While the rest of the United States was busy dressing up for Halloween parties on Saturday night, my little family and I decided on some crafty fun.  We carved our pumpkin and scooped out the seeds to make spicy curry pumpkin seeds.  We had a few left over kernels and went big in the maraca direction making noisemakers!

All photos taken by: Mando Lopez and Nicole Presley

Here’s how we did it….

Ingredients for spicy curry pumpkin seeds:

1 1/2 cups pumpkin seeds

enough water to fill a pot halfway

3 tablespoons of salt

juice from 1 1/2 limes.  Should make about 3 tablespoons

1/4 teaspoon yellow curry powder

1/4 teaspoon chipotle powder

1/4 teaspoon Lawry’s seasoning salt

1/4 teaspoon Tajin (chile and lime pepper)

non-stick cooking spray.

First cut into pumpkin and scoop out all the seeds…

Pour water into a medium sauce pan to fill halfway, then add salt. Bring salted water to a boil over medium flame.  While you are waiting for your water to boil.  Clean gunk off of pumpkin seeds by running under water.

Once water is boiling add pumpkin seeds and boil for 7 to 8 minutes.  Remove from flame and allow seeds to soak in hot water for another 5 to 10 minutes.

Then drain seeds and dry off on a paper towel.

Next mix  lime juice, yellow curry, chipotle pepper, Lawry’s, and Tajin in a small bowl together well.  Then add in dried off pumpkin seeds.  Mix to coat.

Spray a baking sheet with a non-stick cooking spray and spread the coated pumpkin seeds on top in a single layer.  Bake for 20 minutes or until golden/dry. Keep an eye on your pumpkin seeds because they have a tendency to burn quickly.

Things needed for maracas:

– Empty 8oz. water bottle

– A round stick to fit opening of bottle

– Pumpkin seeds ( about 10 to 15)

– White spray paint

– Glue water (1 part glue, 1 part water)

– Felt

– Tissue paper

– Construction paper

– Foil tape

– Aluminum foil

– Sharpies

– White water-color paint

Start by spray painting the outside of the water bottle white.  Allow it to dry a bit, then add pumpkin seeds inside.

Next take some glue and apply to the inside rim of the bottle.  Then insert the round stick for a firm fit.  Last wrap the foil tape around the opening and the stick.

What you do after this is entirely up to you.  Create your spooky maracas anyway you wish.  I used tissue paper to create the color of skin I desired.  Take your gluewater and brush it on the entire bottle, then take strips of tissue paper and place them around the bottle.  Next brush gluewater over the tissue strips.  Repeat till you reach the desired hue.  Then decorate it with felt, construction paper, paint, aluminum foil or sharpies to create the face of the maraca….. Here are a few examples of what we did.

Happy Halloween! Hope it’s a SCARY one!

 I’ve been celebrating Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) since I was a young girl.  As I get older, the holiday grows in importance.  Over the years I have lost many who are near and dear to me.  Death is such a sad, wild reality, but one we must all face.  I have spent many days mourning the death of loved ones lost and find Dia de los Muertos is a happy medium.  Its a day to honor and remember a departed loved one’s spirit by offering their favorite food or beverage.  Many people build private alters in their homes (we did), and some build them at events for remembrance and festivity.  This weekend we went to the 12th annual Dia De Los Muertos Celebration at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.  In my opinion it is one of the BEST events that takes place here in Los Angeles.  I go every year and wouldn’t think of missing it!  You can expect everything from Aztec dancers, Mayan rituals, paper mache skeleton procession, costume contest, ballet dancing, performance art, craft and art vendors, yummy mexican food, micheladas, and some of the best altars you’ve ever seen!  Here is a nice collection of photos from the event.  If you don’t live in Los Angeles, Google a Dia de los Muertos event in your city.  The actual holiday takes place Nov. 2nd.

All photos taken by: Mando Lopez and Nicole Presley

Pan de muerto is traditionally offered to the spirits in the upcoming days leading to Dia de los muertos (Day of the Dead), which is celebrated Nov. 2nd.  You can leave it at the gravesite of your loved one along with their favorite food or at a homemade altar.  Here is a simple recipe for you to make your own.  BTW….. it’s not just for the departed, the living find it tasty too!

