My Grandparents celebrated their 50th anniversary today! They are such great people and wonderful examples to their family and those around them. We had a gathering last night at Sundance to celebrate their anniversary and Kevin’s birthday. Interestingly, Kevin has been a live half as long as they’ve been married.
Mr. Bugg had to be towed to the car shop late Sunday night after he wouldn’t start. This is the second time he’s been this month. Thank goodness for car insurance that covered towing. It saved us a lot of hassle and stress. Turns out gas isn’t getting to the engine and thus can’t start. Supposedly it will be a cheaper fix than replacing all the glowplugs (like the last time). This is supposeded to be Mr. Bugg on the tow truck, but it’s a little hard to see.
My cousin Sami looks very much like Taylor Swift, although much prettier of course. I wanted to take some portraits using natural lighting and she was a great model. Thanks!
School is back in full swing. After one day I already have two pretty big assignments. The first is finished so I thought I would share! Our assignment was this…
A magazine needs a photography for an article that is not yet written. However, they know these 5 words will be in it:
Fall – Fish – Red – Run – Love
Create a vertical photo to illustrate the article.
It took a long time and a lot of brainstorming to come up with a way to combine these words, and naturally I wanted to try and include food. The ideas were all over the place. Finally thanks to Kevin’s help I came up with something! Here it is!
I can’t believe school starts this week! I’m very excited though! For those of you who haven’t heard, I just found out I’ll be receiving a full tuition scholarship for my last two semesters. It’s the Deans Merit Scholarship which is based on GPA and my portfolio. I feel very blessed to have received it.
So lately we’ve:
Camped at Timpanooke
Saw Big River at Sundance. It was awesome!
Had a few crazy rainstorms
Rode in Carls’ “new” truck
Kevin also biked most the way up the Alpine Loop and is currently biking in Draper going over the mountain into Alpine.
I’ve been playing around with my new 50mm Macro lens taking pictures of dishes and ganache covered cupcakes. They don’t look super pretty but they taste delicious!
As I’ve started photographing more food I’ve developed a love for cute dishes. I love shopping for dishes and napkins! There are so many colors, shapes, and textures. I could spend hours looking at them all. We recently went to Ikea where I added a few new things to my collection. I’ve noticed I tend to gravitate toward blues, greens, and browns. I think I may need to start branching out… Here are some photos of the dishes:
I also attempted a layered cake this week. It was much more difficult that I anticipated and thus does not appear here. I did however make some cupcakes to go along with it. For the frosting I used ganache. It was heavenly! Just 8 oz of chocolate (Ghiradelli 60% cocoa) and 8 oz of cream. Pour the hot cream over broken pieces of chocolate, let it sit for a few minutes, stir it up, and viola! Ganache! While the cupcakes aren’t super pretty either… they, along with the cake, were quite delicious. Definitely something to make again!
I love peaches! They are one of my favorite things about fall. Costco had some white flesh peaches that I had never tried before. They looked pretty good so we bought some. They may just be the best peaches I have had. They are so sweet and full of flavor!
They are fantastic with cottage cheese… (I love this picture so much more than my other cottage cheese and peaches pic)
And in a shake… equal amounts of ice cream and peaches with a dash of milk.
So delicious!
Ever since I “announced” my new website I have been trying to upload images to a site called Foodgawker, which is a place where food bloggers and others upload pictures for all to see. The images link to the person’s blog. Well, I received a comment on one of my posts but nothing since. I’ve been wondering if anyone really looked at the blog or not.
Today, as I was browsing through Foodgawker, I saw and image that resembled my Fresh Lime Sherbet Float image. I decided to take a look. As it turns out… “Real Mom Kitchen” saw the post on my blog and did a post about it herself and referenced me! (see here) I was very flattered and excited that at least one person is looking at my blog!
This may or may not be a hint for those of you who read this to stop by some time and make a comment on the photo blog. I think its pretty interesting :)
I love taco salads. Anything from Taco Amigo to Cafe Rio to homemade. This is a homemade version I had for dinner last night. It was delicious! I have to say that you can’t have a taco salad without ranch. I prefer the lime/cilantro kind, but regular works nicely in this case…
Here’s the recipe I used for the filling (I’m not exactly sure where it came from, but I got it from my mom):
1 onion chopped
2 cups cooked hamburger
16 oz tomato sauce
16 oz kidney beans
1 T chili powder
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp garlic powder
Basically just heat and serve. I cooked the onions, then the hamburger, then added the rest. Served with chips, cheese, ranch and it should have had tomato but I didn’t have any…
I love finding a new delicious cake/brownie recipe and this one is great! Kevin actually happened upon it while looking for a dinner idea. It is a twist on Paula Deen’s Gooey Butter Cake recipe. I didn’t have a yellow cake mix (quite a shock actually) so I substituted a chocolate cake mix, which we always have.
So here’s the recipe:
Cake:
1 18 1/4-ounce package yellow cake mix
1 egg
8 tablespoons butter, melted
Filling:
1 8-ounce package cream cheese, softened
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
8 tablespoons butter, melted
1 16-ounce box powdered sugar
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Combine the cake mix, egg, and butter and mix well with an electric mixer. Pat the mixture into the bottom of a lightly greased 13 by 9-inch baking pan. Prepare Filling
In a large bowl, beat the cream cheese until smooth. Add the eggs, vanilla, and butter and beat together.
Next, add the powdered sugar and mix well. Spread over cake batter and bake for 40 to 50 minutes. Make sure not to over bake as the center should be a little gooey.
Servings: 6 to 8 servings
Prep Time: 30 min
Cook Time: 40 min
Difficulty: Easy
Show: Recipe courtesy Paula Deen and Random House Publishing
As a side note, I’m participating in the Sketchbook project. The theme I chose is “And then there was none.” This will probably be an image I put in the book:
