Public Service Announcement....MAKE THIS DISH!

This was so amazing...here is the link to the recipe and below are my pictures as I made it tonight...SO DELICIOUS!

hottest July ever!

This summer has gone by so quickly! I'll be back in class in less than a month and I feel like I just had finals!
In June (since I last blogged) I attended one of my best friend's weddings, she is my "little sis" in our sorority and I can't believe she's all grown up and married now! The entire bridal party did a "design with wine" painting Friday....mine is completely heinous and will be hung nowhere except in the trash. The rehearsal dinner and wedding were absolutely gorgeous! I didn't get a lot of pictures at the wedding, I was too busy having fun, but here are a few shots from such a great weekend with PC friends!

Thursday party at the Lazy Goat, Greenville, SC

Anna, the lovely bride Katie, and myself

Reception

All the PC Alums at the wedding!

Before such a great wedding weekend, I drove down to Charleston to visit my friend Becca and her new "dog baby," Bruce...he was quite the camera ham. But I enjoyed spending time with one of my close childhood friends :)

Since my weekends away from home, I have become quite the movie buff...in the last week I have watched,

and yes I do realize it is only Wednesday...we are switching to U-Verse from Charter and they can't come out until September 2nd...hope I don't run out of movies! If anyone needs a movie synopsis, you know who to call. After getting faster internet installed this afternoon {yay} I went blog hopping like crazy! Which is when I stumbled upon this awesome way to create curls, with no heat at all! Here are my before pictures, will post the curls tomorrow.

And the current food rage that is sweeping my friends, is a chocolate chip pizza recipe I figured out! I grew up eating at Pizza Inn, and the only thing that really drew me for their sub par pizza was their "pizzerts," classy, I know. But in all honesty, the chocolate chip pizza is awesomeeeeeee but Lord knows what they put in it to make it taste so delish...well NOW I can tell you what is in it! I figured out this recipe and it tastes identical to theirs. Go to the store, buy the ingredients and make this now. Trust me.

1 18 ounce box yellow cake mix (DO NOT make the cake as directed)
2 sticks melted unsalted butter
1 package of mini chocolate chips
1 refrigerated thin crust Pillsbury pizza dough can

Grab a baking sheet or pizza pan, grease if needed, form pizza dough on pan, square, circular, it all tastes the same. Melt butter. Mix melted butter with cake mix, don't over mix, lumps are okay! Mix in chocolate chips to your desire. Spread mixture onto uncooked pizza dough. Cook at 400 degrees for about 10-13 minutes, I take it out when dough is starting to turn golden, while still gooey in the middle. Enjoy!

...Have a great Thursday everyone!

Fried Pickles!

Ever have a craving for a certain item from a restaurant but you don't want to go anywhere? This is me most of the time...except for tonight! I decided to attempt my own fried pickles...they were great! Messy to make but really easy! I love fried pickles any way, spears, chips, whatever! I decided to make the chip version tonight but we have a new deep fryer so I will try spears later this summer.

It looks like there are two different types of fried pickles, and that's because as I started doing the milk-flour-egg-cornmeal, they were a lot thicker than I like, so I tried just milk and flour, and I liked those mucho better!

To make them I got hamburger dill chips, 2 for 1, who's the lucky girl?!..Whole milk, all purpose flour, 2 eggs and cornmeal. Again, I preferred the milk and flour dusted more so than what is traditionally done. I also have a strong preference when it comes to ranch dressing. I love the thinner kind, Majestic Grill in Charleston had the absolute best ranch dressing, but sadly they closed the year after I moved from Chucktown....second place goes to Naturally Fresh Ranch, it's really good!

Hope everyone is having a good Tuesday so far!

In your kitchen...

What can you NOT live without? A specific tool? You're favorite cooking dish?

I always find myself staring in the cooking tools aisle (especially in Marshalls) thinking, I know I NEED something, but what was it!? For my birthday last year, I got a Williams Sonoma gift card, and went nuts in the cooking accessory section...and still, I feel like I need more! If I had all the money to spend on things like this, I would get these knives..

However, I stick more to buying the cheaper things like a garlic press, which is still on my wishlist, and new measuring cups and spoons, and a mortar and pestle. Unfortunately, and luckily for my bank account, we don't have a store in Spartanburg, so Greenville is where I have to venture. I just love that store! And they give you samples! Sur la Table is equally awesome, and a tad cheaper, but the closest one of those is in Charlotte, boooo!

And speaking of Sur la Table, a few years ago, I bought this little lovely in the impulse section they so cleverly place beside the registers...

