recipe: croissants

Posted on May 16, 2012 by Madey Edlin under food

Oh croissants, one of God’s greatest gifts to mankind.

This is my third, or fourth time making croissants, and each time they get better and better. I am no where near a well made bakery croissant, but dang, these are good. I filled some with cheeses, others with chocolate (highly recomended) and just left some plain. I love to do some ham and cheese when I have it on hand, what a perfect lunch.

I use Tartine’s recipe for croissants, you can find it here. Of course, who else would you bother following when it comes to pastry?

recipe: lemon bars

Posted on March 26, 2012 by Madey Edlin under food

First off, I would like to comment on the ugly styling and composition of the above photo. This will probably go down as one of the worst styled food photos on my blog. It’s so unlike me, first off I used flash. Flash?! I hate flash, it’s about on the same hate-level as running.

The oozing filling, and falling apart nature of this photo will probably tell you most of what you need to know about these lemon bars. Shortbread crust, with a slightly tangy, totally lemony filling…

By chance I picked up this book Tartine at the library quite a few years ago. The first time I cracked open the pages, I fell on love. My Grandma got the book for me a few months later, and a few hours after that I was on a obsessed to cook everything in that book. It has become one of my can’t-live-without cookbooks. And visiting the Tartine Bakery in San Fran is so on the bucket list.

Anyway, you can follow the recipe here.

recipe: nutella and banana crepes

Posted on March 19, 2012 by Madey Edlin under food

I have a thing for Nutella. Ever since my first trip to Europe, I’ve been hooked. Sometimes my sister has to confiscate my spoon full of Nutella. How rude!

Anyway, this is my favorite Sunday afternoon splurge.

Just use this crepe recipe, and fill with Nutella and sliced banana.

how to: thrift shop

Posted on March 16, 2012 by Madey Edlin under Uncategorized

Do you shop at thrift stores?

This is something that I do regurley. I grew up bargen hunting at thrift shops, and garage sales. I was taught at a young age to offer half of what they were asking for that collectable Beany Baby at a quick garage sale stop. It was common to make a pit stop at an obscure thrift shop on long car rides. My mom taught me alot about shopping second hand, it was something I thought everyone did. Until people started asking me where I got something, and my whole outfit had come from the thrift store; and this surprised them.

Continue reading →

recipe: four ingredient pizza dough

Posted on March 15, 2012 by Madey Edlin under food

This recipe is one that my big brother taught me, and before that my grandma taught him.

It’s so easy. I started making this when I was about 10. If a 10 year old can make this, no excuses you can too.

Today is my Dad’s birthday, and he wanted my homemade pizza for his birthday dinner. We had a family party, we ate pizza, mom made a cake, and we ate it around the fireplace, chatting like a group of best friends.

This recipe makes four very large pizzas (enough for our whole [huge] family)

4 cups warm water
4 tablespoons yeast
4 tablespoons sugar
about 6 cups of flour

Mix the warm water, yeast, and sugar together in a large bowl. Mix enough flour into the mixture (I never measure the flour, i just dump it in, this takes a lot of flour), to form a dough. Kneed the dough on a floured surface until a smooth elastic dough forms. Cover and let it rise for about an hour, or until doubled in size.

(If you add a little salt to the dough, it will rise a bit faster)

how to: stove top espresso

Posted on March 13, 2012 by Madey Edlin under Black and White, food

This is the top with the filter on the bottom.

This is the bottom with the cone inserted (where coffee goes).

(This is the bottom without the cone insert)

Fill it with water.

This is the cone insert, where the coffee goes.

Put the cone in the bottom part, and fill it with finely ground coffee, but do not tamp it down.

Screw the top on.

Turn on just enough heat to heat the bottom without touching the handle.

Wait for the coffee to start bubbling out.

Wait for it…

Ah! There is it!

(let it percolate until all the water is used)

DIY terrarium

Posted on March 7, 2012 by Madey Edlin under but i did it, Plants

Start with about 3/4 inch sand.

Add just enough water to make the sand moist.

Pat down the sand level.

Add a layer of rocks. (We used shiny rocks collected at the beach)

Then a layer of dirt.

Plant small cute little plants. Succulents are my choice.

Yay!

Cheers!

-madey edlin

remembering 2011 with moleskines and iphones

Posted on January 4, 2012 by Madey Edlin under prints

I wanted to remember 2011. Finding the best way was the question. I take a bunch of pictures, but not a ton of my personal life. When it comes to keeping my life inorder, and documenting my iPhone gets all the credit. Between Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, I had happy-snappy pictures to boot; so I printed them. I printed 183 pictures off my phone, memories out the ears! Everything from a new pair of shoes, to packing to to go Italy, and everything in between.

I used the Walgreens iPhone app to easily order my prints (no, I do not recommend printing anything other then phone pictures at Walgreens.), and got these Moleskines.

I just pasted the pictures in the Moleskine, one for last winter/spring, one for summer, and one for fall/this winter, and wrote short quirky captions.