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What we eat

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Taking the Comfort Out of Comfort Foods – Lessons Learned

Grilled Cheese and Tomato Soup

Today was a perfect, rainy, Arizona day. The weather must have made Rylie really sleepy because she didn’t wake up until 9 and with Harris out getting my car fixed, I was able to just lay in bed and be lazy.

I’ve been dying to try this goat cheese tomato soup recipe I found on recently, and I figured today was as good a day as any. After all, cold weather calls for warm soup. So I gathered all my ingredients, cooked up my onions and garlic, threw in some whole tomatoes, salt, pepper, sugar, vegetable stock and tomato paste. I simmered them for about a half hour.

Before putting in the goat cheese and heavy cream, the recipe calls for you to blend the ingredients to a creamy texture. This is when things went wrong. Very wrong.

Maybe I should be embarrassed to make this public, but hey, I have no shame. And if I can help one other poor soul who doesn’t know what’s going to happen next…well then I’ll be happy.

Simply stated, I’m an idiot. I poured the boiling hot contents of my soup into the blender, put on the lid and pressed the button. I realize now why this was a mistake. The blender exploded. On me. OUCH. Quite possibly the DUMBEST thing I’ve ever done. You see the steam needed to find a way out of the enclosed area, and well, it was far more powerful than the strength I was using to hold the lid on.

With soup covering just about everything in the kitchen, it took a minute or two for me to realize that I was covered head to toe in boiling hot soup. At first I thought I was fine, and just start mopping soup up off the counters and floor, but then it set in… my skin was burning.

Obviously I’m ok, lesson learned. I have a few small burns but nothing terrible. It could have been much worse.

Once I recovered and got everything blended together, I mixed in 3 Oz. of goat cheese and 1/3 cup of heavy cream.

Then to top it off, this happened…

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It was a stellar day.

Weekend Recap – Hiking, Food and Relaxation

Ya know what’s awesome about living in Arizona? This…

Hiking South Mountain

I kicked off my weekend bright and early Saturday with a hike on South Mountain. I haven’t hiked since before the baby was born, it was great to get out and get some fresh air and start my day off with some exercise. I think I’ll try it more often! This is the view from the top, it’s hard to tell but the city of Phoenix is down below to the left between those two hills that look deceivingly small.

Did I mention it was 70 degrees on my drive home from work at around 7:00? Don’t be jealous east coasters.

Saturday evening I headed off to Blended Food Bloggers Conference where I met some amazing cooks/bloggers:

Everyday Southwest
Eat Drink Love
Fit Fun Delish
I Wash… You Dry
The Baked Equation
The Slow Roasted Italian
Pink Cake Plate
East Valley Mom Guide
and Around My Family Table… just to name a few.

Holy swag! This event was well worth my $30. I could barely haul this load of freebies down the street to my car…

Gourmet Garden

Sun Dried Tomatoes

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Urban Table

Fry's Food Stores

Fairytale Brownies

Pop Chips

The sponsors of this event were so amazing. Thanks so much to Fry’s Food Stores, Shamrock Farms, Bella Sun Luci, Roland, Fairytale Brownies, Pop Chips and Gourmet Garden for all of your donations and especially Shawn at I Wash You Dry and Wendy at Around My Family Table for organizing the event.

It’s not often that I leave the house and gallivant around town until 10 P.M. so Sunday was a wash for me. I. Did. NOTHING. and it was great.

Only 3 days til the weekend again. Looking forward to it!

Sunday Dinner – Pasta Bake

Last night I attended the Blended Food Bloggers Conference at The Old Spaghetti Factory in Downtown Phoenix. It was a great event! Met a lot of awesome people, heard a talk from Heather Gill, a local food photographer, and got a ton of goodies from some really great sponsors. I also got to spend some quality time with my super awesome friend Brian who I never see. You can catch up with him on his blog or by visiting his Game Night Guys podcast.

So when it came to figuring out what’s for dinner tonight, I looked to my Blended swag bag for inspiration and I came up with this…

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I chopped up some onions and also some garlic and sautéed them in some olive oil.

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We had some beef in the freezer so I gave it a little salt and pepper and threw it in with the onions and garlic.

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Fry’s Food Stores had sponsored the conference and gave away HUGE bags of food. This jar of marinara from their Private Selection was one of the items in the bag. SCORE! (I’ll share the other giveaways at a later time. Good stuff!) Once my meat was all cooked up, I simmered it with this sauce until my ziti noodles boiled.

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For a little extra taste I added in some of my favorite Penzy’s spices.

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Once my noodles boiled I mixed everything together in a casserole dish, and then things got a little crazy up in here… ARE YOU READY?

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That’s right… I added some ricotta.(OK, so my idea of CRAZY is a little off)

After baking at 350 for about a half hour, this meal was a done deal.DSC_0498

And what’s better? It’s a Rylie approved dish. Fit for a princess.

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Super simple meal thrown together by whatever was left over in my kitchen from the week. Can’t beat that!

Enjoy!

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