It is inevitable that if you are a person who knows how and likes to cook or knit or craft or woodwork or whatever, at some point you will become that annoying person who looks at something nice in a store and say, "eh, I can make that better myself." Usually you will be right. There are few things in this world that are for sale that could not be personally made cheaper or of higher quality in your home. The trick, however, is knowing which things are worth your time, because unfortunately, everything you make yourself, be it flaky tender pie crust or a handknit computer bag, takes way longer than buying the same product of inferior quality in the store. For example, I can make both homemade rolls and homemade pasta, but in the complicated quality versus precious time formula (similar in format to the quadratic equation, except with more swear words and heart shaped doodles) buttermilk rolls are totally worth it and gluey homemade fettuccine just isn't that great compared to the fancy pasta I can buy at Pike Place Market.

Recently, I was inspired to make homemade instant oatmeal. Ridiculous, right? Hear me out. For most of last year, I would hurriedly make homemade oatmeal on the stove every morning before work. It can be done in about ten minutes, is a truly delicious and filling breakfast, travels to work and reheats in a tupperware beautifully, and is entirely worth the time investment. Oatmeal is wonderfully adaptable to whatever add ons you happen to have already in your kitchen: almost any fruit- fresh, dried or jammed - nuts and seeds, it all works. Nevertheless, despite one's best intentions, ten minutes before 7 am is still ten minutes, and it can be hard to work up the motivation or speed up the morning grooming process enough to make time for breakfast preparation. The obvious and widely used solution to this problem is instant oatmeal which is available relatively cheaply at virtually every grocery location. And I'm not here to knock store bought instant oatmeal, but it just has never really blown me away or become a fixture in my morning routine. Besides which, it's generally full of sugar and preservatives, which I won't pretend that I don't consume with vigor, but when possible, I like to save those ingredients for my daily intake of food pyramid items cupcakes and goldfish "fishy" crackers. I came across some instructions for homemade instant oatmeal not too long ago and decided to jump on that potentially time and calorie saving train.

To start, you're going to need:

7 cups oatmeal
1 box powdered nonfat milk
Salt

Also necessary:
"Fixins"

For this batch I used what I had in my pantry - dried cranberries, sunflower seeds and toasted slivered almonds. Clearly, most anything would do to the trick here. Like apple cinnamon oatmeal? Use dried apple bits and cinnamon. Like peaches and cream? Dried peaches. This isn't rocket science, yo. One blogger I read even said that he mixed maple syrup into his and it worked well, but I can't quite get behind that.

The only fancy tool you'll need for this is a food processor. I unfortunately, do not own one of these. For this project I made the mistake of borrowing my grandmother's food processor and received daily heckling phone calls asking for it back immediately thereafter. At one point she even asked me if I broke it and the was the reason I hadn't returned it to her yet. Why? Who really knows? My grandma is crazy. A few summers ago she accused me of stealing a pink towel and red plastic bowl from her apartment while she was in Greece. Then again, at this very moment, she is very kindly hemming several pairs of dress pants for me because I feel to busy/lazy to deal with it myself. So I'll give her a break, I guess. Temporarily.

Take two cups of the oatmeal and pulverize it in the food processor until you have oatmeal powder. Dump it back with the non-pulverized oatmeal and add the dry milk. If inclined, you can think deep thoughts about the oatmeal to powdered milk ratio, but since I'm not really interested in having half empty boxes of powdered milk hanging around, I find that a whole box (you know, the one about the size of a hardcover novel) is the right amount for 6 to 7 cups of dry oatmeal. If you make your oatmeal with salt, add a few teaspoons at this point. Add the aforementioned "fixins." Bam. You have enough instant oatmeal to make several dozen breakfast bowls. I put the entire batch in a gallon ziplock bag and keep it in my bottom desk drawer, spooning it out, half a cup at a time into my "work bowl." Look at me, saving the environment too. If you're more of a single serving type person, you can premeasure your servings into ziplock sandwich bags while you contemplate your resource consumption and wasting all that plastic. Whoa. Sufficiently high and mighty for you? Yeah, me too.

