The World's Most Perfect Sandwich

Toasted whole wheat bread, with generous amounts of whole grain mustard (on both slices).
Avocado--just a bit--so soft that it spreads onto the bread like butter.
Oven roasted turkey breast (Applegate Farms--no nitrates here)
Heirloom tomato, sliced thinly
Thin slices of mango
Sprouts--these are broccoli and clover
Spinach leaves

This is based on a sandwich I had last August while I was on vacation in Phoenix--the mango is so sweet against the tang of the mustard, and the avocado is so creamy and indulgent. I had the sandwich that day, and loved it so; I've been making my own version of it at home ever since. I am convinced that this is the world's most perfect sandwich (well, for me at least).

This (and a salad) was my lunch yesterday, during my morning and early afternoon of work at home. Sometimes, I crave the most simple of meals. In my view, one of the most satisfying meals is a combination of two or more of the following: soup, salad, sandwich. A tasty and filling lunch, and a nice break from the stresses of the day. Now, back to work for this morning...dreaming of lunch later in the day.

Jim Stayed Home from Work Today So I Made Him Breakfast

He stayed home today for no reason other than not wanting to go to work and to keep me semi-company as I work at home today. We see a lot less of each other lately, now that I work nights and somehow ended up with three jobs (more on that in a later post, perhaps). He mentioned late last week that he was contemplating a three day weekend; I taunted him all weekend that he would end up staying home because “the seed” had been planted in his head (speaking for myself, if I even consider calling in “sick”, that’s usually the end of it). I wanted to celebrate this three-day weekend by making him a nice breakfast before I began my work for the day (and to make up for basically challenging him to stay home—and winning). Also, I had buttermilk and turkey sausage that I wanted to use up…and a very ripe banana that I could toss in as well. So, when he came downstairs this morning I offered to make him buttermilk pancakes and maple turkey sausage. I got no arguments.

As I raided the cabinets for ingredients, the original “buttermilk pancakes” became whole-wheat banana pecan buttermilk pancakes. The use of whole wheat is pretty predictable for me; I’ll only use AP flour when it’s completely vital to the texture of the final product, when I’m desperate because I ran out of whole-wheat flour, or when I’m baking for a crowd who may not delight in the more healthful sweets that I enjoy the most. In my whole-wheat baking experience, I’ve found that whole-wheat pastry flour has a fine enough texture that it can be totally substituted for AP flour without worry in almost any application. Not so for regular stone ground whole wheat flour, however, which is usually made from hard red winter wheat rather than the white winter wheat that the WW pastry flour is made from (to my understanding, from my as-yet limited internet research and general reading). So, in creating the flour mixture for these pancakes I opted for two-thirds WW pastry flour and one-third stone ground whole wheat flour; I wanted the pancakes to have the hearty flavor of whole wheat but not the leaden texture that would likely result from the use of all stone ground WW flour.

Breakfast came together very quickly—mix the dry ingredients, mix the wet ingredients separately, combine and then begin pancake prep while the sausages cook in a skillet. Unfortunately, I do not own a griddle (one thing on the not-so-short list of kitchen items I’d love to obtain). So, the pancakes were cooked in pairs in my 10-inch omelet pan; the early finishers sat on a stoneware plate in a 200-degree oven until pancake cooking was complete.

I nibbled on a pancake with my usual custard cup of mango on the side, while Jim enjoyed a heaping plate of pancakes, coated generously in maple syrup (see previous posts for mentions of his maple-syrup-lust) and maple turkey sausage on the side. After receiving the verdict on my pancake experiment (good reviews, that’s a relief), I trudged downstairs to begin my work for the day and left him to enjoy the morning paper while he finished his breakfast. As I worked, I eventually heard the pleasant sound of the pans being washed in the sink. Thanks for cleaning up, babe:)

