Blueberry Coffee Cake

This is my favorite cake I've made so far. It was dense and moist. It didn't have a heavy butter flavor and the brown sugar topping was nice and crispy. When I visited my sister in Baltimore, we made the cake into muffins and they turned out just as good. For some reason, I like the cake after it's been refrigerated. My sister doesn't seem to care either way.

I can't remember where I found the recipe. I just saved it on a word document, so when I find it I'll let you know.

LA Tofu Festival 2007

Tofu Festival vendors

YAY! I finally got to go =] but the bigger yay was that I got my carnivorous Mr. Sweetie Pie to take me. It was such a HOT day, seriously 100°F. If you know me, you'd know that I hate the heat and I get grumpy too =/ But Mr. Sweetie Pie was such a great sport but he didn't want to eat a thing; he did hold all the food for me to take a picture though.

more vendors

Pad Thai with Tofu

This dish was probably my favorite.

Curry Tofu

This was my second favorite but still really good. The curry was a Japanese style curry and the faux meat had great texture and taste.

Tofu Bibimbap

The vegetables were fresh and crispy.

Earthen Restaurant

1639 S Azusa Ave, Hacienda Heights, CA, 91745 (626) 964-1570

My sister and I went to Earthens for lunch and ordered green onion pancakes, sautéed vegetables, and tofu with mushrooms. The pancakes were a bit oily but the seasoning was very good. I loved the vegetables, they're my favorite kind of vegetables though (it was sautéed with garlic). The tofu with mushrooms weren't special. I would recommend coming here for the pancakes. I had tired their vegetable dumplings once and it had way too much pepper.

Little Boy Cookies

Little Boy Cookies

This time while I waited at my friend's house for bowling league to start, her little boy decided that we should decorate some cookies.

The little boy decorating them

And here he is putting the faces on the cookies. He actually wanted to make pirate cookies but since we didn't have enough time before we went bowling, he used M&Ms.

Rib Eye Roast

For Mr. Cutie Pie's birthday I made him a Rib Eye Roast, tater tots and for dessert, a Dove Ice Cream Bar (cause his parents already got him an ice cream cake). I've made a roast once before and it was more "medium done" than "medium rare", which is the way Mr. Cutie Pie likes it. This time around, I made sure to get the right cut of meat and took the roast out 10ºF before it reached the desired temperature for "medium rare" (145ºF). Since I don't eat meat I can't tell you how it turned out but Mr. Cutie Pie (and his dad) assured me it was very good.

Rib Eye Roast
Ingredients
4 to 6 lbs of Rib Eye Roast (I got a 5 lb roast which included 2 bones)
5 cloves of garlic cut into slivers
Salt and coarse black pepper
Instant read thermometer

Instructions
About and hour before roasting, remove the meat from the refridgerator and let it get to room temperature.

Preheat oven to 350°F
Make small slits all over the rib eye (about 7) and fill each slit with a few slices of garlic. Season liberally with the salt and coarse black pepper. Pleace the rib eye on a rack set inside a roasting pan and roast for about 2 hours to untill the thermometer inserted into the center of the meat registers 135ºF for medium rare.

Remove the meat to a platter, and tent with foil to keep warm and let it sit for about 15 min. still the thermometer reads 145ºF.

You can make a sauce with the drippings in the pan by adding wine, beef stock and some seasoning (such as fresh thyme leaves).

Thyme Au Jus
2 cups red wine
4 cups beef stock
1 tablespoon chopped fresh thyme leaves.

Place the roasting pan on top of the stove over 2 burners set on high heat. Add the wine to the pan drippings in the pan and cook over high heat untill reduced, scrapping the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon. Add the stock and cook until reduced by half. Whisk in the thyme and season with salt and pepper, to taste.

Cookies

M&M and Chocolate Chip cookies

Since Mr. Cutie Pie doesn't like a lot of sweets, chocolate chip cookies are just about the only thing I know he'll eat for sure. A lot of the cookies I've made in the past have been too flat for my taste. The perfect cookie size and texture for me would be fat, soft and chewy. I usually followed the recipe on the back of NESTLÉ®TOLL HOUSE® Morsels packages but the cookies were too thin for me. I've also tried Alton Brown's recipe for The Chewy cookie and although it was chewy, the cookies were still too thin.

I wanted cookies like the ones I bought from Campitelli Cookies . I finally found the recipe while looking through Mr. Cutie Pie's mom's cook books. I didn't have a lot of unsalted butter (less than ⅓) so I looked for cookie recipes that used a combination of butter and shortening. The whole recipe needed ⅔ butter and ⅔ shortening so I just cut everything in half. The recipe also stated that for a rounder cookie, add another half a cup of flour. The resulting cookies were exactly to my standards. The only difference I would make next time would be to make the cookies bigger.

Reese's pieces cookies

Chocolate Chip Cookies
⅔ cup shortening
⅔ cup butter or margarine, softened (I used unsalted butter)
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup brown sugar (packed)
2 eggs (room temperature)
2 teaspoons vanilla
3 cups flour
1 teaspoon soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup chopped nuts (optional)
12 oz semisweet chocolate pieces (1 ½ cups)

Heat oven to 375°F. Mix thoroughly shortening, butter, sugars, eggs and vanilla. Stir in remaining ingredients. (For a softer, rounder cookie, add an extra½ cups flour)

Drop dough by rounded teaspoonfuls 2 inches apart onto ungreased baking sheet. Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until light brown (if you're making large cookies, bake for about 12 minutes but do not over bake). Cool slightly before removing from baking sheet.

About 7 dozen cookies.

Southern Biscuits

After making the Buttermilk Biscuits, I was a bit disappointed in the taste so I decided to make Alton Brown's Southern Biscuits and his had a much more buttery taste and a flakier texture. I think the reason why the Southern Biscuits rose nicely was that the biscuits were placed just touching instead of a an inch or two apart.