Alexia Foods French Fry Party

On Sunday we partied it up with some of our friends and had a French fry eating extravaganza thanks to Alexia Foods and the Reinvent a Classic campaign I was invited to participate in. We sampled the waffle fries, the sweet potato julianne fries, and the olive oil, rosemary, and garlic oven fries all with a fried egg on top. Take that swimsuit season!

Today I'll be busy inventing, cooking up a storm, and using my deep fryer one last time before I have to pack it for our move. Thanks to you and your wonderful suggestions I have a lot of ideas bubbling up in my head. Some of the flavors you suggested never crossed my mind, like the vinegar and dill combination Drew threw out there or the double fried concept my friend Eva mentioned.

I'd also like to give a shout out to some fellow bloggers who are participating in the Alexia Foods Reinvent a Classic campaing. I don't know who everyone is but here are some of the folks I found while following the #AlexiaFoods conversation on twitter

//Duo Dishes
//Eat The Love
//Cinnamon Spice and Everything Nice
//Eats Well With Others
//Well in LA
//Family Fresh Cooking
//Leslie Loves Veggies
//This Mama Cooks
//Food for my Family
//Tidy Mom
//Fab Find Foodie
//Tickled Red
//Peas and Thank You
//Culinary Cory
//What's Gaby Cooking

I'm stoked to be in such good company. Some of the bloggers above I know personally and totally trust their taste, I am excited to see what they come up with.

.............................
This is the second post of a 4 post series sponsored by Alexia Foods 

We are creating a new type of French fry and we need your help.

What, a new type of French fry?

Do you think we can do it?

Friends I have some good news and some bad news. Lets start with the bad news. The bad news is that I haven't been cooking much, therefore you get no food pictures and no new recipes. Sorry. The good news is that I've been plotting new recipes in my mind, I mean we've been plotting because I got the whole family in on our new mission -- to create a new type of French fry. I've been invited by Alexia foods to join their challenge to reinvent a classic and create a new French fry variety. I feel honored. I think there are 25 of us doing this, including some of my favorite food bloggers.  During the next 4 weeks I'll be planning and cooking, testing and eating, different creations of French fries and I need your help. I need to come up with something tasty, a flavored French fry that you would want to buy. Wanna help me?

What potato type do you like best? I'm personally a huge fan of sweet potatoes and purple potatoes. Should I try a purple potato French fry or should I stick to the classic Yukon gold?

What kind of cut is your favorite? Last year's winner had waffle cut fries. Have you ever had waffle cut fries? I don't think I have. What kind of cut do you like best?

What kind of seasoning goes well with French frys? I need to come up with a flavor. As soon as I was invited to participate in this challenge I thought LEMON, I love anything lemon flavor. No wonder the winning fry from last year was lemon parmesan. Yup, lemon is already taken. So help me out, what seasoning do you think would work for French fries?

We're going to taste test some of Alexia's fries soon. We have a full house with cousins visiting from all over the place. I'm excited, I love a good tasting party specially with kids. Kids don't lie, not about food preferences anyway. Plus, when I asked for their input they suggested some wild flavors. Enzo suggested jelly-beans because jelly-beans has lots of different flavors. Baby Maria just looks at me and imitates my facial expressions, like the pictures above.

I'm hoping you'll have some better suggestions. In addition to being compensated to join the challenge I also have the possibility of show casing my creation at this year's Foodbuzz Festival if my creation is good enough to be in the top 4. So right now I need to create a recipe that's worth making it to the top 4. If you can take a minute to answer my questions above in the comments section that would be super.

Next week I'll let you know how our little creation is progressing and how many different flavors I experimented with.

Have a great weekend my friends.

Pumpkin Pie Popsicles

This month I'm turning pumpkin pie on its head as part of the Side Car Series on Kitchen Play. Have you heard of Kitchen Play? It's a fun new site that teams up food bloggers and sponsors to create new recipes. Nestlé Kitchen is this month's sponsor serving up Libby's 100% Pure Pumpkin and asking us to deconstruct the traditional pumpkin pie.

I don't love pumpkin pie. I like it alright. I like it more this year than last year, it's an acquired taste for sure specially for those of us who did not grow up in the United States feasting on Thanksgiving every year. I love the pumpkin pie filling, and the whip cream for sure and pie crusts are my favorite. It's just that the three together sometimes don't match up quite the way I like it. Needless to say I was stoked to create a variation of the traditional pumpkin pie.

I still wanted to have the pumpkin pie filling, the whip cream, and the crust all together but in a different way. Some people waffle iron everything, others make crazy cupcakes. I like to popsicle things, specially ingredients that are not traditionally made into popsicles. Enzo loved the big can of pumpkin pie mix and helped me come up with my creation, and our friend Lucy loved the result.