Whole Wheat Banana Pecan Pancakes
1 cup of whole-wheat pastry flour
½ cup of stone ground whole wheat flour
1 ½ t baking powder
½ t baking soda
½ t salt
2 ½ T granulated sugar
½ t ground cinnamon
grated fresh nutmeg to taste
1 egg
1 egg white
1 ½ c non-fat buttermilk
1 T vanilla extract
1 very ripe banana, cut into small pieces
¼ chopped pecans

Mix the dry ingredients, up to the nutmeg in a large bowl. In a smaller bowl, whisk the eggs, buttermilk and vanilla until combined. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix until just combined. Fold in the banana and pecans. If you’re fortunate enough to have a griddle, use it; otherwise, use a poor-man’s griddle like I did—the largest, flattest pan you own. Ladle about ½ to ¾ of a cup of batter at a time, cooking until they appear set around the edges and bubbles begin to emerge at the top. Flip and finish cooking. Keep the first batches warm in a low oven (200 degrees) until ready to eat. Dress them (or not, as I did) as you wish for serving.

Christmas in July

I hate to waste food. Since I’m somewhat of a cooking fanatic, we spend a ton of money each month on groceries (really more than I like to face up to, and I track the grocery expenditures carefully in Excel—my secret-software best friend—so I know what the exact damage is, ouch). So I pounce on any opportunity to freeze and save leftovers for future use—sometimes being a little ambitious about the likelihood that we’ll whip out a given frozen leftover in the future. (A prime example: a wheat berry stuffing that we had with chicken once; it was tasty at the time and we had a ton it leftover so I froze it, but chances are that if I’m stuffing a chicken in the future I’ll probably opt for a fresh stuffing). I made a big batch of gingerbread cookie dough during the last holiday season; this recipe makes four big balls of dough, each of which probably makes 30 to 40 cookies. I rolled and cut gingerbread shapes (not all men; sorry, guys) out of the first two balls, but got fatigued and decided to cut my cookie making short and freeze the remaining dough (cooking nut that I am, chances are—particularly during the holidays—that this cookie making probably followed 10 to 12 hours of standing in the kitchen that day making various creations; even I get tired—sometimes). So I froze the two remaining balls of dough and they’ve now been occupying space in our ridiculously cramped upstairs freezer for about six months. These could be frozen with confidence that they’d be revisited someday—we might not be salivating over leftover wheat berry stuffing, but there’s a definite appeal to having cookie dough at the ready any time.

Six months is, I think, about as long as you probably want to keep frozen cookie dough around before it’s quality and safety begins to become questionable. Knowing that the dough is in there—and that I need to use it soon—I’ve been toying with the idea of rolling out the dough to use it as a crust for a tart or pie for a few weeks. I had not settled on the flavor of the filling yet (I had a few general ideas floating around my head), but I had finally settled on making a tart. The problem with this was that I do not own a tart pan…but I do have a ton of leftover Williams-Sonoma gift cards (a great gift for a cook—keep ‘em coming guys), and I’ve eyed their tart pans before. So, on Friday evening—after my last full day of office work (as an update: I quit my job, got a job in the bakery counter at an-as yet to be named-national grocery store chain that prides itself on the sale of organic and other high-quality goods), I stopped by WS (ok—the abbreviation here—I’m not a sick and disgusting yuppie, I swear. I am, however, a really lazy typist) to obtain a tart pan (9.5 inches, nonstick). Now I’ve got the equipment, and I just need to formulate an idea.

Many of my recipe ideas come to me during my daily workout. The ultimate use for this gingerbread dough was no exception. On Saturday morning, on the Nordic Track, I was pondering the potential filling for my tart-creation. I was thinking about a vanilla pudding/custard filling (light, of course—any way I can do it, knowing me), perhaps with some fruit on top. The problem there was that I would want to use actual vanilla beans for maximum effect, but didn’t really want to go out that day and spend $7-10 on a jar of vanilla beans (yes, they’re expensive and it’s the end of the month and I can see that I’ve far exceeded my targeted grocery spending). Ok, axe the vanilla custard. Perhaps some sort of cheesecake-type filling…but what flavor? I pondered this for a bit and suddenly a thought came to me…Gingerbread Latte. Yeah, coffee and gingerbread go pretty well together, as a certain coffee chain has shown us. I’ll make a coffee flavored cheesecake-type filling (light, of course), with a tad of whipped cream on top, and call it a Gingerbread Latte Tart.

