friend kidly

Why in the world would someone want to bake in 90+ degree weather??? Crazy but when the baking bug bites you gotta give in. Here are some chocolate caramel cupcakes that I upgraded by adding some Ghiradehlli chocolate chips. As the picture may or may not reveal the added chocolate chips turned these into yummy molten lava type cupcakes. Add the cream cheese frosting and what a yummy experience. I’m really into cupcakes right now because they bake up quickly and are the perfect size for snacking; they’re pretty cute too.  Next I think I’ll try out carrot cake cupcakes (with cream cheese frosting of course) recipe courtesy of the Barefoot Contessa.  Yay, what a great use of the beautiful carrots I’ve been eying at the farmer’s market lately.

Since husband was out of town on business yesterday I decided to bake some cupcakes to greet him on his return today and in honor of our anniversary. To my dismay I had only one egg and really didn’t feel like trekking to the store. Lucky for me my good old trusty copy of Joy of Cooking had a “one egg cake” recipe. Ok, so I cheated by using store bought frosting but half homemade is better than all store bought…right? The cupcakes are pretty good but next time I probably won’t use whole wheat flour. They taste a bit corn muffinish and that’s the only thing I can attribute it to.

Ooh, I also received these little lovelies today.

I spared you all a shot of them on since my legs are patchoulied out right now. I’ve been eyeing these for over a month now and was finally able to make them my own. I think they’ll make great spring/summer shoes, we shall see anyway.

Believe it or not our 8 year wedding anniversary is coming up next week; on tax day to be exact. It recently occurred to me that I’ve been married for the same length of time that I lived with a step-dad and step-sisters. The comparison doesn’t really mean anything it just struck me as odd mainly because that seemed like a big chunk of my life when I guess it really wasn’t.  Obviously the older I get the shorter eight years will seem.

As an early anniversary gift husband and I decided to purchase a grill…finally. This will be our first grill in seven years as our first one was purchased then immediately stolen shortly after we were married. Needless to say we were pretty shocked to find it gone especially because it was merely a charcoal Weber. I mean come on, who steels something like that? Anyway, we broke in the new grill with two lovely rib eyes along with grilled carrots and asparagus. A nice pre-anniversary dinner. I’m actually looking forward to summer now that I can picture long warm evenings and lots of cooking outdoors.

Well, let’s hope not.  I’ve been using my new stainless steel cookware set (a lovely Valentine’s gift) for a few weeks now and am glad to say that I’m very happy.  Mostly to be rid of the creepy Teflon cookware but I’m also pleased with the performance of my shiny new pots and pans.  We went with Gourmet Standard as they were rated right up there with All Clad but are a fraction of the cost.  So far no problems with sticking and everything is cooking very evenly.  I pretty much love them.

Today we kicked off Spring by going to our local farmer’s market/street fair with our friends and their wee ones.  I picked up some lovely broccoli, carrots, asparagus from a local organic farm, some fresh baked rosemary sourdough bread and some yummy garlic feta, basil humus and pita…YUM!  Charlotte seemed to enjoy the people watching and looking at the petting zoo animals.  A fun time was had by all, just check out flickr if you’d like to see the evidence.

Look at these fun kitchen curtains I fashioned out of some over priced tea towels. The lighting isn’t the best but these curtains pull colors from my rug, some wall decor and even some utensils and have really made my kitchen much cuter. I love what a little window dressing does to a room. So much better than vertical blinds!

Here’s kind of a close up (again sorry for the lighting).  The tea pot and cups are so sweet and I’m in love with the background fabric.  Yay, happy decor!

Having a little one robs me of the luxury of spending an hour+ in the kitchen baking. Knowing this, when asked what desert husband would like me to make this weekend he chose the quintessential summer dish, nilla wafer and banana puddin’…you know, the one Grandma used to serve. However, unlike Grandma I decided against using instant pudding and instead decided to follow the recipe on the nilla wafer box. This would mean homemade custard and meringue which would be more time in the kitchen but a heck of a lot more fun.

The end result was a bit different than the desert we remembered as children but just as good (I’m a sucker for meringue). I’m glad I tried the alternative recipe and we’ll definitely be having this again.