RIP KitchenAid Stand Mixer. We had a good run. It was great while it lasted. The mixer, passed down to us from D's parents, died a silent death as I made these rich, buttery breakfast pretzels. I was celebrating more good graduate school news and making Dustin and his coworkers a quick treat before I left on my next trip. I felt a little...

Dustin and I spent a whirlwind long weekend together in New York City. Now I'm back for just a couple of days before heading out of town again. Being courted and getting to go on free trips is fun, but exhausting. And definitely not conducive to baking! Our trip was full of visiting his cousin, lots of walking, lots of cold, a little sleep,...

To precede our molten chocolate lava cake, we cooked up a romantic risotto dinner together. You know it was romantic because it had lobster. When I went to Whole Foods to pick up ingredients, at the seafood counter, there were 3 of us all buying lobster tails. I'm pretty creative that way. The recipe from Food Network  was pretty similar to...

Whole Foods makes some great prepared chicken salads. Two of our favorites being the blackened chicken salad and the curried chicken salad. I wanted to take a shot at making our own curried chicken salad, with cashews and chickpeas, and serve it with homemade crackers. The chicken salad was fairly easy to craft. We just poached up two boneless...

You know that moment when you bite into a restaurant's top dessert, and your eyes roll back in your head. Your taste buds enlighten, and it all comes together in perfect harmony. I have to give props to Erin. Her latest dessert has completly elicited this reaction from me. When I sliced into her chocolate cake, and the molten chocolate oozed...

Pecan sandies were definitely not a cookie I appreciated as a kid. Despite being surrounded by an abundance of them, pecans were not something I fully appreciated until I was a little older and no longer living in Texas where they are plentiful and cheap compared to Seattle. But with a large box arriving from Texas a few weeks ago, I knew I...

Our first Valentine's Day as a married couple will be spent apart, as I will be leaving for New York at 7 AM on Thursday (fingers crossed NYC will have recovered from the blizzard and there aren't any more storms on the way), so we celebrated Valentine's Day a little early with red velvet pancakes and cream cheese glaze for brunch over the...

For Valentine's Day, Erin bought me one of those "hey why dontcha go make this for me" kind of gifts. This time it was a sushi kit. I'm not upset though because I love sushi, and she helped empower me to create my own! We went on a hunt across all of the Seattle area for fine sashimi-grade ingredients. We were having lunch in Ballard, so we...

Super Bowl party hit #2. Just by the name, you could tell this was going to be good. I want to make sure Dustin gets full credit for making this bread. I do make all of the desserts around here, but Dustin makes a lot of things in the kitchen as well. A lot of times people assume that I make everything, so I get showered with praise even...

How hard it it to find spaghetti squash? Apparently really difficult around us. Whole Foods hasn't ever had them when I've looked, and Amazon Fresh can't seem to keep them in stock when they are delivering to me. But I finally got my hands one, and decided to make low-carb spaghetti and turkey meatballs with marinara. We've joined a fancy...