Pinterest & Popcorn Cake

Have you heard of the hottest new site on the web - Pinterest? If not you are either A - not into social media, B - living under a rock, or C -  a guy. :)   According to Mashable, Pinterest is driving more web traffic than Google+, YouTube, and LinkedIn combined! (More here.) The Huffington Post recently published an interesting article about why Pinterest is so popular. (Full article here.)

"Pinterest's recent success, which flies in the face of so much speculation about social media fatigue and information overload, holds an important lesson: It's not social media we're frustrated with. It's with one another."

"What sets Pinterest apart and makes it so appealing is its focus on who we want to be -- not on what we're doing, where we've gone, how important we are or how beloved. While much of the content shared on existing social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare screams, "Look at me," Pinterest posts urge, "Look at this." At least for now, the site offers a refreshing haven away from the boosterism and boasting that plague so many sites."

For those of you who don't know what Pinterest is (this is for you Dad!), Pinterest is a website where you can "pin" images that you find around the web on different "bulletin boards" that your friends can see. Think of it as visual bookmarking. Instead of managing long lists of bookmarks, you now have cute little graphic boards! You can also see what your friends are pinning, or can browse what strangers are pinning. (You can see my account here.)

I was introduced to Pinterest about a month ago and have been amazed by the variety of images I see on there. There are a lot of crafts, fashion, home improvement products, motivational images, cute pet pictures, etc being pinned. The ones of most interest to me have been the recipes and craft projects. Wow, when did I turn into an old lady? Anyways, although I wouldn't consider myself a cook or baker by any means, I am someone who loves appetizers. I LOVE appetizers! Whoever invented Tapas restaurants is genius!

I recently saw a recipe for a "Popcorn Cake" that came from a blog called Cookies & Cups. That sounded intriguing and disgusting at the same time. It was also pretty so I pinned it to my Food Board aka "Nom Nom Nom". My friend Todd's birthday was approaching and he is the world's biggest fan of popcorn (has a bowl each morning), so I decided that I would make the cake for his birthday. From looking at the recipe I saw that it was essentially a big rice crispy treat. I could do that!

I set out to buy the ingredients (Only the best for my cooking! Albertson's store brand) and put the "cake" together. The cake was easy to make and probably took about 10 minutes.

 

I brought the cake over for Todd's birthday/Super Bowl party (known as the Super Todd party) and I think it was a moderate hit. It was competing with a ton of yummy Mexican food that Todd and Christine had ordered, some other sweets, and an amazing bundt cake. It was still eaten though and hopefully the Newmans finished it off before it turned into a rainbow speckled brick. 

If you are interested in trying this culinary concoction out for yourself, you can find the recipe here.

Happy Pinning!

Fun at Work - Iron Chef Time!

Have I mentioned recently that I love my job? Not only is working in Marketing totally fun, but I also work in a fun industry and have fun coworkers. Now for the best part - a couple times a year we get together for our sales meeting and the team-building events we do are REALLY fun! Back in July our team-building event was a photo scavenger hunt. (More on my blog Fun at Work.) We split up into teams and ran all around Seaport Village down by the San Diego Harbor while taking pictures of things related to a list of clues. This time we did something different, we had an Iron Chef-like cooking challenge!

The Four Cooking Stations

Dining Area in the Back

The cooking challenge was held at the San Diego Wine & Culinary Center. My boss and I had heard some complaints from the women on our sales force that our activities were usually too physical. In some of our past sales meetings we've bowled, golfed, and had the scavenger hunt. The ladies wanted to do something laid back like go wine tasting. We thought about doing just going wine tasting but wanted to do something that was more team oriented, and preferably had a challenge involved. This Iron Chef competition was perfect!

Fresh Ingredients for the Team

We were split up into four teams, given a recipe, had access to a huge table of ingredients, and had a master chef watching over us and answer questions and providing assistance. There were two dishes that we would be making - Sauteed Shrimp with Sweet Peas, and Chicken, Seafood and Chorizo Paella. 

The Recipes

As soon as it was go-time, our team split up to get the ingredients for the two dishes. We were going to make the shrimp dish first (since it was labeled First Course) but the chef advised us to make the paella first (Second Course) since it took longer to cook. One of my favorite dishes as Cafe Sevilla (my favorite restaurant in San Diego) is their black paella. Yummy!

The Competition - Teams 1, 2, 3

 

We started out the paella by sauteing a long list of ingredients in the saucepan. After everything was nicely browned we added some wine and vegetable stock and let that simmer for a while. Once some of the liquid cooked off a bit we added a few more ingredients on the recipe list until it looked like the pan couldn't possibly hold one more thing! The paella then went into the oven for its final cooking. 

Our Paella Cooking

The Bread Crusting in the Pan

Once the paella was in the oven we got to work on the shrimp. We were allowed to take some creative license with the recipe so we added extra sausage, garlic, and wine. My teammates were extremely liberal with the wine! It cooks off though right? As a final touch we browned some bread with garlic to have on the side.

