Back To School and Back At Home

Alright... after a long summer I am back at home. I have moved into my apartment... for the last semester of my undergraduate education. After this semester I will be Mrs. Smith and I can't even wait!. As for a few new food updates i definitely have them!

1st - Alcatraz Brewing Company - http://alcatrazbrewingcompany.blogspot.com/


After moving in, it was a necessity to see my loving fiance whom I had not seen in a month. Now, don't misunderstand me, I would have seen him first thing but he works very hard and was unable to see me until later my move in day. So Ryan decided to meet up at one of our favorite spots. Alcatraz. It is a great place! Super fun and we have been there a handful of times and the seating hostess as well as the waitress know exactly who we are and what we like. The staff is great there! The beer is awesome we well... if that is what you like. Their happy hour menu is super affordable - with all of the mixed drinks, beers and snack for a great price. One of our favorite happy hour items is their margarita pizza - TO DIE FOR! Their fruit beers are great as well as their red. They also have this really neat deal that if you become a "member" you get happy hour prices any time any day and you also get a special Alcatraz beer mug which holds more than just your regular share. It only costs 40 dollars for a year and is such a good deal for what you get! All in all, if you are lookin for a good new hang out and place to watch a game, this could be your new spot.

2nd - Pho House off Beach Blvd. - http://www.yelp.com/biz/pho-house-buena-park


I must say that being up at camp has caused me to miss ethnic food more than I ever thought possible. Pho was the best decision I made yesterday! It is Vietnamese noodle soup. It starts with beef broth and from there you make it your own : ) I added chili paste, plum sauce, basil, cilantro, bean sprouts, green onions, white onions, lime, noodles and thin raw slices of beef that cook as soon as they are put into the hot broth. It is amazing. Wonderful on a cold winter day and even better when you haven't had flavors like that in months!


3rd - Polly's Pies Restaurants - http://www.pollyspies.com/


Polly's is a chain of restaurants and bakeries. There is one located right next to my church in Long Beach so Ryan and I stopped there after church for some breakfast after hearing rave reviews about it from some locals. I was a little disappointed with the service and the portions were a little small if you ask me. The food was very good though. My eggs were cooked to over-easy perfection, bacon cooked very crispy, just as I ordered, and my macadamia banana nut pancakes were wonderful! So awesome. Ryan had some sort of combo meal as well, which had far less food than mine did so I let him nibble off of my plate. I think the best part of Polly's was their amazing cinnamon roll that came with Ryan's meal as a "side". I am pretty dang sure this HUGE cinnamon roll was bigger and had more calories I am sure, than the rest of his entire breakfast. Next time I go back I am making sure I am getting one for myself... and that can be my entire breakfast!

Summer Study Session

So in honor of my being at camp and barely ever getting away, I found a day off which ended up being a day to write a paper for my online class. And being that the internet at camp is slower than anywhere I have ever been, I headed into town to find a fun bakery or coffee shop with free wi-fi. I first found myself at The Coffee Critic, a pretty cool place in town but due to stupid people pirating movies on their internet, they no longer have wi-fi. So i moved to the next stop and instead of getting coffee, I got a pretty amazing sandwich which I enjoyed with a glass of water with lemon. The sandwich was very delicious with its crunchy dutch crunch roll, sprouts, tomato, lettuce, onion, smoked turkey and all sorts of other goodies, although I truly enjoyed the ambiance most of all. Through my four hours of being there, at least a dozen families with little ones camp in, including a couple sets of twins. It was so wonderful to see families doing things together and actually enjoying each others company. Just watching families together, truly made me miss Ryan (yet again) and realize that I am so incredibly excited to be a part of a new family! Who knew that searching for good wireless internet could do all of that? : )

http://www.schats.com/

Just a Glimpse

Here are two of my helpers... Just a glimpse of what living at a camp does to a people. They thought of doing this all on their own. Not only have this group of volunteers created a new fashion for cleaning the cabins during camp clean up, but they have also come up with some pretty awesome games. Some of these games include Ninja - a game where hitting people is an art form, the animal game - where animal noises are subjective to each individual, and the "name" game - where you slap a person as hard as you can in the stomach if you fair to remember and use everyone's proper nickname. O these people have proven to be truly amazing. Although most of them have left and a new batch of volunteers will be coming in, we will not forget them and all of their silliness and laughter! : )

No Suffering Blogs!

