The PhotoHunt theme this week is “Average”

I know – doesn’t sound like a promising start to our Project Yum Yum cook-along, does it?

Let me ‘splain. This is Week One of Project Yum Yum – hosted by my friend, Elle of Elle’s New England Kitchen – a (hopefully) weekly challenge to cook and eat healthier by incorporating at least one vegan meal a week into our normally carnivorous diets, by cooking out of Lauren Ulm’s book, Vegan Yum Yum. Vegan Yum Yum is based on Lauren’s blog of the same name, and if you’re interested in trying some of these recipes yourselves, you can either purchase the book (very reasonable on Amazon) or visit her blog.

This is not the first recipe I’ve made out of this book, but it’s the only one I thought to photograph, so in the interest of time, this will be my “Free Week” post: Pepita Fettucine With Spinach & Cranberries:

Honestly? I would have to rate this dish as Average (hence the PhotoHunt theme reference, and yes, I am stretching it a little. Again.).

It tasted good, but we found the cranberries in this a little overwhelming. And while we appreciate the juxtaposition of sweet and savory flavors in food, here, the sweet part kind of overtook the savory. Otherwise, we really enjoyed the pepitas (pumpkin seeds) and spinach, and this was very quick and easy to put together.

And yes, I know that’s not fettucine. It’s actually whole-grain thin spaghetti. It’s what I had in the house, okay?

Let me repeat – I’ve cooked about 6 or 7 things out of Vegan Yum Yum so far, and we’ve loved everything so far. This is the first recipe in this book that didn’t knock us over and that we found merely Average.

Can’t wait to find out what our first assigned dish is!

The PhotoHunt theme this week is “Spotted”

When I saw the PhotoHunt theme this week is “Spotted”, the first thing that crossed my mind was the Spot-Breasted Oriole.

These birds are native to Mexico and Central America, but because of their vivid plumage, many were caught and brought to the U.S. to be caged birds in the 1950′s and 1960′s. Many of those, however, escaped and began to populate South Florida. Today, if you live in a suburban neighborhood and have shrubbery that produce berries, you might see one of these beautiful bright songbirds with their spotted breasts.

I had a family group visit my yard – the top photo is a young, immature Oriole, who’s just starting to come into his spots. The photo below is a mature bird in his full spotted glory.

Happy weekend, everyone!

The PhotoHunt theme this week is “Balanced”

Two weekends ago, it was absofreakinglutely freezing here. In Miami, of all places!

My cats were indoors, the plants were as protected as we could arrange. I did worry a little about the birds who visit the feeders in my backyard, but most of all I worried about the little hummingbird who’s been a guest in and around my yard since November. I woke up that Saturday morning to see this:

Poor little guy sat there for what seemed like forever, balanced on the hummingbird feeder, without moving. After a few minutes, he started to move his head around, and began to feed. Normally, I never see him at the feeders, but this seems to be the day he discovered them. Even the hummingbirds decided it was better to not have to work so hard for their food, and the feeders gave him the most bang for his buck. Or bill. Whatever.

After awhile, I was relieved to see him fly up to balance on the telephone wire. I didn’t notice till I started editing these photos, that he seems to be picking at something up there.

If you look very closely, you can see that he has a bit of spiderweb in his beak – and no doubt a spider along with it. Hummingbirds don’t survive on nectar and sugar water all day. They require protein, too, and it usually comes in the form of tiny spiders and insects.

I came to realize that the little guy must have just been groggy – coming out of torpor, a state in which the hummingbird lowers his body functions and goes into a kind of short hibernation, in order to avoid having to feed at night, or in order to survive cold.

Heck of a balancing act, eh?

I’m combining my PhotoHunt post this week with my January Mac Tweets Challenge! And the PhotoHunt theme this week is “Jiggly”!

For those of you unfamiliar, Mac Tweets is made up of people all over the world mesmerized and obsessing over a little French cookie called the macaron. For January, the Mac Tweets theme is, well, “New.” Do something new with your macs – something you’ve never tried before. How do the two themes, “New” and “Jiggly” go together in this post?