My Team Hard at Work

 

My Team Cooking the BEST Paella

After each team finished their two dishes they had to plate a small serving for the chef to taste. I think we did a pretty good job with the food itself, but I think our plating was the best on the table! The chef tasted each of the dishes and then announced the awards. I can't remember which award we won, but there were four different awards given out ... and gee each team won one. That was kind of disappointing! I wanted to know if ours really was the best! 

My Team's Shrimp Dish

 My Team's Paella

The Aftermath of our Cooking

Once the judging was over it was time for us to all enjoy our hard work. Everyone was encouraged to go around and try all of the other team's dishes, but I was too full and too lazy to go around and sample anything else. Ours was the best anyways, why face disappointment?

Paella Plated for Judging

 

Shrimp Dish Plated for Judging

After dinner a group of us went to a bar down the street to play pool. To my boss' delight they also had karaoke! I personally hate karaoke. I can't sing to save my life and the idea of revealing my warbling, off-key voice to the public is the last thing in the world I'd ever want to do. I was forced to sing karaoke at a sales meeting two jobs ago and in the process of being forced up onto the stage I honestly thought about quitting. That is how much I don't want to sing in public. 

 Playing Pool in the Gaslamp

Well, thanks to peer pressure yet again, I got dragged up to the stage with my group to sing "We Are the Champions" by Queen. To my delight, with our large group and the blaring speakers by the stage, you couldn't even hear yourself! That made it a lot easier. We made it through the song and it ended up not being the worst thing in the world I'd ever done, and somehow as the night progressed we went up for a number of other songs. To the patrons of the bar that night: I apologize to you and your ears.

Karaoke Stars Singing "Islands in the Stream"

The night was long but a lot of fun. If you are interested in trying out the two recipes, here they are.

Sauteed Shrimp with Sweet Peas

Ingredients

• 20 ea. shrimp, peeled and deveined
• 1 tbs garlic, minced
• 1/2 ea onion, diced
• 10 oz olive oil
• 1 cup tomato, diced
• 1 cup sweet peas
• 1/4 cup mint, fresh and chopped
• 1 cup pea shoots
• 1/2 cup white wine
• 1/2 cup vegetable stock
• 1/4 cup butter, unsalted
• Salt and pepper to taste

Directions
In a hot skillet, pour the olive oil in the pan and sear the sausage to render the fat, stirring it frequently until the sausage is slightly browned. Add the onion and garlic and saute until the onions are just turning transparent. Add the shrimp to the skillet and stir frequently until lightly colored on both sides. Add the tomatoes and peas, toss quickly. Deglaze with the wine, then add vegetable stock, simmer for about 1 minute. Reduce heat and add butter to incorporate. Finish with fresh mint and pea shoots and season to taste.

Option
Serve with warm or grilled crusty bread.

Chicken, Seafood and Chorizo Paella

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 6 ounces chorizo, cut into 1/2 inch slices on the diagonal
• 1 pound manila clams, clean
• 1 pound black mussels, clean
• 1 pound shrimp, peeled and deveined
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1/4 teaspoon paprika
• 2 cups Arborio rice
• 1 pinch saffron threads
• 2 bay leaves
• 4 cups chicken stock
• 1 pound roast chicken (meat from 3-pound chicken skinned, deboned, and torn into chunks)
• 1/2 cup peas
• 1 tomato, chopped
• Coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Directions
Heat oven to 400F. Heat oil in a large casserole or paella pan over high heat. Add chorizo and cook until browned and fragrant, about 1 minute. Add onion, red bell pepper, and garlic. Cook, stirring occasionally, until vegetables are tender, about 3 minutes.

Add rice, paprika, saffron, and bay leaves. Stir to combine and coat the rice, about 1 minute. Add chicken stock and bring to a boil. Add roast chicken, seafood, peas, and tomato; stir to combine.

Transfer skillet to oven. Cook uncovered until rice is tender and no liquid remains, about 20 minutes. Remove from the oven. Fluff with a fork and serve immediately.

If you try out either of these recipes let me know how it goes!

Chills, Church, & Chili

Chills

I am currently training for the Marine Corps Marathon (10/29/09) with my favorite training/running partner David! This will be his first full marathon and I'm really excited that we will get to run it together! Last weekend we planned for an 8 mile run on Saturday. We ended up oversleeping a bit and decided to hit the beach soon after breakfast. We tossed around the choices of running later that afternoon or early the next morning. I always do my long runs on Saturdays and love getting them over with, so I talked David into doing our long run after lunch, after the beach. Oh what a mistake! Roasting in the sun for 2 1/2 hours left us totally dehydrated. Unfortunately neither of us realized this until halfway through our run.