...it's primary purpose is to prevent pots from boiling over, but then I was looking online and saw something that looked identical that you put inside the brown sugar bags to prevent it from hardening...and decided to stick the pot minder into my own brown sugar supply...and let me tell you, it works like a charm! I have not had one ball of rock hard sugar since! I think it must soak up the moisture that seeps out of the brown sugar, but whatever it does, I love it! This is the actual brown sugar ceramic stone

In my kitchen I cannot live without my nesting bowls, whisk, cheap bamboo spoon set, silicon baster, spatula, potato masher/tomato masher, and micro grater, just to name a few :)

What are your favorite things in your kitchen?

In my fridge right now, I'm loving a new flavor of Naked juice I hadn't tried yet, it's reduced calorie tropical, it tastes so refreshing and isn't as thick as the others, which I like

...I also picked up some of the best pickles I have ever had this weekend at Lake Jocassee, they are from a little gas station/grocery store right near the lake...SO GOOD!

Happy Eating!!!

SLACKER!

I'm disappointed in myself for not blogging in so long...and I have had so many amazing food experiences in the last few months...now I guess I can lump them all together! First, we traveled down to Charleston for a week to visit with friends and get some sun and sand! We ate at all of our fav's and threw in some new ones as well! The most memorable one being Bowen's Island, I knew I wanted a TON of oysters and from what I heard on travel channel it was the place to be. It was ZERO frill, eat as many til you pop oysters, as well as crab cakes, fried shrimp and fish, etc...ALL good. It was our last day down there, and it was the perfect ending to such a fun week. The view and sunset were amazing...

Heaps and heaps of shucked oyster shells..

I LOVE this sign for some reason, it was in such an odd place to be in front of the screen door, plywood restaurant that I had to take a picture, which now lives on my bathroom wall :)


Earlier that day we ate brunch at Hominy Grill, which isn't my favorite, but Poogan's Porch wasn't serving brunch on Friday and I was super depressed, so on to the next. I got eggs over easy and their awesome double cut bacon, but I mean, how can you screw that up?

During our mini-vacay we also ate at Coast, my all time favorite seafood restaurant down in Charleston. We started with their crab dip which was, as you can see...awesome


Sadly, I didn't take a before picture...we were hungry

Mike had their Raw Bar Sampler, in which we tried the baby octopus ceviche...I could have eaten an entire plate of it.


I ordered the Crab Encrusted Tilapia with Red Pepper Sauce, it was really good, I probably could have done without the sauce, but don't get me wrong, I still devoured it!

(Apologies for the sub-par quality of the iphone camera)

That same night we attempted to get reservations for Husk, because I have heard awesome things about their food, but they didn't have a reservation until 9:45 and the sunburn I was rockin' was not waiting that long to eat!...Coast was definitely not a let down though!

Some other restaurants we revisited were of course, Moe's Downtown Tavern, old stomping ground when I worked/lived in Charleston and still crave their BLT all the time when I'm home, Andolini's pizza, who has the BEST salad ever made, Basil of course, where we tried new menu items! The 3 flavor fish, was TO. DIE. FOR., and we walked to Magnolia's for some pecan pie--amazing.

(After reading this post, so far, I am SO glad I do not own a scale, Lord knows how much I gained on our tour de fatty in Chucktown.) WORTH IT

The first day down there we went to McCrady's and had some of their bar food...and one of them was very out of the ordinary for such a nice place!


that's right...sour cream and onion pork rinds, and I must say, out of the 2 times I have had pork rinds, these were considerably better!

We also tried the beef belly lettuce wraps with kimchee...a little too much of a fatty-texture for me, but tasted really good! We also had their pickles, which consisted of a lot of different veggies like okra, cucumbers, and some others that I cannot remember now...still great though!


That's about all that stands out from that trip! I was sad I couldn't get my Poogan's Porch fix, but we'll be back soon.

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On a totally separate note, for my 24th birthday I got a gorgeous Kitchen Aid mixer, in copper *swoon* and Mike's family got me the pasta attachments! I can't wait to try making my own pasta!


For now I have used it pretty much for chocolate chip cookies, which is the best recipe I have ever made!


and lots and lots of cream cheese frosting...this is what happens when you double an enormous recipe...

Sometime this week I plan on making these delicious looking bars, they are called "Talkin Crack Bars" and I stumbled upon them on a blog tonight, they look beyond good. They are also good for you too, bonus!

One dessert I am obsessed with is baklava...I always put making it on my own, in the very back corner of my mind, thinking it was too monotonous for my ADD self, but alas, I made it, and it was THE BEST THING I think I have ever made...in the dessert department anyway.

They were absolutely everything I had hoped for :)

Since we seemed to be grilling out a lot during the cold first few months, we shook things up and made our own version of "Juicy Lucy's" that we saw on the travel channel.




Muenster cheese, yes please!

Looking forward to hot days and cold pools!

Much Love!