use real butter

If things are looking a bit different, I’m in the process of some tidying up around here, which I hope is more or less transparent to everyone, but you never know… Besides, it’s the only tidying up I can do right now. As the Chinese New Year was nearing, Jeremy and I scrambled to clean the house because you aren’t supposed to clean once the new year arrives for fear of sweeping out the good luck. I’ve always read that you don’t clean for 2 weeks until the Lantern Festival (15 days later). Unlike my mom, cleaning isn’t one of my hobbies. Whenever she comes to visit us, within an hour of arriving, she will don a pair of rubber gloves and begin scrubbing my kitchen. I always tell her that I just cleaned the house and she always smiles and says, “Oh, I like to clean the house!” The first time this happened, Jeremy walked into our old apartment kitchen with eyes wide and blinking, “If your mom cleans our place before we vacate, we’d get every cent of our deposit back.” So when I mentioned to Mom over the phone that we just finished vacuuming and scrubbing since we aren’t supposed to clean for two weeks, she insisted, “No, just one day.” I told her everyone else says two weeks and she emphatically said, “It’s just the one day.” Okay, well I’m going to take that 2 weeks as a directive…

radda for lunch

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: slider buns

My brain just registered that the Superbowl is this weekend. I knew something was up when I began to see lots of Superbowl party foods posted around the food blogosphere. I’m slow on the uptake sometimes, but I have been really busy getting my photo gallery up. I had a vague awareness that the Superbowl was coming *waves hand in the distance* sometime. Oh, I’m not fooling anyone – I don’t follow football. We don’t own a TV. Can’t stand watching sports, really… I much prefer to play sports.

But I love Superbowl Sunday, because it means hiking trails and ski slopes are empty. Everyone is happy! Aside from keeping the masses glued to the television, I love the Superbowl because it means parties with lots of finger foods. I have a mild obsession with food in miniature and individual servings. One of the great things about urb is that I’ve been shoved out of my comfort zone into the world of bread and yeast. That’s partly due to the Daring Bakers and partly due to my envious ogling of silders in our lovely food blogging community.

i can do this

**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**