From my breakfast table.

Where this picture says it all.  These are Joy’s pancakes.  Joy takes pancakes more seriously than I do, which means I hold her in the highest regard.  When I saw these on her blog, I gasped and ran to the kitchen.  They’re even better than they look.  And the raspberries and whole wheat flour I added totally cancel out the chocolate chunks?

Right?

To make pancakes for a hungry twosome, you will need:

• 1/2 C all purpose flour
• 1/2 C whole wheat flour
• 1 T brown sugar
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• dash cinnamon
• 1 C buttermilk
• 2 T butter, melted, and cooled slightly
• 1 large egg
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 1/3 C chocolate chunks (I used minis)
• 1/2 C fresh rasberries
• oodles of maple syrup

In medium bowl, whisk flours, brown sugar, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon.  In smaller bowl (or measuring cup if you don’t like doing dishes), whisk buttermilk, butter, egg and vanilla.  Whisk wet ingredients into dry, and don’t worry if you still have small lumps.  Stir in chocolate chunks.  Heat a pat of butter over a griddle or frying pan.  Pour batter, by the quarter-cupful onto the pan.  Let it sizzle, untouched, until small bubbles form on top and the edges of the pancake start to pull away from the pan.  Flip pancake and cook for one more minute on the other side.  Repeat with remaining batter until pancakes are finished.  If you’re not cooking them to order, keep pancakes warm on a baking sheet in a low oven.

In a small bowl, smash raspberries with a fork.  Divide mix over and in between tall stacks of pancakes.

Drown in syrup.

Savor Saturday.

Oh, they can be good.

They can be so crispy the crunch echoes through your kitchen when you bite into one.

They can be so flavorful you start thinking of them as a complete meal.

They can steal the show away from anything else you put on the plate.

They are magic.

But you have to make them first.

I wish I could feed them to you in large doses.  You’ll have to settle for the recipe.

It hails from our neighbor.  Brother Bear’s friend Vinny’s mom.  The same one who brought you Pepperoni Gravy.  Which should be endorsement enough.  We call them MVPs.  Because they are Mrs. Vinny’s Potatoes.

To make enough for 4 you will need:

• 1 package new potatoes
• 6 T (3/4 stick) butter (sure, you could cut back to 1/2 stick, but why would you want to?), sliced into pats
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1/2 tsp. pepper

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.  Cut potatoes into 1 1/2 inch chunks.  Place in 9 x 13 baking dish, and top with pats of butter.  Top with salt and pepper.  Bake for 2 hours, stopping every 30 minutes to toss potatoes.

I had a chicken meatball recipe all ready to go.

And then I was completely underwhelmed by these.

If you need me, I’ll be detoxing from all the ground meat with some smoothies.

Which means I never opened the cookbook with the recipe until the night I made the soup.  I jot notes in the margins of all my cookbooks, and the first time I made this dish (February 3, 2009), I wrote the following, “Would be perfect if you’re sick.”

What do you know?  The night I made this, I was sick with a rotten cold that left me chugging orange juice as if my life depended on it.  Sometimes, you just know that the dish you make is going to turn out exactly the way you needed it to.

With all that green, it’s not too bad for you either.

I’ve made this soup several times, and like almost all of Ina’s dishes, there are plenty of substitutes you can make here.  I’m not the biggest fan of sausage, unless it’s top notch.  If you don’t have something great at your disposal, only use ground chicken.  No Romano cheese?  Up the Parmesan.  And any grain you can name will work just fine in this soup.  Small pasta, rice, bown rice, Israeli couscous, you name it.  Sick of adding spinach to everything you make?  Shake this up with some kale instead.  Personalize this however you see fit.

To make Ina’s Italian Wedding Soup for 8, you will need:

• 3/4 pound ground chicken
• 1/2 pound chicken sausage, casings removed
• 2/3 C bread crumbs (I use Italian seasoned)
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 3 T chopped fresh parsley
• 1/4 C grated Pecorino Romano cheese
• 1/4 C grated Parmesan cheese
• 3 T milk
• 1 extra large egg, lightly beaten
• Kosher salt
• pepper
• 2 T olive oil
• 1 onion, chopped
• 3 carrots, chopped
• 2 stalks celery, chopped
• 10 C chicken stock
• 1/2 C dry white wine
• 1 C small pasta (but rice would work too)
• 12 oz. baby spinach leaves

To make the meatballs, preheat the oven to 350 degrees, and line a baking sheet with parchment.  Mix first 9 ingredients, plus 1 tsp. salt, and 1/2 tsp. pepper in a bowl with your hands.  Form small (1 inch) meatballs and place them on baking sheet.  Bake for 20-30 minutes, until cooked through and lightly browned.  Set aside.

Meanwhile, heat oil in bottom of large stock pot.  Saute onion, carrots, and celery and saute until softened, 5-6 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Add wine to deglaze the pan, and chicken stock.  Bring to boil.  Add pasta and cook 5-6 minutes (if you use rice, you’ll need to cook it longer).  Add meatballs to soup and cook 1 minute.  Add spinach and cook one more minute till wilted.  Serve hot in large bowls.

