Garlic Cakes!

It's no secret around here that I love garlic. Like, a lot. It's my favorite food, regardless of the fact that most people strangely consider it a seasoning, and not an actual food!

And also, I love crab cakes.

Well, remember a while back, when I posted pictures of my first attempt at making homemade crab cakes? Here's a refresher:

It turns out, I was inspired by a comment on that blog post, from Hannah:

So because this weekend is when the Gilroy Garlic Festival takes place, and we don't get to go on our annual trip to over indulge in garlic (since sadly my hubs didn't want to travel across the country for it, pshhh!), I finally made us some garlic cakes!

Yes, you read that right. Like crab cakes, but instead of jumbo lump crab meat, I used roasted garlic cloves!

First, I roasted 3 heads of garlic in my roasting machine, which I've written about before.

Once cooked, I removed the roasted garlic cloves (I find it easiest to just stab them with a butter knife to pull them out, when they're still warm and moist from the olive oil they were cooked in).

Then, I decided I wanted to experiment with two different kinds of garlic cakes. So I split the garlic into two bowls, and made one exactly like the crab cake recipe I used before. Except of course I used the garlic cloves instead of the crab meat, and added an extra 1/4 cup of breadcrumbs, since I had less garlic cloves than crab, to bring it to the right consistency.

For my second batch, I added the following to my ~1 1/2 head of garlic cloves:

• 1/2 cup seasoned breadcrumbs
• 1 egg
• 2 chopped fresh basil leaves
• 2 tablespoons shredded parmesan cheese
• 1 tablespoon of garlic infused olive oil (just in case there wasn't enough garlic already!)
• squirt of lemon juice
• couple dashes of oregano, parsley, salt and pepper
• one small dash of paprika

Once I had my two types of garlic cake mixtures, I used a 1/4 cup measuring cup to press the mixture into, to form the cakes, and put them on a greased baking sheet.

Bake at 425 degrees for 10-12 minutes, and you have little garlicy, bready bites of goodness!

 

A couple of notes: I liked my basil/parm version of the garlic cakes (dipped in garlic butter, yum!) better than the crab cake recipe version.

The Worcestershire Sauce in the crab cake recipe is a good compliment to crab, but was a little overpowering for the garlic. I dipped these cakes in garlic EVOO and 18 year aged balsamic vinegar, and it covered the Worcestershire Sauce flavor pretty well, so maybe if I try this again I'll sub Worcestershire for balsamic vinegar. Or maybe just make the basil/parmesan ones with my full 3 heads of roasted garlic!

Mmmm, I'm drooling again just looking at these photos! Luckily we only ate half the garlic cakes last night, so we have more for tonight. And yes, as I said when I replied to the blog comment that inspired it all, I did in fact die and go to heaven when I ate these!

Thanks Hannah, for the marvelous inspiration! I'll definitely make these again for you, when you finally come visit me. :)

Animal Photography: Some of My Favorites

What? You thought I was done with talking about the awesome Lazy 5 Ranch?

Nope, because I didn't even show you the best photos yet!

Animal photography is super hard. Or, at least for me it is, since I've only had a nice camera since March, so I'm still learning. And since I'm still learning, and animals don't seem to like to stay still for photo ops, I always shoot them on continuous shot (I took almost 1,000 photos the ~3 hours we were at the ranch!). Most of them turn out blurry, but sometimes I luck out and get a really clear or really cute shot, like I did with the photos in this post. So of course I had to share!

This guy way so silly, and because of continuous shot, I was able to make a funny GIF.

The giraffe, and his tongue, was one of my favorite animals.

Munching on food photos are fun, but were really hard for me to get because of all the fast chewing!

Sometimes all it takes is a little cropping to make a photo a favorite.

Eyelashes!

This guy was a rarity, he was actually posing for me, and I was sure to reward him after taking his picture by throwing him some food.

Sad panda rhino.

Some more favs.

And I saved the very best of the best for last, the baby animals! I love the side-eye look this grumpy baby cow is giving the camera.

Baby pigs wiggle A LOT. So hard to get a clear picture!

And my two favorite baby deer photos.

Do you like taking photos of animals? Any tips for taking clear photos of them, or do you also rely on a little luck with the continuous shot setting on your camera?

Working From Home Style, Week 9

Happy Monday Tuesday!

Yep, I'm a day late with this post. That's because I learned just how valuable the concept of air conditioning is this weekend (we've never lived in a place with a need for AC until our current house).

Our AC went out sometime Saturday night, and I probably got heatstroke and almost lost my will to live. Or something slightly less dramatic. But I was hot and cranky all day Sunday, with it getting up to 91 degrees on the top level of our house! Luckily around 4pm the maintenance guys came out and had it fixed within about 20 minutes. But it still took hours to cool down the house, and at midnight it was still 81 degrees inside.

Anyway, all of this is to say, I didn't feel like cropping and uploading outfit photos on Sunday night. Nope, instead I hid in our cooler basement, watching Paris Hilton reality TV on my laptop. My husband did say that he thought my TV choice contributed to my loss of will to live though....

