TAMALE NIGHT!!!! (By FOOD & WINE: Entertaining)

I love FOOD & WINE Magazine! They read my mind and provide me with recipes and ideas I have been thinking about as we change the seasons.  As we entered into the holiday months (by the way I CANNOT believe it is already NOVEMBER!) I wanted to try making tamales!

While reading the October Food & Wine Magazine, I stumbled upon tamale recipes and a guide on how to throw a Tamale Making Party! Sounds like my kind of party... So we put it on the calendar.  The Sunday before we prepped the chicken, salsa, and masa dough, and then all we had to do was assemble and steam!

Here are the recipes from FOOD & WINE Magazine (I subscribe via nook, and on my iPad take screen shots to save my favorite articles):

 And to guide us in assembling the tamales, I zoomed in on the instructions to Assemble & Steam the Tamales and displayed with my iPad connection cord on our TV... I know I am a nerd!

While they were steaming we enjoyed wine and appetizers while we chatted... and ummm browsed Facebook, wedding pictures, and wedding videos together on my iPad displayed on our new 55in TV!  

Vacation time!

Ok, so with life being really busy and getting the flu/food poisoning, I haven't really been in the mood to eat food or blog about food. Not sure where it came from, but all I care about is it is out of my system, I am feeling great, I am on vacation, and ready to eat!

This weekend will be spent with my family in northern California. We aren't too sure where the weekend will take us, but I do know we will have a great time, delicious food, and lots of laughs.

I started my vacation by heading down to Los Angeles last night to stay with my friends Austin and Samantha (you can check Samantha out here, she is awesome). We chatted and watched American Idol while enjoying 2 bottles of wine. I think this is what grown ups call fun these days, well at least on a week

Sam and I were looking forward to a hard workout at Sweat Pilates, then a nice little breakfast, and then to the airport. Our morning started out right, we left on time, until the rain in California freaked all the drivers out and they decided to create a traffic jam which made us late for Pilates. We didn't want to be those girls walking into class 10 mins late so we decided to move on to breakfast. With Yelp to the rescue we found FOOD on Pico Ave.

As always we can never pick between a few items on the menu, I wanted the buckwheat buttermilk pancakes on the specials menu, but I also wanted the breakfast FOOD sandwich. We came up with the best idea get both and share. Perfect I would say!

The sandwich was delicious, you really can't go wrong with an over medium egg, bacon, and cheese all in an English muffin plus it came with marinara potatoes with a special aoili sauce. The pancakes were topped with berries and bananas, which obviously made them good for you (just kidding) and were puffy little cakes topped with syrup. My stomach and taste buds were very satisfied.

Then off to LAX to catch my flight to my hometown Sacramento. I used to dread returning home, but I have learned Sacramento actually has a lot to offer and quite a good selection of restaurants. More to come from my vacation!

Sarah

P.S. How cool is this you can do your grocery too!?!? Well if you are looking for dairy, lemons, wine and chips!