Easter Eats

If there's one thing I love more than a good dinner party, it would be dining as the guest of an equally as (or more) skilled culinary mastermind.

For Easter this year, I got to be an esteemed guest in my SoBe partner in crime's beautiful new home and enjoy a wonderful spread of traditional lamb and mint jelly, with all sorts of fixings.

Of course I'm not one to show up as a guest empty handed. For the cocktail hour (or hours as is the case with my friends) I whipped up these Rachael Ray Sage Sausage Bites with Balsamic Apricot Dip. These little Italian sausage meatballs are always a big hit with a sauce that offers the right mix of sweet and savory.

For dessert, I whipped up one of my all time favorite desserts - one I also consider an Easter staple. Carrot cake. I could not resist trying the Cake Boss Buddy Valastro's recipe, and turned to Ina Garten for the cream cheese frosting. The cake was perfectly moist and flavorful, and the cream cheese frosting rich, but not too sugary.

My efforts, however, were quite humbled by the spectacular spread. I'd never had lamb with mint jelly before, and was pleasantly surprised by the flavor combination (courtesy of Tyler Florence's take on years of tradition). It was lucky too that I saved room after the cocktail hour, since I could not get enough of another one of my friend's veggie pizza, a cream cheese, ranch dressing spread covering croissants and topped with carrots and broccoli. This recipe looks pretty similar to the one she told me.

Of course one of my favorite stars of the show were the lamb cupcakes another friend showed up with. The loving detail with which she placed little white chocolate chips to look like fur, and marshmallows for ears was just priceless!

Unveil, the Valentine

Well the Valentines managed to make it safely to Buffalo, fashionably late for the holiday.

This year's design was inspired by the wine humor t's that have become all the rage among my friends lately, and that I happen to find pretty amusing: You had me at merlot.

HIL-arious!

I saw the phrase on a shirt at the wine store across the way and immediately thought it would make the perfect Valentine message. I cut out little heart-shaped cards with stems to resemble wine glasses, covered them with red foil and sprinkled with glitter. Voila! The 2010 Valentine.

On to next year!

Here's to you, St. Valentine

I've always been a big fan of Valentine's Day. I know, not all single people are. Some consider it an exclusive day for couples and put their energy into protest-esque efforts like wearing black, hosting ladies only parties and of course performing the all-empowering feminist Vagina Monologues.

I just never felt the need for such bitterness. (OK ... There was maybe ONE year I coordinated a single ladies only party.)

Perhaps it was the 14 years spent in Catholic schools, each one bringing reminders that the day was really to honor a saint. Sure, we all brought in candy and those cheesy little paper cards to exchange with our classmates. But the nuns never let a year pass without reminding us of its real meaning, before Hallmark got a hold of it.

For me, I always considered it a day to remind the people you love - whether a significant other, your best friends or family - how much you care about them. It's an annual reminder to stop and take the time to do something special for them.

I guess I was a fairly crafty kid (or at least tried to be) so at some point I started putting this expression of love into little handmade Valentines for my family. I even made a little "mailbox" with pockets for everyone to stash their cards in.

I still do it. There's something about the kitschy charm of cutting out little paper hearts and handcrafting glitter-adorned love notes I find endearing. It's become my tradition. And every year there's a theme, usually something that speaks to my life at the time. (I can't, however, reveal this year's because I didn't make it to the post office for them to arrive in a timely fashion. So I'll update on them later, once they've safely arrived in Buffalo.)

Some years turn out better than others. There have been palm trees, fish and turtles, maps, globes and Pulitzer medals. One year I wrote a sonnet and decorated the cards with dried rose petals. Probably my favorite was the Recipe for a Happy Family. My mom liked it so much she framed it and hung it in the kitchen.

So that's how I, a single, independent woman living the good life, like to celebrate Valentine's Day. No complaints.

Except maybe one. I was going to buy myself flowers until I realized Publix DOUBLED the typical asking price. What's up price gouging! Since this year my Valentines will be fashionably late, I figure I'll just go back Monday and see how much they marked down the leftovers.

I'm sure by then I'll still love me : )

Time for a fresh appetite

I love ringing in a new year.

