An Odd Combination

Today I'd like to share with you two of my recent discoveries. One is an excellent (and easy) quiche recipe and the other is a fabulous new mascara. Random I know :)


Last Friday I made up this quiche when I came home from work and let me tell you...although Jeremy loves his quiche full of bacon and jalapenos, this one was equally as delicious! It also feels much healthier since it's filled with hearty potatoes and veggies.


Recipe of the Week: Potato, Leek, and Mushroom Quiche


Ingredients:


1 pie crust
1 yukon gold potato, peeled and cut into cubes
1 leek, cleaned and thinly sliced
3 cremini mushrooms, cleaned and diced
1/4 cup roasted red bell peppers, diced
1 cup swiss cheese
5 eggs, beaten
1 cup milk (I use half and half)
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground black pepper
1/2 tsp dry mustard powder
1 tbsp olive oil


Directions:

1. Preheat your oven to 375 degrees, and bake the pie crust about 14 minutes, or until light golden brown. Remove and let cool. During this time, boil your potatoes for about 7 minutes. You don't want the potatoes to be fully cooked, but a little more than half way through. Drain and let cool.


2. Add the olive oil to a preheated saute pan, and add the leeks and mushrooms. Cook for about 8 minutes, stirring occassionally. To a bowl add the milk, eggs, salt, pepper, and mustard powder. Beat well.


3. Layer half of the cheese on top of the pie crust. Add the potatoes, leek, and mushrooms. Then sprinkle the diced red pepper on top. Pour in as much of the egg mixture as you can fit, leaving at least 1/4-1/2 an inch of space between the top of the mixture and the edge of the crust (so when it bakes and rises it doesn't overflow). Top with remaining cheese.


4. Bake in the oven for 50-60 minutes (until you can insert a knife or toothpick into the quiche and have it come out clean).


5. Remove and let cool for a few minutes. Serve and enjoy!!

*Recipe courtesy of Simple Comfort Food.

Now on to the fun girly stuff! This is a recommendation for that moment when you are in desperate need of a good, show-stopping mascara...but don't have time to get to the department store or Sephora for my absolute favorite Dior Show Mascara.

L'Oreal has come out with a new mascara: Voluminous Million Lashes. It has the most perfect brush...that creates perfectly separated lashes that really do look a million miles long! The only downside it doesn't have quite the same volumizing effect that Dior's Show Mascara does. So this morning I layered! Easy solution! Million Lashes (first coat and bottom lashes) then Dior Show Mascara (second coat on top lashes). Poof! Perfect lashes :)

Thank Goodness It's Friday!

Happy Friday everyone!

I don't have anything life altering to share with you today. However, I think I'll have some good entries on Monday morning. This weekend my longtime friend Laura is coming up to visit from Huntington Beach. I've been trying to make some tentative plans for the weekend so she can get a taste of Portland (she's never been to Oregon!).

The one thing we will for sure be doing is attending Portland's Holiday Ale Festival. This five day event is taking place in Pioneer Square downtown all weekend. With over 100 holiday ales and the beautiful weather that is forecasted for Saturday, this event is a must! I'll make sure to fill you all in on Monday, but hopefully I will see some of you there!

Much love for the weekend. See you back her Monday!

Brrr!

Being the weather.com addict that I am, I couldn't resist sharing this with you guys!

For all of us out here on the West Coast this puts things in perspective...Here in Portland we are ecstatic (and the City shuts down) when we get 2 inches of snow. Well Buffalo, NY...where my lovely Katie lives...is pretty much in the midst of a blizzard! In less than 24 hours, they've received 2 feet of snow!

Trucks straded on the NY Thruway near Buffalo

The view from Katie's office...you can't see past the parking structure!

I'm thinking of you Katie! Hopefully you can stay home (doubtful) and curl up with a blanket, some hot cocoa, and reality TV. True Katie style! :)

I don't want to hear it skeptics!

As most of you who know me have figured out by now...I love fall and I love cooking for the seasons. With autumn quickly transitioning into winter here in the Northwest, I figured it was time to try a recipe I discovered on foodgawker.com a few weeks ago. Pumpkin Chili. Yup, that's right! Two very unlikely things are combined in this delicious and hearty meal. A lot of people I've talked to about making this dish thought it sounded disgusting, but I swear this meal is a must. The pumpkin doesn't make the chili taste like pumpkin, but rather it acts as a healthy thickener...making the chili more filling and the broth creamier (without milk for us lactose-challenged people!). I hope you guys will try this one, Jeremy swears it is one of the top-5 things I've ever made for dinner!

