Once again - it is a beautiful day to be living in this here state of OH-IO
It is so darn bea-utiful outside.
(View from my kitchen window early this morning)
I have a lot of stuff to cover today (both featured items and not) so it's time we get the show on the road!!
Before I give a glimpse into the past few days of my life (because it's oh so interesting lol) I have a couple things I'd like to share....
There is a small rumor......
at my place of employment about me which I find ridiculously rude and unfathomable beyond comprehension. The rumor being: that I haven't been eating.
[I'm almost positive this is due to the fact that I lost some weight since the beginning of "The Biggest Loser Competition". (If you didn't know about my being in biggest loser, I explain it in this here post:Afternoon and Night)]
My initial facial expression:
My initial reactions/thoughts on this harsh and hysterically false accusation:
"SAY WHAAAAT?"
"What the F?"
"Are you kidding me?"
"Where the hell do they get off saying something like that?"
"Ummmm hellooooo can you say FOOD BLOGGER"
But I digress....I'm clearly over it lol.
Do you have any ridiculously ripe bananas that you're thinking about tossing out??
STOP RIGHT THERE! JUST STOP RIGHT THERE!
Let's not be hasty....
Instead of putting these perfectly good bananas in the garbage - just make the banana nut bread recipe I've provided for you at the bottom of this very post- the more ripe the bananas are the better the bread tastes!!!
You won't regret it :)
Yesterday went down a little like this....
It was a very cold day in my house.
A very cold day indeed.
It all began when I was formatting this very blog post yesterday morning...
The cold crept up on me out of no where....
(I love how happy I look when I blog lol)
First I felt it in my arms and shoulders....
Followed by a tingling in my neck...
Then my ears started were starting to get numb...
The next thing I knew my whole body was shivering.
It was just too cold!!
I don't know what it is, but I get cold extremely easily...so I cocooned myself :)
This made for a comfortable and enjoyable blogging experience.....for the most part lol
Brunch at 'First Watch' with my mother, aunt, and sister was a great way to start my day...
I consumed a great deal of coffee....
as well as: a bowl of fruit, an english muffin with peanut butter and honey, and an egg white veggie omelet topped with delicious salsa.
(Plus a heaping load of fried potatoes: not pictured)
Gobbled my breakfast up.
It was delicious as always.
(Take THAT for not eating lol)
We spent the rest of our afternoon shopping around town - specifically for individual pieces for my Halloween costume!!! I am sooooo pleased with the way it's all coming together.
It's going to be AWESOME!!
So far my costume consists of:
(My mother helped me construct this bad boy)
Eeeeeeeeeek! I'm so excited lol.
I can't say it enough - I love Halloween.
I put a lot of time and effort into the process of assembling my Halloween costumes, and this year is no different. Although I did something a little bit different this time: I bought items that i will wear again on opposed to actual costume pieces.
Sure i could go out and buy a $40 costume that I would only wear once. But doesn't it make more sense to buy things that i can wear/use everyday (i.e. a sweaterdress, hat, pretty fingerless gloves, etc.)??
I can't wait to see the final product!!
Do you know what my costume is yet?
Did my hint the last time i posted give it away?
Hmmmmmm...... Stay tuned.....
Last nights hysterically happy and childlike smile can only mean two things and two things only...
1. I got to hang out with my best friend Jessica who was/is in town for the weekend - and....
2. Jessica and her mother made one of my favorite meals in the entire world for dinner- Stacks!!!!
Jessica is my lil enchilada and has been my BFF for the past 12 years.....mainly because her family feeds me the most delicious food. (I use her for the food connection....her friendship would mean very little to me otherwise lol)
Upon my arrival Jess was whipping up something delicious....
Guacamole for my personal consumption.
No....I lied. She didn't make it for me lol. She made it for everyone.
But i'd like to think it was made special for my curly head :)
What are stacks you ask?
Jessica told me to say that 'Stacks' are "An ancient chinese secret". It is a secret...but it's not ancient or chinese lol.
It's her families hispanic style secret recipe which begins with a delicious secret sauce....
