Monthly Archives: August 2010

Cara Mel. Bond Girl Name or Tasty Treat? You Decide

If I were a Bond girl, my cheeky code name would be Cara.  Cara Mel.  I’d make sly, sultry comments to Bond while carelessly smoking a long, elegant cigarette that won’t have the chance to kill me because I’ll die in a freak accident by getting a mounted sword-fish nose through the stomach while Bond escapes the clutches of some comical, balding, verbose and vaguely effeminate bad guy yet again.  “Cara Mel burns when hot, Mr. Bond,” I would say.  “Cara Mel lies,” he would reply blithely, the line coming out very suavely if he was Sean Connery, and not nearly as impressively if he was say, Roger Dalton.  Sorry, Rog.  But it’s true.

Of course my action-packed, sugar-fueled day dreams are only tangentially related to post, at point (Caramel, Bar).  Mostly because I’m tired and I get weird when I’m tired, and also because I can’t think of any other way to introduce this recipe other than to say it’s so good that Josh made me take the pan to work so that he wouldn’t eat the entire thing himself.  So there you go.  Bond tested, Josh approved.

No, really, these bars are quite good.  And really easy too.  And of course, I still had about 1.5 of caramel leftover from making the Take Five bars.  I used half of it for this recipe and the other half I melted into a pan of these brownies.  So yes.  I’ve had a lot of sugar this week.  Enough to kill a lesser mortal.  Okay, maybe not kill.  Stun?  Make giddy?  Give cavities?  There it is. Continue reading

Pamper Yourself

I finally did it last night.  I finally used up the last half of a bag of chocolate nibs and made another batch of my favorite bath scrub ever, the chocolate bath scrub. When I got out of the shower, I was soft and luxurious feeling.  It was excellent.  Now, almost 24 hours later, my skin still feels fantastic, no lotion necessary.  So I’m basking in my own glow as I write this post on my also-finally-finished foodie skin care e-pamphlet, “Play With Your Food.”  It’s my gift to you, free, full of little tidbits I’ve gathered from the farthest reaches of the intarwebs on all the great ways you can use foods you probably keep in the kitchen all the time to pamper yourself and your skin.  And let me tell you, nothing wakes you up better than the smell of chocolate in your shower.  Except maybe a bullhorn.  Or a car crashing through your window.  But nothing else.

Download the “Play with Your Food” free e-pamphlet.


Why don’t you take a little time out with me, just Take 5….

Take 5...leave the rest

I’m calling these my homemade Take 5 bars but really, there are only four lights ingredients.  Caramel.  Chunky peanut butter.  Pretzel.  And chocolate.  Oh unless you count awesome as an ingredient.

These candy bars came as a request, as pretty much all my candy bars do, this time from my friend Chase.  He sent me a recipe, which I pretty much ignored, as I am wont to do.  The story goes something like this:

Once upon a time, in the magical land of NotOhio, there was a little boy.  One day, this little boy felt a rumbly in his tumbly and lo, headed off in the direction of the nearest 7-Eleven to find something to sate his orangutan-sized hunger.  He perused the aisles of this and that, passing Hershey bars and Reese’s peanut butter cups and something called a Goober when his eyes fell upon a beautiful stranger the likes of which he had never seen before, a coquettish, salty yet sweet little minx all wrapped up in  red.  Hey you, she called out, you, with the face.  Why don’t you take a little time out with me?  Just Take 5, just Take 5…”

I’m just going to leave that right there. Continue reading

You look like the milkman…

I’m feeling pretty old-school these days.  We bought a house that’s 150 years old.  I don’t have a microwave anymore.  My grandmother wants to give me a butter churn.  And we have a milkman.

Yes, that’s right.  We have a milkman.  His name is Stan.  Stan the milkman.  I’ve never met Stan but I heart him oh so much.  Not just because I enjoy saying that I have a milkman, not just because our weekly dairy delivery is always on time and neatly done, but also because thanks to Stan, I don’t worry nearly so much about running out of butter (a constant trouble previously, what with all the baking I do) and I spend less time battling crowds at the store.  Yay!

How did I arrange this magnificent thing, you ask?  Well actually, Josh arranged it.  Through Calder Dairy.

If you don’t know about Calder Dairy, now is a great time to get educated, especially if you live in Michigan.  Calder is a local, family-owned dairy farm and around here you can often find their glass-bottled (!!!!!!!) milk and delicious stacks of butter in various stores, like the Ypsi Co-op or Whole Foods or Busch’s.  Their milk is delicious, as is their butter.  But they also have home delivery, which means that if you live near a route, you can arrange to have milk, cream, buttermilk, eggnog, butter, yogurt, cottage cheese, eggs, bread, even ice cream…and lots more….delivered straight to your house. Continue reading

Toffee Break: Homemade Heath Bars

I want to make a disclaimer on this post: I don’t really eat that much junk food.  Honestly.  I know it seems like it, what with every other post being a chocolate cake or a marshmallow mousse or fruity alcoholic drink or yet another homemade candy bar.  I eat a lot of fruit, veggies, whole grains and nonfat dairy.  Honestly.  It’s just that those things aren’t nearly as fun to write about.

But anyway.  Let’s move on to the topic at hand.  Which is a post on yet another homemade candy bar!  But not just any candy bar: homemade Heath bars.  Do you know what a Heath bar is?  I didn’t.  It’s toffee, wrapped in chocolate.  Do you know what toffee is?  Sugar and butter.  Which is then smothered in chocolate.  So that’s three essential food groups right there.  Oh and there’s nuts, too, so that’s…you know…vitamin E.  And protein…

My boss Lynne requested these.  And I blame Jeff.  He started this, requesting a batch of homemade Snickers bars, which turned out remarkably well.  Then another coworker requested M&Ms, which I haven’t figured out yet, and then Lynne requested Heath bars for her birthday.  Now that those are conquered, I’ll have to work on Take 5 bars, Butterfingers and Twixes.  And then I’m going to fall into a deep sugar coma that will hopefully last all winter, so I can skip the whole “freezing my butt off” thing.

Continue reading

Visual Gastronomy

Fancy title, isn’t it?  Anyway, I have all these pictures that I take throughout the week of various meals I make.  Some meals I blog, some I don’t.  Some pictures go up on the site, some don’t.  I figured that since I’m recovering from a brief bout of illness just now, I’ll make myself feel better (and make you feel hungry) by looking at some of the delicious food photos I’ve collected over the year so far.  Some are for posted recipes; if you’re interested, just use the search bar on the top of the page to find them. Some were just from experiments here and there. Let me know if there’s something you’re curious about. Happy Friday.