A Weekly Serving - 1/29/2011

It's been a great week and I'm glad it's the weekend! Before I type away with some personal musings...

Here's what I cooked up in the kitchen this past week...

Lobster Mac & Cheese

A great dish for Valentine’s Day or just to surprise that special someone… 

Peanut Butter Brownie Pie

If you’re a fan of peanut butter and chocolate, this Peanut Butter Brownie Pie is for you!… 

Here are the recipe collections I've posted this past week...

7 Tasty Touchdown Snack Recipes 

Here are some some of the tasty recipes for the big game to check out…

8 Sliders for Superbowl Sunday

Some of the tastiest things come in small packages… 

8 Batches of Brownie Recipes

Serve up portable sweets like brownies for the Superbowl! 

My weekly musings on Family, Food and Fun...

Family -  I should make a movie called, 'The Fast & The Curious,' featuring my little munchkin, Joel. Just last week we were in the in-between stage where he needed some prodding to crawl and encouragement to reach and climb up on things. This week was a whole different ball game. Joel is all over the place and quick! One minute, he's in his designated play area content with his toys...and then the next minute he's on the other side of the room checking out whatever he can get his hands on. All his moving around has got me and Louis exhausted. I can't even imagine how much more energy it will be to keep up with Joel when he's walking around! Here's our little cutie pie's weekly pic, where he's now 38 weeks old...

Food/Restaurant News - This week major renovation started on our kitchen and dining area. I'm hopeful the work will be done in a month so we're all crossing our fingers. In the meantime, we're all keeping busy somehow. I've been working on scheduling public events to keep our momentum up. In fact, next week Friday we will be doing a special presentation and tasting preview at a local Whole Foods store. The following day, we're attending a big event within the Filipino community called Pin@ypalooza where we will have a booth and provide samples of our restaurant menu. So with those events lined up, we're anxious to share what's soon to come!

If you've read my "About Joelen" page, you may have noticed how I have plans to open up a gastro truck. I'm not the only one as my partners would love to open up one as well. Later today, my partners and I will be checking out a food truck to get some information and also familiarize ourselves with the food truck business, since it's much different that a stand alone business. I'm looking forward to it, since the owner of the food truck is also selling her truck... and was previously seen on Food Network's Diners, Drive Ins & Dives. Her name is Grace and is/was the owner of Galewood Cookshack.

So amidst the restaurant renovations, special preview events for the public and even a food truck viewing, another thing to add to the list of food/restaurant news is my new venture - Joely Cakes. In short, Joely Cakes is my independent cake and cupcake line, highlighting Filipino tropical flavors (as well as others). I've been baking for years and even had a side business back in 2002-2005 filling custom cake orders for private and commercial clientele. I stepped away from filling baking orders for a few years but got back into it within the last year after receiving quite a few special occasion cake and cupcake orders. The best feeling this week was having my Joely Cakes hit the retail market! They're currently being sold at Three R Filipino Cafe & Grocery with other local Filipino grocery stores soon to follow. Yay!

Fun - As for fun this past week, I've been enjoying the time at home with my boys. I did some considerable baking this week for Joely Cakes but also for the family... so stay tuned to find out what I've been baking up!

Hope you all enjoy your weekend and have a great week ahead!