New Years Resolutions are boring. Fact. That doesn't mean that they aren't useful or meaningful, granted, but there is nothing interesting in platitudes about healthy eating or renewed devotion to exercise or diligent housework. And by boring I don't mean that I'm just embarrassed to admit that a week of houseguests back to back with an exhausting headcold and many extra hours at work have left my apartment in a state unfit for company, just that there is nothing inherently electrifying in a discussion thereof.

That being said, I do hope to do all those pedestrian and grownup things in 2009: eat out less, cook in even more, put my laundry away after I do it and not just pick clean underwear out of a pile on my floor which badly needs a vacuum, put more vegetables and less fried food into my body, attempt to have a much lower percentage of my bloodstream be comprised of diet coke and beer, read more novels and watch fewer bret michaels based reality tv shows, blah blah blah, etc.

Killing several birds with one green leafy stone, I made amazing roasted brussels sprouts this week. This recipe is adapted from a crappy recipe I found on The Kitchn. My mom and I decided to serve brussels sprouts on Christmas Eve, and I foolishly prepared this recipe for the meal without giving it a test run first. Bad call. Barely blanched brussels sprouts sitting in a cold soup of lemon juice and olive oil are just not very good. The flavor combinations were a good idea, but the execution as a cold salad doesn't come close to working. We repurposed the leftovers the next day by roasting the whole mess in the oven with plenty of butter and had a much better dish at Christmas dinner. Since then, I've prepared this sprout recipe as a hot dish two more times to great happiness and success.

Lemon Roasted Brussels Sprouts

Preheat your oven to 350. Wash, trim and halve a pound or two of brussels sprouts straight into your dutch oven. Add a shallot or onion thinly sliced and several cloves of garlic chopped as finely as you have the patience for (I barely chop mine in half; peeling and chopping garlic is my very least favorite kitchen task). Zest a lemon and squeeze the juice over the mixture and salt and pepper generously. Add a glug or two of olive oil or softened butter and stir everything to coat. I also added some shredded zuchinni because I had it lying around. I like preparing roasted vegetables because they are especially forgiving of experimental vegetable combinations.

Cover the vegetables and place in the oven for 30 minutes. At that point stir and put back in the over for another 20 minutes or so. This dish keeps well and can be served alongside most things. I ate it plain the night I made it, for lunch a few days later with leftover sausage and potatoes, mixed into black bean soup the day after that, and on Friday night I threw whatever was left of it into the crock pot with a pot roast. Delicious and magical.

The Thanksgiving Seasonal Cocktail: Don't Take it For 'Granate
Pun courtesy of Cody. I am cursed with an embarrassing love of puns, yet the general inability to spool them off all clever and impromptu. I am, however, gifted with cocktail invention skills.

In a cocktail shaker filled halfway with crushed ice, combine:
3 parts vodka
1 part Chambord
1 part Barenjaeger
1 part pomegranate juice

Shake vigorously. By the time you are making your second batch of this, you will probably be dancing around a little bit. This is helpful.

Add two tablespoons of pomegranate seeds to a glass and fill glass halfway with Diet 7 Up (or club soda, or clear mixer of your choice). Fill glass with pomegranate mixture from the cocktail shaker. Partake in other Thanksgiving day activities like mashing the potatoes or playing puzzle in the living room. Think about the things for which you give thanks. I have many.

The week of Halloween, I tried to make caramel sauce and failed twice. Part of the problem is that I don't have a candy thermometer because I am a combination of lazy and stubborn, so I kept burning the sugar. Also, I think that my stove is old and ghetto and the heat is not consistent. Regardless, I am a little cocky and not particularly accustomed to such utter failure in the kitchen, especially not twice in a row. It was quite demoralizing. I had a couple Halloween parties to go to last weekend, and my brilliant plan was to bring sliced apples and homemade caramel sauce and be a hero. I went out and bought something ridiculous like 5 pounds of golden delicious apples for this plan and then stunk up my apartment with two nasty batches of unsuccessful caramel sauce. I rallied and brought Greek cheese plates to my party instead, but had a huge bag of apples to deal with and dispose of. Solution? Applesauce.

