use real butter

Recipe: cranberry nut dessert

Just a reminder that Menu for Hope IV is underway as I type! Be sure to visit the full list of prizes being offered over at Chez Pim. If that’s too confusing for you, visit the various regional hosts at the end of Pim’s post – the prizes are being offered from all over the globe! Hurry up! Go! Bid! Do you really want someone else walking off with YOUR prize?!? Well then, get on it! [after you read the rest of my post] :)

Are you freaking out right about now? Maybe now? Maybe – NOW? It’s a big time of year for baking and cooking and feasting and festivities – no matter what the festivities may be. I typically find myself making all manner of sweets and baked goods to share with friends, neighbors, our slow but friendly small town post office, the Subaru dealer, Kaweah’s favorite kennel… When I add up the list though, there just isn’t the time to mass produce super fancy time-intensive confections for everyone. That’s why I love the goto recipes, the ones that are easy to make and delicious to boot.

My dear mate in Sydney sent me a package of Aussie goodies this past week. Kell is such a doll. When I was in Sydney in March, she and Jerad took me on a grand food tour of the city – as much as they could stuff into me in four days! While traveling in Oz, the goto cookie is the Tim Tam. Jeremy and I bought several sleeves while we wandered the Red Centre in the mind-altering heat. Sydney was a breezy welcome in contrast to Alice Springs. I must admit that while we travel New Zealand, I forgo the Tim Tam in favor of Chit Chats. I can’t help it, I just like Chit Chats better. But Tim Tams scream Oz to me and you love it for the nostalgia as well as the sugar rush.

Recipe: chocolate chip banana bread

I am not a banana enthusiast. If all of the fruits were lined up on stage for me to select one-by-one for eating, the banana would definitely be among the last remaining few, looking awkward and feeling self-conscious… I tend to prefer fruits that are juicy and refreshing. The banana makes me thirsty and drowsy. But I do know what is good for me and bananas are certainly that. I periodically buy some, hoping that the guilt of watching them rot will be enough incentive to chop one up to eat with some yogurt.