Well, for the “Jiggly” part, I made marmalade. Ruby Red Grapefruit Marmalade, to be exact. I’ve never made marmalade before, in fact, I’ve never canned anything before! More about the marmalade next week, when I post about another new group I’ve joined, the “Can Jam”.

So this is very, very New for me. Oh, and that marmalade is pretty Jiggly.

These are Ginger Almond Macarons filled with my Ruby Red Grapefruit Marmalade. The other New aspect to my macs this time, is color. I have to admit that I was inspired by Elissa of 17 and Baking’s Striped Peppermint Meringues, last month, and have been itching to try something like her technique with my macs. Well, no time like the present!

After mixing up my batter, I dabbed paste food coloring in pink and yellow – to hint at the pink grapefruit (deep pink on the inside, yellow on the outside) – randomly on the inside of my pastry bag. I then loaded up the pastry bag with my batter, and piped my macs, getting these random, swirly effects on my shells.

Yes, I know I probably over-mixed the batter a bit, and probably piped a bit too large – note the petite “ballerina feet.” I think they came out pretty cool. But then, that’s just me.

(Are you out there, Casey? I think I’m going to have some fodder for you pretty soon!)

The PhotoHunt theme this week is “Lick.” I’m sure I don’t know why.

This squirrel is licking up some water from the birdbath.

It’s not Perriet, but it’ll do.

Sly is licking his lips after a treat.

Please, Mom! May I have some more?

Happy New Year, Everyone!

My Framboise Brownie Cookies are included in Gourmet Girl’s Holiday Cookie Crawl. If you’d like to vote for me, you can click here. I’d appreciate it! Thanks!

Before my PhotoHunt post, I’d like any of you who are either in the Phillipines, or who have contacts in the Phillipines, to see the following message and pass it on to your friends. Maybe in this weird, roundabout kind of way, we can reunite a lost pet with its family: Philippine Animal Welfare Society (PAWS) – MISSING DOG NAMED: FERGIE animaladvocates.multiply.com

Fergie went missing last Saturday morning Dec 19, 2009. She’s last seen in the area of Gen. Ordonez(Molave) St. Marikina Heights, Marikina City. Our family is hoping and praying that she’s in good hands and we can still recover her. Her adopted brothers and sister are waiting for her to come home.

Now, on with the This is my Twelfth and final post for The Twelve Days of Cookies project, baking twelve recipes from the Bon Appetít Holiday Cookie-a-Day collection. As further connection to Twelve, I baked them at Twelve o’clock midnight, for exactly Twelve minutes! Come on – it doesn’t get much more twelve-er than that!

Christmas Cutouts with Vanilla Icing

Ingredients:

Cookies

• 3 cups all purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 large egg
• 2 tablespoons sour cream
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• Additional sugar

Icing

• 4 cups (or more) sifted powdered sugar (sifted, then measured)
• 3 tablespoons (or more) whole milk
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• Colored sugar crystals, sprinkles, and/or decors

Preparation:

For cookies:
Sift first 3 ingredients into medium bowl. Using electric mixer, beat butter and 1 cup sugar in large bowl to blend well. Add egg, sour cream, and vanilla; beat 1 minute. Beat in dry ingredients in 2 additions until just blended. Gather dough together; divide in half. Flatten each half into disk; wrap in plastic and chill 1 hour. (Can be made 1 day ahead. Keep chilled. Soften dough slightly at room temperature before rolling out.)

Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper. Sprinkle work surface and top of dough disks with additional sugar. Working with 1 disk at a time, roll out dough to 1/4-inch thickness (dough will be very soft). Using assorted 2- to 3-inch cookie cutters, cut out cookies. Transfer to prepared sheets, spacing 1 inch apart. Gather scraps and roll out on sugared surface; cut out more cookies. Repeat until all dough is used. Chill all cookies on baking sheets at least 15 minutes and up to 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 350°F. Bake cookies, 1 sheet at a time, until light golden at edges, about 12 minutes. Transfer cookies to racks and cool completely.

