Monthly Archives: March 2012

Last Thursday I went to La Petite Marmoset’s One Year Birthday Bash! They are a hip and cool vintage shop!  I recently delivered some cupcakes to the ladies Katherine and Ash when they had a shoot. Which by the way they made me feel like I was as good as Chef Ramsey in this biotch. I truly had the biggest head walking out the door.  They find the best items, and just when I’m all O_o they style it so well that it opened up my eyes to different form of styling. On some days you just feel like throwing on anything, and having it work and pretty much all of my workweeks outfit were fab according to my co-workers after watching the ladies in action. I went to shake my bootayyy…well not really at Tabaq to celebrate one year!  I found a really nice picture of me that I liked courtesy of Sai, She is a huge ball of fierce fashion energy and I love her style plus her confidence. I’m figuring my hair out, and it’s WERKING!

Jacket|Gap

Jumper| H&M Basics

Skirt|Forever 21 Plus

Bracelets| Vintage

Bag|Gucci

Necklace| Melody Ehsani

In other news,  the weather outside!!! AuhMazing!

_Elle

I hear that whenever I bring a dish to an event, or dinner party.

But first…

I started adding the element of food to my blog one because I love to cook, and apparently according to my mom “I’m a natural”. Two I used to be intimidated to cook certain things from scratch. Meats I had no choice, but sometimes I could doctor up pre-seasoned meats, or fish filets that came already frozen. That was back in my heavily processed food days. I’d even figure out a way to put own spin on things like powdered potatoes (which i hate now) or even Hamburger Helper (which i still crave but can’t eat).

When I started finding food blogs, I thought, “pshh these are too perfect” or “I’m sure they tried like 3 times before getting their pancakes that perfect” or “why do through the trouble when you can just order it”. Then I  started looking up those restaurants nutritional values and the issue of salt came into play, oh and lets not forget my bad luck with finding random things in my food like a shiny rock mixed in my eggs (dennys) Lipstick on my coffee cup (iHOP), Old food under my pancakes (iHop), Hair (iHop) , Gum in my Burger (TGI Fridays or one of those places probably iHop), OR my favorite a women trying to drink the overspill from the cup and then serving it to me (random bowling alley in MD) after knocking the drink over and asking for another I was pretty much done and quite frankly I knew that maybe it just wasn’t meant to be and I had no business eating the stuff in the first place.  But alas top chef, master chef,  iron chef,and kitchen nightmares entered in my life with my Adonis Gordon Ramsey…(with cloudy eyes) I was addicted to learning how to put my own spin on things with the help of Gordon (swoon).

The Food Network had become my bible, and I was off. It started with making meals at home for myself, and my mom “hovering over my plate” finding managing to get a forkfuls of my creations, and then the idea of photographing my work came. I mean I had a DSLR for god’s sake. I couldn’t just take Style pictures with it, so why not. I want to stress that cooking was and still is very therapeutic for me, and when I’m not in the mood it shows. Whether its burning a cupcake, or under seasoning something, it was all about having fun for me. So when I hear people say cooking is hard, I have no idea how to confront that. I think cooking is easy if you are given the right tools and as you learn, and taste, and explore flavors you can move on to the next level. Then again there is nothing like having someone hype you head up to the size of a Hot Air Balloon when they love your cooking.

I’ve received about 4 emails, and a couple of tweets about cooking for beginners. All I can say is this, it really does make a difference to know how to do the basic’s even if you don’t care for cooking, there are so many things you can make with a couple of ingredients and stocked spice cabinet. Trust me, that Omelette Post was thought of merely 5 minutes before grabbing my camera and thinking it was pretty enough to post on here. I’ve taken the liberty of posting my favorite favorite cookbooks that I believe work well for beginners in the kitchen they are informative regarding techniques and kitchen terms, some even have step by step pictures, and they are full of non-complicated recipes. Listen, if my mother can make something taste delicious it’s because I brought her a lot of these cookbooks from Christmas last year. *sorry mom*. But as she lets them collect dust I turn to them for a lot of referencing and ideas! I still consider myself a beginner to intermediate and these books are the best!

How to Boil Water

Don’t let the title fool you! This book is full of yummy, simple recipes. I think if you love eating out you will love this book. Simple flavorful salad, chicken recipes, and pasta!

Betty Crocker Cooking Basics

Very Simple, my favorite recipe from here is Alfredo, and the Chicken Recipes. It provides a reference to cooking terms, food storage tips, cooking times and nutritional information. Step by Step procedures.

Anyone Can Cook

This is  go to comfort foods go to book! mashed potatoes, tarts, burgers, lasagna.

I love this book, and it comes with a little DVD to watch that goes hand in hand with the book. It also has a great feature for substituting items as well.

How to be a Domestic Goddess

The best cookbook gets the biggest shine.

I LOVE this cookbook. This was one of my first cookbooks that I got when I was interested in learning more.

Hands down my favorite and most easy recipe Peanut Butter Bars.

Chocolate Brownies….yum.

I do have a Cute little Amazon Store with my Favorite Cookbooks. Click Here to see.

