Solving Your Kitchen Problems One Giveaway at a Time {$30 gift certificate to cookware.com}

I'll take a rainbow of le Creuset

thank you very much.

Do you want to have a stylish kitchen? Have colorful pots. Do you want to make delicious food? Make it in a dutch oven. Simple. Pricey but simple.

Cookware.com is having a killer le Creuset close out sale and to help in your endeavor of owning one of the lovelies above I'm giving away a $30 gift certificate to cookware.com. Lucky.

Here's the thing, you don't have to use it towards a le creuset pot. You don't. You can use it toward anything you want. Double lucky. But if I were you I'd go for the red dutch oven in a heart beat.

Giveaway rules:

• Leave a comment on this post telling me which le creuset cookware is your fave. 
• For extra entries leave an extra comment for the extra things you do. Like...follow this blog, fan on facebook, twitter, post on your blog, you know the usual stuffs.
• Comments will be closed by Midnight (PMT) Thursday August 5th. One winner will be choosen at random.org. Winner will be contacted via e-mail on Friday so make sure your comment leads me back to an e-mail address otherwise leave your e-mail on the comment. 

Ready?

Set-

Go!


Giveaway Eye-Candy {the best things in life are free}
I want to add a little something-something to my giveaways so that if you don't win you'll still come out of here with a little treat. Visual candy is good for the soul, if nothing else it inspires. This week I was inspired by this.

• How-to send an ice cream party in the mail via The Dear Dairy Stories
• A Pool Party via The Sweetest Ocassion
• For Tea Lovers via Miles of Style

and a lovely weekend to you.

*************************
Congratulations to Cheryl for winning this giveaway.

Peach Pie

You know the recipe is good

when you have a note to the dad

"did you change his diaper"

on the same sheet of paper as the recipe.

Our friends, the Adairs, are a kick. They live in Texas but come to live in Santa Cruz in the summer for fun. They're always up for an impromptu dinner party. They're great. This week they leave back to Texas. Has summer really gone by this fast?

On Sunday Jen made a peach pie that blew me out of the water. She doesn't do cooked fruits so this was fresh from the Farmer's Market, juicy, cold peaches served with a delicious sauce over a crispy pie crust.

So far this has been the best thing I've had all summer.

Peach Pie

pie crust

• 2 cups flour
• 1tsp salt
• 1 cup butter shortening
• 1/3 cup ice water

sauce

• 3 tbsp cornstarch
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 orange juice
• 1 cup water
• 1/2 cup limeade

peaches

• 10 ripe freestone peaches

Pie Crust-

1. Mix the flour and salt together in a large bowl
2. cut in the butter shortening
3. Add water slowly by pouring it over your knuckles so that the dough gets evenly wet. Pour a little, then mix, then pour more and mix. Repeat until it forms a ball
4. Refrigerate for a couple of hours.
5. Roll it out and bake at 450* for 8-10 minutes. (Makes 2 pie crusts. For this recipe you will only need one. Pie crusts can be frozen for up to a month)

Sauce-

1. Stir all of the ingredients in a sauce pan until it is medium thick and clear.
2. Chill in the refrigerator.

Assembling the peaches-

1. Wash and remove the skins from the peaches.
2. Cut in thick slices.
3. Pour 1/2 of the sauce on top of the pie crust.
4. Gently put all of the slices of peaches on top of the sauce
5. Pour the remaining sauce on top and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Next time you're in Texas go say hi to Jen and Sam for me

and thank her for the recipe.

Foodie Book Club

I'm trying to feed my mind

will you join me?

On my last visit to Omivore I picked up What to Eat. The book shop owner recommend I read it. She said it was a "must read" (her words, promise). So I am going to do it and I think I will love it. In fact I'm committed to loving it or at least learning from it because I really need to have a couple questions answered like "why is milk always in the back of the store?"

I'm instituting a foodie book club because talking about books is way more fun than reading solo. We'll start with month numero uno, see how it goes and then proceed from there.

Foodie Book Club- Month of August

Book: What to Eat

Meet: on Twitter end of August (what days work for you?) to discuss and share ideas.

Open to: You. Just leave a comment or e-mail me to tell me that you want to join.

