homemade italian dressing

The other day I got a craving for pasta salad and decided I wanted make my own italian dressing to go with it. I think I will always make my own now. The recipe I used from the parsley thief was amazing. The flavors were so much more full and fresh than they are in the stuff from the bottle. Worth the extra effort for sure.

Just mix your sugar and spices in a bowl with red wine vinegar.


Combine extra virgin olive oil and canola oil in a measuring cup and pour it into the vinegar mix in a thin stream, whisking constantly with a fork or, well, a whisk.


Add your chopped herbs on top and mix again.


At this point I was going to pour it into a cute mason jar and store it in the fridge but I decided to see how much I need for the pasta salad. I just chopped up a yellow and a red bell pepper, some mushrooms, and olives and mixed them with a box of tricolor pasta. The dressing was pretty much the perfect amount to coat all of this evenly so no leftovers this time. I'll have to make some more later!

Homemade Italian Dressing
recipe from the parsley thief

makes 1 1/3 cups

2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tsp sugar
2 tsp dried mustard
kosher salt + freshly ground pepper
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
3 tbsp red wine vinegar
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/2 cup canola oil
1/4 cup finely chopped fresh basil leaves
2 tsp finely chopped fresh marjoram
1 tsp finely chopped fresh oregano

In a medium bowl, whisk together garlic, sugar, mustard, red pepper flakes, and red wine vinegar. Whisk together the two oils and pour into the vinegar mixture in a slow stream, whisking constantly to form an emulsion. Add the fresh herbs and stir in salt and pepper to taste. Store the dressing in a container for up to a week.

Pour it over your favorite salad mix or use it to marinate chicken! Nothing beats the fresh ingredients.

overnight french toast

This is a little Christmas tradition I wanted to share because it is so delicious. And you can make it anytime of the year! It just became a tradition for us every Christmas because all the prep work is done the night before so you just pop it in the oven Christmas morning and that's it!

My mom learned this recipe from my aunt so I'm not exactly sure of its origins, but we've been doing this for years now. Once again, I slacked on picture taking this holiday break so I remade it this past weekend so I could post it here.

Start by making your brown sugar "sludge". Believe me, this is the best sludge you'd ever wanna eat. And its a special occasion so you don't have to feel guilty about it :).


Mix mix mix.


Grease a baking dish and pour the brown sugar goodness into it. Spread it around.


Now, you want to get a loaf of nice crusty french bread. It's the perfect bread for this. However, I decided I was going to make this fairly late at night. The first market I went to was out of pretty much all bread in the bakery. The second market had one loaf of french bread and one loaf of italian bread. Before I could locate the bread among all the empty baskets, some women swooped in and grabbed the last french bread. I had two options.. challenge her to a duel with the bread, or suck it up and try to use the italian. I was too committed to just give up so I pouted and grabbed the italian bread. It worked, just not as nicely. So do as I say, not as I do. Use french bread.

Cut up the bread into 3/4in to 1 in slices and line up on top of the brown sugar. You should be able to get neat rows of three when using the proper bread. Not this hodge-podge mess.


Mix up your egg mixture and pour it all over, making sure to coat all of the bread.


Now cover this up with foil and put in the fridge overnight. Get some sleep!

When you take it out of the fridge in the morning, most of the egg mixture will be absorbed. Uncover it and put it in the oven for a half hour. Go open your Christmas presents. :)


When it comes out the edges will be nice and crusty and inside will be soft and hot. The brown sugar mix on the bottom really completes it. After you scoop your pieces out, spoon some of the remaining brown sugar on top. ;)


Overnight French Toast

1/2 cup butter, melted
1 cup light brown sugar
2 tbsp corn syrup
dash of ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1 loaf crusty french bread
6 eggs
2 cups milk
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Melt butter in a medium bowl. Stir in brown sugar, corn syrup, nutmeg, and cinnamon. Pour into a greased 9x13 in baking dish. Cut bread into 3/4 in to 1 in slices and line up across brown sugar mixture. Beat eggs with milk and vanilla. Pour egg mixture all over the bread, making sure it all gets coated. Cover and refrigerate overnight. In the morning, uncover and bake for 30-35 minutes at 325F.



The perfect start to a special day.



