Sunday, July 6, 2014

The French Macaroon

Here lately I've really gotten into baking. 
I've always liked it, but never really had the time to try the things I really wanted to try. 
Recently graduating college..my free time opened up tremendously. 

French Macaroons have always been one of my favorite treats.  They were takeaways at my college portfolio show and they were a huge hit.  I had to buy them of course, because at that time they totally intimated me.  It was an expensive takeaway, but that's in the past now.

Yesterday after work, I randomly thought trying to make them would be a good idea.  It was.  I only know that now though. 



The main reason I never tried making these sooner was everyone else that has ever tried to make them.  That, and there are hundreds of different ways.  All of them are very similar, yet certain aspects of the process are varied.  That makes one little cookie pretty intimidating.  I found this one recipe for this fairly simple vanilla macaroon and I thought I'd give it a try.  I'm not a huge Lemon curd fan though, so for my filling I just decided to try a simple vanilla buttercream fill.  It was surprisingly very easy and they turned out deliciously.  I'm not a baking pro, hell, I've never even used a piping bag until last night, and I made these correctly.  If I can, anyone can.



Seeing that it was almost midnight when I finished, the picture effort was lax. 
I'm excited to try more complicated flavor recipes for these guys sometime soon!

xxBrittany






Tuesday, July 1, 2014

Parrot Bay Punch



Back in my hometown, one of my favorite eatery places is Flamingo Row.  This is a Caribbean themed restaurant and it's delicious: both food and drink-wise.
One particular drink that they have is called Parrot Bay Punch.  Knowing everything they put in that, I decided to make my own.

 
What you need:
- 1 shot of Parrot Bay Coconut Rum(Any coconut rum will work but it IS called "Parrot Bay Punch")
- 1 Shot of Creme de Banana
- 1 6oz can of pineapple juice
- 1 teaspoon of cream of coconut
- 4 ice cubes

Makes 1 serving (easily doubles to make more)








First add your shot of rum and shot of creme de banana to a shaker.  We don't have a cocktail shaker right now, so we had to improvise.

 Next, add in the teaspoon of cream of coconut.  We used a tablespoon because our shaker had a strainer.  You can use your own judgement.
Now pour a whole 6oz can of pineapple juice in, followed by 4-5 ice cubes. 

Finally, shake all of the ingredients together and pour into a glass.  Richard makes such an elegant model right?
Optionally, add a cute straw and an umbrella to kick it up a notch. 

This drink is super easy to make and tastes delicious.  Be warned though, the alcohol is hidden well, you'll be feeling good before you realized what happened. Enjoy!

xxBrittany



Monday, June 30, 2014

Childhood: Revisited

I love board games.

I grew up with them and I had a family (mainly my dad and cousins) that were always down to play a game or two with me for hours on end.  I owned a countless number of them when I was younger, some I was entirely too young to play but I just made my own rules up.

I thought for sure that most people played board games with their families every now and then.  I discovered that wasn't true at all.  In fact, a lot of my closest friends so wish that they had families that sat down with them and played games with them.  So I am forever grateful to my family for those memories.

On my last visit home my mother informed me that she was going to re-decorate my bedroom at the house into a room for her to use.  This was not something I wanted to hear, but I knew it made sense.  Therefore, I had to go through all of my things that I left there to tell her what she could get rid of and what went to storage.  It was an interesting walk down memory lane, that's for sure.

One particular item I was extremely excited to find was an old trivia board game I have had for years and years. 
The Wonderful World of Disney Trivia Game is a game I haven't played since I was 10, even that doesn't seem long enough. 

It's three of my favorite things combined: Disney, trivia, and a board game.  I, of course, brought it back to my current house to add to our game stack.

I made Richard play it with me the other day when it was raining (again) and we couldn't think of anything else to do.  He is not a big Disney lover like I am.  He doesn't like trivia either...so clearly this relationship is doomed.  I'm working on converting him though.  

Since it's been a good 11+ years since I've played this, (and there were no instructions to be found) we had to make up our own rules.  They made sense though, and they seemed familiar.  I think we ended up playing it correctly after all.
 It's very similar to trivial pursuit and scene it, or at least the way we played it was.

You start out on Mickey's left ear and have to answer 5 questions correctly to get out of the ear to get to the main board (Mickey's face) and start collecting the mouse pieces.  On the left ear, you get to pick the category that you would like to answer from.
Each question card has 5 different categories:
-Animation (yellow)
-Film (purple)
-Song (green)
-Personalities (blue)
-Mousellaneous (red)


 Once you make it to main board, you start rolling the dice to determine which category you have to answer.  The colored pictures on the board represent the category color, naturally. 

 If you answer your question right during this part, you get a little colored ring to fit over your mouse playing piece.  The goal is to fill up your piece with as many rings as it will hold to advance to the right ear.
You have two different card options.  You can choose a card from the "Adults" side or the "Kids" side.  The adults side, is strictly normal Disney related trivia, in accordance with the 5 categories.  These cards are for the true Disney fanatic.  The questions range from the Disney animated movies that everyone knows to the animated short movies that most have never heard of.  These cards also hold questions about different actors and famous people and how they are connected to Disney.  There's even trivia about the different parks and attractions.  Not going to lie, these questions can be tough, especially now that the game is years old.  
Richard and I started out trying to answer only questions from the adults side, but at that rate it was going to take us hours to finish the game.  We decided to rotate between both kids and adults cards.  Which was actually really fun and worked well.  We learned a lot about Disney we never knew.   
The "Kids" cards have a picture on one side, and then the questions on the back relate to the movie pictured on the other side. MUCH easier than some of the adult questions.  Even still, some of the movies pictured we had never watched, so even the kids cards stumped us sometimes.  








 Like this card here, I have no idea who that character is or even what movie he's from.
I did not get this question right.
 Once you fill up your piece you get to make your way over to the right ear.  That ear is similar to the left because you have to answer 5 questions correctly to progress to the end.  The only difference is that in the first ear YOU get to select the category, in the last ear your OPPONENT gets to choose.
The first person to reach "The End" is the winner.  Although I won both times, Richard did very well and almost beat me both times.  We were both surprised.  You don't have to be a Disney wizard to enjoy this game. 
 Of course we HAD to drink our morning coffee out of Disney themed mugs, it made it much better.

I'm working on making this into a drinking game so that Richard is more willing to play with me again.  So stay tuned for that.

xxBrittany


Rainy Day Art

I'm not an artist.

I went to art school and I have a photography degree, that's true.  I don't consider myself an artist though.  "Photographers are artists too."  Yes, they are.  I know this, trust me.  They are a different kind of artist to me I guess.  When I say the word "artist" I simply mean someone who can just get up and draw/paint/sketch something like it's no big deal.  I've always been envious of that.  I recently discovered that I live with one of those people. 

So far this summer, Nashville has been under one big rain cloud it seems.  It feels like it has down-poured at least once a day for a month.  I know that's probably not true, but I know it has on all of my days off work.

On this one particular rainy day Richard just decided to get up and get the pastels out.  Totally out of the blue.  He then just started creating.  Not going to lie, I didn't get it.  Mainly because I'm not capable of that.  I have to plan everything I do "art-wise."  

I did the only thing I could think to do while he was working, I got my camera and documented it. 



He's using Master's Touch Fine Art Studio Pastels (48 Pieces)
 It's still a work in progress.  He's the type to go back and forth between projects.  We're alike in that respect.  Finished piece to come soon!

xxBrittany