Comfort Foods and Indulgences

I love Dr. Pepper. I love brisket. I love brie and I love tacos. So, this seems like a pretty logical meal choice...for me! I even add a little chile-lime flavor to the meat and it goes surprisingly well with the brie, which is just a great melting cheese anyway.

I do like to cook my meat in the slow-cooker in Dr. Pepper. The soda concentrates down with a wee bit of complexity and offers a very slight background sweetness to the meat. It tenderizes...it flavors...I'm using the Pepper.

When the meat is done cooking, I remove the fat and pull the meat apart. I place the pulled meat back in the slow-cooker with a slight bit of liquid from the original cooking process and season it with a chile-lime salt called, tajin clasico seasoning. The seasoning, I see it everywhere from Walmart to the regular grocery store. If you do not have it, the same result can be achieved with fresh lime juice, some salt and chile powder stirred into the meat. Just keep tasting and adding until you get the flavor result you are happy with. It's so delicious especially since beef and lime are so classic together.

From the L.A. Times

Many years ago, when I was younger and even more foolish than today, I took it upon myself to perfect the shortcake. I spent a week going through a dozen or so recipes from my favorite writers, cooking them, plotting the ingredients on a spreadsheet and then testing different combinations until I came up with the shortcake of my dreams.

What's so foolish about that? Absolutely nothing (though a tad obsessive, maybe). But then I had to go and proclaim it in print as "The Ultimate Shortcake." And of course you know what happened then – within a couple of months, I found a shortcake I liked better. "Sic transit gloria pastry" and all that.

The reason I'm bringing this up is that I was recently bitten again by the shortcake bug. I guess that's practically unavoidable at this time of year, when the markets are full of fragrant strawberries just begging for a little lightly whipped cream and a bite of something crunchy.

Read article...

So really, is there anything better than a chocolate chip cookie to satisfy a sweet tooth? I didn't think so. There's something so special about a homemade chocolate chip cookie, warm out of the oven. Just think back to when you were a kid making cookies with mom or grandma—they always made pretty amazing cookies from scratch. So don't even think of making the kind from a refrigerator can or boxed mix. You have to agree that homemade is the best hands-down.

There are countless different versions of the classic recipe, but the best chocolate chip cookies don't have chips but chunks, chopped from a big block of premium chocolate. But I take the classic recipe one step further and add a Halloween favorite candy, peanut butter cups, and a sprinkling of salt.

Chocolate chip cookie purists might turn up their noses at that. But I think they (along with peanut butter fans) will love these cookies. Trust me—these cookies have been tasted and approved by discerning mouths. This recipe is great for using up any leftover Halloween chocolates. But if you're a fan of peanut butter cups like I am, you'll make these cookies all-year long without having any special reason or occasion.

After returning from a two-week holiday stay with family in Rhode Island, Jeff and I were in a bit of a funk. San Diego suddenly seemed too quiet, too sunny, too bland. We missed the crunch of snow beneath our feet, the hearty bowls of quahog chowder and the sight of a pink and orange Dunkin' Donuts on every street corner. More than anything, we missed the accents.