I Am... Newcastle Brown Ale Pulled Duck Nachos
When I think of beer, I think of nachos. And nachos are one of my all time favorite food groups. I've been known to make people restaurant hop in search of nachos. One year, my dearest friends and I had the most surreal Christmas nacho experience. We were in a hip (okay, it wasn't that hip) part of town with tons of restaurants and none of them had nachos. We must've gone to 4 or 5 places, looking at menus, until we finally found a place by the water. It wasn't the kind of joint that we'd typically visit, but at that point we were all fiending for nachos, so we went in.
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I Am... Chicken Recipe Round Up
Mike and I are home from our travels and I couldn't be happier. As much as I love traveling, there's something so heart-warming about coming home. We just decorated the tree and are now in the midst of the busy Christmas season. Usually at this time of year, we're out for dinner a lot, with friends and family. If we are at home, I'm usually making something quick and easy, like chicken. Here's a little chicken recipe round up for all of you who are looking for something delicious. Hope your December is going well so far!
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I Am... 2015 Holiday Giveaway
It's giveaway time! It's a massive one guys and I'm pretty excited! For the past week or so I've been featuring recipes using Staub, Shun, Cuttingboard.com, Finex, and Kitchen Aid and now's the time to finally bundle everything up and give it all away. Well, not literally, because you're actually going to win new items, so there's no real bundling, just figurative bundling.
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I Am... Festive Caramel Corn and Rice Krispie Mix
My family isn't huge on sweet treats, but Christmas time is treat time. We have a few favorites: an incredibly buttery butter pound cake that smells insanely delicious while baking, melt-in-your-mouth short bread cookies, and caramel corn, or as my mom likes to call it, poppycock. The caramel corn/poppycock is a fairly new addition to our sweet treat list. My mom got the recipe from a co-worker and I remember the first time we made it, it was more candied nuts than popcorn, mostly because my mom loves nuts.
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I Am... Mini Puff Pastry Apple Rose Recipe
Do you guys ever see stuff on Pinterest or Facebook and become obsessed? It happens to me quite a lot, probably because I look at so many food photos. But it's rare that I keep thinking about it and thinking about it until the point where I actually make it. I have so many recipes tagged that I want to make, but because I'm always acquiring new ideas and recipes, I hardly ever actually make the things I intend to. Well, that changed with these little puff pastry apple roses.
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I Am... Slow Braised Japanese Chashu Pork
I get absurdly nostalgic around the holidays, even for things that happened just a year or two ago. I feel just as much for the memories formed just a short while ago (as short as last week!) as I feel for cherished, barely remembered childhood memories. I'm the sentimental sort – I cry at happy/sad commercials, I'm constantly taking photos in order to commemorate the everyday, and I am always reminiscing, sometimes even in the moment.
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I Am... The Ultimate Meat-Lovers Pizza
Happy December! I'm so excited it's finally here: the perfect month to cozy up, listen to Christmas music, and eat pizza. When I was a kid I had an obsession with pepperoni pizza. The thing is, I didn't eat it all the time – nope, I was obsessed with it because I never got to eat it. My parents' pizza of choice was always Hawaiian. And while I loved (and still love) the combination of savory ham and sweet pineapple on pizza, I wanted a taste of the unknown. I wanted what I didn't have.
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I Am... 2015 Holiday Gift Guide
Happy Friday! It's the day after Thanksgiving and that means it's time for leftovers and the start of the holiday season! My eyes get extra sparkly right around now because it really is the most wonderful time of the year. Just a couple more days until the beginning of my all time favorite holiday season – the season of food indulgence and gift giving. I’m obsessed with gift giving and I really really love gift guides so, here we go, these are my picks for 2015.
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I Am... Sweet and Sour Crispy Chicken Strips
Mike and I spent the last week or so in Iceland and I'm completely smitten. I feel like this country has it all: gorgeously fluffy sheep, black sand beaches, glaciers, and an increased chance of seeing the aurora. We had been kicking around the idea of visiting Iceland for while and I'm so happy that we finally did. It's otherworldly here.
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I Am... Sunday Brunch: Tuna Melt Waffles
Are you guys fans of tuna? I used to be obsessed with tuna fish sandwiches in elementary school, until someone made fun of my smelly lunch. I was pretty sensitive as a kid, so after that I only ever ate tuna sandwiches at home. But, it wasn't really too much of a problem, because tuna sandwiches are really so much better as tuna melts! Who doesn't love tuna and melty cheese on toasted bread?
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I Am... Thanksgiving Turkey Five Ways
I know this guy whose family used to eat a turkey dinner every month. I'm talking oven roasted turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, the entire works. He used to complain about it, but it sounded (still sounds) like heaven to a turkey lover like me! But, now that I think about it a little more, it probably wasn't a traditional turkey dinner at all. It's a lot more likely that they ate it turkey rice style, a popular regional Taiwanese way of cooking turkey. To them, turkey didn't equal Thanksgiving the way it does in North America. To them, turkey was delicious, regardless of the time of year, probably because it was a taste of home.
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I Am... Sweet and Savory Cheddar Cheese Muffins
Sometimes I see little kids at the mall with their parents and it brings me right back to when my mom used to take me along with her to run errands. I used to be bored out of my mind. I didn't at all understand why or how my mom could spend what seemed to me hours, picking out fruits and vegetables – or worse yet – household stuff. There was a silver lining though – errands always ended with a trip to the library (yes, I was a nerdy kid) and a stop for cheddar cheese muffins.
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