Banana bread is the most common quick bread around, but you very rarely see other bread recipes made with mashed fruit. Instead, you usually find chunks of fruit. But that's not what I envisioned when I set out to make this bread. I basically wanted to make banana bread, but instead of using mashed bananas, I used crushed blueberry to create a...

Dustin has been making fun of me recently because of my obsession with this list I stumbled upon online. It's a list from Jonathan Gold of the LA Times counting down the 101 best restaurants in LA. I've been using it as a reference guide for places to eat around here, and I thought it would be a fun to set a goal for ourselves to eat at all of...

Sorry for the late post today! I'm sure you are dying with anticipation to see my creation for Dustin's birthday. Well, here it is in all it's glory— a mint chocolate chip cake! I know Dustin loves mint chocolate chip ice cream, so I decided to turn the flavors into a birthday cake— a three layered chocolate cake frosted with Andes mint...

Today is Dustin's birthday (welcome to your mid-20s!)— check back tomorrow for his special birthday dessert! To celebrate Halloween yesterday, we made oatmeal cookies. Oatmeal raisin cookies are gross, well the raisin part anyway. So we replaced raisins with chocolate chips. Instantly better. To make them festive, we pressed white chocolate...

Happy Halloween! I've already professed my love for skillet cookies before and how they bring such nostalgia for the early days of my relationship with Dustin. For an updated version, perfect for Halloween, I decided to infuse the cake with pumpkin and fall spices along with pumpkin spice M\&Ms. I also wanted to frost it with a maple frosting,...

We were literally talking the other night about cooking and about the fact that we have been really successful in the kitchen. We were trying to think of an instance where we made something that really just didn't work, and we couldn't recall anything. I would say less than a week later, this dish came along. The flavors of the dish definitely...

Last time Dustin was away, I made mint pea pesto with gnocchi. I thought it was absolutely delicious, but let me tell you, it pales in comparison to the pumpkin seed pesto with sweet potato gnocchi this time around. I based the pesto off of this recipe from Whole Foods, but definitely made some changes. What's a pesto without some parmesan in...

The first time I ever went to Trader Joe's (back on our road trip to Minnesota in the summer of 2010), I bought cat cookies and a box of pumpkin pancake and waffle mix to bring back to Texas with me. I savored and nursed that box of mix for months before sadly, I ran out. These were the days just before I started making most everything from...

Without as much time to cook in the evenings, I've been trying to think up shortcut meals that don't involve a lot of work, but are still tasty and creative. Trader Joe's has become our best friend in doing so with all of their precooked meats and even their higher quality frozen products. I'm not sure where the idea for these enchiladas came...

After a long day of work and school, neither Dustin nor I felt like cooking (plus I think we had exhausted our at-home food supply for the week) or even sitting in a restaurant. I didn't feel like brushing my hair or putting on makeup. All I wanted to do was flop on the bed and cuddle my puppy. Take out was on our horizon. We debated Indian...