Amazing homemade applesauce starts with five or six apples, peeled, cored, and chopped up into pieces about the size of pencil erasers. Dump all your chopped apples into a big saucepan and put about a cup of water into the pan. Cover, turn the stove heat to medium, and let the apples sweat for about 15 minutes. Remove the lid and add between 1 and 3 tablespoons of of cinnamon, sugar and vanilla extract. Simmer the apples until the water is evaporated and the apples are soft and saucy. Mash some of the residual chunks against the side of the pan, and you could puree with an immersion blender, but I don't own crap like that and even if I did, I wouldn't want to wash it.

Applesauce is delicious hot or cold, plain or garnished with nonfat yogurt, mixed into oatmeal or shared with your friends and coworkers. Also, as an extra bonus, it smells like Christmas which is three quarters of what I'm looking for this time of year.

A Delicious Cheese Plate

This a a good thing to eat when you've just been to a funeral for the mother of one of your very closest friends. It's not that cheese actually makes the situation better or less raw and painful, per se, but it is very comforting to spend time together and try and laugh about the good things in the world.

Arrange on a plate the following items:

Rogue Creamery Garlic Cheddar
Pepper Jack
Cranberry Wensleydale
Sliced Salami
Very stinky Camembert style goat cheese
Safeway Select Whole Wheat Crackers

Consume the following items with a selection of microbrews, for example, NewCastle, Blue Moon Harvest Pumpkin Ale and New Belgium 2 Below. Because you are in California, you can sit outside in the backyard drinking beer and eating cheese, which is pleasant even in these unfortunate circumstances.

When your cheese and beer party is over, your friend may give you the very stinky goat cheese to take home because it is too pungent for her taste. Whatever you do, do not leave this stinky cheese in the backseat of your brother's car by accident. If you do, he will call you three days later with some choice expletives directed towards you.

Something Amazing:  Whatever, Martha.  

If you get the Fine Living Channel (I have no idea if this is part of basic cable or extended or the crazy 500 channel package I have, because I had never heard of it before today, which is a travesty, because I am about to tell you about the best show in the universe), you need to watch Whatever, Martha.  This is a show where Martha Stewart's daughter, Alexis, sits around watching old episodes of the Martha Stewart show and being dirty and sassy about it.  No seriously, it is an amazing concept and actually very funny in real life.  Watching this show, I suddenly I realized that I am some weird middle ground hybrid between prissy, crafty Martha and inappropriate, snarky Alexis.  Further, Alexis pretends to hate all the fussy things Martha does on her show, but after Alexis proves she knows a recipe for pesto off the top of her head, when her dopey co-host talks about how the hardest thing she can make is scrambled eggs, the look of incredulous contempt that Alexis shoots her is worth ten million dollars.  Also, I like jokes about "rock hard" pillows.  So sue me.  Two thumbs up.  

A Very Scientific Experiment

Two months ago I read a story in the New York Times about chocolate chip cookies. Now, I could no sooner pick a favorite kind of cookie among the chocolate chips and peanut butters and sugar with buttercream frosting and linzer filled with apricot jam and chocolate sandwich as I could pick a favorite pair of shoes or color of dahlia or episode of Veronica Mars - I just love them all so much - but chocolate chip is right up there with my brown suede peep-toe wedges and deep violet and the one where Logan and Veronica get together for the first time after Logan punches JTT who is an FBI agent posing as a high school student. I was less interested in the overly prescriptive recipe in the Times article as I was by their assertion that the quality and taste of these cookies could be increased exponentially by letting the dough rest in the refrigerator for 36 hours before baking. I've read a lot of cookbooks and bossy, but well intentioned, advice about baking before and had never been told to do any such thing, so I was intrigued. No one, not even the New York Times, will be able to convince me that any recipe for chocolate chip cookies is better than my Grandma Mariel's, but I could potentially be persuaded to mix up the baking process. Obviously, the only way to proceed was to employ the scientific method and ascertain whether Jaques Torres was full of crap or truly on to something.

