Hi! It’s almost Valentine’s Day. Do you know what that means for me?
A healthy-looking heart.
Well, in the past it would’ve meant I’d be looking forward to a day (or at least an evening) off, spent snuggling and probably having a nice dinner or something with Z. But now? Now it means I’m gearing up for a long weekend of busy dinner service with a special holiday menu at work. Ah, restaurant life.
You know what I don’t post often enough? Breakfast foods. Oh sure, there were crepes that one time, scones at some point, then there were those amazing oatmeal clafoutis, and of course the epically wonderful pumpkin gingerbread muffins, but it’s been nearly a year since the muffins and I thought I ought to give more attention to the first meal of the day.
Even if I tend to consider noon “time to roll out of bed and think about eating something” time.
A very serious breakfast.
A few months ago I got a special gift of a really useful book and some wonderful wines to go with it. I used the red for sorbet, ended up just enjoying the white (a Riesling) on its own (sooo gooood) and stashed the sparkling in my fridge. For the holiday season. That book had given me some pretty good ideas and I couldn’t wait to put them to use. I was just waiting for the right time.
Bubble, sparkle and pop.
Well, it happened again. I bought into the “pumpkin shortage” in October and am left with an extra can of orange vegetable goop. I love the goop, but it’s hard to think of things to do with it, especially after the holidays and all the baking and cookies and…
…Wait, cookies? Hm, maybe not so hard to think of things after all.
A whole tray of 'em!
Hey, it’s 2011! I sure haven’t been around much lately. This year I’m going to try to work on that. I’m not going to force anything or stress about deadlines, though. Some weeks and months I just don’t have as much free time or energy and nothing bad will happen if I don’t enter this thing or photograph that. My baking at home is to make me happy. Which makes no sense when you consider how much baking I did in December at home, just to send things to people I miss.
Snowball?
The giveaway ended last night at midnight and today I randomly selected a winner (using a winner picking program created by my adorable site designer)
The winner is #18, Melanie! She has been emailed, thanks to everyone for entering!
Time for my latest cupcake! Wheeee! I decided that for this month’s Cupcake Hero I’d try to avoid buying ingredients, and I almost completely succeeded.
Looking a little seedy.
This month’s Mystery Box theme is the color orange. Totally appropriate and delicious. The recipe I decided on could have been made with sweet potato, squash or pumpkin, and since I decided against sweet potato and couldn’t find canned squash in my neighborhood, I went with good old pumpkin. Oh, pumpkin. I do adore you. Especially with spices and chocolate. But not this time.
Spooooky!
It’s still September, isn’t it? Barely? Good!
September marks the anniversary of the release of one of my most very favorite books, The Flavor Bible! Last year I did a post about it and this year Karen and Andrew (the authors) were kind/terrifically sweet and generous enough to send me a copy of The Flavor Bible’s companion book, What to Drink with What You Eat, as well as a few bottles of wine to play with. There was a bit of a snafu with the delivering of said book (though the wine showed up quickly, at 9 p.m. from a refrigerated UPS truck…odd) which FedEx decided to send straight back after I wasn’t home to receive it, but Karen and Andrew just arranged to have it sent to me at work and all was well! So that explains why this post is just barely still in the month of September. It was frustrating having the wine around and no book to glean ideas from, though!
How dramatic!
