Sooooo, exciting news! Little Muggsy turned 3 years old! 3 whole years old! I've heard that this is when dogs start calming down, but I don't really see that happening with this one any time soon. I decided to make some simple sugar cookies (not for her...she got to eat treats and some steak plus a new toy!). I wanted to make them look like her toys and so I picked her two faves! She LOVES her FETCH ball (so much so that she has already chewed off the blue FETCH letters off!) and her KONG toy. Read on for more! 1 Comment Hey everyone! Thanks for bearing with me on my hiatus lately, I've had a LOT happening and have barely had a chance to come up for air. Anyway, I HAD to make time to make this post because I have something awesome to share with you guys... a giveaway! The lovely folks at Certified Steak and Seafood sent me a gift certificate so that I could try some of their amazing product, and they are doing the same for one lucky Order in the Kitchen reader! The winner will get a $50 gift certificate to use in the online store! Keep reading to see how the product comes, what it looks like and how YOU can win! I took a whole bunch of pictures from beginning to end (well not totally the end... I didn't capture our empty plates because the food was SO good!) I decided to boil the lobster tails (although there are practically endless ways to cook lobster tails). I boiled them in salted water for one minute per ounce (these were 6 ounces, so about 6 minutes). I then just served them with some butter (about half a stick, melted in a pan) with shallots and chives (about a tablespoon of each). I spooned the white part of the butter off of the top, so I was left with mostly clarified butter. For the filets I simply seared them in my All Clad pan for approximately 8-10 minutes on each side on Medium-High Heat, to get a good medium temperature. You can cook it to whatever temperature you prefer, just be sure to let it rest for about 10 minutes! While it was resting, I added a small diced shallot, and about 2-3 oz of sliced mushrooms to the pan that I had cooked the steak in. After a few minutes I added 1/4 cup of red wine (I used Chianti but a Syrah would be lovely as well) to deglaze the pan. After reducing the mixture until the meat is done resting, I simply spooned it over the filet. Simple and lovely! The Verdict: Trust me, you WANT to win this giveaway. This filet was one of the most tender delicious meats I had ever eaten. I cooked it simply so that I could get as much of the natural flavor as possible, and I'm happy I did because it was so tasty. The lobster tails were equally delicious, and HUGE! Like enormous. I actually couldn't even finish my entire filet and lobster tail because the portions were incredible. You really get your money worth on this one. Plus, Matt certainly didn't complain that I had leftovers because he got to eat this magnificent meal twice. They also included a free gift with mine of a hamburger patty with 100% Angus. For free. Amazing, love this company and will definitely be using it in the future! Now, do yourself a favor, and read how to enter the giveaway so you can try this stuff! And if you don't win, I would definitely still suggest actually purchasing through the website because it's well worth the money (and their prices are actually very reasonable). How to Enter the Giveaway!: First (required) entry: What would you like to order from Certified Steak? A combo pack? Filets? NY Strip? It's up to you! What would you do with it? Extra Entries (leave a separate comment for each entry--if you have already done these things, just comment saying so): Like Order in the Kitchen on Facebook Follow Order in the Kitchen on Twitter Like Certified Steak on Facebook Follow Certified Steak on Twitter Tweet the following: "I just entered a giveaway from @orderinthekitch to win a $50 gift certificate to @certifiedsteak and you can too! http://tinyurl.com/6mw6a64" Giveaway ends May 25th at 11:59 pm. A winner will be chosen by a random number generator. Duplicate comments will be deleted. Winner will have 48 hours to confirm or an alternate winner will be selected. Please leave your real email address in order to be contacted! While I did receive this product for free to review, the opinions and statements regarding the products are my own and I was not compensated for them. UPDATE: This giveaway is now closed. Congratulations to comment number 21, Michelle! You won $50 to Certified Steak and Seafood! YAY congrats! Hey y'all, it's been awhile! Last week and this week have been very exciting and busy! I had my birthday last Thursday, our housewarming party on Saturday and today is my One Year Blogiversary!!! I can't believe that a year ago, I started this little old blog and began this awesome journey. I've met so many incredible people and have made some great friends (some who I've even met in real life!) I've loved it so much and I wish I was making something awesome to celebrate, but I have been dying to show y'all what I made for the housewarming and the cake I did for my birthday, so I think I'll share that instead... I hope that's okay with y'all :) First I'll talk about the housewarming things I put together, and then I'll move in to the birthday cake! So we all know that I love