As mentioned, I would be conducting this experiment using my cookie gospel of choice, my grandmother's Cowboy Cookie recipe. Cream 2 cups butter (or margarine), 2 cups white sugar, 2 cups brown sugar, and 4 eggs. Slowly mix in 4 cups flour, 1 t baking powder, 2t soda, and 1t salt. Finally stir in 3 cups oats and 12 ounces of chocolate chips. My original plan was make the cookie dough at about 7am on Sunday morning when I usually wake up, so that I could bake test batches exactly 36 hours later when there would be a gaggle of boys at my house watching Monday Night Football, but that plan was thwarted when I stayed out until 3 am with my cousins on Saturday night. Instead, by the time I woke up, drank a carafe of french press coffee, talked to my mom on the phone for 45 minutes while laying on the couch with a pillow over my head, and finally got myself organized to make cookie dough, it was 11 o'clock. Luckily, I was a history major and thus am not particularly into "scientific precision." Close enough for government work. At that point, I baked one test batch of a dozen cookies for 12-15 minutes in a 350 degree oven and departed to Madison Park with Megan to eat a shrimp and havarti omelet for brunch.

Monday night I baked 4 dozen more cookies and put the rest of the dough in the freezer to use later. I let the 36 hour cookies cool so as not to tip off the cookie testers, and gave everyone a "Cookie 1" and a "Cookie 2," with no details as to their potential differences and the instruction to tell me which they preferred.

See "My Very Official Cookie Focus Group":

Both Witold and Kevin Hannifan preferred the cookie from the aged dough. Kevin Lind thought the cookies that had been baked right away were superior, but he is a hippie vegetarian, so his taste buds are suspect in the first place. The first cookie definitely had a softer texture, but the aged cookie had a much more distinct flavor profile, it was much sweeter and complex and had a crispy outside but a moist middle. I can not speak to whether the texture was a result of the way it dough had aged or just that I overcooked the new batch a little bit.

The Moral of The Story: I did prefer the cookie dough that had matured in the fridge. Luckily, this complements my cooking style because I frequently make dough ahead of time to be baked at different intervals. Granted, my focus group was quite small, and was cleansing their palette in between tastes with nasty Coors Light, so I don't know that we can take any hard and fast rules from this experiment, other than that cookies are totally delicious.

I have a tempestuous relationship with boxed cake mixes. I understand that they are sooooo convenient, and the taste generally lies on the more delicious end of the "decent" bell curve, but I believe in my heart of hearts that cake from scratch is empirically more delicious and really not that much harder to make. My feelings and opinions on boxed cake and pre-packed baked goods and their easiness versus laziness versus quality factors are exacerbated by conversation with my lovely boyfriend who thinks the most delicious things in the world are those crappy Pillsbury biscuits and blueberry muffins you make out of a box with a little tin of pin sized blueberries packed in sketchy corn syrup. Obviously, I will and have baked both of these things from scratch for him, and for the sake of domestic bliss he wouldn't dare admit it out loud, but I am very sure that in his heart of hearts, he would rather be eating the boxed versions. I do not understand this. It defies logic.

When pressed, I will concede that while I do not object to a boxed cake in certain circumstances, the true crime against baked goods everywhere is ready-made frosting. All tubs of frosting taste like garbage and are full of literal garbage for your body and, dudes, frosting is the simplest thing to make in your kitchen. All you need is powdered sugar, butter, and milk. Oh, but you love that crappy cream cheese and crisco flavored frosting Duncan Hines makes? Well all you need to make that is cream cheese, powdered sugar, butter and milk. Yes, it is that easy. What? You're too lazy to mix those things together and put them on your cake? Then maybe you should be going for a walk or cultivating a hobby or saving the world instead of making substandard baked goods. Yeah. I said it. The clear instances when boxed cake mix is forgivable, however, are numerous. The highest examples of these instances are when you take a boxed cake mix and ignore the directions on the back of the box, and instead, turn the cake into something magical. My favorite sexed up box cake recipe is caramel fudge brownies. A close runner up is The Liqueur Cake.

The Liqueur Cake is constructed thusly:

1 box Chocolate Cake mix
2 eggs
1 pint sour cream
1/4 c butter/margarine/vegetable oil
1 c liqueur (My favorite is Baileys, but Kalhua, Amaretto, Frangelico etc all work equally well. Also, a whole cup creates a very strong flavor in the cake, which is how I roll, but if you prefer a more subtle essence, use a 1/2 cup.)
12 oz chocolate chips (Again, go ahead and substitute white chocolate, cafe au lait, butterscotch or whatever flavor chips willy nilly.)

