Check out the recipe on the Bon Appetit Hon Blog.

CHOCOLATE! Screaming at me.  OMG. I must make these and soon!  I bet they’d look cute with a few holiday nonpareils sprinkled on them too!

As soon as I’m feeling right as rain, these lovely confections will be baking in my oven.  Came down with a bit of the flu on Tuesday afternoon, but am starting to feel better today having had a couple days of rest, some warm soup, and a few Tylenol cocktails.

On the creativity front, hmm… well… let’s see.  I knitted six more mini mittens, created a banner for my Auntie Jamie’s new Etsy shop (still under construction but coming soon!!) and had a couple visions of new projects (OH NO! NOT NEW PROJECTS!) that I hope – fingers crossed – to get started before Christmas.  We’ll just see about that.  AAAAAND I started planning out my digital portfolio for applying to grad school, which, I must say, is not a fun task.  Whittling down your life’s work into 12-18 pieces of what YOU think is your best work… eghh.  But it must be done, and done by January 15! YEEEEEEEEEEPS!

Ok, I’m off!  Hopefully next time you hear from me, I’ll have my own pictures of yummy chocolate cookies to share.

As something of an amateur chef, I have enjoyed the variety of places to shop around Boston. Within 15 minutes of our house are probably 10-12 grocery stores, including several of the “usual suspects” for the Northeast suburbs (Trader Joe’s, Whole Paycheck). These places have their spot in a grocery rotation, but we are lucky to live where we do in Belmont because my favorite grocery find, Russo’s, is just 10 minutes away in Watertown.

Over the past month, an early morning Saturday or Sunday trip to Russo’s has become one of the highlights of our week. And we’re not the only ones who love it. Russo’s is nearly always packed by 9 a.m. on Saturday AND Sunday. Why, you ask? How about this?

And this?

The place has an incredible variety of produce for just about every sort of cuisine you can think of. The Asian and Italian sections are especially strong:

They buy local stuff in season (today I picked out a basket of apples, maybe 7 lbs. worth, for $.79 cents a pound):

They also have a fantastic bakery and deli counter. The only problem with those is the crowds. As I mentioned earlier, it’s almost incredible how full the place is by 9 a.m. on the weekends. Getting a cart around the small store requires real concentration. But the mix of shoppers is great and the deals even better.

I’m hoping to post more “Best of Boston” places in the near future. But in the meantime, anyone have any spots like this to share?

Here is the recipe for MMMM… Balls!

It’s super easy.

AAAAND… you shouldn’t tell people this fact because they taste WAY more complex and WAY more than really what they are.

THREE ingredients:

(1)  2 packages oreo cookies
(2) 2 packages cream cheese (you can use both regular or one reg and one low fat)
(3) 2 packages chocolate chips (whatever kind you like–dark, semi, milk, white)

Step 1: Use cuisinart or blender to chop oreos into something that resembles dirt.

Step 2: Put cream cheese into a bowl and mix until soft and creamy (I used a stand mixer, but a regular hand mixer would work if you let the cream cheese get soft at room temp. first).

Step 3: Add the oreo dirt mixture to the cream cheese and mix until you get a mixture that resembles mud.

Steps 4 & 5: Turn out mixture in 1″ balls onto a lined cookie sheet.  Refrigerate for 30 mins to an hour.  While they’re in the fridge, melt your chocolate in a double boiler (pan with 1-2 inches of water to boil with a metal or glass bowl on top).

Step 6: Dip your cold balls into the hot chocolate and put back on the lined cookie sheet.

Step 7: Refrigerate or freeze until ready to serve.

Keep extras (there won’t be many!) in a tupperware container for up to a week (they won’t last long)

We hadn’t made meatballs in years, so first of all, we had to remember how to cook them. We had lots of ideas for what might make a unique and tasty ball, but eventually I decided on a pretty basic duo of pesto-infused beef and chicken balls. One had basil pesto, the other sundried tomato pesto. I ended up baking them for about a half an hour and they were nice and brown. Problem is, keeping meatballs fresh for an hour without being coated in sauce is tough. I named them Red Light/Green Light Balls, and once they got to the table they looked like this:

Anna decided to reprise one of her favorite recipes from Williamstown, a tasty double chocolate ball introduced to us by our friend Katie Kamieniecki. They are simple and easy to make but will blow your mind. The basic recipe is cream cheese, crushed Oreos, and melted chocolate. Noboday can resist! She called them…

Competition was fierce this year, as there were 13 entrants for the “Best Meatball” category!

