Caramelized Pear, Prosciutto & Blue Cheese Pizza

Posted on February 15, 2014 by Georgina

Caramelized Pear, Prosciutto & Blue Cheese Pizza

Ingredients:
1 semi-ripe pear(still want it a little hard) – thinly sliced
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 tablespoons butter (I prefer unsalted)
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
2 tablespoons brown sugar
6 ounces fontina cheese, freshly grated (could sub grated mozzarella too)
2 shallots, sliced
2 garlic cloves, minced
4 slices prosciutto
6 ounces blue cheese, crumbled
balsamic glaze for drizzling

Oh and a pizza crust of your choosing 🙂

Directions:

Preheat your oven to 400 F (this is a little dependent on the pizza crust you choose so make sure to check the packaging/instructions).

Heat a large skillet over low heat and add olive oil and butter. Add in the pears with the salt and nutmeg and cover, cooking for about 10 minutes and stirring occasionally. Reduce the heat more if they begin to brown too much. Stir in the brown sugar and cook for 5 more minutes or so, until golden. Set aside.

Add about three fourths of the fontina on the crust along with the garlic and shallots. Spread the pears all over the pizza and cover them with the prosciutto. Crumble the blue cheese over top and add the rest of the fontina. Bake for 10 to 15 minutes, or until the crust is golden and the cheese is bubbly. Remove and drizzle balsamic on top.

Um. Then die and go to heaven. So freaking tasty.

I adapted this recipe when I made it and did a smaller portion and just did a mini pizza for me, Jake was hanging out with some guys friends so I got to enjoy this beaut all on my own. Seriously I could have eaten like 4 of the the mini pizzas. Deeeeeeee-licious. If I do say so myself 🙂

Hope you enjoy too!

xoxo

POMEGRANATE, KALE, AND WILD RICE SALAD

Posted on February 9, 2014 by Georgina

POMEGRANATE, KALE, AND WILD RICE SALAD

Ummmm, seriously you guys, this is one of the best things on planet earth. It caught my eye at first just becuase of how pretty it was but then once I made it, ohhhh maaaaannnn oohhh mannn. Probably could’ve eaten the whole thing myself. The dressing to this is amaze-balls and I’m gonna make it for my regular salads all the time!

INGREDIENTS
For the salad
1 cup pomegranate seeds
2 cups chopped(not tiny)baby kale
2 cups cooked wild rice (you can use leftover rice or buy precooked)
¼ cup toasted walnuts
¼ cup feta or crumbled goat cheese

For the dressing
½ cup minced onion or shallot
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons water
2 tablespoons honey
½ tablespoon apple cider vinegar
½ teaspoon salt
1 squeeze lemon or orange juice

INSTRUCTIONS
Prep the salad ingredients (chop, rinse, toast, etc). Chill the ingredients in the fridge while you’re making the dressing if you want a cold salad.

This is more walnuts than I used for the salad, but I toasted about a cup to use for various things, while I was at it anyway 🙂

Mince the shallot or onion and saute in ½ tablespoons olive oil to reduce the ‘bite’ of them. When soft and fragrant, remove from heat and transfer to a food processor. (If you want a stronger flavor for your dressing, skip the sauteing altogether. The shallot in particular works well for not sautéing method as they are milder)
Pulse the onions or shallot with the remaining olive oil, water, honey, apple cider vinegar, salt, and orange juice until smooth and creamy. Taste and adjust. Add additional olive oil or water to keep the mixture moving through the food processor.
Toss the salad ingredients together with the dressing just before serving. I prefer to serve this at room temperature or chilled slightly.

Then: Eat. It. All

Please tell me you guys like this one as much as I did!!!!

xoxo

Glitter State Artwork

Posted on February 5, 2014 by Georgina

Glitter State Artwork

So here is another one of my Christmas presents I made. I have had my eye on this craft for a while. I actually love state artwork, there are so many fun ones I want to try but how many pictures of states can a girl have in her house, I believe the answer is too many. What better way to have fun making them and not look like a hoarder- than making them as gifts! 🙂 This one took a little bit more time simply for the fact that I a) needed daylight (to trace the state outline on my paper) since I don’t have a lightbox I needed daylight and as sad as it is, that is hard to come by in the winter during the hours I’m at home. and b) I wanted the glue and glitter to completely dry and set before framing.

Here is what you’ll need:

a print out of your state of choice. I obviously chose the best state in existance, Wisconin.
Thicker paper, like cardstock, poster board, this really depends on how big of a state or picture you are making
Scissors
Plain ole regular modge podge (mine in honestly still from when I was like 17 years old. still works, but I’m running low and need more soon!
Glitter. I got mine in the card making section at Micheals(you can see the pic below for deets) but really any craft glitter will work.
Paint brush
Containter to coat your cut out in to avoid a glitter catastrophe 🙂
Double stick tape
Frame and if you want, colored paper to line your frame.

Optional:

You can use a sticker of a heart or if you don’t have on I just painted a heart in red/pink paint on a peice of paper and cut it out and stuck in on.

Here is a picture of some of my supplies:

Clockwise: My modge podge and glitter I used- an illustration that you really want to not be shy with the modge podge in order to get a good coating of glitter to stay on the paper, my cutout in a glass container covered in glitter, then once it had dried a little and the exess glitter shaken off.

Here is what I did:

1) Print out an outline of your state. I mean I guess you can freehand it but I would suggest printing 😉

2) I taped my thicker cardstock over the outline and held up to my patio door (this is where that daylight is needed) and just traced the shape. then untape the sheets.

3) Use scissors and carefully cut out your state from your thicker cardstock.

