(Photo by: Tim Street Photo)

Maple Sour Cream Walnut Muffins (recipe via Design Sponge)

*Note -- I halved the recipe below and got 9 muffins out of it.

For the batter:

1/2 cup butter, room temperature
3/4 cup maple syrup
2 large eggs
1 cup sour cream
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 cup walnuts, roughly chopped

For the topping:

1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup all purpose flour
3 Tbs butter, chopped
Scant 1/4 cup walnuts, chopped small
1/2 tsp cinnamon

Whip butter in an electric mixer. Slowly add maple syrup to combine. Add eggs, one at a time. Add sour cream. Add vanilla extract. Combine dry ingredients (except nuts). Add to butter mixture. Stir to combine. Stir in walnuts. Fill muffin cups approximately half full with batter.

Combine ingredients for the topping. Use your fingers to pinch butter and break into pea-sized pieces well-combined into rest of ingredients. Generously spoon topping over muffin batter.

Bake in 350 degree oven for 10-12 minutes until a cake tester comes out clean. Cool on wire racks.

Photo by me

Tim's photo is clearly better. Note our maple syrup collection in the background. It's also using the 50mm lens, which is the best thing ever.

I honestly find that vegetarian lunches are harder to compose than vegetarian dinners. For lunches, most days I'm bringing something to work, so I want it to be low-maintenance. Usually this means I eat a lot of peanut butter sandwiches. Today I have hummus and a carrot/beet salad. For the lunches I get to enjoy while home, I like making something more involved, as a treat.

So, this weekend I read that roasting sweet potato with olive oil, chili powder, and cumin is delicious and pairs nicely with black beans, so I tried it in tostada form. It was, indeed, delicious, and a nice veggie-friendly lunch that wasn't all that difficult to make.

No real recipe to share b/c it's so open-ended. I cooked corn tortillas in vegetable oil, layered it with refried black beans, sauteed red peppers and onions, the roasted chili cumin sweet potato, and then garnished with shredded cheese, sour cream, and cilantro.

Um, so I just discovered Statigram.com, which is basically an online tool to view Instagram photos. It helps to see a lot at a time and track your history and follower's histories as well as provide stats on your Instagram usage. I'm a data nerd, so this is totally awesome. And I'm completely obsessed with Instagram. I try to do no more than one a day (and it's often less than that), as a photo journal of sorts. I'm excited to have a little photo journal of my year come December 31. And, I try try try to not take 80 photos a week of my dog :)

Soon after signing up for Statigram I received an email with my stats (which can also be viewed on my account). This goes to show there are way too many people in the world with iPhones.





And here's a view of some of the stats from the actual Statigram site

I'm trying to space out wedding-related posts so you all don't get sick of it. Most of these are predominately pictures anyway, so I guess it doesn't matter too much.

Lately I've been seriously questioning the point of blogging, but I guess it's posts like this where I realize I can't put the equivalent of this on Facebook or Twitter. So ... for now I shall keep my blog!

Anyway -- so this is about the selection of bridesmaid dresses + accessories for the wedding. I already discussed our color palette, and here's the final result:

Photo by Cathy & David Photographers

Here are the gray dresses pictured above. Each bridesmaid selected her own.

Dresses, from L to R:

J. Crew, Nordstrom, Nordstrom, J. Crew, ASOS

The girls also picked their own burgundy shoes -- from places like Zappos and Endless.

Photo by Cathy & David Photographers

Below are the individual palettes, with the dress and shoes they picked out, the pocketwatch necklace and earrings I selected for them (from Etsy, ModCloth, and ASOS), and aqua blue pashminas from The Dessy Group. The flower arrangements we had for the day (in the photo above) were similar to the ones pictured in the palettes.