There's something about fresh starts - new notebooks for the first day of school, a clean page on the calendar - that I find incredibly refreshing.

Sure, maybe another year is gone without us accomplishing all of the things - or anything - we thought we would when it started. We still carry those extra few pounds. Didn't manage to accrue that savings.

But that's the beauty of life. Things come up that we could never expect. Plans change. We figure out how to deal with it.

Besides, we must have accomplished something?

I learned my best lesson about short-term goals when I was the editor of the college newspaper. About halfway into my term I hadn't made a dent in my to do list. I got frustrated. My predecessor gave me a piece of advice.

Rip it up and start all over again.

I'm not one for just giving up, but I've definitely learned that circumstances change beyond our control. Problems come up. New people come into our lives, and others leave. At the end of the day a page on a calendar is just a page on a calendar. It does not define our successes or failures.

Maybe New Year's is just as much about leaving a lackluster year behind as it is starting a new one.

New Year's is usually a time for setting goals we hope to keep for the next twelve months. This year I'm taking a different approach. I'm not making any. I'm just going to pour some champagne, take it one day at a time and see where the new year takes me.

Hopefully somewhere yummy : )

Happy New Year!

Have a holly, jolly apron ...

I'll admit this one. It's kind of hard getting into the holiday spirit in Florida.

To state the obvious, there's no snow. A week or so ago the temperature hit 80. There are no fluffy green trees or deer running around or snowmen or anything else that smacks of Christmas.

How could a girl from one of the most wintry places in the Great White North not notice?

It hit me the first year I was living in Florida. I went through all of the motions of getting ready for the holidays - decorating the apartment, sending cards, baking cookies - but it still didn't feel like Christmas. I got bitter about it.

To make matters worse, that same year I spent the week before Christmas taking my turn answering calls from irate readers complaining about everything from the size of the print in the newspaper to a late delivery.

What a happy, jolly way to kick off my holiday.

But then my last day on the job before heading home to Buffalo, Santa brought me a little bit of Christmas magic. On Christmas Eve, the phone line flooded with calls from people wanting information about where to make donations of food and clothing, or where to send presents to U.S. soldiers.

Yes, Tiffany, the Christmas spirit does abound, even in the land of palm trees and surfer Santas.

Ever since then, I take it one year at a time, looking for the small and subtle ways to gear up for the holidays, often times the ones that don't require a whole lot of energy or planning.

Some years are easier than others, and this wasn't one of them. I didn't bother with the cookies or cards. Maybe spending the weeks before Christmas reporting on childhood hunger, homelessness and teen suicide dampers the holiday spirit. Maybe this was just a long and tough year for the whole country.

But, just as always, the holiday spirit eventually caught up with me.

It could have been seeing my Christmas presents all ready to pack sitting on the kitchen table. Or the anticipation of spending a quiet evening at home - something I love but hadn't done for a while - making a warm and comforting mushroom soup.

Or maybe it hit when I opened my kitchen cabinet and saw the little corner of poinsettia fabric.

My holiday apron.

My mom started making seasonal aprons a few years ago, something that stemmed from a general dissatisfaction with the selection available on the retail market. We have fall aprons, holiday aprons and summery aprons with bright floral colors, all with special tags sewn in the front with loving messages from mom.

I saw it and that Saturday night I was ready when the Christmas spirit came looking for me.

I cranked up the Christmas tunes, wrapped myself in holiday cheer and started cooking.

Holiday cheer by way of 1,500 cupcakes

So there's this phenomenon every year at my place of employment. I call it the Holiday Cheer Epidemic, because that's exactly what our top boss asked for a few years ago to counter a rash of bad news in the paper. Holiday Cheer stories. The kind that people find uplifting.

It makes sense to some degree. The holidays move people to volunteer time, donate presents and otherwise do nice things for people who aren't as fortunate. That's a lot of what is going on in the community.

I'll be honest that some of these efforts have rubbed me the wrong way over the years, coming off as condescending or self-serving. Besides, people who need help need it all year long. Not just at Christmas.

And the irony of Holiday Cheer stories is that once you cut through the warmth they really aren't that cheery. They're really about people who are hungry, homeless or otherwise struggling to get by, and that can be tough to get across in a simple news story.