This is an easy recipe to make totally doable with kids.

Pumpkin Pie Popsicles
(printable version)

• 1cup Libby's Pumpkin Pie mix
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1/2 cup milk
• 3 tablespoons sugar
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon powder
• 1/4 cup crushed graham crackers

1. In a blender mix the heavy cream with sugar and cinnamon in high speed for 30 seconds. Place inside a large gallon sized plastic bag.
2. Mix The cup of Libby's Pumpkin Pie Mix with the milk in a blender in high speed for 30 seconds. Place in a separate gallon sized plastic bag.
3. Cup a small hole on one tip of the plastic bag that has the pumpkin mix. This will help you pour the mixture into your popsicle molds. 
4. Pour the pumpkin mixture into the Popsicle molds 3/4 full.
5. When the pumpkin mixture has frozen add the whip cream mixture by cutting a small hole on the plastic bag and pouring it until the Popsicle mold is completely full.
6. Sprinkle crushed graham crackers on top of the whip cream and freeze.
7. Serve when popsicles are completely frozen.

we made a couple variations.
They all tasted great.
At least the kids thought so.

This was a paid post sponsored by Kitchen Play.

The recipe is my own.

The opinions, also mine.

Top 10 moments at Pebble Beach Food and Wine Grand Tasting Event

Thank you Foodbuzz,

I love you guys to the moon and back.

xoxo

Pebble Beach Food and Wine

I’m attending this year’s Pebble Beach Food & Wine Lexus Grand Tasting Tent.  I’m so excited to enjoy great food, and meet some truly talented chefs.  And I want to share the experience with you!  Check out the Pebble Beach Food and Wine Grand Tasting Tent schedule and tell me what chefs you’d like me to meet and  what food you’d like me to try.

I promise to take lost of pictures and to stuff my face, in elegance of course, and report back next week. In the meantime I'd highly recommend following the event on twitter or facebook
Pebble Beach Food & Wine 
Foodbuzz  on Facebook 
@foodbuzz on Twitter. 

have a lovely weekend.

Foodbuzz 24,24,24: Farewell Farmer's Market

Yesterday I had a  pineapple-guava for the first time at Twin Girls farm stand at the Farmer's market on the West Side of Santa Cruz. Vendors were busy protecting their stands from the strong Autumn winds that was knocking down produce and costumers were picking up things here and there.

Meet Josh and Benjamin

Josh is a regular and Benjamin tags along to help his dad buy produce. Listen to Josh talk about his favorite farm stand and why he's going to miss them.

Josh.mp3

One of my favorite stands is Happy Girl Kitchen Company.

Even when the season is over I can still remember summer and the abundance of vegetables and fruits with Happy Girl Kitchen Company's yummy preserved products. Here is what they have to say about their products.

farm stand.mp3

My farewell lunch was at Conscious Creations stand. Joshua Server is an organic chef who has traveled all over the world. He had an awesome job working for the Surf Travel Company cooking for surfers on a yacht. Today I had one of his special breakfast frittata and a breakfast burrito with bacon and avocado.

Good Times.

I love me

some 

Farmer's market

to check out some more 24,24,24 meals visit Foodbuzz for an eye candy culinary experience. Thanks Foodbuzz for making my event possible as always I {heart} you!

I {HEART} FOODBUZZ

The First Annual Foodbuzz Blogger Festival was this past weekend in THE city (San Fran.) and it rocked my world. If all conferences were this good and this tasty I would go to them more often. Conference about car parts with good food? Sure, I'm there. Conference about insects with a million legs and good food? There again!

The Foodbuzz conference/festival was about food blogging AND good food, hands down the best blogger conference I've been to and it was free for featured publishers (I love foodbuzz to the moon and back).

I want to tell you all about it. I want to describe every single taste that I experienced, the cheese, oh the cheese and the silky butter and the different varieties of passion fruit chocolate. All this deliciousness while being surrounded by hundreds of other food bloggers, who like yourself, loves to eat and talk about food.

Best Moments

• Being introduced to Foodzie (HELL-O Christmas shopping!)
• Watching the cute couple, The Duo Dishes cook their winning Bertolli recipe
• Participate in an Outstanding in the Field dinner (total dream come true) in the Green Leaf warehouse. 
• Hanging out with fellow food bloggers like La Fuji Mama and meeting new bloggers like Diana from A Little Bit of Spain in Iowa.

Good times. 

Good times.

