Current obsession

Seriously, where has 'Words with Friends' been hiding all my life?!

Love this game!

Picture test

OK, tomorrow is my first French Fridays with Dorie recipe and I am so excited! But, I have never posted a picture in a blog post, so I am going to do a practice one. Here is a great picture of the bucket from Tower Ladder Truck that I ride at work:

Yay, it worked!!! Awesome, I am now sorta confident in my ability to insert pics tomorrow!

Grocery Stores and other things

I heart the Giant by my house. It is super close and hardly ever crowded. Today was an interesting shopping day, found the yummy ingredients for this weeks FFwD recipe and stocked up on the usual stuff. What makes it interesting is answering the question, "But, why?" every 10 seconds. That is my son's favorite phrase. So, imagine walking down the aisle answering, "But, why?" to everything from the food on the shelves to what the intercom is saying to why the favorite Mickey doll can't be dragged on the floor... the store employees are very tolerant, because there is no such thing as a quiet grocery trip!

Apparently the local liquor store does not differentiate between Armagnac and other Cognac, the believe that they are one and the same. There was no Armagnac to be found for Friday's recipe, so I got a nice French Cognac and will hope for the best!

French Fridays with Dorie: Bubble Brioche

Yay, I joined the French Fridays with Dorie group!! I missed this weeks, too late to make the Brioche, but can't wait to make next weeks recipe!

Christmas presents

For Christmas I got 2 cookbooks, both by Dorie Greenspan, Around My French Table and Baking: From my house to yours. I made my first recipe yesterday, the chocolate chip cookies.... I made 2 different types, double chocolate with coconut and chocolate with caramel. The double chocolate are amazing, so rich and perfect! The chocolate chip with caramel are very tasty, but I kept the caramel pieces too big and they are a bit hard. Lessons for next time: keep caramel pieces small.

Anyway, I found a great online cooking group called French Fridays with Dorie that is cooking their way through Around My French Table, I am very excited about this!!

Happy New Year!!!

Happy New Year!! Well, it has been a crazy busy 2 months, between the holidays, trying to get the house ready to put on the market, and losing a full blown battle with a sidewalk (injuries: ankle sprain, scraped elbow and knee), I cannot believe that it is January already!

The holidays were wonderful, Christmas with a toddler is magical, everything was so exciting for him and us by extension. I worked on Christmas, but we had a big dinner at the fire station with everyone's family. It was a very nice day, lots of cooking. I made vanilla cupcakes with buttercream for Christmas Eve, New York style crumb cake for Christmas morning, and sweet potato casserole for dinner. Also helped a coworker make Salted Nutella Fudge (amazing!). Everything turned out awesome and we were all in a food coma before 1800!

Ughhh...

I am sick, thought at first I was just fighting a cold, now, starting to believe it might have morphed into a sinus infection. Ughhhh..... I can't taste or smell anything. Being sick sucks.