The best way I can think of to describe my friendship with Cari Faye is to tell you a little story about her wedding day.

On the day of Cari Faye’s wedding, her wedding party arrived early in the morning to begin the beautification process.  By the time lunch rolled around, our entourage ordered from the deli downstairs.  While six bridesmaids, Cari Faye’s mother, future mother-in-law, and Grandmother, all ordered foods that would ensure their beautiful dresses would zip, Cari Faye ordered 2 pounds of French Fries.  She knew I would enjoy them.  So while all her little friends ate lettuce leaves and tomato slices, we chowed down on potatoes cooked in fat.  See, there they are, in the bottom left of that photo.

In honor of Cari Faye, and the French fries, and because they will pair so well with the meatballs we’re having tonight, we’ll have these too.  Which, weirdly enough, I made exactly two years ago.

While preparing for our trip to the Big Apple, Queen Cupcake emailed me to ask where we should eat our actual meals, which is more my domain (she’s really only in it for the cupcakes).  As always, Queen Cupcake’s timing was impeccable.  I had recently read about The Meatball Shop on two of my favorite New York blogs that same week.  Their newest location is in the West Village, or as Queen Cupcake calls it, heaven.  Things were coming together.

We arrived at 8:00 on a Saturday night with the promise of a table in an hour, “but it could be in 15 minutes, you just never know.”  Not to worry, The Meatball Shop has wine.  The three of us cozied up to the bar and started making friends with the Australians sitting next to us.  And two glasses later, when SCL got the text that our table was ready, so were we.

We sat down at the communal table and were promptly given a nice rundown of the balls on the menu.  *Side note-I love a communal table.*  The waitress said the word balls so many times, we started getting uncomfortable.  Admit it–you’re a little uncomfortable now, aren’t you?  And you’ve only read the word balls twice.  Well, now three times.  When you sit down and get that all on the table (forgive the pun) right away, you automatically feel closer to those around you.

After our menu run-down, we hit those laminated suckers up with our dry-erase marker.  Yep, the menu is like a giant to-do list you can check things off of. Type-A-ers everywhere, rejoice!  Queen Cupcake ordered a Meatball Smash, and SCL and I ordered naked balls to share.  Above are my chicken balls with pesto and polenta.  And below are her pork balls with mushroom gravy and risotto.

We weren’t brave enough to try the buffalo chicken balls, but given my penchant for AGOMYR’s buffalo chicken dip (her take on this), those would have been right up my alley.  And for all you vegetarians out there (I’m looking at you, Wooden Nickels), The Meatball Shop has options for you as well.

And when you finish dinner, you get to piece together your own ice cream sandwich.  When Queen Cupcake asked if we could have a different cookie on the top and bottom, the waitress said, “Of course!” as if you’d be crazy not to.

Love that place.

So it’s meatball week!  Be prepared to be inundated.

I’ll see if I can’t come up with something healthier for when we’re through.

But there’s nothing inherently unhealthy about meatballs.

Especially if you don’t even fry them.

Which you don’t when you make them this way.

While on a deep de-cluttering attack the other day, I came across an old recipe (old as in, December, 2003) I had plucked from the pages of one of Grandma Glass of Milk’s back issues of Fine Cooking.  I came across the recipe right as I was dreaming up our dinner menu for the week, and thus, Spicy Meatballs with Fragrant Tomato sauce earned their place on our table.  The smell alone was enough for the meatballs to earn their place for weeks to come.  These things are gooood.  And their moniker is fitting.  The meatballs are spicy, but not the kind of spicy that clears your sinuses.  The kind that makes food warm and comforting.

And they’re beyond simple.  I always get it in my head that meatballs are labor-intensive, but that’s not always the case.  After you shape these, you set them aside until they are, and yes, this is the word they use, “nestled” into the sauce.  The meatballs are tired little people like you and me, crawling into their bed of sauce after a long day at work.

To make meatballs for four (although our leftovers would suggest more people could get their fill), you will need:

• 1 C breadcrumbs (The original recipe suggests fresh, but seriously?  Who has those lying around all the time?)
• 1/3 C milk (I used whole)
• 2 T olive oil
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 2 tsp. ground cumin
• 1 tsp. ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp. cayenne
• 28 oz. can diced tomatoes, with their juices
• Kosher salt
• black pepper
• 1 lb. ground beef
• 2/3 C chopped cilantro

Combine breadcrumbs and milk in mixing bowl and let sit for 5 minutes.  Meanwhile, heat oil in large skillet over medium heat.  Add onion and saute 5 minutes.  Add 1 tsp. of cumin, the cinnamon, and 1/8 tsp. cayenne and cook for 30 seconds.  Add tomatoes and their juices, 1 C water and 1/2 tsp. salt, and stir till combined.  Bring sauce to a boil, then reduce heat and let simmer 15 minutes.