Foodbuzz 24,24,24: Happy BIRTHday Meal

Today is our son's half birthday. He thinks he's 4 but he's not, he's 3 and 1/2. Ten days ago I gave birth to our second child, Maria Aurea. We wanted to celebrate our daughter's birth without leaving our son out of the festivities. The Foodbuzz 24,24,24 inspired me to do a BIRTHday dinner celebration where we could celebrate Enzo's half birthday and the birth of our daughter with some friends. Enzo got to introduce his new little sister to our old neighbors. Litle 2 year old Via was just delighted with the baby and with the food.

The company was great and the food was great. What more could we ask for? (a little sleep would be nice but I'm not counting on that for a while...)

Like any good Birthday party the cake took center stage. Christian and I tried very hard to make a cake that looked good and tasted good. I think we finally succeeded.

To accompany the chocolate cake we made Vanilla Frozen yogurt.

And for dinner we had individual pizzas, Ina Garten style.

I wanted the menu to be good but easy(ish) to make. I'm resigned to the fact that for a while I won't have as much time as I used to, to cook as much as I want.

Below are the recipes for the Chocolate Cake, Vanilla Frozen Yogurt, and Ina Garten Pizza dough. Enjoy!

Chocolate Cake

• 2 1/4 cups flour
• 1 2/3 cups sugar
• 3/4 cup butter
• 2/3 cup good quality baking cocoa
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 2 large eggs

1. Heat oven to 350* and grease bottom and sides of pan
2. Beat all ingredients with electric mixer on low speed for 30 seconds, scraping bowl constantly.
3. Bear on high speed for 3 minutes.
4. Pour batter into pan
5. Bake for 30-35 minutes
6. Cool for ten minutes and then remove from pan and cool on wire rack.

We put whip cream in the middle and frosted with with Chocolate ganash. If you do the whip cream make sure it's almost to the point where it turns into butter. You don't want it to melt so it needs to be hard. The ganash should be poured on the cake when it's still warm that way you won't have to work so hard to make it smooth.

Vanilla Frozen Yogurt
a couple weeks ago designmom wrote a post about frozen yogurt. I'm a huge fan of frozen yogurt so I checked out the original recipe a frozen yogurt recipe to rival pinkberry's recipecreamy blackberry frozen yogurt and became inspired to use yogurt cheese to make create my recipe. Yesterday I decided to stick with the original vanilla frozen yogurt recipe. So good. So creamy and rich. So delish! Here is how I made the recipe using yogurt cheese

• 6 cups plain yogurt
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  

1. Place 6 cups of yogurt on a cheese cloth. Gather the ends and fold them over the yogurt and hang it over a bowl in the fridge over night. This will make 2 cups of yogurt cheese
2. Mix together the yogurt cheese, sugar, and vanilla.
3. Refrigerate for 1 hour.
4. Freeze in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions

Ina Garten Pizza Dough (California Pizza)
a couple weeks ago I tried this recipe and fell in love. If you like thin crust pizza you will love this dough.

• 1 1/4 cups warm water
• 2 packages dry yeast
• 1 tablespoon honey
• 3 tablespoons good olive oil
• 4 cups all-purpose flour, plus extra for kneading
• 2 teaspoons kosher salt

1. combine the water, yeast, honey, and olive oil in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a dough hook.
   
2. Add 3 cups flour, then the salt, and mix.
   
3. While mixing, add 1 more cup of flour.
4. Knead the dough on low speed for about 10 minutes until smooth, sprinkling it with flour, if necessary, to keep it from sticking to the bowl.
5. When the dough is ready, turn it out onto a floured board and knead by hand a dozen times. It should be smooth and elastic.
   
6. Place the dough in a well-oiled bowl and turn it several times to cover it lightly with oil.
   
7. Cover the bowl with a kitchen towel. Allow the dough to rest at room temperature for 30 minutes.
8. Divide the dough into 6 equal parts and roll each one into a smooth ball. Place the balls on a baking sheet and cover them with a damp towel. Allow the dough to rest for 10 minutes. Use immediately
9. Preheat oven to 500*
   
10. Roll and stretch each ball into a rough 8-inch circle and place them all on baking sheets sprinkled with cornmeal. You will be able to fit 2 pizzas on each baking sheet.
11. Brush the dough with olive oil and add any toppings you wish.
12. drizzle olive oil over the pizzas and bake for 10-15 minutes
    

Shout Out to Food Bloggers

I've been depressed all week because BlogHer'09 in Chicago is sold out. My friend Mariko and I were planning on going and now we can't because you all bought tickets before we did.

Today she informed me that there will be a blogher food conference in San Francisco, which is so convenient. Of course there's the minor detail that it's in the end of September which means that I'll have a 2 week old baby and if my labor is anything like last time I won't even be walking. Minor details that I'm sure will work itself out as the day approaches.

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.

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.