California Coast New Years.

Dug out the camera cable last nite and did a little uploading. Many pictures to ensue of our fun little jaunt down the California Coast for New Years. Grab some hot apple cider and keep on scrollin.

sea rock inn. (http://www.searockinn.com/) they were fab.

view from our deck.

our cozy little jr. suite

view from along the road.

amazing old fashioned fireplace. greg had a heyday with this. who knew i married a pyro?

yummy blueberry danish for breakkie both mornings at mendo bakery.

amazing feathery plant alongside road.

barn or house? not sure, but it's cool.

cute little church along the road.

loved this sky shot taken from main street in town. it looks like heaven.

series of sunset pictures, all within a few minutes of each other on the same evening.

spectacular.




where we ended up after a fab 5 star dinner at cafe beaujolais....dick's place.

we were seriously overdressed, but it didn't stop us from ringing in the new year with a drink and a smile.


Hope 2008 is fabulous for us all.

I'm Elite!

Something happened yesterday that is cause for great celebration in the Tyler household. Well mostly by me...the female half. The male half just smiled indulgently.

I've been really into Yelp'ing lately (www.yelp.com) and got 2008 Yelp Elite status which means..well..that I'm cool? Who knows what it means...I guess that they like my reviews. So now I have this cute little 08 Elite button on my profile and we get invited to local Yelp events where we can partake of food and booze and meet other local Yelpers who like to write. Sounds like fun, huh. We shall see.

Check out my Yelps at http://marae.yelp.com.

Welcome 2008.

Happy New Year!!

I've been remiss in posting the last week...it's called Time Off and I guess I just took some serious advantage of it...thinking 'oh I really should update my blog' but since most of the time I feel like I am just talking to myself..I thought that 'I' wouldn't really miss much by waiting.

But today's a new year...er well the start of the New Work Year for me anyway now that I am heading back to the daily grind...so I figured why not pop in for a quick post. 2007 was a great year for us...and we are hoping for an even better 2008.

So, I thoroughly enjoyed being off...we hosted a lovely little cocktail post-holiday party for friends on the 28th...it was a small group being that most of our friends were out of town for Xmas and New Years, but it was an awesome time with some yummy punch and foodie items (some of which I actually made).

One of my coworkers brought us these cookies...which let's be honest, I was so friggin cookied out from my cookie love-fest the week before Xmas (and umm during and after)...and I thought I wouldn't be able to eat any.

WRONG. These things were tasty. I asked her for the recipe...turns out she mentioned these to me in a previous convo, basically Peanut Butter cookies with a mini-snickers bar inside. Sounds basic but oh so good. I didn't recognize the Snickers bar, instead I thought she was a fabulous magician for being able to get peanuts and caramel and chocolate inside the cookies. DOH.

So here's the link for the recipe...I am definitely going to try these at some point but figure it's safer to wait given how much we loved them here in the Tyler household, the party was on the 28th and we were gifted with about 20 cookies and now umm there are 2 left.

PB Cookie Snickers Heaven ensues below.

Snickers Bar Cookies
1 cup butter, softened (2 sticks)
1 cup creamy peanut butter
1 cup light brown sugar
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, sifted
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 13-ounce package Snickers Miniatures (about 60 candies)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Combine the butter, peanut butter and sugars using a mixer on a medium to low speed until light and fluffy. Slowly add eggs and vanilla until thoroughly combined. Then mix in flour, salt and baking soda. Cover and chill dough for 2 to 3 hours.

Unwrap all Snickers. Remove dough from refrigerator. Shape about 1 tablespoon of dough around each candy. Place on a greased cookie sheet and bake for 10 to 12 minutes. Let cookies cool on baking rack. Makes about 4 dozen cookies.

Note: You will use 1 bag and approximately half the other bag.

Recipe and notes at:
http://www.post-gazette.com/food/20020905mailbox1.asp

We also took a trip to Mendocino for New Years with some friends, we had a wonderful time and the Mini got some serious breaking in what with all the crazy curves and all, I have some beautiful pictures which I will upload at some point once I can figure out how to magically create more space on my laptop hard drive.

But for now, gotta go get ready for work...have a good one all!

Santa Baby.

Christmas 2007 was *great*.

Greg was great to me.


I was great to Greg.

Family and friends were great to us.




Throw in three types of tamales, massive amounts of cookies. Candy. Some light egg nog. Spiced apple cider. Snuggles with Portia. Time off.

