Some Food I Made Over the Holidays

One of my 2014 objectives is to get better at cooking, more specifically, cooking healthier meals that don't take up too much time. I am a big fan of making everything from scratch, such as mixing my own salad dressing or baking homemade bread. And that's not necessarily the smartest way to go about day-to-day meal planning, because every little task took up so much time and I ended up feeling frustrated and exhausted for not getting enough things done. So I've decided to "outsource" some of that as long as I am thorough with the ingredients and nutritional facts.

All the photos below were taken from the actual food I made.

This old-fashioned crab cake is a foolproof recipe I tried again and again, and it's always a big hit among my guests. You can locate the recipe here. I used half chunky half leg crab meat.

We were hooked on this savory Paella Marinara during our Barcelona trip, so I decided to try it out at home. I used a typical seafood Paella recipe, and instead of using saffron threads, I used the Carmencita Paellero Paella Spice Mix which contains saffron. It's totally rad.

Red velvet cupcake is one of my favorite holiday desserts - they look as pretty as they taste good. I used the President's Choice Red Velvet Cake Kit.

Apple pie is yet another favorite holiday dessert of mine. The warm apple with cinnamon and nutmeg smells so festive. Sometimes I will make my own pastry but on other occasions I will use Pillsbury's pie crust and follow this recipe. I am pretty proud of my crimping job - a lot of friends thought I used some sort of tool/mold, but no, this is 100% freehand crimping work by yours truly! :)