Recipes from a Pescetarian

A few weeks ago I blogged about how delicious our Easter lunch was and I promised to share a few recipes with you, and here they are brought to you by my favorite pescetarian, Jackie.

What in the world is a pescetarian you may ask?  Well, a pescatarian is very similar to a vegetarian; the exception is that pescatarians eat eggs, dairy, fish, and shellfish...but no meat from any land animals. 

Her Texas Caviar and Strawberry Spinach Salad were to die for...yet nothing had to die for it. ;)

Texas Caviar

1 can black beans, drained

1 can black eye peas, drained

1 can corn, drained

1 jar pimentos, chopped

2 stalks celery, chopped

1 red onion, chopped

1 cup olive oil

1/2 cup sugar (or splenda)

1/2 cup cider vinegar

On stove top, heat olive oil, cider vinegar, and sugar until sugar is melted. Mix everything together, with liquid, and chill overnight. Drain before serving. Serve with Chips/Fritos/Scoops.

 

 

Strawberry Spinach Salad

*Note: I usually double the recipe for more than ~6 people. I double the dressing, too, but only use about 3/4 of it for the salad, then save the extra for dinner salads and throughout the week.

1 bag baby spinach

1/2 cup toasted pecans (whole or cut)

1 pint strawberries, cut

Mix ingredients together just before serving (otherwise, salad gets soggy!); dress salad before serving

Dressing, mixed together in a small jar/container with lid:

1 T poppyseeds

2 T toasted sesame seeds

1 1/2 tsp minced dried onion

a few shakes worcestershire sauce

a few shakes paprika

1/3 cup sugar (or splenda)

1/2 cup olive oil

1/4 cup cider vinegar

Easter Weekend with the Days

I must say this was a terrific three day weekend and I could use a few more of them in my life.  Friday I spent the day shopping with my sister and niece then went out for sushi with my love.  Saturday we spent the day piddling around the house until it was time to go to a dear friend's wedding.  It was a beautiful spring afternoon for an outdoor ceremony.  God was definitely smiling down on Young and Shelby.  It was a perfect Southern wedding between a southern gentlemen and an Asian beauty, under the stately oaks on the family's estate, just wonderful!

 A beautiful Live Oak tree.

What a sunset! 

Today we celebrated Easter with our church family and with our Day family.  Bro. Jay's message was so great and not your typical "Easter Sunday Message."  I thought I would share a few of his key point with you.  

His title for today was, "A Better Life."  Bro. Jay said, "that through Jesus' resurrection power, change is possible in any and all aspects of our lives, but only if we open up to Him.  We can begin to live a better life by doing three things,"

Open Your..

• Mind to God's Power- Romans 12:2
• Heart to God's Grace- Romans 3:22
• Life to God's Love- John 10:10

If you have a few minutes, read these versus and I hope they speak to you in the same way they did me.

Now on to Easter lunch which I'll share with you via photos, it was so delicious!

Cuttin' up some filets

Dad/Chef/Butcher/Builder/Lover/Pilot/etc...he pretty much does it all!

Great fresh salsa made by Jackie  

 Mmmm...beef tenderloin steaks.

Does it get any better?  No ma'am!

 Twice baked potatoes made by Erin

 Orzo pasta salad made by yours truly

(I recreated the Whole Foods version, which I love.

Get the recipe here.)

Fresh spinach and strawberry salad with homemade poppy seed dressing also

made by Jackie.  Two words:  "So go-od."  I'll post the recipe when she sends it to me!

I was so excited about dessert I forgot to take pics, Drew requested homemade coffee ice-cream made by yours truly.  For my first time making coffee ice-cream I'd say it turned out pretty good, especially when paired with Erin's homemade choc-chip cookies, macaroons, and hot fudge!  YUM! 

 Poppie and Carrie

 Jax and Rigby

 Jackie and Nate

 Jax checking Carrie out

 Sweet baby girl.

While I missed my Mom & Dad so much today, I am so blessed to be apart of the Day family also.  There is never a dull moment and I always laugh so much when we are all together; if I have to get wrinkles I'd much rather laughter wrinkles over worry wrinkles!  

I hope you all had a wonderful Easter and I hope you all have a truly blessed week!

DD2's First Annual Crawfish Boil

On April Fools Day we hosted Daiquiri Daze's First Annual Crawfish Boil.  The weather was perfect and we had a great turn out.  The guys ended up boiling 800 lbs of crawfish and we didn't have any left over!!  I can't imagine ever going a spring or summer without weekend crawfish boils, I don't think these two seasons would be the same without them.

 A BIG THANK YOU....

to our friends who had four pots going from 11:30 until 6:00 that afternoon!

 Just a couple of damn Yankees,  Nate & Jackie just moved here from Philly.