It was great all around.

Happy Merry!

Well the day is finally here, MERRY CHRISTMAS from Greg & Mara to anyone reading my little corner of the blogosphere. We are about to get down and dirty opening gifts, I of course took a picture of our overflowing tree, it's always so sad when it's bare and cold and naked after the fact. I don't mind delaying for a while just to live vicariously through wrapped present glory. Hope everyone is enjoying their wonderful day with friends and family!!

In celebration of Christmas Eve, yesterday I pulled out the rest of the rugelach dough from the other day and made more pinwheels. This time with dried cranberries, coconut, brown sugar, cinnamon and walnuts with apricot and these were rockin! Though honestly the first batch was great too, but these were just a little less sweet and more tart but still sweet. Hmm that made no sense. Anyway, rave reviews from hubby, who said 'those pinwheel things are good, i ate a few'...haha. I def think these and the PB cookies are my fave this year. I'm hoarding the PB cookies and trying to eat them sparingly, because how often do I bake with hydrogenated oil Skippy? Once a year.

This 2nd batch of rugelach came out way more visually lovely than the first tries I made. Those were still good looking but nowhere near SmittenKitchen or Janna beauty, now I finally feel like I got more of the hang of it.

rugelach beauties.

ready for it's closeup.


Time for presents!! Have a wonderful day everyone. Hugs and kisses from Greg, Mara and the snow princess, Portia.

Holiday Tradition...Tamales!

Every year my family makes Tamales for Xmas...well year after year it's been mostly Mom and Grandma making the elements for them and then the grandkids assemble them. I have never really felt all that confident in my kitchen skills so I was never sure I could pull off the tamale makin' on my own. However last year only Mom made Tamales...for whatever reason I don't really love hers, and Grandma hurt her shoulder this year, so I thought well if there was ever a time to step up the plate it is this year.

I had Grandma help me by making her famous sauce (which has 3 types of chilis, garlic, peanut butter, chocolate, pumpkin and sesame seed in it!!) and I did the rest. I went a little crazy because I figure when in Rome so we made beef/pork combo tamales ala family tradition, chicken chile verde tamales ala Mara experimental tradition, and sweet tamales which are kind of rare and unique around here so I was really excited about these. They are basically like dessert tamales.

Like any obsessed blogger, I catalogued the process the whole time with my camera. I started cooking the meats on Friday, and we assembled on Saturday. Greg helped. Started steaming on Sunday and into Monday, each batch takes between 2-4 hours to steam.

Here are the highlights. I am happy to report that every version was received with cheers by the family members and the most important taster, my cute guinea pig husband, who wants to eat tamales and cookies solely for meals the rest of this week. I like the way he thinks!!

crockpot beef with garlic, onion, water, simmered and cooked for 5+ hours.

shredded!!

mixed with Grandma's famous chili sauce....mmm.

prepared masa from a local Guadalajara market (which also has fab greasy burritos). yep this stuff has LARD in it!! yum.

added EVOO, baking powder, sauce for color and whipped into shape!

assembly station.

assembled and ready to be steamed for a few hours.

beautiful steamy goodness.

ta-da! finished product. i think these are actually the sweet ones as the beef and chicken ones are slightly larger.

speaking of sweet, here is the filling for the sweet tamales. hot rum soaked raisins, cinnamon, brown sugar.

done, cooled and cut-up. they ARE as tasty as they look.

Baking Overload.

So last nite I spent 4 hours baking goodies for my team cookie exchange, which was actually a ton of fun. We put the Christmas music on and I started making a whirlwind of a mess in the kitchen!!! I only needed to make one type of cookies for the exchange but I've been researching them all week, so I got inspired and made three different types. Baking superwomanslashfriend Janna has been waxing on and on about SmittenKitchen.Com so I started checking out that blog and other baking blogs this week. So I had a little pile of 'I wanna try this!' placed in front of me. Oodles of european unsalted butter and light brown sugar later...I had my results and boy were they tasted. I took pictures the whole time, which Greg just finds hilarious and a little crazee, but after seeing those baking blog pictures, you'd be inspired to take photos of your handiwork too. I'm but a novice.

thumbprint dough.

beautiful organic sugar.


peanut butter dough.


finished peanut butter product.


apricot rugelach dry filling.


rugelach dough rolled & filled.


yum yum. solo baked rugelach.


rolls and rolls of rugelach.

cooled & packaged...tasty pretty.