Kitty Deschanel | Food, Wine, and Travel Adventures in an Airstream Basecamp

Cake mix for breakfast? Check out my 2-ingredient Cake Mix Pancakes . Cake mix custard! Here is a quick and easy and SO GOOD no-bake dessert recipe that can be made ahead of time for your 4th of July get together. You'll need a Vitamix, Blendtec, or other high-powered blender. A quality food processor, such as the Breville Sous Chef, can also work. Cake Mix Custard Vitamix Recipe Serves 6 or one sugar-addicted blogger and her husband 16 oz milk (Feel free to use whatever kind you have on hand. I've even mixed nonfat milk with coconut milk to great results.) 6 egg yolks (Feeling fancy? Save the egg whites to top your custards with meringue and torch them, Baked Alaska-style. Ooh, and then sprinkle with fresh chocolate shavings. Or rainbow sprinkles for a birthday cake custard variation! Folding crushed Oreos into the finished custard would be delicious too - the options are endless.) 1/4 C white sugar 1/4 C brown sugar 8 oz cake mix (Approximately 1/2 a box)(I...

We've finally broken ground on our dream home ! Can you believe it? (You can follow our construction progress here , along with lots of construction drama - the neighbors building their fence on our property, discovering we'd placed our house on a bunch of expensive rocks, our concrete footings being destroyed by a freak hail storm, etc.) Even more surprising than finally building the house we've dreamed of for years, we actually managed to work a good chunk of our ridiculous wish list into the actual design. *Update* Construction is finished! It took longer than expected and cost more too (that's how construction works, right?), but we are finally living in our mountain dream home and it's even better than I'd hoped! Here is a photo of our new kitchen and living room.  Our Dream Home Believe it or not, our budget was meager. Really! My husband built the coffee table from an olive trunk and did the thin brick backsplash himself. Eventually, he's ...

This is a Father's Day re-post, full of fun and yummy ideas for your own Father's Day get together. Enjoy! We played host at an impromptu Father's Day party yesterday for my parents, brother, and sister-in-law. You might remember seeing my dad and brother mentioned on my site before. They're a little bit awkward . Our kitchen, almost ready to party. (Not shown: A pre-photo shoving frenzy of knick-knacks anywhere and everywhere out of sight. I can never find anything after I "clean" the house.) Sexy Nerd gathered some flowers from our backyard, eventually. Every time company is coming over, without fail, he lounges around lazily while I frantically cook/clean/decorate/panic. I get mad at him, he's bewildered with no idea what's wrong, then he finally, FINALLY helps get things ready. It's our own little party tradition. The half wall dividing our living and dining rooms served as a convenient beverage station. But som...

A few years ago, I backed up my millions of photo and video files on a flash drive. I was glad I'd planned ahead...until I actually needed the files and discovered the flash drive had removed all the details! The files were still there, but instead of carefully sorted folders and file names, now they're all in one giant mishmash folder with names like T58146297, unable to be sorted by date. Oh, and the flash drive disaster created multiple copies of the same file in multiple sizes with multiple names. Ugh. Today I'm finally making an attempt to organize the files again. It's a slow process, partly because everything is so jumbled, but mostly because I'm easily distracted. I haven't looked at these photos in years! With my BFF in 2008, who I haven't seen since that same year. She's a successful actress in London and when we went to London a few years ago, she was visiting the USA. Ack! I was a muddy bride.  My brother and I in th...

Construction has been delayed (surprise, surprise) for quite some time due to our local utility company, PNM, refusing to do their job. This has meant deep, open trenches and sky-high mountains of dirt blocking the path to our house. No one has been able to do any work, interior or exterior. Somehow, Sexy Nerd and I still managed to get inside without any trouble. We were even able to move in a long, cumbersome vanity for the guest bathroom, as well as all of the cabinets Sexy Nerd built for my closet (a ton of cabinets...I may have gotten carried away), even though every member of the construction crew was helpless to access the house until PNM arrived. Weird how that works, isn't it? Not to complain though, because guess what? PNM has finally come and gone and the trenches have been filled! After So beautiful. Before Ack! If I'd started with this hideous photo, in typical Before & After fashion, you never would have clicked the link to this kick-@ss...