So... I have decided that since I am away from my lovely doting fiance and slowly working on wedding shenanigans AND I never leave the two mile radius bubble I am in... my blog would suffer if i didn't find a new topic to write about! So since all I do all day is cook, clean and hang out with crazy high schoolers with way too much summer on their hands... I have decided I will switch gears for part of my blog and write about fun recipes and funny things high schoolers say and do all day long! : ) i hope it will be as funny as it has been in the kitchen! So first I give you one of my families most sacred recipes! STICKY BUNS!!!! O YES!!!

Sticky Buns
24 Parkerhouse/ Bridgeford Frozen Dinner Dough Rolls
1 Small Package Cook N' Serve Butterscotch Pudding Mix
1 Stick Butter
1 Cup Brown Sugar
1 Tablespoon Cinnamon

The Night before:
Take the rolls and place them in a greased bundt pan.
Sprinkle with the butterscotch pudding mix
Melt together Butter, Brown Sugar and Cinnamon
Pour over sprinkled rolls
Cover with a plate and leave in a warmish place overnight

The Next Morning
Pre-heat the oven to 350.
When oven is ready, remove plate from the top,
Push in any dough that might have exploded out over the edges
Bake about 20-25 min or until dark golden brown and bubbly,
You can even pull apart a roll from the center to make sure it is finished
Once out of the oven, flip over onto serving plate!
Serve and Enjoy!
THEY ARE SO AMAZING!!!!!

These sticky buns are so good we make them for the last breakfast of EVERY camp! Could you imagine being abound those sticky buns about ever five days! Imagine how sticky your buns would get! : )

Back at Camp... For the Last Summer

So the summer has officially begun. To my surprise I am rather indifferent of how I think this summer will go. While I do feel that some things will go swimmingly, I know others will be much harder to bare. As most people already know, I work in a commercial kitchen as the head cook at Hartstone Bible Camp. This will be my seventh summer there and I truly love the job. I have grown to learn so much about cooking, baking, and just plain living. One of the blessings but also hardships, which I am sure most of you would agree, is living at home with my parents. They are the directors of the camp and so I have now made the summer transition to living back with my parents. Most of the summer I have my own private room out on the porch : ) sounds like I got kicked out there, but honestly it is the coolest, the most fun, and is the place where I find the most privacy. I sleep out on my day bed and enjoy the echoing sounds of nature around me every night. At the moment it is raining (some summer!) so I have taken up lodging in the extra bedroom in my parents trailer. Which even as I write this, I am so close to my parents I can hear the pages of my Mother's magazine flip and the clock sitting next to my dad tick. Let's just say, you haven't truly experienced paper thin walls until you have lived in my parents house! Though it is difficult living with parents for the usually reasons, it is also a blessing. They take care of me, they feed me and put a roof or overhang (because of the porch) over my head all summer! I love being home with my mom as she helps me work on wedding planning and loves to play skip-bo and mexican train with me. There are always project to be done and the work never ends, but it is part of the beauty of being up here. It is also fun being around my dad as he follows his honey-do list and tries to make this place into the heaven my parents tend to envision. The hard part is going to be away from Ryan for three whole months. Typing it is even difficult for me. Yuck. We did about a year, I know we can do another three long distance. Right? Ugh...
But back to happy news, I am excited to be in charge of the kitchen again this year, though I really don't know what all is in store for me. Now that my old assistant Courtney is six days over due with her first baby and is planning on not running around the kitchen this summer with a newborn on her hip, I have a new assistant Julie, who also just found out she is pregnant! Babies Babies everywhere! O my! Julie is super fun though and I know this summer will be great with her as well.
I am kind of at a stand still with wedding stuff. I really need a photographer and a cake person. Anyone know any affordable cake people or photographers in the walnut creek/ danville area? Let me know if you do!
Tomorrow I am off to see my nephew Emery and my brother and sister-in-law. I am so excited! I haven't seen E-Money since Christmas and being that he is almost two, those last six months I am sure have brought more changes than I even want to admit! I am so stoked to see him run around like a little boy saying and doing funny things, since I hear that is his usual temperament. I will give a full report of my time with him when I get back to camp next Sunday.
Speaking of family, I just got to go see my sister and brother-in-law and got to have a blast with them this past memorial day weekend! My sister is one of my best and dearest friends and I always forget how much I miss her and her husband Noah until I am around then again. They are always such a wonderful example of what love should be. They are always so ready and eager to listen to me and anyone who needs an ear to hear. They are thoughtful and so open to helping those around them. O how I love my Michelle and Noah! While I was there we were able to do so many wonderful things! I got to go to church with them on Sunday, and have an extendedly long coffee date with my sister at Simone's. We went to the beach and got to hang out with their adopted church family. Then we had an amazing dinner of fresh salmon burgers from Trader Joe's with homemade soy mayo and fresh cole slaw. Then on Monday we got to sleep in and then spend the day slowly turning my sister's porch into the menagerie she has always longed for. Continued by a wonderful BBQ with some of my sister's friends from work and their husbands. All in all, I got to see my sister and experience a little more of her day to day life, which I always enjoy!
So I have come to a halt on my old movie watching, simply because the internet is too slow up here at camp to even watch a you-tube video, let alone a full blown movie!

