As I've mentioned before, there's a GREAT new grocer by my subway stop. I walk past it at least twice a day (once GOING to work and once coming HOME). On the way to work yesterday, there were flats upon flats of asparagus bundles (99 cents, no less)... and wouldn't you know by the time I got home they were all sold! I spoke with one of the workers, and rather than go into the basement to retrieve more (if you've ever been in a basement in NYC, you'll understand this sentiment), he offered me the organic bundles at the same price. Here they are, all chopped and pretty in my lovely Fiesta-ware bowl (I love this thing!!):
Lucky for me, the recipe is really simple! I was able to use my microplane zester (PW would be proud) for the lemon zest, and my fancy new Penzey's pepper rounded out the dish.
See? It TOTALLY looks like the picture (humor me please)...
On top of the pasta dish, I made a yummy little salad (yes, it's in a pie dish- I just grabbed the first thing that was handy).
And in a testament to our different personalities, here is a shot of my plate. Notice how things are hardly touching (don't worry, I moved that errant piece of pasta as SOON as I took this picture)- I even put my salad in a separate bowl so the dressing won't touch anything... Mom, am I your daughter or WHAT?
Meanwhile, SFS piles everything onto a plate... at this point, I was dying!
To be honest, it was a pretty yummy meal! It was nice to eat veggies that are fresh/in season! All in all, I was pretty pleased with myself.But it doesn't end there. As you probably already know, I'm a little obsessed with cake plates. I received the cutest little one as an Easter gift, and I decided yesterday was a perfect day to make a cake for it. Yep, that's correct... I made a cake JUST so I could have an excuse to use my cake plate... totally normal, right? I bought tiny little cake pans that would fit on the plate, and I baked up a couple yellow cakes... here's the whole shebang before I started...
First I sliced off the tops of the rounds, so the cake would sit as close to even as I could get it!
(Which resulted in these YUMMY scraps....)
Then I slathered a layer of chocolate frosting between the two rounds.
Here's how it came out. I used canned frosting (I know- the horrors), but all in all it looked fine!
Then, because I'm silly, I tried draping some fabric behind/under the cake. Of course, I only have ONE piece of fabric in my whole apartment, so that's what I used! (I bought it when SBV was in town ages ago, and planned to stretch it as art... it's from Mood.)
Now, isn't all this worth it for that ADORABLE cake plate? Note: if you have this month's Martha Stewart magazine, you'll see a similar one in the Hidden Valley ad.And on top of being the cutest thing... it's also FUNCTIONAL! Look- it's holding my cake so I can cut a piece to devour!
YUMMY!
Goodness... those are a lot of pictures. But that's it for me today- if you've stuck around this far, I'm impressed... I hope you have a GREAT Thursday!
