Saturday, July 30, 2011

Jerseylicious

I come from a long line of culinary prowess; every woman in my family is an amazing cook. From my aunt's Christmas lasagna, to my grandma's chocolate chip cookies, to my mom's, well, everything, there's a lot to live up to when you cook in my family.

And maybe it's just me, but homemade cooking just tastes better in Jersey. That's one thing I'm sorely missing while being out here; a lot of the foods that are a staple back home are harder to find or not as good here. Pizza is hard to come by, bagels I won't even touch, and Taylor ham? Forget about it. They never even heard of it.

So when I stumbled on some pretty awesome Italian sausage at Claro's Italian Market in Tustin, I was SO.EXCITED. I whipped up some classic sausage and peppers for some of my girlfriends.

Brown the sausage

Remove sausage and slice, and cook up your peppers. I add olive oil, a splash of white wine vinegar (seriously, a splash, like less than 1 T just to deglaze the pan), 1/4 of an onion, a clove of garlic, and some crushed red pepper.

Then mix it all together. What could be easier?

Needless to say, my Jersey classic was a hit!

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Ashley visits OC!

My dear friend Ashley (who I met when we were in dropped out of the Wedding From Hell together) has been one of my most frequent OC visitors. She's awesome and we always have a blast.

We ate guac at El Torito Grill...

...where they have the cutest piggy bowls!

We went to the beach at Crystal Cove State Park...
 ...where I showed off my 25-lb weight loss...
...and I wore shorts for
one of the first times in about 10 years! Go me! :)
We checked out the tidepools...
...and met a crabby friend!

We went to dinner at The White House in Laguna Beach

And Ashley encouraged me to finally get some decorations up (red flower painting from Pier 1)

We bought Milo a bed...and this was the first and only time he slept in it :(

Monday, July 18, 2011

We went shopping.....

Pretty much that's what I do best, especially when Tara's in town.

She visited this past weekend, and we went to local boutique Madison Bleu, where I picked up this amazing summery dress.


Other items
Cardigan: Target
Belt: Shoedazzle
Shoes: Kohl's

An all-around super thrifty outfit, if I do say so!