My last slice of pie

This is a picture of the last slice of pumpkin pie that Kai and I baked on Thursday, and I uncontrollably ate all but two slices out of the nine inch pie! Kai had a slice and Jimmy had the other. I was undecided about the pie, but since I did eat it all....I guess I like the recipe. I had help from Whole Foods frozen department for the shell and canned organic pumpkin. Roasting my own pumpkin and making crust just takes too long for me and I'm not that patient, plus with my youngest constantly running around my legs, I venture not. I also have a fear of making scratch crust. Could be because my husband is a professional and I don't want to disappoint or because I don't want to eat overworked pie crust!

Now I'm thinking about making brownies, but we are out of Valrhona cocoa powder so I might just wait until we can go get some more. Reading over my shoulder, Jimmy says to me,

" You're a chef you should be able to think of the alternative. Use a recipe that calls for couvature."

Yea, it's just not as fast as the one bowl brownie recipe that I like...hmm. I'll think about it and if the craving is strong enough, I might just have to do it or make him work.

The cutest thing today that I have to share is from this morning. Jimmy and I were in bed saying good morning to our baby Cassia when Kai walked in with a little purple box and Cassia exclaims, "chocolate!". Jimmy and I looked at each other and had to laugh, our one year old daughter knows that chocolate is inside the pretty purple box.

Thank You Vosges!

The other night Jimmy came home with my favorite purple box! It was a congratulation gift sent from Katrina the owner of Vosges Haut Chocolat. Inside the magnificently large purple box was a smaller purple box containing their 'exotic truffles' and a bottle of rose champagne!! OMG!! It's good to be the wife of a pastry chef!!! I love, love, love Vosges chocolates! I first discovered them back in 2001 when I was touring the vineyards in Napa and Sonoma, I've been hooked since then.

I was in awe at her creativity. The ingenuity of combining spices and chocolate was unheard of back then. I wanted to meet the person who created those wonderful morsels of chocolate that was cleverly packaged in a white Chinese take-out container wrapped with a pretty purple ribbon and chopsticks. Now I live down the street from one of her boutiques!! I haven't met her yet, but someday soon via the hubby.

The children and I stop in for the caramel marshmallows when ever we walk that way (almost twice a month). I would love to work for her too. I don't know what I'd do, but come on who wouldn't want to work with the woman who made the daring leap of making chocolate and spices chic?!?

Yes, I have forgotten to report about Jimmy and Sandra regarding the National Bread and Pastry Championship, but that was because I was busy being addicted to (fluff)friends on face book. (There the first step is admitting it!)

Team Burns/MacMillan placed third! Yay! Woo Hoo! Good job guys!

Team Peemoeller/ Abdullah won first and team Salazar/ Mora won second. Great job everyone.

It was not an easy competition, I can't imagine or want to be any of the competitors. Two days of non-stop cooking and creating. It was crazy for us, I'm sure it was crazy for everyone else too. The day before,we were driving around Philadelphia and Atlantic City trying to find a grocery store or any store that would have replacements for ingredients and tools that didn't make it. Just so you know, there are no grocery stores in Atlantic City, just little convenience stores. Jimmy didn't even sleep the night before because he was up scaling the rest of his ingredients and with the assistance of the babies! The kids just would not leave him alone and they were too excited to sleep.




Atlantic City, to me, screams salt water taffy...so we had to stop in James' Candy Shop and a few other candy stores. I highly reccomend James' taffy and fudge! They are by far the best I've ever tasted in my life (and I've eaten a ton of candy in my time...lots of cavities to prove it!). The taffy is incredibly soft, rich and oh so delicious! We bought the regular, the filled, the dipped and some English butter taffys along with the maple fudge and chocolate fudge. I'm already wanting more and wished that we bought more fudge, but seriously we bought three pounds of taffy and one pound of fudge...we probably looked a little crazy doing so.

On the way out we stopped at It Sugar because the decor caught our eye and bought more candy! I justify it by saying it was Kai's turn...he picked out a mega swirly lollipop, mini M&Ms and a helicopter toy/sucker.