The gingerbread dough was made according to a recipe from Eating Well magazine; it is entirely whole wheat (I differed from the recipe on that point, because they call for some AP flour) and contains butter in a more reasonable proportion than most cookies. So while the crust for the tart would be composed of cookie dough, this is a less-unhealthy cookie dough than most. I won’t give the recipe here, but will direct any interested parties to the Eating Well website, where the recipe is posted (and feel free to use all whole-wheat pastry flour in place of the whole wheat + AP flour—works fine, tastes great).

I took the cookie dough out of the freezer on Friday night, after I had secured the tart pan, and allowed it to thaw in the refrigerator until the next day. On Saturday evening, before dinner, I rolled the dough out to about a quarter inch thickness and did my best job at getting the rolled dough into the tart pan in one piece. Of course, it ripped in several spots. This was an easy fix, however, because in the process of pressing the dough into the tart pan, I was able to mend any tears that had occurred. After pressing the dough into the bottom and up the sides of the pan, I lightly pricked the dough with a fork in many places (to create holes for air to escape, thereby preventing the dough from rising too much and leaving room for filling). I set the pan on a cookie sheet (for easy deposit and removal from the oven, since the pan has a removable bottom) and baked the crust at 350 degrees for about 10 to 12 minutes. I removed the crust from the oven and observed that it had puffed up more than I had wanted. To deflate the crust, I again poked it lightly with a fork in several places; the crust collapsed to an acceptable height and I allowed it to cool on top of the oven while I prepared the filling.

I have made a ton of cheesecakes over the years, so the filling was very familiar territory. I didn’t want to have to bake it for long (I wasn’t sure how much additional baking the cookie crust could take before beginning to burn), so I wanted a less loose mixture than my typical cheesecake formulation. The problem caused by my cheesecake familiarity is that I basically combined a bunch of ingredients by sight, with little or no measuring, until the mixture looked and tasted about right…so there’s no real “recipe” to impart to you. But, I’ll try to summarize and estimate in order to provide some kind of idea of what the mixture was composed of (and maybe someday make it again and actually measure this time). I softened about 12 ounces of light cream cheese while the crust baked; when it was softened adequately, I added it to my stand mixer and mixed on medium-low speed to further soften it and prepare it for the addition of sugar. I then added about ¼ c plus 2 T of white sugar and maybe about 1 T of brown sugar (by sight and taste; no measurements here) and mixed well. After this was well incorporated, I added one egg and one extra egg white and mixed until the new addition was integrated into the mixture. After eggs are added to the cheesecake mixture, the more liquidy ingredients can be introduced, so I next added about 2 T of cold brewed coffee, 2 T of 1% milk, a couple spoonfuls of light sour cream and 1 ½ T of instant espresso powder. I also added about 1 T of bourbon, because there are few things that won’t benefit from the addition of a little liquor (especially cheesecake; I routinely add rum to my vanilla cheesecake–it gives it that extra little “something”). I mixed on low speed until these ingredients were fully mixed-in, tasted the mixture for flavor (I had initially added less espresso powder and through tasting got up to the final amount quoted above—needs more coffee!!). I then poured the batter into the pre-baked tart shell and put it in a 325-degree oven. I think that it took about 20 to 30 minutes to reach the proper temperature in the center of the cheesecake mixture (160 degrees—to make sure those eggs are cooked; a digital instant read thermometer is a cook’ best friend). I removed it from the oven and allowed it to cool on the countertop until it reached room temperature. Once this state was achieved, it traveled to the refrigerator to set and chill. After a long period of chilling, I piped some freshly whipped cream on top (sparingly, around the edges, and a dot in the center to cover up the hole where my instant read thermometer was inserted). It surely looked good enough to eat.

