What more can I ask for than to have a lap full of The Boy and the Hell Kitty? After a long day of driving to say goodbye to my grandmother’s husband… words can hardly express the depth of my gratitude I have for my husband, children, and the blessings we have in each other.
Thursday night was a “Favorite Things” party for my Moms Club. I brought a bottle of Sophia’s Rosé by Francic Coppola to share and came home with another friend’s favorite scented bath salts. What a great idea for a party, huh? All attendees came armed with a gift wrapped favorite thing in the price range of $10-15, attached a number to the gift, and drew a random number. Last year I brought a Pineapple and Sake Teriyake sauce made by Vine and Branch, and Sweet and Spicy Garlic Mustard from Garlic Festival. 
But the best thing I found last night was my drink. Stop your search, I have found it- The Best Sangria ever to be served. Get to one of the two locations for the San Diego area seafood restaurant, “The Brigatine.”
The not-so-secret ingredient would seem to be the blackberry brandy to the usual line up of sangria stuff. Remember that! Add blackberry brandy to a sangria… Got it?
I’ve never been to The Brigatine, but will return. Often. And I guarantee, I will be thirsty.
I thought I would try this trick for peeling garlic that I have seen demonstrated online a lot lately:
Scroll down to see the results!
The only problem is that the garlic juice and some peels are now stuck inside the jar…
I find it more efficient with no more dirty dishes to just whack the clove with the flat of my kitchen knife- the peels slide right off the cloves, and your garlic is also on it’s way to being chopped up.
A grocery chain in our area has been bought out by and replaced with another, and the prices have definitely increased. I asked the manager of one store if there was any reason why, and all he could figure was the lack of a direct supplier like the other chain used to have. There’s the economics lesson today: insert middleman, increase prices.
I rarely use coupons lately, but instead of relegating this week’s stack straight to my recycle bin… why don’t I just sneak on over to the pricy new store with a roll of tape and see what kind of mischief I can make?
COUPON BOMBING!
I matched up the coupons from the newspaper’s Sunday ads and taped them to the products. In all, I taped about $13 in coupons on about eight or so products. I sure hope someone who was coming along to buy one of these products got a laugh along with their savings.
No one who worked there seemed to notice… maybe the people watching on the security cameras got a chuckle out of seeing some crackpot lady walking around with a tape dispenser and pile of coupons in her shopping cart stealthily trying to stick coupons around the store… ha.
Clip a few coupons and scatter the savings. It makes for quite an enjoyable afternoon.
SeriousEats.com is one of my go-to web sites for anything in the food and cooking world. I love, Love, LOVE their test recipes, food tourism articles, product reviews… love it all.
One of my favorite contributors is J. Kenji López-Alt and his “Food Lab” articles are kitchen chemistry at its best… my favorite type of food reading. Tonight I tried a recipe he worked on in detail five years ago- “Fresh Ricotta in 5 minutes or Less.”
Maybe doubling the recipe put things out of whack? Might the larger volume of milk thrown off how long the milk should have been brought up to the specified 165 degrees? All I know is, more than double the microwaving time wasn’t the only issue. The milk initially started coagulating just fine, but then the mass of curds just fell apart.
From four cups of whole milk I netted about half a cup of ricotta curds. And a kitchen that smelled distinctly of baby barf. You fellow parents know exactly what I mean.
P.U.
I am not finished with you, oh Great Stinky Experiment, if Kenji says I can do this, then, by gosh, I CAN! I will repeat this soon… very soon.
branching out... on a limb 