Warm Tomato Bruschetta

Recipe Review- Classic Bruschetta- capers are the secret ingredient!

One of my hobbies outside of the kitchen is running. (Gotta work off all that food somehow!) One of the best parts of going on a long run is knowing that you can eat something amazing afterwards, and also getting to carb load before a big race. Kevin and I were getting ready for the La Jolla Half marathon, so we invited a few running friends over and made a big pot of pasta, chicken Parmesan, garlic bread, and some bruschetta as an appetizer. Bruchetta is one of my favorite things to make when people are coming over for dinner. The prep is rather simple, everyone seems to like it, and I'll take any excuse to eat some capers.

Double Chocolate Cupcakes with Peanut Butter Frosting

Recipe Review: Chocolate and Peanut Butter- the perfect combination. 

I had been planning on making cupcakes for Easter every since I got into cupcake decorating. There were so many cute ideas, I wanted to make them all and I couldn't decide. Also I couldn't figure out what flavor to try and make. I started out trying to make the plastic Easter egg cupcakes featured in Whats New Cupcake. What you're supposed to do is coat the inside of plastic eggs with melting candy to make a candy egg that looks like a plastic egg. That was a great big fail. The chocolate stuck in the egg and wouldn't come out without breaking even though I had followed the directions to a T. Realizing this was just going to stress me out I scrapped that idea and moved on to the much simpler birds nest cupcakes. Although its Easter and that lends itself to light fruit flavors I decided to try a chocolate cupcake since I hadn't done one yet.

Mediterranean Turkey Burgers and Spiced Couscous

It was a beautiful Sunday, slightly warmer than its been, clear and sunny. I slept in and then spent a few hours hanging out poolside with a friend who was visiting. HBO had just started re airing season 3 of True Blood and so I was looking forward making dinner and watching it in the evening. Last summer that was Kevin's and my Sunday routine- spend the day outside, cook dinner, watch True Blood. Except this weekend my favorite sous chef was sick. I still enjoy cooking when its just me, but this Sunday made me miss our summer Sundays, I can't wait to for it be consistently nice weather so we can get back into that routine.



I went for a Mediterranean theme with turkey burgers, using whole wheat pitas instead of buns, and a spiced couscous with fennel and roasted red peppers. I'm into fennel big time right now. A few weeks back I did a fennel risotto, and just love the complex flavor that fennel brings to a dish. If you haven't had it before fennel has a mild black licorice/anise flavor, crossed with a little bit of onion, and slightly sweet. I've never had it raw before but apparently you can eat it both ways. Back to dinner... I've made turkey burgers previously using a variety of spice combinations but this is my favorite so far. It's really pretty easy to just add in a few ingredients to your burgers and it makes a huge difference in flavor.

Pork Tenderloin with Sweet Potato Cakes

This is a very exciting blog post for me. To start off its my 50th blog post! Since I started blogging in the fall I have really come to love it and look forward to every post that I write. Blogging has lead me to try making new things that I never would have tried, and I now have new hobbies to pursue, (cake/cupcakes decorating, and food photography) that are fueled by the blog!

Second- Kevin and I invented the most delicious food! Usually I cook from a recipe, and I was making a sweet potato and spinach hash that I had seen in Real Simple magazine, Kevin was watching the process (which involves grating the sweet potatoes) and suggested that we make them into cakes and fry them like latkes. Since this was a huge departure from the recipe I let Kevin take the lead, and we mixed in an egg and some bread crumbs to the spinach mix, fried them up, and oh. my. goodness. They were amazing! We were both incredibly surprised by how great these tasted. No they aren't the prettiest, and we probably should have baked them instead of fried but wow. Just wow.