Blog Love: What Katie Ate

My love of food blogs has reached a new peak thanks to Katie Quinn Davies, a professional food photographer and stylist, who writes What Katie Ate, a personal food blog filled with yummy goodies. The recipes look beyond amazing and are presented in pretty recipe cards. I've already printed out a few recipes that I'd love to try over the next few weeks. The photos are great for cluing me into what the dish is "supposed" to look like...useful for a rookie chef like myself.

Photos by Katie Quinn Davies

A Cup of Tea

This August has held up to its reputation as being the rainiest month of the year in South Florida. So the hubs and I have been enjoying the rainy weekend days at home with our pj's, a good book, and hot tea. There's nothing like cup of hot tea to make you feel cozy. Lately I just can't seem to get enough of this green tea from Teavana. Instead of drinking coffee, I've tried switching to green tea for the health benefits. My husband drinks his favorite Strawberry Kiwi herbal tea because of the vitamin C and flavor... he says my green tea tastes like grass. Oh well.However, if there is one thing we can both agree on, it's that tea always tastes better with honey. Oh yeah, there's nothing like a bit of honey to make a cup of tea that much better... So what's your favorite tea? I'd love to try new flavors, in fact our tea collection is slowly growing. Do you love green, black, white? Flavored?

I'd love to know!

Images via We Heart It

Salute to the Cake Pan Dude

The cake pan dude at Williams-Sonoma is a genius...that's right, a genius. I really want this cake pan, it brings my daydreams of eating a giant Oreo cookie to life.

Chocolate and Zucchini

For quite sometime I've been looking for a food blog that features recipes with fun twists on the food I love to eat. A blog that brings dishes from different countries to one place and yet, they sound absurdly easy to make. I found it today via the Inside Out Blog, it's called Chocolate and Zucchini. I am loving her recipes and the great commentaries that come along with them. On my list for this weekend are her amazing looking Chocolate Chip Cookies and the Miso Glazed Flank Steak...yummo!

Inside Out just featured her in a recent interview, to read it, click here. Happy cooking!

Chanel Cupcakes

If I received a box of these I'd probably let out one of those exaggerated gasps that leave your mouth in a giant "O" for a long time and proceed to refuse to eat any of them because they are so pretty. Well, at least for a little while...they are after all cupcakes!

Image via Love Puppy

Cookie Monster

I heard about the delicious cookies from Downtown Cookie Co. on the radio the other day and am seriously trying to find an occasion to order them. Oh, who am I kidding? You and I both know that I am going to order a dozen of these little delights for Mango and I to enjoy with a glass of milk in the wee hours of the night.

The cookies are made fresh to order and shipped to your home within 2-3 days. If you live in Manhattan, they are sent to you via messenger (I've never gotten anything via messenger, that would actually be really cool). All of this is done to ensure freshness...yummy!

The cookie that intrigues me the most is the one above, the Jam Thumbprint cookie. However, this Chocolate Chocolate Chip looks pretty darn good for a girly movie fest.

Save the Earth people!

There's my adorable husband who, after yesterday's grocery shopping trip, I begged to pose and model our brand new Publix grocery totes. What are these you ask? Well, recently our grocery store, Publix (the main grocery store here in the south), began selling cloth grocery bags. I thought this was a great way to "Go Green" and save on having to throw away all of those plastic bags that you normally come home with after shopping. At just 99 cents a bag, it's hard not to jump on the green bandwagon. Plus, they're a super cute and come in tan, green, and black. If you can believe it, we managed to fit 2 weeks worth of groceries in just 4 bags, they expand really well so you don't have to buy many. If you're not up to sporting the "Publix" logo, here are some cute ones that I found on Etsy:

Mangonett's Shrimp Pizza!

One of my favorite things to make is a pizza. We always keep a plain frozen pizza in the freezer and sometimes if I'm feeling extra ambitious, I might buy a Boboli pizza shell and build it myself (eventually I might try my hand at making the pizza dough). The best part is coming up with fun and tasty stuff to add to it, the whole point is to make something that tastes great, looks gourmet, and takes 25 minutes to make (including cooking time). Last night was one of our best creations yet!

I happened to have some frozen shrimp in the freezer, so this became our pizza topping. Along with the shrimp, we added some spinach, goat cheese, tomatoes, basil, garlic and a little bit of lemon. The result was really tasty, we tried to eat the whole pizza, but when you have a lot of toppings, it can be a challenge. So here's the basic recipe, rule of thumb...have fun and add as much of the ingredient as you want!

Mangonett's Shrimp Pizza

15 shrimp (if frozen, thaw out, remove tails)

Spinach

2-3 cloves of garlic, minced

2 plum tomatoes (sliced thinly)

1/2-1 cup crumbled goat cheese

1/2 a lemon

4 leaves fresh basil

1 frozen cheese pizza (I like DiGorno!)