While sauce simmers, prepare meatballs.  Mash breadcrumbs and milk with a fork to a smooth paste.  Add beef, remaining cumin, half of the cilantro, 1/2 tsp. salt, 1/4 tsp. black pepper, and remaining cayenne to the mixture.  Mix with your hands until thoroughly combined.  Wet your hands to keep mixture from sticking, and roll a couple tablespoonsful into a 1 1/2 inch diameter ball.  Continue until you’ve used all the meat.  This should yield about 30 small meatballs.

Nestle meatballs into the sauce, cover, and cook for 10 minutes.  Remove the lid and continue simmering for 5 minutes to thicken sauce.  Stir in remaining cilantro and season sauce with salt and pepper as necessary.

Serve hot, preferrably over Israeli couscous.

With these people.

So, as you can no doubt imagine, last weekend was the best weekend ever!

It was, of course, filled with the three of us running all over the island, inhaling more food than you thought humanly possible from two size-2 girls and, ahem, me.

For cupcakes, we went to Sprinkles and Baked by Melissa.  We also sneaked in a compost cookie at Milk Bar (confession:  I like my homemade compost cookies better).  For proof that I ate something healthy, there’s Le Pain Quotidien’s granola with bananas and strawberries up there.  And for meals, we went to Eataly, Shake Shack and The Meatball Shop.  There was nary a disappointing bite to be found.

Hi, do you see this little creation in the foreground?  It’s cake!  Meringue cake with raspberry mousse, to be exact.  And I bet you’ve never seen anything like this.  It’s kind of to die for.  I kind of ate it every day.  Sometimes for breakfast.

And this is what happens when you slice into the white cake, torta de milojas, in the background.  Cake of 1,000 leaves, or layers.  And what’s in between those thin, sweet, crispy layers?  Dulce de leche and orange marmalade.  Winning.

And yes, I already posted one empanada, but they’re good enough that they warrant a second shout out.  Besides, these are baked not fried, so they’re totally different.  And they have mushrooms, beef, or pork.  So they’re not at all like the other cheese one.  These little bite-sized guys are amazing.

This is a sopapilla.  It’s a squash bread that can be savory and served with dinner (like I ate it here), or sweet and served with powdered sugar on top.  You really can’t lose.  Try it both ways.  I only had one food problem on the whole trip.

The milk!  Chileans don’t drink milk at the alarming pace Americans do.  Thus, their milk is uber-pasteurized, is not kept in the fridge at the supermarket, and has a shelf life of 6 months!!!!  Who can’t finish their milk in half a year?  Needless to say, it had a completely different taste that my husband and I couldn’t get over.  So we drank more vino tinto to make up for it.

I made a cheesecake.

And a good one, at that.

Yep, that’s a candle.

This cheesecake hails from December, when I made it for my husband’s/Grandma Glass of Milk’s/my aunt’s Triple Birthday Bash!  All three were born on 12/13.  Well, all three plus Taylor Swift.  But when you’re a food blogger, December is filled with holiday cookies, and January is packed with grains and greens.  When you’re a food blogger, cheesecakes made in the middle of December get relegated to the back of your iPhoto files, waiting for you to rediscover them late one chilly evening while sitting with a warm laptop on your, well, lap.

By now you’ve all given up your healthy eating resolutions, right?  We’re that far into the month, aren’t we?  Even if we’re not, let me tell you this is splurge-worthy.  Indulgent.  Luxurious.  It’s velvety smooth.  The lemon zest does that same thing to vanilla that coffee powder does to chocolate.  The cheesecake doesn’t taste like lemon, it just tastes more like vanilla.  Rich vanilla.

This is Ina’s cheesecake.  There are at least a dozen cookbooks in my library I could have turned to when my husband requested a cheesecake for his birthday, but I went with my girl, the Barefoot Contessa.  Or as Liz Lemon calls her, “That woman on the Food Network whose husband only comes home on the weekends.”  Ina is at her best when she’s making American classics (and yes, she really does turn up the volume), and this cheesecake is a shining example of such dishes.  Out of the three cakes available, this was the one that was first to go.  The one everybody had to have a piece of.

And yes, it had a giant crack in the middle, but whose cheesecake doesn’t?   When you top it with raspberry sauce (which wasn’t memorable, so maybe this sauce next time, okay?), you’ll never even know it was there.

You don’t need a reason to make a cheesecake.  Today is Sunday.  Tomorrow is Monday.  Do it.

To make cheesecake for 12, you will need:

Time.  Cheesecake is not a labor-intensive cake to make, but it takes a lot of time just hanging out in the oven.  Plan to make it the day before you need it.

For the crust:

• 1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs (10 crackers)

• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) unsalted butter, melted

For the filling:

• 2 1/2 pounds cream cheese, at room temperature
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 5 whole extra-large eggs, at room temperature
• 2 extra-large egg yolks, at room temperature
• 1/4 cup sour cream
• 1 tablespoon grated lemon zest (2 lemons)
• 1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

For the topping:

• 1 cup red jelly (not jam), such as currant, raspberry, or strawberry
• 3 half-pints fresh raspberries