Combine all of the above ingredients in your mixer or bowl. Mix them together. Pour the batter into a greased bundt or tube pan, as regular flat cake pans will not allow the cake to rise evenly. Bake in a 350 degree oven for 45-60 minutes, until it done (toothpick comes out clean, blah blah blah, have you never made a cake before?)

I think this cake is most delicious at room temperature. You can serve it with whipped cream or ice cream or berries or dusted with powdered sugar. Just don't put any effing store bought frosting on it, ok?

Savory Sausage Bread Pudding

Seeing as I love things that are starchy and eggy and substantial, bread pudding is a no brainer. Rice pudding, for that matter, is also a long-time favorite of mine. Both can be eaten with lots of cinnamon and are uniformly palatable anywhere along the hot to cold spectrum. I was introduced to the universe of a savory bread pudding by Heidi of 101 Cookbooks with her recipe for Asparagus Bread Pudding and have made it several times over the last year. I love Heidi's website, and I enjoy the way she talks about cooking and living in San Francisco, but it drives me slightly crazy that all the recipes she posts involve three or more ingredients that not only do I not keep stocked in my (fairly extensive!) pantry, but would require a trip to a specialty grocery store to acquire. It might be a personal shortcoming of mine that I don't have 6 different obscure colors of rice in my cupboard, but I just don't. Because of this, I've enjoyed every recipe I've pulled off her site and recreated at home, but I can count the number of times I've done so on one hand.

Bread Pudding is a good thing to make when you buy those delicious two loaves of crusty French Bread at Costco every single time you shop there, even though you know there's no way you can eat both of them before they go stale. I'm not great at learning from experience; I usually make it 2/3rds of the way through one loaf before the outside becomes rock hard. With over a loaf of bread to use up in a short period of time, Heidi's recipe came immediately to mind, but not only did I not have asparagus, but asparagus falls into the category of vegetables that my boyfriend will not eat. What I did have lying around however, was delicious homemade sausage from Idaho. A little clicking around the internets landed me on this recipe from Cooking Light which I used as a basis for my dish. The awesome thing about improvising off an already "lowfat" recipe is that instead of my standard substitutions (less oil and butter, low/nonfat milk instead of whole, etc.), I don't feel naughty adding more delicious things to the basic recipe. For example, in this recipe, I probably used two or three times as much cheese as I was directed to, but overall it was less than three cups, so whatever.

My Sausage Bread Pudding started by browning about a pound of amazing Idaho sausage in a pan over medium heat. I chopped one and a half Granny Smith apples into bitty pieces and added that and one chopped white onion to the sausage, covered the pan to keep all that good vegetable sweat in, and cooked that on low for 10 or 15 minutes until the onions were translucent. In a big ole mixing bowl I whisked together 2 cups of milk and 4 eggs, grated some cheddar cheese in there, and salted and peppered the wet ingredients. Carefully, with your serated knife, cube the stale bread into pieces about an inch to half inch square. With this bread, I found it was easier to slice the bread a half inch thick and just rip the slices in to little pieces. There's no need to make this part pretty or uniform. Throw your bread cubes into the wet ingredients, add your sausage mixture to the bowl and stir until everything is wet. I added some extra milk and one or two more eggs during this step, because you want all the bread to be moist. Let the mixture sit for at least 10 minutes, and pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees.

Spray a 9x12 baking dish with Pam and dump in your yummy soggy concoction. Now is the fun part: I grated three different kinds of cheese on top. For some reason, I had a ton of cheese in the fridge last week, so I just went nuts. Cheddar, mozerella, and parmesan, all yummy and sprinkled on top of the pudding like a generous coat of freshly fallen snow. Cook on the center rack for 45 or 60 minutes until your pudding is fluffy and set and the cheese is bubbly and browned. Remove the pudding from the oven and let it rest for 15 minutes before serving.

