Recently.

Watch reruns, they replay your memories.

Chocolate is a valentine you give yourself.

Oh Dove. Fine, it may not be the greatest chocolate in the world but I have decided that I like it. I think because it tastes like brownie batter to me. But brownie batter with a snap when you bite into it. And I can buy it in little pieces and one piece is good. So there. But they really need to not print things inside the wrappers because that might be enough to make me hate them. Chocolate IS a Valentine you give yourself…when you are pathetic. And while I do, on occasion watch reruns…nevermind. I just don’t like what they write on the wrappers. Nuff said.

While there has not been much blogging around here, there has been a fair amount of cooking going on over the weekends. For the Oscars there were chocolate cupcakes with vanilla bean frosting and vanilla cupcakes with caramel buttercream. And if you cook but you haven’t make a cooked buttercream before, give it a try. It’s not that hard and the difference between a cooked buttercream (a Swiss meringue buttercream) and a “quick” buttercream is pretty significant in terms of texture and, for me, taste. Silky is the only way to describe it. The closest vegan counterpart I have tried is the “Velvet” frosting from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the world and that one darn good too, so you know, you aren’t missing out on much if you don’t do the eggs/butter thing. Either way, a cooked buttercream (style) icing is, as Martha would say, a good thing. A very good thing. A really very good thing. Seriously.

And last night, well, there was cooking but no cupcakes. I just really wanted a veggie burger with mashed avacado, tomoatoes, green onions and lettuce and oven fries. I never crave any thing that specific. In fact, I rarely have much opionion on what’s for dinner other than “not that” or “this is what I defrosted”. But last night, nothing else would do. And man was it good and satisfying and…good.

Oh and there were some breakfast muffins made too..cocoa-banana-almond (vegan). Last night I thought they were just ok but this morning it made an excellent breakfast. I guess sometimes a day (well, half a day) makes all the difference.