Ingredients for pan de muerto: 

1/4 – cup milk

4 – tablespoons butter

1/3 – cup sugar

1/2 – teaspoon salt

1 – package active dry yeast

1/4 – cup warm/hot water

2 – eggs (beaten)

3 – cups all-purpose flour

1/2 – teaspoon anise seed

1/4 – cup orange juice

1/4 –  teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 – cups sugar plus 2 tablespoons

In a sauce pan over a low medium flame melt butter and stir in milk. Bring to slight boil and remove from heat.  Add in 1/3 cup sugar and salt, and mix well to combine. Set to the side.

In a very large bowl, mix yeast and warm/hot water together and stir until yeast is dissolved. Let it rest for 15 minutes to cool down then add the milk mixture.

In a medium bowl mix flour and anise seed together . Then add flour and anise seed mixture to yeast/milk mix, and gradually work in the beaten eggs. Mix until dough forms into a ball.

Flour your work surface well and place dough in the middle. Knead for 5 minutes or until dough is nice and soft. Place it back into the large bowl and cover with a kitchen towel or plastic wrap. Let dough rise in a warm place (inside your oven when it’s off) for an hour and a half to two hours. Meanwhile, grease a baking sheet and set to the side.

Then remove dough from large bowl and punch it down and shape it into one large loaf or several small loaves. Reserve a small portion of dough to make a knob on top of loaf or braids around the loaf, or little strips to represent bones. Form your loaf then place on greased baking sheet and cover loosely with plastic wrap or kitchen towel for another hour (in a warm place) or until it’s doubled in size.

Then preheat oven to 350 degrees fahrenheit, and bake for 35 to 45 minutes. If you make small loaves then 35 minutes…. if you make one big one 45 minutes. About 5 minutes before the pan de muerto is done baking….. make the glaze.

In a small saucepan over a medium flame add orange juice, cinnamon, and 1/4 cup sugar. Bring to a boil and remove from flame. Set to the side. Next remove pan de muerto from oven and let cool slightly, then brush with glaze. Then sprinkle glazed bread with remaining 2 tablespoons sugar! Celebrate Dia de los muertos by offering your loved one a pan de muerto this year!

Con mucho amor!

  I find it interesting when my Mom recounts the days of her youth.  She tells it in a very matter of fact tone.  For the most part it was an unfair childhood, but the way my Mom paints it you can tell she never felt sorry for herself.  I’m the one who gets crushed for her when I hear what she lacked.  One of the things I remember her telling me was that she never had money to eat in the cafeteria at school when she was a little girl.  She says they use to serve a rice dish with meatballs and gravy on top and it always smelled delicious, but not once did she ever try it.  When I started cooking I decided it was time for my Mommy to have her meatballs and gravy over rice.  Thank the cafeteria chief for making a simple child-proof dish that I jumped all over and vamped into an adult plate.  I added Wonderful Pistachios to the meatballs and rice to give it an extra bite of flavor.  My Mom use to love this dish before she became a vegetarian, but my man and our son think this is one of the best things I make. 🙂  Enjoy!

All photos taken by: Nicole Presley and Mando Lopez

Ingredients for meatballs: 

1 – pound ground beef

1 – pound ground pork

1 – egg

1/4 – cup chopped green onion

1/3 – cup Wonderful Pistachios (shucked and chopped)

1 – heaping tablespoon of minced garlic

1/4 – cup fresh cilantro leaves

1/3 – cup chopped mushrooms

1/4 – cup bread crumbs

Salt and pepper to taste

Using your hands, mix all ingredients in a bowl. Then grab a small handful of meat mixture and roll into a ball. Repeat until done. Set to the side.

