Calamity Shazaam in the Kitchen

Sometimes I get obsessed with one particular dish/food item. Past obsessions have included: --- Sponge cake (age 10 to 12 - until Mom secretly tore the recipe out from the Junior League of Athens, GA cookbook, which she still denies doing... But really there is only so much sponge cake people can eat in life and I was churning them out at probably 2 per week. ) --- Thin Mints (age 0 to present - and let me tell you everything they say about mint oil and the digestive tract is completely true. Do I really care? No, not so much - I live by myself. ) --- Pizza (age 11 to present - I will do anything for the #16 - hold the tomatos - from Emma's. Anything. ) --- Anything that involves a potato. Since I was born. Currently I am in the throes of a full-on claypot crisis. I want it for dinner every NIGHT. Ohhhh, why am I even lying, I want it for every MEAL. How delicious does this look? (photo from Stephen OB) Basically this is a pot lined with crispy rice and then filled with all manner...

And the winner is: MerceditaA Congratulations!!! Please send me an email with your address and I will send this out to you today. Thanks to everyone who commented to win and I am actually sorry that I can't send you all a copy. Stay tuned for the next Big Giveaway!

GIVEAWAY!! GIVEAWAY!! GIVEAWAY!! GIVEAWAY!! GIVEAWAY!! GIVEAWAY!! GIVEAWAY!! GIVEAWAY!! GIVEAWAY!! GIVEAWAY!! GIVEAWAY!! GIVEAWAY!! GIVEAWAY!! GIVEAWAY!! GIVEAWAY!! There are a lot of things I love about my job and this is one: our office has a full kitchen and we are encouraged to cook whenever we want. The kitchen happens to be next to the stockroom that is filled with our cookbooks AND there is a grocery store just down the street. How awesome is that? Pretty awesome! So today at work we are cooking out of one of the cookbooks we publish, Double Take by Jeremy Holt and AJ Rathbun . What I love about this book is that the recipes are pretty straightforward - whatever you make will turn out as expected. Which seems a trivial point, but I own a LOT of cookbooks and believe me there are plenty of recipes out there that just don't ever work out. Which is completely frustrating at 8:30pm when you are hungry and just spend $20 on groceries and are otherwise out of thin...

Sometimes dinner just has to make itself because I am too fricking tired. This is why having frozen stuff on hand is, well, handy. Dinner, and lunch today, consists of a quiche made from Chip-in Farm eggs, a little milk, caramelized onions, roasted red peppers, basil, and garlic. In a frozen pie shell from Whole Foods. I love the Whole Foods ready made pie shells and having a package on hand is just never a bad idea. I had made a large batch of caramelized onions a while ago and then froze them in batches. The roasted red peppers came from a jar I'd canned in the fall, and the basil and garlic I just had on hand. The basic recipe to fill the pie shell was about 6 eggs, about a cup of milk, about a cup of onions, around a cup of red pepper, and then season to taste. I just whisked it all together, dumped it all into the frozen shell and baked it in a 350 or so oven for about 35 minutes. Just to the point where it didn't wobble in the middle anymore. It came out pretty delicious....

Get it? Can not... hahahah! Anyway. Are you familiar with this magical place? It is the extremely nondescript exterior of China Fair . And frankly if you didn't know it was there, you wouldn't. This is the one in Needham/Newton (I never remember, but it is just down from the New England Mobile Book Fair) and I love it. You really never know what you are going to find. They really have the weirdest mix of everything you need and stuff you don't really. I bought a set of flat bottom glasses at Marshalls ages ago and finally got around to smashing one to bits. Of course I walk into China Fair and see a near replica right there in front of me. No matter that it was a teeny tiny bit different and that it had a stamp on the bottom saying that it had been made in West Germany... That just about sums up every China Fair experience I've had. Also they do have a TON of canning jars for sale: These are the jars that involve the orange rubber gasket - I am not positive how to use ...