Bake. Laugh. Eat. Repeat.
Beans really are a kind of magical fruit, aren’t they?
Yes, magical in that way, silly goose! But since most of us aren’t 10 year old boys, we’re going to talk about the other ways that beans are magical today.
Like how they’re filling!
Like how they’re fibrous!
Like how they’re dee-licious!
And how they make a wonderful substitute for meat!
Loaded. Loaded, I tell you!
I think there are two camps when it comes to carrot cake: (1) Just stick with the carrots. (2) Throw lots of other stuff in the mix and go absolutely nuts with it.
I’m a go absolutely nuts with it person. For sure.
Which is why these cupcakes are loaded. Loaded I tell you!
Let’s get into it.
So I tried phoning Spring yesterday, just to remind it that it had, in fact, sprung. My call was sent direct to voicemail. I will try texting later today, but I’m frankly feeling a little ignored.
Email?
Telegrams?
Smoke signals?
Don’t make me bust out the string and tin cans, Spring!
Between you and me, this lovely chili is a bit of a stink eye aimed in the general direction of Spring. As in “Fine, you won’t play nice and show yourself? Then I’m going to keep eating foods of the wintertime until you do.”
Perfectly reasonable, right?
Confession time: this past weekend was one of those weekends.
One of those weekends when someone mistakes your pajamas for a uniform.
One of those weekends when nobody thinks about laundry until the piles threaten line of site to the TV.
One of those weekends when breakfast is the only meal on the table for 48 hours straight.
I’ll be honest, that last point is never a hard sell for me (OK, fine, none of the above is ever a hard sell for me); I don’t think I’ve made any secret of my passionate love affair with breakfast.
And it just feels right to eat food meant for lazy mornings all throughout the day when your mornings are running into your afternoons, which are running into your evenings. Don’t you think?
I’m on a serious chorizo + sweet potato = winning campaign lately. It’s just really hard not to love the combination of savory, salty chorizo sausage and creamy, satisfying sweet potato; I firmly believe that some foods are just made to be eaten together, and these are two of those.
Ah, chocolate. You really are a celebrity at this time of year, aren’t you? No need to be humble, you know it’s true.
Something just feels right about enjoying chocolate when there’s a chill in the air.
Something just feels right about enjoying chocolate when you’re surrounded by friends and family with whom you can share.
Something just feels right about enjoying chocolate when you can simply promise to work it off in the New Year.
I especially like chocolate when it’s flavoring a delectable bread or cake, which should then be topped with some sort of creamy frosting, preferably also favored with chocolate.
So, you know, these Chocolate Spice Muffins are pretty much made for me. What a coincidence!
Is your home anything like mine?
With cookbooks, magazines, tabloids, and various other culinary and pop-culturalia references littering every surface?
It’s embarrassing. Does this sound familiar?
Is your home anything like mine?
Where the smells of a freshly baked chocolate cake mingle with the aroma of roasting tomatoes? Toasted cumin seeds and roasted fresh chiles perfume the air, and you have to peer through a haze of flour to find your way into the kitchen…
Confusing? Yes. Delicious? Absolutely.
Sundays are for relaxing, don’t you think?
Relaxing by tuning in to watch ridiculously beautiful people walk down a ridiculously fancy carpet on their way to receiving ridiculously glitzy awards for their roles in ridiculously silly TV shows that you never had time to watch anyway.
That’s just ridiculous.
Consider this a Sunday Turbo Post, because what Sundays are actually for, what I hope you’re doing right now, is sitting on the couch in your ridiculously silly pajamas, watching a ridiculously entertaining sporting event, eating ridiculously good Spicy Buttermilk Mashed Potatoes out of a ridiculously large serving bowl.
And since you’ve got some relaxing to do, I’m not going to waste any more of your time talking about it – that would just be ridiculous.
Something of interest came up in our household the other day, something that you may already be aware of. This family learned, for the first time, about the Thundershirt. Maybe you’ve heard of these?
Thundershirts are tight little tees for your pup, the idea being that gentle pressure on the canine bod will sooth any jangled nerves he/she may be experiencing due to, say, a passing thunderstorm.
And being a canine household, as well as a person who is always fascinated by infomercials and their associated products, Thundershirts got me thinking.
I started thinking that maybe it would be nice to have Thundershirts for more than just dogs.
Like, wouldn’t it be nice to have Thundershirts for husbands?
I don’t have any children yet, but I think that, when I do, I would like to have a kid-sized Thundershirt handy in the case of any emergency tantrums.
I would like to have our presidential candidates wear Thundershirts during their debates. And I would request that Thundershirts be made available to Real Housewives across the land.
Seriously, Thundershirts are looking more and more like the solution to so many problems!
Perfect French fries really are a science, wouldn’t you say? And maybe also an art – the art and science of the perfect French fry. With a side of perfect, spicy ketchup for dipping. This will be our topic du jour: we’d better get started.
Now, of course, I’ve read all the rags and I know what’s what: the truly perfect way to make French fries is to double fry them. You par cook them in oil at a lower temp then jack up the heat and get those fries sinfully crisp on the outside and wonderfully soft on the inside. It’s so wrong its right, and I enjoy being wrong/right every time I go to my favorite local fry spot.
But I’m lazy. And I’m not into eating deep fried foods all the time. And I still need to have some crispy taters, dang it! So I worked out a recipe that would get me where I needed to go without all the drama.
Perfect Baked French Frytown, here we come.
Dear Nachos,
This is, for the most part, a love letter. Because I love you! And I have for so long.
But Dr. Phil says that love is a journey, so I think it may be time for us to consult our Garmin and make sure that we’re on the right track.
I know you’ll agree that it really was love at first sight for us. Your melted cheese first caught my eye from across the room that fateful night, but when I finally worked up the nerve to come over and introduce myself, your fresh salsa and salty, crunchy corn chips had me at ‘Hello’.
To this day, your creamy sour cream and tart lime juice-laced guacamole still make me weak in the knees.