Ingredients for pistachio rice:

 4 – tablespoons butter

1 – tablespoon minced garlic

1/2 – cup onion

1 1/2 – cup long grain rice

1 -tablespoon toasted sesame seeds

1/3 – cup Wonderful Pistachios (chopped)

1 -teaspoon salt

1 -teaspoon black pepper

3/4 – cup peas (optional)

3 – cups chicken broth

Over a medium high flame add butter and garlic to a sauce pan with a lid. Melt butter, then add onion and rice. Mix until rice starts to brown. Then add sesame seeds, chopped pistachios, salt & pepper and mix well.  Add peas if you like. Wait until rice is very golden brown. Then add chicken broth and bring to a boil. Once broth starts to boil, lower flame to low, and put the lid on the rice. Cook the covered rice for 20 minutes. Then remove from flame and set to the side.

While your rice is cooking, let’s start the gravy.

Ingredients for gravy:

4 – tablespoons butter

1/2 – tablespoon minced garlic

1/2 – cup chopped onion

1/2 – cup chopped mushrooms

2 – cups beef broth

1 – tablespoon corn starch

1/8 – cup water

In a small sauce pan over a medium flame add butter and allow to melt.  Then add garlic, onion and mushrooms.  Saute until onions are soft.  Then add beef broth and bring to a boil.  Once broth is boiling get a small cup and fill with water then add corn starch and mix until corn starch is completely dissolved.  Now add corn starch water to boiling broth onion mixture.  Mix well.  Broth will thicken and remove from flame.

Lastly… over a medium flame take a large frying pan and add 1 tablespoon vegetable oil, and allow to get hot. Then add your reserved meatballs and cook on each side for 5 to 7 minutes or until cooked all the way through.

That’s it your done. I like to add a piece of pineapple to the plate for the perfect touch of sweetness! You could enjoy this dish either way!

No compensation was received for this post. I was provided with a sample of  Wonderful Pistachios to aid this recipe. The recipe and opinions are my own.

 It’s not everyday I get invited to the Disney Studio Lot for a Halloween Party.  Boy was it a nice one.  Lots of activities for the kiddies, but an equal amount of fun for adults too.  Or maybe I just relish in childish venture.  There was a ton of video games, craft making, cookie decorating, a drawing station, and a costume contest.  The excitement didn’t end there…. we got a tour of the studio back lot.  I felt like a fly on the wall walking the halls of the animation building.  Looking at old posters and glazing over vintage collectables from the archives.  It was indeed a lucky day.  I snapped a few pictures along the way, let me give you a peak.

Back at the Party the snacks were in full swing. Mini burgers, mac and cheese cupcakes, caprese salad, ceasar salad, chicken skewers, candied apples, Mickey Mouse cupcakes and Jack Skellington  cupcakes too.

  These cupcakes would be the perfect HALLOWEEN treat. Why don’t you make them?Here’s how.

You’ll need:

• Batch of chocolate cupcakes
• White buttercream frosting
• 2 toothpicks
• Tube of black decorator’s icing

Instructions:

1. Frost the cupcakes.
2. For each cupcake, use the tip of a toothpick to lightly etch the outline of two large Jack Skellington eyes in the frosting.
3. Slowly pipe black decorator’s icing onto the etched lines and then fill in the inner circles. Use another toothpick to spread and smooth the icing.
4. Pipe on two short lines for a nose. Next, pipe a long line across the bottom of the cupcake for the mouth. For the finishing spooky touch, randomly top the mouth with a bunch of short icing barbs.

Thank you Disney for inviting me and my family to your wonderful party. We had too much fun!

