World Food Day

October 24th - World Food Day

Reason #734 to adore October:  World Food Day!

Help feed a family this year...Donate to your local food pantry today!

Two Totally Unrelated Yet Awesome Recipes

Now that it is officially Fall, I am free to bust out the canned pumpkin and bake everything I've been pinning to my Fall Pinterest board! 

YAAAAAY FALL!!!   

Only because I've been dreaming of these, I tried Cooking Classy's twice iced (yes, hello...Twice.Iced.) Starbuck's copycat recipe for pumpkin scones first. (THANK YOU cookingclassy.com!).

 If I'm being honest, I'll tell you I have never had a good scone at Starbuck's, but they looked delicious on Pinterest and I love pumpkin....sooooo...I decided 8 scones per batch was too few, so I cut my dough to produce 16 smaller, yet still generously sized, scones.

Can I just saw, WOW.  Super terrific good.. and if you don't believe me, I have about twenty friends who will testify.

Up next, homemade ketchup.  I know - sounds insane, right?  I mean, who in their right mind MAKES KETCHUP when Heinz does such a bang up job?  Well, for reasons my hubby thinks I should keep to myself, I have made the executive decision to make my own ketchup. After picking an easy recipe from Epicurious I decided there was no time like the present.

Man o man, am I glad I tried this.  This ketchup tastes like ketchup, only better.  I know, I know, everything is better when made from scratch, but I wasn't expecting ketchup to knock my socks off!  In fairness, I did alter the recipe slightly.  I reduced the brown sugar by half, doubled the tomato paste, and added 1-2 T. of corn syrup into the final puree.  I will definitely be making this on a regular basis.

Until next time, hope you are finding the delicious side of life!

I left my heart in San Francisco...

Greetings from cold, damp WV, friends...

Hubby and I are fresh back from a fairly long (but not nearly long enough) trek to the West coast.  I love "The City" by the Bay more now that I did before but not as much as I will next time around.  There is so much to see and do, it's impossible to talk about it all without making your ears bleed, so to summarize...

There's the Bridge(s), the wharf, the trolleys, the Piers, the Farmers Market, the cable cars, the hills, the parks, the sea lions, the chowder, the tea, the fog, the Rock (Alcatraz), Sausalito, the art and artists, the Painted Ladies, the parrots, the history, the tragedies (fire and earthquake), the romance, the food, the wine, the bread(!), the chocolate, the Bay, the sunset, the 49ers, Chinatown, did I mention the food?, the carousel, the Red Trolley ale, the Presidio, and the people... All EXTRAORDINARY... Add one five-star-blow-your-mind-and-hold-on-to-your-VISA-card needlepoint store (Needlepoint, Inc.) on top of all that and hey, what more could a girl ask for (besides more money and one more week)?  I do believe SFCA has something for everyone.  I also firmly believe everyone should go see it before it drops off into the Pacific Ocean... Seriously..

Enjoy a few pics while I go try to telepathically convince my pathetic avocados to taste more like fresh, ripe Californian avocados...

From the Japanese Tea Garden at the Golden Gate Park:

From the Legion of Honor Fine Art Museum:

Pics from the Redwood National Forest and Oregon next post...