Coffee Cupcakes!!

Last night I stayed up late to make some coffee cupcakes for my sister. See, my sister graduated college a couple of weeks ago and we were to celebrate with homemade coffee cupcakes. (She is a coffee-holic.)But I was sick the whole week & weekend of her graduation and I never made them. But hey, at least she got some tiramasu from CPK that day. 

Anyhow, I was back at in my parent's hood and this time, toting the coffee cupcakes

Homemade Pizza and Breadsticks (and Marinara Sauce)

Not only did I make blueberries and cream cookies this weekend, I also made a really good pizza on Monday. This required some preparation on Sunday, but it was well worth it. Let me tell you about this pizza dough recipe. I've mentioned it before. It takes some patience, not in kneading the dough, but just time. Time and planning to make the dough the night before so it can be refrigerated and time again to allow the dough to rest and rise the next day. But it's well worth it and way better than Trader Joe's pizza dough (sorry TJ's, it's true!) and anything from a chain pizza place.

Blueberries and Cream Cookies

Hope you had a nice weekend! I sure did. I visited the MOCA's street art exhibit in downtown LA and also spent some time in Little Tokyo. On Sunday, I spent a lot of time cleaning our apartment floors (wooden floors are more work than carpet!) and then I experimented and made some blueberries and cream cookies.

Quick and Dirty Coconut Cream Pie

I've got to learn to take better pictures

I'm on a roll... 3 blog posts in one week... in one month in fact... crazy! This will be quick and dirty, just like my semi-recipe for coconut cream pie. In fact, you could argue and say it's not really a recipe and I'd probably agree. Jello pudding mix and graham crackers... who am I trying to fool? Well, what it lacks as a so called recipe, it makes up in easiness and creativity. Yes, creativity! I cleaned out our pantry on Sunday and what did I find?

Local Eats: Pepe's Mexican Food

Chicken Plate @ Pepe's

This is a quesadilla!

Place: Pepe's
Location: Several, but Jason and I used to frequent the Fullerton & Brea locations
Website: http://www.pepesmexicanfood.com/

Jason and I discovered Pepe's while living in Fullerton. At the time, our apartment was really close to a Pepe's and we would often drive by and think.... "hmmm... that place looks like it's either really bad or a whole in the wall that is actually really good." It was years before we tried it because we leaned toward the first statement. I don't know why weren't savvy enough to yelp anything back then, but we sure missed out.

NYC Eats!

Last month Jason and I took a real honest to goodness vacation.  Unfortunately work stress from the past month made it seem like I never took any vacation and this stresses me out. Seriously. But with less complaining, I offer to you a snap shot of all the meals Jason and I ate while on vacation in New York City. Everything is captured with

Product Review- Salad Spinner!

Alright, this may or may not be a new category. I like buying fun little kitchen gadgets, but my wallet & kitchen cabinets prefer I do otherwise. See, sometimes I buy things because they are cute, but then I never use them and they take up space and also waste my money. But.... there are other times when I find something so neat (and hopefully on sale or cheap!) that I thought it would be worth sharing.

For the longest time I wanted to buy a salad spinner... seriously. I did. However, the going price for one of these gadgets to dry off my lettuce leaves was around $20 bucks. And $20 bucks to dry off some leaves of lettuce is too pricey for me.

Enter... Ikea. Ikea with all it's cheap and fun goodness. Sometimes Ikea products are a little too cheap & break or don't work as promised. So when I found a salad spinner for the nice price of $2.99, I thought... too good to be true. But at $3, it was well worth the risk to find out. And wouldn't you know? It's spins and dries my lettuce leaves oh so nicely. It really beats eating soggy salads! I completely recommend adding this little gadget to your kitchen cabinets, especially if you are a salad eater.

Get your own @ Ikea