I wanted to wish you all a very wonderful holiday full of family, friends, food and lots of memories. With this little guy in our lives now, I know ours will be.

Allow me to apologize for my absence lately, I’ve been a little bit busy with little man. It turns out I have greatly underestimated how difficult it is to cook and take care of a new born at the same time but I’m starting to get the hang of it. In between changes and naps I’ve managed to get into the kitchen a couple of times. I have a few recipes including a spicy version of mashed potatoes and a succulent jalapeno garlic marinated pork to share with you all shortly. Believe me they will be worth the wait.

In the meantime, enjoy yourselves this holiday weekend. Be safe. Eat lots. And don’t forget to leave cookies for Santa!

Oh and one last thing, I’ve gotten a few emails from people asking what we’ve named our new addition. This cute, bundle of joy, light of our lives is named Kellan Ryan.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Love,

Des

We’ve been home a couple of days now simply resting. Baby boy has been doing a lot of sleeping and eating while Ryan and I have been falling in love with him more and more each minute. This is truly an amazing feeling and we cannot wait to watch him grow.

I’ll be back in the kitchen soon and will be sharing more pictures of our little boy too. Hope you are all having a great week!

Love,
Des

I decided the best way to celebrate and to say thank you for being there was to give away one of my favorite kitchen items: A 3.5 qt Le Creuset Round French Oven. It’s enameled cast iron.  It’s oven and stove top safe. And is really easy to clean. I simply adore mine that Ryan gave me as a birthday present a couple of years ago. I use it as often as I can. It works great for soups, deep frying, stews, chilis , roasts and spaghetti sauce. Basically it’s perfect for the comfort food season that just started.

In addition to being helpful and practical in the kitchen, I love my Le Creuset because it is just so pretty. No matter what color, they all just add a certain pop to your kitchen aresnal.  And we all know that that is the most important thing right? For this giveaway I decided to go with the color that caught my eye as soon as I walked into Mrs. Cook’s, Fennel.  It’s green. It’s luscious  and I wouldn’t blame you if you won it and left it on your counter, just to stare at it. I mean really. It is that pretty.

I am doing a lot of talking up of Le Creuset here but it’s important that you know the people at Le Creuset don’t know me. I’ve chosen to purchase and give this away because I want to.

Unlike previous giveaways, you’ve got two chances to win. For one entry simply leave a comment in the comments section of this post telling me what your favorite comfort food is. For the second entry leave a comment telling me your favorite comfort food on the Life’s Ambrosia Facebook page.  I’ll pick the winner at random. Good luck! And again, thank you so much for reading and I look forward to many more years and many more recipes.

Giveaway Details:

2 entries max per person (One via a comment on the blog post and one via a comment on the Facebook fan page)

Due to shipping costs I can only ship to US mailing addresses

Contest ends 10/14/11 at 5:00PM PST.

Winner will be picked at random.

I have personally purchased the product. I have not been compensated in anyway for this post or product recommendation.

Thanks for participating everyone! The giveaway is now over. Winner will be announced by Monday.

And the winner is!

BOY! And we couldn’t be happier. He was a little shy during the ultrasound but we eventually got a peak. Thank goodness because we were really anxious to know. It cuts the names that we have to think of by half after all. We have a couple that we like but are going to keep that quiet for now until we decide for sure. I just wanted to share the good news with you all. I’ll keep you posted as things progress and I’ll be back early next week with a new recipe. And believe me you don’t want to miss it. There is roasted garlic, cream cheese and frying involved.

Happy cooking!

Love,

Des

You may or may not have noticed a decrease in blog posts here on Life’s Ambrosia for the last few months or so. Well Ryan and I are finally ready to tell you why. Do you know how many weeks there are until Thanksgiving? I do. There are 26 weeks. Do you know why I know that? It’s not because of my affinity for mashed potatoes and gravy or pumpkin pie, no, I know the exact weeks until Thanksgiving because Ryan and I are expecting our first baby two days before. We like to think of it as our little slow roasted turkey.

If you’ve ever been pregnant or have had a pregnant woman in your life then you probably know that these first few months aren’t exactly the best for food lovers. The meals that I have been eating (read: boxes of macaroni and cheese, apple sauce, cheerios, Mexican pizzas, pickles and Klondike bars) aren’t necessarily blog worthy so that is why I’ve been a little absent lately. I hope to get back into the groove and begin posting a couple of times a week again soon. I just wanted to let you all in on the exciting news and to tell you that I haven’t forgotten about Life’s Ambrosia, I’m still here and as soon as baby starts craving stuff that doesn’t require a trip to a drive thru or a pickle jar, I’ll be back a little more often.

Happy cooking all!

Love,

Des

As I sit here writing this post the Christmas tree is lit. A fire is ablaze and crackling. Someone is wrapping presents and George Bailey just found out that no man is a failure who has friends. It’s Christmas eve friends. My absolute favorite day of the year.

The shopping is done (hopefully), the presents wrapped and the preparation for the big meal is complete. It is now time to relax. Time to take in all of the lights, the sounds, the movies, the family, the friends and the food. Time to really enjoy everything that makes this season so special. Before we start out festivities here I just wanted to take a moment to say Merry Christmas friends, from our house to yours.