Monday:

Top: Old Navy, Shorts: Victoria's Secret

Yellow Flowered Heels: Bumper

Tuesday:

Maroon Dress: Victoria's Secret, Necklace and Earrings: Target

Brown Ruffle Heels: Wild Diva

Wednesday:

Pinstripe Vest: Target, Black Tank Top: H&M, Skirt: Victoria's Secret, Bracelet and Earrings: Target

Black and Silver Heels: Steve Madden

Thursday:

Purple and Green Dress: Anthropologie, Necklace and Earrings: Bought by my husband on our honeymoon in Hawaii

Purple Heels: Chinese Laundry

Friday:

Pink and Black Ruffle Dress: H&M, Earrings: Forever 21

Black Strappy Heels: Aldo

Dresses were my main choice this week, and really good for the crazy heat we've been having. Sunday was the 5th day in a row with 100+ degrees in our area. My solution has been dressing cool, and not going outside until after it gets dark out, which luckily I can do since I don't have to leave the house for work! I'm not sure I'll ever fully adjust to these temperatures though--and I think I'm starting to crave scarves and boots weather!

Is anyone else starting to look forward to fall fashion yet?

Annnnd This Is What Happens When I Don't Meal Plan

We go grocery shopping and come home with a freezer-full of frozen food. :(

THIS is why it's so important for me to plan out our meals in advance, otherwise we go shopping without a real list, and end up with lame dinners for the next 3 or 4 weeks. Even though it takes a bit of time, it's a whole lot better than this:

We didn't get only frozen dinners, we also got some prepared pulled pork, deli meat, ravioli....lazy fridge stuff that requires heating, not real cooking. I guess on the upside, our grocery bill at checkout was about $100 less than it usually is, since we didn't buy a million ingredients for cooking real meals. But I'm sure our sodium intake this next month will also be off the charts. Sigh!

Remind me to look at this post before our next grocery shopping trip, mkay? I think it will be good motivation to take the time to meal plan!

Shadow Boxes: A Little Snapshot of Our Wedding

Remember a while ago when I bought these cheap shadow boxes?

(Purchased to fill the blank space on a wall, when I had to move the frame that was there to another wall, to replace a frame that broke when it fell off the wall)

Well, not too long after purchasing these frames, I hung them up, but with nothing in them. I didn't have anything good to use as placeholder art, but wanted to make the living room feel more complete, so up they went, teal colored paper sheet they came with and all.

But finally, I was inspired to fill the shadow boxes! I'd planned a long time ago to make a shadow box with some mementos from our wedding, and with these empty shadow boxes looking me in the face, it was the perfect opportunity.

So I dug through my old boxes of wedding stuff, and printed out some photos to make a collage for the shadow boxes. Unfortunately, I couldn't find my husband's dried boutineer, but I'm sure it will turn up eventually. I distinctly remember hiding it in some kind of little box or something, somewhere "safe" where it wouldn't get damaged in our move, but I guess it was such a good hiding place that now I can't remember where I put it!

Wanna see the finished (but not yet re-hung) shadow boxes? :)

(Tip: After you figure out how you want to display your shadow box items, take a photo of the layout before you glue/tape everything into place. It makes a good reference, and is a lot easier than trying to remember the exact layout you liked after picking things up to apply the glue and tape.)

And how about some close ups?

Below shows one of my "something old" items, a little bear I gave my grandma when I was 3 years old, that she carried around with her in her purse for 20 years, until my grandpa gave it back to me after she passed away. Also, one of my Cola rehearsal bouquet flowers, as a nod to my time writing for Weddingbee. And in the far bottom right, some fabric from the napkin rings I made.

A close up of our laser-cut invitations. So much work, with all the cutting, folding (I even hand made the pocketfolds!), and gluing, but I'm still so proud of them.

I had to include a photo of our six foot tall cupcake tower that my husband and I built together, since that was another one of my favorite wedding projects. And also one of the rocks from our "wishing stone" guestbook, signed by my parents. My mom even drew a little flower on it, just like from our invitations.

And now for a closer look at the second shadow box.

Our programs, and a few leftover flowers that I had after I turned the cuffs from my DIY wedding shoes into a clutch.

One of the magnets from our save the dates, and of course, a photo of our first kiss as husband and wife!

And finally, the belly band from our invitations, and our LED luminary escort cards, another favorite wedding project of mine (partly because my husband did most of the work, haha!)

It's just too bad I can't leave the batteries turned on all the time, to glow like they did at our wedding.

(Above photo, and photos used in the shadow boxes by Shoot Me Now Photography)

Now, the reason I haven't re-hung these shadow boxes is because now that I put together these little snapshots of our wedding, I'm thinking they would be more appropriate in our main hallway. So I need to get even more hanging strips.

Of course, now I'm yet again left with a blank wall in our living room. Complete with the little hanging strips still in place from when the empty shadow boxes were hanging there!

Ah, well, guess it's back to the drawing board...and to the hardware store for hanging strips, so I can hang these freshly completed shadow boxes. I'm pretty excited, considering we've been hitched for over a year, and these will be the first wedding photos we've put up!

Did you find a way to showcase any mementos from your wedding? And how long did it take you after getting married to hang or display your wedding photos?