How Many...

How many pictures can you take of your kid eating a cookie without feeling like a totally obsessive parent? Today my kid and I went on a date to Monterey. We hit up the aquarium, Cannery lane, and the train cars that are right in the middle of the bike lane.

We also went to the Nestle Toll House cafe. Have these things always existed? If so why didn't you tell me?! I obviously don't get out much but I was very surprised when I saw the cafe in front of the harbor. You can smell their cookies from a couple blocks away and we were not disappointed when we walked in and saw all their creations. Enzo picked the rainbow chocolate chip cookie and I had a peanut butter chocolate chip cookie that was so decadent I almost asked someone to take a picture of me eating it so I could put it on the blog. Ha! Just kidding, I don't eat my cookies nearly as cute as my son.

Scrumptious

Check out this scrumptious picture by Mark Lee. Man that guy is gooooood.

Speedy Bento

Today is the last day to submit your speedy bento to the Lunch In a Box bento forum. I totally had to quickly pack a  lunch for Enzo since Wednesdays are our over the top crazy day. So I decided to take some pictures of my speedy bento and submit it to the forum.

This whole bento took me about 5 minutes to make because I didn't have to cook anything. I did cut his cheese slices into numbers because we've been practicing numbers with him. I have number cookie cutters so that's what I used.

The top tier had sliced apples and a little container with plain yogurt, honey, and granola used for dipping his apples. The container fits perfectly inside the bento box. I had it positioned like this just for the picture.

Making fast lunches these days have been my salvation with my busy school schedule. 

24,24,24 Foodbuzz: Carnaval Countdown Dinner

This month I was selected to participate in the Foodbuzz 24,24,24 program. I was so excited to be able to share with the foodbuzz community my Carnaval Countdown dinner. In less than a month the most important holiday in Brazil begins, Carnaval. This Holiday is meant for people to A LOT of fun before lent. In modern times people usually practice lent by giving up a food item like sugar or fried food. So Carnaval is also a time to eat up on all the goodies you won't be able to once lent begins. In an effort to start our countdown for this important Holiday I decided to have a party at my home yesterday with some of our Brazilian friends that live in Santa Cruz. There was a lot of dancing going on and the food that I served, salgadinhos, were perfect for the occasion. Salgadinhos are a type of finger food that are usually served in parties. It fills you up without requiring you to sit down and have a meal. It's perfect if you want to be up and dancing all night while eating

Here is a sampler of my salgadinhos. The little balls are called bolinhos de queijo, cheese balls. The cupcake shaped things on the left side is my favorite salgadinho, the empadinha. On the back is the pastel, it's the easiest to make so I'll post a recipe further down. On the right of the cheese balls are the coxinhas, which I have posted about here before. For a recipe on how to make coxinhas go HERE.

I'm so lucky to have a Brazilian community in Santa Cruz. Here is a picture of some of my guests. 

Here is my friend Silvia. She's loves those coxinhas!
For drinks we had Brazilian style limeade which is made from the whole lime and with a lot of mint.

Pastel is the Brazilian version of deep fried pastry filled with something. The most common fillings are cheese with tomatoes, heart of palm, ground beef, or shrimp. The simplest way you can make pastel is by using Asian wraps, the same ones used for Chinese dumplings. You can also make your own dough. The best dough recipe that I've found online is here.

To simplify my life I decided to use the Asian wrap dough. 

1. Heat oil in a large pan. I like to use a wok whenever I fry things.
2. When the oil is hot enough for frying you can turn it down a little bit so that it doesn't burn and it will give you time to make the pastel.
3. On a clean plate place an Asian wrap.
4. For a basic pastel place fresh mozzarella on top of half of the dough.
5. Bring the other half of the dough over the cheese and close the edges using a fork.
6. Fry for a couple seconds on one side and flip over to the other side.
7. Eat while hot.
8. You can also try different fillings. Another favorite is cheese with guava jam. 

I want to introduce you to the empadinha. This is my favorite salgadinho. The dough is flaky and inside is filled with heart of palm. Maybe I'll post a recipe at a later date but for now you can enjoy some pictures 

Placing the heart of palm mixture inside the pastry shell.

right before placing it in the oven.

DESSERT.....

last but not least we had dessert. I made individual flans. I've talked about flans before on this blog. For a recipe go HERE.

thanks foodbuzz for giving me the opportunity to make and share this meal on line. Don't forget to listen to some samba in this upcoming month of Carnaval.

The Obama foodies Round Up

A couple other food lovers joined my on-line cooking party to celebrate the Inauguration. Check out their blogs for the full scoop.

The Food Librarian

came up with a couple of things

Cupcakes

Red, White and Blue "O" Obama Bars

Metta from Prietissimo!

made this lovely Donauwelle

Karen Cooks

made this yummy looking

Inauguration Day Burger because what is more American than a big piece of meat between two slices of bread?

Thanks ladies for participating. Next time we'll have to do this for reals in pot luck style!

If you made anything on Tuesday that you would like to share send me an e-mail with a link and I'll post it here.

Patriotic Pancake Cups

I should of posted these on Inauguration Day. We had a huge breakfast at our home with friends and family and projected the whole ceremony on our wall. It was fabulous. The food was amazing thanks to my husband who really should be a full time baker and not a Ph.D student. He made individual pop-up pancakes. I'm renaming them Patriotic Pancake Cups and I want to have them every single day so that I can be reminded of how excited I am about our new prez. I am still in celebration mode especially after reading the NY Times today.