Nate and I work together so I sort of adopted them.  I love them so much already, their northern personalities crack me up! :)

 A little entertainment compliments of DJ 21.

Happy Thanksgiving Eve!

So like I said I've been down with the funk for the last three days.  I stayed home sick from work Monday, made myself go to work on Tuesday and my co-workers pretty much told me not to come back until I was well. I'm guessing I looked as bad as I felt, so today Jax and I both had our shots...not at the same place of course! Jax had his second set of shots and I got my most favorite shot ever, the steroid shot.  I've been Speedy Gonzales-ing around the house ever since and I probably won't get much sleep tonight...or at least I usually can't sleep after a steroid shot and Drew says I haven't shut up since either, so if I run a few rabbits in this blog I apologized.  "Blame it on the dru-u-u-u-gs." 


Ok, so on this cool, crisp (finally) Thanksgiving Eve I am thankful for so many things.  Some big, some small, and some only I could be thankful for but nonetheless I am indeed grateful for it all.

• My main man, Andrew.  When he came skipping through the door last night I couldn't believe how much he's changed in a month.  His torso is catching up with his legs, his face is a little rounder, his snaggle tooth smile isn't so snaggly, but what has changed the most is his hair color.  It's the darkest I've ever seen it, even his eyebrows are brown!  His hair always gets lighter in the summer, but this fall his hair has definitely crossed over to the dark side.  Which, to me, makes him look even more like his Daddy Day-o.  I do believe he will fit the description of "tall, dark, and handsome" to a T!  We had a great day today.  We work on phonics, took care of Jax, his cousin Cole(d) came to play, made his Daddy a sweet potato pie, and made place cards for Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow.

My dark eyebrowed cutie pie!

 Working on his short vowel sounds.

 Cole helping Andrew out with his Christmas list to Santa.

(I forgot I drank thank Mt. Dew probably not the best idea.)

 An artist at work.  :)

• Big slabs of juicy beef.  My hubs doesn't like your traditional holiday proteins of turkey and ham, so when we do holidays at our house you can almost bet you'll get a delicious piece of beef...I mean it is what's for dinner.  So I scored a fine tenderloin from a local butcher and my personal chef is going to have it tasting o-so-right.

Seasoned with olive oil, fresh garlic, rosemary, and wrapped in bacon. ............................

sorry a drop of drool jammed my keyboard. ;)  I'll save the rest of the menu for tomorrow.

• A reason to set the table.  My how my tune has changed.  My Dad would always make us set the table of Sunday lunch and I hated it, ever second of it.  I would peruse the kitchen scoping out every dish trying to limit the silverware down to the bare essentials.  But then Dad would walk through and ask, "Where's the spoons?", even though not a single dish needed a spoon for consumption!  Ew, I can still see myself rolling my eyes.  But now I love setting my table, so what if it's only because I want to use my fine silver or my Maw Maw Nita's china.  I mean a fine meal shouldn't be eaten off of a paper plate, the cooks' creations deserve some respect!  Okay, all that said my table is all ready to go for tomorrow!  We all had a hand in dressing it up for a great Thanksgiving meal.

 Thanks to my man for cutting my gourds to fit a tea light.

 My favorite, is of course the place cards Andrew made for each of us.

  Ta-Da!  Simple, yet very Thanksgivingish.

• The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.  Oh my gosh I can't wait!  I'll be up at 6am to get my yeast rolls     a-rising and then I'll be counting down until the start of the parade!  My bucket list definitely includes going to the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade.  Hmmm....maybe I should do that for my 30th Birthday, then Andrew could go too.  I wonder if I could talk my folks into going also?!
  

Welp, I'm being pulled on to go watch the Lion King, I hope you all have a wonderful day tomorrow!  

Count your blessings, name them one by one. 

Count your many blessings, see what God has done!

An Apple a Day-O

Apples are another one of my favorite fall foods.  Every magazine I received last week had some amazing fall apple recipes.  Even Andrew's first grade class has been learning about apples this month.  This weekend I decided to try out a few recipes that caught my eye...or stomach.

 I found some beautiful Gala apples.

 Yesterday, I made prosciutto, manchego, and apple sandwiches for lunch.  They were delicious!  I found the recipe in one of my Cooking Light magazines.

• 1 1/2 tablespoons canola mayonnaise  (I used mayo made with olive oil)
• 2 teaspoons Dijon mustard, divided
• 4 (1-ounce) slices sourdough bread, toasted
• 1/4 cup sliced shallot
• 4 ounces paper-thin sliced serrano ham or prosciutto (I used prosciutto.)
• 1/3 cup (1 1/2 ounces) shredded Manchego cheese (Machego is sort of expensive, but worth it!)
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper, divided
• 1 tablespoon olive oil 
• 1 teaspoon sherry vinegar
• 2 cups arugula (I used baby spinach.)
• 1 tart apple, peeled, cored, and thinly sliced (I invested in an apple corer, definitely worth the $3 and I used a Granny Smith apple.  I also recommend a Chef 'n Palm Peeler, this little kitchen gadget is genius!  Thanks to Mimi for stuffing it in my stocking.)