One of our favorites was Anne Marie’s traditional, Italian meatball. Are you kidding me!? She told us she let them simmer for four hours. Everyone needs to know an Italian chef as talented as AMC. We could’ve eaten these all night:

As we were all judges, we sampled everything. I took my judging very seriously… and sampled them all twice. We then rested for a bit and played Atari! After awhile, we all voted and the results were announced. And guess who won the best Dessert Meatball category? Anna! She was very proud. And she won an awesome chef’s hat!

It was an absolute blast. Any else doing anything like this?

1. we got hitched!

2. we moved!  to a cute little house on a quiet road further in to Belmont, where Gordon can hunt rabbits and we can listen to nothing but the chirping birds and the kids playing in the street.

Dining Room

Sun Room

Living Room

—-

Anyhoo… it’s too damn hot outside today and turning on the oven seems unthinkable.  But darnit, I want pizza! So we’re grilling.  Here’s a nifty little video about how to do it yourself, thanks to Allrecipes.com: http://allrecipes.com/HowTo/Grilling-Pizza-Video.  I’ll post pictures when we’re finished… unless it doesn’t turn out and we’re walking down the street to get a pizza pie at Thiago’s… [Edit: grilling pizza is simple and well worth the effort... sorry Thiago's,  we'll have to see you when grilling season is over!]

So yeah.  We highly recommend grilling your pizza.

First, you put the pizza dough (we got ours at the grocery store pre-made at the deli! or if you’re really brave you can make your own) right on the super hot grill.  It’s easiest if they’re kinda small so you can flip them.  You’ll notice one is slightly smaller than the other and oddly shaped… this is because someone dropped the dough on to the grill.  I’m not naming names but it wasn’t me and Gordon was staying cool inside.  Luckily we were able to whisk it off and re-shaped it and laid it on there just in time.

Then we let them sit for a couple of minutes.  And it really only took a couple of minutes.  They rise up and get nice and bubbly.  But you can take a fork and poke them so they’re nice and flat.  Then we flipped them over with tongs (or you could use a spatula, or both if you need the extra help to get it over) and quickly started putting on the ingredients!  We did homemade basil pesto, tomatoes, and mozzarella.  Feel free to get creative here.

Here Mark puts on the ingredients (he made the pesto–it was AWESOME!)

I wanted my turn too.  Hurry Anna!  Hurry!  They’re cooking fast!

Then we shut the door and let them cook for a couple more minutes.  It was really hot outside… and the grill was hot too.  At least it wasn’t so hot in the house. We couldn’t wait for these to cook up fast so we could eat them. Woo Pizza!

Here’s the finished product:

With a nice salad of red leaf lettuce, apples, and balsamic vinaigrette, this meal was really one of the best of the summer.  MmmmmmmM!

Hopefully you’ll see more of us here now that we’re settled in and nesting in our new digs.  Until then, welcome back to Le Petit Éléphant, now on Winslow Road.  We’ll get to changing the banner soon, don’t you worry.

Wishing everyone this morning a Happy Easter, and hoping spring comes soon with new life and fresh moments of happiness and hope and love for the coming months.

Today I feel mixed feelings of happiness and sadness–happy because it -IS- almost feeling like spring, and we have new sprouts popping up that will bring good produce to us this summer; happy for the buds on the trees and the flowers popping up all around; excited for the coming of summer and all the warm days will bring.  But sad because I’m missing my family today… I know it’s hard for us to be away from our families on holidays, but for some reason Easter gets me every year.  And picturing my mum and dad at home dying eggs by themselves just breaks my heart.  So to all of our families far and wide:

WE LOVE YOU!  We miss you!

We will be having a nice Easter brunch soon and be celebrating the newness of the Spring with Annie–we’ve cooked up some yummy treats for her–Sunrise Enchiladas and Blue Ribbon Cinnamon Rolls, from a special Wyoming Cookbook given to me by my mother.  I’ll put photos up soon.  We’ll also be trying to plant some of our sprouts that have grown WAY outside of their little peat packs (roots everywhere! It’s incredible!) in hopes that they’ll be able to grow much bigger and faster outside…

Enjoy the day!  It’s a day of new life!

It’s been quite a while.  And we know that, because last time we blogged there was a giant freaking snow pile in our driveway.  And now, alas, there is not… nothing like actually, and especially today.  It was lovely outside.  And if I don’t see snow for another whole 8 months I’ll be a happy bear.