When it comes down to it, I know this summer will be good and being that it will be my last one here it is bitter sweet for yet another reason. It is interesting to reflect back on years past, seeing how you change and seeing how the world changes around you... because it really does! All this change just reminds me that I need prayer, prayer and encouragement to get through the summer, and to come out on the other side, happy, healthy and ready to move on to my next adventure!

Last Dinner At Our Favorite Place

For our final meal together, Ryan and I enjoyed a meal at our favorite spot; the Grove in LA. This the the place where Ryan and I go to get away from the Biola / La Mirada bubble and are able to love each other and enjoy the craziness that is the world around us. From the eccentric women and men of LA to the obvious tourists from all over the world, there is always something to take a gander at : ) In fact Ryan and I sat together at a random little bench placed perfectly near the trolly station where we were able to sit and people watch for a good half of an hour without feeling one bit of boredom. But to dinner...
So Ryan and I decided that our favorite food is French. It fulfills our love of good wine, our desire for amazing cheese, and our fervor for salt and sweet and all that is... good! So for our final meal in our favorite spot, Ryan and I went to Mr. Marcel Pain Vin Et Fromage, another fine French Restaurant. This place is so fun! It consists of a bar that faces out toward the rest of the Farmer's Market (another wonderful place to people watch : ). Ryan and I started with another perfect bottle of Rose and a cheese platter with three different cheeses, nuts, figs, quince paste, and grapes - SO GOOD! We had a soft goat, a semi-soft brie, and a hard something... I can't remember but it was my favorite : ) and its rind was a wine flavor. Amazing... I LOVE CHEESE. And then I got an Endive Salad, with crumbly blue cheese, walnuts and a tangy vinaigrette. Ryan got his new found favorite clams and mussels in a garlic butter cream sauce. We were on cloud nine. Again a wonderful time of enjoying the company of the one you love, knowing we must soak in every moment together : ) Again, I am so in love with this man. We complete each others thoughts, we love each others tastes, we enjoy each others company and we genuinely appreciate each other for who and what we are... even all of our many flaws. I am in love, I am in love and I don't care who knows it! : )

http://www.farmersmarketla.com/restaurants/index.html

Last Big Dinner

So the day before I left, Ryan and I went out to our last dinner together before I leave for the summer. So depressing. It was a great dinner, not our best, but great none the less! We went to Pinot Provence at South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa which is part of the Patine Restaurant Group. Ryan had signed up for their birthday club so we were able to get $30 off of our meal : ) Our meal consisted of a starting appetizer of Escargot with roasted garlic, parsley, French butter, brioche bread crumbs. Ryan got their duck which was seasoned to perfection, had an amazing port reduction sauce and white asparagus cooked to impeccable perfection. I ordered the fish special which was a thin sea bass, cooked with skin on, seasoned with salt. It was accompanied by abalone mushrooms, grilled spring onion, fiddlehead ferns, celeriac purée and asparagus as well, spring onions, which altogether made it light and perfect for summer. We paired our meal perfectly with a beautiful rose that meets both of our pallets amazingly. We finished out our meal with a fantastic dessert called S’mores Gâteau which was a chocolate sponge cake layered with cappuchino gelato, marshmallow brûlée, and espresso tuile. Wonderful! The food at Pinot Provence was a tad over priced, and there were a few things that could have been perfected, yet it was still a wonderful meal. Our conversation was positive and lively as ever, and yet again through this dinner I am reminded of why I love my fiance so dearly. He is perfect for me. Though we were at a fantastic restaurant supposed to be acting like adults, we fell back into who we are: children at heart with a taste for amazing food. I love him and miss him already, and I have only been away from him for barely 24 hours. This will be a long summer without him!

http://www.patinagroup.com/restaurant.php?restaurants_id=25