For icing:
Combine 4 cups powdered sugar, 3 tablespoons milk, and vanilla in medium bowl. Stir until icing is well blended, smooth, and spreadable, adding more milk by teaspoonfuls if too thick or more sugar by tablespoonfuls if too thin. Using small icing spatula or table knife, spread thin layer of icing atop each cookie. If using colored sugar crystals, sprinkle over cookies before icing sets. If using food-safe colored markers, let icing dry about 30 minutes; decorate cookies as desired. (Can be made 3 days ahead. Store airtight between sheets of waxed paper at room temperature.)

*My Notes:

To begin, I will repeat for the umpteenth time: I am not a food stylist! Nowhere on my résumé does it say “food stylist”. Why I chose a decorated cut-out cookie for my twelfth post in this series, is absofreakinglutely beyond me. Call me a masochist.

This is another very soft cut-out cookie, but at least they warn you this time, and it softens up out of the fridge in just a couple of minutes.

Seeing as Christmas is over, I didn’t feel compelled to make Holiday shapes, opting instead for the cow and the moose. These are large cutters, so I took Alton Brown’s advice and, using a spatula, transferred them to the cookie sheet with the cutters still in place, lifting them off afterward. This is a pretty smart maneuver to use with any cut-out cookies that might go wrong on you in the process. Thanks, Alton!

The cow and the moose, by the way, represent (very) little private jokes with my husband, going back to our trips to Ireland and western Canada, respectively. No, I’m not going to share them with you – you already think I’m an idiot. Why make it worse?

By the next time we meet, I will be another year older, and so will the Earth! My most heartfelt and sincere best wishes for you and yours – Have a Happy, Healthy and Peaceful New Year!

Please visit my partners in holiday baking, below, and see what they’ve got in store for you. Bedeebedeebedee, that’s all, folks!

Andrea of Andrea’s Recipes (honorary member and our founder but not participating this year)
Claire of The Barefoot Kitchen
Courtney of Coco Cooks
Di of Di’s Kitchen Notebook
Judy of No Fear Entertaining
Kelly of Sass & Veracity
Michelle of Big Black Dog
RJ of Flamingo Musings (hey! that’s me!)
Sandy of At the Baker’s Bench
Tiffany of The Nesting Project

Welcome back for Day 5 of The 12 Days of Cookies, and since it’s Saturday, it’s also PhotoHunt Day. The theme for the PhotoHunt this week, is “Curved.” I think you’ll agree that these Hazelnut Linzer cookies fit the bill!

In case you’re wondering what’s going on, I was invited to participate in a project to bake and blog about 12 cookies in 12 days (December 1-12), choosing from the 2008 Bon Appétit Holiday Cookie-a-Day collection. We were free to choose any 12 cookies from the 31 recipes in the collection, in any order and compare notes. You didn’t know I had it in me, did you?

On with the cookies, and the PhotoHunt!

First the recipe, then my notes:

Hazelnut Linzer Cookies with Blackberry Jam

Preparation

Notes:

If you’ve stopped by to see the first four installments of this series, you won’t be surprised to learn that here’s another really soft dough for a cut-out cookie. In fact, you’re probably pretty sick of reading me bitch about it. Fine. Not another word. You can’t say you weren’t warned. I’ll just say this: Keep the bench flour close. You’ll need it. And when cutting out the tops of the cookies, take them to the cookie sheet before cutting out the “Linzer eye” and cut it out in place.

This is a very tender cookie, a nice way of saying “more delicate than it looks.” It’s very crispy, but in my opinion, might have benefited from using the whole eggs, rather than just the yolks, to give them a little more backbone. As it were.

Yes, Linzers are traditionally round, although the “eye” can be virtually any shape. But, you know, I have the cutters in various sizes, so why not use them?

Also? I didn’t have any blackberry jam, so I substituted lingonberry. That should be the tip-off that we spent some time in the Ikea store awhile back.

