1. Williams Sonoma Bourbon BBQ Sauce / 2. The Craft Cocktail Party / 3. Gilded Monogram DOF Glass / 4. Williams Sonoma One Pot of the Day Cookbook / 5. Lunch in Paris – A Love Story with Recipes / 6. Mercado Fruit Cart / 7. Acacia Wedge Server / 8. Cookbook Stand / 9. Kicking Horse Coffee – Cliff Hanger Espresso Roast / 10. ‘But First Tea’ Teacup / 11. Raised Bloom Measuring Cups / 12. Kate Spade Tidbit ‘Sayings’ Plate Set

**All of the items I’ve listed above are just because I love them – none of them are sponsored. I’m not affiliated with any of the companies. I just love to talk about the items I love to use in the kitchen**

Until the next cooking adventure,
Jess

The post Holiday Gift Guide appeared first on Cooking in my Genes.

I remember growing up when we’d come downstairs Christmas morning, we’d put on a CD called ‘A Very Special Christmas 2’ before we sat down around the tree.  It’s honestly the only Christmas CD I can remember we played and so many of the songs are my favourite to this day.

SO I wanted to share with  you my Holiday Playlist, a compilation of my favourite music for this time of year.

1. Please Come Home for Christmas – Bonjovi
2. Sleigh Ride – Debbie Gibson
3. Christmas All Over Again – Tom Petty
4. So This Is Christmas – Celine Dion
5. All I Want for Christmas Is You – Mariah Carey
6. Baby, It’s Cold Outside – Frank Sinatra
7. It’s Beginning to Look Alot Like Christmas – Michael Buble
8. She Daisy – Deck the Halls
9. I’ll Be Home For Christmas – She & Him
10. Underneath the Tree – Kelly Clarkson
11. Christmas (Baby Please Come Home – U2
12. Merry Christmas Baby – Bruce Springsteen
13. Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree – Brenda Lee
14. Christmas Eve – Celine Dion
15. Jingle Bell Rock – Randy Travis
16. Christmas Time Again – Extreme
17. Silver Bells – Lady Antebellum
18. All My Bells Are Ringing – Lenka
19. Moonlight Kiss – Bap Kennedy
20. White Christmas – Otis Redding
21. One More Sleep – Leona Lewis

What are some of your favourite tunes? SHARE with us in the comments below!

Until the next cooking adventure,
Jess

The post My Favourite Holiday Tunes appeared first on Cooking in my Genes.

There are DEFINITELY some serious kitchen fails that go on behind the scenes that never usually make it past the kitchen…spilling bacon grease in the oven, breaking corks when opening wine bottles and going overboard with spices (aka my chipotle chili which my husband is still sweating from to this day).  Not everything goes perfectly well the first time you make a recipe or hey even if you’ve made it 100 times it can go sideways…so come along on this journey of kitchen fails with me for dose of laughter and recognizing that we all have our ‘moments’ in the kitchen.

“The case of the missing sugar”
Did you know that table salt and sugar look eerily similar?  I learned this lesson pretty quickly.  I was baking and had all of my ingredients out on the counter.  I swore up and down the ‘sugar’ I took out of the pantry was ‘sugar.’  It was in the same container as sugar, why would it be salt?!  My husband and I had recently merged all of our kitchen items together when moving so I guess there had been some sort of mix-up with what I thought was the official ‘sugar’ container versus ‘salt container.’  So, I dumped in a nice, leveled cup of SALT into my cake batter and carried on adding additional ingredients. It wasn’t until I tasted the batter that I knew something was not right about this cake – why on earth did it taste salty! ‘That’s the salt container’ my husband said to me. Apparently the salt and sugar containers were interchangeable and I did not know this – after this baking adventure, I made sure to label each container for future use.

“Peas can loose their lovely bright green colour quickly”
There is this lovely and easy pea soup recipe that I love to make in the fall and winter.  I’ve made it often and it had never failed to be delicious and beautiful to look at!  Just last winter, I was whipping up a batch of the soup which involves adding frozen peas to a boiling broth, letting them cook briefly and then pureeing the soup.  I’m pretty sure I was distracted (possibly by an episode of Scandal), that I let the peas cook a little TOO long and all of a sudden when I looked in the pot they were not their glowing green colour anymore! I immediately took them off the heat and went to puree the soup.  Lets just say the soup still tasted OK but unfortunately the colour wasn’t anything to take a photo of and as my husband said, “it wasn’t your best honey.”

“Rice Krispie Hockey Puck”
You’re probably thinking to yourself, how on earth can you mess up rice krispee squares?! Oh I have my ways, let me tell you.  I love a good ‘rice krispie’ square – soft, gooey, sweet and crunchy bars that are ‘easy’ to make and a tasty little snack.  One day I wanted a quick little dessert so I decided to make a batch of squares in a snap (no pun intended). I had legitimately made these about 100 times growing up but apparently this time I was overconfident.  I followed all of the instructions, melting butter and marshmallows, mixing in the rice krispies, spreading them out into the pan and then letting them set.  Later, when I went to cut them into squares I was greeted by a hard rock of squares that I couldn’t even cut through! My husband (and I, after a moment of how the heck did I screw these up) laughed hysterically at the very fact I had somehow failed at making the squares and had made a rice krispie hockey puck instead.  I still to this day don’t know how I managed to mess these up.

The moral of the story is, we ALL have our moments in the kitchen, good and not-so-good BUT as long as you have a great attitude and can laugh at yourself, it can be a fun and enjoyable place to make dishes for the ones you love.

Have any of your own kitchen fails? Share your stories below, I’d love to hear from you!

Until the next cooking adventure,
Jess

The post My Kitchen Fails – ‘The Untold Stories’ appeared first on Cooking in my Genes.