This mousse won’t give you diabetes.  Seriously.  I can’t make this claim about much of my food (coughapplesyrupcough) but this mousse is actually sugar-free.  Free of regular sugar, anyway.  I’ve been experimenting with sugar substitutes and this recipe is one of my new favorites.  It’s also free of one other thing: effort.  If you can put things in a mixing bowl and blend them together, you can make this mousse.  It’s great for days when you’re low on time, or low on energy and want a creamy, chocolaty fix.  I’m feeling under the weather myself today, so this is my quick-fix pick-me-up.

Enjoy

 

 

 

[frame align=”left”][/frame]Saturday was a glorious day.  We joined together in the holy name of burgers to celebrate the second Evernote cookalong.  And oh, what a cookalong it was.  Full of juicy, grilled deliciousness, smothered in cheese and various toppings, served on golden buns.

Let’s see…the burgers themselves were turkey-feta, and ground brisket and pork.  The toppings ranged from the classic cheese, tomato and lettuce to homemade double-dipped onion rings to…poutine.  Yes, poutine.  Our friends Jeff and Ruth are Canadian and well…they bought fresh cheese curds from Zingermans.  Which made Jeff think he could also get gravy and fries.  By that, I mean, he realized he could bring things to my house and I would make gravy and fries.  Because I would.  And I did.  And then he topped the fries with the gravy.  And topped the gravy with the cheese curds.  And topped his burger with the poutine.

He topped his burger with the poutine.  Well, I guess Sunday was Canada Day.  Continue reading →

[frame align=”left”][/frame]So…what are you doing this Saturday?  If you answered, “Grilling burgers for the Evernote Burger Cookalong, of course,” then congratulations!  You’ve won the prize…of delicious flavor!

Seriously, you should join in.  I mean, after all, the Fourth of July is next week.  You have a cookout planned.  Your best friends are coming, your family, maybe even your boss, probably even a potential new girlfriend/boyfriend (if your glass is half-full) or a potential new ex-girlfriend/ex-boyfriend (if your glass is half-empty).  Anyway, that’s a lot of people that you’re gonna wanna “Wow!” with your burger prowess.  So consider Saturday a dry-run and try out a new recipe or two, or five.  I mean, the options are endless.  Beef burgers, turkey burgers, chicken burgers, veggie burgers, black bean burgers, tempeh burgers…and don’t even get me started on toppings!  This conversation will quickly turn into a scene with Bubba from Forrest Gump (“Shrimp cocktail…shrimp salad…shrimp pasta…”).

So do yourself a favor.  RSVP for the cookalong.  Pull out your best burger recipe.  Make it, eat it, and share it on Facebook or Twitter (hashtag #evernotecookalong) using Evernote or Evernote Food –and maybe you’ll inspire another burger-lover, find a great new recipe yourself…even win a prize!

But at the very least….dude.  Burgers.

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Today is the first Evernote Cookalong...and that means crêpe-a-palooza at our house.  My friend Brian came over and the two of us made a few different batches of crêpes so that we could wrap ourselves in their warm, delicious folds.

First, we made a batch of savory crepes, which we called “green crêpes and ham.”  We used my standard crêpe recipe (below) and filled them with sautéed asparagus (from my in-laws’ family farm!), zucchini, hot Italian pork sausage from the inestimable Biercamp here in town, and then topped it with a cheesy, creamy brie sauce.  (Literally, the sauce was just cream and melted brie cheese.)  They were…out of this world.

We sat and ate those for a while and watched Lilo and Stitch (“This is your badness level.  It’s unusually high for someone your size.”) before heading back to the kitchen for Round 2: Crêpe Boogaloo.  This time we went simple, classic, light.  We made another batch of the crêpe batter, but added a tablespoon of vanilla bean paste.  The filling was just fresh sliced strawberries sprinkled with grated lemon zest, powdered sugar and whipped cream.

I’ll just say that again for you: warm crêpes with fresh sliced strawberries sprinkled with grated lemon zest, powdered sugar and whipped cream.  Just let that ooze into your bones for a second.  Oh yeah.  Can you feel the love tonight?

The day is not over yet..I may yet make one more batch of crêpes (we’ll see).  I’m thinking I have plenty of good dark chocolate, leftover cream, graham cracker and chocolate marshmallows…s’more crêpes anyone?

