eggs on sunday

So here’s the thing.

As many of you probably do, I have a loooooong list of recipes on my “to cook” list. Some of these come from my food magazine subscriptions (BA, Gourmet, CI), some of them come from the time I spend browsing around epicurious.com, many of them come from food bloggers whom I regularly read (I simultaneously feel overwhelming love and just “overwhelmed” at my Google Reader list, many days.) And don’t even get me started on my cookbooks: this past year I finally tried to get my act together and put post-it flags on the recipes I wanted to try. I had grand plans to go through all of my 100+ cookbooks and do this. Months later, how many have I gotten through? Maybe six. Sigh. And flagging the recipes doesn’t mean I have any structured plan to actually cook them; oh, no. I’ve made baby, baby steps of progress through a handful, but I have a long way to go.

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Yes, I don’t think of these as mere cheesecake pops — I say “cheesecake pops!!!” every time I eat one. What a cute idea for this month’s Daring Bakers challenge! I’ve been enamored of the dessert pop idea ever since I saw Bakerella’s cupcake pops (aren’t those amazing?), and I was thrilled to have these as my second DB challenge.

The pops are a New York-style cheesecake — smooth and creamy — rolled into balls and coated with melted chocolate. According to the rules for this month’s challenge, we had leeway as far as flavoring the cheesecake (though it had to remain white), as well as what we used to decorate the pops. I divided my batch of cheesecake batter in two and made half raspberry-flavored (with Chambord) and the other half hazelnut flavored (with an organic hazelnut extract.) I rolled both kinds of pops in dark chocolate, and then drizzled white chocolate over the raspberry pops and rolled the hazelnut pops in finely chopped toasted hazelnuts. They were really delicious, and I’ve been keeping ours in the freezer…which makes them OH so good. Like frozen chocolate-covered cheesecake! We’ve been having some every night for the past week; no one is complaining.

Here’s how the cheesecake pop adventure unfolded: (more…)

Last week, I was in a bit of a Friday Night Pizza rut. I’ve really been enjoying coming up with new ideas for them since I started this series, but last week….well….I was clean out of inspiration. A quick search on epicurious.com (what would I do without that web site?) yielded this recipe for sausage, red onion, and wild mushroom pizza. (more…)

Waiting for me this morning, there was a lovely note from Lori, aka Recipe Girl: I was one of the blogs she named for the “Blog of Distinction” award! Aww…thanks, Lori! I’m so flattered, and really, it made my day! If you haven’t yet been over to her blog, you should make a visit: I’ve recently been really enjoying her string of Ina recipes, and she has some great suggestions for Cinco de Mayo (coming up!)

Part of the idea behind this award is that you share the love: i.e., pass it along to others. I knew right away who I wanted to pass this award along to. (more…)

If you were to ask me to list some of the defining moments in previous years that helped fuel my growing passion for all things food-related, in the top 3 would probably be my first trip to the Ithaca Farmer’s Market. When I lived in Ithaca for four years as an undergrad at Cornell, I only discovered the market later in my college career…but I tried to make up for lost time. I actually remember getting up early on a Saturday morning when my roommates were all still asleep, just so I could go down to the market and get some fresh vegetables before I started all my work for classes! It was the IFM where I first saw and tasted an heirloom tomato — it was a Striped German. The sweet taste, luscious, dripping juice, and brilliantly marbled yellow and red color is imprinted permanently in my memory. My time in Ithaca also began my devotion to organics; not only did the Ithaca Wegman’s have a good selection of organic produce (this was in the late 90’s, and our supermarket back home for sure did not have any organic produce), but all of the farms coming to the Farmer’s Market were selling organically grown produce. My family always had a modest kitchen garden growing up, but there was no farmer’s market anywhere close to us — the availability of all these new foods to try was just so incredibly enriching!

Fast forward about 10 years: after graduating, living in a few different states, working at a few different jobs, meeting and marrying B — and cooking all the way — I am back in Ithaca, and couldn’t be happier. Besides being just a gorgeous place to live (as they say, “Ithaca is gorges”), we’re blessed to have a real abundance of farms (not just vegetable farms: fruits, meats, eggs, poultry and dairy products as well), local artisans, bakeries, etc. in the area, many of which come to the Ithaca Farmer’s Market. While the Market has only been back now for a few weeks, in the spirit of Earth Day today, I’ve taken a few photos that I thought I’d share with you of my trip around the market! (more…)

A few years ago, if you had told me that I’d be writing this post today — about homemade mayonnaise and radishes — I would have said you were nuts. No, not “nuts”….

NUTS. (more…)

These little tartlets were the second big hit of my foray into tartlet-making a few weeks ago — and they confirm to me that putting chocolate ganache in, over, under, or around anything is a good idea. I used the same chocolate sweet pastry crust as I did for the strawberry chocolate cream tartlets, but filled these with a dark chocolate ganache to which I had added some seedless raspberry jam and Chambord. I snuggled a raspberry into the center of each, and they were off — tartlets on parade! (Parade into my mouth, that is…) (more…)

What wonders lurk in the depths of your freezer when you clean it out, right?

I was *sure* I had used up the last of the pesto I’d frozen from last summer. We had a share in CSA back in the Boston area last year, and when it got to be August/September, they were practically begging their shareholders to pick as much basil as could possibly, fathomably be used. No need to twist my arm! We came home week after week with mounds of the sweet, fragrant leaves. I made batch…after batch…after batch…of pesto, freezing it all in individual portions to be used throughout the rest of the year. Well, even though I made more batches than I could count and stocked our freezer to the gills, we still somehow ran out mid-January.

Or so I thought… (more…)

…along with some ginger, cream and sugar. Then I scooped ‘em both up.

Yes, every time I think of this ice cream, I get the Coconut Song stuck in my head. (more…)

One of the foods that I’m currently *in love* with is the black japonica rice from Lundberg Farms. It’s a blend of black and mahogany short-grain rices, and it cooks up to a beautiful, plump, deep purply-black color. I just adore it. It’s not all looks, either; it cooks beautifully, tastes nicely nutty and has a good bite to it.

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