This weekend was good and fun and filled with good food, good friends, good games, and too much sugar.  Let’s do this thing in three categories:  Gardening; Friends; Sugar

Gardening:

YEEEAAAAHOOOOOOOOO! It’s _almost_ that time of year again, that time of big tomatoes, little squashes, and other fresh delights hanging out of our pot garden.  To get a kick-start this year, we drove over to our local Home Depot… which by the way is a great place.  Families of all shapes and sizes picking out seeds and gardening stuff, big guys with their little girls loading pink paint and lights into carts, and crafty types picking up wood and nails for their next projects, all with big happy smiles on their faces, and nice folks in orange aprons there to help you out.  Anyhoo, we were there for one thing: Starting Kits.  You can make your own if you have boxes, REALLY heavy duty plastic bags or plastic liners, wire of some sort, and plastic wrap.  OR, you can spend $5 and buy a reusable box with 50 little holes for 50 seed starts with its very own plastic top.  While we’d love to do our own thing, we couldn’t not spend the $5 plus $4 for a bag of special seed-starting peat moss stuff.  It seemed like a good idea, and we’ll see about that.  We also bought seeds for tomatoes, squash, beans, carrots, lettuce, various flowers and herbs.

We brought our wares back to the house and got straight to work:

We organized a work space, and filled the box with the 50 spots with the peat mixture stuff…

sprayed it with water, and added various seeds in rows…

then we gave it a good drink of water and put the top on.  We did this three more times, and set them up in our back room under a plant light and turned the space heater up to 71.

Apparently these things like this kind of special warm wet climate… and the little boxes create a bit of condensation and sort of make it swampy… perfect conditions for turning from seed to sprout.

We hope to have seedlings in about 7-10 days… and don’t you worry, you’ll be kept very well informed.  Yay for gardening!  Yay for pots and dirt and seeds!  Pot gardens!  Yeaaay!

Friends:

Later on Saturday evening we brought ourselves over to good buddy Seth’s house for some Settling of Catan and good food with our other lovely Anne Marie friend.  But boy were we surprised to see Jamin too, in Boston for apartment hunting (congrats to Jamin on his match at MGH!)

Settlers of Catan is a great game.  And you can call us nerds until you go blue in the face, we will not stop playing, nor will we take your teasing.  It is, a fantastic game.  See here if you don’t believe us.  You trade commodoties for other commodoties, all in the hopes of building roads and huts and cities and longest roads and largest armies.  And no, it is not like Risk.

We played for about three hours… and I’ve never seen a board turn out like this (and I say that because, unlike most games, the board and state and rate and style and outcome of play is different every time).   Mark and I were on a side in orange against Anne Marie in red, Seth in white, and Jamin in blue.  Three parallel roads!! Craziness.  Anne Marie had the HUGEST road… like 12 lengths long or something (see the pic above), and everyone was so close (8 pts each with 11 to win in this game–we decided).

Seth kept moving the robber (yes! there’s a robber!) and stifling our sheep and brick winnings… and then the robber came off and Mark and I dominated, and then it was over.  But fun.  And funny.  Because everyone has their endearing ways of playing, such as in trading:

(Jamin: OK, guys…so here’s what I want. I have bricks. I want wood. Anyone? Anyone? OK, let me repeat myself: here’s what I want…)

and evading the robber: (Anne Marie: But I only have two cards! I’m not strong! – except that she is strong… it’s just a ploy) and pointing out other players strength when they put down a road or settlement (Seth: OOOOOH… she’s strong! Oooooooh! Look how strong she is!) and me, I just like to deny everything… No! I don’t have any ore. Sorry.  Not today.  Sorry… (when I perfectly well do have ore, just not to trade with you).

And Mark? Well, he’s generally just very tricky.  Very tricky indeed, and not to be trusted.

Suffice it to say, it was good fun.  Mark made marinaded chicken and he and Seth skewered up some kabobs with yummy veggies, and we enjoyed good kabobs with some sort of cous cous that was spicy and delightful.  Good times.  Good eats.  Good friends.  Good game.

Sugar:

So today I probably consumed a pound of sugar. Or so.  Maybe two pounds.  But it was worth it.  Sammy Pants friend came over for a while and helped bake the lovely Easter Cookies.

We made maybe 3 or 4 dozen or so…

And they are awesome.  Sammy is a cookie decorating machine.  Here are some of our finest:

And anyone who knows anything about decorating cookies KNOWS that there is frosting everywhere, and it seeps out of every place.  And if one looks bad, you eat it.  Or if an ear falls off, you eat it!  Or if a giant glob of frosting accidentally on purpose falls off the knife, you have to catch it on your finger, and EAT IT!

And so we crashed.

And it was good.

The end.

Of a lovely weekend.

I cannot wait for summer.