50 Ways To Tie a Scarf

I love scarves! They're such a great accessory to snazzy up any outfit. Transforming a plain old white tee shirt and jeans to a fashion forward ensemble. But the wrap-around-the-neck method can get boring.

I was searching the internet for some inspiration and came across scarves.net. It has some awesome how-to's for scarf tying.

She has a great master list of knots here.

Here's a personal favorite also found on her site: the Four-in-Hand knot

Every woman should have the tools to be as fashionably fabulous as she wants! Enjoy and be fabulous today!

Tomato Free Pasta Sauces

No more jarred sauce!

You're tired. Nothing's defrosted. You don't feel like cooking. What do you do? Pop open a jar of sauce and boil up some spaghetti! But after a while, that go-to gets boring.

 
Even the culinarily enhanced go through it. You need a quick, easy meal that only calls for a few ingredients and very few brain cells. But after a while, tomato sauce from a jar gets boring and you want some other options. Well, look no further! There's more than just tomato sauce from a jar! Below are some great recipes for your lazy night pleasure.

Braised Organic Lamb & Beans

Oh, to eat organic, grass fed meat! It's amazing how you can really taste the difference from the normal, everyday variety. Unfortunately, with the way my husband can pack away the food (and if I had his routine of 5am gym time and 10+ hour work days I would too!), eating organic meat is cost prohibitive. I can only imagine how much I'll spend on groceries when our little guy is running around and eating full meals like his daddy...

Anyways, as the savvy shopper that I am, I've discovered that our local Wegmans tends to discount their meat selection on Wednesdays (as it nears the sell by date cutoff) so I'll pop over there every other week and check out the goodies. As long as you either eat the meat that evening or freeze it right away, you're good. I've amassed quite a selection of delicious organic fare this way. Another trick to discounted food if your grocery store doesn't have a set discount day is to check out the sell by dates of the food you're interested in and return to the store the day before it's set to expire. I did this with organic leg of lamb. There were a bunch of them, and what were the odds of all those legs being bought up when we weren't near a holiday? I came back a few days later and, sure enough, they were all marked down 50%. Woohoo!

I scored this butterflied leg of lamb for half off and found a tasty recipe from Wegmans for Braised Organic Lamb & Beans from which I've adapted this recipe.

Ingredients

• 2.5 - 3lbs lamb
• pan searing flour
• olive oil
• 8 oz. Mirepoix (diced carrots, celery and onions)
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 cup white wine
• 28 oz. cut tomatoes with basil
• 3 x 15.5 oz. cans cannellini beans, drained
• 1 lemon, zested and juiced
• 1 cup chicken stock
• fresh rosemary
• fresh thyme
• salt and pepper

Preheat your oven to 350F. Put a dutch oven on medium high on the stove top.

Dust your lamb with some pan searing flour. If you'll recall from my previous post, the flour will help dry off the meat and allow it to sear beautifully.

Now that your dutch oven is nice and warm, pour in a couple glugs of extra virgin olive oil and sear your meat.

It should only take a couple minutes per side.

After your lamb has seared, set it aside on a plate and gather your other items.

Add your mirepoix and bayleaf to the dutch oven you were using for your lamb.

Pour two cups of wine, one for the recipe and the other to drink while you cook :)

And while you're taking that little break to enjoy the fruits of a vineyard's labor, check out a sneaky little tip about cooking with wine here.

Ok, back to cooking. Pour in the cup of wine and lemon juice and deglaze the pan. That means the wine will pick up all those little browned bits of lamb and caramelized veggies. Cook the wine down for 5-10 minutes until the liquid has reduced by half. Doing this allows evaporation, leaving more flavor in the resulting liquid.

Now you can add the remaining ingredients - beans, tomatoes, and lemon zest (you did check out my nifty trick for lemon zest earlier, right?)

Now pop the lamb on top of that wonderful braising mixture you've just concocted and douse it with a cup of chicken broth.

Ah, beautiful! Bring up the heat a bit so it starts simmering (see those little bubbles forming on the surface?)

Now place it in your toasty oven and let it work it's magic for about 2 to 2.5 hours. You want the meat to pull apart when you stick a fork in it. When you're satisfied with the tenderness, mix in the rosemary, thyme and season with salt and pepper to taste.

