December 30, 2016

Life Update!

Well here I am back again! I didn’t fall off the planet not to worry. Blogging was put on the back burner the past year or so because of how hectic life has been! Ted and I got engaged in November and got married on August 7 this past summer! We were busy planning the wedding and our honeymoon (which we took in October to Santorini)….and oh yeah we decided to throw buying a house into the mix last spring! But I’m making a solemn promise to start blogging again <3

I will get back to posting recipes in the coming week but here’s some pictures of the past year until then. This will be the photo version of the friends, family, engagement, house, summer, friends’ weddings, and delicious food! I’ll be back with a post about our wedding and recent honeymoon to Santorini soon. The food was amazing and if Greece is not on your bucket list yet you better add it!

Bare with me….there’s a lot of photos! My apologies as I ramble a tiny bit!

Ted surprised me with a trip to Puerto Rico for the weekend in November 2015 and proposed on the beach! I knew watching those romantic chick flicks with him would pay off 😉

He sure did well!

We took a trip to the Bacardi Rum Factory 😉

While the trip was short we still made time to do some sightseeing like old San Juan.

I’m telling you Puerto Rican food is so delicious. But let’s face it really any Latin American food is right up my alley. I have to be a proper Spanish teacher 🙂

We took some engagement photos in the dead of winter 2015–little do you know we were freezing our butts off!

And……did you know the winter is the peak season for Meyer lemons? A good family friend sent me this huge box of lemons and I went lemon crazy.

We made lemon pie, lemon bars, lemon curd, and some lemon marmalade (unpictured). The marmalade was probably the trickiest but I used this recipe. I used about 4 ¼ cups of lemon, 4 ¼ cup of water and 3 cups of sugar. I boiled it all for about 25 min–it was quite a bit of work but totally worth it. You could easily do it with oranges and make yummy orange marmalade!

This is one of my favorite recipes and I will have to post it soon but it’s italian sausage with kale, mushrooms and tomato over some cheesy polenta.

Garlic knot puff things with butter, pieces of pre-made biscuit dough, and LOTS of garlic. They paired perfectly with the sausage, kale, white bean soup below!

One of my birthday presents was to attend a cooking demonstration at Chez Francois.

We took our annual trip to Park City to go skiing with Ted’s family and stopped at this cool deli/cheese shop that ages its own cheese.

Aidan had her white coat ceremony at Veterinary school and only has a couple more months till she’s a vet! Whoo hoo!!

Onto house buying! We went back and forth on whether we wanted a townhouse or an actual house in the suburbs but eventually decided on the latter since it would be a good home for a growing family #Adulting.

As a little treat leading up to the wedding my sisters, mother, and I took a trip to The Lodge at Woodloch for some yoga classes and excellent cuisine. It was such a relaxing long weekend and the perfect pick me up! We attended another cooking demo there (of course) and had delicious dishes at each meal.

The chef showed us how to make a nicoise salad.

My little sister Delaney graduated as an engineer in May and already has a job with a big construction company in California. Lucky duck!

Homemade Shakshuka anyone? We made this for a mother’s day brunch.

During the summer I whipped up a grilled whole wheat pizza with prosciutto, fig jam, mozzarella and arugula.

Gazpacho was an easy dish and easy on the waistline–perfect for the summer!

My friends took me away for a weekend in June for a little bachelorette fiesta. We did some wine tasting in Pennsylvania at a couple vineyards and went to Longwood Gardens.