Turkey Dinner with Bacon #FoodPicFriday

I was not a big fan of January or February so I wanted to celebrate them finally being over with a big, yummy meal. March has already shown warmer temperatures and way more outdoor time for me, so I am overjoyed that we are finally getting out of this winter. Also, any excuse to make a turkey is kind of how I roll.

We just picked up some old fashioned bacon and John suggested we put some over the breast of the bird while it roasted. I gave it a shot and the turkey and gravy tasted great. It didn't really taste like bacon, but I think it basted the bird with awesomeness. I even got some crispy snackin' bacon while the turkey was settling on the counter. Mmmmm...snackin' bacon.

Salmon Dinner

Something we love to eat but don't buy very often is fresh salmon. It can be more expensive than other main dishes, so if we ever do buy it, it's usually on sale and frozen. Recently we had some grocery store points saved up and decided to spend them a nice salmon dinner. We were so happy we did.

John prepared our salmon with some garlic and lemon pieces, adding an infusion of flavour.

He also added various spices (dill, chives) to make our mouths water even more.

I prepared whipped potatoes with butter and chives, and we had an explosion of awesome tastes on our plate.

Yum! Sometimes there really is nothing better than a wonderful home cooked meal.

My New Hangout

So this winter has forced me to accept a new reality when it comes to what I believe to be cold. Since we have had so many days that were -20°C or below, my body has come to think of warmer temperatures (-5°C or above) as actually warm.

This winter has also led me to believe that spring/summer aren't actually coming. We just live in Westeros now, winter came, it's going to last years, and we all need to suck it up and move on. So this is me moving on.

This is my -5°C or higher "day at the beach" zone. The backyard still has 3 feet of snow in it, so this is my drive-way hangout. I've got books, hot chocolate, my sunnies, and a few layers of winter outerwear. Reading with mitts on isn't the best, but seriously, I'm taking what I can get at the moment.

Twitter and pi Day

I have been on Twitter for about a year now and a new thing happened for me on Friday: I got a bunch of retweets. I'm pretty sure it all had to do with the magic combination of posting the right thing, at the right time, with the right hashtags, and having a cool photo. The tweet was for pi day and my blog post about it. I posted it around noon on Friday (pi day) and was really excited by the response it got.

Throughout the afternoon I got 37 Retweets and 21 Favourites. This was a new record for me to say the least. My biggest amount of RTs previously was 5. So even though the pi retweets wasn't quite an Ellen Oscar selfie, getting as many as 37 was pretty cool for me.

The RTs also had an effect on my Blogger stats, as I linked to my blog in my tweet. In six hours, I got more page views on the pi day post than most of my other posts get in a few weeks. So cross posting to social media made a huge difference for me on pi day.

UPDATE: (March 22, 2014): Last night I got an email from the Twitter team with my weekly stats. I've never gotten an email like that before, so maybe it had to do with all the action around this tweet. Not only did the tweet get all the retweets I previously mentioned, but the photo itself got almost 15,000 views. Holy shit!!

 

St. Patrick's Day Cupcakes

This past weekend I wanted to make a treat for gaming night that had a little St. Patrick's Day flare. Cupcakes are always a great go to for me, and I took to Google for some ideas, as I didn't have any shamrock accents (sprinkles, cookie cutter, etc.)

I found a fun recipe on allrecipes, that had a burst of colour inside a white cupcake. I had my winner.

I started with a white cake mix, which I substituted unsweeted applesauce for the oil. I always do this when I make a cake mix and I love the flavour of the finished cupcakes/cake.

After mixing up the batter, I put 2/3 of it into baking cups (about 21 baking cups).

The remaining third of the batter I dyed green and piped it into the middle of the cupcakes.

Using a resealable bag as a makeshift pastry bag, I snipped off the end and added a baking tip, so I could accurately squeeze the green batter into the center of my cupcakes. I actually used a baking tip that was far too wide for this purpose, and the green batter rushed out faster than I was expecting. Because of this, adding the green took very little time but some of the cupcakes got green batter on more than just their middles. I decided I could fix it in post (with all the icing on top, I was sure no one would really notice).

I made my favourite icing, marshmallow buttercream. If you haven't tried it yet, do give it a shot. Really, really, good.

In the baking cup

Unwrapped

Surprise! It's green inside!

Happy St. Patrick's Day! Hope you are having a great day!