When the sauce was ready, and the fix ins were chopped - it was prime time to assemble a proper 'Stack'
(please excuse the blurry photos)
You STACK(which is where the name comes from) up each layer with tortilla, sauce, fixins, and top it with an egg.
I asked Jessica for 1 stack to begin with, because I wasn't all that hungry......yet....
I'm not sure if you've noticed or are aware of this little fact- but the bigger my smile gets means the better the food is.
I'd say from a 1-10 this smile exceeds 1,245.
This particular stack had a life span of about 5-10 minutes before....
....it was gone.
But who only eats one stack I ask you?! Who!?
Sissy's. That's who.
Stack #2
(What was that rumor again? Something about me not eating? Oh yea...right. Hahaha - thats a laugh.)
After out late night dinner - we drove to a series of Halloween stores not too far away....
Note to self: Do not take pictures of you or anyone else whilest driving.
Especially with your blinding L.E.D. flash on your camera.
As humorous as the after blindness/spots may be - it is dangerous.
: End note.
Looks like someone loves Halloween just as much as I do!
Has anyone else seen the movie 'Big'?
Where the kid finds a 'Zoltar' machine and wishes to be big? Then the kid wakes up the next morning to find that he's aged 30+ years over night?
(I love that movie)
ZOLTAR was in the Halloween shop!!!
I was so excited. Jessica was nice enough to lend me a dollar so I could get my very own fortune!
My fortunes are ALWAYS spot on. Seriously. It scares me sometimes how accurate my fortunes, horoscopes, Chinese signs, or anything of that nature can be. This time was no different....it was eerie how accurate my fortune was.
At least I know now that fate will be kind to me and I can expect my life to run on a smoother pattern. Zoltar has spoken. And I believe him lol.
The rest of my time with Jessica was spent trying to figure out how to make a friendship bracelet for her to send to a friend stationed in Afghanistan....
.....we failed lol.
When I finally got home last night- it was no warmer than it was when I left twelve hours earlier....
I slept in my leather jacket, hat, scarf, and pants....I couldn't bring myself to take them off lol. Which brings us to.....
Today....
This morning I woke up, got out of bed, put in my contacts, took one look in the mirror - and the theme music from the movie "psycho" immediately went off in my head.
I looked scary.
Like seriously scary.
For one, I fell asleep with my makeup on....so I had mascara and lipstick.....all over lol.
And I must've run my fingers through my curls when I was asleep, because my hair was going in all frizzy directions.
I looked like a mixture between 'Shrek' and Haggard from 'Harry Potter'
(A lot of movie references today lol)
Needless to say I didn't want to be photographed lol.
Seeing as I missed out on 'pancake Saturday' yesterday (due to an early morning shift at work) I decided to give my less than great pumpkin spice pancake recipe another go.
(I love my handy dandy griddle)
I wish I could say that the pancakes turned out the way I wanted them to this time, but sadly they didn't lol. The flavor tasted a lot more like pumpkin spice this time, and they actually tasted pretty good!
But I seriously messed up somewhere within my many recipe tweaks. The pancakes were super thin and the texture was strange. I suppose that's what I get for screwing with a recipe when I had no idea what I was doing :/
I was so bummed out over these silly little pancakes this morning that my mother had to finally step it. She said something along the lines of "Jenna, you're being ridiculous. The pancakes taste good. They taste like pumpkin spice. Who cares if they're thin. The texture is fine. You're being way too hard on yourself. They're just pancakes."
And she was right - they were JUST pancakes. I'm lucky that I even have food in my house to eat! Some people would kill to eat my sub par pumpkin spice pancakes, but here i am moping about because they aren't the best pancakes to ever be created in the history of pancakes or breakfast. I'm not a pancake expert - it's been a while since I've even had a 'Pancake Saturday'. This will take practice. Building recipes take practice. Tweaking recipes takes practice. I need to remember these things before I have a nervous breakdown over a teeny tiny pancake lol.
I am guilty of being hard on myself when it comes to making food. A little TOO hard on myself. I suppose I need little wake up calls like these from my mother.
After I stopped bumming out I really did enjoy my breakfast....
It is the best meal of the day you know ;)
::Quick Fastforward of the rest of my day::
After breakfast I did a little 'blog work'.
