SWEETS

Entertaining

Fresh Mint Lemonade

When I first moved to LA, I found an apartment right off of the Sunset Strip and a job at an upscale-ish pizza place called Cheebo (the phonetic spelling of the Italian word for "food"). It wasn't too bad of a job - the food was pretty reasonably priced and lunchtime-focused, which meant that tips were only okay, but I liked my coworkers and really liked the staff meal that we got at the end of every shift. The part of it that I hated was when my manager asked me to work the brunch shift, because the brunch shift involved fresh-squeezed orange juice…and you know what's a major pain to make?

Fresh-squeezed orange juice. If you have never done this, let me tell you: you have no idea how many pieces of fruit it takes to make your teeny, tiny four-dollar glass of Vitamin C.

I think working at Cheebo gave me a bit of juice-making PTSD, because never since have I been enamored of the idea of fresh-squeezing my own anythings…but pregnancy does weird stuff, like make you all of a sudden need fresh lemonade RIGHT NOW.

Eat

Olive Oil & Ricotta Cake (with Chocolate & Orange)

Loaf cakes are basically the best things in the world. They're easy to make, they freeze well (making them an excellent solution when you've got a lot of parties to go to and not a lot of time)...and you can pretend that they are "bread" and eat them for breakfast. Which is what I just finished doing.

I've never actually made an olive oil cake before, but I've always wanted to try it, partially because it sounds delicious and partially because it sounds weird (and those two things are not, to my mind, mutually exclusive). As it turns out, it is delicious, but it's totally not weird - just a super-moist version of a traditional cake. You can make a plain version of this cake minus the chocolate and orange, or you can try swapping in lemon zest or topping it with a fruit coulis (try strawberry or plum). If you do that you can call the coulis "jam", plant a cup of coffee next to it, and happily consume it at 7 o'clock in the morning. And then again at 7 o'clock at night. And maybe again while laying in bed a couple of hours later, with a side order of Joel McHale. All good.

Try it. You'll like it.

Recipes

Blueberry-Cinnamon French Toast

Suggestion for your weekend: make this.

It takes about five minutes total, and is a huge crowd-pleaser for all ages. The key to this recipe: use blueberry bread instead of regular bread (this is Pepperidge Farm Blueberry Swirl bread, which I think is delicious…but my son's obsession is on another level entirely: he insists on eating it every. single. morning, calls it "my muffin", and was literally still talking about it as he went to sleep last night).

SWEETS

Valentine’s Day Rice Krispie Treats

Because Kendrick loves Rice Krispie treats more than anything and spent a decent percentage of today shoveling snow out of our driveway, and because I am a huge nerd:

I made him a Valentine's Day Rice Krispie Treat.

If, like me, you haven't made these things in a couple of decades and need a refresher, here's how you do it:


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