Updated:

Ok, I couldn’t help myself.  I had a little bit of batter left and the idea of a s’more crêpe was just so appealing...

 

I’m not sure that I announced it here, officially.  If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, you might have heard.  That, or maybe you’re one of fifty million people my mother forwarded it on to.  You may have suspected from previous posts I’ve written that I am indeed a fan of obsessed with Evernote and all the ways it can be used to achieve deliciousness in all stages of one’s life.  Well now that love affair is full-on legit.  I am now Evernote’s Ambassador for Home Cooking.

What does this mean?  To my husband’s sadness, it does not mean that I have diplomatic immunity in the continental US and parts of Guam.  It does mean that I am a total guru on how the average home cook can use this program in their own kitchens and wheresoever else their gastronomical fiefdom may extend.  Got questions?  I am here to help.  We can conquer the divide between dish and digital device together.

Because if there’s one thing I love, it’s barbecue.  Wait, that’s a different post.  Because if there’s one more thing I love, it’s inspiring people to cook.  That and really, really, really thin pancakes.  Thus, I invite you to join me and the worldwide Evernote community this Saturday for the first ever

Evernote Cookalong!

And the special dish of the day?  Crêpes!  Anyway you want them.  It’s a digital foodie’s dream come true.  There’s cooking, there’s crêpes, there’s picture taking, there’s drooling over said pictures, there’s prizes, there’s eating, there’s something for everybody!

You can read more about the event on the Evernote blog, or sign up on Facebook to participate.  Feel free to use my basic crêpe recipe to get started, or find your own (and share it with the rest of us!).

So come, join the fun.  Do a little dish, make a little crêpe, get down tonight.  (I promise, I’ll make better crêpe jokes later.  Or will I?  Only thyme will tell…)

 

You know what the best meal ever is?  Dessert.  But you know what the best meal ever after dessert is?  Brunch.  And do you know why?  Consider the Venn diagram below.  Study it closely.  Learn its truths.

Today was a grand and glorious celebration in the holy and delicious name of a meal time that occurs between 10am and 2pm.  We called it, Brunchapalooza!  Continue reading →

Yesterday was a beautiful day.  Clear skies, not warm but pleasant weather overall, got an awesome massive free lunch at Noodles&Co thanks to my friend Chase, and then I went home to my own personal box of sunshine, aka the remaining mangoes I got from Whole Foods.  If you remember, they gave me a free box of them to see what I could come up with.  The last post was mango ice cream and mango-ancho chili ice cream.  Today’s post is still desserty–I can’t help it, mangoes are just so sweet and soft and dessert-y.  Today’s post is a mashup of mangoes and my lingering obsession with Italian food, specifically ricotta cheese, after eating at RPM Italian in Chicago last week.  Today’s post is a variation of tiramisu.  With mango.  Mango. Tiramisu.

As Isha would say, “That’s a thing.” Continue reading →

I’m ashamed to say that I think that is only the second headline reference to Spaceballs on this blog.  I’m sorry about that.  I’ll do better.

Anyway, how are you?  How’ve you been, Internet?  Oh, really?  Interesting.  I’d love to hear all about that.  We should get together and you should tell me about it over a nice glass of raspberry soda.  Continue reading →

I’m a simple person.  I don’t want much in life.  A warm home, a happy family, an elephant, and a few good, simple meals.  This dish basically evolved out of me wanting a tasty, light dinner but also not having gone grocery shopping in a week and not having any meat or anything thawed.

I had a few odds and ends in the fridge, including a tub of cremini mushrooms that I’d originally bought to make this garlic butter roasted mushroom recipe from Smitten Kitchen.  Instead of making the recipe as is, I decided to use it as inspiration for this pasta dish.  I want all of you health enthusiasts to note that there is no butter in this dish at all.  So there.

Oh, but there are two tablespoons of duck fat. Yeah. Continue reading →

I don’t know that I’ve ever made pizza crust from scratch before, mostly because I suffer from a relatively serious case of selective laziness.  Make my own caramel and nougat for homemade snickers bars?  Sure!  Make pizza dough?  Ha.  Why?  Whole Foods sells theirs in neat little packages.

