New Favorite Sandwich

On my last visit to Dubai I ordered a pretty delicious sandwich. I had a hunch that I could make it even better... and today, I believe I did.

Behold the Cucumber Avocado Pesto Sandwich.

The pesto on the sandwich in Dubai was a bit bland so I decided to make my own. This is the recipe I usually follow pretty loosely. It always turns out pretty tasty.

The bread was homemade too. I followed my usual recipe but added some herbs, nutrional yeast, and sunflower seeds.

Before you close up your sandwich, make sure you sprinkle on just a tiny bit of sea salt.

So good.

Kumquats

Kumquats are so beautiful... but so sour.

Anyone have any kumquat tips?

Cookies

The internet can be such a dangerous place. It only took one look at the photo in this post to make me remember I had leftover frosting in the fridge. I had to make my favorite cookies.

Vanilla refrigerator cookies with vanilla frosting are the best. What's your favorite cookie?

Pretty Sweet

Anyone sick of birthdays yet? Not me!


These cupcakes I baked for Molly's birthday turned out so pretty. I love the little swirls on top!

Carnival

or Adventures in Deep Frying

The birthday posting continues over here.

To celebrate a few birthdays last week, Hannah and I teamed up to transform our weekly dinner party into a carnival.

Planning the menu was a lot of fun, but eating it was even better.

We served an appetizer of popcorn then moved on to the main course of homemade corndogs, baked beans, and curly fries. To balance out the grease, a veggie tray was on hand as well. Drinks were customized sodas honoring the birthday girls (Sarah's Special Grenadine Soda and Molly's Marvelous Mandarin Soda).

With the first round of eating out of the way, we moved on to the carnival games. We had a few rousing rounds of balloon darts and ring-toss. Winners enjoyed prizes of cotton candy and other such goodies.

Finally it was time for the dessert... birthday funnel cake!

I'm sure everyone was ready for a grease detox the next day, but that's the way carnivals go!

One More

March 3rd is a very special day for a very special person. My sewing machine was still out from making the quilted notecards so I decide to make one more.

Happy Birthday, Molly!

(Look, it's rainbow but not ROYGBIV. She'll know what that means.)

Quilted Notecards

I saw this tutorial for quilted notecards a few months ago. Like usual, I started thinking of all possible occasions that might justify a new craft project. Two special birthdays seemed like the perfect opportunity!

The first step was to request blank notecards be sent over from the States (a difficult item to find here). It's so nice to have such a willing assistant in the form of my mom.

The cards arrived a week or two ago and it was time to get started. It was fun to pair up the pieces of fabric and each set only took maybe twenty five minutes total. This is definitely a project I will try again.

It only occurred to me later that if the recipients want to mail the cards internationally the fabric will probably bump up the postage! Oops!