Come to Me, Little Piggy

Now that Valentine's Day has come and gone and I can't find the heart shaped mixing bowls in stores anymore (still available online but I'm too cheap to pay shipping), I've moved on.  This is the NEW latest obsession that I'm threatening to use my employee discount on:
 
A pig shaped cutting board!  SO cute (the picture doesn't do it justice), and SO unnecessary since Sweetie came equipped with, like, five cutting boards and I don't even know where we would put this one.  Still, I want it I want it I want it!

Update Your Look!

Sweets and I have a running joke: we were walking into PB one time, and they had a huge sign that said "Update Your Look with Pillows!".  And so now whenever we're in a home store, without fail, he says in a serious tone "Sweetie, I think we should update our look with pillows." (actually, he really does want new couch pillows - we're just looking for the right ones).

Me, when it comes to seasonal looks, I'm all about the vase filler.  Here's what our winter look was.  Thanks Margaret, for the pine cones!

And now this nice weather we've been having has inspired me to - yes! - update our look with NEW vase filler.  So I busted out a new white candle and the PB Cherry Blossom potpourri I found on sale.  

Et voila!  Spring time!

Except that the candle is too big and not all the vase filler fit in - some pieces were too big.

Decorating is hard.

Holiday!

I was on the phone yesterday with my Mom, and she reminded me what tomorrow is: the day that the little ground bug comes out of its hole, and we get to see how much longer winter is going to last! 

I swear, its her favorite holiday.  I'll have to remember to call her to see how it goes.

What I Just Read: Googled and Cheerful Money

I just finished reading two very different books.  Here are some disjointed thoughts on each:

Googled: Whew, glad I don't work in Old Media! Yikes, Google is so powerful - though in the long term, you do have to wonder what's brewing in some Silicon Valley garage that will be the next big thing.

Cheerful Money by Tad Friend.  Because apparently I will read anything that's excerpted in Vogue.  And I did watch Metropolitan a couple of weeks ago (thanks, Netflix Watch Instantly!).  Wasps!  Snort.  We don't really have many of those here in the Bay Area.  This book reminded me of those boys on the crew team at Columbia.  I might also be biased, influenced by the sneering description I once read in SFBG of the author, reporting on California issues for the New Yorker from the vantage point of his Brooklyn brownstone.  Anyway: stories about someone else's family?  Not always so interesting.  It was just OK.

Chocolate-Caramel Cookie Bars

I like being invited to dinner at people's houses, because usually you're asked to bring something and it's a great excuse to bake.  For years, my go-to recipes was a Lemon Tart, but after attending a party a couple of months ago where someone made the Chocolate-Caramel Cookie Bars from the back page of the November issue of Martha Stewart Living, I have now adopted that recipe as my own.

It's incredibly easy.  You just take eighteen sticks of butter, five lbs. of light brown sugar, and some flour to make the cookie base.  Bake for thirty minutes, and while it's baking you take a bag of sugar, heat it up in water, add another twenty-two sticks of butter and some heavy cream, and boil that up and pour it over a bowl full of chocolate.  Mix, let it sit, and then pour the whole thing over the cookie part, and refrigerate overnight.  And it ends up looking something like this if you're lucky:*

That's salt on the top.  LOVE that salt-chocolate combo.

*That is, unless your hostesses accidentally leave it on top of their warm stove when you bring it over, and the whole thing melts into a gloppy mess.  Oops, mishap!  Oh well, it was still good, though not pretty.

**Product plug**: I love my baking pan that comes with it's own lid.  It makes it so easy to transport your baked goods!

The Week in Pop Culture

• The "new" Office this week was a clip show.  It actually wasn't so bad, and I admire their restraint in waiting so long to do one.  Friends did a clip show in, like, season two.
• Painful: Julianne Moore's wicked bad, bad Boston accent in 30 Rock.  Oh, just BAD.  Didn't someone have the heart to take her aside and tell her?
• Madonna in the Dolce & Gabbana print ads: Yikes.  Her lips are puffed out beyond recognition, and her face has that plastic filled-in look.  This kind of work is just so obvious.
  
• I don't care, I'm still not planning to see Avatar.
• Last season was the most boring Project Runway ever, but I'm giving it another chance.  It's back in New York, which helps a lot, and Michael (salute) and Nina (wave) appear to be back on as regulars.  Tim just seems to be getting crankier and crankier with every passing season, though.
• Flight of the Conchords Season Two, Disc One has now been in my home for 30 days and I have yet to watch it. 

Bad.

Meal # 2: American Meatloaf

I didn't cook last week, but I was determined to get back on track this week.  Today's meatloaf recipe came from Marion Cunningham's Learning to Cook.  I got this book years ago in my RH days, but gave it away at some point.  Then I hooked up with Sweets and he had his own well-worn copy.  What goes around comes around!

These are things I learned/could have done better:

• Timing.  The steamed broccoli was done first, followed by the baked sweet potatoes ten minutes later.  The meatloaf took about twenty minutes longer than I thought it would.  This could have been better planned out.
• I steamed the broccoli too long and it was limp.  No more than ten minutes next time!
• I liked this recipe, especially the addition of the spinach.  And I think that the beef-pork combo tastes better than turkey.  But it would have been better with ketchup, which is found in many other meatloaf recipes.  Noted for next time.

Overall, not bad.  And I have leftovers for lunch!

Speaking of cooking, this is the latest item I am threatening to use my employee discount on:

Heart-shaped melamine bowls.  So cute!