Vanilla Soda & Ice Cream Floats

Carbonate everything!

Ever since I got my soda siphon at the flea market, I've been making so many different homemade sodas!  I seriously want to carbonate everything.  Pretty much anything I can pour into the siphon has a chance of being carbonated.  Except milk, I'm pretty sure that would be just weird.

Having an endless array of soda flavors also gives me endless possibilities of ice cream float flavors!  Which is exactly what I had in mind when I prepared this all natural vanilla soda.

Sure, you could buy some cream soda from the store.  Or you could quickly make this vanilla soda from all natural flavors!  It's seriously simple too.  All you need is a vanilla bean and some palm sugar.  Sure, palm sugar is a specialty ingredient (you can find it in my aStore on the bottom right!), but it gives this soda an distinct flavor.

Make it.  Pour it over ice cream.  Enjoy in a comfy spot outdoors.  Do it do it do it!

Chile-spiced Chicken with Mango Salsa

How is it August 6th already?  It was just fourth of July like two days ago!  This summer is running away from me and I'm even unemployed and can enjoy every day in the sun.

July was jam-packed with travel.  I spent a week in Buffalo, visiting family I hadn't seen in years, eating locals treats and playing with my parents puppies.  After that I was in Arizona with BF for another week, sweating it out in the Phoenix heat, being awed by amazing geography and taking the longest hike I've even done in my life.

Upon our return from Arizona, we returned to New Jersey to find milder temperatures and rain.  Lots of rain.  That's okay though.  I use the rainy days to focus on my future career plans.  I'm really ready to head back to work after three months off.  I'm running out of things to do at home and I really miss working in the lab!  I'm going to try to make the most of my remaining time off (which hopefully isn't too much more!) and enjoy the last few weeks of summer!  Mostly by eating more fruit.

I made this chicken dinner last week and knew I would love it.  I also knew that BF would leave every last bit of mango on his plate.  He just really doesn't like fruit.  Such a weirdo!  Personally I love fruit with savory dishes and loved the mango salsa with the spice rubbed chicken.  I also got to use one of my new OXO tools - the mango splitter!  While it's totally easy to pit a mango without one, it took about three seconds to pit the mango with it!  I also thought I would show my step-by-step how-to cut a mango pics.  Now you know and it's so much easier than you thought!

Thanks go to OXO for sending me an amazing package of summer fruit tools, including this mango splitter, through the blogger outreach program.  All opinions about the tools are my own, but I have yet to find an OXO tool that doesn't do it's job!  Check out some of their fruit tools and enjoy the summers bounty!

Say Hello to WITC!

I've been wanting to expand my online postings from the food arena and post about some of my other loves - fashion, photography, NYC, travel, etc, etc...  In order to keep WITK focused on cooking and all my fun adventures in the kitchen, I've launched Wilde in the City!

Feel free to stop by occasionally and see what life outside the Wilde Kitchen is like.  And thanks so much for making the internet such a fun place for me to come!