Introducing...

Please welcome our new food blog author: Kimberly Risso! She is a foodie extraordinaire and loves being in the kitchen and making food for people so they can all walk away with smiling faces and full bellies! She is inspired by legendary chefs such as Julia Child, Giada DeLaurentis, and Paula Dean. Not only is she amazing in the kitchen, but she is an amazing woman as well and I am very thankful to have her as a friend. We have had many kitchen adventures together and just last night we tackeled the ever mysterious brussel sprouts! She did an amazing job on the delicious buttery little baby heads of cabbage and she had everyone going back for more! Although food blogging is potentially dangerous on the figure and on the wallet...it is our creative outlet, our passion, and our way of sharing what we love with the world. Please feel free to comment/respond to any of our posts and I understand that as many pictures u see and as much as you read our blogs you can't actually smell or taste them! So let us know the next time you'd like us to host an event/party/shindig etc and we'll cater for free so long as you give us your feedback and allow us to take pictures for our blog! All we request is to have the cost of the food covered and we'll take care of the rest!

my own spin on an old american chinese take-out favorite

Now I have no idea if I am the first person to ever do this but this idea just popped into my head outta nowhere and I guess I want to share it with ya'll! So everyone's been to Chinese restaurants and has ordered the crab cheese wontons, right? Yeah, not exactly the most authentically Asian thing on the menu but, I've discovered a yummy twist on making homemade fried won tons! Now I rarely, if ever, fry foods at home. For those of you who know me best, I'm a total grease-a-phob and frequently eat pizza with knife and fork so I don't get grease on my hands. BUT, I decided to try this and successfully made green onion goat cheese wontons for a company poker party one weekend and they were a BIG HIT! Here it goes...

Makes approxiamately (30 wontons)

1 package wonton wrappers (Asian foods aisle of any market)
8 oz. cream cheese
4 oz. goat cheese
1/4 cup chopped green onion
4 cups vegetable oil
small bowl of water

Sauce:

Store bought Sweet and Sour sauce

Fold together cream cheese, goat cheese, green onion until evenly mixed
Spoon 1 Tbsp. of mixture into the center of a wonton wrapper
Dip index finger in small bowl of water and wet two sides to wonton wrapper
Crease all sides of the wonton wrapper to the center and pinch, enclosing the wonton

In a medium sized pot fill bottom with vegetable oil and heat on medium
Drop raw wontons into oil
Spoon out until wontons completely float (they are done when they are golden brown on the edges)
Lay paper towels on plate to soak up excess oil and to cool slightly.

Enjoy them with sweet and sour dipping sauce.
Allow for all poker party guests to come crawling back for more!

loves the bite-sized

Okay so I don't know when my infatuation with bite-sized food started but I'm being led to believe that it's outta control! I no longer buy whole sliced bread, instead I opt for mini ciabatta, foccaccia, hawaiian, or brioche rolls when it comes time to make some sandwiches. I don't like burgers but I LOVE a good slider. Scones are overwhelmingly sweet and heavy but when Starbucks has 3 mini vanilla scones for $1.95, I'm all over it! Its not like eating bite sized foods means eating any less because when served or prepared it's usually in the form of a trio, but I love it! Maybe it's the idea of loving appetizers or pre-meal "amous-bouche" if you will. I don't know but nevertheless, here are some of my recent discoveries that I just cannot do without!




Bistro 33 Kobe Beef Burger Sliders



Trader Joe's mini Stroopwafels. Chewy, sweet, and Delish..with a Capital D! My friend who lived in Amsterdam for sometime brought some back to the states and after the first bite I was instantly hooked! Perfect pairing with a cup o joe or bowl of ice cream. Yum!



Mini Quiches (assorted) from Costco. These come in an assortment from spinach to bacon and cheese and are just to DIE for! My parents are known to be Costco "whores" and have always served these up at all family holiday get togethers. Honestly, what can be better than bite-sized breakfast in a flaky crust!? Skip all the steps and go straight from freezer, to oven, to eat...with no bacon grease splatter residue on your new white shirt!



My new obsession can be summed in 5 words: Fage Greek Yogurt with Honey. Found @ Trader Joe's, of course! They come in a small serving size container attached to a smaller seperate container of honey. Okay, so I know that I could be the national spokesperson for this place but upon the first bite of this incredible find, I was in heaven! I was sitting in front of my computer at work totally in need of a pick-me-up when I decided to whip this out....I was so excited about how amazing this tasted that I got up and literally started doing jumping jacks while yelling "omg...I love this stuff!" over and over again! Seriously though, top it off with sliced banana, granola, or raisins and you are set for the rest of your mundane workday.

Sunflower cupcakes that will guarantee oooooohs and ahhhhhs...

For my best friends, I have somehow found myself always on cupcake duty when it comes to baby showers, wedding showers, bachelorette parties, what have you! Not to say that I'm the best baker in the world as I've had many failed attempts at baking what I think will turn out to be the best thing anyone's ever tasted. Baking, unlike cooking to me, is a hard, objective, detail-oriented science, one that I sometimes don't always have the patience for. But I do have days when I wanna get it perfect and use the creative part of my mind that has been all too often neglected in the world of work, errands, sleep, repeat. I am bound to NOT make life about filling everyday with those THINGS and always maintain a creative outlet. Kinda like this blog. So here goes nothing.

So I was given the task to make cupcakes at my best friend's second baby shower very last minute. The theme of the shower was Sunflowers, a very unique and summery theme that isn't too stereotypically baby girl-esque. Love it! So I went totally literal and decided to forgo trying to create an awesome cake/frosting recipe this time and spend all my energy and time into creating Sunflower cupcakes--focusing on the presentation and decor rather than homemade chemical concoctions of what might end up tasting like delicious cake or might end up being bit into and spat out almost immediately.

I used basic Duncan Hines yellow or chocolate boxed cake. I know, I'm such a fraud! I also used store bought frosting but I used Duncan Hines whipped white frosting. This way I could color the frosting whatever colors I wanted. I also used yellow and green food dye for the flower petals and leaves. I got the idea to used crushed oreo cookie for the center of each sunflower then proceeded to decorate around them. It helps to skin a small circular portion of the top center of the cupcake so that when you sprinkle the crushed oreo cookie, the crumbs adhere better. It also works better if you remove the frosting of the oreo prior to crushing or you'll get these white clumps that mess with the texture.

I created homemade frosting piping bags by using large zip lock bags and cutting a V shaped whole on one bottom corner of the bag. This gave me the ability to make very detailed petal and leaf like frosting designs on these mini works of art. I piped 4 green leaves equally spaced apart in each quadrant of the circular cakes. Then I piped yellow petals overlapping the leaves on the circumfrence of the oreo cookie center. Let me know what you think! This is a very tedious and time-consuming project and after getting carpal tunnel and straining my eyes out in one night, it should be obvious that I made each one with alot of love and care. They were the hit of the party and were specially showcased and the feature dessert!

Bon Appetit! Enjoy!