Just look at that!

Gorgeous!

Tips & Tricks: Fresh Lemons

How many times has this happened to you? You find a recipe that you really want to try out and it calls for lemon zest. You think maybe if you just add a little extra from that bottle of lemon juice you have in the fridge... but no! you are going to do it right, gosh darn it! So you go to the store and now you're hit with a difficult decision. You see you can buy two large lemons for $2 or a whole bag of smaller lemons for $2. If you're anything like me, you want to get the most bang for your buck so you get the bag, not knowing what you're going to do with all those extra lemons. And most likely, all but the lemon you used for the recipe ends up going bad and you toss them. Sigh.

Now here's the trick to buying a bag of lemons. Freeze them! Whenever you come across a recipe that calls for lemon zest, march right over to your freezer, pull out a lemon and zest away!

Tips & Tricks: Cooking with Wine

When your recipe calls for wine, please, please, please use wine that you would actually drink instead of the "cooking wine" you can pick up in the grocery store. The grocery store variety has preservatives in it, and really, if you wouldn't want to sit down with a glass of it at the end of a long day, why would you want to cook with it and have it in your food?

If you're not a big wine person and fear buying a bottle only to have it go to waste, why, send the leftovers to me! Ok, ok. How about this nifty trick instead. Freeze the wine in an ice cube tray and then you always have one ounce servings whenever you need them!

Tips & Tricks: Dutch Ovens

Dutch Ovens. No, not that gross thing males do involving farting, bed sheets and their poor, unfortunate significant other. I'm talking about those glorious, cast iron vessels, usable on the stove top and in the oven. Capable of transforming mere toughest piece of meat into a slow cooked, fall apart tender morsel worthy of song.

"They're expensive," you say. I know. But they really are worth it. Ask for one on your next birthday. Or for Christmas. Or for Valentines Day. Or Mother's Day. Or you anniversary. See? That's five opportunities in one year for you to have someone else get it for you!

 Cast iron isn't a good conductor of heat so it'll take a while to heat up but that also means it will retain it well. Use it to braise meat, simmer stews and soups, deep fry whatever your heart desires and slow cook anything you normally would in a crock pot.

Here's a sampling of dutch ovens for your drooling pleasure and here is a good overview of 5 different brands to help you make your choice.

Also, here are some recipes you can make in your brand new dutch oven:

Braised Organic Lamb & Beans

Pumpkin Steel Cut Oats

Barbecue Pork Sandwiches

Glitter Ombre Nails

Winter can get you down. Everywhere you look there's a monotonous palette of browns and greys. I fall into a pattern of dressing in yoga pants and hoodies every day. Hibernating in the house until I start seeing the little green buds of spring pushing through the tough, frozen ground. It took an impromptu gathering of girlfriends to shake me out of my funk and add a little bling to my ensemble.

What a nice break in my routine it was to be surrounded by friends, drink wine, eat food, do manicures and watch some Mystery Science Theater 3000 (and if you don't know what that is, you have to check it out. Netflix currently has MST3K: The Movie on streaming)!

I've been inspired by nail art on Pinterest, but the following has to be my favorite: Glitter Ombre.

 It's surprisingly easy, you just need to take your time and make sure each coat is dry before starting the next one. That's why it was perfect for a movie night!

First off, choose any base coat you'd like. I chose Sally Hansen's Fairy Teal.

After that coat is completely dry, take a clear nail polish that has glitter in it and only cover the tip of your nail. Allow to dry (see, I told you this would take some time!).

Next, do another coat of the glitter starting from the middle of your nail back over the tip. As you are probably seeing now, each coat will lay more and more glitter onto the tip of your nail giving it that higher concentration.

Your last glitter coat will cover your entire nail and it should look like the picture now. You can always go a little heavier on the tip of your nail now to get just the right amount of glitter.

Once that is all dry, go over your nail once more with a clear coat. This will seal all the layers together and help prevent chipping.

Think of all the possibilities with this method! Black with silver glitter will look like the night sky. Red or Pink with white glitter is great for Valentine's Day. Then there's nude with black, coral with gold, spring green with silver...endless beautiful combinations. Let your creativity abound!