krismulkey.com

Candied Walnuts by Sante Nuts MMMMM candied walnuts. Sweet and crunchy. A little bit salty. Roasted by hand. More, please! We like snacks in our house. A lot. I'm going to blame my mom on this one. She is the queen of snacks. She must think everyone looks starving all the time. The minute you walk in her house she asks if you want a snack. Cheese and crackers? Chips and Salsa? Pretzels? Nut mix? Popcorn? I love her. When I was young I used to steal eat all of the nuts my mom had in the kitchen. They were supposed to be for baking. I liked to snack on them. I'm sure she loved that. I try to have nuts on hand for snacks instead of constantly carbing out on cheese and crackers all the time. (Oh how I love cheese.) Even Elli likes them. I've started packing little containers of nuts in her lunchbox and she loves it. Peanuts, almonds, pistachios, walnuts, and cashews are her favorites. She's a snacker in training. They do say it's better to eat...

I've gone to two fun blogging parties in the last two weeks. The first was a group of foodies tasting chocolate and wine. The second was a group of lady bloggers from Northern California who got together to drink wine, eat yummy food and share blogging ideas. Free chocolate and wine. It's rough. If you had told me five years ago I would have a blog and would be socializing with people I met on the internet I would have given you one of my famous "HUH?" looks. It's amazing how my life has changed since I started my silly little blog. I'm now making money (real money) blogging for companies. How crazy is that? Elli thinks it's the best thing ever that I get to Tweet and Facebook all day long and get paid for it. "You love tweeting! That's the perfect job for you." she said.  And it's true. I love Twitter. It's full of news and interesting people. It's like reading all the headlines on topics you love all day long. The hardes...

There's nothing better than a great food and wine pairing. You eat it and think to yourself, man this is good. The best way to pair a food and wine is to pair the flavors. Does the wine taste earthy? Pair it with Pinot Noir. When I went to the Star Olive Oil tasting party a few weeks ago I was blown away by how awesome all the wine tasted with each dish. The chef really knew how to pair wine with food. Here are some other really basic examples. Oakey butter chardonnay = buttery pasta dish, risotto, scallops in cream sauce Citrusy sauvignon blanc = herb chicken, clams, cucumber salad Pinot Noir = turkey, mushroom dishes, cornish game hens, lamb This oakey and buttery Rombauer Vineyards Chardonnay goes perfectly with this Baked Scallops dish. I hope you enjoy it! Baked Scallops adapted from Simply Recipes 2 lbs large scallops 1 cup white wine 6 T unsalted butter (separated 3T and 3T) 2 1/2 T flour 1 shallot finely diced 1/2 cup whole wheat Panko brea...

woot woot!!! This is one of my favorite perks of being a blogger. We occasionally get invited to super cool stuff like this. I'm sure some bloggers get invitations like this all the time. I don't. So when I do I feel like I'm a supa star like Oprah. I know, I know. This is probably why I don't get invited very often. Anyway, tonight we're attending a Ghirardelli intense dark chocolate pairing party. HELLO? How awesome is this going to be? We'll get lots of this..... And this..... Chef Sabrina of the Tomato Tart Blog is hosting. She'll be using all the different yummy dark chocolate to make fabulous recipes that pair with wine, champagne and beer. { happy dance !} I better cut back on the caffeine right now. I feel the sugar crazies coming on. Don is even looking forward to it. Although he would never admit it, or show it. I believe after all the treats and cocktails he may crack a smile. Elli has made me promise to bring her a sample....

Have you ever eaten something so good you couldn't stop thinking about it? Of course you have. Well I hope you have anyway. We ate the most delicious homemade focaccia when we went camping with my sister and her friends. Never in a million years did I think one of the husbands would bake fresh bread on a campout. Never. Ever. Open a bag of tortilla chips and a jar of queso, of course. But fresh bread, from scratch? Are you kidding me? It was then I realized there is a camping God. I wasn't sure if it was the stress of camping that made it taste so good or if it really was that good. All I know is that when Kevin placed a huge pan of warm focaccia bread on the picnic table we all devoured it in a matter of minutes. We were polite about it at first. Then it was every man for himself. You had to get in there if you wanted a piece. The bread was moist and the crust crispy from the olive oil. The top was salted just enough. It was absolutely divine. And that's exactl...