Patriotic Pancake Cups 

• 2 large eggs
• 1 cup flour
• 1 cup milk
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

1. Preheat oven to 450*
2. Grease with butter 2 sets of muffin pans
3. Place the pans in the oven until the butter is melted
4. Beat eggs slightly with a fork in a large bowl. 
5. Beat in remaining ingredients until smooth.
6. Fill cups about half full.
7. Bake 20 minutes
8. Reduce temperature to 350* and bake for an additional 10 minutes.
9. Immediately remove from pan.
10. Serve warm with strawberries, blueberries and homemade whip cream.

HABA play food

Every month I do a kitchen product review. This month my 2 year old son, Enzo, got to help by reviewing the toys that HABA sent him to play with.

I was so impressed with the quality of the toys. The texture is so soft and nice to hold, especially for toddlers. I wouldn't recommend these particular items for children who still puts everything in their mouth.

The Biofino Vegetable Basket was Enzo's favorite. He liked pealing the banana and the leek. He especially liked taking things out of the basket and then rearranging them back in. I really like the fabric they used. It's soft and easy to clean. I also like the sturdy wooden basket.

The Ravioli Tin Biofino is also really cute and easy to clean. I like that I can just put all of these food toys in the wash and not have to worry about getting them ruined. He liked playing with the raviolis but wasn't sure what to do with the red fabric that's supposed to be tomato sauce. I'm guessing it has something to do with the fact that he only eats his pasta plain (heheheh).

HABA has a very large selection of play food. I am very happy with the quality of the products I reviewed. Does anyone have any of their wooden play food toys? They look lovely and I'm wondering if they're as well made as the fabric ones.

YOU are SO invited!

(original picture from Mary)

What: An Inaugural Baking Party!

When: Tuesday January 20Th 2009

How: Come up with a fabulous baked goody to celebrate Pres. Obama's inauguration. Post it on your bloggy blog on Tuesday January 20Th and send me a link to your post at damarispalmer(at)gmail(dot)com. I'll gather all the submissions, organize a nice list with blog urls and links, and share them with you on Wednesday the 21st so you can indulge in some baked Obama goodies.

RSVP: please leave me a comment if you think you would like to participate so I can get an idea of who all is going to partay with me.

Baked Potato Chips

Thanks everyone who voted last week. Baked Potato Chips was a definite winner. I'm glad because it is so easy to make and tastes so much better than store bought potato chips. This Recipe below is for 2 people so I suggest doubling it if you have a crowd.

• 5 medium sized potatoes
• 4 tablespoons olive oil
• salt and pepper to season

(Preheat oven to 350)

1. Wash out the potatoes very, very well.
2. cut out the potatoes 4 mm thick. I started using a slicer and then did it all in my food processor.
3. Have 2 cookie sheets ready. Place 1 tablespoon olive oil on each cookie sheet and put it in the oven for 5 minutes. Remove the hot cookie sheets and place the potato slices on the cookie sheet. Be careful so that the slices do not overlap.
4. Sprinkle the remaining olive oil on top of the potato slices and season with salt and pepper.
5. Bake for 10 minutes and flip all the potato slices to the other side.
6. Bake for an additional 10-15 minutes until it is crisp.
7. Remove from cookie sheet and place on top of a plate with paper towel so that it drains some of the oil.
8. Serve warm or wait until it is completely cool to store in an air tight container.

please vote again for next week's recipe.

shopping= yuck!

First, I need to clarify that I have nothing against shopping carts. My rant is about shopping. Actually I take that back. I also have a few bad things to say about those gigantic shopping carts that have those plastic cars in the front. The ones that are impossible to maneuver but you must use anyway unless you want to deal with a screaming child for the next 40 minutes. You know which ones I'm talking about right?

Yesterday I had the worst grocery shopping experience of my life. The fact that I had a fever all day and felt like I had been run over by a truck means that even if I had gone to an empty super market with a million dollar shopping spree the experience would of still probably been bad. However, the fact that I waited 15 minutes for a parking spot to only find out a second after I pulled in that it was a handicap spot and had to circle the lot for an additional 20 minutes made the whole experience, that was already doomed to be bad, exceptionally horrible.

After parking the car in the farthest corner of the lot (the one I never even knew existed) I reached back to grab my son from the car seat. The little bugger was asleep and I have NEVER been so tempted to just leave him asleep. I woke him up, of course, and regret it immediately when he started crying and his nose started to bleed. Not only was his face totally covered in mucus and blood but his pants were wet with pee (yes husband you DID forget to change his diaper before picking me up from class) and of course he was barefoot. I'm sure he felt just as up as I did to go shopping being wet, bloody, and having his toes freezing while we walked from the car to super market.

To make it up to him I did buy him the Gorilla cereal he wanted AND I let him eat it for dinner. I pretended that it was a special treat because he had put up with my insane idea to go grocery shopping. The truth is I was way to tiered at that point to even think about making dinner, much less put the groceries away. I left that for the husband (remember the wet diaper and no shoes) to do.

shopping, shopping, shopping....do you have a tale to tell?

Change is Good!

2009 will bring about some changes to my blogging life. I will no longer host weekly giveaways. They are fun but timeeeeee consuming to say the least. I will occasionally have a giveaway here and there so don't be too sad.

I want to write posts that you want to read. So help me out here. Every week I plan my family's weekly meals and would like to share with you the ONE recipe that you really want to learn how to make not the 15 recipes that you could care less about. So please take a moment to vote on the handy dandy poll I just created. Let me know which recipe you would like me to share with you next week.

thanks
xoxo Damaris

Hawaiian Style Meal

My last 2008 meal was amazing. My friend participated in the foodbuzz 24,24,24 for this month and she made the most amazing Hawaiian style meal. Think macadamia nut chicken, passion fruit juice, sweet potatoes.... is your mouth watering? Check out her post for the full account and recipes.