Presley's Pantry

 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!!!! 

Last year my Mom , my Auntie Rosie, and I made candy wreaths for Christmas and we used Lindt chocolates to give our wreaths a red accent.  I love spending time with two of the most important ladies in my life, but the truth is we had to go out and buy more Lindt because we couldn’t stop eating the chocolate.  Yes we love to eat and pass our Sunday afternoon in project mode.  I thought to myself how am I going to recreate that feeling of closeness again this year?  What could we do?  We wouldn’t want to make the same wreaths.  That’s when I found out about this super fun contest Lindt is having.  I know a ton of my readers LOVE CHOCOLATE, and I know a bunch of you enjoy baking too….. Naturally I want to share this tidbit of info with you.

Lindt is giving chocolate lovers a chance to submit an original recipe to their Fall Recipe Contest from now to Nov 7th, 2011.  The only rule is you must use Lindt chocolate in your recipe…  Want me to tell you what the prizes are?

– A year’s supply of Lindt Chocolate

– A brand new KitchenAid 7-quart bowl-lift residential stand mixer

– Lindt gift cards ($100 & $50)

– Lindt chocolate passion recipe book

This lady will not only tell you about the contest she’ll show you the prizes too.

Want to enter? Click HERE to submit your recipe!

Once your all done with that…. you might want to look at the rules. You can click HERE for the regulations.

So back to what us girls will be doing this holiday season….  I think my Mom, my Aunt and I will make chocolate tamales.  I don’t know if we will end up submitting them to the recipe contest or not.  We are such tragonas (big eaters), the chocolate will probably never make it into the recipe. 🙂  Good Luck Friends!

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.

 I’ve always read about Mr. Bones Pumpkin Patch.  I’m sure you have seen the pictures of all the celebrity moms taking their little ones to the patch….. and now I know why.  My family and I went there for the grand opening this past Saturday and I was pleased to discover all the great activities (face painting, petting zoo, pony rides, skeleton slide, pumpkin jumper) they have for children and the hard to find fall home decor.  No wonder Yoplait has teamed up with Mr. Bones Pumpkin Patch.  For every pumpkin sold Yoplait will donate $1.00 to the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank.  How cool.  Right?  So pack up the kiddies and head over to Mr. Bones Pumpkin Patch.  They’ll have a blast, and you’ll feel good knowing you are helping another family stay California Strong!

All photos taken by: Mando Lopez and Nicole Presley

Mr. Bones Pumpkin Patch is open now through October 31st.  

I’m excited to say I have a second post up at SpanglishBaby.com…..  I worked with Pam No-Stick Performance Spray again, and this time I made cherry cobbler…..  Click here to see the recipe and a little video of me making the dish!  Enjoy!  For the record….  it didn’t stick.  Yay!

Photo taken by: Nicole Presley