Organizing Your Kitchen

Do you live in a small space?  Looking for ways to maximize your kitchen space? Well here are some tips that I found helpful.  

I have been meaning to organize my kitchen and the kitchen cabinets, but I have not been able to because I have been so busy lately.  But finally, I found the time to get a move on it and I was able to organize a few of my cabinets.  I found ways to organize my kitchen making it easier to access items, more efficient, and easy on the eyes =)

The Pantry: In my pantry I had canned foods, boxed cake mixes, bottles (salad dressings, marinades), etc...

• What I did was purchased File Holders from the Container Store and place the bottles in them to make them easier to move around and to save on space.

• For the canned foods I purchased a can rack from The Container Store and this definitely saved a lot of room in my pantry.

The Cabinets:  I had a lot of boxes for crackers, pastas, snacks, etc...

• I bought shelf helpers to add an extra set of shelving.
• I used this for my snack cabinet as well as the cabinet I use to for dishes.
• I purchased baskets with handles (large and small) at Walmart.  These baskets were ideal for keeping portioned snacks, pasta boxes, noodle bags (that are difficult to stack).
• I started to pre-portion out some of our snacks (in snack bags) making it easy grab things on the go and get rid of the bulky packaging.
• I also did this for my refrigerated snacks (i.e. baby carrots, celery, fruit).






















• For the spice and bottle cabinet I purchased a couple of Lazy susans’ to make it easy to access all items in the cabinets and maximize the room in the cabinets.
• Tray dividers are a good way to store baking sheets and serving trays.

Baking Goods: Bags of flour, sugar, chocolate chips were a mess in my cabinets.

• I purchased different sizes of Mason Jars, labeled them and filled them up.  Usually a lot of the baking ingredients come in bags which makes it hard to stack.  I found that Mason jars kept the ingredients fresh (because the Mason Jar has an air tight seal) and this made it so much easier to see which ingredients I was looking for.  
• The labels that I used were erasable food labels (a necessity =))
• You can also use the baskets with handles to place the bags in if you prefer.

BEFORE

AFTER

Tea:  My boyfriend and I drink quite a bit of tea and all those loose boxes are space hogs.

• I purchased a Tea Holder, one for decaffeinated and one for caffeinated tea.
• I cut each box to fit in each slot, so we can refer back to the packaging in case we wanted to repurchase the tea again.

BEFORE

AFTER

Tips:

1. Edit.  Remove items that are expired and donate things that you will probably never use.
2. Organize to fit your lifestyle.
3. Think outside of the box.  Think of ways to use everyday items as other things (i.e. Jars as storage containers).
4. It’s sad to say, but It is not cheap to organize.  Take an inventory of what you have and what you need to fit your organizing needs.  
5. Some stores that have organizing tools:
1. Walmart
2. Target
3. Kmart
4. Bed Bath and Beyond
5. The Container Store
6. Hardware Stores






Please comment, rate ans subscribe! Happy organizing =)

Off The Grid and Nutella Creme Brulee Recipe

Hello there foodies =) I hope everyone had a great spring/Easter Holiday filled with food, fun and family.  

A few weeks ago my boyfriend and I hopped on the BART and took a lovely ~2.5 mile walk (bike carriages are available) along SF’s Embarcadero to attend the season opener of an event called Off The Grid (OTG).  OTG is an event that happens everyday of the week in multiple areas in the Bay Area (San Mateo, UN Plaza, St. Mary’s Square), with the biggest Market on Fridays at Fort Mason in San Francisco.  On the weekdays there can be from 4 to 10 vendors/trucks, and on Fridays there are about 30+ vendors with treats that would satisfy everyone’s taste buds.  

What OTG is, is a gathering of different food vendors in tents, food trucks, carts, etc...  You will find many different types of foods with TONS of fusion and lots of FLARE (similar to the Food Network’s Great Food Truck).  For example the Curry Up Now truck serves items like deconstructed samosas, Chicken Masala Burritos; the Hapa SF truck serves modern organic Filipino food (i.e. sisig, adobo and more).  There is music, there is food; it is a fun way to spice up your Friday night.

One of the things that I was dying to try was the Creme Brulee Cart.  I have had and tried many creme brulees, but the reason why this one intrigued me is because it was a Nutella strawberry creme brulee....talk about yum =)  It was so delicious and I could not help it, but I wanted more.  So I decided to recreate a version of the Nutella creme brulee at home.  This is a very simple, quick, easy and VERY decadent recipe that takes your basic creme brulee recipe  and takes it up a notch. 

