Pupusas: Cravin' the Flave

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Has anyone ever made PUPUSAS, the Salvadoran staple? I'm eager to find a recipe. Please share if you've made them or know of a great place to get them in Seattle! We ate pupusas in Los Angeles, thanks to the write-up in Saveur's LA issue. They were so delicious topped with sour cream and a pickled cabbage slaw. I'm dying to track these down or make some. My buds are cravin' the flavor.

Love at First Sight

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Well aren't you just adorable you tiny little Chanel you!

'Mad-Men'-ese

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Like the rest of the country, I'm obsessed with Mad Men, which is why I thought this article was interesting on the language of the show. Read: ‘Mad Men’-ese

Cool Clogs

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I happened upon a great little shoe store in Fremont called Lambs Ear Shoes. I was drooling a little bit over these two pairs of clogs. I especially love the colors.

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Guest Blogger: Joe's Special, Breakfast for Dinner

My friend Lynne and I talk daily, and inevitably the conversation always turns to food. The other day she told me about her breakfast for dinner, and then her leftover "breakfast for dinner" for breakfast the next day. (Got that?). She offered to do a guest blogger post on her delicious version of Joe's Special and of course I gladly accepted. So here she is....

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Breakfast for Dinner (and then breakfast the next morning)

I thawed out a pound of ground beef from the Queen Anne Farmer's Market, purchased at Proper British Bacon Meats & Cheese and my husband and I didn't know what to do with it. Tacos? Bolognese? Nothing sounded good. I suggested Joe's Special and that's what we did! And here I am the next morning eating leftovers for breakfast. I combined 2 recipes and think this is a winner.

Joe's Special

Splash or two of Tabasco or other hot pepper sauce
6 large eggs
1 teaspoon salt or more to taste
1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon freshly milled black pepper or more to taste
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 medium onion, diced
2-4 cloves garlic, chopped
1/2 pound white mushrooms, sliced
1/2 pound lean freshly ground beef
1/2 pound fresh spinach (I used 5 oz and it was plenty),
freshly grated parmesan

Crack the eggs into a small bowl and add the Tabasco, salt, and pepper. Whisk just enough to combine; you should still see large bubbles. Set aside.

Warm the oil and butter in a large skillet over medium heat until the butter melts. Add the onion, garlic, mushrooms and sauté until soft but not beginning to brown. Add the ground beef and continue cooking until uniformly brown, breaking the meat into small pieces as it cooks. Stir in all spices. Cover with the spinach, place a lid over the mixture, and cook for about 3 minutes, just until the spinach wilts. (If using frozen spinach, cook, covered, for 1 minute, just to take off its raw edge.)

Stir the spinach into the meat, cooking briefly to eliminate excess liquid if the mixture seems watery. Pour the egg mixture over all, stirring with a spatula from the bottom until the eggs begin to set. Remove from the heat and stir a few more times, as the eggs cook through from the residual heat. Serve immediately with fresh toasted bread and sprinkle with parmesan.

Hot Summer/Cold Salmon Salads

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I'm completely addicted to salmon salads right now. Every week I get extra salmon at the farmers market knowing I will cook it for dinner one night and use the leftovers for lunch the next day.

You can bake, grill or poach your salmon. My only recommendation is pulling it from the heat before it's cooked through. I like it a teense bit rare so it stays moist and doesn't dry out. I recommend one of these 4 preparations:

1. Olive Oil Poached Salmon

2. Poached Salmon with Dill-Mustard Sauce

3. Broiled Salmon in Parchment Paper

4. Grilled Salmon with Lemon-Yogurt Herb Sauce

The next trick is to use your leftover veggie for the salad too. During asparagus season, I was making it with leftover asparagus. If I had sugar snap peas, I'd blanch those for 30 seconds and toss those in too. Now that asparagus are long gone from the farmers market, I've moved onto green beans. I cook them using Ina's recipe for String Beans with Shallots. No matter what veggie(s) you choose, you have to have a great dressing. I used my friend Jen's salad dressing recipe from her Simple But Delicious Salad. I usually use a mix of lettuces from the market depending on what looks good: Romaine, Butter, Cherokee, Green Leaf. And last but not least, chives. Toss the lettuce with the dressing and top with a small fillet of salmon, green veggie, minced chive and fresh ground pepper. Perfect lunch in no time.

Now if you want to turn those leftovers into a full dinner....

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The other night I made Broiled Salmon in Parchment Paper, String Beans with Shallots, Mrs. Young's Potatoes and the sauce from Poached Salmon with Dill-Mustard Sauce (great side sauce for salmon and potatoes no matter the preparation). I was half-way to a salmon nicoise salad with leftovers so I boiled some eggs and dug through the fridge. Capers and kalamatas, check. The next night, I threw it all together and had dinner in less than 10 minutes. Serve with some toasted baguette and cambozola cheese (my current obsession) and dessert for a perfect dinner.