All photos taken by: Nicole Presley and Mando Lopez.  Except the Jack Skellington Cupcake photo is courtesy of Disney Family.com

Halloween came out of nowhere for me this year.  I am known in my circle of friends as a Halloween queen…..  I always have my costume ready weeks in advance and try and make it myself.  I’m NOT the store bought kinda Halloween gal.  This year time sideswiped me and I am slightly behind on my ghoulish duties.  Over the weekend I decided it was time to play catch up…. fast.  I started by decorating the house, and getting my son’s costume in order.  Then I wanted to do a fun edible graveyard scene for my kitchen.  Well let me tell you it certainly turned into a project.  I had never made rice krispie treats and thought it would make for a good graveyard….. that’s until I started melting the vegan marshmallow.  Holy Moly!  That stuff sticks to everything.   So there I go….. I used Pam on my rice krispie treat graveyard, and it was so much easier to manage.  Don’t laugh, I had to make them twice, the first time was a complete disaster, it was like being stuck in a spider web.  Once that was settled, we built a little haunted house and let some ghost come and squat there. Gosh…. I love Halloween.  Now I’m on a roll.  The festivities in this house have not stopped.  Here’s a little play by play incase you want to make a spooky graveyard in your kitchen too!

Ingredients for graveyard rice krispie treats:

Pam non-stick cooking spray

4 – tablespoons butter

10.5 – ounces of vegan marshmallows

food coloring

5 – cups rice krispie cereal

1 – cup pretzel sticks

3/4 – cup plain m&m’s

1 – 13×9 pyrex dish

Spray pam in a large sauce pan, then place pan over a medium flame and add butter. Allow butter to melt, add vegan marshmallows and mix until completely melted.  Quickly add food coloring color of your choice ( I used red, blue and a little black to make a dark purple) to marshmallow mixture and mix until color is completely incorporated.  Now add rice krispie cereal, pretzels, and M&M’s to marshmallow mixture and mix to combine.

Take your 13×9 pyrex and spray with pam.  Then place all rice krispie cereal mixture into pyrex.  Spread with a spatula (sprayed with pam) and even it out to fit the pyrex dish.  Let cool for 1 hour and then turn it upside down and watch it plop right out onto your working surface.

Now for the fun part, you get to decorate your graveyard.  I added a haunted house to give it an extra hair raising feeling.  I used cookies and chocolate for the headstones, and ghost peeps to spook you.  I decorated the haunted house with an assortment of candy and painted the hand coming out of the grave with red food coloring.  This graveyard is going to taste as good as it looks!

All photos taken by: Nicole Presley and Mando Lopez

       Here’s the SCARY part, the mess this project made in the kitchen. Trick or Treat!!!! 

We are all in love with dessert.  When I think about it, I sigh…..  I never want to give my dessert love up.  I’ll sacrifice other things but I’ll be damned if dessert will be one.  So here I go trying to come up with something light for the person who wants to watch their figure, but sacrifice NOTHING.  I am going to SWAP a piece of cake or chocolate mousse for these lovely little mini tarts I created today.  Yoplait Light yogurt saved me the headache of trying to create a fat free custard….  I used their thick and creamy yogurt instead.  Hope you Enjoy!

All photos taken by: Nicole Presley

Ingredients for mini tarts:

1 1/2 – cups chocolate graham cookies

4 – tablespoons butter

1/2 – teaspoon vanilla

2 – 6 ounce  Yoplait Fat Free Thick and Creamy Lemon Meringue Yogurt

2 – tablespoons toasted coconut

2 – strawberries

This recipe will make 7 tarts. 

Preheat oven to 350 fahrenheit.

Add cookies to a food processor and pulse till the cookies become crumb dust.  Then add butter and vanilla.  Pulse again until combined.  Take a 2 inch tart pan and fill with a heaping tablespoon of cookies mixture.  Press all around and into the edges.  Then place all your tart pans on a cookie sheet and bake for 12 minutes.

Once tart shells are baked let them cool completely.  Then scoop in lemon yogurt and top with toasted coconut and a slice of strawberry.  Place them in the fridge and whenever you get starry eyes for a dessert… there is one that will make your heart sing and your waistline won’t have to pay the price for it. 🙂

Do the Swap!

No compensation was received for this post. I was provided with a sample of  Yoplait yogurt to aid this recipe. The recipe and opinions are my own.

