Fish Provencal

I decided to make this recipe, despite not having a grill. It was excellent! When you open the foil the smell is amazing. I used tilapia instead of cod. To get around the no grill situation, I just stuck the foil in the oven. I had about 1/3 a pound fish and the oven set at 350. It took about 30 mins, though I'd definitely recommend checking on it often. Make this recipe! It's great, easy, and there are almost no dishes to clean afterwards!

In honor of Italy

We are eating spaghetti with meat sauce tonight.

Just sayin'. Nothing gourmet about this meal. But, we're leaving for Italy in four days, so it's time to eat what's in the house. Creative and quick meals for the next four days.

Sonal's Birthday Feast

For Sonal's birthday this year, we decided to throw a pot-luck picnic in Central Park. It of course rained the whole afternoon (as it has done every time we decide to throw a pot-luck picnic), so we moved the party indoors to a bar. The owner was more than happy to have 12 people fill her otherwise empty bar at 1pm on a Saturday. They don't serve food at this bar and completely welcome outside food. It's the perfect place to relocate a pot-luck picnic. I made:

Chocolate Fudge: Uber easy -- who knew! I keep telling it's as easy as making rice krispee treats (something I mastered at age 10). The other nice part about making fudge was that I could make it a few days in advance.

Tomato, Corn, and Avocado Salad: this is my new favorite dish! So quick, hardly any mess to clean up. I actually had a bunch of leftover ingredients, so I made it again for dinner later in the week.

Macaroni Salad: another new favorite. there's something so yummy about the way this tastes. I made it with whole wheat noodles, so you don't feel so bad eating all those carbs. Again I had leftovers of most of the ingredients so I made it again for lunch one day. I didn't have any prosciutto left, so instead I sliced up some chicken breast lunch meat and put that in. It worked really well. I might have even liked it better that way. A couple tips:

• don't toss all the goat cheese in before you put the noodles in. The heat from the pasta kinda melts everything (in a good way b/c the pasta gets really well coated with the sauce), but its nice to have some un-melted pieces of goat cheese too. I put about half in before and saved the other half to add later, once the whole thing cooled down a bit.
• double the quantity of tomatos, cheese, and meat that you use compared to the pasta otherwise you end up with mainly noodles. I caught that tip in the comments people left on the recipe so I just did it, but I can easily see how it could happen.

Strawberry Cream Cake: This was our birthday cake. I'm going to admit - I made the cake part from a box mix to save time, but I used to rest of the recipe for the cream and strawberries. Also, don't listen to them when they tell you to whip the cream until you get "soft peaks" -- its a lie. You need "firm peaks" - as any other whipped cream recipe will tell you.

Chocolate covered strawberries

The other day we were at a Godiva store where they were selling chocolate covered strawberries for like $4 each. Insane. The next day it just so happened that LZ brought home this huge bar of chocolate from work - free! (It had expired - something I don't worry about.) I wanted to think of something to do with it that wouldn't result in my eating the entire thing that very night. Chocolate covered strawberries were the perfect thing! Then I decided I needed a double boiler so I ran out and got one. And finally, these beauties were born. There's plenty of chocolate left so I'll be making more tonight!

Mulberries!

A lady in my neighborhood has a couple huge mulberries trees that drop an incredible amount of white mulberries during June and July. Her neighbors complain that she doesn't clean up after it so she said anyone who helps sweep the sidewalk can have all the mulberries they want. I figured I'd give it a try and I collected all these mulberries. They look pretty gross don't they? Like albino blackberries. Or caterpillar parts. Too bad it turns out they don't have any particular taste. So I mixed them with some cherries and blueberries and made this berry crisp. It was good, but the mulberries didn't add much besides volume. Picking them and meeting the mulberry lady was an interesting experience though!

Potato Skins

Also while home, with my mom, I made these Potato Skins. Quite honestly - she did most of the work, but it was my idea. We were making a few things at the same time and somehow she got stuck with the not so awesome job of scooping out all of the potatoes. We also didn't plan well and were too impatient to wait for the potatoes to cool before scooping them, so it was quite a production. All in all, I personally thought they required more effort than they're worth and wouldn't bother making them again. I can wait to eat my potato skins at bar, but for those of you that want to make them at home, this recipe works just fine.

Lemon Ginger Bundt Cake

A few weeks ago, while at at my parents house, I took advantage of the fact that my mom has a big old Kitchen Aid, perfect for baking, and make this Lemon-Ginger Bundt cake. It was really quite easy and the little tiny pieces of ginger were great. I'd definitely make it again! The picture is, quite obviously, not mine, but honestly mine looked just as good. Oh - and I didn't bother with the powdered sugar...