Food + Foto Week 3: Sausage Stuffed Mushrooms Recipe

I made these sausage stuffed mushrooms for our first annual holiday party with Doug’s friends last year and it was a hit!  I whipped them up for another holiday potluck this year.  

So Much to Learn!

Now that I am in the Food + Foto class, I am inspired by other people’s creative shots and am realizing that there is so much to learn! 

Food + Foto Week 2: Tomato Soup & Grilled Cheese

I’m not too happy with this week’s photo - I let my hunger and impatience get the best of me.  But here it is.

Thanksgiving Recipe - Caramel Apple Cheesecake Bars

Oh my goodness, Thanksgiving is coming up quick!  I still need to plan this year’s menu!!  Here’s the last Thanksgiving recipe before the big feast.  While I was making my Thanksgiving dessert last year, Doug peeked over my shoulder and said "What is that? It doesn’t look good."  As with most husbands, he’s never right.  Sure enough, there were resounding mMmMmMMmmM’s after digging into these Caramel Apple Cheesecake Bars (drizzled with warm caramel and topped with freshly whipped cream).

I Love the Holidays!

For so many reasons…

Second Family Photo Shoot

When my sister in law asked me to take their Christmas pictures this year, I delightfully accepted!  I just got my new lens a few days earlier and was excited to practice on something outside of my own home. We wanted to go to the Morton Arboretum, but the rain and cold front didn’t let that happen.

So Many Variables...

If you think buying a DSLR camera automatically means better pictures, you might be a little right, but there's so much more to it than you think.  Here are a few things that (I try) to have go through my mind in that split second of trying to perfectly capture a moment…

Thanksgiving Recipe – Honey Cornbread Muffins

In addition to toasty French bread, I like to have cornbread in my bread basket for Thanksgiving.  I think I associate turkey with cornbread thanks to Boston Market.  The first cornbread recipe I tried the day before Thanksgiving turned out to be un-servable and tasted like cardboard!  I tossed the whole batch out. I had to quickly look for another recipe where I had all the ingredients on hand.  I found this one and it’s a keeper!  

Food + Foto Week 1: Hoisin-Broiled Ribs Recipe

Since I'm in the Souvenir Foto School featuring food, I'll be posting recipes each week.  Some will be new to me and some will be regulars. Hopefully the pictures will improve each time! 

I had country-style ribs on hand but didn’t know what to do with them.  I didn’t want to make BBQ ribs because this wasn’t a full slab (it was cut into individual pieces already) and I prefer to do BBQ ribs over the grill.  Which it’s too cold for that now.  I was looking for something Asian and found this recipe on epicurious.com. It's not too different from the Hoisin Honey Chicken Wings recipe, but I did say I liked having hoisin on hand in my pantry.  And I'm a meat and potatoes kinda girl, so anything would probably work.  After the first bite, Doug said with his mouth full “I love you a lot.”  So I may come back to this recipe if I have the meat on hand. 

Food + Foto::Souvenir Foto School

Each week for the next six weeks, I’ll be posting a picture of food. 

New Toy!

Now that I’m more familiar with my camera and its limitations, I realized that I’m ready for a new lens.  Santa brought my gift early and I got a new 50mm f/1.4G SIC SW Prime Nikkor Lens!

 

DIY - Baby Leg Warmers

Mia had her nine month pictures taken this weekend.  My how time is flying! She wore an adorable little sweater dress from Frances and to complete the look, I made a flower headband and legwarmers.  Easy peasy for a completed look! J If only I had someone to accessorize me. L

Thanksgiving Recipe – Raspberry Vinaigrette

I wanted a recipe for raspberry vinaigrette, found this one and stuck with it.  I never kept track of where I got recipes from, so again, I can’t remember where this came from.  But if you search for Ella’s Raspberry Vinaigrette, it’ll come up on various sites and no one cites where it came from.  Anywhoo, raspberry season may not be in the fall, but I still think it’s a wonderful salad and I've had it at my Thanksgiving table.  And it seriously takes 5 minutes to make.

Three Weeks Until Turkey Day!

A friend of ours who lives close by and never leaves our place without a meal, suggested that I have more recipe posts.  How appropriate with Thanksgiving coming up in a few weeks! omm omm ommmmm...

Hoisin Honey Chicken Wings Recipe

One added bonus of having Umma over is random deliveries of kimchi J  Here's a recipe for chicken wings that I like to make that goes well with (or without) the Korean side dish.

Happy Halloween!

What will you get with a onesie, sweatpants, headband hat, 2 pairs of socks, pipe cleaners, and some felt?

Pumpkin Carving Party!

Halloween would be incomplete without some jack-o-lanterns.  Agatha started the pumpkin carving party tradition a few years ago and we decided to host this time.  Apparently sweatpants are unaccepptable attire being the hostess, whoops!

The night before, I wanted to make some cute Halloween treats for our pumpkin carving party.  I guess there are certain expectations for Mama Stuart, since it was shocking that I wouldn’t make something from scratch or use the pumpkin seeds for something else (I just don’t like how pumpkin seeds taste!).  Since it was a weeknight, I took the easy way out and baked cupcakes out of a box and bought frosting out of a can.  I wanted to create something like these, but I discovered that cake/cupcake decorating is not my forte. I should take the Wilton cake decorating class.  Maybe it was the “creamy” type frosting I bought or the heat blowing over the cupcakes, but all I got was a drippy sloppy mess!  It was so sad to see all these unappetizing looking cupcakes. L  But I have good friends because they still ate them J  Agatha wouldn’t even let the frosting on her arm go to waste!

But back to the pumpkin carving party…Mia had fun with the other two baby girls - it was so cute to see them interact.  It also felt like a photography studio swapping babies in and out with our pumpkin backdrop.  

Here’s pictures of mine and Doug’s pumpkins from past Halloweens.  We were pretty proud of our first one  where Dougeretta doubled as a wine carrier!  

 

 

Three pumpkins are missing from the final picture for this year, but I think they all came out pretty good!

Check back tomorrow for Mia’s first Halloween costume!