4) place the outline in your container and use a paintbrush or spongebrush thingy, to coat your paper in modge podge. See my picture above about how you should really put a good coat on. Otherwise the glitter won’t stick nicely and it will be alittle thin, but be careful to not overcoat otherwise it will probably never dry. No harm in doing a little test run on a peice of scrap paper like I did above too.

5) When modge podge is still wet, coat generously with glitter, making sure to get a nice even coat and no “bald” spots.

6) Let the glitter and modge podge set for a while, probably like an hour and then pick up carefully(as it’s not all the way dry yet) and shake excess glitter from the cutout. Then I placed the glitter state on a piece of scrap paper and allowed to dry completely. I waited 4 days because I went out of town but I’m sure it doesn’t really take that long, but I’d for sure wait a full day.

7) You can pour your excess glitter back into it’s container and save for another glitter craft 🙂

8) This isn’t a necessary step but once my state was dry I took it outside and sprayed it with a high gloss arcylic sealer. Basically just because I wanted to set the glitter a little more. I didn’t want to have specs of glitter coming “free” and getting all over the glass of the frame because that would be a pain in the ass to deal with. I had purchased it for a different craft and thought, “hey why not try it”. Like I said, it’s not necessary but if you have anything similar lying around it worked great. ( Here is a link to the product that I used)

9) Once dry, if you choose you can place a heart over a particular locatiaon of the state that holds any significance to you. Then I put a couple peices of double stick tape on the back and taped it to a peice of black paper and placed in the frame.

TA DA!

Ignore the reflection in the glass of the frame. It was nearly impossible to not get my hands or face ! 🙂

I was so pleased with this craft! I made it for my best friend who is originally from Wisconsin but moved to Minnesota. I told her this was so she could always see “home” 🙂 I miss you B!That’s pretty much it. I mean this had so many endless possibilities not just in states but any shape you could think of. I think an outline of a stag head and antlers or something like that would be really cool too. Experiment and let me know what awesome things you all create 🙂

Thanks for reading!

xoxo

Cork Letters

Posted on February 2, 2014 by Georgina

Cork Letter Craft

Sooo- I LOVE making homemade gifts for Christmas. Throughout the year I will save ideas for certain people and usually on December 20th I start working on them….. Kidding. Well sort of- my plan is usually to get started wayyyy earlier than I do.

This year one of the gifts I made for a friend was a cork letter of her new last name (she recently got married and decided to take her husbands last name) the idea came from something I saw on Etsy selling for about $100. Um no. And plus I could make that! Soo I did. And you totally can too.

Here is what you’ll need:

hot glue (duh- craft staple)
burlap or some fabric to wrap your letter
knife (be careful 🙂 )
corks , the real wine corks made from you know, cork. Not the plastic ones.

Here is how to do it:
I went to Michaels (but any craft store has these) and bought a wood letter, in this case a ‘C’ . It was really inexpensive, I’m talking like $4, PLUS those places always have coupons.

I basically just wrapped the letter in burlap- my thought with this was that the hot glue and corks would stick better to the burlap than the plain letter and my letter was white instead of a wood color and I was going for more of a natural look- anyway, uses some hot glue and wrap the letter. It doesn’t have to be perfect because you’re covering it.

Then I honestly just cut up corks in a random fashion in tons of different shapes and glued them on! I tried to get them pretty tight to one another and overlapped a lot. Um seriously that’s it! It turned out perfect. I was soo proud of it. Haha. I am totally going to make more.

I feel like I should share that somehow my family came into a trillion corks. So no I’m not boozing on wine every day to save up- though I do have my own little collection started, if only boxed wine had corks, then I’d have a lot 🙂 hahaha- my dad probably isn’t too thrilled about that comment 😉 anyway I am fortunate enough to be able to have TONS of corks at my disposal. Someone we know had asked a restaurant to save them and then realized they didn’t have anything to do with them so they passed them to us. No complaints here!

Um, yeah thats a 55+ gallon drum filled with corks. loveeeeee

So anyway, this is actually a pretty easy and lower cost project. Hope you have fun and experiment with this! The possibilities are endless.

Thanks for checking out my blog!!

Lemony Brussel Sprouts & Corn

Posted on January 22, 2014 by Georgina

Lemony Brussel Sprouts & Corn

Ingredients:

1 lb brussel sprouts
2 ears of corn, kernels freshly cut off of the cob
3 tbs olive oil, divided
1/2 lemons-worth of juice
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp onion powder
salt & pepper

Directions:
1. In a large pan heat 1 tbs olive oil over medium-high heat. Cut brussel sprouts in half and add to pan. Sprinkle with lemon juice, cayenne pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, and generous pinches of salt & pepper.

2. Shake and stir to coat, continue to shake every so often, to enable a caramelized sear but not an over-cook on one side.

3. After about 10 minutes (adding more olive oil as needed), when brussel sprouts are browned, soft on the outside, but a bit hard n crunch on the inside, add fresh corn kernels to the pan.

4. Drizzle 1 tbs olive oil over the corn, sprinkle with more salt & pepper and stir & shake to fully mix.

5. Cook altogether for another 5 minutes, until corn is warmed through.

6. Eat it!

Soooo good. I could have eaten just these for dinner that night. This is the first time I made brussle sprouts for Jake and I was a little scared because I mean C’mon brussle spouts have GOT TO BE one of the most hated/feared vegitables on the planet. I love them and have been known the just eat them raw, but word on the street is not toooo many people are huge fans. Hopefully you like them! and if not, maybe give them another shot with this recipe?!?!?

xoxo