I ate this plain for dinner the night I made it, but when I packed it in tuppers for lunch on the subsequent days, I put a good sized square of pudding and then stuffed the rest of the space with fresh spinach. Two minutes in the microwave to warm up the pudding is the exact right time to steam the spinach and get some extra iron and vitamins into your meal. Obviously, Cody's lunch portions did not include the extra vegetation, but he concurred that it was especially delicious the next day.

Deviled Eggs - (I just found out that another name for Deviled Eggs is Eggs Mimosa. I wish I would have been aware of that fact earlier so I could have been calling them that all along.)

If you would like to make your friends love you, I recommend bringing these to a barbecue, party or gathering of any sort. Peoples' responses will help you differentiate between the awesome people you like and the dogmatic vegan types. Just kidding. Sort of.

Boil six (or more!) eggs. My procedure for this is to place the eggs in the bottom of a pot, cover them with cold water, and heat the water on high until it boils. Once the water is boiling, wait 6-8 minutes, remove from heat and stop the eggs from cooking further by putting them in cold water. What I usually do is pour as much of the boiling water as I can out into the sink and run cold water into the pot. Let the eggs cool as much as you can. Ideally, you'd let them rest for half hour or so, but the time will obviously be dictated by whether or not you've planned ahead and if you were supposed to be at your barbecue 45 minutes ago.

Once the eggs are cool (enough), shell them, slice in half lengthwise and dump the yolks into a mixing bowl. Mix the yolks with a few tablespoons of mayonnaise, some mustard, a teaspoon or two of white vinegar, salt, pepper, paprika, and about a tablespoon of sugar per six eggs. Dude, the sugar is the secret in the recipe, it makes these eggs magical. You want this mixture to have the consistency of toothpaste, so add the wetter ingredients slowly and sparingly until you figure out what you're dealing with. Taste and adjust seasoning.

At this point, you can spoon the filling into your egg white cups with a little spatula and a spoon. Or, if you are too much of an over-achiever for your own good, as I tend to be, you can transfer the mixture to a pastry bag fitted with a large star shaped tip. Pipe the filling into your egg cups in a circular motion, arrange prettily and give the whole plate a sprinkle of paprika. Practice smiling graciously for when people tell that they have determined that you that you are a wizard disguised as a regular person for crafting these eggs.

Last week, because I am possibly a creep who reads too many blogs, I made a recipe from Emily Gould's "famous secret blog" Heartbreak Soup. (I'm not going to get into it, because that's weird, but Team Emily, duh.) I know that the saga is over-exposed and that she got a lot of flack for the extremely long and confessional story she wrote for The New York Times magazine, but I thought it was fascinating and well crafted. Also, I adore a good overwrought food metaphor, and girlfriend is full of them. I deeply understand the impulse to connect what you eat and what you feel in a personal and convoluted way, because it appeals to my passive aggressive desire to communicate in symbolism rather than words. I also like talking about cooking in a way that is experiential and non-technical, because that is how I operate in the kitchen.

I followed Emily's recipe for chicken soup pretty closely, whole bird and all, except I went running while the delicious ginger broth was simmering instead of doing my laundry. Also, I subbed out some vegetables and added fresh carrots and celery and noodles to the strained broth before shredding and reincorporating the chicken meat. I added so much stuff during that last step that by the end the soup was so thick that I couldn't effectively skim the frothy fat off the top, which made delicious soup, because, man, there was a lot of olive oil in there. I loved the ginger in the broth and I made the soup Tuesday night and ate the very last of it for dinner on Friday, which was noteworthy because I hardly ever like a soup recipe so much that Cody and I don't need to freeze at least a few tuppers of it for later.

Chicken soup last week seemed frivolous and wasted on the healthy by this recent Monday night, however, when I truly was deathly ill with something evil tight in my sinuses and rough in the back of my throat. I reprised the chicken base of this soup to make myself some comfort food, Avgolemeno soup. Too sick to feel like stopping at the grocery store on the way home from work, I just used frozen chicken breasts. I didn't even defrost the chicken before browning it in a little olive oil and five cloves of garlic, and then dumping in four carrots, half a bunch of wilted celery, a chopped shallot, a quarter of a red onion, and two bouillon cubes, covering everything in water and letting the mixture simmer for an hour while slumping on the couch and watching my DVRed episodes of "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?" and sending Cody out for a lemon for the next step of the soup. Think about how this television show would be much cooler if they actually sang more than one Sound of Music song per episode.

