My Little Strawwwwbery!

This post is brought to you by the lovely and talented Nicole. If you're alive and you know where a grocery store is, you've probably realized that strawberries are craaaazy in season.  And having so many strawberries requires an easy way to make a whole bunch of them into something awesome. I give you: the do-it-yourself chocolate covered strawberry:

I have to apologize to Nicole at this point -- I took all of the pictures of the process and final product with a vintage camera app that doesn't really do justice to how pretty (and delicious!) her chocolate covered strawberries are.  Just imagine a perfectly ripe strawberry wrapped in Guittard Chocolate. 

[FYI, did you know that Guittard provides the chocolate for Sees Candies? Nicole says Sees acutally covers their chocolate truffles with Guittard chocolate! Wikipedia says it's true, so I'm going to believe. 

It's so good. I mean, it's so good.]

retro-post: cinco de mayo & margarita cupcakes

I grew up in a culture that generally doesn't imbibe much. At all. So I remember the first time when my family vacationed in Mexico, my mom ordered a virgin margarita to enjoy out by the pool (or the pond) and the bartender replied, So you want lemonade? Right?

And maybe he wasn't being snarky. He was probably just making sure he understood that we all wanted fancy drinks with little umbrellas without the complimentary (at that hotel) booze.

So for Cinco de Mayo, in honor of a culturally irreverent/irrelevant gathering at my apartment, I made "virgin" "margarita" cupcakes. Which is code for lemon cupcakes with cream cheese frosting and a twist of lime that made the frosting taste ridiculously good. Look at that lil twist! I'm smacking my lips right now.

Soup!

Uh, hi there. Sorry I left you all hanging here with nothing new. See, the problem with this blog is that it entices me to make delicious treats ALL THE TIME. So I thought, okay, I'm going to eat healthier and blog about THAT. But that didn't happen (the eating or the blogging). Until now.

This morning I had a rude little awakening that I am a considerably larger person now than I was a year ago when Lito and I got married. Eugh. Let's not dwell on this any longer than is necessary. The point is that it lit a fire under my buns to figure out how to something healthy, maybe even weight-loss-ey, that actually tastes good. So here we go.

Cranberry Sauce for Fakers

It's Thanksgiving Eve! And I'm so thankful for my darling friends who read this oft-neglected blog. I thought I would post a little something I just made -- cranberry sauce. I should have typed "made" because I cheated and used a can (gasp!) of cranberry sauce. I do love figuring out how to doctor up decent food into good tasting stuff. No, not gourmet, but if you are honestly making everything for a full thanksgiving dinner from scratch without any help, then you're reading this blog because you're amazing and you just want to make me feel good about myself. Bless you.

I am no cranberry connoisseur -- my family always had this cranberry jello salad that secretly no one actually likes. Which means that this little recipe tastes pretty darn good to me. Give it a try and let me know what you think!

Saladita!

Imagine this: a vegetarian who didn't really like to eat veggies. See also: Me, approximately a year ago. I was what I like to call a "vegaquarian" (a vegetarian who eats fish, er pescatarian). That lasted four years until I drove past an In and Out Burger. But that's another story. The real story here, folks, is that I found a veggie dish that I actually crave. Here it is:

Shake it up.

Hi friends -- I've been taking a break here because, let's face it, my behind needs to take a break from all the cupcakes and cookies and ice cream. Time to start posting some healthier options that I've found that are still pretty yummy.

Exhibit A: The breakfast fruit shake of glory. This fruit shake is delicious and (I'm told that) because it has protein powder, it doesn't shake up your blood sugar level as much as other sweet smoothies do.

Ahoy!

In honor of Halloween, of no longer being sick (after ten days in bed), and of Lito going back to work (despite the fact that he still has a very mean esophagus that hurts him), I give you: Pirate Cupcakes.