Random Stuff....!

Hey Guys I haven't really had time to post, but I want to stay consistent....so I'm doing a quick post on things I've had over the past week. I did a lot of eating out this week, nothing to fancy, just the chain restaurants Olive Garden, TGI Fridays, and Red Lobster. Here are some pics of some of my favorite things to order, I also found recipes for them online, so check out my recipe page for the links!


Olive Garden - Sicilian Scampi

 

This is my favorite appetizer from Olive Garden, actually it is my favorite appetizer from any restaurant that I've been to thus far! It's shrimp served on top of toasted slices of Italian bread with a white wine sauce, and topped with fresh tomato, black olives, and green onion. 

TGI Friday's - Cajun Shrimp & Chicken Pasta, Blackberry Mojito

I don't know if I'm the only one that does this, but I tend to order the same things every time I go out to eat. At TGI Fridays, I almost always order the Cajun Shrimp & Chicken Pasta, or the Sizzlin Shrimp & Chicken.I  As far as drinks go, the Blackberry Mojito is my favorite because it taste like juice, I'm not really a fan of strong drinks. I guess you can call me a light weight.

Red Lobster - Shrimp Scampi

My trip to Red Lobster was out of the ordinary this weekend. The didn't have the steamed clams appetizer, and the biscuits were hard!! I can't complain about my meal though. I had broiled scallops, shrimp scampi, and shrimp pasta, with a lobster stuffed baked potato on the side! Sounds like a lot right? I have the leftovers for my lunch sitting next me as I write this. I always order the shrimp scampi and shrimp pasta together because I like to poor the scampi over the pasta. I don't know when I started doing that or why, but I know it makes it ten times better you should try it! 

I'm looking forward to posting alot in February, we have the Superbowl next weekend, and Valentines day, I'm throwing a baby shower, and of course it's Black History Month! So there should be lots of food involved with all of these things.  

What did you guys have to eat this past week? 

The Big "1"

This weekend we celebrated my daughters first birthday.We didn't do anything big, just had some family and friends over for cake and ice cream. I made her the "big cupcake" that I mentioned in my last post, and it actually came out really cute. I let the kids make their own ice cream sundays with sprinkles, whipped cream, and all the toppings. We had a lot of fun. Everyone wanted to know how I made the cupcakes so I decided that would be a good topic for this post. 

So first lets start with supplies......

I decided to make her a Funfetti cake, I thought that it went well with the Minnie Mouse theme and kids seem to love it. This time I used the Pillsbury brand but it doesn't really matter, I usually just grab what's on sale, they all taste good to me. Here's a little secret I picked up from my sister, add a pudding cup to the cake batter and it makes the cake come out really moist and delicious. 

I'm sure you've all seen the "Big Top Cupcake" commercial...that's the pan I used to bake the cake in. I had never baked in silicone bakeware, so I googled directions. The directions that I found said to lightly grease the pan, and I did...and the cake still ended up sticking!!! So it all fell apart, but I put it back together and this is the result.

Can you tell that it fell apart? 

I used some of the icing to patch it back together.

To decorate the cake I used a decorating bag and a 1M size piping tip. 

 

Using a decorating bag is easy, I learned by reading the box insert that came with a set that I got from Walmart. I added a page to the blog for tutorials, check out the cupcake decorating one I found.  

I find that craft stores such as Michael's have a bigger selection of piping tips and bag sizes. Another good thing about the craft store is they have couplers, these are the white pieces that connect the tip to the bag. These come in handy if you want to use different decorating tips for the same icing.

For the small cupcakes I used purple and pink icing. I have a pack of McCormack primary colors food coloring. They come in little squeeze bottles and the back of the box tells you how many drops of each color to mix in order to get the icing color you are looking for. I also had a container of Wilton 6 mix sprinkles that I had used for another occasion. The container had sprinkles shaped as daisies, hearts, dots, leaves, wildflowers, and butterflies. I used the dots for the big cupcake, and the daisies for the small ones. I also used some plain course sugar sprinkles in pink and purple. 

Here is the final result....

This is the face of the birthday girl....I think she liked it!!

Happy New Year!

It's a New Year!! 

The holidays are finally over, and so is 2010. Can you guys believe I forgot to make a sandwich with my leftover Christmas turkey!! That's my favorite thing to do with the leftovers, my grandma makes soup and pot pies with hers. 

 I had a few days off for the holidays and I spent them with my friends and family. Every year my friends and I have a Christmas cookie share, we all bake something and then come together and share it. My cousin is not a fan of baking so she usually  makes the dinner. This year we had tortellini in meat sauce and it was really good. For dessert I made carrot cake cupcakes with cream cheese frosting drizzled with caramel. I also made my first cheesecake, which was an adventure but it turned out good. I couldn't find a recipe I liked for the cheesecake so I took a few things from a bunch of different recipes, I think I'm going to try it again this weekend, I need to tweak it a little. Once I get the end result I'm looking for I'll be sure to post on my recipe page. Some other desserts we had were cookie brownie bars, which is a brownie on the bottom and a cookie on the top, they were good but very thick and made it hard to eat anything else after. One of my friends cheats every year and buys her dessert, this year she bought pound cake and topped it with peaches and whipped cream, and I have to admit it was really good.

So, what did everyone do to bring in the new year? I had planned to have a few friends over, it turned out to be a little more than expected! But we all had a good time, we had a few drinks and played cards and watched the ball drop. My cousin made hot wings for our gathering,  I made shrimp and rice, and we had a tossed salad for our veggie. 

 New Years Day at 300 Bowling Alley

On new years day a few friends and I decided to go bowling. We went to 300 in Melville. 300 is definitely different from the bowling alleys that I'm used to. We went around 10pm, so when we got there we were greeted by a bouncer giving out wristbands for people over 21. For a second I was a little confused, thought I was at a nightclub. The place is set up really nice with a big bar in the middle, nice tables all around to eat at. I thought it was clean and well kept. The balls are all kept in a back area and you have to go to a desk and tell the attendant what size you need. I thought that was nice, I usually spend to much time walking around the bowling alley trying to find a ball.  The staff was really friendly and the DJ was ok. Now lets talk about the important stuff.....The FOOD! The menu offered items like burgers, chicken fingers, fries, hot wings, chicken quesadilla and more. Pretty good selection for a bowling alley. I tried the chicken quesadilla, hot wings, and sweet potato fries. They were all so good! The drinks were good as well. The price for bowling was reasonable $7 a game, drinks were in the $8-$10 range, and food was a bit high for a bowling alley - $11 for six chicken fingers, however the portion sizes were very good. 300 is right around the corner from my job, the food was so good I'm thinking I've found a new lunch spot.

Now that the holidays are over I've decided to post once a week, I see a few new restaurants that are popping up around town that I'd like to review, and I found some new recipes to try. Next week is my daughters first birthday, I'm going to be making her the big cupcake so we'll see how it turns out. Any suggestions on what kind of cake?