Ice Cream

I love ice cream but, not as much as my mom. My mom LOVES ice cream, so since I'm poor, I decided I'd make her ice cream for Mother's Day. I used an Alton Brown Recipe. I'm not gonna lie, I don't know what the heck Vanilla Sugar is, and I'm sure I could google it, but whatever. I used regular sugar and I love vanilla so I probably added about another tablespoon of Mexican vanilla. I swear that I think the secret to vanilla is Mexican vanilla. I don't know why it's better. I don't think its processed or artificial. So next time you go to Mexico, do yourself a favor and stock up on vanilla. I let the liquid ice cream mixture chill in the fridge overnight and then I put it in the freezer the next morning for about 30 minutes. Only then did I put it in the Ice Cream attachment to my mixer. It turned out great.

I also had gone strawberry picking with Stella 2 days before this so I folded in some fresh strawberry puree. Sooooo, good. My mom liked it too. Next time I need more strawberrys. The ice cream itself was delicious! My favorite thing in my kitchen is my lime green Kitchen Aid mixer!

Quiche X 2

I've never made quiche so when my mom asked me to make some for Mother's Day, I said sure. You can't turn down your mom on Mother's Day, right? My husband however HATES quiche. Ok, so how am I going to make both mom and hubby happy?

So after searching the internet and foodnetwork.com I found a recipe to make hubby happy from Paula Dean (aka, everything is made with straight butter and heavy cream). Low and behold, girlfriend didn't disappoint. She had a hash brown crust quiche instead of a traditional crust that got rave reviews. I substituted half and half for 2% milk. The cooking time on the hash browns was longer (I had to bake it for about 50 minutes instead of the 25 she said) but otherwise I followed the recipe. My suggestion is to do all the prep work the day before (grate cheese, cut onions, cut ham, bake hash browns) then assemble the morning of your brunch. The combining of ingredients is the easy part...it's all the prep that takes forever. I thought it was good, but my husband actually liked it! Yay.

I also wanted to do something with a traditional crust, but with less traditional breakfast ingredients. So I found this Emeril recipe. I don't trust the Emeril. I have made many recipes of his and I swear a cook time or an ingredient always seems to be missing. I bought pre-made Marie Calendar pie crust from the frozen foods isle. Again, prep work is everything. Caramelizing onions are like low riders, they need to cook low and slow. These onions are not even close to being done. It probably took about 30-40 minutes to do it right.


Next step is to sautee the mushrooms. You want to do this so that the mushrooms don't release all their juice inside the quiche. That would make the crust all mushy and disgusting.

I used the Gruyere cheese, it was soooooooooooo good. So savory. I will make this again!

The key to quiche is patience, and a little of this:

Taste of Ladera

So I work on Saturdays. It sucks! I've tried many times to hire, reschedule....everything to get Saturday's off. It just never works. I own my own business, I need to make it happen right? However, if I'm done by 1pm I try to do stuff with my family. Yesterday, I texted my husband and said "taste of ladera tomorrow?" he replied "sure". So today I got home at 1, got small child and the husband in the car and headed to Liberty Park in Ladera Ranch for good food and walking around. I actually had completely forgotten about Taste of Ladera until I got an email from workout lady at boogie box saying they were going to have a booth there (more on boogie box later).

I'm torn by Taste of Ladera. Keep in mind that I'm an expert on EVERYTHING! They had food vendors, some random vendors and some kiddie stuff to do but it was just horribly organized. Liberty park is HUGE! The food vendors and the regular vendors were mixed in with one another. So to decide what we wanted we had to walk around a ginormous park. I'm fat, lazy and hungry and they made me walk a lot. I finally decided on Beachfire which had the option for skirt steak or jerk chicken with rice and black beans. We walked around and let our daughter go on some bounce house thing. Walked around some more, and had a hot dog from Jerry's hot dogs on the way out. HOT DOGS ARE GOOOOOOOD there. I recommend everyone add celery salt to their dogs and check out Jerry's! The food was good, the organization was not.

Also, for those who put on A Taste of Ladera, I understand about your entrance fees. I understand about having to pay for food. I do, I completely get it. But A Taste is just that... a taste, not a whole meal. I think you should do tierd wrist bands and have an entrance fee plus 5 kids rides, plus 5 taste/drink tickets for $30, or entrance plus kids rides plus 10 tastes for $50, etc. The taste should be like a Costco sized taste, not a whole meal. I wanted to taste all of Ladera but my tummy can't hold a whole meal for all the restaurants represented (despite my size which I'm desperately trying to boogie box away)

Boogie box rocks! I try to work out twice a week. I really haven't changed how I eat (in fact it's probably gotten worse since First Class Pizza opened). I've lost 10 pounds and 4 inches in my bust, waist and hips in a month. So go boogie box people. It's fun and even uncoordinated people can do it! They have a free trial so go try before you committ!