Cute and Cuter

You know it's a good entertainment week when the new Muppets trailer comes out during the 50th Anniversary celebrations for Doctor Who.  Yes, I have to say that I've been spending a bit too much on the Pinterest Geek boards and YouTube this week.  Enjoy!

1 For 2 in the Kitchen

As I said last week, I've been trying a bit harder with cooking and baking lately.  Pinterest has been a big inspiration and I've loved trying to find new and interesting recipes to try out.  Sometimes these recipes are big hits and other times unfortunately they are huge misses. Today I went 50:50 on the hit miss scale - One was most definitely a hit and one was most definitely a HUGE miss.

 

First up in the miss department we have Chocolate Cream Cheesecake.  At first glance, it's the perfect recipe: Dove Dark Chocolate Squares and Cream Cheese. Yum!  It even looked pretty coming out of the oven.  But after letting it cool and having a taste, I decided looks were deceiving.  It had a weird non-cheesecakey texture and the 24 squares of chocolate I was told to add, was much too much chocolate even for a chocolate lover like me. After throwing it out, I decided to delete the recipe from my Pinterest as well - Don't want to make that mistake again.

In the hit department we have Cheesy Chicken Quesadilla Pie.  It was everything it promised to be and much, much more.  I thought the batter over the chicken would get gloopy and heavy but it wasn't at all.  Also, I decided to change it a bit and leave out the disgusting cilantro it called for and added instead, green onions - it worked perfectly! The only problem I had was the tortilla on the bottom was a bit difficult to cut through after they baked.  Aside from that, with a little salsa, it was the perfect dinner!  Ironically: I was more worried about this dish being terrible than I was the dessert - Shows what I know : )

Breezy and Bright Books

A few months ago I wrote about the annoyance I had with the lack of British writers being published here in the States.  Luckily, as much as this still bugs me, I was in Great Britain just about a month ago and I was able to remedy this situation by purchasing about a million books that I'd been coveting on Amazon UK.  Most of those books were written by Jenny Colgan. I'd like you to notice that while she's written about a dozen books, only one is available currently on our Amazon. 

After devouring not only Meet Me at the Cupcake Café, which was the first of hers that I had read and the reason I scooped up so many in England, Rosie Hopkins' Sweet Shop of Dreams, West End Girls & The Loveliest Chocolate Shop in Paris, I'm officially hooked and will read pretty much anything this lovely writer churns out.  I also have Christmas at the Cupcake Café currently resting on my book case - it's being rationed until we get a little closer to Christmas. 

What first drew me to the stories were the recipes.  I'm a sucker for a story that includes the perfect recipe for Chocolate Cake.  The fact that she's able to weave these tales together with some seriously delicious (sounding that is - I haven't been as adventurous yet to actually try them) recipes is pretty impressive.  The other thing she has going for her are the characters.  In most Chick Lit series, if you'll excuse the term, the girls are always flighty, blonde and grumpy until they've met Mr. Right and then they're brilliant, blonde and far from grumpy.  In these stories, each main character is completely different than the last.  They're all flawed and really remind me of me as a 29+1 single person trying to find her Prince Charming.

Of course, all these characters have found their Prince Charming by the end (Spoiler Alert!), so that makes me hate them the tiniest bit, but I can actually see myself being friends with them. (Is that weird?  Do other people think about characters in books like this?  I hope so...) Lastly, it's the England tie-ins that do it for me.  How can you not like a book that takes place in your most favorite place in the whole world?  But she's not content to stick to the same part of the island each time: she moves around to the lesser seen, but no less beautiful places - Chelsea (ok so not lesser seen but you get the idea), a small working town up North, Stoke Newington, and Paris (also not really lesser seen).

Like most things do, seeing parts of England through their eyes, made me all the more envious and  grumpy that I'm here in the States - but in a good way, I promise ; )  Her books are wonderful, funny, breezy and sometimes sad (just finished tearing up over the end of The Loveliest Chocolate Shop in Paris - so don't say I didn't warn you.) and I promise you will love every last page if you are an avid reader or just a sucker for a happy ending!  And if you figure out how to obtain the rest of her canon, please let me know.  It's at least a few months until I get back there and I could really use some more books to add to my reading list.

Worst Mayor...EVER

For everyone who's been following the news lately, the story of Rob Ford aka Worst Mayor in the History of Mayors has been riveting to say the least.  He's seemingly done every single bad thing someone can do and yet still remains Mayor of Toronto.  The man has smoked crack ON VIDEO, used racial slurs ON VIDEO, threatened to kill someone ON A RECORDING and today knocked over a fellow council member ON VIDEO while attempting to defend himself, but all the city of Toronto has done is stripped him of his powers.

Don't get me wrong, stripping him of his powers is the right idea obviously.  I'm thinking someone smoking crack and assuming they won't be caught shouldn't be making important, possible life-altering decisions.  But we have a way to kick terrible politicians out of office. Why don't they?  More importantly, why doesn't he just step down?  Obviously, his tenure isn't going the way he'd hoped when the mayor's office was just a glint in his eye.  But he can't stand behind his pride anymore.  That's been pretty much thrown out the window in the midst of every terrible recording the press is playing each day.  He can't be proud of what he's done so do the honorable thing and just step down already!  At least keep a shred of your dignity and gain some respect.  Now he's completely powerless and what?  He's just going to hang around the mayor's house until his term is over?  It's senseless!

But I suppose the one small, teeny-tiny bright spot in this whole mess: the fact that this embarrassing bit of drama isn't on the Americans for a change.  We've got all sorts of other things to be embarrassed by.  At least, we can feel a bit superior in this aspect - that is of course, until Anthony Weiner starts Twittering again...

Diary of a Sunday

 A beautiful and sunny fall day in Maryland despite...

 

Iced Tea and Yummy Mexican (Pulled Pork Quesadillas and homemade salsa) for the game

 Pinterest to bide the time during the rain delay

So then this happened...YUCK!

 Brand new kitchen drawer knobs to replace the broken one...finally

And an evening of tea and reading to round out the day

Happy Sunday!

Happy Saturday!

Good Food,

Good Friends,

Good Time,

Good Saturday!

Happy Weekend!

Friday Five

1. Paragon China on Etsy: I've been craving this pattern ever since my dad brought the tea set back from England in this beautiful pattern.  It's always been my dream to have it as my wedding china.  Unfortunately, Paragon china went out of business years ago so the only way to find the set is in pieces on Ebay, and apparently now Etsy; which makes me very, very happy!  

2. Children in Need special sneak peak:  You're just going to have to get used to seeing the 50th anniversary be mentioned every few days at least until November 23rd.  



3. These gorgeous minimalist posters that show the differences between Paris and New York.  They are absolutely perfect!  Now if she'd just create some London ones I'd be pretty darn happy!

4. Smitten by Britain: My new favorite website.  I spent hours on it the other day.  Who knew there were others out there as crazy as I am about all things England and Britain?

5. Usually I'm grumpy about the whole Christmas time coming before Thanksgiving but this year, I'm totally up for it.  I already have my Christmas tree up at work and I've made some pretty good head way on the shopping.  And you all might think it crazy, but I was actually listening to Christmas music last weekend.  Bring it on Santa!  I'm ready this year!