San Diego Food Bloggers Unite!! A Fund for Jennie

On August 12^th, seemed like the whole food blogging world was making a peanut butter pie in support of fellow blogger Jennie Perillo and her two young daughters who had lost their husband/father suddenly. As if it wasn't hard enough to deal with the loss of your partner, Jennie is having to deal with the other realities of life such as health insurance, the mortgage, and just day to day life trying to raise her girls.

So again the food bloggers unite to help Jennie out. Bloggers Without Borders is a non-profit organization that was created to raise awareness for certain issues in our communities and to spread the word via the food blogging community. Read more about Bloggers Without Borders

BWoB’s latest project: A Fund for Jennie 

Food bloggers throughout the country have organized auctions for their readers to bid on. Items include anything from baked goods to stacks of cookbooks to the blogger actually coming to your home to teach you how to cook or host a dinner party.




 

What I'm doing about it

I got an email from Marie of Meandering Eats a few days ago asking fellow San Diego Food Bloggers to help put together a basket to auction. Yup....I'm in!!

What you can do

1) Bid on our super awesome San Diego themed basket! Visit Marie's blog, Meandering Eats to check out what's up for auction. If you are interested in bidding, please leave a comment at the bottom of the post (Marie's post, not mine...you won't get anything for bidding on my page silly!) Be sure to include your email address so we can contact you if your bid wins. The auction ends on September 2 at 12:59pm, PST.  

Btw, I contributed San Diego's own Sam the Cooking Guy's newest cookbook, Just Grill This!....which I want one for myself now. The only way to pry this cookbook away from my hands is to bid. So what are you waiting for?!

2) Visit the auction page on the Bloggers Without Borders website. They are updating the site with blogs that are holding auctions. There are so many great items but a lot of the auctions will be ending soon so hurry!

3) If you are like me and the millions of people who cannot afford to bid but you would like to still contribute something, please follow the link Donate: A Fund for Jennie to make a donation for any denomination. All funds being donated at this time will be going towards A Fund for Jennie.

A huge thank you to all of you who donate or bid on the SD Food Bloggers basket! Have a great weekend!

Lil Ms. Sueshine



First Annual Gourmet Food Truck Festival 2011

It's true that food brings people together. Yesterday I got to hang out with two of my friends from high school, my friend's co-worker, and a few hundred foodie friends at the First Annual Gourmet Food Truck Festival at the beautiful Del Mar Racetrack. The festival featured 40 food trucks from all over Southern California. Although the lines were a little overwhelming and I didn't get the chance to try a lot of the trucks, I think the event definitely made people aware of how many different food trucks are out there. For me personally, it served as a launch pad for new foodie adventures! 

Slidertini from The Gathering Spot BistroTruck
(www.facebook.com/tgsbistrotruck)
Angus beef slider with dill aioli with sauteed mushrooms & onions, bruschetta. and topped with a cheddar cheese cube



HazelBerryAna from Crepes Bonaparte
(http://www.crepesbonaparte.com/)
Inside this crepe: Nutella, strawberries, & bananas

 

Several of the trucks featured on The Food Network's "The Great Food Truck Race"
were at the festival including: Season One's Nom Nom (seen above), Ragin Cajun, Crepes Bonaparte & Season Two's Devilious (local San Diego truck) & The Lime Truck

More pictures from the event are on my Facebook page. Don't forget to click the "LIKE" button on the sidebar to your right :)
If you would like to find out more about the food trucks, where they will be, follow your favorites on Twitter, or upcoming events, here's a good resource so you can track them down: http://www.sdfoodtrucks.com/

Peanut Butter Pie

Just like most Friday nights, my husband and I sat side by side on the couch, both working on our laptops. Both of us have been so busy lately between our regular day jobs, me with my baking orders & house sitting and my husband with his martial arts business. I logged onto my Blogger account and ran down the list of blogs that I read. Clearly, something was going on. Almost everyone had a picture of a peanut butter pie on their blog and what better reason than this: Jennie Pirello called everyone into action to make a peanut butter pie which was her husband’s favorite. Read more here.....For Mikey

It broke my heart to read the post. I’ll be honest and have never read her blog before Friday but just reading about her loss put things into perspective for me. For the past few weeks, every time the oven was turned on and the mixer started going, my own husband had been asking me, “When are you going to make me something with peanut butter and chocolate?” Each time I told him I didn’t have time. It’s sad that something like this made me stop and realize what I was doing…or better yet, not doing.

Although a day late, I made my peanut butter pie. This one was in honor of Jennie’s husband….and my own husband.




My no sugar added version of a Peanut Butter Cream Pie. My husband and I shared the first slice.