I don’t claim to make sense.  Continue reading →

Wait, make that “Tortellini-Are-Little-Puffs-of-Heaven and Italian Sausage Stew.”  Kind of a long name, though.  I’ll work on it.

It’s been a very soup-y fall for me, for a couple of reasons.  1)Fall just seems to need soup.  I don’t know what it is but for some reason, fall is a soup season.  2)Soup recipes make a lot and it’s great for pouring leftovers into a jar and taking it work a couple days for lunch.  3)I rarely made soup before last year because I was convinced I was a failure at it.  I’m not nearly as nervous now.  Clearly if I can do, any idiot can.  But I repeat myself.

Continue reading →

You know what I like about these bars?  Everything.  They were easy to make, very fast, tasty, they made the house smell delicious and they are a perfect fall treat for noshing on with a good sized mug of hot cocoa and whipped cream.

They came about because I was sitting home alone, bored, getting over a cold and therefore in sore need of some comfort food.  I didn’t want the usual sort of snack–cookies, brownies, etc.  Or more honestly, I didn’t have enough chocolate on hand for the usual snack.  Instead, I sifted through the 300 or so recipes in my Evernote cookbook tagged with “dessert” and found a recipe for pecan pie bars.

I didn’t have pecans…but I did have a Costco-sized bag of almonds.  Plus I knew that with a bit of extra cinnamon thrown in, the bars would basically be like eating candied almonds atop a shortbread crust.  And yep, that’s pretty much what they are.  Delightfully, they’re not too sweet at all–so they won’t push you into sugar shock if you eat one or two with a good helping of my homemade cocoa. Continue reading →

“Make me a sandwich.”
“Poof!  You’re a sandwich.”

You want jokes?  I got ‘em.  You want funny jokes?  Try back next week.

Josh and I have been trying this radical new thing: “making our own lunches and taking them to work.”  Innovative right?

You see, I work on a college campus that happens to be nicely situated amongst the city’s downtown area.  I am surrounded by restaurants of all kinds–Indian buffets, sandwich places, Mediterranean joints, sushi places, pizza delivery, milkshake delivery and the best soup-shack this side of Heaven.  It is, needless to say, very difficult for me to ignore all of that and eat a lunch I packed.  If I packed.  Hey, sometimes I’m too lazy busy to remember little details like that.  But the down side of this genuine first-world problem of having lots of restaurants nearby is that it’s expensive to eat out all the time for lunch and frankly, eventually it gets boring. Continue reading →

Josh sent me a delightful TED Talk by New York Times journalist Jennifer 8. Lee all about “Chinese” food in America.  It’s not only extremely informative but witty and entertaining as well.  It’s 16 minutes or so, but worth watching it all.

My favorite part? Learning about French and Italian Chinese food!

 

[highlight]”I used to think the brain was the most important organ in the body.  Then I realized who was telling me this.” –Emo Phillips [/highlight]

The brain is clearly the most superior of all the organs, and I’m not just saying that because it told me to.  Well I kind of am.  Ok, I totally am, but with other good–nay, delicious–justifications.  After all, my brain is what told me to buy a couple gallons of cider at the Dexter Mill a couple weeks ago and my brain is what told me to use that cider to make apple syrup, which was delicious, and my brain decided that if apple syrup is good then apple caramel sauce must be just as delicious and obviously, if the brain thinks it’s true, then it must be. Continue reading →

Sunday was a busy day.  I got out of bed–and that was an effort, let me tell you–and made breakfast, prepared bread dough, did the week’s grocery shopping, found out my Twitter account was hacked (again, apologies to all involved), roasted chicken, made stock, made soup and still managed to watch Squid Invasion on Netflix streaming and thoroughly freak myself out.

But the important thing here is the soup.  It’s my cheesy, chunky comfort stew.  I originally made it for Paul and Josh last week for dinner.  Paul and I had a very good trade going: if I made dinner, he would bring cinnamon pie for dessert.  (I freaking love cinnamon pie and Paul makes it brilliantly.)  And since I knew I was going to want to have a really large piece of pie for dessert, I figured I would make something for dinner that was simple (cause I was tired), quick (cause I was short on time), vegetarian (because Paul is not of the meat-eating persuasion) and filling without being super heavy (cause pie).  Oh and delicious, of course, because that’s how I roll. Continue reading →