Pinterest. Like love, love, love it. I have about 65 boards and 6500 pins (eeek I'm out of control!) Anyway, Matt and I decided to have a housewarming to celebrate moving in to our new place. So, of course, I took this as an opportunity to make a new board. Now, I didn't make everything on that board, but I let it inspire me, and I definitely felt like I succeeded in making that board come to life! It ended up being a lot of work, but thankfully I had my friend Kristen in town to help me make all this stuff! Here are some of the highlights... I'll add captions to describe them and give some instructions. I know it's been a few days since this happened, but I wanted to do a quick post to tell y'all how much fun our NC meetup was! Kate, from The Small Things Blog, posted that there was going to be an NC Meetup and I definitely wanted to be a part of it! When I emailed in a couple hours after her post, the event was already full and I was super bummed I wouldn't be able to go. I was told I would be on the waitlist, but I was still a little sad I would miss it. Then, a few days later, I got an email that there was a spot open and I was SO excited. I wrote Kate back right away to confirm my attendance! It was everything I thought it would be, and more! I ended up meeting some extremely awesome ladies, including someone who I had a real-life (not blog-life) connection with (i.e. she and her hubs went to law school with my bf). It was so fun to meet these fabulous people and the venue couldn't have been cuter! We met up at Benelux in downtown Raleigh (so like a ten minute walk for me!). It's a cute cafe where they have coffee and amazing Belgian waffles! It was the perfect place for the meetup, and the coffee was delish! I was so busy chatting and meeting people that I didn't get many pics but here are a few highlights: Happy Easter weekend everyone! I hope you are all enjoying your weekends! I got a long weekend off from work, which I'm fully enjoying as a relaxing 3 days and doing pretty much as little as possible. Sometimes you just have to recharge ya know? Anyway, I made this rack of lamb a few nights ago and thought I would share it with you in the event that you haven't decided what to make for Easter dinner yet.
Well folks, we did it! We finally took the plunge and moved to Raleigh. Matt can now walk to work, and our new place is just lovely (I will post pics below). On the same day we moved, I got a job *yay!* at a firm ten minutes from our new place...fate or what? Anywayyyy I was feeling slightly cheesy and so I decided to make some cookies celebrating our move but wanted to make them Cow-Themed so that they could say we "MOOved"...I know, I'm a dork...but at least I don't deny it. I made these cookies with the simple sugar cookie recipe given by the lovely Sweetapolita on her blog...I just adore this recipe and so I use it a lot. I used fondant to do both the white and black and also for the letters. I used a pre-made fondant (Satin Ice), which is good but it's insanely sweet. I found it to be far too sweet and could only eat like a quarter of a cookie. I preferred the marshmallow homemade fondant I made for Marina's birthday cake because I had used lemon extract to cut the sweetness and so it wasn't too sweet like these. I used these little letter cookie cutters that I got from Williams-Sonoma, and they worked great for the most part...I had a hard time with the Os and the Ds (Because you have to cut the middle part out) so they look a little wonky and I think I preferred the cookies as just the plain cow pattern, but nevertheless I stuck with the letters because they were fun.
Hey y'all... I'm doing the holiday thing early (or right on time, in blogger world). I realize that I posted my 4th of July cake ON the 4th of July, and my holiday cookies on December 30th (oy vey) and that does not give readers enough time to make these holiday items for the actual holiday (unless they have a time machine...if you do, please let me know). I wanted to make mini-cakes for St. Paddy's day that reminded me (and hopefully you too!) of little lucky pots of gold! (I have recently been informed that it is actually St. PADDY's day and not St. Patty's day...learn something new every day huh?!)
Hey y'all! Happy Leap Year!! This is so fun that we have one this year! I mean they only come once every four years, so we have to make the best of it right? I'm going to make the best of it by sharing some things that make me Leap for Joy this Leap Year!
Hey y'all! Back from Hawaii, and had an absolutely fabulous time (I mean did you really have any doubt?) I posted endless pictures on Instagram, which you can certainly check out, but I'll just post some of the highlights here, including, most importantly for the purposes of this blog, some of the food:
Do y'all want to know more about the girl behind the blog? Want to have a few questions answered? Well my friend Kimm from Sweetness Catering in Washington (state) asked if I would do an interview for her blog and of course I jumped at it and said YES! as if she was proposing marriage or something... anyway, here is the link to the interview. Definitely check out the rest of Kimm's blog because I think she is just the Bees Knees. |

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