Weekend of Food

The final presentation.

This weekend was a weekend of food. Not just ok food...great food! I made Peach-Whiskey BBQ chicken. I think it's a recipe P-Dub will have in her next cookbook. I used fancier peach preserves, and fancier whiskey. It was so good. I love cooking. Love it! I wish I had the time to cook 2 hour meals every night!

I served the chicken with mashed potatoes (as suggested) and grilled zucchini/yellow squash. I used a cheese slicer thing to get the long ribbons. The guys seemed to think that was pretty special. Did I mention that my audience was all guys? Cooking for guys in nice, because if they're hungry enough they will eat just about anything. On the other hand, they get picky about "girl" food. There was nothing girly about this meal, that's fo sho.

After dinner, I was surprised with birthday cake from Nick and Sam's. Is that beautiful or what?

Hello yummy goodness!

This is what I learned from the whole dinner (it's almost budget related!)
1. Chicken breasts are so 1990's. Chicken quarters are cheap, delicious, and look really nice for serving. I've never had anyone complain about eating thighs and legs.
2. You only need about 2 good sized red potatoes per person when making mashed potatoes. I estimated 3, plus a few extra for good measure. We will be eating potatoes for a few days. Oops!
3. If you have something in the oven for an hour, you should do dishes while you wait. The kitchen was a complete disaster by the end of the night!

Just wanted to make you drool a little more!

Now on a completely different topic. That snooze app I blogged about...I had to delete it! It went off the next morning, I had to listen to the obnoxious beep while I logged into my account. Then, I didn't get an option to turn off the snooze, so it went off again at which point I just turned off my phone. I've been told that it's in a serious beta phase and that a new version will be coming out soon. I'll re-install when the new app comes out and see how it is. I love the concept!

Snooze Solution: Snooze for Charity app by LetGive

I have a serious love affair with the snooze button. Sometimes I set multiple alarms just in case I turn off the alarm instead of hitting snooze. Usually laziness is a bigger problem than lack of sleep. I get so comfortable, I just don't want to get out of bed! So my solution is Snooze for Charity...an app that "donates" 25 cents of your money to charity every time you hit snooze. Might be more effective if it were a greater amount. I bet there are days when 25 cents is a small price to pay to sleep a few more minutes! But since the actual donation only happens once a month, maybe the big number will shock me enough to quit hitting snooze!

Here are my initial thoughts on the app. Good in theory, bad in execution. It's a free app, and I think it's a Beta version. On the other hand, there is a lot of room for improvement.

1. You have to log in every time you wan to set the alarm. It's not linked to your bank, so I don't know why this is necessary. To link to your bank card or credit card, I think you have to log in online. Not 100% sure. If you get up at the same time every day, it's not too big of a deal as the times are set to go off daily.




2. There are barely any instructions on the app. How do you pay up? Don't know. Pretty sure you have to do this online.

3. Unless you go to the LetGive web site, you can't review the charities. I thought that by clicking on a charity listed in the app, I would be able to see what it was all about. Nope...now I'm giving to Piper Theater Productions and I barely know anything about it. Which leads me to my next pet peave...

3. You can't change your charity of choice! I can't stand it when an app doesn't let you undo what you just did. Not good programming there.

4. Even on the LetGive website, you can't find out much regarding the charities. For Piper Theatre, there's a blurb and that's it. They don't even link the website for the actual not for profit organization.

5. There's very little commitment. You could consider this good or bad. Every time you hit snooze, it's actually a 25 cent pledge. The money isn't committed until you  go online (I think) and enter your bank card info.



I don't want to sound too harsh. I think this app is actually pretty cool. It's such an easy way to get a few bucks for organizations doing great things. My main frustration is not being able to change the organization I support. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for supporting the arts! It's not the end of the world! But maybe my frustration will lead to me not wanting to hit snooze and pay 25 cents! A few programming changes could really improve the execution of the idea. Until these changes are made, I can't very well give this app more than 3 stars.

Epicurious App Review and recipe share

This is another long overdue post. I made this pasta dish over a week ago. I ate it every day for 5 days with one day off somewhere in there. It was that good!

I found the recipe on Epicurus app. I love Epicurious for a lot of reasons.
1. They have legitimate apps for iPhone and iPad.
2. The recipes are generally from some of my favorite magazines
3. You can search by ingredient, dish type, etc.
4. You can create a grocery list from the recipes you choose. It costs a little more to do this for the iPhone and iPad apps. $1.99 I think.
5. Your account syncs to all devices!

So here's the recipe originally from Bon Appetite magazine

Castellane Pasta with Sausage, Peppers, Cherry Tomatoes, and Marjoram

I made a few mods:
whole wheat spiral pasta gave another awesome flavor
added zucchini, and think mushrooms and/or yellow squash would be good too
Used mild Italian sausage
served with lemon boy tomato. Yum!








End result was seriously amazing! I bought store brand sausage that was on sale and had most of the other ingredients on hand. Goat's cheese was about $4. Batch would feed 4-5 people, so all in all a pretty cheap recipe. It tasted good warmed up too!