Archive for January, 2009

It’s the only warning shot that my husband gets before it all breaks loose.

It seems the stereotype is that grown men make the worst patients. I’m a terrible patient. I sniffle, I whine, I cough, I whine, and I build a miniature version of Mt. Rushmore out of balled-up Kleenexes. And then I whine some more. I think the only thing that could make me a worse patient is if I had one of those little bells to ring when I needed something. Or, you know, just wanted to whine to an audience.
Read the rest of this entry »

Have I mentioned lately how much I love Ina Garten? Really, I do. She’s so calm and collected, zipping around The Hamptons in her cute little Beamer. I received Barefoot Contessa, Back to Basics for Christmas and it’s quickly becoming a household classic. One of the first recipes that I bookmarked was the Roasted Pears with Blue Cheese salad. Pear halves, roasted with port, blue cheese, walnuts, and cranberries are served over a bed of greens… it’s every bit as good as it sounds.

Read the rest of this entry »

“This is so cool! Listen to this: Potatoes, sunflower oil, and salt. That’s all!”

My husband was really excited. I stared at him from across the booth at Jason’s Deli, no doubt a little puzzled at the time. He was reading the ingredients on a bag of potato chips and was completely blown away that the manufacturer was only selling us potato chips in our bag of potato chips.

I was a little surprised myself. Ingredient labels on packaged foods can sometimes be a little daunting – and sometimes extremely disappointing (cough Central Market and their pistachio-less Pistachio Muffins cough).

I’m most definitely not anti-packaged foods. I always have a couple boxes of Duncan Hines cake mix in my pantry. There’s nothing worse than being wide awake at 1am and having nothing sweet to munch on or getting smacked with a chocolate craving when the weather is too bad to leave the house. French Vanilla cupcakes, straight out of the oven, are the best! And your house still smells wonderful when you come downstairs the next day. That being said, I do mostly bake from scratch because it’s fun.

You know, “fun” to realize that you don’t have enough sugar, “fun” to get started and realize that there is actually an over-night step involved, or “fun” to realize that what you thought was a box of cake flour in the bottom drawer of the pantry was actually a misplaced box of Lucky Charms. You know. “Fun.”
Read the rest of this entry »