We tasted some after dinner and the review was positive; the coffee flavor of the cheesecake complimented the gingerbread well. This made a 9.5-inch tart and there are only two of us, so leftovers remained in the fridge for a few days (which isn’t too bad, because cheesecake actually gets better when given a few days to rest). The crust softened a bit after a couple of days in the fridge, which I was told was a positive development because the initial crunch of the crust made the tart more difficult to eat. So: overall, this attempt at eliminating food waste was a success; I managed to create a new dish from leftover frozen cookie dough that I will most likely endeavor to make again. I’m filled with glee and a bit of shy pride for my creation. It’s like Christmas in July.

How “the cake” was made

A couple of weeks before his birthday party, I started pumping Jim for info on what type of cake he would like for the occasion. His usual favorite cake is a chocolate cake with white frosting. But I told him to use his imagination in formulating this request—do you want a mousse filling, for example, or a special flavored cake or frosting? (I had made a white cake with a raspberry mousse filling and whipped cream frosting for my sister’s 30th in Fall 2004, so I felt up to the task). Being a maple nut, he requested on “something maple”; we settled on a chocolate cake with a maple frosting. We agreed that the cake would be the low-fat chocolate cake that I usually make for us (which is shockingly moist and rich for its lack of butter and oil) and a full-fat frosting (it is a celebration, right? Plus, you’ve got to please the “crowd”). I had never made a maple frosting before—so let the research begin.

At first inspection, it seemed as though I would be adding maple flavor (presumably in the form of maple syrup—Jim’s favorite) to a basic vanilla frosting. The two obvious choices of base-frostings to which I could add the flavor were cream cheese frosting and a buttercream. Putting my dictatorial kitchen nature aside, it being Jim’s birthday and his choice, I offered the two alternatives: Maple Cream Cheese frosting or Maple Buttercream. Butter? Cream? Buttercream was the fast answer. Jim has probably had plenty cream cheese frosting over time, and wasn’t terribly intrigued at that suggestion anyway: I make cream cheese frosting frequently, just for kicks—it’s my guilty pleasure when I’m feeling very, very bad. No cake necessary; just Tupperware to store it in and lots of clean spoons for snacking. Having powdered sugar and cream cheese in the house at the same time is very dangerous for me—I swear the stuff just makes itself.

Anyhow…the frosting was chosen. Not only had I never made a maple frosting before, I had also never made a buttercream. Before I had the chance to perform any research, I had assumed that buttercream frosting would consist of a ton of butter and a ton of powdered sugar, with maple syrup added as a flavoring. I was wrong; this is what constitutes an “American” buttercream, but your classic bakery butter cream is far different. My research uncovered the fact that classic buttercream is actually a combination of egg yolks, hot sugar syrup and a ton of butter. Great. When we went to Costco, I bought was must have been a 10 pound bag of powdered sugar, under the assumption that half of it would be used in the frosting; I guess not. (As a side note, I did break into that bag of powdered sugar soon after to make…cream cheese frosting. But I didn’t stop there—I made peanut butter chocolate cream cheese frosting. No cake, just frosting. Finger lickin’ good.).