Im excited. I've never ever been a part of a book club before. Have you? If so feel free to chime in on ideas.

ready?

set-

read!

post-edit: We're no longer meeting on Twitter. We're going to have a new location. Maybe someone who wants to join the book club can host it on their blog and each month we rotate. This is getting more and more exciting. I'm excited!

Beaba Babycook {product review}

It's baby food.

It's not supposed to look very appetizing
 just wholesome and healthy and mushy.

Ever since I wrote the post about feeding my baby I've been on a baby food kick. I recently had the opportunity to try out the Beaba Babycook sent to me by the kind folks at Scandanavian Child, which by the way have the high chair of my dreams but I'll leave that for another post.

I used the Beaba Babycook to make some butternut squash puree with cheese. I was going for simple and easy just to test the efficiency of this appliance. Simultaneously I steamed some cubed butternut squash on my stove top. The Beaba Babybook is interesting because it steams, purees, defrosts, and warms up food all in one and even though stove top was faster I was happier with the steamed butternut squash made in the babycook.

In the past I made all of Enzo's baby food using my stove and because I was cooking in large batches and freezing I ended up throwing away a lot of food. I realized that frozen puree is not the same as fresh puree and after a couple weeks it always gets freezer burn. The Beaba has a little basket where you put your food in to steam. The size of the basket makes it so that it's impossible do do large batches. You still get left overs but it's not excessive. Also, because of the convenience of not having to worry whether your veggies are burning or whether you have enough water to steam them, it makes it so that it's easy to have fresh puree every day or at least every other day.

I also liked how the appliance kept the water that was used for steaming the butternut squash. It became a good broth that I later used for other foods.

Before pureeing I added a handful of cheese, just to add a little more flavor. The puree button allows you to control how thick to make your baby food.

Here is the thing, Maria is now a finger food baby and usually does not let us spoon feed her anymore. However, She really loved that mushy orange stuff on top and even went back for seconds. Fresh baby food is not the same as baby food in a jar. It's just not. I'm not condemning the jars, I use them frequently, but fresh purees has so much more flavor and texture. There really is no comparison.

Overall I was very impressed with the Beaba Babycook. At first I was a little skeptical but now I'm a fan. It's definitely easy to use. I'm excited to try new babycook recipes as well.

A shout out to Scandanavian Child. Your site is lovely. Your service is great. Your products are oh-so- tempting. Thanks for letting me try out the babybook.

********************************
This was not a paid post. 
I did receive the Beaba Babycook for free.

Camp Food

When camping 

bring ramen noodles, 

just in case.

Just in case

a) your kids decide to be picky

b) Your kids don't want to be picky but the people that are supposed to do dinner won't be done with dinner until way past your kids' bedtime

c) You don't like what the other people in your camping party made.

Luckily I only had problems with option (b), and it only happened once.

We had our family reunion at Yosemite this year with 18 kids, 20 adults,  limited refrigeration, and 7 days worth of meals. Guess what? It worked! No joke, it was total smooth sailing as far as feeding that amount of people are concerned.

Here is what we did:

Group meals- Each family signed up to do a meal for the whole group. That meant that on your meal day you had to have all the ingredients but could recruit help from other families to assemble the dish. We ended up having 6 shared dinners and 1 shared lunch.

Individual meals- Each family was responsible for their own breakfast and lunch. However, we did end up sharing a lot and also bringing way more than we could eat. Maybe in the future we'll just do group meals for every meal. 

Snacks- This is the fun part, specially for the kids. We did a lot of driving, a lot of walking, and a lot of just sitting. Snacks helped keep us occupied and energized. My brother-in-law does this great thing which he calls "hiking treats". When we did long hikes with the kids he would go in front and leave a handful of M&Ms on a rock, or somewhere along the trail, for the kids to find. This really motivated the kids to keep hiking. When they found the treats they were only allowed to have one so the incentive was definitely there to keep moving in order to find more M&Ms.

Beverage- We had potable water near our campsite which is very handy when needing to refill metal water bottles and big plastic bottles. Juice boxes is, of course, a hit and easy to transport.

Milk- For milk you can buy boxed milk which does not need to be refrigerated before opening. Costco sells Parmalat milk in bulk. I also brought rice milk and other people brought boxed smoothies. 

Dessert- We did the classic s'mores but my absolute favorite were the cobblers cooked on the camp fire.