Please visit my partners in holiday baking, below, and see what they’ve got in store for you. They’re not PhotoHunting, but their photos are guaranteed to make you drool! And don’t forget to come back tomorrow for the sixth installment!

Andrea of Andrea’s Recipes (honorary member and our founder but not participating this year)
Claire of The Barefoot Kitchen
Courtney of Coco Cooks
Di of Di’s Kitchen Notebook
Judy of No Fear Entertaining
Kelly of Sass & Veracity
Michelle of Big Black Dog
RJ of Flamingo Musings (hey! that’s me!)
Sandy of At the Baker’s Bench
Tiffany of The Nesting Project

The PhotoHunt theme this week is “Birds”

Totally cheating, I’m combining my PhotoHunt and Nature Notes posts, again this week. Well, the subject’s pretty much the same – Birds.

Things have been, and continue to be, hectic around here, lately. But I was able to steal a little time to enjoy the increasingly better weather we’ve been having. Of course, good things never seem to last very long – temps are supposed to hover around 88º this weekend. Hardly inspiring the feelings of fall and upcoming holidays!

Still, we’ve had some new visitors:

The Gray Catbird has returned to enjoy snacking at the Beautyberry.

And this lousy picture is of the male Painted Bunting who appeared – if only for a couple of days before apparently moving on to Miz Shoes’ place, several miles away. I was very excited to see the male bunting! I’ve only ever had females come to my feeder in previous years, and have only ever seen one male, years ago, from a distance! So, what happens? The breeze comes up, and it’s nearly twilight, and all I get is a fuzzy image. But I don’t care. I had a male bunting!

In other news, three – count ‘em three – hummingbirds showed up at the pavonia and mystery shrubs! At the same time! For us, that’s more than exciting – it’s incredible! If they stick around, I’ll try to get some new hummingbird photos – not so easy to do, since they seem to prefer the flowers to the feeders.

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Michelle at Rambling Woods is hosting Nature Notes: Signs of the Season, a weekly meme dedicated to challenging us to take a moment out of our hectic lives and notice the seasonal changes – large and small – taking place in nature all around each of us, in our own little corners of the world. Please visit Michelle and all the other participants, and maybe take some of your own Nature Notes!

The PhotoHunt theme this week is “Music”

Another subject that I always enjoy showing you, is the Hindu wedding that MJ and I attended a couple of years ago.

Before the ceremony, the groom and his family and friends are led in a procession to the temple by musicians playing a drum called a “Tavil” and a double-reeded instrument called a “Nadaswaram”. The Nadaswaram is considered a very auspicious instrument, and is generally played at temples and weddings. As always, please click on the images for a much better look!

*Note that the groom here should be riding an elephant, or at the very least, a horse. For various reasons, among which I believe is that he was chicken, that didn’t happen.*

Just a quick note: If you have honored me by adding me to your blogroll or bookmarked Flamingo Musings, please take a moment to update your link by removing the “blogspot.” from the URL. That’s right! I’m a dot com, now! Any link to Flamingo Musings should now read: http://flamingomusings.com Thanks!

Where has the week gone?!?

The PhotoHunt theme this week is “Veterans/Military”

This is kind of embarrassing for me. Anyone who knows us, knows that my husband is a military history buff, and that somewhere in this house are his collection of military medals and even his great-uncle Frank’s diary from when he was first stationed on a U.S. Navy ship in World War II. Somewhere. But, of course, things get shifted, moved, then moved again, and before you know it, all you can say is that you know they’re here. Somewhere.

So the best I can come up with at the moment are rockets. Rockets from the early days of the U.S. space program. All of the early astronauts – and most of the present-day ones – are U.S. Air Force officers, for the very reason that the space program was considered a military program. You should, of course, feel free to click on the images for a better look. They’re pretty cool, actually.

Hopefully, by Wednesday, which is Veterans’ Day here in the U.S. and Remembrance Day in other countries, I will be able to locate some of these items and write a proper post. But in the meantime, I offer these as a humble tribute to our men and women in the Armed Forces, and say to them: Thank you for your service!