As an aside: I realize that recently, this blog is not sounding much like the “healthy” home chef but more like the hedonist home chef. Buttercream is an exception, not the rule; and cream cheese frosting is a guilty indulgence that I try not to fall to, but sometimes do. Our diet does not typically consist of these things—once “party” season is over and we get back to everyday cooking, the health factor of these entries is likely to improve. Now back to frosting…

There are other variations of buttercreams, some of which use egg whites, some of which use yolks only, and some of which require the separate preparation and subsequent combination of a Crème Anglaise and an Italian Meringue. I researched buttercream frosting for about a week and consulted probably 20 to 30 recipes in that time, before finally settling on the Neoclassic Maple Buttercream from Rose Levy-Barenbaum’s The Cake Bible. This is a French style Buttercream, meaning that it’s basic constituents are beaten egg yolks, with a hot sugar syrup beaten in and a ton of butter. Typically, the creation of the hot sugar syrup requires the use of a candy thermometer, because you want the sugar to reach the soft ball stage, but not to go beyond this point (which is a much easier call to make if you use a candy thermometer—the other alternative is taking a small amount of the syrup, dropping it in cold water and observing its behavior; a little too much like chem-lab for me). The beauty of this “Neoclassic” buttercream is that it starts off with syrup (the non-maple version uses corn syrup), which contains enough water so as to prevent its temperature from going above 238 degrees (the soft ball stage temperature). So, I didn’t need to run out and buy a candy thermometer or to learn how to use it. Whew, dodged that bullet.

I arrived home from work on Friday night (the party was the next day), and began the frosting preparation. You’ll notice from the photos that we were sharing some fine beers as I did my preparations. I tried to drink slowly, so as not to become too impaired. But, Jim and I often joke that I must be talented in the kitchen because cooking is just about the only thing that I can do just as well drunk as sober (knife usage aside). That being said…onto the frosting:

To start, I took a ton of butter out of the refrigerator to come to room temperature. Cold butter added to the egg and sugar base would cause butter-lumps in the frosting, which are certainly not an attractive feature. The butter would be added last, but had to be above 65 degrees when it was used to avoid this problem. It would take a while to achieve this temperature—even with it cut into small pieces—since the butter had just emerged from the refrigerator. You can see below the continuous butter temperature monitoring; I didn’t want to have the frosting base ready to accept the butter until the butter was warm enough to be used. So the full start of the frosting preparation hinged on the very slow temperature increase of a pound and a half of butter, cut into tiny bits (yes, a pound and a half; when Jim saw it, he exclaimed, “wow, that’s a lot of butter—I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much butter in one place).

Not there yet.

Still not there.

Dear god, how long does it take to soften butter?

Damn it, just a few more measly degrees to go.

Once the butter was reaching the goal-temperature, the preparation of the frosting base began. The frosting base would consist of beaten egg yolks, with a hot sugar syrup beaten in. Since the sugar syrup would be hot and ready for immediate usage once it was prepared, I began by beating the egg yolks (9 of them; yes, 9) until they were pale in color. After this was complete, they were ready to receive their syrup.

The syrup: First, I greased a measuring cup; the hot sugar syrup would be poured into this cup once it reached the proper temperature and the grease would ensure a clean release as the sugar syrup was poured into the eggs. I combined sugar and maple syrup in a saucepan, and stirred until the sugar dissolved and the mixture came to a rolling boil. As soon as this boil was achieved, the mixture was pulled and poured into the greased measuring cup.

I then gradually beat the hot syrup into the egg yolks in a steady stream, using caution not to allow the syrup to contact the beaters, and instead to go directly into the eggs. If the hot syrup contacted the beaters and got flung around the sides of the bowl, it would harden immediately and we’d have crunchy bits in our frosting (yet another unappealing feature I’d like to avoid). Once the syrup was added, the beating continued (and continued, and continued, ugh.) until the mixture was cool again. Once the egg-sugar mixture was cool, the butter could be added. I added the butter, one tiny piece at a time, as I beat the mixture. It took a long time to actually begin to look like frosting; I probably had about one-sixth of the butter left to use when the mixture finally stopped looking ultra-loose and began to take on the texture of a frosting. I was relieved when that finally occurred. Finally, the last of butter was added and the frosting was complete. Challenge met.

Now for all of that butter. Just look at that pile of butter.

Thank heavens--it finally resembles frosting.