 
I just recently became part of the food blogging community in April but I’m proud to say I’m part of it. It’s amazing to me how the community had reached out to support Jennie, even though she is a stranger to a lot of us. So it’s not a recipe that I want you to get out of today’s post. What I hope you get out of it is to take some time out of your busy schedule and tell those special people in your life that you love them. Also be kind to others because you don’t know what that person you are passing on the street might be going through. Sometimes something as simple as a smile can make their day. Despite the pain she must be feeling, something like a few hundred peanut butter pies might have made Jennie’s day.

It all started with an Orange Julius

Not many people know the real story about how me and the Mister actually met. I'm finally coming clean after 7 years. The fake story is that we met on a double date. I told my mom that my close friend had met a guy and she asked me to go on a double date with one of his friends. The truth is that I met Scott on the Internet.

Okay you must be asking yourself, why would you be ashamed of meeting someone on the Internet? Plenty of people have met over the Internet and on dating sites. Well for one, back then it was kinda nerdy to meet people on the Internet and I was the definition of nerdy (role playing games kinda of nerdy). Secondly, I just had just recently gotten out of a 5 year relationship that had started on the Internet and that didn't end so well. Did I really want to go there again? After my breakup, I was casually dating so I could figure out what I wanted in my next relationship. I had put up a profile on Yahoo Personals and my choice on a dating site just goes to show how serious I was about getting into another relationship (as opposed to a more serious site like eHarmony). Scott and I started chatting and decided to meet up at the mall one night. We actually had to try meeting up twice because the first time we missed each other. If you ask Scott about this first time, he'd tell you that I was hiding in a nearby store and checking him out from a distance. Truth is that I honestly couldn't find him. We met on the second try. Ask Scott about the this time around, he would straight up tell you that he gave me a hug so he could check our my butt. Everything was closing up and one of the only things still open was the food court. We both agreed that an Orange Julius sounded good so he bought us drinks and we sat and talked for awhile. Years later, whenever we go to the mall, we occasionally get an Orange Julius but only order one so we can share <3 At one point, we even considered getting a bunch of Orange Julius drinks so we can have it at our wedding...hehe. 

So what does this story have to do with baking? We met at the end of July and I thought what better way to honor the memory of us meeting for the first time than to bake something that is the same flavor. If you don't know what an Orange Julius is, it's a smoothie type drink that has orange juice and some vanilla cream powder. The best thing I can compare it to is an orange creamsicle. I started looking into recipes and I found the following recipe on the Women's Day Magazine website.

Creamsicle "Cupcakes"

cake
1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
1 1/2 cups of sugar or sugar substitute
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp vanilla
4 large eggs
2 1/4 cups of all purpose flour
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup orange juice (you can use the oranges you zest. About 2 large oranges)
2 tsp grated orange zest

frosting
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
1/2 cup confectioners sugar
1 tbsp grated orange zest
orange food coloring (optional)
orange zest strips for garnish (optional)

Heat oven to 350F. Line muffin cups with paper or foil liners.
Beat butter, baking powder, vanilla, orange juice, and zest in a large bowl for about 3 minutes or until fluffy. Add eggs one at a time and beat. On low speed, beat in flour in 3 additions alternating with milk in 2 additions until blended. Spoon evenly into cups.



Uh oh...that doesn't look appetizing...looks like a sun burst though. Maybe there is a ray hope!



Okay that looks a little more like regular batter.

Bake 22-25 minutes until toothpick comes out clean and the tops are golden. Cool on wire rack before frosting.

For frosting, beat heavy cream, sugar, and zest in a chilled metal bowl on medium high speed until soft peaks form. Add food coloring if desired. Frost and garnish cupcakes.

Sueshine Notes about this recipe

1) Notice how I put "cupcakes" in quotes? The texture of the cake was not your typical light and fluffy cupcake cake. It was very dense and bordering on a bread but I think it still had a good, light orange flavor.

2) The frosting is more of a whipped cream than your traditional frosting which I was surprisingly pleased with. The orange whipped cream frosting was what really made this taste like an Orange Julius. Even the texture reminded me of the frothy drink.

3) You could probably use orange extract for this recipe but why would you if oranges are available to squeeze fresh juice and get zest which definitely made a difference in the frosting.

When I bake, I usually bring them to work so my co-workers can eat them instead of me eating all of them. The Mister had to put his foot down and say no, these ones were his. He ate 4 cupcakes in a row and said that it takes just like an Orange Julius. My memories inspire a lot of my baking and flavors and this is one memory and flavor that I will always cherish because that day in late July, I met my best friend and future husband :)