Happy New Year!

Happy 2011 my dear friends and thank you for paying attention to my little world of food!  It's such a passion of mine and I love very minute of it.  This holiday season has been so wonderful baking and spending time with all the people I care about. 


I expect 2011 to be another tremendous year of food for me.  I hope to grow in my food techniques, expand my creativity and design of food, and make it more serious then the hobby it has been.  Expect more goodies my friends.  I will be eating more healthy but it shouldn't stop my baking.  :)


New year's eve was a great start!  My friends Hamed and Pascale hosted a night of fabulous food, friends, and good times.  I made the desserts for the night of Red Velvet Cupcakes and Pecan Cranberry Bars.   Other folks brought some delicious food and of course Hamed cooked some mean meat and had the drinks flowing.


Red Velvet Cupcakes

Pecan Cranberry Bars

Veggie Crudites and Dip

Caesar Salad

Caprese Salad
I love the little cheese.  Always find the cheese is a bit much in this salad so the mini ones were perfect

Spanikopeta
I always buy these frozen so was good to try some home made ones.

Chicken Wings

Taziki Yogurt Sauce

Lamb
Sometimes I wish I could eat meat.

Veggies
Always thinking of of us veggies and vegans.

Steamed Rice

Oatmeal Cookies

Hamed the gracious host cooking away!

Petros in Manhattan Beach

A Nice Find...

On my last trip to LA, near our hotel and the beach was this little shopping center that was once a pottery factory. It's a nice little place with a variety of eateries and mix of local and chain shops. I went there for a little spa at this Triology spa and next to it was this Greek place. Very modern, very California....I really enjoyed the CA cuisine of the fruit and veggies during that trip. I think I had tomatoes in almost every meal there.  We went back to this place twice.

Here are some items...     
               
Side Dips served with Pita

Tomato, Watermelon, Feta Salad (my favorite)

Arugula Salad

Spanokopedia

Gyro and Fries

Manhattan Beach neighborhood is such a beautiful area. I guess this is where they have all the pro volleyball tournaments each summer. I need to plan a girls trip for another visit.  The life gaurds were really hot too. :)  


If you ever go to LA, please check out this place...

Palate Party

Last weekend, I co-hosted a Palate Party. What is a Palate Party you ask? We ripped it off from a Top Chef quick fire competition. It's where you have a competition to see who can guess the most ingredients....essentially who has the best "palate"?

Marisela and Soung were my co host.

Every attendee had to bring 1-2 ingredient, this way everyone can play and have a shoe in to guess what they brought. As soon as they walked in the door, they had paper bag to put their ingredient and write their name so we could track. We had 3 prizes...first prize for most # of guesses, another prize for person who brought the ingredient that could not be guessed, and third was host choice.

We did in 2 rounds. Girls round and boys round. We only had so many blind folds. As you can see, we got creative with this. Although, we swear some people (Dan!) took advantage and could see through their blind fold. Each round had 5 tastings.

People brought creative stuff. We had...pears, tamrind sauce, vegimite (yuk), apples, pears, veggie dogs (which people hated the most), cactus (a good one!), pepitas (mine), nutella (yum), cooked squash, and more that I can't recall. It was fun!!!

Us, co host each made 2 appetizers or so....

Marisela made salmon fritters, cheese plate, and eggplant bruschetta

Soung made savory bread pudding and cookies

I made watermelon/tomato salad, spinach dip, and peach foster with ice cream.

We are definitely doing this again but going to rethink how to run the competition...maybe Family Feud style next time.