Well, I'm afraid I have bad news. The lunchbox was used twice and that's it. It's too big and the lid is too hard to secure. It took me a good minute to make sure I had all the sections sealed tight. That would never work with Elli, or any kid if you ask me. It would be a major bummer if the lid fell off and you lost all your food. So, we'll use it for car trips or to store craft items. Elli had a blast decorating it. Too bad we wasted all the stickers on a container she'll never use.  Wah wah. ITEM: Goodbyn lunch box STORE: Reuseit.com PRICE: $24.95

by Kris Mulkey Don and I were living in Norwalk, Connecticut back in 2001. We both had jobs that required lots of travel and nights away from home. We were a married couple without kids with busy careers. This was our life. In 2001 I was the Director of Field Marketing for Einstein Bros Bagels based in Golden, Colorado, and Don was a Creative Director working on AT&T Wireless with Ogilvy & Mather in New York City. He took the Metro-North train to NYC every day. I was often on a plane traveling to our corporate headquarters or other regions for meetings. Elli wasn't part of our family yet. What we didn't know at the time was that she would be born in China just 8 weeks later on November 5th, 2001. On the morning of September 11th, I was on my usual United flight from LaGuardia to Denver. I took this flight so often I could drive to Laguardia with my eyes closed. I often saw the same people on the flight. There were other commuters just like me going to Denver ev...

Remember these? Little puffs of pastry filled with ice cream or custard, topped with chocolate sauce and whipped cream. They are impossible to resist. Trust me. We made them last weekend and they were divine. And super easy, too. We found the recipe this summer while we were sitting in the waiting room at the pediatrician's office. We ripped it out of Family Fun magazine because we really wanted it. Probably not the best example to set for your kid. Sorry Dr. Schwartzman. And Elli, you really shouldn't do that. The recipe showed a mom and her daughter making the puffs. Elli was practically drooling staring at the picture. We tossed it in my purse, otherwise known as the black hole, and forgot about it. It appeared out of nowhere last weekend. I think it was ready to be used! Elli and her friend did a great job following the recipe. I had to stir the pate a choux dough a few times just to make sure it was really combined, but they did everything else. The recipe...

I miss childhood dinners with my family. Especially Friday night. Otherwise known as taco night. We'd laugh, and eat, and share stories while stuffing our faces with tacos. We would go through dozens of tacos. Cookies sheets lined with taco shells would pop out of the oven one after another. We'd stuff them so full the shells would break and fall apart. Salsa would be dripping down our arms. It was organized chaos. And we all loved it. There were always extra kids and families eating with us on Friday night. Taco night was meant to be shared. We ate and laughed until our stomachs ached. Now that I'm a mom I can totally appreciate all my mom went through to get four kids to sit down at the table for dinner every night. In the summer she would stand outside ringing a big cow bell at six o'clock. It was the signal for the entire neighborhood to go home. We'd all run straight to the kitchen because we were starving. Then were immediately shoo'd to the ...

We just got back from the festival. It was terrific, as usual. You really should go if you haven't gone. It's one of the top fine art (& music) festivals in the country. It's not cheap ($25/adults and $15/kids) but there are coupons around town - so look for them. I snagged a bunch of $5 off coupons when I was in Napa one day. They had a stack of them at a local toy store. We didn't need them all so I handed them out to the crowd which made a bunch of people very happy. I hope they spent the $5 they saved at the beer booth. I know we did. We saw some new artists this year and some of our favorites. We heard classic rock, folk, and opera while we were there, too. We saw a lot of people buying art and jewelry. The artists seemed to be quite pleased. We did our part and purchased two small pieces. Nothing big cuz we're kind of on a tight budget. Elli even brought some of her own money and bought a gorgeous, glass paperweight. There were several large pieces...