Lil Valentine's Day Treat and a randon snack...

Welp - I said I want to food blog more - so here we go!

This weekend brought me a couple of new recipes.

Today is Valentine's Day!  Since it falls on a Monday and we have the kiddo, it's not like the boy and I were going to do anything super romantical but I certainly had to bake something themed for the holiday because - well - I'm me!

I will say that yesterday the boy and the kid headed to the store, yelling at me not to ask questions as to why, and came back with this:

Chocolate and Flowers

Very sweet!

Speaking of sweet - I found an interesting recipe I wanted to try for the holiday.  I pinned this.

How cute right?!

I seemed like cheating using a cake mix, but honestly I had a lot of random crap I was cramming in the weekend so I was ok with it.  I altered it a bit due to the fact that the grocery store had no Strawberry Extract and only had the Party Pack of the normal Hershey's Kisses.  Seems the stores are out of random stuff thanks to our wonderful pandemic.  So anywhoo - I now have Hershey Kisses for days (So I'll have to find another Hershey Kiss Recipe) and I used Vanilla Extract instead of Strawberry.  Honestly the Strawberry Cake Mix was enough for flavor I would think.

Here we go!

Here we go!

So I liked the idea of freezing the kisses.  I've had issues of them melting on cookies before so this was super helpful.  You're supposed to put the dough in the refrigerator for an hour and I can understand why.  The dough was super sticky and when I was rolling them up into balls, my hands warmed it up and I had to re-refridgerate the dough again.

Sticky dough

Ballin these bitches

You don't cook them for super long.  I was surprised how gooey they came out.  When I put my little tester in there it kept coming out clean, but they're so soft!  It's almost like they're underbaked, but they didn't taste that way.  The kisses when on so easy!

How cute right?!

I had the kid and Pat try them - and since we're all super in the Great British Baking Show right now, Pat gave me his best Paul Hollywood judging.

Next time I'm making him do a British Accent

All in all they came out pretty good!  Very rich.  Very gooey.  But tasty!  You gotta like strawberries though.  So yay!

Next recipe is kind of random.  Mom gave me a Spaghetti Squash.  I didn't really know what to do with it, and since I was home this weekend I thought I'd throw something together.  I took bits from this recipe, but didn't totally follow it.  I had some leftover chicken and a jar of pesto so I used that instead of following the recipe totally.

It was pretty good!  Very healthy.  I love pesto, so I enjoyed it but some may find it a little bland.  Made for a good lunch for me on Sunday!

What the hell do I do with this?

I see why it's called spaghetti squash

Healthy lunch!

So there we go!

A couple of new recipes that came out pretty good!

Yay food!

Food Glorious Food...

So.

I think I want to start blogging about food more.

I'm in an odd spot in life - theatre is not prominent due mainly to the pandemic, but honestly I've sort of got away from it.  This doesn't mean I won't be going back - because OH I WILL!  But probably not in the capacity that I used to.

This is leaving me feeling a bit creatively stifled.

I write, journal, blog (not as often as I want to be which I hope to change), photograph, and even the random craft here and there.

I've always loved food.  Loved to eat.  Never could cook.  Like - NEVER.  

 

 

 

Here's a little backstory:

My mom wasn't a great cook.  (I love you mom)  She was and still is an amazing baker.  Woman bakes THE BEST BREAD!  But growing up cooking wasn't her thang.  She was also a single mom, working full time and raising two assholes - so - fair.  When I got married the dude BBQ'd basically everything.  We were both heavily involved in the theatre community so rarely ate at home.  We divorced -  I moved in with a roommate who also didn't cook.  He and I were even more heavily involved in the theatre community - rarely ate at home.  When you opened our fridge it had condiments and beer.  But our freezer was stuffed full of microwave things.

2008 hit.  Economy crashed.  My job disappeared.  Moved home with mom.  Didn't cook much.  If we did it was mostly mom or our roomie.  Moved out into a caboose with no insulation.  After living there a few years and freezing my ass off, one winter I just couldn't take it.  I thought - maybe I could bake something and the oven will warm up the place for a min.  I got on Pinterest.

This is where it began.

I thought - "I can do this!"  Went to the store.  The recipe called for shortening.  I'm confused.  I call my friend who knows I'm taking on this new endeavor in life.  "Hi!  Where do I find shortening in the grocery store?"  She says "Where are you right now?"  "In the bread aisle" I respond.  Long pause.  Giggle.  "Dare I ask, why are you in the bread aisle?"  I'm confused.  "Because of that song...Mama's little baby loves shortening shortening..mama's little baby loves shortening bread"  Laughter bursts out on the other end of the phone.  A fellow shopper is staring at me after my little song.  "What?!" I yell into the phone.  "Shortening is Crisco!!" she says through laughter.  No shit?