 

Deconstructed Samosa

Spicy Shrimp

Ingredients:

• 4 cups Heavy Cream
• 6 Eggs (yolks, separated)
• ½ cup Superfine Sugar (with a few tbsps for dusting)
• Vanilla Bean or 1 tbsp Vanilla Extract
• ¼ cup Nutella (Optional)
• ¼ cup Dark Chocolate
• Strawberries (Optional)

1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees.
2. Heat cream and vanilla in a saucepan on medium heat until it starts to boil.
3. Remove saucepan from heat ~10 minutes
4. In another bowl separate the eggs yolks.  
5. Add sugar to egg yolks and whisk.
6. Temper the egg mixture by adding a little of the warm cream to the mixture at a time.
7. (Optional) Once all the cream is added, add the Nutella and chocolate chips, whisk well.
8. Ladle the cream mixture into ramekins.
9. Place the ramekins in a roasting pan or large cake pan.
10. Place pan in the oven and fill the pan with water until it reaches ½ ways up the sides of the ramekins (quick tip: add water for the water bath after the pan is placed on an oven rack to avoid splashing and heavy lifting).
11. Bake for 40-45 minutes (or until the creme sets).
12. Remove pan from oven.
13. Remove ramekins from pan and allow to cool.
14. Once ramekins are cool, refrigerate for 2+ hours.
15. Remove creme brulee from refrigerator 20 minutes before ready to serve.
16. Dust the creme brulee with a light layer superfine sugar.
17. Using a creme brulee torch, melt the sugar until it forms a hard top.
18. (Optional) Garnish with strawberries.
19. Serve and enjoy.

Nutella Creme Brulee

Classic Creme Brulee

Creme Brulee You Tube Video

Please comment, rate and subscribe! =)

Crunchy Cabbage Salad Recipe

Good evening everyone.  I just wanted to post another recipe that is quick, healthy, and refreshing.  

Hope you enjoy!



Crunchy Cabbage Salad

Ingredients

Salad:

• 1/2 Head of Cabbage (shredded)
• 1 bunch of Parsley (chopped)
• 1/2 Medium Red Onion (diced)
• 1 to 2 Jalepenos (seeded and diced)

Vinaigrette:

• 2 Lemons (juiced)
• 1/2 cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• 1/4 to ½ cups Red Wine Vinegar
• Salt and Pepper (to taste)

1. For the salad, prepare all of the veggies (cabbage, parsley, red onion, and jalepenos) and place them in a bowl and set aside.
2. For the vinaigrette, in a separate bowl combine wet ingredients (lemon juice, red wine vinegar, extra virgin olive oil) salt and pepper and whisk together.
3. Place salad and dressing in refrigerator until ready to serve.
4. Once ready to serve, lightly dress the salad and enjoy!

Seafood Galore: Phil's Fish Market

Hello again! Just wanted to do a quick review and blog about Phil's Fish Market in Moss Landing, Ca.  Over the President's Day weekend, my boyfriend and I planned a trip out to Monterey, Ca, to enjoy some fresh air, amazing scenery and of course great food.  We usually grab a quick bite at the Old Fisherman's Grotto; a sourdough bowl and their famous clam chowder (I love it there, in my opinion it is the best on the Wharf), but this time I wanted to try something new.  I absolutely love seafood, so before my trip I searched online for the "best" seafood restaurant in Monterey...and Phil's Fish Market came up.  After reading a couple reviews I was sold, and decided that I would give Phil's a try.

Getting to the restaurant was not too bad because it was not too far from where we were heading anyways. However, finding Phil's was a bit tricky once we exited off the highway; there are no signs screaming out "Phil's This Way -->."  Fortunately there was a swarm of cars so we joined the caravan.

We arrived at Phil's at about 2 pm and it was a mad house, completely packed.  Tons of people and barely enough seats to hold us all.  Luckily, it did not take us too long to get to the front of the line, and the wait gave us just enough time to pick out what we wanted to order.  I ordered their famous Cioppino, and my boyfriend ordered a 3 item combo from the fryer (squid, shrimp and oysters).

View from the wait in line lol

Menu, and specials

It took quite a while for our food to come, which gave me a good opportunity to enjoy the open and airy ambiance that the restaurant had to offer.  When you enter the restaurant you are greeted with a decent sized bar and wonderful little fish market.  If you can't find a seat inside, you can wander to the back of the restaurant, grab a seat outside and get a refreshing ocean view =)

Fish Market offerings =)

Finally (30+ minutes later), we got our food...the Cioppino came out piping hot with generous portions of crab, scallops, and mussels, a slice of toasty garlic bread and a crisp green salad.  My boyfriend's combo plate was fresh, fried, and crispy.  All the seafood was sooooo FRESH and worth the wait, it definitely fulfilled my seafood craving.

Phil's famous Cioppino (feature on the Food Network's "Throwdown"

3 Item combo from the fryer (squid, shrimp, and oysters)

Even though the food is a bit pricey (what seafood isn't? lol), the restaurant is crowded, and it did take quite a while for us to get our food, I totally recommend Phil's Fish Market.  If you are in the area, stop by and check it out, you will NOT be disappointed.  If you can't make it over to the restaurant, but you are dying to try their delicious Cioppino, check out their online store.

It was amazing experience and I would definitely do it again =)

Outside of Phil's (PG&E Power Plant located in front of Phil's)

View from outside...beautiful