Artichoke and Parmesan Risotto

This artichoke and parmesan risotto is a great fall/winter food, incredibly rich and comforting. Except now that I don't have 5 roommates I was forced to eat this for lunch AND dinner for 3 days straight and it was no longer comforting or even good by the third day. so please... make half or find someone to share it with.


I <3 artichokes and I'm starting to like white wine! I don't remember what I bought- I read all the labels at Trader Joe's and chose one that said it was light and went well with pasta.... thank you Trader Joe's -you never do me wrong.

A pizza dough fail.

Yes, broccoli. It was about to go bad and I had to eat it.

Another pizza dough recipe. And this one was a big fail, I don't know why! Maybe my yeast was dead? But this dough did NOT want to be kneaded or be anything other than a chunk of cold, wet dough. I persevered and made one pizza, but I ended up trashing the other two balls of dough. It was sad day in pizza land.

Vanishing Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

This recipe can be found on the box of Quaker Oats' oats. They are really good and truly, vanishing. I used a few tablespoons less butter, used 1/3 whole wheat flour and added some ground flax seed to make up for all the junk we've been eating and they tasted the same. Amazing. They are awesome.



I made these for a cookie delivery to my friends in Ohio along with brown butter chocolate chip cookies and snickerdoodles. I'll post the recipe for the brown butter chocolate chip cookies later- they were buttertastic.

Spiced Pumpkin Bread

The Santa Ana winds are back and that means it's officially Fall/Winter here in Los Angeles, which also means it's time for pumpkin! I love pumpkin, but it feels wrong to eat it at any other time. This recipe for spiced pumpkin bread is reallyyyyyy good. It makes two small loaves, but of course because I'm impatient I crammed it into one loaf pan making for a really big loaf. I had to cut the top off when it started getting a wee bit burnt while the inside was still mush. Good thing Ilya likes crusty/burnt bread. Although this isn't bread, it's just a big frosting-less cake.



The before: the pan overfilleth with pumpkin bread. Do not do this unless you want to cut the top crust off and have burnt edges.

Chorizo and Potato Tacos

Unfortunately, no photos of the finished product because I packed this up for lunch. This recipe is from Real Simple, one of my favorite magazines. It's only rated 2 stars on the website, but I thought it was a pretty good recipe. I got chorizo from my neighborhood Sprouts, also another favorite. They sell "bulk" chorizo, spicy italian sausage without the casings in the meat section and it ranges from 1 lb to 2lbs so it's great for small recipes like this.



I made the radish, black bean salsa the day before and added some avocado and sour cream to the mix. Tasty- although I pretty much like anything with chorizo and black beans.

Thomas Keller Oreos

Another recipe from Thomas Keller. This time it's his version of an oreo. I didn't have a fluted pastry cutter so I ended up using an old plastic wine glass I had, which worked out pretty well. The shortbread is salty- so good with the white chocolate cream. I had an issue with the white chocolate being too viscous so I let it rest in the fridge for a day instead of the 6 hours and that seemed to solve it. Also thank goodness the blogger mentioned that the dough will at first look like sand because it did and I wasn't sure if I was making it correctly. But just keep mixing and it will eventually come together.

Ginger Pork Meatballs

First of all, this recipe is from Cooking Light, which I am going to visit more often now because these meatballs are delicious and in no way dry. I can't believe they're healthy- how bizarre! They are much much better tasting than any turkey meatball I've made because there is so much flavor in these (ginger, cilanto, onion, soy sauce). Easy to make and cook, very very tasty.