• Two new obsessions

    Since I started an actual fire inside my oven last night and set off our smoke alarm, I think I need to tweak the recipe I was using a bit before posting it. In the meantime, I wanted to tell you about two exciting things I discovered this week while seeking lunch in Annapolis (instead […]

  • Award-winning bourbon chili

    Toby doesn’t cook much, but he does make chili. In fact, he was already an award-winning chili chef when I met him. Of course, the award may have had a little to do with the fact that the judges were Marines and the chili contains bourbon. But this chili IS good. And pretty easy to […]

  • Red velvet cupcakes

    You know what today is, right? Arizona’s 99th birthday! What better way to celebrate that — and that other holiday — than red velvet cupcakes? You need cake flour for this recipe, and I thought I had a whole box. Then I picked up the box to measure it and realized I only had about […]

  • Barbecue sauce – 2 ways

    I wanted some Eastern North Carolina-style vinegar barbecue sauce for the pulled pork, but I figured I couldn’t buy it in Maryland. Then, when I started looking for a recipe, I realized it is super easy to make — as is what I would call “normal” barbecue sauce. I ended up making three kinds: Eastern […]

  • Slow-cooker pulled pork and coleslaw

    When I started thinking about our Super Bowl party, I immediately decided I wanted to make pulled pork and chili. Toby has an award-winning chili recipe and will be posting that later. But I thought the slow-cooker would be perfect for the pork. We had slow-cooker pulled pork sandwiches at Matt and Hilary’s house a […]

  • More Super Bowl cookies

    Remember the polka-dot helmets? I figured out a way to turn those polka dots into the Steelers logo: I didn’t take a lot of photos of the frosting and decorating process with these because it was the middle of the night and I wanted to get them done. But basically I just made polka dots […]

  • Purplicious

    There will be Super Bowl cookie photos and meat galore later. First, some nail polish. If you couldn’t tell from the giant ballet flat at the top of the page, pink is my favorite color. But I also love purple — especially purple eye makeup and nail polish. So you can imagine my excitement when […]

  • Cheesehead macarons

    Don’t worry, I didn’t forget the Packers! I was just having some trouble with the lemon curd I made earlier. I tried using the “teal” color from the Duff jewel colors pack, but it turned it blue. So don’t do that. So… the lemon curd I made tastes amazing. Unfortunately, it didn’t thicken properly. I […]

  • Steel Curtain macarons

    Are you ready for the Super Bowl? I’m totally not. But I do have some cookies, so that’s a good start. The first cookies I made today were Steelers macarons — yellow shells with chocolate ganache. I used the same recipe and method for the macaron shells I used during the 12 days of Christmas […]