But over the years I've become less jaded and figured out a way to write Holiday Cheer stories to my liking. The solution has been to look for genuine people trying in the very simplest (AKA: not attention grabbing and splashy) ways to make the holidays a little more bearable for some people. Besides, why not cash in on this spirit of giving and generosity and inspire people to help out the children.

This week I found Chef Cindy.

I heard about Chef Cindy doing another Holiday Cheer story at one of the high schools. I wrote a story last week about how the year-round food pantry the school had started to help needy kids and their families was empty. They got cleaned out right before Thanksgiving. After the story ran, the school got an outpouring of support - food, clothes and over $4,000 to help families with things like utilities. One of the largest donations was a batch of food to feed 400 people from the area food bank.

As we were waiting for the food to arrive on Wednesday the lady from the food bank started casually telling me about a woman who made 1,500 cupcakes to send home with homeless and needy children for Christmas. I'm not sure she realized that's a heck of a lot of baking.

"Did you say 1,500?" I asked her, just as a point of clarification. Journalists like to be accurate.

She looked at me like I had just landed from Mars for questioning whether a single woman was really baking 1,500 cupcakes to distribute to poor children.

"Uh, huh," she replied. "1,500. They're going out Friday."

I had my notebook out and started doing some basic long division. That would be about 125 dozen cupcakes ... You could maybe fit four dozen in a standard oven at a time ... Baking time is about 25 to 30 minutes ...

I couldn't believe someone was actually doing this.

So I set out on my quest to write about the Cupcake Lady.

I went back to the office and pitched the story to my editors. They signed off, so I called the food bank and asked them if they could put me in contact with Chef Cindy. And then I did the thing most journalists hate. I waited.

A few hours went by before the lady from the food bank called me back and gave me Chef Cindy's number.

"She's a little," she paused. "Shy. But I think she'll talk to you since this is such a good story."

I called and left a message, waited about an hour and got no answer. Of course we had to try and get photos of her baking, and that meant we had to do it Thursday.

I think I let two hours pass before I walked down to the restaurant where she was alleged to be baking. It was closed, the dining room dark, but I could see a light on back in the kitchen.

"Do I go around the back and knock on the door?" I thought. "Would that be creepy?"

It's important to note this kind of determined reporting is usually reserved for big stories or tracking down bad guys. I still can't believe I put forth this much effort toward a story about cupcakes. Stories about baked goods just shouldn't be so challenging.

I opted not to stalk her through the back of the kitchen.

"I'm sure she'll call me back later." I thought.

I left the office and headed home. Around eight-o-clock it was bugging me I never heard from her. The chances of us getting any kind of photo in her kitchen were getting slimmer and slimmer.

I dialed the number I had saved in my phone as Cupcake Lady and to my surprise she answered.

"Hello," said an obviously frazzled voice on the other end. "This is Cindy."

"Hi," I started. "This is Tiffany, the reporter from the Herald-Tribune. I think the food bank told you I might be calling.

She gushed a sigh.

"Oh," she said, clearly regretting she picked up the phone.

She continued with a note of exasperation:

"I'm a little busy. I'm on my way to Sam's Club. I RAN OUT OF EGGS. I only have 500 cupcakes done. I have A THOUSAND I need to finish by Friday. I'm going to be up all night. I DON'T KNOW HOW I will ever finish."

For a moment I wished I could volunteer to help, but reporters don't really do that sort of thing. So instead I just asked if we could come hang out and get some photos of her baking.

"I'm not really very photogenic," she said. "I'm a mess. I'm covered in cake batter. And I can't really have you in my kitchen. I HAVE TO FINISH A THOUSAND CUPCAKES."

My attempts to sway her were useless. I agreed that we would just come get a picture of her when she dropped off the cupcakes Friday morning at the food bank.

It took most of the day Thursday to even get a time flushed out for when the big drop would happen. Then finally we got word: 8 a.m. Friday morning.

I barely get my butt to work before 10 a.m. most days, but for the Cupcake Lady, I'd get there early.

Shortly after the photographer and I arrived, the woman from the food bank came down to greet us with a shocked expression.

