use real butter

Recipe: chocolate espresso fudge cake

When we first moved in together, Jeremy used to complain about how much time was spent preparing meals. He really liked the idea of bachelor chow, sort of like Kaweah’s dry kibbles – same thing every meal. No hassle, no fuss, no mystery. He still talks about it like some concept that would free up a few hours a day, that is until I mention sushi, or pan-seared scallops, or crab, or chocolate or… I can see the appeal of chow, to get more hours in the day. But the problem for me is that I would miss the prep more than the eating. I didn’t used to think so, but after spending months cooking and baking things I couldn’t eat during chemo, I realized that for as much as I love to eat the food, I love the making of it even more. I wonder among foodies if they love the cooking or the eating more?

Case in point. Today I made Jeremy’s (belated) birthday cake. I’ve been wanting to make this for a while, but between the heat of summer, health issues, and getting stuff done in between health issues – I haven’t had a chance. Today we had rain (and snow in the high country!) with temps flirting with the 30s. Nice.

Recipe: flourless chocolate espresso truffle cake

Sometimes I’m bad at following instructions and other times I’m great at it. For instance, in the past several months, many wonderful bloggers have tagged me for various blogging awards. The gist of the blogging award is to display it in a post or on your blog, write whatever it is the award/meme wants you to write, pass it along to other recipients, and name the one who bestowed it upon you. I used to try and keep up with these, but after a while I just couldn’t. As they piled up, I was less and less inclined to get around to them. So I hope all of the nice people who passed awards on to me aren’t offended, but I don’t see these making it to post at all. Thanks for thinking of me, really. I just find the whole award business to be one of those “we’re all going to break our arms patting each other on the back” deals.

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: chocolate espresso semifreddo

Funny how just a few weeks ago some of my bloggy buds were all, “Dooode, you are blogging daily and I can’t keep up witchyoo, yo!” And I’m all like, “Laydeeeez, I’m on another steroid dose for my side-effects and I can’t sleep, so I just keep a bloggin’!” Okay, well that ended abruptly this past weekend because I replaced blogging with doing everything else. Seriously though, we were just entertaining my ILs this weekend. Still, I’m breaking it down into a few posts since they involve… FOOD!

Last year, Jeremy’s folks were out to visit us about a week before I got my diagnosis. It was also the weekend of MIL’s bday. I asked her what she wanted to do for her birthday and she replied she’d like to bake a cake with me! MIL likes to bake and I had just completed a pastry skills course that summer at the culinary school (my reward for defending my PhD dissertation), so she wanted to try one of the recipes I had learned. We made a lovely Lemon Mousseline Torte. Thing is… FIL is a chocolate fiend. Not just that he likes chocolate, but he won’t touch anything else if there *isn’t* chocolate in it. Okay, that isn’t entirely true. If it is a hunk of meat… perhaps FIL should meet Mr. SGCC – aka Caveman, Susan? :)