Food

It was my husband’s birthday this week. I had high hopes of making him a layer cake of his favorite German chocolate cake, but with a new baby in the house, time slipped away from me. Since cookies are my husband’s favorite baked-good, I opted to turn his favorite cake into cookies instead.

Most Saturday mornings, you will find my husband and me roaming the abundant produce-packed aisles at the Irvine Farmer’s Market. I mentioned this market last summer, when I featured a peach cobbler recipe.

When you think of St. Patrick’s Day, do you think of chocolate covered beer and pretzel caramels? Probably not, but maybe I can change your mind. When I think of St. Patty’s day, the first thing that comes to mind is Guinness, the second thing is the green beer and green long islands they served at the Red Shed, a divey bar I frequented in college.

My husband and I were reminiscing about desserts that reminded us of our childhood. He was shocked that I’d never had his mom’s favorite, a Lemon Jell-O Cake. I had never even heard of cooking Jell-O into a cake.

For my daughter’s first birthday, I made her a funfetti cake from scratch. I made way too much cake though, so I had almost an entire cake and enough frosting left to make funfetti cake pops.

I have a problem, a problem with all baked goods in the bar, blondie and brownie form. Who am I kidding? I could say the same thing about cookies too.

When you are invited to a party and you need to come up with something to bring on short notice, I always suggest checking your pantry to see what you have on hand. My husband has started a rather robust herb garden on our balcony. Since the rosemary is thriving, I took to google to try to find a quick and easy recipe that would highlight the fragrant herb. I found many rosemary roasted almond recipes, but wanted to increase the flavor intensity, so I added black pepper.

In the U.S. the Super Bowl is practically a national holiday, and food takes center stage. Nothing reminds me more of watching the ‘big game’ than some peanuts and beer. I’ve never seasoned my own nuts before, so I thought it was something worth trying. I didn’t realize just how easy it is and I love that there are almost endless combinations of flavors I could create.

I bought a gorgeous loaf of sourdough for another recipe, but before I had the chance to use it, my entire family contracted this nasty, week-long cold/flu bug. Rather than letting a stale loaf of bread go to waste, the only sensible option was to find a recipe that called for crusty bread.