"She's gone," she said. "She must have come really early and just left the cupcakes. They were here when the first person got here."

"Sneaky," I thought, annoyed, but kind of admiring the Cupcake Lady for eluding us.

Anyway, as it always does, it all worked out in the end. I called Chef Cindy and, after laughing a little - probably for pulling one over on me - she did chat with me for a bit about why she took on this effort.

"It just bothered me so much," she said. "That some children go hungry. I can't solve their problems, but maybe I can make them happy."

These are the kind of stories I love, anytime of year. Normal, everyday people doing creative and extraordinary things to make a difference. Even a little one, especially for children.

But those are the stories that are also hardest to write. How do you take an incredible person, all their emotions and drive, and put them into words on paper?

We went to a school later and watched the principal and guidance counselor hand out the cupcakes and bags of food for the winter holidays to about 50 homeless and needy children.

Watching this sort of thing used to really upset me when I started covering schools seven years ago. It's hard to comprehend so many kids not having anything to eat for two weeks but a bag of beefaroni and canned veggies when some of us are so lucky. The TV reporter said she was ready to start crying. So did the lady from the food bank when we were at Booker High on Wednesday.

Even after so many stories and so many years covering schools, I still get choked up a little sometimes. But I guess you kind of get used to it after awhile. All you can do is use your talents to try to help them.

At some point the lead for my story just popped in my head, inspired by the ultimate of holiday cheesiness and drawing the parallel between Chef Cindy and Santa.

"She came in early Friday, leaving no trace of her visit but 1,500 cupcakes."

The whole time I worked on this I kept trying to wrap my mind around 1,500 cupcakes. Just how much is that? Well if you're curious, check out the sweet graphic on the story.

And Chef Cindy may have tried to dupe me, but clearly didn't get up early enough in the morning. Everyone reading the story would want to know what the Cupcake Lady looked like. As it turned out, we had a nice picture of her in our archives from a cooking demo she did a few years ago, so we were able to run that with the story (I don't think, by the way, Cindy was opposed to running her picture in the paper, I think she just didn't want to make a big deal about her part in the cupcake situation).

So as I said to our graphic artist in sheer fun when it was all done:

"Put that in your Kitchenaid and mix it."

Happy holidays!

Tis the season to be merry

So if you're wondering would could possibly be more enticing to me than cooking up a good meal in my kitchen, consider the following: FREE ... HOLIDAY ... WINE TASTING.

That's right, this year I've learned that swanky businesses and upscale restaurants like to promote themselves by inviting wine-loving people like me in for "holiday parties" that involve free food and dozens of wines to try. All of this in exchange for a toy that will be donated to a charity.

Part of me thinks this is a brilliant and altruistic thing for seemingly successful businesses to do, forfeiting profit from entrance fees for gifts for the children. But in reality I realize their ulterior motive is probably to get people all tipsy and enamored by their concern for the kids that they spend big wads of cash in their stores and restaurants (or, as always noted, on those perfect stocking stuffers - gift cards).

Either way, I consider this a win, win, win situation - for me, for the businesses, for the children.

On Thursday I'm planning on hitting up an event at Sarasota Architectural Salvage. The list of contributing restaurants includes local favs like The Colony, Michael's on East, Bijou Cafe and Libby's.

Then on Saturday I head over to Michael's on East for their holiday wine tasting.

As they say, tis the season to be jolly : )

Good thing I've got that big pot of soup to feed off of.

Overindulgence

They say too much of anything isn't good for us.

I now believe that explains the death of my letter "N" on the keyboard.

(Which, by the way, my family came to the rescue again, hooking me up with a USB keyboard for my laptop so I can proceed with the blogging.)

And how ironic for this to happen right at the start of the season of overindulgence.

Parties. Cookies. Shopping. Family. Fun in general. All of the festivities and responsibilities that come with the holidays can get overwhelming and exhausting just thinking about them.

Right in the midst of all of this holiday splendor, I woke up this morning - my first day off since I got back from Thanksgiving - and immediately started thinking about blogging.

That's how it's been since I started this project. Every day off. Many evenings. Spending my time blogging.