Next, the cake assembly. I had prepared the cake layers the previous weekend and had frozen them, wrapped in plastic wrap and stored in heavy-duty freezer bags. The cake is based on a recipe from Eating Well magazine, called “Died and Went to Heaven Chocolate Cake”; for a low-fat cake, it is truly amazing. When I make it for us, I even substitute all whole-wheat pastry flour for the AP flour they call for, and the texture is always moist and lush and the taste chocolaty and rich (they have the recipe on their website: check it out, I beg you). I had taken the layers out that morning to thaw at room temperature so they’d be ready for evening usage. I unwrapped them, and began to build and frost the cake. Cake frosting is not too complicated; probably the only lesser known technique is the use of the “crumb coat”. A thin layer of frosting is applied to the entire cake, to seal in errant crumbs and the final, full layer of frosting is added on top of the crumb coat. After the full frosting layer was applied to the cake, out came the pastry bag for decoration. I’m capable enough with a pastry bag, but I haven’t practiced enough to do more fancy decorations like shells and flowers. Some day, perhaps, but not tonight. I also prepared a simple colored powdered sugar frosting to be used to write the obligatory birthday message atop the final product.

Here come the layers.

Yes, there was a wardrobe change in there--my first shirt was toast by the time I finished the frosting.

Pre-pastry bag.

Mid-pastry bag.

Done.

And there it is, with my dumb smiling ass behind it. Mission accomplished. Now to prepare everything else for the party the next day…

Tuna Salad Nicoise

At the mention of an entrée salad for dinner, Jim’s eyes perk up. I find his funny, since I normally have to force a side-salad on him as an accompaniment to dinner (sometimes I let him get away with his lame excuse for not having one—“I probably shouldn’t; I had all that cheese before dinner and I’m kind of full”—but sometimes I insist). An entrée salad at home will usually involve a healthy dose of salad greens, with a greater variety of additional vegetable toppings than I typically add to side salads, some kind of hot meat or fish and a homemade salad dressing. The entrée salads that I’ve prepared in the past have been absolute hits, so the suggestion of a Tuna Salad Nicoise for Monday night was met with immediate agreement on his part. We had a fairly heavy weekend of food and drink, and a salad seemed like a cleansing option for the end of the weekend.

I’ll begin by saying that I don’t know what exactly constitutes a Tuna Salad Nicoise. (Nicoise, as Jim and I found out after Googling it on Sunday, means “as prepared in Nice, France”—he asked me, I didn’t know and Google, as always, provided a link to a quick answer). I’ve seen them on restaurant menus, in magazines and on cooking programs, and know that they will typically contain new potatoes, cooked green beans, nicoise olives and seared tuna (among other things) atop a bed of greens with some sort of vinaigrette dressing. So, that provided a starting point, at least…but I like to have fun with these entrée salads, so we’ll likely be adding much more than that.

Our salad would include the basics that I mentioned above: lightly steamed green beans (I like my veggies crunchy, so they still resemble vegetables), new potatoes seasoned with pepper and poached on the stovetop in vegetable broth, chopped nicoise olives (the Whole Foods olive bar is the best, bar none) and tuna coated with cracked pepper and seared rare. In addition to these components, I added the following:

• Chopped jarred roasted red peppers (I love these things—they make a great addition to just about anything; as long as you’re careful to buy them packed in water, not oil; and there’s little or no prep involved. Haddon House makes a great water-packed jarred roasted red pepper. When you pull them from the jar, you get a full red pepper—not pepper pieces as I’ve experienced with Cento and other brands.)
• Cremini mushrooms poached whole in vegetable broth and then sliced (we’ve really been enjoying hot mushrooms on salads recently—they’re so juicy and the hot mushrooms add so much to a salad otherwise composed of cold inputs
• Frozen artichoke hearts, defrosted and poached in vegetable broth (noticing a theme here? I used the same pan and the same medium to cook/heat all of the ingredients that required it; as one ingredient was done cooking it was put aside and the next was up for cooking—one pan, little clean up.)
• Caramelized red and Vidalia onions (see the Pizza entry for instructions on their preparation)
• A few chopped almonds, for texture contrast (and great flavor; almonds are just divine)
• The typical salad fixings assortment of diced cucumber, carrot and bell pepper (I keep a contained of pre-prepped salad fixings in the fridge at all times, so salad preparation is always fast and easy—so this was ready and waiting for me)