Recipe of the Day: Pumpkin Chili (Serves 8)
Courtesy of The Family Kitchen

Ingredients:

1.5 pounds ground chuck
1 - 15 oz. can light red kidney beans
1 - 15 oz. can dark red kidney beans
2 - 14 oz. cans of pure pumpkin (pumpkin puree)
2 - 28 oz. cans of diced or crushed tomatoes (recommend: fire-roasted diced tomatoes)
3 cups beef broth
1 large onion, diced
1 large green bell pepper, diced
2 cloves garlic, diced
3 teaspoons cumin
1 tsp. chili powder (I use 2 teaspoons)
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. pepper
2 teaspoons dried cilantro
2 teaspoons dried oregano

Directions:

1. Add ground beef, salt, and pepper to a large soup pot. Brown meat. Add diced onion, green bell pepper, and garlic. Cook until the onions are translucent.


2. Add the ground beef and vegetables to the crock-pot. Then add the dark and light beans, pumpkin, tomatoes, broth, cumin, chili powder, cilantro and oregano. Cook on low for 6-8 hours or on high for 4 hours.

Walking in a Winter Wonderland

Happy December everyone and happy first day of Hanukkah!

I don't know about all of you, but I am extremely ready for December. November wasn't a bad month per say, but it's definitely time for a new one. November ended yesterday with waking up to my car being towed from guest parking and a $250 charge to free it from the devil itself....Retriever Towing Co. So Jeremy and I have decided December is going to be better, and how could it not be? December means Christmas, Hanukkah, pretty lights, snow, and all the holiday food!

As excited as I am about the coming weeks, I also wanted to look back and share a bit about my Thanksgiving weekend. Although Jeremy and I couldn't be together, Buoy and I had an amazing trip up north to visit his grandparents and aunt Brittany. :) Thursday morning we dropped Jeremy off at PDX and headed for Bellingham. About an hour north of Portland it began to snow...beautiful light snow flurries accompanied me all the way to Seattle. Then things really picked up and it started to snow much harder, the plows weren't keeping up, and the lines dividing lanes transitioned into mountains of snow that marked where each lane's edges were. When I finally arrived at my parents' house there were about 5 inches of gorgeous powdery snow covering everything! They live up a smallish mountain, so they were hit pretty hard by the sudden snowstorm. Everyone loves a White Christmas...but we loved our White Thanksgiving!

The highlight of the day was without a doubt playing with Buoy in the snow. Below you will find some of the pictures of him discovering how much fun snow can be! I hope you enjoy them.

Dinner itself was also wonderful. My whole family was together, including my grandparents. My grandmother had a special treat for me as well. She gave me my paternal great-grandmother's cookbook. It is particularly special because my grandpa's mother died when he was only 6 years old. It's one of the only things we have that can tell us a bit about her. It's filled with her handwritten recipes and a number of recipes cut out of newspapers. The dates range from 1901-1927. Pretty incredible! Although most of the recipes aren't for meals most people today would enjoy eating...we've come a long way from the North Dakota farm she lived on...there are a few that I will be experimenting with just for fun :)

I tried to pick out one to share with you that I found in tact and might actually be delicious! The other challenge...finding a recipe that doesn't use ingredients we can't really get anymore (i.e. suet...don't look it up, but it's in most old recipes). I finally settled on a recipe for ginger snaps...pretty appropriate for this time of year! So I haven't tried this yet, but here ya go:

Recipe: Great-Grandmother Carrie's Ginger Snaps

Ingredients:

1 cup of molasses

1 cup of sugar

1 cup of lard and butter mixed (I would sub shortening)

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp ground pepper

2 tablespoons of ginger

1 tsp of soda mixed in molasses

Directions:

Most of my great-grandmother's recipes don't include directions...just ingredients, but because this is a pretty straightforward list of ingredients I would just combine the dry ingredients and then add the molasses and shortening. She does say to mix the ingredients with as little flour as possible, roll out the dough thin, and then bake in a "quick oven". My guess is 350 degrees for 6 or 7 minutes. (Depends on what shape and how thick you cut your ginger snaps!)

Aside from Thanksgiving itself, the whole weekend was a blast. Spent time down in Seattle with my Mom and Britt doing a bit of Black Friday shopping. It's a bit of a tradition for us. Britt and I realized we have braved the Black Friday crowds all over the country...Orange County, Los Angeles, New York, and Seattle! We are going to make it our goal to hit-up Black Friday in every major city!

The last thing I wanted to share with you all was what we did on Saturday. Britt and I drove down to Burlington, WA to the big movie theater. We saw Love & Other Drugs and Burlesque. Both were incredible! I highly recommend seeing them. I just purchased some of the songs from Burlesque on iTunes...definitely going on my workout playlist!

I hope all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Now it's time to prep for the upcoming big holidays! Top of my holiday to-do list...go chop down my own Christmas tree! One of the perks of living in Oregon...you can go pick and actually cut down your own tree out in the forest :) I'll make sure to share that adventure with all of you as soon as it happens :)