Brownie hangover

...it can happen. At least, I'm pretty sure. I made these dulce de leche brownies the other night and ate some last night, and I swear they ruined me. It took a LOT of very loud dance music to get me going this morning.

Normally, I like silence or quiet ambient rock in the morning. I realized desperate measures were in order when, in my zombie-trancelike state, I accidentally ate a brownie for breakfast. Love that Lady Gaga Pandora radio station.

They are amazing and I highly recommend making them. Next time, I'll be adding some not-melted chocolate chips to the mix, because I like brownies with chocolate chips. Adds nice texture.

On the other end of the food spectrum, my lettuce seeds are coming along nicely, despite the fact that there was SNOW in the forecast this week.I'm excited for fresh lettuce. Like most produce that's home grown, it's just a lot better than grocery-store lettuce.

We're headed to Medford this weekend, and I'm excited to dig into some projects. Like a table for our grill I want to build. Maybe "stand" is more accurate, but something to lift it up a little. I need to take some measurements. Our neighbors have been gardening, so it'll be fun to see how things are coming along there. And, of course, yardwork. YAY!

Lastly, I finished my lemon wreath a while ago and it makes me happy every dang time I look at it (which is frequently, since I spend most of my time in a very tiny apartment).

Sausage mushroom soup

Todd and I have an arrangement about the food in our house. I do the grocery shopping and most of the cooking. He does a lot of the cleanup, and also contributes ideas to the weekly menu (I get totally bored and need inspiration, which he's quite good at).

So last week, he cracked open a cookbook he'd gotten me years ago as a gift (and from which one of our favorite dishes comes from; I'll share it in the summer) to come up with something for dinner.

The cookbook, by the way, is Food and Wine Magazine's Quick From Scratch Italian Cookbook. Having been raised in the Midwest, I still think, rather uncreatively, of spaghetti with marinara sauce topped with Kraft parmesan cheese as the quintessential Italian meal, and this cookbook pushes me far beyond that.

Eye of round roast, take 2. And work!

I made an ill-fated attempt at cooking a roast last fall. I'm not altogether sure why, given the fact that I all but get nauseous thinking about that roast, but I've decided to take another crack at it.

So I chopped up some onions and shallots and minced a whole lot of garlic and dumped that in a plastic freezer bag, along with the 2 1/4-pound roast.

Who ever went wrong with red meat, onions, garlic and shallots? Hopefully, I won't be the first.

Drawing from the marinade recipes I leafed through, I threw in some soy sauce, cracked black pepper and a hefty dose of kosher salt for good measure.

When it's ready to go in the crock pot (which is the one cooking method I'm always successful with) tomorrow, I'm going to bore a hole in the middle, and--get ready for it--stuff it with BACON.

I contend that there is nobody in the history of the universe who has ever made something that involves beef, bacon, garlic, shallots and onions taste bad. Especially when slow cooked, maybe in some red wine or something. IT'S JUST NOT POSSIBLE. (I hope.)

Above: does not look edible, but will hopefully be spectacular. I'll let you know how it goes.

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Candied chocolate-covered orange peel and clementines

When we were in Chicago at Christmas, I bought some chocolate-covered orange peel on a whim. While I'm not a fan of dark chocolate, I do make exceptions when it's combined with orange.

So anyway, I got to thinking: how hard can it possibly be to candy oranges? Answer: it's not. It's reallllllly easy. I've done it three times so far. The first time, I learned the importance of keeping the lid on while the peels simmer in the syrup. While the orange hard candy I inadvertently made wasn't bad, the texture was wrong.