$12 Paella Cakes

Longtime readers (Hi, Mom!) may recall The $12 Empanada Incident, in which His Lordship’s finely-tuned sense of food value was grossly violated by a single, tiny empanada of spinach, artichoke and Manchego cheese. Inexplicably priced at $12, this item, which would more properly have been labeled an amuse-bouche, greatly impacted what was otherwise [...]

Read Full Post »

So Not Your Grandmother’s Oatmeal Cookie

While driving home through a particularly nasty thunderstorm yesterday afternoon, I had a good long think about what I wanted to do for Sunday Night Cookie Blogging. I really wanted a simple cookie, without any chocolate after last week’s brownie blitz, and with a strong butterscotch flavor.
On getting home, I rummaged through the cupboards for [...]

Read Full Post »

You Like Me! You Really Like Me!

So I log in to WordPress this evening to continue my compulsive way-after-the-fact proofreading and re-re-editing of the last couple of posts, as I do, and imagine my complete and utter shock at having been nominated for an Arte y Pico award!  Here I am, blathering into the ether under the assumption that no one [...]

Read Full Post »

Sidewalk Table and Jacarandas Not Included

This week’s Sunday sweets blogging was partly pantry-clearing and partly nostalgia-tripping.
For our anniversary last year, His Lordship and I took a greatly-postponed honeymoon trip to Argentina. The idea was to show him where I came from, visit my pasta-producing grandmother, and consume unseemly quantities of amazing — and amazingly cheap — local food products, [...]

Read Full Post »

Further Adventures in Pantry-Clearing

Last night’s dinner put an additional dent in my reserve of olive oil (currently five different kinds), tahini, and herbs, and completely used up the basmati rice. It also made excellent use of Sunday morning’s farmers market haul.
Pattypan squash, white eggplant and long peppers were tossed with olive oil, garlic paste, salt and herbs [...]

Read Full Post »

Your Mission, Should You Choose to Accept It

As I noted in the updated “About Me” section, I am leaving the job that interferes so inexcusably with my blogging time — and, let’s be fair, also provides the captive audience for my weekly baking experiments — in favor of an accelerated masters program to set up my next career move.  Since said program [...]

Read Full Post »

While we’re on this theme…

Wherein we continue to head in a vaguely Middle Eastern direction, with some promising initial results.
One of my stand-by choices for Sunday baking is the French yogurt cake I originally discovered on Chocolate and Zucchini, which yields grandmere levels of deliciousness from box-mix levels of effort, just the thing when I want cake now. It’s [...]

Read Full Post »

Mid-Week Baklava

I’m still writing up this week’s Sunday baking recipe, but as an appetizer, I’m putting up the baklava I made in the middle of last week.
And why did the crazy woman make baklava in the middle of the week? Because she can, darlings!
OK, truthfully, because she defrosted phyllo over the Fourth of July weekend, [...]

Read Full Post »