Also, the flower girl, Vivian, had a similar outfit, with a gray/silver dress, and I bought her a silver long-strand locket necklace to kind of go with our long necklaces. Unplanned, she had a braid in her hair just like me :)

Photo by Cathy & David Photographers

For our first vegetarian meal I made (with changes) Closet Cooking's Jalapeno Cornbread Grilled Cheese and Roasted Tomato Soup

I made the cornbread using Jiffy mixes that we already had in the pantry, and added jalapenos. It's a delicious way to make cornbread, though I wonder if making it from scratch would have helped my "sandwich" to not crumble apart as easily. It didn't matter in the end, though. It mostly stayed together fine and it didn't need to be pretty as I ate it.

For the roasted tomato soup, I used canned fire-roasted tomatoes since it's like the exact opposite of tomato season right now.

Roasted Tomato Soup

Ingredients:
2 pounds canned tomatoes
1 red pepper, chopped
1 onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 Tbsp olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
1/4 teaspoon smoked paprika
1 teaspoon oregano
2 cups vegetable stock
1/4 cup heavy cream, optional

Directions:
1. Saute on high the chopped red peppers, onion, garlic and olive oil.
2. Place everything but the cream into a sauce pan and simmer for 45 minutes.
3. Puree with a hand blender to desired consistency and mix in the cream.

I also added lots of salt and pepper, more paprika, and a little bit of cumin.


Jalapeno Cornbread Grilled Cheese

Ingredients:
1 loaf jalapeno cornbread
1 batch refried black beans
1/2 onion, sauteed
1 red pepper, sauteed
2 cups cheddar cheese, grated, room temperature
4 tablespoons butter, room temperature
1 batch guacamole, or avocado (optional)
sour cream (optional)
cilantro (optional)

Directions
1. Heat a pan over medium heat.
2. Butter up one side of each slice of cornbread, put half of them butter side down in the pan, sprinkle on half the cheese followed by the onions & peppers, a dollop of refried beans, the remaining cheese and cornbread with the buttered side up.
3. Grill until golden brown, carefully flip and continue grilling until the other side is golden brown and the cheese has melted, about 2-4 minutes per side.
4. Top with avocado, sour cream and cilantro and enjoy!

Must be eaten with a fork :)

No, this post is not about The Oscars.

It's about Pinterest. I started this "absurdly cute" animals board over a year ago, in October 2010. It's gone by mostly enjoyed only by me ... but for some reason the repinning and re-repinning thing has occurred and the "absurdly cute" board is ending up on fellow Pinners' radars, as these things in internet-world go. So every day in my feed I see little cute animals being repinned. I'm glad to spread joy in such a way!

But, out of a total of 1,555 pins since becoming a Pinterest member, the award for Most Repinned goes to the following, with a total of 489 repins!!!

And yes, that is in fact the most absurdly cute thing you've ever seen.

"Eating is an agricultural act." -Wendell Berry

Tim and I have decided to give up eating meat for Lent (February 22, 2012 to April 7, 2012). For me, it is meant as reminder that I can cook delicious, healthy, and filling meals meat-free. Sometimes I get all American and forget. Also, I have been slipping here and there lately on my "eat only local meat" personal vow, and I think I need good healthy reminder as to why I care about that in the first place.

It will be my goal to post some of the vegetarian recipes on my blog, and share in the deliciousness I find :)

I used to be a vegetarian and I understand and appreciate that choice. However, for me at this phase of my life, I tend to follow Michael Pollan's thinking below and choose to eat only local meat. Now, I fully understand the argument against what Pollan is saying below (ala Jonathan Safran Foer, and others), and I don't feel the need to blog about it all. I just wanted to quickly share what I appreciate about this line of thinking...

On the Q&A section of Michael Pollan's website he answers the question "Why aren’t you a vegetarian?" as follows:

"I’m not a vegetarian because I enjoy eating meat, meat is nutritious food, and I believe there are ways to eat meat that are in keeping with my environmental and ethical values. I don’t make the decision to eat meat lightly. Meat-eating has always been a messy business, shadowed by the shame of killing and, since Upton Sinclair’s writing of The Jungle, by questions about what we’re really eating when we eat meat. Forgetting, or willed ignorance, is the preferred strategy of many beef eaters, a strategy abetted by the industry. (What grocery-store item is more silent about its origins than a shrink-wrapped steak?) A few years ago while writing The Omnivore’s Dilemma I decided if I was going to continue to eat red meat, then I owed it to myself, as well as to the animals, to take more responsibility for the invisible but crucial transaction between ourselves and the animals we eat.