I had about three quarters of a pound of tuna medallions, which I coated with cracked pepper and seared in the same pan I used to heat all of the warm inputs listed above (wiped clean first, of course, because you wouldn’t get a searing with all that liquid in the pan—we weren’t going for steamed tuna tonight). We love our tuna rare, and that’s how most of it turned out. One of the pieces was a bit smaller and I should have pulled it sooner, so it would have been at our desired level of “doneness”. Oh, well; next time. Even not-so-rare tuna tastes good…

The salad dressing was a strawberry balsamic concoction. A few months ago we had some pears in the fridge that were nearing their end, so I prepared an entrée salad using grilled chicken, sliced pears, bleu cheese and walnuts, and topped with a strawberry dressing I threw together. The salad was good. The dressing was spectacular. For this salad, I tried to repeat that glory. I halved about 6 strawberries (I quartered the larger ones), and added these to my mini food processor with about 2 T of balsamic vinegar, a bunch of fresh thyme stripped from the stems, about 6 cloves of roasted garlic (I had popped a head in the oven earlier while I prepared other items; now it was out and cool enough to handle), about a quarter cup of orange juice, about 1 t of fennel seed and about a tablespoon of whole grain mustard. I blended these ingredients in the food processor until smooth, adding extra liquid and flavoring as needed until the dressing was just right. Presto: salad dressing. The mini food processor is a great item to have for these types of preparations; it’s small, easy to handle and easy to clean (easier than the gigantic Cuisinart, at least). I gave Jim an early taste, with my usual question put forth: “do you want this on your salad?” Affirmative.

We had some toasted bread with our salads, with a spread of goat cheese on top. Goat cheese has such a pleasant tang, and is naturally lower in fat and calories than most other cheeses. We use it often in grilled cheese sandwiches (I make grilled cheese sans butter—just a spray of olive oil; this is why I usually refer to them as “hot cheese sandwiches” at home, to avoid confusion), omelets, and even atop tacos, etc. I’ve actually just about replaced my cream cheese for toast with goat cheese; it spreads almost as well, has a ton more flavor and is a little less processed than cream cheese.

This was our Memorial Day meal, the last hoorah of a three-day weekend before the inevitable and painful return to work. At least this week is only four days long…that makes it a bit easier to stomach. Now we can spend these next four days dreaming of next weekend…

Ok, so this has nothing to do with cooking

But I just had to share...

J&L in San Francisco last weekend. The most beautiful city in the US. Ahhh. Thank you to the new Dr. Frome (Andrea) for giving us a fantastic excuse to visit your lovely city:))

Isn't this pretty?

Isn't it lovely? I generally try not to pat myself on the back (I generally think that humility is among the most important qualities one can strive to possess) but I just think it's beautiful and feel the need to share. This was Jim's 40th birthday cake (for the public party). It's a chocolate cake (our usual low-fat formula), with Maple Buttercream Frosting (per his request).

I am in the process of writing a more detailed entry on the preparation of the cake, but I had to put a "teaser" up in advance. Jim took a great bunch of pictures of the process, and I’m hoping it will be a fun and informative entry—once I manage to find the time to type it out.

It's amazing how little personal fulfillment I get in my job, where I spend most of my time, but looking at this cake fills me with a feeling of such accomplishment. Oh well, that's what spare time is for...more on the full process involved in the preparation of this cake to come shortly…