Add some Italian to your day

Last night I had a double birthday party at my house. A friend of mine and I share a birthday (today). We had a small gathering at my place and one of the left over items were cherry tomatoes.

Today I decided to just relax, but I kept thinking about those cherry tomatoes and how I would use them before they went bad. So, I got dressed and hopped into the car. It is sunday after all and one of my favorite things to do is go to the farmer’s market and walk among the vendors before I make my purchases.

Normally, I stay away from the fresh bread vendors because while I am not on the low carb diet anymore I am trying not to have tons of bread products in my house (chips are an evil thing.. and this includes pita chips). But today, there is bruschetta on the menu and it craves french bread based in olive oil and rubbed with fresh garlic after it is taken out of the oven. I also picked up some fresh basil, yum. I think today is an Italian day.

After spending a few hours in my favorite shop (Bliss on Jay Street) and my friend Amy, I came home and got right back into my comfy pants. It is lunch time so I started to cut up the cherry tomatoes and sliced my french bread. I used this as my base recipe but I didn’t boil the tomatoes.

Once the tomatoes were cut up, I rubbed a garlic clove over the toasted bread and flipped it so that oil olive side was on top. Then I put the left over garlic (two cloves) crushed in with the tomatoes. Next came basil, and here is a link on how to chiffonade basil. Add some salt and better and drizzled in oil olive and balsamic vinegar and stir it all together.

It was so yummy! Sometimes I think we forget that the simplest recipes can sometimes be the best. The right paring of herbs and vegetables can make the most amazing punch to your taste buds.

Craft Project – Chalkboard

While I was working on re-painting the kitchen I thought that it would be a nice touch to add a chalkboard. I know that it is all the latest rage to have it, but it really is a nice touch to have in the kitchen to write down what you need.

So I looked online and saw that others have created chalkboard in a variety of ways; from doing whole walls, fridge doors and cupboard doors. I had one wall that was very blank and long so I thought that having a chalkboard in that area would be a nice touch in that space.

The first thing I needed to do was to find what to use for my chalkboard surface. So one day after work I headed over to Salvation Army (because I am a girl on a budget). I was lucky that day and for seven dollars bought a picture in a frame and two other picture frames that I needed for other photos.

I thought this would be perfect because it was just the right size for the space I had picked out.

What I needed for this project:

• picture in frame
• painters tape
• chalkboard paint
• spray paint
• yellow paint
• buttons
• newspapers

I layered newspapers over the glass of the picture frame and then spray painted the frame white. Which is what I thought I wanted for the frame color.

I then removed the newspaper and taped the inside of the frame with the painters tape so that I could then use the chalkboard paint. I did two layers of paint.

Once I completed that I hung it on the wall but realized that it was just too much white. So I then painted the frame yellow to match the yellow in my kitchen. Once it was dried I took a scrub to “rough up” the picture frame to make it look a bit more lived in.

To give the chalkboard a bit more character and give it some texture I decided to add buttons to it that would bring in the different colors in the kitchen. When this is done one of the buttons will hold the chalk to the board.

This was a fun project that I think brought some character to my kitchen and gave it a modern twist.

Upon a Mother’s Request…

My mom saw that I made dill pickles and made a request for bread and butter pickles. Well, I am all for a cooking challenge and thought why not, my grandma use to make those too. After asking my mom for the recipes, which she then replied I don’t think she ever wrote it down. UGH!

So the internet I turned to and found a few recipes. I followed this one except I canned them.

I must say the first 24 hours were a little stinky because of the raw onions but in the end I was amazed by pickling liquid. At first I was very doubtful about the mixture of spices but once I smelled it cooking and then tasted one of the spare pickles I knew it was the right recipe.

These beauties will be given as gifts and saved for thanksgiving dinner.

Project – Kitchen Make Over – Update

I started this project a few months ago and I have slowly been working on it ever since. Yesterday, I finished the project. While I am tired, I am so proud of myself that I finished this project on my own.

This color combination is my dream kitchen. I think that there are some details that can be added to some of the white spaces.

I wish that this project hadn’t taken so long, but I found that it was much more painful than I would have thought.

One of the photos is of a mini project that I did which is a chalkboard, which I will post about later.