Salmon Nicoise Salad

Salmon leftovers

Green bean leftovers

Potato leftovers, tossed with mustard-dill sauce leftovers
Mixed greens (Romaine, Butter, Cherokee, Green Leaf)

Medium to hard-boiled eggs, quartered

Good tomatoes, quartered

Kalamata olives, cut in half

Capers

Salad dressing, using recipe from Simple But Delicious Salad

Freshly ground black pepper

More Fun Fashion Blogs

Here are a few fun fashion sites I came across in this month's Vanity Fair that I was not familiar with. Love the two photos above, plucked from two of these sites.

Because I'm Addicted

Garance Doré

Le Fashion

Favorite Children's Books

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I decided to do a post on some of my favorite children's books. My list is long but includes our rotation of favorites. I also asked two friends who share my love of children's books to hand over a list of their faves. Please share your favorites too!

Yours Truly (I got a little carried away)

1. Ladybug Girl
2. Who is Driving?
3. Jazz Baby
4. Is There Really a Human Race
5. My Friends
6. A Color of His Own
7. Slinky Malinki
8. Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile
9. The House on East 88th Street
10. One Day
11. The Incredible Book Eating Boy
12. Pinkalicious
13. Poodlena
14. I'm the Biggest Thing in the Ocean
15. How to Catch a Star
16. Iggy Peck, Architect
17. The Paper Bag Princess
18. Lost & Found
19. The Little Train
20. Madeline
21. Olivia and The Missing Toy

22. Slow Loris

Clare

1. Miss Rumphius (Barbara Cooney)
2. Paper Bag Princess (Robert Munsch)
3. Incredible Book Eating Boy (Oliver Jeffers)
4. The Cat at Night (Ipcar)
5. A Penguin Story (Portis)
6. Swimmy (Leo Leoni)
7. A House is a House For Me (Hoberman)
8. Little Red (Roberts)

Amy

1. The Big Orange Splot
2. Bread and Jam for Frances
3. Cars and Trucks and Things that Go
4. Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs
5. Is There Really a Human Race?
6. Hush Little Digger
7. The Way Back Home
8. Iggy Peck Architect
9. How I Became a Pirate
10. Pirates Don't Change Diapers is equally as good, too.
11. Trucks, Planes, Trains, Airports (all the Byron Barton books)
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Happy Birthday Baby!

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How sad - I missed my very own Over Cocktails 2nd birthday. Happy Belated Baby! I wouldn't have even realized it but I came across this Rifle Paper Co. print that I love (I'm such a fan of her stuff) and it reminded me of the little wooden animals I bought both of my kids. My very first post was about these little wooden animals which took me searching through for the photo. When I found it, I saw the date and realized my little baby blog is 2+ years old. Amazing. Had I known it had a birthday, I could have used it as an excuse (albeit ridiculous) to order a Brownstone Front Cake (darn it). To the point though, how adorable are Rifle Paper Co.'s animal parade print and animal parade cards? I kind of think the print and the wooden animals would make an adorable baby shower gift paired together. J'adore!

My Kind of List

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I love my friend Ali's Seattle Sandwich Bucket List. Two down, three to go. Read it here or listen to it here.

Silly Husband

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Don't introduce me to sites like Zulily. Spending freeze or no spending freeze, I have no self-control when it comes to sales!

Oh Tom...

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And they say nobody has it all. Giselle might.

Photo courtesy of Jak & Jil Blog.

Salmon Two Ways

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My dinner club mixed it up this week and instead of going out, we decided to stay in and try some new recipes. We decided to get fresh salmon from the farmers market and each cook it a different way so we could try several preparations... one baked, one poached and one grilled. After wine and appetizers we (I!) got lazy and we ended up making only two, but they turned out so great that we never missed the third. We made Poached Salmon with Dill-Mustard Sauce and Crème Fraîche-Roasted Salmon. Both recipes were fantastic and super easy.

We served the salmon with Yukon Gold potatoes (recipe below) and a salad with lettuce and cucumber from Full Circle Farms CSA, carrots and tomatoes from the farmers market and Pasta & Co. dressing (with an added splash of red wine vinegar and fresh ground pepper). Delicious. We topped it off with my friend Tara's peach and blueberry crisp and vanilla ice cream. A perfect dinner to make for, or even better, with friends.

Mrs. Young's Potatoes

1.5-2 lbs Yukon Gold potatoes (skins on)
1.5 T plive oil
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 t + ½ t salt
¼ t pepper

Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Cut potatoes in approximate 1 inch cubes. Put 2 tsp salt in rapidly boiling water. Add potatoes and boil for 8-10 minutes. Once potatoes can easily be pierced with fork, drain and set aside to cool. Toss with oil, garlic, salt and pepper. Line on a cookie sheet and broil for about 5 minutes or until browned and crispy (I had the cookie sheet on the second rack from the broil, not the top rack).