David Marveling at My Hello Kitty Towel

Running in the late afternoon in the heat (~85F, not bad, but about 20 degrees higher than I'm used to running in the early morning) after sweating in the sun all afternoon was not a good choice. We both felt the effects and had strange heavy-headed headaches for the last half of the run. We powered through our 8 miles though (with some walking.. shh! don't judge) and agreed to try out a real ice bath when we got back to my place. We made a quick stop at the liquor store on the way home to pick up two bags of ice and some Gatorade and we were ready!

We dumped the ice in the tub and filled it with a few inches of cold water and were ready to soothe the soreness out of our muscles. We then added some Gatorade for electrolytes. No, I'm kidding, we drank the Gatorade. But back to the ice bath .... Um, have any of you sat in an ice bath before?? Well if so, hats off to you! Seriously! I stepped in and could barely stand the few moments my feet were in! I jumped back out and though crap! That hurt! I dipped my feet back in again and figured if I withstood the pain for a bit longer it would start to go away as my body adjusted. Um, nope! I had to step back out. My feet ached with pain and felt like there was an elephant stepping on each foot and crushing the life out of them.

Finally, I had an idea on how we could ice our shins but keep our poor sensitive feet out of the ice cold water. I found that if I kneeled in the water I could lift my feet back out behind me. The ice didn't hurt my shins like it hurt my feet, and the death bath, I mean ice bath was bearable that way. So we both kneeled in the ice, feet kicked back and up. Let me tell you, its pretty awkward to kneel in a tub of ice with your feet angled up and out of the water behind you, but hey - I do yoga. I can hold an awkward pose! About five minutes into the icing I had the bright idea that I could distract myself by reading more of the 2nd Twilight book. I started to engross myself back into the love that is Edward Cullen the vampire (sigh....) when David asked me to read aloud to him to distract him as well. So yes, two people kneeling in ice, with one reading Twilight out loud to the other. What a freakshow we were! Not sure I want to try an ice bath again anytime soon, but maybe if I do it will be less and less painful each time. One can hope!

Church

On Sunday David and I went to check out a church downtown San Diego. Yes, at the ripe age of 31 I've finally decided to try attending church on a regular basis. The first one I went to a couple weeks ago was really not up my alley. It was very doom and gloom and oddly political. The talk of the world ending due to moral decline and blaming part of our country's problems on "Obama not being friends with Israel" was way too much for me. I'm a Joel Osteen kind of girl. Learn to live a better life. Be positive. Do good. I like messages like that. Doom and gloom and fear? Not my bag.

Anyways, this church we went to last weekend wasn't political, but it felt wrong to me in its own way. Instead of the pastor there was a guest speaker, a lawyer. And he was angry! Very angry! Not being a church goer growing up, I really anticipated church to be a positive, growing place, not somewhere I should feel fearful and guilty as I did after the past two churches. This speaker gave an hour long presentation about how the media is attacking the Bible and faith by questioning the timeline and story that is told. The man presenting was very angry and gave example after example about how the media is trying to ruin faith. I wasn't quite sure what to think about his presentation, and wondered several times how they found him and if this church really aligned with his message and sentiment. I left this second church a bit disappointed again as I did last week. But oh well, the search will continue.

Chili

David was pretty excited that the Home Run Derby that was going on Monday night, and the All-Star game on Tuesday night. I'm not a big baseball fan myself but thought I'd try to get into the excitement by cooking a baseball themed dinner. Hot dogs were number one on the menu of course, and number two was chili! I love chili! Beans, meat, spices... you can't go wrong! I found a recipe online for a simple chili, substituted the ground beef with low-fat ground turkey, and also cooked some low-fat turkey dogs to go with them. Chili turkey dog home run derby night! I think it was quite a success! David did too, even with my low-fat substitutions! Hey, at least I didn't try to slip him a tofu dog! (That's what she said! Okay sorry, poor fit for that joke.. Sorry Michael Scott for not doing that justice.)

The Dogs Boiling

The Buns Grilling

The Chili Cooking

(Yes, that is a wok that my chili is cooking in. I need a Crock Pot! Christmas is only 5 months away! Don't forget to put it on your list for me!!)

The Finished Product

So one of the many great things about chili is that cooking a pot of chili for two people means you have plenty of leftovers. The All-Star game the following night became leftover chili night. It was just as good as the night before. I love chili!

Nothing else we did last week started with "ch" and fit with my title, so you won't get to hear about it. :o) Sorry! Well ...... fine, you dragged it out of me! We also went to the dog park! Actually if I use the French word for dog it fits my title - "chien!" It was a hot weekend and my poor little furballs were pretty tired, but they still had fun. Here are some pictures from that trip.

Mika Shoving Her Way into a Picture

My Girls Following Me Around in the Park

Mika & David Taking a Time-Out

Great weekend, lots of fun. Until next time!