Snowflake Pie

Santa brought me the most amazing snowflake plunger/cutters for Christmas this year! My mom and I put them to good use today: Mixed Berry Snowflake Pie!

My mom made this glorious filling, and the truth is that we used a Pillsbury crust. In order to use the plunger/cutters, we needed to have the dough at a very uniform thickness, so I cut corners here. Next time the crust will be home made.

retro-post: cinco de mayo & margarita cupcakes

I grew up in a culture that generally doesn't imbibe much. At all. So I remember the first time when my family vacationed in Mexico, my mom ordered a virgin margarita to enjoy out by the pool (or the pond) and the bartender replied, So you want lemonade? Right?

And maybe he wasn't being snarky. He was probably just making sure he understood that we all wanted fancy drinks with little umbrellas without the complimentary (at that hotel) booze.

So for Cinco de Mayo, in honor of a culturally irreverent/irrelevant gathering at my apartment, I made "virgin" "margarita" cupcakes. Which is code for lemon cupcakes with cream cheese frosting and a twist of lime that made the frosting taste ridiculously good. Look at that lil twist! I'm smacking my lips right now.

Soup!

Uh, hi there. Sorry I left you all hanging here with nothing new. See, the problem with this blog is that it entices me to make delicious treats ALL THE TIME. So I thought, okay, I'm going to eat healthier and blog about THAT. But that didn't happen (the eating or the blogging). Until now.

This morning I had a rude little awakening that I am a considerably larger person now than I was a year ago when Lito and I got married. Eugh. Let's not dwell on this any longer than is necessary. The point is that it lit a fire under my buns to figure out how to something healthy, maybe even weight-loss-ey, that actually tastes good. So here we go.

Cranberry Sauce for Fakers

It's Thanksgiving Eve! And I'm so thankful for my darling friends who read this oft-neglected blog. I thought I would post a little something I just made -- cranberry sauce. I should have typed "made" because I cheated and used a can (gasp!) of cranberry sauce. I do love figuring out how to doctor up decent food into good tasting stuff. No, not gourmet, but if you are honestly making everything for a full thanksgiving dinner from scratch without any help, then you're reading this blog because you're amazing and you just want to make me feel good about myself. Bless you.

I am no cranberry connoisseur -- my family always had this cranberry jello salad that secretly no one actually likes. Which means that this little recipe tastes pretty darn good to me. Give it a try and let me know what you think!