After your mixture on the stove is brothy, 1-3 hours, remove the chicken and strain out the vegetables. Say thank you to the vegetables because you are sick and talking to inanimate objects, and put them in your yard waste bucket. Return the broth to your stove and turn the heat to medium high. Add 1 cup rice. While the rice is cooking, shred the chicken breasts with your hands into little bite sized pieces. Juice one lemon into a medium sized mixing bowl and use the microplane grater gifted to you by your best friend to grate a few teaspoons of zest into the lemon juice. Whisk four eggs and a teaspoon of flour into the lemon juice until everything is frothy. Return the chicken to the broth and wait for the rice to soften(approximately 15 minutes). While you are waiting for the rice to be ready, you can dramatically fling yourself onto the couch or the floor to make a point about how sickly you are feeling, because now Cody is back from the store and ready to be impressed by the severity of your discomfort. You can also adjust the seasoning of the broth with salt and pepper.

Next is the tricky part: temper the egg mixture. Scoop a cup of simmering broth out of your soup pot with a measuring cup and pour very slowly it into the egg bowl while quickly whisking with your other hand. This warms up the eggs so that they will not scramble when introduced to the hot broth. Take your whisk and the tempered eggs and pour that mixture slowly into your broth on the stove, whisking the soup in the big pot. At this point, the soup will turn from a brothy color to an opaque creamy white. Continue to stir the soup with your whisk for three to four minutes while everything gets thick and yummy. It is not necessary to bring the soup to a boil.

Once your soup is done you can serve in a big bowl with a piece of toast. I also recommend watching all those episodes of Battlestar Galactica that you've been missing because you've been out town every weekend for the past month, which is probably the reason you're exhausted and got sick in the first place. If you're lucky, when your boyfriend went to buy the lemon for the soup, he will have also bought two single serving pieces of red velvet cake, which is the perfect dessert to almost any meal, but especially Avgolememo Soup.

After all this is consumed, take a big glug of NyQuil. Be sure to put the extra soup in the fridge before the NyQuil step, because I'm pretty sure that what the apothecary gave Juliet was actually NyQuil, and you will undoubtedly pass out approximately 34 seconds after the sweet potion passes your lips.

Two Springtime CakesMegan called me at 4pm yesterday inviting me to a six o'clock barbecue at Seth's house, giving me my choice of salads, drinks or desserts to bring and share. I thought about throwing together strawberry shortcake, but had used all the rest of my strawberries on Cheerios eaten on the sun dappled patio that morning. Pie was also briefly entertained, but would have required a trip to the grocery store. My pantry already had all the ingredients for this Velvet Spice Cake from The Joy of Cooking, even the cup of plain yogurt and cream cheese for the frosting. I recommend this recipe. It is very moist and fluffy, though I might double up on the spices next time. It was quite mild and with thick cream cheese frosting (my own improvised recipe) so mellow that you could barely discern hints of the cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg.

I decorated the cake with icing tips #67 for the ruffled leaves and #107 for the cranberry colored drop flowers. I brought the big cake to the barbecue with me, barely two hours later, and delivered the smaller bundt to my grandmother on the way home. I made one extra little bundt cake for my lunch today which was not frosted so prettily, but tasted delicious when I ate it out of tupperware just an hour ago.

After at least a year of admiring it in bookstores, Cody purchased the America's Test Kitchen Cookbook a few weeks ago. I think it illustrates some important differences in us that Cody's idea of the perfect cookbook is one that provides scientifically tested "best of breed" recipes, whereas I am mostly seeking the cookbook that has the recipes that taste just like the food my mother and grandmothers cook. Nevertheless, Cody's purchase inspired him to resolve to cook one new meal every week. He got off to a great start this week by cooking delicious dinners two nights in a row. Which leads me to. . .