Pasta with Chantrelles

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I've never cooked with fresh chantrelles before but I couldn't resist the basket spilling over with them at the Foraged & Found Edibles booth at the Ballard market on Sunday. I decided to give it a shot. I opted for pasta with chantrelles and figured you couldn't go wrong with a great sauce made from shallots, garlic, butter and cream. I was pleasantly surprised with the outcome. Not too heavy, quite flavorful and easy to repeat now that I know what I'm doing.

Pasta with Chantrelles

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4 T butter

1 T olive oil

3 T shallot, minced (about one medium shallot)

2 T garlic, minced (about 4 cloves)

2 T sherry (decent sherry, not just "cooking sherry")

1/4 cup white wine

3/4 lb chantrelles, cleaned and sliced

3 cups homemade chicken stock

1-2 t fresh thyme, minced

1/4 cup cream (or more)

salt and pepper

1 1/2 cups freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano

1/2 - 3/4 lb spaghetti or fettucini

Bring a large pot of water to a boil.

Melt 2 T butter and olive oil over medium heat in a large saute pan or braiser. Add shallots and cook for a few minutes. Add garlic and saute for a few minutes, then add mushrooms. Add more butter if needed. Saute for a few minutes. Add sherry and wine, then bring to a quick boil. Lower heat and saute for a few minutes. Add 1/2 cup chicken stock and bring to a slight boil again. Reduce to medium and cook, reducing the sauce. Add salt and pepper and thyme. Continue to add stock 1/2 cup at a time, reducing and adding more every 5 minutes or so, stirring occasionally.

Add noodles to salted boiling water and cook according to package directions.

When you have a small amount of reduced sauce, lower temperature and then slowly pour in cream around outside of pan. Stir into the sauce and make sure heat is low enough that it doesn't boil. Check seasoning and add more salt, pepper, butter or cream as needed.

Drain noodles and add to sauce. (I never add all the noodles to the sauce at once because I like to monitor the sauce to noodle ratio. I hate when it's too light on sauce. This means I end up with a bunch of plain noodles that I toss with butter, parmesan and whatever I have in the fridge for my daughter. If you want to use the full pound of noodles, just increase your sauce ingredients proportionately).

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Stir to combine and sprinkle with most of the parmesan. Plate pasta and sprinkle with remaining parmesan. Serve with garlic crostinis and white wine.

POLO POLOs

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I usually don't post about online sales but I think this is a fun one. I think these little Classic Mesh Polos are so cute on little boys and when you can swipe them up for $14.99, it's hard to resist. I also love the Big Pony Polo. Cute shower gift or birthday gift.

Will I ever get 8 hours again? No? Okay, what about 7 hours?

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My friend Amy and I were comparing notes about our little bambinos who get up at the crack of dawn. 6:00am is just too early for this night-owl. Try as I might to go to bed earlier, I just can't seem to get the sleep I need.

Amy was also struggling to keep her kids in bed until.... she discovered the American Innovative Teach Me Time Talking Alarm Clock and Nightlight. This clock allows parents to set a time on the clock when it turns colors. If kids wake up before that, they know it's still "nighttime" and that they need to stay in bed. Once the clock turns green, the child knows it's go time and they are free to get up and terrorize you while you come out of the groggy morning z's.

Amy said it's the best $40 she's spent in years. I'm hoping I have as much luck.

Selling: Crib & Accoutrements

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I normally wouldn't use my blog to pimp some goods but it's an easy way to get info to a large audience of ladies.

My three year old is moving into a big girl bed so I'm looking to sell her crib, crib mattress, and crib bedding. I LOVE her crib and bedding because it's feminine without being too girly or cutesy. I love the simplicity of the tone on tone bedding and crib. And really, it could even be used for a boy.

Below is a list of all the crib items I'm selling bundled together. I'm also selling a great Miller Pollard glider that I had covered in a pink cotton fabric with ivory colored flowers. Please email me if you're interested in learning more or coming by to see it.

• Stanley Ma Marie Antique White Built To Grow Crib
• OMI Organic Cotton & Wool Crib Mattress
• AeroSleep Comfort Sleep System
• Stefano Angelini's Cadena Collection cream colored metlasse bumper
• Stefano Angelini's Cadena Collection cream colored metlasse bedskirt
• Organic cotton cream crib sheet

Meal Planning

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My friend Michelle puts together the most amazing weekly meal plans. I'm always so impressed with her creative menus. Her side dishes always complement the main dish so well. She emails them out to friends and recently converted to a blog listing out each week's menu selection. If you're needing inspiration (Lynne - this ones for you), check out Conrad Family Weekly Dinners for some great ideas and links to the recipes. (Thanks for your great meal plans Michelle!)