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sailor loot

I mentioned this two days ago but apparently Sailor Jerry isn't going to be carrying their clothing line anymore. If you don't know the clothes, you may know the rum or the tattoos. They are a Philly based company where Norman "Sailor Jerry" Collins' tattoo designs are featured on clothing, drink-ware, and accessories. The tattoos are those iconic ships, pin-up girls, and sparrows you see everywhere.

The other day, Charlie and I ran down to the city real quick to snag some loot that was on sale (and sadly one thing that was not because I can't read price tags properly). I just wanted to share my finds because I love this style. I got this button down that I love that has a ship on the back and a little anchor on the front..



And this hoodie (the not on sale thing that I bought anyway because I love it) that also has a ship on the back and sparrows on the front. It says "good work ain't cheap.. cheap work ain't good". True.



I also got the last deck of cards they had in the store. The designs on the cards are pretty awesome.

If you're into this iconic tattoo style check out the website before all the clothes are gone! Or if you're near Philly you can stop in the store.

I can't believe this week is half over. I have my second class tomorrow! It's weird to be back in school even though it wasn't that long ago..

new layout

Late post tonight but it's pretty much because of this. My new layout is finally up and ready to go. I'm posting this before I fix all the links so bear with me for like the next half hour or so and hopefully it'll be totally good to go. I also officially became a grad student tonight so that took a little time too! We got out super early because it's snowing like crazy here but I'm glad I at least got my first class over with. It feels real now.

A little insight into my mind about the design.. everything that deals with me is on the left sidebar and the right is devoted to others. Or should I say will be devoted to others. Right now I just have a bunch of placeholder images from past posts but soon I hope for those spaces to hold ads for other blogs and shops I particularly like. Not google ads or anything, strictly things by other bloggers/independent artists that appeal to me and therefore hopefully my readers. I know it's quite here at times but my analytics don't lie, you guys are out there ;). Just don't be too shy to chat it up! I'd love to hear your thoughts. :)

I also broke down some categories on the left on banners i created. They link to related tags but I left the categories feature for a more specific breakdown. I put a shop ad at the bottom too but that doesn't exist yet :/ I just wanted to have a place for it. The link goes to my etsy but as you'll see I have a little "vacation" message up for the time being.

I updated my about section too including a ridiculous picture of me so you can kind of see who I really am (I hope that's good thing). My 101 things has moved down below the shop ad. I'll link to it though as I update the list.

I think that's about it for now. There may be minor changes in the next few days as I see how things work but I'm pretty happy with the facelift. What can I say, I'm a designer.. I get excited about these things :).

Well I hope you like the news digs! Feel free to leave some input below!

meat america

Good ol' PA in steak form. I'd eat that. This past friday I met up with Charlie and his coworkers in Northern Liberties and we all traveled over to Bambi Gallery for Dominic Episcopo's show, Meat America. Probably not vegan friendly. There was a great turnout and the photos were amazing. The main wall when you first walk in was a map of the U.S. divided up like cuts of meat.



Down at the bottom was a cut of Louisiana, surrounded by oil X). Some of the meat was cut into portraits of famous people such as Alfred Hitchcock and Michael Jackson. Pretty impressive.


There's the man of the hour in the bottom left corner (above).


This is a chandelier in the gallery that I thought was awesome so I took a picture. Upon further inspection it could do without the questionable light sticking out of it but other than that it's pretty cool.


I heard that these photos are going to be used for other things too, such as a book. There is also a possibility that Urban Outfitters will be selling prints of them. I think that's pretty exciting and I'll definitely be looking out for that. How cool would these look in a kitchen?



I met a lot of really nice people and definitely left the gallery hungry. We went to Dos Segundos afterward and I got steak tacos :). Those were seriously the first tacos I've ever enjoyed. I don't generally care for Mexican food. I can't stand whatever that typical "taco spice" is. These were delicious though.

In other news, I've been working on my new blog design all weekend and it's almost finished. Things are actually working out and I'm stoked about it. I get along with html way better than I get along with Flash so that probably has something to do with it. All I really have left to do is shoot my banner image so I anticipate the new design being up this week, sooner rather than later. I'm excited! Now I'm off to the city to make a stop at Sailor Jerry's because supposedly they are going to stop their clothing line so I want to see if I can score anything on sale.

Happy Monday! Have a good week :)