if you know where I can find one! oh, and the cookies are amazing.

Thoughts on Sunday...

So, I've been at this blog for about a month now. It was slow going at first but I had only been married a few days & was living in a city I had never been to that I now call home. I'm getting used to the city...well, not so much the city as my neighborhood. (Brooklyn is big you see and New York City is bigger. I'm really loving it, by the way.)

I have made it a goal to post once a day (except weekends) for the past week or so, I've succeeded...somedays I even posted twice. I feel that things have been sort of random and sparatic so I'm going to try to write out some goals and a more focused posting schedule, saavy? (I do better with goals when I share them with people, it helps hold me accountable...aren't you lucky!) If you have any thoughts/suggestions/words of wisdom/requests please let me know via comment or email: kd.mcnamara85@gmail.com let me know what you want to see more of and what you're not really into.

thank you for sticking with me this far my lovilies, I hope to be making more improvments soon. thank you in advance for your feedback!

ps. sorry about the photo, we aren't exactly the cutest couple in the world! this was taken July 7th, 2007, just after our dear friends Whitney and Mark got hitched! (we miss and love you guys! xo)

Labor Day Cocktail // Michelada

While I know that some people have known about these yummy concoctions for awhile, they are fairly new to me. They would be perfect for a Labor Day weekend get together...or while sitting on a lawn chair by yourself indulging in some sun and a good read.

I've seen a few different variations of this drink but this is my favorite thus far. I really love to have them with fish tacos, kind of a match made in heaven.

ps: if you haven't noticed, you can drag & drop (copy/paste, you PC users) the recipes to your desktop and print them for your collection...just fyi.