Culinary Exploration

There is a lot of great confectionery places to visit in Seattle, however I never seem to have a chance to visit any of them. Since we were heading to the Woodland Park Zoo I decided that we should detour and check a few of them out.

First stop Trophy Cupcakes...oooo, ahhhh yummy! Since our budget is tight we all sampled one divine chocolate cupcake. I am defiantly going back for more!

Next stop was Theo's Chocolates. This wasn't exactly what I thought it was going to be, but it was still worth the stop. We got to sample all of their chocolates - boy what a explosion of flavor in my mouth. The most extreme one was a Spicy Chili Pepper Chocolate bar - yuck, not even my spicy lovin' brother would like it.

After the zoo I got to go the the "palace" for bakers! HEAVEN!!!! The Home Cake Decorating Supply Co. is a 30 year old, hole in the wall store that has everything an aspiring baker like me would need. If she doesn't have it here...then a probably don't need it! I am so inspired to bake up a storm now. I am working on a few special things for Ellyson's 1st birthday party!
Our final stop for the day was a delicious dinner at Buca Di Beppo. We normally can not afford a tasty supper like this...but this frugal mama had 2 coupons for free food who-hoo! Since we were there a little bit before the dinner rush we got to sit at their famous kitchen table. The head chef was awesome in spoiling our kids with spaghetti and ice cream. It was so good and cheap too!

S'mores on a stick

This is how you do it in the Northwest when it rains in August...I like the burnt, fire roasted ones better!

The Gardening Report

My prized Tomato plants are doing well, they are loving the sun and the yummy food that I give them. The sweet 100 already has a beautiful and tasty red fruit with lots more to come! Carter and I started some mid-season plants...pumpkins, radishes, spaghetti squash, and peas. We will see how they do.

Ice Cream Cone Cupcakes

These have cupcakes instead of ice cream in them! Yummy!

Jammin' with my mom

I got some wonderful strawberries from the local market so I thought that I would make some freezer jam. Well, since I have never actually made jam before....I called for my mom's expertice.

Since we were so sucessful at make the strawberry jam, we sent my husband and dad down the road to pick some yummy raspberries from the neighborhood shared raspberry garden and jammed them up too!

Next up - blueberries and blackberries!

I am a Sneaky Chef!

Carter's favorite food is spaghetti....so I thought that I would try and reduce the number of carbs and give him a little bit of vegetable power. I have used spaghetti squash before (in place of pasta) and really enjoyed, but I wasn't sure how Carter would like it - it worked, he loved it!Actually I think that his words were "this is pretty good"! Off to figure out a few more sneaky ideas!

Fast Food Father's Day

After a wonderful homemade dinner that my mom made we went fast food style for dessert! I found this idea from my new favorite blog, Bakerella, and decided to give it a try. Mind you that I have only had 1 cake decorating class so far....but I think that I did a decent job. The "Burger Basket" was made from cupcakes, brownies and sugar cookies! I even went the extra mile for the dads in my life and handmade all of the paper serving stuff.

MY DADDY!

My Father-in-Law

My Baby Daddy - aka husband

Mother's Day

My Family gave me a GREAT Mother's Day! We went to the Puyallup Farmer's Market on Saturday and I picked out some tomato plants...hopefully this will be a better year for tomatoes. Here is the menu this year: Sweet 100, Chocolate Cherry (I guess that they are brown and very sweet), Early Girl, 1 Sugar Snap Pea, and new this year an Heirloom called Kellogg's Breakfast. I am excited to give Heirlooms a try. If you want to see my results from last years plants (although a bad year for all tomato gardners) check out the blog from August 2008.

TOMATOES!

I Love Tomatoes! This is the 3rd year that I have planted and loved on my own tomato garden. For mother's day I asked for plants and special pots for my precious plants...I planted a roma, grape, sweet 100 and big beef. It was a slow summer, but by August each plant had lots of fruit and just then we just waited for the sun to make them red (the roma is still green, it was slow to produce). I am so impressed with myself, the plants are full,carefully loved for and the produce taste awesome! I am now a self proclaimed tomato gardener!