Salt and Pepper

Olive Oil

1. Take pizza out and put on tray, preheat oven according to directions on box

2. Add goat cheese and garlic to the pizza

3. Finely chop up the basil and sprinkle it on

4. Add amount of spinach you would like (it tends to shrink as it cooks)

5. Place tomato slices around pizza over the spinach

6. Place shrimp on pizza, you can leave them whole, or chop them up if you want it bit size

7. Squeeze the lemon over the pizza, mainly on the shrimp

8. Add salt and pepper to taste and drizzle a little bit of olive oil

9. Cook pizza according to time on box

My Muse of the Week: Taste Spotting

One of my favorite recipe websites was on hiatus for a little while, but it's back up and running in all it's glory again! Taste Spotting is a beyond fantastic recipe site that features practically any dish you can think of, and some you might have not even imagined. It's my Muse of the Week because the holiday weekend is here and I am inspired to whip up some of these delicious creations...mainly the sweet stuff.

The website is created to look like it's made up recipe cards, featuring a picture of each dish. If you click on a card it will lead you to a rather easy to follow recipe and real life comments on how readers enjoyed making the dish. Their search engine up top allows you to search for anything you might have specifically in mind, giving you some wonderful options to try. Some of my favorite recipes that I want to try this weekend are the Margarita Ice pops

and the Extreme Rotini and Cheese.

Po' Boys on the Horizon!

Along with decorating our home and finding out new ways to beat Mango on Wii, I have been infatuated with finding fun recipes to try. I must confess, that before I got married my culinary achievement was making my mom's famous lasagna, however now I am determined to learn how to cook, and cook well. So everyday I search my favorite food blogs and sites for new recipes I can try. Today, while perusing the cooking board on The Nest, I decided to look through some of food blogs authored by these talented Nesties and even found a couple of favorites.

There was one in particular that caught my attention called Sweet Savory Southern, which is dedicated to southern food. Being that my husband is originally from New Orleans, Louisiana, I was especially excited because I would love to learn how to cook the food that he grew up with. As I looked through the many recipes on her blog, I quickly landed on one of my favorite foods, shrimp po'boys! I fell in love with them on my first trip to New Orleans and since then have always wanted to try making them. I figured this would be a great recipe to try tonight for dinner, mainly as a surprise to Mango since every now and then he sighs and says "I could really go for a shrimp po'boy right now!"

Wish me lots of happy cooking pixie dust!

Recipe: Shrimp Po'Boys

Source: Sweet Savory Southern

Servings: 2 Sandwiches

16-18 medium shrimp, peeled and deveined(thawed if frozen)
1/2 cup bread crumbs
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/4 tsp paprika
1/8 tsp cayenne pepper
2 eggs
olive oil or veg oil for frying
1 small loaf French or Italian bread
Begin by setting up two shallow bowls. Beat the eggs in one bowl. In the second bowl, combine the bread crumbs, salt, pepper, paprika, and cayenne pepper. Begin by dipping the shrimp in the egg and then into the bread crumbs. Dip them again into the egg and then again into the bread crumbs. Heat a skillet over medium heat and add enough oil to cover the bottom of the pan. Pan fry the shrimp 2-3 minutes or until golden brown on each side. Work in batches of 3-4 to prevent burning. Place shrimp on a plate lined with a paper towel to absorb any excess oil. Pile the shrimp on toasted Italian or french bread with your favorite toppings.

Recommendations: Before toasting your sliced bread, brush it with a little bit of butter. Also, you can top your po'boy with your favorite toppings like lettuce, tomato, and cocktail sauce.

The Foodie in Me...

My husband and I have several things in common, we both have a sarcastic sense of humor, we're avid movie fans, but most of all we are "foodies". In case you don't know what a "foodie" is, Slashfood.com says that being a foodie involves not only liking food, but to be interested in it. While others like to know about where the food comes from or all the flavors involved in it, I am particularly interested in how it's made. As a result, even though I don't do it as often as I would like to, I love to cook. Especially now that we have acquired some flipping awesome cooking tools as part of our loot from the bridal shower. I am more excited than ever to try out some recipes with my new toys.

Recently, my sister, who's hobby is to find all of the crazy and interesting websites out there, introduced me to the fabulous Tastespotting.com. It is filled with amazing recipes for anything you can think of and even some things you couldn't have imagined. I love how their site is set up to look like a mosaic of recipe cards for you to choose from. This summer, this Foodie is definitely go to try a couple of these recipes! Now, to figure out how get back into exercising, being a foodie can have some repercussions on how well your jeans fit!