1. Preheat broiler.
2. Combine mayonnaise and 1 teaspoon mustard; spread mayonnaise mixture over each bread slice. Top each slice with 1 tablespoon shallot, 1 ounce ham, and 4 teaspoons cheese, and sprinkle evenly with 1/4 teaspoon pepper. Broil 3 minutes. Combine 1 teaspoon mustard, oil, and vinegar. Combine the arugula and apple slices in a bowl; drizzle with vinaigrette. Toss gently. Divide the apple mixture evenly among sandwiches, and sprinkle with remaining 1/4 teaspoon pepper. (I recommend pairing with a glass of white wine.)


While I prepped lunch, my wonderful husband cleaned our rides.  He even shampooed the carpet! 

 The Stache-  His mustache started off as a dare, but I think he kind of digs it.  Me, I love facial hair so I'm all about it!

 Always a piddlin'!  (Drives me crazy sometimes!)

It was definitely open door weather yesterday! 

 I opened all of the doors and let the house air out.  The weather was beautiful!  We sat outside and enjoyed out sandwiches on the back porch.

Ok back to the apples!

Today, I'm making baked apples in my crock-pot.  I found this recipe on Pinterest, imagine that!  It is originally from the Skinny Chef.

• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 cup walnuts, chopped
• 2 tablespoons trans-fat free margarine
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 6 Gala or Macintosh apples, cored (I used Gala.)
• 1/2 cup apple juice or apple cider (I used apple juice.)
• 2 tablespoons orange liquor (optional, I also added a shot of brandy.)

Preheat a large crock-pot on high heat and preset it for 3 hours. (I preheated my crock-pot and when I poured in my liquids it cracked, so beware!  It's still usable for now, but I'm thinking my pot had a defect.  Thankfully I can replace just the pot.)  In a large bowl, mix brown sugar, walnuts, margarine, and cinnamon. Fill the apples with the filling and place them in the crock-pot. Pour in the apple juice or cider and the liquor, if using. Cover and cook 2 1/2 to 3 hours on high heat until the apples are soft and begin to collapse.

We haven't tried them yet, I'm waiting on my husband's apple smoked ribs to come off the smoker, but they smell heavenly, so do the ribs!  I'll let you know how they taste. Enjoy your Sunday and Geaux Saints!

I'll leave you with Andrew's Fall Break Poem about apples.

Apple Three

Fresh picked apples

From a tree

One for you

And one for me

One for teacher

That makes three

Apples picked

From an apple tree

-Monica Kulling

An Empire State of Mind

A while back I told Drew I would take him where ever he wanted to go for his 30th birthday, Drew loves big cities and New York was his pick!  As most of you can imagine, we had an amazing time in New York, New York!  The weather was pretty humid, much to our surprise, but it didn't slow us down.  Here's the rundown on our trip and a little taste of NY for all of my readers!


Thursday we took a direct flight out of New Orleans on JetBlue.  It's about a 2 hour and 45 min flight so it's pretty great and they have Direct TV for your viewing pleasure!  As soon as we left baggage claim we hailed a cab and were on our way to the condo.  If you've ever been to NY then you already know about the cab rides/drivers.  I love it!  To me it's half the fun of being in NY, horns blaring, yellow taxis darting in and out of traffic, drivers yelling at each other...ahhh the big city!  Now back to the condo, we were all a little worried about the condo situation because we rented it from an individual online.  Yikes, I know.  But the views were incredible and for the price we decided to take a chance despite all of the horror stories we heard.

 Our BF's, Matt and Britt

 The Birthday Boy and his Amazing Wife

Here is our building, Atelier

 As soon as we walked into this, we all breathed a sigh of relief!

 And here is our long weekend home away from home

Next we high-tailed it down to the 9/11 Memorial.  The city only allows 1500 people in at a time so you have to get tickets and be there for your designated time.  The memorial had been opened for 2 weeks, it was amazing and heart wrenchingly sad all at the same time.  One thing is for sure this city will never forget 9/11.  

"Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations

of our biggest buildings, but they cannot

touch the foundation of America.

These acts shatter steel, but they cannot dent

the steel of American resolve.

America was targeted for attack because

we are the brightest beacon for freedom

and opportunity in the world.

And no one will keep that light from shining."

