Weekly Gourmet

Today is Friday. How many muffins are TOO MANY muffins to eat in one morning? Well let's see, considering the amount of batter I licked out of the bowl, like a dog, and the number of muffins I "taste-tested" before serving them to my very worldly and discerning guests of my preschooler, and my parents...I'm gonna go with "However many I ate." My worldly, discerning preschooler is a lover of lemon blueberry anything, so even though it's a February cold snap, I made him lemon blueberry muffins in honor of...wait for it...his half birthday. Because we celebrate whatever over here. Half birthdays included. This week I almost bought my kids smoothies because they got haircuts. Perhaps I go too far with the sugar celebrations of nothing, but a half birthday is like a real thing. He's four and-a-half, and that's the last of the baby ages ever! : ( These muffins were moist and sour and lip-smackin' sweet. But not sweet enough for Luca, who threw hims...

Today is Friday! TGIFF if you know what I mean. Today I needed Friday equally as much as I needed chocolate. The food gods were smiling down on me this morning with this recipe from epicurious.com (isn't Epicurious the Greek god of food or something?). Three Ingredient Nutella Brownies SOUND like someone is punking us but they are totally real and they are glorious! Fun fact about Nutella: my daughter used to be allergic to hazelnuts, and a medical professional SAID we (she) HAD to eat Nutella (hazelnuts) a few times a week to help her grow out of her allergy. We followed those doctor's orders like he was curing her of leprosy. And we prevailed! She can eat hazelnuts now! See what a good mom I am! Also I have gone on an outing to downtown Chicago just to go to the Nutella Cafe. "Pride" isn't the word I would use exactly- unless that's what you were thinking because then I would. Dedication. Determination. Longing. All work. Decadent. Easy. Stackable. Thre...

Today is Friday. Today I wanted to go a little healthier with my baking. I noticed my good little eaters started down a slippery slope of eating their healthies and then enjoying a treat, and snowballed into sugar-crazed Pavlovian puppies "I'm-done-eating-what's-my-treat?" Salmon, demolished. "Ice cream?" Garbanzo beans gone, "How many Oreos can I have?" "I finished my frozen waffle, do I get candy?" Eat --> Treat. Food --> Dessert. Thank goodness this isn't a parenting blog!   Per my friend's Katie's request, I went with a banana bread recipe. Katie's kids eat really healthily- she's probably going to add spinach to this. Actually, you could probably add 2 cups of chopped spinach and it wouldn't change the flavor much. Tell me if you do that. Anyways, hopefully a wholesome, fruity bread will help take the edge off as I wean them from the hard stuff. This is meant to be a lighter version of banana bread for a...

Today is Friday! In an effort to be more British, I decided to bake scones today. The truth is, I'm trying to get into Bridgerton, really I am. But I feel weird about myself because it just isn't steamy ENOUGH for me. That girl just needs a tan and a taco. Probably these will help (her and me).  Burnt the first batch. Bloody 'ell! Contemplated my life choices while making a second batch. Do I have to tell you people everything I do in the kitchen?   Elizabeth's Cherry Almond Scones  Yield: 16 scones  Prep Time: 10 minutes Freeze Time: 30 minutes Bake Time: 18 minutes Total Time: 1 hour (with 2 minutes to spare)  My friend Amy says I need more beautiful pictures of my ingredients with houseplants in the background. So, here are all my beautiful ingredients except the almond extract because she's just not photogenic like that exotic Mexican Vanilla bottle. I feel her pain. Also I am determined to grow a fiddle leaf fig tree from a single leaf and this is t...

  Today is Friday. Liz doesn’t cook on Fridays. However, it has become my favorite day to bake. I love nothing more than being alone, in a sunny kitchen, with some music playing or maybe a baking show on TV and baking the afternoon away. It also comes in handy to have sweets on hand over the weekend, when we stop caring about being healthy and make up for all the calories that we denied ourselves during the week. I’m also ready with treats if we hang out with friends or family. To that end, we were invited over to some friends’ house for pizza tonight. When I asked what dessert I could bring I got a very specific answer of “chocolate chip cookies”. Hey now, I can do better than that for the first time I hang out with people! I just couldn’t bring myself to make such a plain treat. They must not know I am a professional blogger (ha). I decided to make “monster cookies” which are basically ramped up chocolate chip cookies. Or maybe indecisive cookies. They usually have peanut but...