Meals my boyfriend cooked for me this week:

1. Parmesan Encrusted Chicken Breasts - America's Test Kitchen Cookbook
This recipe required Cody to pound chicken breasts to 1/2 thick and coat them in flour, egg whites and thickly grated Parmesan cheese before pan frying them briefly and finishing the baking in the oven. The chicken turned out moist and tender, with a crunchy savory coating. The reheated extra breast I ate for lunch the next day was less crispy, but equally delicious. In the future, I would reheat the chicken in the oven rather than the microwave, if given the option.

2. Boeuf Bourgondien - The Joy of Cooking
Cody swore he saw a recipe with photos of this dish in the America's Test Kitchen cookbook, but when it came time to find the recipe to write up his shopping list, it was definitely not in there. I wonder if he dreamed of it. Sometimes I make up recipes in my dreams, like last week when I dreamt of creating a lasagna with lots of spinach and shredded chicken. Luckily, The Joy of Cooking had a detailed and delicious looking Beef Burgundy recipe. We ate this over egg noodles, which was perfect. We both agreed that the next time we make this recipe we will use way more carrots and other vegetables.

Greek Stuffed Tomatoes and Peppers
Cribbed and adapted from both my grandmother and mother's recipes

3 large tomatoes
3 bell peppers
1 pound ground beef or turkey
1 yellow onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 tsp dill
Olive oil (honestly, who measures that when they're cooking)
1 cup rice
4 potatoes, peeled and sliced into wedges
Salt and pepper to taste

In a large saucepan, saute the the onion and garlic with as much delicious olive oil as you can pour into the pan without feeling fat (a tablespoon or two). Once the onions become translucent, add your ground meat. While meat is browning, slice the lids off your tomatoes and hollow them out. Dump tomato guts into the browning mixture. Once all the meat is cooked, season with salt, pepper and dill and add 1 cup of rice and a cup or two of water (the tomatoes will have added a good amount of moisture to the mixture, so your rice ratio will be slightly different than usual). Cover and wait for your rice to become almost soft. At this point, preheat the oven to 350 degrees and prepare a 9 by 13 baking dish by sloshing a little bit of olive oil in the dish. Slice the lids of your bell peppers and remove the seeds. Arrange your hollow tomatoes and peppers in the dish and set your potato wedges seasoned with salt and pepper around them. When the rice is almost tender, spoon the mixture into the prepared vegetables until they are full. Replace the vegetables lids, mostly because it is cute. Place the dish in your preheated oven and bake for one hour, or until the potatoes are golden brown.

If you have leftover filling, you can add a little more water and cook until the rice is completely soft. This filling is delicious and can be served on the side or saved for a separate meal.

Last night I made this dish for Cody and I, and I also prepped a soup for the crock pot. I'm making a black bean soup that I found the recipe for in the comments section of one of Heather Havrilesky's articles on Salon. I'm making the soup mostly because it looks delicious but a little bit because I think Heather is brilliant and an excellent writer and I accept most of her opinions in her weekly TV column as gospel. Yes, I understand that she didn't personally vouch for this recipe dumped in her comments section, but somehow I irrationally find it reputable by proximity. I'll let you know how that works out for me.

Black Eyed Pea Salsa

2 15 oz cans Black Eyed Peas, drained and rinsed
1 15 oz can Black Beans, drained and rinsed
One half red bell pepper diced
One jalepeno pepper, seeds removed, diced
Small bunch green onions, thinly sliced
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
3 tablespoons cider vinegar
Salt and pepper to taste

Combine ingredients in large bowl, stir and mash some of the beans coarsely with a fork. This recipe is especially good if you can make it in advance and let the mixture meld overnight. Serve with tortilla chips. Cody likes to make nachos with the leftovers.

Chunky Guacamole

5 large ripe avacados
3 roma tomatoes
1/2 small red onion
1 jalepeno pepper, seeds removed
1/2 large bell pepper, whatever color is on sale at the store
5 cloves garlic
1 lime
2 tablespoons olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

Slice roma tomatoes in half, scoop out the seeds and discard. Coarsely chop tomatoes, onion, jalepeno and bell pepper into a large bowl. Add minced garlic. Squeeze juice of lime over ingredients, add avocado and mash with fork. Continue to mash / stir and add olive oil, salt and pepper. Serve with anything at all, because seriously, this guacamole is that good.