President George W. Bush

September 11, 2001

The Survivor Tree:  This tree was still standing when the dust and smoke cleared on September 11th.  The museum was not open yet, but the World Trade Center "Tridents" will be housed there along with the "Survivor Stairs" and other remnants from the buildings.

Thursday night we walked over to 9th Ave in Hell's Kitchen to find something to eat.  9th Ave (from 37th-57th) in Hell's Kitchen is known for it's many ethnic restaurants.  We decided on an Italian restaurant called Basilica.  "If Lady and the Tramp had been filmed at a real Italian restaurant, it would have been this one."  We loved it, and they loved us!  We had Sangria, bruschetta, I had the Gamberoni Gambusiera, Drew had the Pumpkin Ravioli with Chicken (the Pumpkin Ravioli was to die for!), Matt had the Veal Marsala, and Britt had the Manicotti Bolognese .  For dessert we had handmade canoli, homemade pistachio ice cream, espresso, and on the house after dinner drinks.

 Britt's Manicotti Bolognese

 Gamberoni Gambusiera is served with black pasta.  It's homemade pasta dyed with squid ink and it was amazing!

 We fell in love with Hell's Kitchen, I don't think I would stay anywhere else!

At midnight, my love turned the big 3-0!

 Happy Birthday Kisses! XOXO

Friday morning we woke up to a foggy New York City and a 90% chance of rain.  So we decided to do some shopping on 5th Avenue.  Britt found a fabulous sussie at Louis Vuitton and I found a dazzling sussie at Tiffany's!  Thanks to our wonderful husbands!  Since, it rained all day I didn't take very many pictures Friday.

(All of these were taken from our condo.  Like I said we could see everything!)

 The Hudson River, from our kitchen window.

 That's the Empire State building, I still can't get over how much taller it is than every other skyscraper in NYC.

We had lunch at the Carnegie Delicatessen, their salty beef was out of this world.  Matt and I had The Woody Allen, name after the actor of course.  It was half corned beef, half pastrami....and huge!

 Drew had a foot-long hot dog. 

You can't really tell, but we were soak through and through from the rain.  So we headed back to the condo to dry off, relax, and get ready for Drew's birthday dinner at Keen's Steakhouse.

Keen's has been around since 1885 and has the largest collection churchwarden pipes in the world.  Men would check their pipes in with the pipe warden in the Pipe Room, because they were too fragile to carry in saddle bags.  Keen's is known for their lamb chops, my double lamb chops with mint jelly were delicious!

 Saturday morning we woke to a much prettier day!  

 The cruise ships came into the harbor.

Britt and I headed to H&M for some shopping while the boys tooled around town.  For lunch we headed to SoHo for some Lombardi's pizza...little did we know what we were in store for!

 The infamous White Pizza, this is by far one of the top 5 best things I've ever eaten!

 Next we headed to the Italian Heritage Festival, where we tried things like fried oreos, fried ding dongs, and of course more Canoli!

Then we rode the subway to Grand Central Station.

Look who we found on the streets of NYC!

 Legends!  This was one of the high lights of our trip.  LSU allumni from all over New York gather here on game days to eat, drink, be merry, and cheer on our TIGERS.  It's the most fun I've had outside of Tiger Stadium!  The atmosphere was incredible, the service was stellar, and the Tigers won...I don't think it gets much better than that.

 Sunday morning we went for a stroll in Central Park.  I love this park, there's just something about 843 green acres in the middle of that concrete and steel jungle that brings a smile to my face.

 Nice pose dear!

  

Next we headed over to the toy store to end all toy stores the NY FAO Schwarz!

Matt & Drew were not nice to the toy solider guarding the door. ;)

I think we had as much fun as the kids! 

We had to buy another piece of luggage just to get all of Andrew's sussies home!

Sunday afternoon was Broadway time!  Matt & Britt went to see Wicked and Drew & I went to see Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark.  It was amazing!  The whole time we were going Andrew would love this!  Maybe they'll tour and we can take him to see it.  The actors were flying around on cables, the stage engineering was incredible, definitely an action packed show!

Sunday night we took in a sail boat tour of Manhatten Island which took us out to Staten Island to see the Statue of Liberty.  My pictures did come out too great, what with the moving boat and the evening lighting.

 After our sail boat ride we made one more stop at Lombardi's just for good measure! :)

Finally, Monday morning before our flight home we toured the Empire State Building.

Like I said our trip was incredible!  Drew said this birthday was one of the best yet!  I am very blessed to be able to treat my hubs to a trip like this, we love traveling together, seeing new things, and creating memories that we will tell our grandchildren about.  New York is definitely a place like no other both historical and modern at the same time.  The food is amazing and the cultural difference throughout Manhattan makes for a mini tour around the world.  You should definitely go!