That's not as carefree and simple as it sounds. I'm an obsessive personality. One blog post might turn into hours toiling to perfection. Then another idea pops into my head. I have to get it all down before I forget something. Before you know it, the morning or evening is gone, swallowed up by a computer screen.

If you've been following you've probably noticed I've done more writing and pontificating lately than cooking. One of the unintended results of the blog is that it has been a fun outlet for my writing, without the constrictions that come with doing it for a living. I'm enjoying it.

But all that time spent in front of a computer isn't relaxing. Piles of cooking magazines lay all over the apartment, my yoga mat seeing a little less use, old hobbies fallen victim of my new obsession.

I've become overindulgent.

This morning it dawned on me the whole point of the blog was to distract me from other things I tend to obsess over, like work and life in general.

So what does that mean when you've traded one obsession for another?

I guess that's when you rely on the universe for balance. I couldn't blog the week I went without the letter "N", so I did other things. Dusted off some of those cooking magazines and spent some time on the patio just thinking and listening to music. I reacquainted myself with life beyond blogging.

Now the letter "N" is back in my life. And, if you haven't noticed by now, I'm sitting here blogging.

Giving thanks for the letter "N," among other things

So I didn't make good on my promise to update with a new recipe last weekend. I'm terrible. But in the interest of wallowing in excuses, there are plenty of good ones.

For starters, Whole Foods didn't have the mushrooms I needed for the soup I planned to make from Poland. Then it occurred to me I was going out of town and wasn't going to be around to eat much of it anyway.

And then of course there were the holidays, those times of relaxation and joy that somehow suck so much energy from us. Why exactly is that? With the first of the spate looming in front of me - and since I shortened my weekend by agreeing to pick up a Sunday shift - I already felt drained just thinking of sitting for hours in an airport and decided Saturday would be best spent mentally bracing and physically detoxing for the upcoming indulgences ahead of me.

But aside from all of that, perhaps my best excuse of all is that the letter "n" on my keyboard is not working (I am at home now in Buffalo using my mom's computer).

Yes one morning I woke up and it was gone. Push the button, and nothing. I've been getting by until I have time to get it fixed copying and pasting the letter into e-mails and Facebook messages, but for some reason I can't paste things into this blog program.

Have you ever thought about how many times you use a simple letter in your daily communication?

I'm sure I'll be able to figure that one out. But for now, it's just there. Something to struggle with. Something to figure out, keeping me from doing things I enjoy. A nagging inconvenience.

Yesterday my 9-year-old cousin asked my mother why I just don't stay in Buffalo in between Thanksgiving and Christmas. She thought it seemed like a lot of trouble to have to fly back and forth in such a short time span, and didn't get why I can't just write my stories and e-mail them to my editors. Fair point, but when you're nine I guess it's hard to grasp only getting four weeks of vacation.

So how does all of this tie together? Perhaps it provides pause this Thanksgiving to reflect on all of the simple, little things in life we take for granted and that can be taken away from us in an instant.

The endless weeks of vacation we enjoyed as children thanks to an underachieving and heavily unionized American school system. The babkah kuchen they no longer sell at Wegman's. Judgment free zones. The carefree daily texts and phone calls from one of your best friends that just stop one morning. The relationships we have that change and morph as we do, whether or not we like it.

The letter "n" on the keyboard.

Yes of course there are the big things too, but day by day there are so many little things we rely on to get by. What happens when they disappear?

I guess things come and go over time and all we can do is try not to dwell on them. We can redirect our energy to the little things we still have that we rely on to make us happy before they're gone too and we miss them.

The new friends we have who bring us dinner and wine when we are having a bad week. A ticket home for the holidays. Hugs. Judgment free zones. Bourbon turkey and green bean casserole. Brunch with an old friend, one of your very favorites. Fitting into that dress you wore in high school.

A slice of pie, delivered by someone who might turn out to suck but at least for now is feeding your sweet tooth. A Thanksgiving buffet with free mimosas. The Whole Foods rosemary Christmas tree with little kitchen-themed Sur La Table ornaments.

And work out some of the other things. I'll figure that whole "n" situation when I get back next week, and get back on that mushroom soup from Poland.

In the meantime... Happy Thanksgiving!