"Meat eating may have become an act riddled with moral and ethical ambiguities, but eating a steak at the end of a short, primordial food chain comprising nothing more than ruminants and grass and sunlight is something I’m happy to do and defend. The same is true for a pastured chicken or hog. When obtained from small farms where these animals are treated well, fed an appropriate diet, and generally allowed to express their creaturely character, I think the benefits of eating such meat outweigh the cost. A truly sustainable agriculture will involve animals, in order to complete the nutrient cycle, and those animals are going to be killed and eaten.

"That said, I have the ultimate respect for vegetarians and vegans. For they have actually done the work of thinking through the consequences of their eating decisions, something most of the rest of us have not done. My own examination of those consequences has led me to the conclusion that eating a small amount of meat from certain kinds of farms is something I can feel good about. But we all have to decide this question for ourselves, and different people will come to different conclusions, depending on their values. To explore the question further, you might want to read my essay, An Animal’s Place or chapter 17 of The Omnivore’s Dilemma." (emphasis added)

I also feel that the sad reality is we live in a world where economics wins. There's no escaping it. So, in order for me to proactively support a change in the farming landscapes -- meaning, supporting small farms that healthily raise animals instead of factory farms -- I need to put my money into those small farms. By spending money on a farmer's market chicken as opposed to a genetically-enhanced factory-farmed chicken in the grocery store, I'm making a choice (albeit, what feels like a TINY one) that has political and economic shift. My "no" to factory farms is not simply a "no" but also a "yes" to small farms where animals are treated well. I understand this argument is backward thinking in a way, but we can just blame my grad school economics professors for totally ruining me :)

So, after Lent I will continue to eat meat -- local meat -- and we are fortunate enough to live in a farmer's-market kind of town (or, near one) where that is abundantly available.

And maybe during this time I'll be motivated to post some more thoughts of vegetarianism and sustainable agriculture in general, in addition to food recipe posts!

Pistachio Ice Cream

Ingredients:
• 2 1/2 cups whole milk
• 1 Tablespoon + 2 teaspoons cornstarch
• 3 Tablespoons cream cheese (softened)
• 1/8 tsp fine sea salt
• 1 1/2 cups heavy cream
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 3 Tablespoons light corn syrup
• 1 cup shelled pistachios, finely ground in food processor
• 1/2 tsp almond extract
• 1/4 tsp vanilla extract

Preparation:
• Mix slurry of 1 Tablespoon + 1 teaspoons cornstarch and 2 Tablespoons of the whole milk. Set aside.
• Combine 3 Tablespoons cream cheese (softened or slightly heated) with 1/8 tsp salt in a large bowl. Set aside.
• Make an ice bath in a large bowl.
• Prepare Ziploc bag, set up ice cream maker, etc.

Cook:
• Combine 2 1/2 cups (minus the 2 Tbsp already used) of whole milk, 1 1/2 cups heavy cream, 3/4 cup sugar, and 3 Tablespoons corn syrup in a 4-quart saucepan. Bring the mixture to a rolling boil over medium-high heat and boil for 4 minutes.
• Remove the mixture from the heat and add in the ground pistachio nuts
• Return the cream mixture to a boil, and then stir in the cornstarch/milk slurry.
• Return to a boil again and cook for no more than 1 minute until slightly thickened.
• Optional step: you may choose to strain out any larger pistachio pieces at this point. I left them in.

Freeze:
• Add the hot mixture to the cream cheese (which was set aside in a large bowl earlier) and whisk until smooth and there are no lumps.
• Pour the mixture into a Ziploc bag (or leave in bowl) and chill in the ice bath for about 30 minutes.
• Freeze the ice cream in an ice cream maker about 20-25 minutes.
• Store in containers in the freezer for about 4 hours until frozen solid. Be sure to cover the ice cream with a layer of parchment paper to prevent freezer burn.