So! Are we going to try this?

Say it together!

*Cooking can be easy*

*Cooking can be fun*

_Elle

Eggs are so yummy, so versatile, and good for you. Yolks have gotten a bad rep for cholesterol, but I’ve done my own research and there are still great benefits to yolks, in moderation. The only issue I’ve ever had with egg whites is that they tend to be watery, and after googling my favorite Egg White Flatbread Sandwich from Subway I realized how bad it was for me in my current health condition. Of course I took to my kitchen to come up with a yummy egg white recipe with no salt. NO SALT? Yes! It’s possible! Whenever I can’t use salt I turn to all of my spices and herbs especially pepper. Believe it or not pepper in great quantities makes a difference. When I make Alfredo… PEPPER, Mac and Cheese …PEPPER. This isn’t to say that Salt doesn’t make a difference,  but these days I have to change my intake drastically.

I give to you my take on the classic omelette, my secret is using at least one whole egg, and the are rest Egg Whites.

1 Whole Egg

3 Egg Whites

1/2 Cup Spinach (Shredded)

1/4 Cup of Diced Tomatoes

1 TS Pepper

A Few Shakes of Garlic Powder,

Red Pepper Flakes (optional)

Salt (optional)

***Note, I’m sure you can mix any combo of veggies just make sure it’s a decent Egg to Veggie ratio when you’re cooking.***

Scramble your eggs, add pepper and garlic powder. Gently mix in spinach and tomatoes.

** If you want to add other spices including Salt add them first! This is a blank canvas, you can do what you want in regards to making it savory, or spicy! **

Spray a nonstick pan with cooking spray and place on a medium fire. Once your pan is hot, dump the mixture in and swirl your pan so the egg fills out the pan. Let it cook, and don’t be afraid to slide your spatula around the edges of the pan to prevent the eggs from sticking.

Carefully flip the omelette over! Take your TIME and let that side cook, every once in awhile press to make sure there aren’t any pockets of raw egg left. Once your omelet is cooked sprinkle your choice of cheese in the middle and fold the omelet, let the cheese melt a little and remove from the pan.

I used Pepper Jack cheese and I sprinkled crushed pepper on the top because I like my food spicyyyy!

This might be my new favorite breakfast for a lazy Sundays.Which is every Sunday for me

Have a great week!!

_Elle

P.S. One of my goals for the new year was to come up with original recipes! If you notice this is one of them!!

Also I was really torn over the spelling of Omelette/Omelet.

Apparently the spell check doesn’t want me to spell it Omelette. After looking at it so long I have no idea anymore, it all looks wrong.

I guess it’s okay to share a few of my secret weapons. Night Time Repair Lip Gloss, Mac Black Eye Liner, Homemade Whipped Shea Butter, and Ming Cupcake Recipes. I stumbled across this cool and very simple blog almost 2 years ago. Someone I’m guessing named Ming decided to do the research on great cupcake recipes, and took all these lovely pictures of them. They are simple, and I almost always have everything to make them in my pantry. Tomorrow I’m headed over to a fantabulas Etsy shop owner Katherine’s house while she does a photo shoot for her store. Katherine runs her own blog as well, and has great personal style. Like so many of my new found blogger friends we met through CapFabb. So here we both were at the CapFabb One year Birthday Bash and I mentioned that I wanted to bake something for her and her models, and attend one of her photo shoots that seem so cool when I see the pictures. She was game, and with the invitation extended I decided to do two cupcakes but my favorite ended up being the Key Lime Cupcakes.

It’s a perfect blend of Graham Cracker Crumbs and Key West Lime Frosting. I honestly think these are the easiest cupcakes period, well all of Mings Recipes are, and they make a perfect Dozen which I love. It took a perfect 18 minutes to get these soft and fluffy cupcakes, the icing was even easier.Granted mine NEVER come out as good as Ming’s Photos, they taste good, and people love them.

Well, I’m beat, I had a long draining week, and I got to eat of half of this cupcake, my mom hovered of it like Golem.

It was so yummy, I’m such a sucker for Lime Flavored anything! I savored every little bite of it.

Have a great weekend!!

_Elle

Happy First Day of March! Oh how time has flown!! I’ve got great news, I’m losing weight! My Les Mills Pump is working, so I urge you to try it out if you want great results!

I am developing a crazy obsession with Polyvore, and while it’s been out there for what seems like ages, I totally forgot about it. I compiled a little collage of the things I can’t wait to get my hands on for the spring!  I hate how trends work, but love how Mint has been dubbed the “Color or Spring”! I love it only because I feel like we always hype a color that pretty much was always there and known as a spring color. I guess for the first time in awhile it’s popular as a solid stand alone color for an item such as a shirt, or pants makes it fun. There are MINT overloads going on throughout the Blog World. I even saw someone try to call it Highlighter green! It’s MINT people and it’s lovely.

I think it’s safe to say I want the Mint Green Shoes I found, and I would love to try my hand and the Yellow sheer top, but i’m always afraid of looking like a tall, big breasted highlighter! What do you think? Can I pull it off? Come on be honest? Haha!