I go home and bake muffins.  THEY'RE AMAZING!  I've shocked myself.  I then start baking all the time because we have a very cold winter.  I'm shocked I'm actually pretty good at it.

Sometime later my friend Cesar comes over to cook me dinner.  He turns on 3 burners of the 4 burners on my stove.  "What are you doing?!?!?!" I cry!!  He looks at me like I'm insane.  "You can have more than one burner on?!?!" I shout fearfully.  He now knows I'm insane.

That following Thanksgiving my gramma lands in the hospital and my mom flips out saying I have to help her cook.  "I'm ready!" I say.  She tells me what to do.  Before she runs out the door I have to ask..."What's a casserole dish?"  She yells at me not to burn the house down and leaves.

So those last few paragraphs give you and idea of my cooking knowledge.  Pretty damn sad.

I then start to dabble.  I mean every time I go to a restaurant I love talking about the flavors and trying new things and tasting things and pairing things and I LOVE FOOD!  Why don't I cook?

My friend T and I decided we're going to meal prep - and we do for quite a while!  You can read about that endeavor HERE:

T basically taught me how to cook.  Then when we stopped meal prepping I kept at it.  Did mini meal preps for myself.  I tried a new recipe here and there and found I was pretty good at it.  Then I moved in with Pat.  Then COVID hit.  So guess who ended up doing a shit ton of cooking?!  Yup.  Once Pat and I found our groove we cook pretty well together!  He's also a BBQ King (Way better than my ex husband BTW!)  You can see a lot of the cooking we did in my Lockdown Life series I did.

So here I am.  All these years later, and I still love food, maybe even more than before.  I've had a lot of friends ask me why I don't watch cooking shows.  Good question.  A lot of times they are shaky cam so I can't watch them, but I'm starting to try.  I mean I'm in love with movies like Chef, The Hundred Foot Journey, Julie and Julia, and Woman on Top because of the food porn.  Pat said he's never seen someone love food so much in movies.  So I started watching The Great British Baking Show.  I'm in love with it.  Checking out Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat.  Loving that.  Plan to watch more.

But also - I want to do more.  To try more recipes.  A dear friend recently revealed to me that my Human Design is meant to create with food and storytelling.  These are two huge things that pop up so much in my life.  So let's do it!  I'm already nagging the boy and the kid to give me ideas on what they want to eat so I can start changing things up.

So - I had my 1st brand new recipe last week I wanted to share!  (After my long winded intro)

I made Gnocchi!!!

So 1st I tried a crockpot soup.  It was something I swore the kid would like.  Sadly no.  But Pat & I enjoyed it.  It's def a comfort food thing.  Not sure I'd make it again since it was mainly directed at making something for the kid but it was pretty good.  You can find that recipe here.  (Yes I know I pimp out other people's blogs but I want to share!)

My best friend (whose Italian) had told me to always get fresh gnocchi and that you have to go to an Italian Store to get it.  The packaged was fine for soup but for other recipes fresh.  Well I was thrilled when the next week I went to our Farmer's Market and there was a pasta guy!  And he had gnocchi!  It was like a sign.  So that night I made this.

 

It was friggin delicious!!!!  I mean I love me some pesto so there's that but YUM!  I plan to take more pictures when I make something new and blog about them, so there's not much in this blog but I did capture a IG story:

 

 

 In the recipe it said boil for just a few minutes or until they rise to the top.  I took such delight watching the little gnocchi's float up!  I squealed each time one came up!  Then when Pat said he really liked it I was even more thrilled!

So this is my pledge to myself I hope I can keep.  I'm going to try to make more new things and blog more about them with pictures and stories because that's what I am not only designed to do but what I actually love to do!  Eat and tell stories!!!

Geocaching Adventure Lab...

 So I've stopped posting dedicated blogs to geocaching, really just because you're probably all sick of seeing them!  Tee hee....but they cant get a bit redundant.  But - there's another additional app called The Adventure Lab that's usually tied into the Geocaching app.  I've posted about them before, but I figured it would be fun to write some dedicated blogs to these since they're all different!

Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day so we all three happen to have it off work/school.  So I thought let's do an Adventure Lab!  It's hard to get the kid to get into these, but there was one that looked to have a perfect path to ride bikes, we could bring the dog, so everyone would be happy.  The kid got to ride their bike up and down and Pat and I walked along the path with Seymore doing the Lab.

This is apparently called The Freeway Trail and I can see why.  You're literally right next to the 405.  It is a bit loud, so plan on some shouty conversation while walking along this trail.  The Lab was called Urban Zoo.  There's a bunch of cool sculptures down this nursery along the trail and each stop gave you a little bit of information on each of the animals it chose!  Giraffe, Tyrannosaurus Rex,  Dolphin, Triceratops and the Elephant!  

