Food: Avocado Corn Salad

Today I’m making a little parenthesis from my Europe travel stories, to bring you a recipe I made yesterday that turned out pretty good, both looking and tasting. It was a cold avocado corn salad that is pretty much the epitome of summer foods: cool, fresh and yummy.
As it’s been often the case lately when it comes to my cooking, I got the recipe from Pinterest, but slightly modified it to suit me and the ingredients I had at hand. I had actually been wanting to make this salad for a quite while, but for whatever reason whenever I craved it I didn’t happen to have all the ingredients available, and kept putting it off. However yesterday, things finally aligned and I had just about all the ingredients to make it happen. Let me tell you, I wish I had made it earlier! It was just perfect.
In fact, it looked and tasted good enough to share on Instagram, which I did and that’s what prompted this foodie post. A couple friends commented on there that they would like the recipe, that I might add it’s ridiculously easy to make, so here it’s my take on the Avocado Corn Salad (to check out the original version, click here):

1 cup cooked corn, fresh or frozen
1 avocado, cut into cubes
1/2 cup yellow sweet onion, diced
1/2 pint of cherry tomatoes, halved
1/3 of a cucumber, chopped
1/4 cup cilantro, chopped
2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 Tbsp fresh lime juice
Salt and pepper to taste

Toss all ingredients together in a bowl and enjoy!
Makes 2 servings.

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Food: Beef Bourguignon

My first real foodie post on the blog!!! If you follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and/or Pinterest you are well aware of my love for food, so it should come as no surprise that I’m posting about it on the blog now. I’m pretty much as passionate about food as I am about fashion. In fact, I can’t believe I hadn’t blogged much about it so far. But that’s about to change.

For the past several years I had thought and considered making Beef Bourguignon, the quintessential French beef stew, but I have to admit I was a little daunted by the challenge. As much as I love food, I gotta confess I’m not much of a cook. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy cooking -a lot- but my cooking skills are still very much in diapers. At home I usually cook very simple meals, and anything beyond the basics for me requires following a very detailed recipe. So that’s exactly what I did on New Year’s Eve after deciding I was ready to tackle the Beef Bourguignon challenge, I did an extensive Pinterest search, studied several recipes (including Julia Child’s famous version!), and finally settled on Tyler Florence’s yummy recipe.

Let me tell ya, it turned out absolutely, amazingly delicious! Of course I can’t take the whole credit for it because I did have my mom and even my 14 year old stepson helping me with the prep work, because oh boy, it sure is a lot of work, especially when making a huge quantity like we did (we double up Tyler’s recipe!). But all the hard work was so worth it in the end. We made some slight modifications to the original recipe (like adding more flour to thicken it up, and adding carrots for some color) , something I’m usually not comfortable doing, but having my mom to back me up gave me the confidence to go for it. And that’s when I realized… it all comes down to confidence.

It is such an obvious thing that confidence is key in everything we do, but I hadn’t realized until now that one of the reasons keeping me from getting better in the kitchen was the lack of confidence. After a few unsuccessful cooking attempts,  the fear of messing up and ruining a meal, the anxiety of people not liking what I cook, took over and made me slightly neurotic about following a recipe, and stopped me from trying and experimenting anything on my own.

Granted, I’m not denying practice makes perfect, and I still believe following recipes is a great way to learn our way around the kitchen, but I shouldn’t be afraid to screw up… Let me rephrase that, I can’t let the fear of screwing up stop me from trying, because truth is I’ll probably still be afraid and nervous about screwing up, I just gotta handle it differently. I gotta apply to the kitchen what I already believe and try to live by in other areas of my life: embrace the mistakes! Embrace them fully for they are the greatest teacher, and not only do they tend to make us better, they often make for the best (and usually funniest) stories!

I can’t think of a better way to have wrapped up a wonderful year than having had a wonderful homemade 3 course dinner, shared with wonderful people, my family. And no better way to begin the new year than with this great reminder of one of my favorite life lessons. So 2014, bring it on! I’m ready to cook more, fear less, screw up, learn and laugh about it all.

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P.S. Our dinner menu consisted of the following:

First course: Pear & Gorgonzola Green Salad.                                                                  Second course: Beef Bourguignon served with Rosemary Roasted Potatoes and Sauteed Mushrooms.                                                                                                                        Third course: Champagne Poached Pears.

To get most of these recipes and more, you can follow me on Pinterest and go to my Cravings! board.

 

Hollywood

Today’s post is the diary of my (and my hubby’s) third day in LA, which we spent doing a lot of driving around and sightseeing in some of the classic landmarks of the city. We also had some amazing food that day, which just made our day that much better. I haven’t shared much on the blog about my foodie obsessions, but if you follow me on Facebook/Twitter/Instagram, you know by now that if there’s something I love as much as fashion (and possibly even more!) is food!
We started our day with a delicious brunch at Le Pain Quotidien, which I had been wanting to try every time I’ve been to NY and just never got around to it. I didn’t even realize they also had locations in LA, but we just happened to drive by one in West Hollywood, and I just about caused my husband to crash the car by loudly surprising him with a “Oh my gosh, STOP! We have to eat there!”. And boy, let me tell ya, it was worth the conmotion and crazy U-turn. Amazing, fresh, healthy food and perfect bread and pastries. I also love their concept of the communal table. All in all, just a lovely place and concept.
Then, we moved on to what I decided to call my little exercise of visualization: a stroll down Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. Being the quintessential place for luxury shopping, I can’t actually afford to buy much in most of the stores there (we’re talking Gucci, Chanel, Tom Ford, among others, so definitely not your average shopping destination), but it’s still nice to walk down the street while reminiscing about one of my favorite scenes from Pretty Woman, and of course daydreaming about someday walking out of the stores with any amount of my favorite designer goodies.
Now, once we were done visualizing and daydreaming, I was set on finding the perfect spot to snap some shots of the Hollywood sign, which I had actually never seen in any of my past trips to Lala-land. Such goal took us on a little adventure of getting lost driving thru the Hollywood hills (not entirely lost thanks to the wonder of Google maps and smartphones but you get the idea). It was such a nice drive, and we did find a couple perfect spots to enjoy the view of both the sign and the city. We also found the cutest little market and coffee shop, and had some lovely afternoon tea and scones, nestled in the hills.
We then drove to get a quick look at the walk of fame and the Chinese Theater (places I had visited before so didn’t necessarily want to spend too much time there). Some more driving around Sunset Boulevard, Melrose Avenue, and off to dinner we went.
The chosen place was Pizzeria Mozza by (former Iron Chef) Mario Batali and Nancy Silverton (founder of La Brea Bakery). Of course, we knew we couldn’t go wrong with a creation of such culinary masters, and Pizzeria Mozza didn’t disappoint. We tried the fried squash blossoms stuffed with ricotta and they were something not to be missed if you’re ever in the area; then we decided on a classic margherita pizza so we could enjoy the deliciousness and difference that simple quality ingredients can make. The whole meal was sheer perfection. However we skipped the opportunity to enjoy one of their desserts in exchange for finding some other lovely place to know and enjoy it at.
We drove back to Beverly Hills and had some gourmet-sy flourless chocolate cake with chocolate mousse from Bouchon Bakery, which frankly was a bit too rich for my palate, but it was worth it just to sit and enjoy it by the beautiful Beverly Hills Canon Garden. Just the perfect ending to a perfect day.

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