Peru!!!

Jamie and I fly out to Peru tonight! I cannot wait. I've wanted to go to Machu Picchu ever since I did a report on the "Incredible Incas" in 4th grade. We'll be spending the next week wandering around Cusco, hiking up to Machu Picchu, and eating everything in Lima (we're going to three restaurants that are supposed to be amazing - Astrid y Gaston, Maido, and Chez Wong). This does mean I will be taking a hiatus next week, but I'll be back June 2.

Happy Memorial Day!

Radish Butter

This is a very simple recipe (2 ingredients plus salt and pepper) that is surprisingly flavorful for how few ingredients it has. I took the recipe from Simple Fresh Southern to use up some of my garden radishes. It's a great, springy spread and something a little different - smooth from the butter and crunchy and peppery from the radishes. It's great just on crackers, but I'd love to try it on a sandwich. Jamie thought it would be a great mayo substitute.

Garden - Week 10, May 17

The garden is looking great! We had a ton of radishes. What a great thing to plant - they do so well and they're ready in a month. I'm going to post a recipe for radish butter later this week. It sounds kind of ordinary but it's actually delicious.

Dog-Friendly Brooklyn Bar - Bar Great Harry

Now that we have this little monster, it's harder to justify going out on the weekends and leaving her at home. We did a little research and found that Bar Great Harry on Smith Street in Cobble Hill allows dogs (so does Barrow's Pub in the West Village). We brought Toonsy there last Sunday when it was beautiful and sunny. All the doors were open and it was airy and nice. Petunia was tired out from her walk and had a nice snooze on a bar stool.

Rainbow Layer Cake

Jamie and my adorable niece Charlotte is coming to visit us for her 6th birthday. (She chose visiting us for the weekend over having a birthday party!) We're going to have a little party for her up here and when my sister-in-law Katie asked if we could get a cake for her, I thought it would be fun to do something special. Enter the rainbow layer cake. (I did try an easier version once before.) Not sure if you've seen this all over the pinterest-sphere, but it's a beautiful cake with six colored layers - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple - with white icing in between and on the outside. So it looks like a plain, white cake, but is all rainbow when you cut into it. It is definitely more work than a regular cake, but worth is if you have a little kid to impress.

Ingredients:

Two packages of white cake (pick whatever kind you want)

-follow the instructions on the back and use just the egg whites if that's an option - it will lead to crisper colors

Slow Cooker Tomato Sauce

I'd been wanting to try making tomato sauce in the slow cooker. It's so easy and you get a really rich tomato flavor. 

Garden - Week 8, May 3

The garden is doing well! I forgot to take more pictures, but the snap peas are growing really well, the regular peas only have like 3 shoots, the lettuce is coming up nicely, the swiss chard isn't really, the zucchini hasn't come up yet, neither has the cucumber. The radishes are doing really well and I culled/thinned them a bit, resulting in a couple adorable micro radishes. They were peppery and delicious.

Get Better Soup

I had a bad cold and started to feel a little flu-ish on Monday and went home from work. I made myself a soup that I thought might cure my cold and nausea. I think it worked as I soon felt better. It's cheap and easy and tasty. Maybe don't have it before a date...

Omelette

I'm usually a Bismarck person, and when it comes to eggs I usually go scrambled, fried, or One-Eyed Connolly, but last weekend I wanted to try out an omelette (mostly because I had spinach, fontina, and herbs in the fridge). It was really easy and very tasty, and you can put whatever you want in the middle. I opted for some sauted spinach and scallions with parsley, dill, and fontina. Yum. You just need a non-stick pan.

Ramp Spaghetti

This is a Maria Batali recipe - very simple and just highlighting the ramp flavor. This is a perfect for a quick weeknight dinner.