Mexican Street Tacos!

Mexican Street taco class was so much fun! 

We made our own corn tortillas, oh, that was fun and easy! We grilled them and ate them, and let me tell you, once you make your own it is very hard to eat the pre-made store tortillas again!

We also marinated some pork pieces and some shrimp, then we made a filling for veggie tacos for those who don't eat meat. The veggie taco filling was so delicious, I will be making it just as a topping for tacos, it was that good! It was charred pablano chiles mixed with grilled onions and corn and garlic, so delicious!

So here are the fillings we made:

Grilled Pork Tacos (Al Pastor)

Chipolte-lime Shrimp Tacos

Tacos de Rajas con Queso Fresco (charred pablano w/mexican cheese)

You can find the recipes at SurLaTable.com

I just love these classes, it is getting me out of the house once a month and I am learning so many neat tips and tricks for cooking. I love to cook when I am stressed out, being in the kitchen and following a recipe is so therapeutic, and you get to eat wonderful homemade food which is always better than store bought food.

So I hope you give these tacos a try, They were fun and delicious!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Normally we don't do V-Day, but I had this box of doughnut mix I bought from Sur La Table, and knowing my hubby loves doughnuts I made them special for him this morning!
He was so happy!
The mix is great, they give you the frosting mix too. I decided to leave some plain and put powdered sugar on some. Wow, they were so soft and moist, really good mix! Perfect for a special occasion like this! The doughnut pan is a Wilton pan, and the little signs were just from my scrapbooking stash.

Have a happy day, and I hope you get the chance to cook up something fun!

Wine Cooler

I am selling my wine cooler, had to make room for all my cooking stuff! I now have a cupboard in place to hold all my Kitchen aid mixer and attachments.

So if you or anyone you know is interested here is the ebay listing..local pick up only! I will not ship it.

Danby Wine Cooler Holds 50 Bottles DWC508BLS | eBay

Cooking classes

I am starting to take cooking classes at Sur La Table. I think I would like to take one a month if I can.
So far I took a tamale making class, it was good, but I have tried two times to make them at home and have failed, my masa is too wet. I will try again and see if I can master them!
My last class was a pasta making class, we made the pasta by hand and then used a hand crank to roll it out and the kitchenaid mixer too. I got the kitchenaid attachments for Christmas that make pasta rolling and cutting easy so that is the reason for a pasta making class.
Once you taste homemade pasta it is hard to go back to the cardboard tasting box stuff!
It is fun and easy to make pasta at home.

Here are the dishes we made in class:

Tarragon leaf pasta sheets with creamy chicken and mushrooms

and Tagliatelle with tomato and panchetta sauce.

The tomato based sauce and pasta

cooking the chicken and mushrooms, this smelled amazing!

our samples, sooooo good!

Here I am making the sheets, just cut in large squares and add some tarragon and sandwich them, then cook them up!

My finished dish, it was delicious 

You can go to www.surlatable.com for all their recipes or you can take a class, you will have so much fun!

The perfect winter dish...

I love casseroles, total comfort food. I also love potatoes, you could probably do anything to a potato and would still eat it! Ha, ha! French fry, bake, mash, so versatile, so yummy...creamy, dreamy potato.

After eating the scalloped potatoes at the LaJolla Marriott, quite a few times now, I decided it was time to attempt them at home. As usual, I scoured the Internet, Pinterest, YouTube. I came across the best scallop potato recipe. Very rich and creamy with a golden topping. Heaven on a plate I tell ya!

But, first things first, I had to buy the handy dandy, slicer, dicer, shredder, for my Kitchen Aid mixer, because I don't know how much time you have but I don't have the kinda a time it would take to slice potatoes for this dish! The slicer shredder attachment sliced me up a whole casserole dish of perfect potato slices in 2 minutes!! Someone at Kitchen Aid is a genius. Thank you.

So here it is:
Heavenly Cheesy Scalloped Potatoes:

Sorry not my pic,
I will replace as soon as I make them again,
I know I had a picture of mine but cannot find it!

4-5 potatoes, washed, peeled.
2 cups medium cheddar cheese.
3 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons flour
2 tablespoons onion-fine dice (so hubby doesn't know they are there)
1 1/2 cups milk
salt and pepper

oven 350*

Slice the potatoes 1/8 inch thick, use the large slicer attachment on the KA mixer. Shred the cheese using the small shredder attachment, finer shred makes the cheese melt easier.
Melt the butter in a pan, saute onions in butter until translucent, maybe 4 minutes, add flour and mix until flour is incorporated into butter/onion mix, slowly add in milk, so your mix stays at a slow boil, turn heat down and add cheese and salt and pepper, once melted, remove from stove. Grease the bottom of a 9x9 baking dish, add one layer of potatoes, pour on some of the sauce to cover, layer more potatoes and top with sauce, add a little more grated cheese on top. Bake for 1 hour.
Remove from oven and let sit up about 15 minutes. Dig in to that creamy, dreamy dish.

With the help of the Kitchen Aid mixer this dish is just as easy as the scallop potatoes I have been making for years from a box. Well, those box days are over and it is just real potatoes from here on!

Scrapbooking is my passion....

I thought I would share some of my favorite scrapbook pages I have made. I love scrapbooking, I love the travel involved, the weekend getaways, the search for the perfect paper or embellishment that pulls the photos all together...

This is the last page from my Scandinavian albums, I finished them just in time to start our new adventure,-British Isles and Ireland, we leave in May!

After we get back I will be scrapbooking that trip in 2016-2017, in 2018 we will embark on another adventure! Perhaps, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany! You never know where life will take us next!

Scrappin-Escapes

Got to go to San Diego for scrappin-escapes weekend! We had fun, about 85 scrappers! On saturday we all pooled some money and went in on the powerball! Wouldn't that have been fun to see us on the news winning the big one!! We put in 10.00 each and we did win some so they will roll it over for wednesday so there is still hope!

Christy cropping!

Me cropping!

Patti had fun little props to play with!

Wore the shirts I made!

christy, patti and me, oh I had to chop my hair off. It was dry and scraggly and I could not take it any longer!

Hope you had a fun weekend! If you want to have fun and scrapbook with a lot of fun gals, go here:
www.scrappinescapes.com