use real butter

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.

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Recipe: chocolate matcha earl grey cake

The date sort of snuck up on us. We are both bad about remembering dates, but my MIL called on Friday to say there was something special to look for in the post – something for our anniversary. Our what?! Oh that’s right… We celebrated 11 years of marital dorkiness on Saturday. Marriage was never something either of us really wanted. It was what our mothers kept asking about since we were living in sin for many years. We finally caved in since we realized our car insurance would go down – way down. Bargain! I think we would feel better about marriage if some of our dear friends could marry and enjoy the same rights we do.

We didn’t do anything special, just ran a ton of errands. We discovered that Chinese food on the flats is neither Chinese nor food really… The day was incredibly warm – 70 Effingham degrees? It was a cruel joke as far as I was concerned. March is when the weather flirts with spring then winter then spring then winter. You get those hoochie mama crop top days when you have to shield your eyes from the exposed white limbs of undergraduates on campus, chased down by those gorgeous spring upslope events that dump a ton of powder and send the ski whores rejoicing back on the mountains. Anyway, I promised Jeremy I would make a nice something or other in celebration of our day since this is my good week before the next treatment. He likes chocolate and I had matcha on the brain.

Recipe: dark chocolate tartelettes

Happy Chinese New Year to everyone! Gong Xi Fa Tsai! Jing Nian Quai Le!

It is the year of the Rat and in case you didn’t know, it’s Peabody’s year. Last year was the year of the Pig, which was my year. Since I made it through more or less in one piece, I’m going to assume that I was working the good juju. Peabody tells me she’s sharing the good juju with me into this year. I love that girl. In turn, let’s just say good juju all around for everyone! I sincerely wish each of you everything your heart desires in the new year – health, happiness, luck, fortune – all of it and more. xxoo

I began my morning quite early because I was behind schedule on making dumplings. Well, let me explain why. I spent yesterday telemark skiing with a bunch of awesome tele babes on the mountain. I felt well enough to tele all day with my D70 in tow too.

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