Recipes

Tastes of summer.

Do you ever get a craving with the season change? The warm weather and beginning of summer has had me craving lemonade, ice cream, and sweet fresh blueberries. For Father’s Day last weekend I pulled out my grandmother’s blueberry cobbler recipe, and it just tastes of summer. It’s so simple to make and it’s a real crowd-pleaser — we practically licked the inside of the dish clean! Scroll down for the recipe.

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Grandma’s Blueberry Cobbler

  • 1 cup of flour
  • 1 stick of butter
  • 1 1/2cups of sugar (divided)
  • 1 tsp  of baking powder
  • 1/2 cup of milk
  • 2 cups of blueberries
  • 1 tbsp of lemon juice

Melt butter in casserole. In a bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, 1 cup of sugar, and combine with milk. Pour batter of butter when melted.

In a small saucepan, combine 1/2 cup of sugar, blueberries, and lemon juice. Simmer on stove for 10 minutes. Pour blueberry mixture  over batter (but do not stir). Bake for 45 minutes at 350 degrees or until golden brown.

Recipes

Grapefruit Gin Fizz.

I was at a new grocery store last weekend couldn’t pass up the delicious looking fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice on display — and being the healthy gal that I am, immediately started thinking about which liquor I should mix it with.  The debate concluded with a tie, gin and champagne — and the Grapefruit Gin Fizz was born. Ready for this recipe? Start with 2 oz of gin over ice, add 6 oz of fresh squeezed grapefruit juice, top with a splash of St Germain and finish with a champagne float and  garnish with a slice of fresh grapefruit. Striped straws are optional, but highly recommended (and let’s talk about how cute my new straw dispenser is — an amazing wedding gift from a cousin that knows me really well.) Bottom’s up, it’s Friday! 

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Travel

The Viceroy Palm Springs.

This particular road-trip stop is special enough to get its own post. We had a loose itinerary for our trip, we knew our general route, and when we needed to be in LA for our flight back, but everything else was a spontaneous plan. And when we ended up making it California with an extra day to spare, we decided to spend a night in Palm Springs — using the HotelTonight app we struck some amazing luck and got a room at the Viceroy Palm Springs. We joked upon arrival that I was checking-in to instagram heaven, it was one of the most picture-perfect places I have seen (with credit to Kelly Wearstler’s design). I had to be dragged out of the pool at check-out time — it was so hard to leave!

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Travel

Road Trip Eats.

I shared a bunch of honeymoon pictures yesterday, but this particular type of trip called for a follow-up post with a focus on the food. We pretty much ate with abandon for two whole weeks, (with thanks to my trusty Food Network app we hit up lots of hidden gems). Chicago was all about the pizza, I wanted to buy tickets for a pizza walking tour, and when I found out they were sold out we decided to do a self guided version. We hit up some Guy Fieri approved drive-ins, and had some of the best fajitas I’ve ever tasted in Moab. And we tried some things that were almost beyond my imagine: a breakfast pot pie in Denver, a sweet pea and corn grilled cheese in Cleveland, and the winner of best road trip find: macaroni and cheese with a homemade cinnamon applesauce to dip the pasta in. You have to eat it to believe it.

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Travel

The Honeymoon.

Trying to narrow down pictures to share from this honeymoon was nearly impossible, I want to sit down and show every single person I know all of the photographs I took on our two-week  adventure. When we first told people we were going to drive cross-country for our honeymoon, we got lots of ‘well, if your marriage can last that, I guess it’s meant to be’ comments. I’m happy to say we proved the naysayers wrong, we’re still married! And we had so, so, so much fun on our trip, we saw so many amazing places and landmarks. We took in a game at Wrigley when we were in Chicago, we wandered around the Nelson Atkins museum in Kansas City, saw a concert at Red Rocks in Colorado, drove through Arches National Park in Moab, and hit up the strip in Las Vegas. After 3700 miles we hit the Pacific Ocean, coast to coast. It was a perfect adventure to start off life as husband and wife!

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Recipes

Summery weeknight eats.

While on our honeymoon last week (more on that to come, I have lots of pictures to share!) I was sunning myself by the pool at the Viceroy Palm Springs and perusing the lunch menu from  my lounge chair. I noticed a tasty sounding Mediterranean steak pita sandwich on the list, and though I wasn’t hungry at the time, I kept thinking about the combination long after we left. I attempted to recreate the dish for dinner this week: Grilled steak and red onions, seasoned with olive oil, salt and pepper on top of butter lettuce and chopped kalamata olives in a pita with a light aioli seasoned with lots of oregano and lemon zest. It was the perfect summery weeknight meal!

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Life

Rehearsal Dinner.

I’m dying to share pictures of the wedding, but in the meantime, I thought I’d share a few of the details from our rehearsal dinner. My lovely in-laws hosted a dinner at a waterfront restaurant near our wedding venue, and it was a perfect evening filled with all of my favorite things: fragrant peonies, gold polka-dot details, and lots and lots of nautical anchor motifs! Plus an amazing view out into the shipyards where our tasty dinner was freshly caught! Oh and did I mention the world’s best family and bridal party? DSC_0062DSC_0056

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Life

And we’re back.

And … we’re back. That is, if anyone is still reading this blog after my month-long hiatus! Life was busy over the past few weeks with things like getting married and heading out on a cross-country honeymoon. But I’m ready to get back into blog-mode and share all of the fun details that I’ve been storing up since. Stay tuned: tomorrow, a peek at our rehearsal dinner!

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Travel

Bachelorette Weekend.

The wedding festivities continue: in between seating charts and dress fittings I squeezed in an amazing weekend with my girlfriends in Newport, RI for my bachelorette party. My friends have mastered the planning of a successful girls weekend: we hit up a local winery, toured the vineyards, and had a decadent picnic after a wine tasting. We walked around Newport to do some shopping and take advantage of the preppy wares; and we topped the night off with some dancing and quite a few cocktails. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have to go through dozens of pictures to find a few ‘blog-appropriate’ versions to share. But hey, that’s what a bachelorette party is all about, right? Now that I’m nearly recovered from the debauchery we’re in the final countdown: just under 3 weeks ’til we say I do!

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Travel

San Francisco.

It seems almost like this was already months ago, but it was just last week that I spent a few days in San Francisco (my first time!) for work. I have to say, it may be one of my favorite cities I’ve ever visited. Of course it helped that right after stepping off the plane I made my way to the Ferry Building and discovered the macarons and sea-salted caramels at Miette; one bite and anyone would have fallen love! Another highlight of the trip? Playing tourist and seeing two equally important landmarks: the Golden Gate bridge and of course the row of painted ladies houses from the opening of Full House (a childhood dream come true seeing them in real life!).  I promise I got some work done while I was there too!

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