Shepherd's Pie

I think of shepherd's pie as the perfect winter food. Maybe it's the potatoes or the fact that it's called a pie. 

One day, I was thinking about shepherd's pie, and I thought, What if the crust was made of scalloped potatoes. I thought about this idea for a long time but never tried it until now.

I wasn't quite sure how it would turn out, so I was really excited at the outcome!

Definitely the ultimate winter dinner.

Recipe

 Ingredients:

• 3-4 medium sized potatoes
• 1lb ground lamb
• 4 carrots
• 3/4 cup of peas (fresh or frozen)
• 1 small onion
• 2 cloves garlic
• 2 Tablespoons flour
• 4-5 Tablespoons butter

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Butter or oil your pan. Slice your potatoes with a mandoline (I used a peeler because I don't have a mandoline but be warned, it takes a long time.)  Line the potatoes in your pan. You may want to have several layers of potatoes. 

In a pot, melt butter and put in chopped onions and diced garlic. Cook until golden brown. Add flour and stir. Add lamb and cook until brown. Mix in peas and chopped carrots and pour into the potato crust. Top with about 2 more layers of thinly sliced potatoes. Pour some olive oil or melted butter over the top and cook for 30 minutes or until the top appears golden. Enjoy!




In other news, Carolyn is growing up and is learning lots!

Pictures from SF Adventure

So here are the pictures:

Delicious calamari at The Fish Tank

 

Amazing lamb dosa's at The Dosa Republic. Look at the salsa looking thing. It was crazy good. And you'll never guess, it had quinoa in it!

 

Falafel's at Sunrise Deli

http://www.sunrisedeli.net/truck.php

 

 These mouth-watering bundles of delicious at The Slider Shack

Belgian waffles with strawberries at the Waffle Mobile.

 

 As you can see, my sister and brother-in-law got really excited and broke their utensils. 

 

We got The Asian Asada at Kung Fu Tacos and it was really, truly incredible. We also got the Roast duck taco and that disappeared quick.

We got another one.

 

 

    My sister took some artistic shots.

                    Also something I didn't tell you about. We went to Tartine Bakery which is so crisp, fresh, and                     delicious.

 

 

 Cute little label

And La Palma! Which has handmade tortillas and the best guacamole ever.

 

 

And Bi-rite Creamery where we got a Banana Split

Dainty Genlemen 

 

 

 And Sam's Sundae

And a big surprise!!

My new Guide Dog Puppy, Caroline!

She's very cute, sweet, and spunky. Can't wait to tell more about my adventures in raising my third Guide Dog Puppy!

Horray!

Surprise! My birthday happened, so my family took me on a San Francisco adventure. I had a really great time and it was really fun. Thank you family. Here are some pictures from the trip.

We went to Soma SrEat food park http://somastreatfoodpark.com/ And the first place we checked out was...

Thefishtanktruck.com

http://www.facebook.com/TheDosaRepublic

 

http://www.facebook.com/theslidershacksf

http://www.facebook.com/TheWaffleMobile

 

And last and most defiantly my favorite...

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Kung-Fu-Tacos/122815922690

 

 

I had a really great time and all the food was super incredible! I have another surprise coming and more pictures of the actual food but something is wrong with my blogging account. So, goodbye for now but I hope to post soon!

Surprises!

Tommorrow something exciting is happening! In the meantime, here's what I've been baking.

 

 

 Blackberry Tarts

                                             Kentucky Butter Cake

   Snickerdoodles.

 

 

Hope to post my exciting news tommorrow!

Celebrations

It's a little late, but the 8th was my niece's dedication and my brother-in-law's birthday. We had a family BBQ and I made German chocolate cake. It's really yummy and fairly easy (Or maybe that's because I make it a lot.)

Also, here is the cake the first time I ever made it.

I based it off of this cake but I tweaked it a bit. Also, instead of adding shredded coconut to the frosting, I added shaved coconut from Whole Foods.

We had a really fun and delicious day!

Love and Lavender Shortbread

My sister's getting married!!!
Her Bridal Shower was a bright and flowery theme so I thought ice cream sandwiches would be fun. I had been dooling over Tartlelette's Lavender Shortbread Cookies Sorbet Sandwiches for a long time and finally had the chance to make them.

Lavender Shortbread Cookies:

Makes 12 cookies for sandwiches

1& 3/4 cups all-purpose flour or Jeanne's Gluten Free All Purpose Mix
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup yellow cornmeal
1/2 cup butter
2 teaspoons fresh edible lavender
3 tablespoons milk

Preheat oven to 350F. Position a rack in the middle.
In a bowl stir together flour, sugar, and cornmeal. Using pastry blender, cut in butter until mixture resembles fine crumbs. Stir in lavender. Add milk. Stir with fork to combine and form into ball. Knead until smooth and divide in half.
On lightly floured surface, roll half the dough at a time to 1/4-inch thickness. Using 2-inch square cookie cutter, cut out dough.
Place cutouts 1 inch apart on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake about 10 minutes or until edges are firm and bottoms are very lightly browned. Transfer cookies to wire rack. Cool.
To store: Place in layers separated by waxed paper in an airtight container; cover. Store at room temperature up to 3 days. Or freeze unfilled cookies up to 3 months.

Instead of making my own sorbet, I bought some Talenti brand. The flavor was Roman Raspberry and it was really delicious. Also, it came in these nice little plastic jars with screw-on lids.
We used a spoon to put the sorbet in-between the cookies, which was a bit messy, but really fun. In the end, it was all worth it.



Honeyed Apricots and French Toast

My family is big on honey. Especially local, raw honey. I decided to try tartelette's Honey apricots (Her pictures are stunning and far better than mine.). I have no idea why, because 1. I don't really like apricots, and 2. The apricots we had were sour.

 They were not my favorite, but my mom liked them so it was all good. Probably if they had been riper, they would have been tastier.

The honey was delicious though. It had a really nice apricot flavor.

And since I can't just eat apricots for breakfast, I made french toast.

I usually eat my french toast with syrup, jam, or powdered sugar but french toast with honey is incredible. I feel like I've never tried it with honey before, but I know I have. Maybe it was the apricotness.

I'm not quite sure of the ratio of eggs to milk but I used Challah bread. But here's the recipe for the apricots:

• 1 tablespoon butter
• six apricots, cut in half, pit removed
• 1/3 cup honey

Melt the butter in a pan until it starts to sizzle, put in the apricots, cut side down, cook for 2 minutes, flip and cook for another 2 minutes. remove them from pan and place on a serving plate. Add honey to the hot pan and swirl around until hot. Pour over apricots and serve.