Last month Eric's parents went on vacation, right around the time their fruit trees ripened. They left about a day or two before the first fruits came into their own. Actually, this happens every year, why vacations in this family have always happened around the time the fruit ripens we'll never know, but you can plan a harvest by his parents vacation calender. This year they went chasing an eclipse in the South Pacific, (something Eric's dad Pat has always dreamed of seeing with his own eyes and finally saw one this time, after getting rained on twice before) and we raided the back yard with buckets and fruit pickers. Later, when we were hearing all about the trip Pat mentioned that it was really peculiar that all the fruit was gone. We told them that it was delicious. Charisse ate some straight up, we tossed some into this dish

Growing up, my favorite thing to do in the summer was head out back in the early morning and stay outside till it was time for dinner.  I had a magical world outside where I would play and pretend and I always had lots of company with my two dogs, five bunnies and fifteen chickens running around with me.  During these summer time adventures, I used the resources available to me so I wouldn't have to go back inside.  I drank from the hose and I picked and ate all the wonderful fruits and veggies that my mom was growing.  Two of my favorite things to munch on were the mulberries and loquats.  Unfortunately, many years later the mulberry tree had to be cut down due to a disease, but large loquat tree still stands.  You may ask, "what is a loquat?" Many people have never heard of this fruit

Charisse is an artist by trade and by profession. She makes things pretty for a living. Vibrant complimentary colors with the occasional contrast thrown in for effect flow around pleasing shapes and enjoyable images. This is just the way she is. Eric on the other hand subscribes to the practical, doesn't-have-to-be-pretty-just-has-to-work school of doing things. You can even see this in our food, the prettier it is, the more Charisse had to do with it. These discussions have been the foundation of many of our disagreements, 99% of which end with "Eric your wrong because I said so". Every now and again, Eric does get to win, but that is usually regulated to picking between multiple pre-selected choices of the "which of these chairs do you like?" variety or futzing in the garage. Over the weekend, Eric got to actually win something on his own. We needed better lighting in the kitchen for our

Tuesday and Thursday nights are typically Eric's night to cook, which isn't a bad thing its just... time consuming. Lets just say that "multitasking" is not used in his vocabulary next to "I can" or "I'm good at" very often. So when Eric cooks, eating later in the evening (8:30 anyone?) tends to be more common than not. Such was the case last night when he got home all excited to start on a recipe he found, and realized halfway through that we were out of a great many things. This is actually okay as the phrase "lets just wing it" is a very common phrase in the Eric Lexicon. Halfway through, the dish was starting to sound more like a Martini than a dinner so a few of those got added to the meal too. In fact a cold martini is one of Eric's favorite meals.The recipe here calls for fresh spinach, but sometimes

It was about a month ago that Eric got home to find a backhoe digging a big hole in his front yard and our friends Dan and Jenn came to the rescue, inviting us over for dinner. Dan was going to fire up the grill and cook... something, but he wasn't sure what. Eric on the other hand had a great rub ready to go and really wanted to try out making some flavored butters. It was a match made in perfection. Eric brought the rub and the butter and Charisse and Jen handled the rest.Using a fancy butter on a well seasoned steak is almost always going to be fantastic. The butter melts along the steak as you eat it, almost as an after thought to the flavors in the steak and the rub. The rub gives the steak a kick going down but doesn't hide the natural beef

The Hostess Cupcake. Iconic. Nostalgic. Slightly Waxy. Some of the many descriptions that come to mind whenever someone mentions those little individually wrapped cream filled chocolate cakes. Forget the Twinkie, Hostess even alludes to it being the single most popular snake cake in history, something most people who were young up anytime in the 70's all they way through the 90's can probably attest. Packed in millions of school lunches and probably millions of adult lunches as well, the Hostess Cupcake with its squiggly swirl of vanilla icing on top was for many people a generational snack. Eric's dad loved the things and growing up, so did he. Charisse's mom also has a soft spot for the little chocolate cakes, and mentioned something to Charisse a few days before her birthday. So after some searching around, Charisse hit up the idea of making her own version of the little cake for Monica's

Exotic salads seem to be an obsession of Charisse's lately and this one definitely fits into the exotic salad category.  This was a very unexpected combination of flavors, from the sweetness of the watermelon, to the tart lemon juice we were a bit skeptical at first.  But Charisse thought it would be a "pretty" salad and we went ahead with our concoction.  A few tips for this salad that we discovered: use seedless watermelon, it makes the cleaning and cubing process quicker.  Also this salad NEEDS to be kept cold, although it still tastes great, when it starts warming up, the watermelon and cucumbers start giving up the water in them and your salad starts to look like soup.  So I would suggest keeping in the fridge until ready to serve or if you are having a buffet style, chilling it over ice.  Watermelon SaladWhat You Will Need1/2 of a red

In the spirit of summer, we've been trying to do as much "summertime" food as we can; burgers, BBQ, fruit and ice cream. Today we've got one of our own burger creations: the Fiesta Burger! We'd been hoping to have a taco night, but found that we were missing some key ingredients (taco shells? tortillas? Nope, didn't have any of those). So we had to think about what else we could do with ground beef and cheese and had one of those "duh" moments. Eric still wanted tacos though and Charisse said something along the line of "why don't we do a taco burger?" Taco Burger? Had we lost our minds? Probably, but the idea sounded so crazy it might work. Or we'd be ordering pizza. Thankfully the pizza guy stayed home and we dug into these burgers like... hungry sharks going after... fiesta burgers? Okay analogy fail.These burgers are

Last weekend was the 4th of July, so we had some friends over for a BBQ potluck and Charisse prepared a nice cake, with a colorful surprise! The idea of a red white and blue cake is something Eric's sister Elaine discovered around memorial day, and Charisse applied her own cake recipe to produce this patriotic dessert. We tried to snap as many pictures as we could, but believe you me, this cake vanished faster than anyone could say "Mmmm, let me have another slice". Let us know what you think and hit the break for pictures and recipe!American Flag CakeWhat You Will Need3 cups flour4 teaspoons baking powder1/2 teaspoon salt2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature2 1/3 cups sugar5 large egg whites, room temperature2 teaspoons vanilla1 1/2 cups milk, room temperaturered gel food coloringnavy blue gel food coloringCream Cheese FrostingWhat you will need2 sticks of butter16 ounces of cream cheese4-6 cups of

Just about every day, Eric walks by the Subway in the train station in San Francisco. Every now and again, there is something cooking (okay, something being heated in the microwave) that smells so good it ruins Eric's commute, because he sits on the train, hungry. That something is the meatball sub. Now granted, Subway's try at it doesn't taste nearly as good as say the Amato's sandwich in Saratoga but a meatball sub smells like a meatball sub no matter who makes it. And it always makes Eric hungry.So the other day he gets home from work and found his thought process going something along the lines of "meatball sub meatball sub meatball sub meatball sub say hi to wife meatball sub meatball sub meatball sub say hi to dog meatball sub meatball sub stop drolling meatball sub meatball sub". Needless to say convincing Charisse to whip up a batch of meatballs and some sauce was a pretty easy sell. We'd