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Showing posts with label 24 24 24. Show all posts
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!! I hope you all had wonderful days filled with family/friends and good food! I know I am so very thankful to have a loving family, a job, a warm place to sleep, and so many good things to eat. I think it's easy to take simple pleasures like cooking and eating for granted. It was this inspiration that lead me to this month's 24 24 24 proposal. I proposed a giving of a celebration to families in need. With the help of Dimitri House who paired John and I with the families, we were able to "adopt" two families for Thanksgiving this year. Both families are headed by strong women raising their kids alone, one family with 7 children ranging in ages from 1 to 16 (2 sets of twins!!). The mission is simple: provide the families with everything they need in order to celebrate Thanksgiving without any burden or worry.

Celebrating Thanksgiving with food is not a given for many families, there just isn't room in an already tight budget to splurge on such things. On a day that is filled with so much glutton and excess, it is so wonderful to be able to give something back so that they may celebrate and give thanks for all of the good things they do have.


With $250 from Foodbuzz we were able to give these families enough for Turkey day along with more food to use up later!! Actually, even with a full trunk and back seat filled with groceries we still didn't hit the $250 mark... what to do?? Wegmans giftcards!! This way the families could get whatever else we didn't pick up that they were craving. Hopefully they picked up something extra special :)


As for what we did pick up... we gave each family a call first to see if they would rather have turkey or ham for Thanksgiving... both were ladies after my own heart and picked ham!! MMMMM ham!!! John and I headed to Wegmans for a late night attack on the ailes! We filled two large carts to the brim with huge hams, stuffing, 10 lb bags of potatoes, yams, onions, all types of veggies, fruit, salad fixings, bread, milk, eggs, pumpkin and apple pies, cheese, crackers, PB and jelly, pasta, sauce, cereal... and so much more!

I was heading to NJ this past Sunday so John was left to deliver all of the food on his own. He was a trooper though and after a dozen or so trips back and forth to the car had all of the bags in the homes of the two families. Both families were overwhelmed with the amount of food we had for them, and totally floored with the giftcards.

Thank you Foodbuzz for making these events possible! Although John and I didn't take part in the actual Thanksgiving day event with these families, I think it was the best and most rewarding 24 24 24 participation I've had so far!


What would you say is the thing you are most thankful for?
Have I mentioned how much I love Foodbuzz and their monthly 24 24 24 event... L O V E it!!! The wonderful people there along with Visa Signature card have let me do it again and host a Gelato 24 ways tasting!! (actually it was gelato 20 ways... they only had 20 flavors that night whoops!) Either way we were all going to get together at Mona Lisa Cafe to get our gelato on!

See the guys hanging out in front... they totally harassed me about taking their picture LOL (they were joking)! So that guy to the left owns It's a Guy Thing across the street, so here's your shout out! You better leave me a comment so I know you saw this!! :D

Mona Lisa Cafe is out in Webster NY (basically a suburb to the east of Rochester). My one friend asked me "how the he!! did you ever find this place?" It's true, it's not the most convenient place for me to travel to... but OH MAN IS IT WORTH IT!!!!

I first learned of Mona Lisa Cafe soon after it opened (May 2008) and it was the gelato that drew me there! You see, growing up in norther NJ, we had a lot of gelato around... then I moved up here and *POOF* no more gelato... it's a very sad story if you ask me! So when I heard a little cafe offering TWENTY-FOUR kinds of gelato had opened, I knew I had to go! (and PS to all those Rochester folk saying "what are you talking about there is a gelato place on park ave" yeahhh... I don't know about you.. but I tried it... and it didn't taste like gealto to me... more like normal ice cream... no thanks!)

Angie was our hostess with the mostest while we were there!!! She ROCKED!!!! She's one of the owners and was over the top wonderful to us! She set us up for the tasting and told us all about the favorite flavors of customers and how they come up with some of the crazy flavors... like this one:


Cotton Candy- seriously... it tasted just like the stuff, in gelato form... no weird chemically taste either, just instant memories of being a little kid with a face covered in sticky cotton candy glue.

Another reason I love gelato... it's only made with 4% milk fat... ice cream is made with anywhere from 20-30% milk fat. AKA gelato is a less fattening option (HELL YEAH!!!) Here are some other interesting gelato facts (click the image to make it larger).


The owners of Mona Lisa Cafe bought their gelato machine straight from Italy and a cute little Italian man taught them all the secrets, along with his recipes! He still shows up when he has new recipe ideas (popcorn was the last one before cotton candy!!). Believe it or not, Angie said it was a hit!!!

As for the flavor that was our number 1 that night for my crew: (drum roll please)


Amaretto!!!! My mom was so jealous that they had it and she wasn't there to have some. The place by us in NJ never carries Amaretto anymore for some reason... boo to them and WOOHOO to Mona Lisa Cafe!!

The second runner up was peanut butter! Man it was SO GOOD!!!!

An important note about eating gelato if you are under the age of 3... always use two spoons and wear a bib :)


Wondering what the other flavors were?? (Scroll over the image to see the flavor)



OH and if you are still hungry after eating to your eyeballs in gelato... they have a full menu of panini's, salads, and a HUGE selection of Italian cookies and cakes :) They will also happily accommodate larger groups. Just give them a call and they will get you all set up!

Is anyone else feeling like they just gained 5 lbs?? So tell me, which flavor do you think you'd like the best??

