Our lives these days consist of engagement parties, bridal showers, weddings, and more engagement parties. It’s crazy…but a weekend without one of these events is extremely rare. Last night’s occasion, an engagement party. The host are all bringing something different, from us…a vegetable appetizer. The dilemma: nobody every really eats anything from the plain vegetable tray. Why? I dunno. Personally I LOVE fresh vegetables. Yhey usually involve a lot of prep work, and at the end of the night only 1/8th of the veggie tray has even been touched. End result, depressing. All that work and money, and no one even touches it. Haven’t you all ever heard of being healthy?? So what to do, what to do? We’re going to give this made-up adapted recipe a try…

Start with LOTS of asparagus. Snap the end off, leaving just the tips. Bend the end, and where it naturally snaps=the perfect amount of “stalky” end gone! In small batches, blanch the asparagus in a large fry pan filled with about 1/4″ of water – about 6-7 minutes. Remove from pan and season with salt and pepper, set aside.

Spoon four containers of chive and onion flavored cream cheese into a small bowl – let it soften at room temperature.

Add four small (or one large) red pepper, thinly diced.

about 10 slices of crumbled bacon, and a pinch of red pepper to season.

Mix all of those ingredients into the cream cheese until well blended. This mixture in and of itself is tasting worthy…for real!

Next step buy LOTS of crescent rolls. They make seamless sheets now, but the grocery store was out.

Unroll the crescent dough onto a non-stick surface, and spread with the cream cheese mixture. Add A LOT, do not be stingy…this is the good unhealthy stuff that makes people eat the vegetables. Kind of contradicting the idea of making a healthy appetizer, right?

Next, sprinkle with parmesan cheese and cut the dough into thin slices.

roll on asparagus tip per slice of crescent dough.

As you go place the individual appetizers on an un-greased cookies sheet.

and after you’ve rolled all of them up 200 of these babies in my case, bake at 325 degrees for about 8 minutes. Watch them carefully, you want the crescents to just be slightly brown on top.

and TA DA…all toasty and golden brown with a SPARK of deliciousness!

Bon Appetit!

I have not cooked in a long time. I miss it.

Unfortunately work consumes the day. Lots of line drawing in revit and autocad. This leads to lots of clicks in photoshop and illustrator. Then somehow I forget which program I am using and try to use autocad commands in photoshop. Just FYI that doesn’t work, and makes things go where you do not want them to. Oh so frustrating. Then I just turn on happy music on my ipod and life gets happier. (Erika-why can they not be like you, and we play “happy music” out-loud”?) Yes, those clicks and frustration lead to really creative projects. I Agree. It is a good not great fix for the need to express creativity, but there is just something about the word computer that doesn’t cut it for me. You get where I am going with this?? It is just so much more satisfying to be hands-on; cutting, tearing; making, and experiencing texture. The haptic quality, sense of touch, is just plain goodness. Really for me, design is about communication, and I love to communicate. One of many ways to convey “something”. It is like a silent way of talking. We need that sometimes!

So, where I was going with the whole cooking thing at the beginning. I think it is somewhat therapeutic to me. Weird? I dunno? Mixing things to make really yummy things is just plain FUN! Then when it turns out really pretty and tasty (people really like it), it makes the whole act even better. It is like a “fast-pace” design project, with a relatively quick completion. No waiting around for subs, samples, painters, backordered materials, or questions.

For now, I have work to do on my computer. But I will be back soon with some new recipes I want to share.

Sorry for the lack of posts recently, but things got busy. Christmas was so much fun. Lots of food, family, presents, and celebrating of our Savior. The weather was a little gloomy over Christmas in Auburn, but that just made for our arrival in the snow white land of Colorado even more glorious. There is nothing better than waking up to this beautiful landscape out your bedroom window. 

and upon walking in the lobby of the hotel, we were welcomed with warm glasses of hot cider and a GI-normous gingerbread house that took over 30 hours to construct. 

But the best part was when I heard that this man was in his restaurant Spago. Yeap that is Wolfgang Puck himself. I swiftly turned around on one foot and directed myself to meet him. I walked in, headed toward the booth where he sat with his cookbooks, and chatted with him for a few. He was a delightful man. Those of you who know me, know what I am a cooking affetionado, but not a celebrity stalker. I really could care less. But getting to meet Mr. Puck was crazy awesome in my book, especially since I was not setting out to meet him. It was a total surprise, and a good one at that.

So as Mr. Puck would say, “Happy Cooking”. I will be back soon with lots of snowy white pictures!