Pumpkin and Spice

My hair has, at various points, been about every color known to Lady Clairol- red, auburn, strawberry blonde, light brown, dark brown, purple, black, and even platinum blonde. You'd think I'd be able to answer with some authority the age old question, "Do blondes have more fun?" Well, I don't know about that... but I do know that you'll have fun (blonde or not) baking and eating these blondies!

As you probably know, blondies are moist, butterscotch-flavored, cake-like bar cookies. As yummy as blondies are, they still tend to play second fiddle to their ooey-gooey chocolate cousin, the brownie. No more! My blondies are a cross between a traditional blondie and a chocolate chip cookie. Moist blondie, flavored with vanilla and plenty of dark brown sugar, and jam-packed with every sort of chocolate imaginable- dark, milk, white and semi-sweet! To keep the sweetness from being too overwhelming, I use the largest proportion of the dark chocolates, and add a "secret" ingredient- coarse sea salt. Since the salt is a little chunky, it doesn't fully dissolve into the batter, so as you eat the blondies, you occasionally get a little pop of salt! I don't know about you, but I love the contrast of a little salt to the sweetness of chocolate.

It has been a busy week! My mom was recently in Orlando for a conference, so she came a few days early and spent some time with Kyle and I doing fun touristy kinda things. Most notably, we went to the zoo, where we fed giraffes... (That's my mom feeding the giraffe. They ate a rye cracker- it looked an awful lot like a Wasa cracker.)

Personally, I'm a big fan of the turkey burger. Kyle and I don't eat much beef (we do eat it, on occasion, but we tend to eat a lot more seafood and poultry), plus turkey burgers tend to be much lower in fat and calories than their beef counterparts. The problem that turkey burgers sometimes run into is that they can be a little dry, and occasionally bland.

Well, I don't mean to brag, but I make a pretty wicked turkey burger- juicy, flavorful, and packed with yummy bits. Spinach, caramelized onions, herbs, parmesan cheese... these babies have it all! Oh, and they're totally kid-approved! We had a friend and her daughters over for dinner, and the 5 year-old ate a burger and a half!

One of my favorite foods in the world (and I know at least some of you are with me on this) is pizza! I'm pretty indiscriminate about my pizza preferences- I like froufy gourmet pizza, I like greasy pizza from dive-y pizza joints, I like flatbreads, thin Italian pizzas, big floppy New York Style pizza, thick doughy Chicago Style Pizza... it's hard to go wrong. And, while I like almost any topping combination (sausage and green peppers are classic!) I do have a clear cut favorite- Hawaiian pizza is hands down my favorite topping! Mmmm... salty-sweet ham, sweet pineapple on top of savory sauce and covered in gooey salty cheese... Does it get better?

All this week I was craving pizza... it was just about all I could think about, and I know I was annoying Kyle with my incessant requests to order pizza. (He kept saying something about us having just had pizza this weekend... I dunno what that was about. Heehee!)

I hope that you all had a great Mother's Day weekend- I hope you all treated your moms well, showered them with love and gifts and let them know how fab they are. I gave my mom a call, but since she's coming to visit this coming weekend (Yay!) we're postponing our Mother's Day celebrating until then. I'm super-excited about the present I got her, because I know she'll love it, but she reads my blog (hi, Mom!) so I can't say what it is yet!

Kyle's mother lives about three miles away from us, so we did celebrate with her. Of course, I baked her a cake. I decided that I wanted to decorate her cake in an orange color scheme, because I think that Kyle's mom looks beautiful when she wears oranges. (Not many people do, but it's a great color on her.) Since the outside was going to be orange, it made sense to make the cake orange flavored as well.