Eating local has become all the rage, so why not make it truly local and go pick your own food from the farm!? This is what I proposed to Foodbuzz and they happily agreed to play along! Rochester NY has the best of both worlds, a decent sized city with tons of great places to eat, and farms just outside of town. With so many small farms near by it was hard to choose! We ended up at Green Acre farms where they had two varieties of strawberries to pick.

Big juicy ones (Cabot), and smaller sweeter ones (Early Dawn). We had to give both a little try!


Once loaded up with lbs upon lbs of strawberries (I on my own came home with 10 lbs!) we hit the road back to our kitchens to see what we could come up with for a mellow brunch celebrating strawberries.

perfect weather, sunny, no too hot or humid... much better then the hail storms that happened on friday!

We started things off with some strawberry pancakes. Strawberries inside and out! We got the recipe from Baking Bites here. A few changes were made, like the use of 1 Tbs apple sauce instead of the butter and a little vanilla extract added in for good measure. They were wicked good, although a bit on the flat side, but oh so tasty!


Next we moved onto some strawberry muffins! (because come on, we all know I love carbs!) My blueberry muffin recipe was used and then whole strawberries were pushed into the center of each muffin once it was in the pan. The strawberries cooked and turned into a fun jam center!


From here we traveled onto dessert with a strawberry pie made by John! I'd tell you what's in it but John wants to do a guest blog about it! So stay tuned :)


If you didn't have enough sweets by this point feel free to have a sip of my deliciously refreshing strawberry amaretto twister. It's made with a combo of strawberries, breyers slow churn vanilla ice cream, amaretto, and some ice. Toss it all in the blender and it's GO TIME!! What's that you say... it's brunch... I shouldn't be drinking yet... whooops.


Oh and how did I almost forget about the jam!!! Seriously now! It's making home made strawberry jam that was the initial inspiration for this!! A "how to" is going to come later this week so stay tuned! Jam is the perfect parting gift for a party like this. Everyone goes home with a little bit of the party with them :)


While you wait for the jam recipe check out the deliciously luscious jam foam in action... a topper for a little oatmeal perhaps?? YUM! Because why waste all that lovely foam you skim off the top of your boiling jam?


Thank you again Foodbuzz for making this all possible! As you can see, we all had a blast and can't wait to do it again!
Imagine... hundreds of local farmers and vendors, all showing up no matter what time of year it is, no matter what the weather, to this open air place:


Rochester NY's 103 year old Public Market is thriving like crazy in these tough economic times. Found in the heart of the city, thousands show up every week on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday looking to find the best, freshest, local veggies, among other not so local fair (mango anyone?). Vendors' offerings range from fresh fruits and veggies, meats, cheese, bread, honey, clothing and other household goods... and the occasional live chicken (it's legal to raise chickens for eggs in your backyard in the city! No roosters allowed though):


I'm thankful for being picked again to participate in this months 24 24 24 by Foodbuzz. I proposed a task in cooking for a group with only $20 to spend at the local public market... Each person's task was easy... or maybe not so easy for some. Roam the market, $20 in hand, and buy up ingredients to make a delicious meal to feed 8 adults and 1 kid later in the day. Each person came up with creative ways of spending their money and brought amazing dishes to the party last night. (no one bought a live chicken though... I totally should have!)

Let me tell you a little more about the market... It is not for the claustrophobic, you tend to feel like cattle being herded through the lines of tightly packed vendors... it's rather easy to loose your friends, I've definitely lost John more than once there (thankfully he's tall and easy to locate!) I mean just look at all those people!


And that's just one aisle of the market!! This place is huge. And let me tell you, it will try your patience... after almost two hours of being trapped behind slow moving people and numerous sets of parents attempting to fit a double wide stroller full of kids and veggies down a crammed isle... you may end up looking like this:


Yeah I was reaching my point of wanting some people free time here... Thanks for making sure to capture the Kodak moment John! :D But the payoff of fresh local veggies...


totally makes it worth it!

To give you an idea of what I bought... I got this huge thing of tomatoes, eggplants, yellow and green squash for a total of $5. Impressive huh!


I also picked up dessert for us, a large marble angel food cake $1.50. A mini chocolate cake $2. And some cannoli for $1.25 each. Delicious!


Once everyone got home from the market the cooking began! Not everyone has sent me their recipes yet, so I'm going to do posts all week about the specific recipes everyone made as they send them to me! Then I'll link them back to this post so everyone can see all the recipes! So check back for an update link at the end of this each day this week!

For now though here's a little taste of what we had. Starting with an appetizer I made, simple and seriously delicious!

I bought some chicken andouille sausage from a butcher for $3 a pound. Pairing this with some extra sharp cheddar ($2 for 1/2 lb) from an Amish run stand and a loaf of honey wheat bread ($3) from a local baker... made for an irresistible appetizer!


Andouille & Cheddar Slider
1 lb chicken andouille sausage (or other VERY spicy sausage)
1/2 lb extra sharp aged cheddar cheese
1/2 loaf honey wheat bread

Cook the sausage on the stove or a grill until an internal temperature of 160 is reached. Slice into bite size pieces. Slice bread into small chunks, top with cheese and sausage. CHOW!

Totally easy and amazingly flavorful!

We had an amazing time and THANK YOU FOODBUZZ for making it possible! A glass of wine to you in thanks!


Check back for the recipe links to all these great dishes... which one looks the best to you??

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