Camp Menu Ideas (basically what we ate)

• Tin-foil dinners with veggies and precooked chicken: easy for each person to assemble and takes between 15-20min to cook.
• Shish kabobs: there was an all veggie option and an all chicken option. It's pretty labor intensive to prepare but pretty quick to cook once it's in the fire. Also make sure you cut and freeze the chicken pre-camping.
• Tacos and quesadillas: you need a camping stove for this one if you want to make ground beef. Also a bit labor intensive to prepare but so delicious. Everyone appreciated the fresh salsa and cheese. 
• Ravioli/mac-n-cheese and salad: Costco sells the big packages of frozen raviolis which keep well for a couple of days before thawing out completely. 
• Taco soup: I made an improvised version my taco soup recipe. I omitted the meat and just stuck with cans of beans that were already seasoned. I added salsa and canned corn and some fresh chopped avocados and called it good. This is a very easy meal to make. Not as delicious as the other warm meals but filling and quick.
• Curry and rice: I have no idea how to make curry but so appreciated the curry that my sister-in-law made with her husband. 
• Pulled pork burritos: Kaity, one of my sister-in-laws, took a big frozen block of already made pulled pork and threw that in her cooler. It helped keep the rest of her food cool and because it was frozen it was able to keep for 6 days. Here is an easy pulled pork recipe.

I am happy to report that no one got sick from any of the meals. 

Dirty? Yes. 

Sick? No. 

Total success.

Omnivore Bookstore in San Francisco

A food bookstore.

Genius.

Last week I crossed one thing off my summer list. I spent the day in the city by my lone self. Except for dinner, when I met up with a friend and that was fun. It's not that I love my own company it's just that I really wanted to go to Omnivore without the kids. I wanted to look and sit and read for as long as I wanted. 

and I did.

I don't know how long I stayed there for. I wasn't worried about time. I love cookbooks, no wait, that is an understatement. It's not just cookbooks it's books about food in general that I love. Pictures. Writing. Recipes. So fun.

and of course the staff is great. She was so patient with me showing me all the different children's cookbooks.

I got the Green Eggs and Ham Cookbook for Enzo, for Christmas. It's part of that summer list, you know Christmas shopping early so that I'm not stressed out in the end of the year. 

They have all sorts of great vintage books as well.

Next time you're in San Francisco make sure you hit up Omnivore and if you want to get me an early Christmas present this is the place. 

Omnivore Books on Food · 3885a Cesar Chavez Street · San Francisco, CA 94131 · 415.282.4712 · Hours: Mon-Sat 11am-6pm, Sun 12-5 

4th of July Giveaway

Happy 4th of July.

This year is my second 4th of July as an American Citizen.

There are lots of things I like about this country, food happens to be one of them.

I have this fun new cookbook to giveaway The United States Cookbook: Fabulous Foods and Fascinating Facts From All 50 States. I think your kids will love it. I think you will love it (even if you don't have kids).  

For a chance to win please leave a comment telling me what your favorite American food is. For extra comments and chances to win you can follow this blog, subscribe, follow me on twitter, like me on facebook, or do the funky chicken. You can also twitter, facebook, or blog this giveaway. Dang, that is a lot of chances. So please make sure that for every extra thing you do you leave an extra comment. 1 comment will be chosen at random on Wednesday July 7th and the winner will be contacted via e-mail and announced on this post on Thursday July 8th. 

This giveaway is open to every one, American or otherwise.

Are you excited? I am. I love me a cookbook.

post edit: Congrats to Wildcat32. You are the luckiest of them all.

What I've learned this week about Food Blogging.

The thing I love about blogging is how generous bloggers are with their knowledge. I don't feel like it's a competitive field at all. Just because you already read one food blog doesn't mean you can't read another, right?

The word community is overrated, I know, but it is really possible to create such a thing on line. It is. I'm always surprised when I ask questions to a food blogger and I get a response. I mean, even the Pioneer Woman has e-mailed me back about a cheese muffin recipe measurement doubt I had. Ree is the best.

This article Foodblogging- Do's and Don'ts is a generous account of where to start your food blog, written by Delicious Days, go read it.

Oh and have a great 4th of July weekend.
I'll see you again on Monday with a giveaway, ok? o.k!