I hung out with Jessica during her last few hours in town.
She made me the best lunch (Left over stacks) What a good friend :)
I came home, walked my dog.
Ate my body weight in tomatoes out of my dads garden.
I am now spending the last remaining minutes of sunlight outside - swinging on my swingset.
It is such a beautiful evening.
I hope you all enjoy this post - I think it's a good one :)
Good day/evening/night to you all!!
Let us begin...
[[Today’s music]]
(1) TWO DOOR CINEMA CLUB – SOMETHING GOOD CAN WORK
(2) PANIC AT THE DISCO – WHEN THE DAY MET THE NIGHT
“When the moon fell in love with the sun
All was golden in the sky
All was golden when the day met the night”
(3) KATE NASH – MERRY HAPPY
(I can’t find a really good version of this song…there is either too much base…too many fans singing…or you cant understand what Kate is saying…either way I love this song – so here you go!)
“Dancing at discos
Eating cheese on toast
Yeah you make me merry make me very very happy
But you obviously, you didn't want to stick around"
[[Today’s restaurant]]
NOMA – COPENHAGEN DENMARK
This restaurant was voted “The Best Restaurant in the World” IN THE WORLD!!!!!!
My hypothetical/nonexistent gorgeous French chef husband (who can sing like Michael Buble, and dance like Fred Astaire) will one day take me to this restaurant and buy me whatever it is my little heart desires, and we will eat and eat and eat until we pass out or die from euphoria.
-OR-
I can just save up my money and go there all by myself like an independent woman. (But doesn’t the first option sound a lot more romantic???)
I get the shivers just watching these clips. This is my new favorite restaurant and I’ve never even been there. I suggest you watch each and every video. Chef Rene Redzepi is absolutely amazing.
[[Today's blog findings]]
While going through my daily "blog check" (which is where I peruse through the many blogs I follow) today I came across a lot of pictures that I find interesting, funny, cool, beautiful, and/or wonderful in one way or another:
[[Today's kitchen gadget]]
JUICERS
[[Today’s news]]
(1) HOW CHRISTINA TOSI INTRODUCED DESSERTS TO THE ‘MOMOFUKU’ EMPIRE
"At The Feast Talks during the New York Wine & Food Festival, we sat down with Milk Bar pastry whiz Christina Tosi and discussed how she infiltrated the no-dessert territory of the Momofuku restaurants. Watch Tosi describe how she designs sweets for each of the different menus (when she's not masterminding a Brooklyn expansion). She also explains why midtown's Má Pêche doesn't serve dessert."
“File this under "How Did We Not Blog About This Already?" Jim's Pancakes, Jim Belosic's blog where he documents the artistic pancake creations he makes for his daughter Allie, has been around since the beginning of the year, but thanks to an appearance on the Rachael Ray Show today his site is making the rounds. He's turned pancake batter into a dinosaur skeleton, unicorn, Tetris, crane, and more. See how Jim makes his pancake art at his YouTube page.”
(I could’ve used this as a featured restaurant…but I didn’t want to wait any longer to share it with you guys! So I decided to put it under the ‘random’ section. This coffee shop is SO COOL!!)
“The new D’Espresso on Madison Avenue (at 42nd) in New York has received more media attention than is generally awarded to a tiny coffee shop in this world of millions of new coffee shops.
The reason for the attention is the fun design by the Manhattan-based nemaworkshop, a team of designers and architects that has created numerous cool retail and hospitality concepts. Founder Anurag Nema took the idea of a coffee shop that looks like a library – giving a nod to the nearby New York Public Library’s Bryant park branch – and turned it on its side. The walls are not lined with books but the floors and ceiling are. Except that it is all an illusion, a life-size image of books printed on custom tiles. Pendant lighting does not hang from the ceiling; it sticks out from the walls.
The tiny coffee bar of 420 square feet (39 square meters) is the second for owner Eugene Kagansky (the first one is on the Lower East Side) who plans to create an entire empire of coffee shops. Apparently, the next one will be completely upside down.”