There wasn't any caches involved in this lab which surprised me, but I opened the geocache app after the fact and there were a couple.  Sadly I should have looked at the beginning, but I did grab one at the end.  So yay!

1st stop!

Seymore was trying to mimic the horse

Freeway Trail

Grrrrrr!  Stop 2

Stop 3!

Unique flower!

These guys were cool

Stop 4

Stop 5

Oh wait!  There's a cache behind his ear!

Seymore Snack

A nice little jaunt out of the house!

2021 Recap...

Well here we are.

Another year gone.  Whoosh.  And sadly it was pretty craptastic year for everyone.  2020 took a helluva toll on us and 2021 was like it's little psycho sibling that kept poking the bear and fucking with us all year.

We also had some devastating losses.  My Grandad passed away in July of this year.  I was absolutely heartbroken.  We moved him out here in the middle of the damn Pandemic from Illinois.  He was so happy living with my mom.  I just feel like it wasn't fair and his time here with us was just way too damn short. I know he was so happy though, and I was thrilled my cousins and my aunt got out to see him.  But I do miss him so much.  He was just a joy to have around.

The McCoy Fam

Pat also lost his Uncle Rick unexpectadly which was just a heartbreaking loss to his family.  We also lost my step-grandmother earlier this year.  Just been a tough year for sure.  

Political unrest, anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers, this whole f-ing COVID thing is just destroying us. 

BUT -  we find the light.  We find the joy.  We move forward and continue to live our lives the best we can, so with that - I give you the good highlights of this rough year!

The year started out promising.  Vaccines were being rolled out, a new president was coming in - oh and then there was a riot on January 6th.  GAWD we're a bunch of assholes.  Later in January Biden/Harris were sworn in.  There was a little bit of hope.  I'm also not going to lie - was really really cool to see this:

That's our 1st Woman VP right there!

February brought my birthday - a very quiet one at that - you can read about that here.  And the vaccine roll-out really starting picking up speed so hope was on the horizon to fight this COVID bitch.

March got me my 1st dose of the vax.  House of Pfizer here.  And our world starting slowly trying to come out of the 2020 mess.  March also brought Pat and I up to the Madonna Inn!  Had a lovely few days away.  

Starting off vacay right!

 

April consisted of the normal hiking, eating and starting to get together with friends again.  We got to celebrate Grandad's 95th Birthday in person which was awesome!  Mom had a low key Easter since COVID is still around, so no big party this year but it was of course just lovely.

Happy Birthday Grandad!

Hiking away the day

Happy Easter!

May brought a Mother's Day together, hiking and geocaching and more gatherings with friends picking up.  Yay!

Mama's Day Brunch!

Hiking Couple

 June brought California's "Re-Opening".  This really did give us a bit of hope.  It certainly hasn't gone away but we're at least on a path to fighting it and hopefully coming out of this in 2022.  June also got me working on some fun film sketches with the Travesty Ball crew and of course more hiking, eating, seeing my people.

Travesty Ball Fun

 

July was a mixed bag of huge emotions - We had a really great 3rd of July BBQ, shortly after is when we lost my Grandad.  But then a few weeks later - Pat popped the question on our wonderful trip to Idyllwild!  You can read about that here..

My Justin moved back east this year.  I miss him so!

So...I'm getting married

 August took us on a week long trip up to NorCal..  Saw so many beautiful sites!

September brought the kid to the start of Middle School!  We also had a really great trip to the Safari Park!  We hit up the OC Fair too which was our 1st (and probably only) crowded event of the year.

Hmm....Pat doesn't have that McCoy competitive side...

October was a low-key Halloween season but still fun!  COVID is still kicking around and ramping up for the holidays so we're still kind of on the DL but a lovely time indeed!  It also brought us Dad's big 70th Birthday Surprise!

Happy 70th Daddy!

November and December as usual bring a whirlwind of holiday madness - but this year we got to add to that insanity by moving.  The whole story is a few blogs back - but that was a not by choice.  But we landed in a great place that will I'm  sure bring us great memories for 2022!

Move Day

We had a very mellow New Year's Eve which was lovely.  Pat and I had a yummy dinner at Orange Mining Company then came home and didn't even make it until New Year's Eve.  

Happy New Year!

2021 has been a roller coaster of a year.  Some major ups but too many downs.  I'm honestly not super sad to see it go.  But going through my highlights here it reminds me how grateful I am to have such wonderful people in my life and I look forward to making many more memories!  

Happy New Year my friends!!  Hope 2022 is full of love, laughter, joy and adventure!