use real butter

Recipe: crab mac and cheese

Are you feeling crabby this Valentine’s Day? If so, I’ve got just the dish for you. But I ask you to be patient because I have a winner to announce for the Kyocera ceramic knife drawing (and some other musings)! People like to use the site random.org for their random drawings, but I have something beyond random - we call it mindless and ridiculous.

ready to do her job, naked

In consultation with my resident astrophysicist, someone well-versed in statistics, we agreed to place a treat inside Kaweah’s Kong toy and hide it in the yard. Jeremy would time how long it took for Kaweah to find the Kong in 100ths of a second.

she canvased the yard in no time

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: tuiles

Yo, baby! Did I ever mention that *I* am a Daring Baker? Well, I am. And it’s time. Time for another fanfrickingtabulous Daring Bakers challenge!

daring bakers: we knead to bake!

I need to give a shout out to my lovely, wonderful, sexy, smart, and talented founders: Lis of La Mia Cucina and Ivonne of Cream Puffs in Venice, and a huge thanks to our equally lovely, wonderful, sexy, smart, and talented hosts for this month. Here’s the official line:

This month’s challenge is brought to us by Karen of Bake My Day and Zorra of 1x umruehren bitte aka Kochtopf. They have chosen Tuiles from The Chocolate Book by Angélique Schmeink and Nougatine and Chocolate Tuiles from Michel Roux.

Of course, one of the reasons I am so happy about January’s challenge is that we had the option to go savory - which you know I love - based on Thomas Keller’s cornet recipe from The French Laundry Cookbook.

how apropos - we use real butter *snort*

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: mussels in white wine sauce

My dad skyped me this evening and I was all giggles because Jeremy and I had already broken into the champagne. Even though we stay up past midnight most evenings, we usually turn in before the year flips on New Year’s Eve. We enjoyed a bottle of bubbly with our dinner tonight.

i know this is a favorite of squid, barbara, and mollie

The typical thing to do at the close of the year is to reflect and perhaps list favorites or tick off milestones of the year. I feel I got a very good look at 2008 during 2008 - like traveling the road with my face 2 inches from the pavement. All of the bad times are quite fresh, but more importantly all of the good times are also vivid in my mind. I am really happy to not only be alive, but to be more or less healthy (it’s hard to really know), and definitely living on my terms. In volleyball, we always used to tell each other, “on your toes!” so you’d be ready for anything the offense would dump over the net - a dink, off the block, hard line, cross court, six-pack in the face. I feel as if I live my life “on my toes” now. That comes with the territory when you lose someone close to you or don’t know if you will survive your disease or experience one of those curve balls (I like to think of it as a wicked floater serve instead) that life pitches and sends you sprawling on your ass. Keep your eye on the ball.

back to breckenridge with my honey

**Jump for more butter**