Last Thanksgiving Morgan was introduced to my aunt’s "sticky rice" and it was love at first bite! Since then we’ve been pestering her for the recipe but to no avail. So instead of waiting for Thanksgiving to roll around this year we decided to do a little online research and replicate the dish the best we could. After several tries this is how we’ve faired.

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My cute husband got me a stash of Domoooo! Attack which we decided to try over the 4th of July weekend. Tasty. Tart like Red Bull but without the jitters.

Oh chocolate mousse, how I love thee.

Actually, let me amend that statement. Oh chocolate, how I love thee.

Here’s one truth about me: I love chocolate. It doesn’t matter what it’s in, I love it.

My latest craving is craving chocolate mousse.

I’m always hunting for the best and tastiest chocolate recipe and both Alice and I were happy with the way this one. For this version, I tweaked a Tyler Florence recipe to make a double serving (because if I’d made the full batch, I would have eaten three servings, and I didn’t need that post-eating guilt).

Check out the recipe!

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This week I had a hankering for polenta, so I added it to our menu (yeah, I typically write out a weekly menu for us, I’m a bit of a nerd).

Rather than just plain ol’ polenta (which is tasty, don’t get me wrong), I wanted to add something with a little sauce on it, which immediately made me think of a ragout.

Knowing that Alice is a big mushroom fan, I decided to go with a mushroom ragout and viola, our Wednesday night dinner: polenta with sausage and mushroom ragout.

Sadly, I used some wine in making the ragout, but it wasn’t the whole bottle. That meant Alice and I had to drink the rest of it.

Real shame that.

A while back, Alice and I had some leftover rice, so we decided to make fried rice (with the possible exception of rice pudding, there are few better uses for leftover rice). Typically, we use ham or some other pork product as the protein; but this fateful day, we didn’t have any and were too — let’s say unmotivated — to go to the store.

However, we did have bacon. Hello inspiration.

Adding the bacon added a nice smoky note to the fried rice and kept us happy with its porky goodness. Seriously, is there anything that bacon can’t do?

Unlock the keys to discovery for Bacon Fried Rice!

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that is all

Over this previous weekend, Alice and I were busy.

We went to Santa Barbara, did some outlet shopping, almost went to my friend Bryan’s birthday celebration (LA traffic, I’m not a fan), did some price comparison shopping for alcohol for the wedding, looked at invitations, had some amazing cheesesteaks (seriously, amazing) and most importantly, made some paper pomanders.

When you view these now and you’re getting an early preview of some of our wedding decorations.

At this point, we’re not sure how many of these we’re going to make and everywhere that we plan to hang them, but they will play a role in our decorations. (Not just because they take a while to make, but because they’re pretty.)

Here’s the low down: you take a ball of styrofoam, you take some tissue paper (turns out five for the small ones), group the tissue paper, fold it, use some wire to hold the paper together, fluff the paper and then put the fluffed papers in the styrofoam ball.

It’s not overly difficult (except when you forget to round the ends of the paper like I’ve done), but it’s just a little labor intensive.

Still though, they’re fun to make and we’re going to make a few more before the actual wedding so we have more pretty decorations (along with everything else we’re planning on using).