"Audi, a brand exuding an attitude of self confidence and progressive thinking, and associated with the latest technology and innovative design, is a perfect brand to pioneer this entirely original concept, a new breed of “billboard” created by Access Agency. It is a display of four life-size Audi cars, suspended inside the silver rings of a massive Audi symbol attached to an iconic bridge structure or in front of landmark spaces — the Sydney Harbour Bridge, Brooklyn Bridge, Tower Bridge, Venice. The rings rotate around, light-up at night, and move up and down the bridge. Against the backdrop of spectacular urban architecture, the Audi installation reflects Audi’s continuous challenging of the status quo, its capacity to innovate, and its ability to avoid the bland and the ordinary.
But what will create valuable media attention and social media buzz is not just the actual final display, but the entire anticipation, the process of creation, the engineering feat of the installation and the spectacular launch event. The manufacturing and transportation of the gigantic rings, the installation of the rings, the hoisting of the vehicles, the first test of the lights, the rehearsals of the launch…By the time the installation is complete, and the unveiling event is about to start, the news about it will have reached those in the know.
PR — locally and globally — plus participation and rallies by dealers, and other in-town and on-site activities and happenings leading up to the unveiling, will add to the echo effect of this one-of-a-kind promotion. The anticipation, excitement and buzz will culminate in an epic night-time launch event that we envision including a live symphony orchestra playing on a barge right under the suspended rings or on the bridge itself, a fireworks presentation or a LED light show above the bridge, and the ultimate unveiling of the rings. Bill Tikos"
Jenna is the name blogging about food appears to be my game. Self declared funny gal, and budding chef-to-be. I prepare food for a living at @olivedive . Click the 'About Me' tab to learn more!
After I stopped bumming out I really did enjoy my breakfast....
It is the best meal of the day you know ;)
“The new D’Espresso on Madison Avenue (at 42nd) in New York has received more media attention than is generally awarded to a tiny coffee shop in this world of millions of new coffee shops..jpg)
The reason for the attention is the fun design by the Manhattan-based nemaworkshop, a team of designers and architects that has created numerous cool retail and hospitality concepts. Founder Anurag Nema took the idea of a coffee shop that looks like a library – giving a nod to the nearby New York Public Library’s Bryant park branch – and turned it on its side. The walls are not lined with books but the floors and ceiling are. Except that it is all an illusion, a life-size image of books printed on custom tiles. Pendant lighting does not hang from the ceiling; it sticks out from the walls.
The tiny coffee bar of 420 square feet (39 square meters) is the second for owner Eugene Kagansky (the first one is on the Lower East Side) who plans to create an entire empire of coffee shops. Apparently, the next one will be completely upside down.”
http://www.thecoolhunter.net/article/detail/1807/despresso--new-york.jpg)
"Audi, a brand exuding an attitude of self confidence and progressive thinking, and associated with the latest technology and innovative design, is a perfect brand to pioneer this entirely original concept, a new breed of “billboard” created by Access Agency.
It is a display of four life-size Audi cars, suspended inside the silver rings of a massive Audi symbol attached to an iconic bridge structure or in front of landmark spaces — the Sydney Harbour Bridge, Brooklyn Bridge, Tower Bridge, Venice. The rings rotate around, light-up at night, and move up and down the bridge. Against the backdrop of spectacular urban architecture, the Audi installation reflects Audi’s continuous challenging of the status quo, its capacity to innovate, and its ability to avoid the bland and the ordinary..jpg)
But what will create valuable media attention and social media buzz is not just the actual final display, but the entire anticipation, the process of creation, the engineering feat of the installation and the spectacular launch event.
The manufacturing and transportation of the gigantic rings, the installation of the rings, the hoisting of the vehicles, the first test of the lights, the rehearsals of the launch…By the time the installation is complete, and the unveiling event is about to start, the news about it will have reached those in the know.-1.jpg)
PR — locally and globally — plus participation and rallies by dealers, and other in-town and on-site activities and happenings leading up to the unveiling, will add to the echo effect of this one-of-a-kind promotion.
The anticipation, excitement and buzz will culminate in an epic night-time launch event that we envision including a live symphony orchestra playing on a barge right under the suspended rings or on the bridge itself, a fireworks presentation or a LED light show above the bridge, and the ultimate unveiling of the rings. Bill Tikos".jpg)
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