The Blog: Interesting food finds, personal projects and other cool stuff!

For the last 10 days, I was roadtripping around Oregon. Oregon has great food, lots of unique and weird items to find. Here are a few that I picked up! What crazy marketing. I didn't end up purchasing this, but found the bold packaging very interesting. Based on the package, I was expecting more pili… Continue reading Interesting food finds in Oregon

While staying in an Airbnb on vacation, I came up with this simple twist on pancakes. In this version, you are actually making a "cake" with pancake mix and lots of fruit. I'd say it is at leas half fruit. For simplicity, since we were on vacation, I used Birchbenders Protein pancake mix (Just Add… Continue reading Summer Baking #6: Fruity Pan Cake

My friend Tom, was having a birthday party and I was trying to decide what to bring. When I think of Tom, I think Dark Beer, Dark Coffee and Dark Chocolate. How could I turn that into a baking project? I decided to make cookie that eats more like a brownie, and to try and… Continue reading Summer 2021: Baking #5 – Beer and Coffee Brownie Cookies

I've been interested in making bagels for a while. I don't eat a lot of bagels, but who doesn't like a nice fresh one? Also, I was curious to see how it is different from making pretzels. I decided to make the bagels on the night before I left for a big trip, maybe not… Continue reading Summer 2021 Baking #4: Whole Wheat Bagels

My daughter had an idea to make a filled cookie. We brainstormed together how best to achieve the filling. There are several methods that could work, depending on what kind of filling you have. We landed on an idea to make a cookie-in-a-cookie, basically a ball shaped brownie surrounded by a chocolate chip cookie. This… Continue reading 2021 Summer Baking #3 – Double Layer Cookie Balls

First, let me say that I got this recipe from Irvin Lin. Here is the link. He does an excellent job of breaking this recipe down and has great photos. It made it really easy for me to reproduce. I decided to add walnuts to the filling, just because I thought it would be interesting.… Continue reading 2021 Summer Baking #2: Apricot Walnut Brioche

Whoa, it has been just over a year since I last wrote something here! I definitely fell into the Covid Void over the last year, but I've got a new summer goal and hopefully it will inspire me to post more ! My good friend had a birthday party last weekend and requested Gluten Free… Continue reading 2021 Summer Baking #1: Strawberry Rhubarb Layered Biscuits

It's that time of year, Girl Scouts on every corner peddling cookies. We bought a box of Samoas, whch is hands down, the best Girl Scout cookie out there. One of my daughters decided she'd like to try and recreate a Samoa at home, so we embarked on a cookie adventure! It is quite a… Continue reading Homemade Girl Scout Cookies

Our orange tree went nuts this year. Not that this has been a problem! We've been having fun dropping bags of oranges at the neighbor's houses and leaving a free box out front. We've also been using them in some fun ways. Dehydrated orange slices are actually AMAZING. They turn crisp and flavorful, less sweet,… Continue reading Oranges!

Recently, a friend asked if I would be interested in designing some sci-fi themed cocktails for an event. Now, that sounds like fun! I started by brainstorming some ideas about what "effects" these cocktails might have or do (see the brainstorm list below). What ingredients would cause these effects? What would be interesting to see… Continue reading Designing Cocktails!