These past two years working on the blog have been wonderful. Not only have I been able to explore my ever growing passion for food and cooking but I have been able to share it with people. I have been able to meet wonderful people from around the world. I have been lucky enough to meet some of you in person. While others I consider very good friends despite the fact that I only know you by email address or twitter handle. These relationships, to me, have been the most rewarding part of blogging. Who would’ve known that the blogging world would be full of so many wonderful, kind, talented and caring people. I am truly honored to be part of such a wonderful community. It really is a reason to celebrate.

One of my favorite ways to celebrate is to open a bottle of wine or champagne and toast to the event. Another favorite way is to celebrate with food of course.  However, for the longest time, one of the things that I always struggled with is how to pair the two together. Not anymore however.  Not since I found “What to Drink with What You Eat” written by Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page the authors of my other kitchen must have “The Flavor Bible”.

“What to Drink with What You Eat” has everything you ever wanted to know about pairing food with a particular wine. Want to know what wine to serve with your roasted chicken? Chardonnay is great for that. Have a wonderful bottle of Brunello that you brought back from your trip to Italy but aren’t sure how to use it? Serve it with a perfectly grilled aged steak or maybe go the cheese and wine route and serve it with some aged asaiago. I’m tellin’ ya this book has just about every kind of pairing you can think of. Seriously people, I’m not kidding. There is even an entry for Church’s Chicken.

Because I like this book so much, and because I want to show my thanks for your readership the last 2 years I am giving away a copy of this wonderful book. All you have to do is leave a comment below telling me what your favorite way to celebrate a special occasion is.

I look forward to reading all of your answers and I look forward to sharing many more recipes with you.

Here’s to many more years. Cheers!

Contest Rules:

One entry per person.

No entries after 5:00 PST on 10/13/10

Winner will be chosen at random.

You know, when I started this blog almost two years ago with this post,  I had originally intended for Life’s Ambrosia to be a recipe blog with a little bit of life sprinkled in here and there. Somewhere along the way it became strictly a recipe blog which has worked very well for the past year or so. But right now there are so many things going on in my life that I figured it’s time to start sharing a little bit more, after all I have gotten to know quite a few of you very well over this here internets. For those of you that are here strictly for the food, don’t worry you’ll still get recipes every week but every once in a while there might also be pictures of family, friends and babies…and really who doesn’t like pictures of babies. Especially when babies look like this:

And when they do this:

When we weren’t busy ooh-ing and aw-ing over baby kisses, we played some games because what is a bridal shower without games? They were very grown up games though. Like this one where we fought over pens to see who could write to 100 first. It was good times but I won’t lie things got a little vicious. Who knew all these sweet ladies were so competitive?

Melissa won. And she was very excited as you can see. I mean who wouldn’t be with a bag of candy from the party store comin’ their way.  Ya I know, not the coolest prize hey whats a new homeowner to do?

Along with the babies and games, there were presents to be opened by the lovely bride to be. I will probably have to borrow this pasta bowl. I’m also thinking that I should tell Shannon she should try out for the Price is Right. She’s got the “And you will win this lovely pasta bowl” thing down.

It wouldn’t be a party thrown by Des if I didn’t have food. And in case you didn’t see the recipe yesterday let me tempt you one more time with these garlic chips.

And because I simply can’t resist. A couple more pictures of babies:

And so concluded my first party at the new house and my first experience taking pictures with Ryan’s camera. I have to say it was a lot of fun, I think I might have found a new hobby.

Its finally time! It felt like this day would never come but its almost here. That’s right, we’re moving into our first home! It seems like so long ago that we put in the offer and waited for the seller to accept. Then the 30 days it took to close seemed like 30 years. Which considering I’m only 26 means that it felt longer than a lifetime. The month since we closed has been full of sanding, furniture shopping and trips to the paint store. So many trips to the paint store that they now know me. But finally all that hard work has paid off and we’re moving. I’m so excited. I’m so overwhelmed and so…not packed.

Let’s not beat around the bush here. Packing sucks. It’s no fun. It’s a lot of work. It makes you realize that you have a lot of things that you really don’t need. It takes forever. This is why we have put it off for so long. Not only is the job of packing so much work but you know what you have to do after you pack? Unpack. Unpacking also takes forever because as much as I try to channel my inner Sabrina the Teenage Witch I just can’t seem to get out of it.

So with that said, I’ll be taking a few days off while we move. After all it is hard to boil pasta with all your pots in boxes. But I’ll be back in a few days with more recipes and maybe even some pictures of our new home.

Until then, Cheers!

Des

Dips are always a must. People love to snack while their waiting for whatever it is you’ve got grilling. Some of my favorites are:

Caramelized French Onion Dip.

Creamy Ranch Dip

When dips just won’t satisfy your bunch, these other yummy bites are perfect.

Cream Cheese and Bacon Stuffed Jalapenos

Spicy Pepper Steak

Salads are also on the must have list. Whether pasta or potato you really can’t go wrong.

Creamy Bacon Tomato and Avocado Pasta Salad

Potato Salad

It is probably a good idea to throw some vegetables in the mix too. And on a hot, sunny 4th of July day grilled is most certainly the way to go.

Grilled Corn with Jalapeno-Garlic Butter

Grilled Zucchini

Of course everyone is always excited for the main event and that generally means that something is cooking on the grill. This is what will be on ours.

Grilled Chipotle Chicken

Grilled Flat Iron Steak with Chimichurri Sauce

And for dessert? When popsicles just wont do try these sweet bites.

Chocolate Mascarpone Stuffed Strawberries

Fudgy Brownie Cookie Ice Cream Sandwiches