It was last Tuesday early afternoon, and my fiance says he needs my help scouting out a dive bar for a movie he is working on.  He tells me…  “It can’t be a recognizable dive bar, it has to be a bar no one will find common place.”  I grab the Cannon, put on my best walking shoes, and jump in the car.  We drive around the city, but hardly any bars are open.  “What goes on in this town?”  I ask.  “What time do bars open? It’s already 1:30p.m.”  We continue driving and as the afternoon ripens we come across three or four bars, but nothing dive-y enough.  Each time I get off the car, walk into the watering hole and spill the same mumbo jumbo about scouting for a film and wanting to snap a few pictures to see if the director would be interested, if so someone will return with a contract and go over pricing.  Most people are not phased by this info, others act as if a golden egg has just hatched before their eyes.  Then we find a little bar on a main street on the cusp of East Los Angeles and Montebello.  I walk in and there is NO ONE to be found.  No one sitting in the dive nor standing behind the bar tending to it.  I say out loud in the nicest voice I can find inside my throat “Hello.”  No response.  I then say “Hi.” Nothing.  I keep looking around.  All the chairs are dressed in plastic.  There are black and white framed photos of Ricky Ricardo, and Vicente Fernandez adorning the walls along with a huge gold fake Rolex watch that serves as a clock.  There are pink artificial flowers in vases that have not been dusted in years.  It looks like a grandma’s tacky living room that has been frozen in time from the 50’s or 60’s.  In my mind I’m doing somersaults thinking this could work.  Then at the back of the room I notice a long rectangular window with a little puff of white floating across it.  I walk towards the window to get a better look.  Standing on my tippy toes with my neck reaching to the ceiling, I peak in.  What I see I can’t believe.  I observe a tiny, fragile, little OLD lady barley able to move.  In my head I calculate she is in her late 80’s maybe early 90’s.  My heart breaks, thinking who ever left this lady here to man the bar is a for sure CREEP!  I now start giving my greetings in Spanish, thinking maybe she didn’t understand my arrival announcement in English, or worse yet she can’t hear.  I start thinking how am I going to explain to this lady that I am scouting for a film.  As I’m dreading the conversation….. she starts to make her way from the back.  Moving at a pace slower then any snail, she thinks about the next position of her footing as she holds on to the wall and all along never makes eye contact with me.  I say hello again…. she doesn’t acknowledge I’m there.  I figured she was blind and deaf.  Then she starts to pass where I’m standing and turns around in a swift motion and just SLUGS me with all her might right in the chest!  I never saw it coming.  I got so sad and upset at the same time.  Nothing like this had ever happened to me.

A.) I can’t hit her back she is a tiny little lady.

B.) She’s crazy or drunk or both.

C.) I did nothing to provoke getting punched.

I immediately start yelling in a high half crying pitch “Why are you hitting me?”  As I’m waving my arms trying to block the next swing.  She has me trapped and is relentless. Then by the grace of my youth I see a little window of opportunity to make a run for the door.  I zoom out of there only to hear her footsteps following on my trail.  I look back and she is running after me and she’s not slow anymore.  She stops at the door of the bar and is screaming all sorts of obscenities to me in Spanish that are the equivalent to “get the f@^* out of here you good for nothing broad.”  I dive into the car (no pun intended) and am horrified.  Wow!  What the hell just happened?  It took a minute or two to register as I replayed the whole thing in my mind again and as it was sinking in all I could do was shake my head thinking “Pinche vieja loca.”  I told the guy I live with I was not happy and I was not going to scout anymore, even if it was the middle of the afternoon.

As we arrive home I’m still shaken up from the hell I had just been through when lo and behold a box of wine is sitting  there on my door step waiting for me.  It was a sign from the wine gods that it would be best if I opened that box and enjoyed a glass right then and there.  Entwine was the name on the bottle.  I popped it open and poured a cup of merlot. As I sat on my porch staring at the vessel I noticed it had a list of food pairings on the back.  Perfect.  Another way for me to shut off my brain and  just let the bottle do all the work.  Thank you Food Network and Wente Vineyards for joining forces to make life easy with your new wine.  It surely saved my afternoon last Tuesday.

No compensation was received for this post. I was provided with a sample of  Entwine’s merlot for my review. The story and opinions are my own.