Wilde Week #19

1. Happy Fourth of July Week everyone!  I hope that you were one of the lucky people with a super long weekend.  I love it when the 4th is in the middle of the week.  It means you can go and watch fireworks all week long!  We got to watch three different displays, even one right from our couch (thank you mystery town west of ours!).

2. I'm totally behind on my Restaurant Wars challenge.  Please, don't go up top and click on the tab.  I'm way behind.  Like months behind.  This is totally crazy because I've been unemployed for a month and a half.  I should have all the time in the world to complete the challenges.  I promise I'll fix it.  Don't give up on me!

3. In the meantime, I need to make cookie dough brownies, like stat.

4. I spent a good portion of this long weekend at a photography workshop with Aran Goyoaga (of Cannelle et Vanille).  It was a two day workshop and day one was dedicated to foraging and outdoor photography!  I'll tell you all about it later this week, but I wanted to share a few photos from the weekend.  If you have the chance to take one of Aran's workshops, you should definitely sign up.  It was very inspiring.

5. I was at French Connection this weekend and tried on those pants up there.  Thoughts?  My only problem is, it's a million degrees outside right now and I can't imagine wearing pants.

6.   Want to learn a neat trick in to use Photoshop?  Check out this video.  Now you don't have to worry about all those tourists in your photo of Lady Liberty.  Just average them out.  Amazing.

7. I have discovered the absolute best time to go shopping in Soho.  It's July 4th.  All of the city dwellers have fled the island for the beaches and all of the tourists are on the west side trying to get a good firework viewing spot.  This leaves Soho completely empty, yet all the stores are having amazing sales.  I got a Tahari suit for 60% off.  I'm going to be styling on my upcoming interviews!   Put it in your calendar - July 4th 2014 - shop in Soho.

Vanilla Ice Cream with Roasted Cherry Swirl

Happy Fourth of July Internet friends! 

For my international friends out there, I hope you have an enjoyable Thursday.  For my American friends in the Internet ether, Happy Independence day! 

I hope that your day is filled with sunshine, cookouts, ice cream and warm weather.  I love living in the tri-state area this time of year because we can celebrate the holiday all week long!  There have been fireworks dotting the skyline since Saturday as the hundreds of townships in the area celebrate with local events.  Boyfriend and I headed to the Montclair fireworks last night and have big plans to view the fireworks of New York City, western Long Island and eastern New Jersey from high up in the hills of Upper Montclair tonight.

To celebrate Independence day this year, I decided to put my OXO fruit tools to use and make some cherry swirled vanilla ice cream.  A few weeks ago I received a package from OXO (via the OXO blogger outreach program) filled with tools to help us enjoy the summer fruit bounty.  The box included a pineapple corer, mango pitter, strawberry huller, fruit scoopers and this cherry pitter! 

Using the cherry pitter cut my prep time down significantly and my cherry sauce was in the oven in no time.  Cherries are delicious all on their own, but roast them in the oven with a little sugar, you've got a winner.  Rather than just topping the ice cream with the roasted cherry sauce, I decided to swirl it right into the just churned ice cream.  Super delicious, perfectly refreshing for the fourth of July!

Disclaimer - I received the OXO fruit tools as a part of the blogger outreach program.  All opinions about the tools are my own and I have not been compensated for this post.

Strawberry-Bacon Pizza

Say hello to delicious.

During my days of unemployment, I usually wander around Montclair, read books at Starbucks and bake cookies for Boyfriend.  Lunch often falls by the wayside and I wind up having a yogurt around 3:00.  Yesterday I was inspired to actually make lunch after flipping through Fitness magazine.  This strawberry and goat cheese pizza screamed my name.  Top it all off with a hefty load of crumbled bacon and I was tearing this recipe from the magazine and heading to Whole Foods. 

This pizza comes together quickly, which is perfect for someone craving bacon and goat cheese.  Using naan for the pizza crust, this lunch went from ingredients to delicious in only fifteen minutes. 

And it was amazing.  I should make lunch more often.