I guess there’s something about shortbread paired with citrus that gets me insane. I must have had at least 6 of these tonight while I was testing the recipe. Needless to say, I skipped dinner, though that was calling for me, too. I just knew that if I had eaten the spaghetti, I would have needed to clean my palate with more cookies—not a good idea.

The whole time I kept thinking about Jerry Seinfeld’s new bit about cookies, which was on David Letterman a couple months ago. I looked everywhere for a clip of it on YouTube, but couldn’t find it. Sorry. If anyone finds it out there, post it in the comments, and then we can all have a good laugh.

So, I decided to make these cookies with thyme because the package of thyme I found at the grocery store had these pretty little flowers in them, and I thought they would look nice in a photograph. If you aren’t brave enough to put an herb you may associate with savory foods into a cookie, then just leave it out. I won’t be offended, and I won’t even say you’re not a foodie.

What is a foodie exactly anyway? I don’t even know if I am one, much less qualified to determine if others are.

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Here’s just a quick recipe I thought might be fun.  I thought about making it for ages, and had very high hopes about it.  When the moment arrived, though, I burnt a ton of them trying to get the eggs to cook through.  In the end, I decided to pull them out of the oven when the phyllo was golden brown and microwave them to cook the egg enough to be presentable.  If you’re some sort of purist that refuses to use a microwave, or you just don’t have one, feel free to experiment with the recipe and post your cooking times and temperatures in the comments.  I’d love to know how to get them to work without the microwave.

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Lately, more than usual, I find myself strapped for time. Keeping up this blog is definitely one of the reasons. Not wanting to cut back on posts, nor have my kids need to go out and join Big Brothers Big Sisters, I’ve decided they’re just gonna have to help in the kitchen. Now we can spend more time together, they can learn how to cook, and the best reason of all: they’ll look cute in the pictures.

I used halibut in this recipe. It’s firm, white, tender, and cuts clean to make perfect fish sticks. The major drawback is price. These fish sticks were not cheap. So, use another firm white fish, such as cod, if you can’t find halibut on sale.

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I asked my 9-year-old what he thought of these. With his mouth full of icing, he said two words: “Life changing.”

Well, now that you know how I feel about foil dinners, I suppose I should continue in my camping cuisine vein, and tell you how I feel about s’mores. Just like with the foil dinners, I am always giddy with anticipation.

I go and find the perfect stick in the woods, whittle down the end, then gather to the fire circle. I patiently wait for the fire to burn down long enough to produce those mesmerizing, delicately glowing embers. Carefully, I tuck my marshmallow stick between a tangle of logs and kindling to nestle my fluffy white pillow of sugar at the perfect distance from the coals. I carefully turn the stick, ever so gently, with such hyper focus that my toddler could wander too close to the fire and I would literally think twice before ditching the stick and running to his rescue. But, luckily that doesn’t happen, and I keep turning, and turning, until I finally achieve the perfect, golden brown marshmallow, filled with a river of warm flowing confection.

Then it falls off the stick.

So I do it all over again.

When the moment of truth finally arrives, and I have my perfectly cooked marshmallow, I race to the chocolate and graham crackers, shove them together. I sink my teeth in, hoping for the magical transcendence that is surely to result from such a tried and true tradition of Americana. And then . . . nothing. Absolutely nothing. The chocolate never melts enough, the marshmallow somehow instantly cools on contact, and my river of warm flowing confection halts mid bite. I think, Are graham crackers always this dry? And why do we have to use Hershey’s? It’s so chalky.

So I think, what it boils down to is, I like the idea of s’mores much more than the actual thing.

I hope with these cupcakes, to bring all the s’morey flavors together without disappointing in that moment of truth. The best thing of all is you get to pull out the kitchen torch. I can’t promise it will be as mesmerizing as those red glowing embers, but it will come close.

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Here’s a book my mom and I found last year while browsing through Borders in Plymouth, Massachusetts (going to a book store with my mom, without kids, is probably my most favorite thing in the whole world).

My son wants to be a writer when he grows up, but before I hand this book off to him, I have been holding on to it myself to bask in all its good advice. Gail Carson Levine (author of Ella Enchanted, The Two Princesses of Bamarre, Fairest) takes young writers on a straight forward path to writing their first stories. The guidance it gives, however, is so pertinent that even we old gals trying to write would be wise to sit down for an hour or two and read it through. She makes writing sound fun and achievable, which, of course, it is.

My favorite chapter is called “Suffer,” in which Levine explains how we must, as writers, be vicious to our main characters.  It’s a wall I am trying to climb up in my own writing right now, but the chapter is so simple, so to-the-point, I can get up from the book, sit down at my computer, and make my characters’ lives cruel with much more ease than I could before.

Writing Magic: Creating Stories that Fly is encouraging, funny, and an absolute must for anyone trying to write a novel.

Want an idea on how to use the chicken I posted yesterday?  This is what I did with it.

Many chefs use tarragon to flavor chicken, and I wanted to make a salad with it.  Since it is also a major flavor component in béarnaise sauce, I wanted to incorporate those flavors, too.  But do you really think I wanted to go crazy making a béarnaise sauce, with the egg yolks and the vinegar?  Mm, not so much.  Not today, anyway.  Besides, I needed something a little less runny for a chicken salad.  Basically I just started with mayonnaise and added shallots and tarragon.  Et voilà, I came up with a béarnaise flavored dressing, perfect for a chicken salad.

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It sounds better in French, don’t you think?

I think you’ll like this recipe. It’s like a foil dinner you make when you’re camping, only you don’t have to fuss with forgetting the salt, or uncooked hamburger meat, or the know-it-all camper that tells everybody how to make the fire.

My problem whenever I make those things is I think I’m gonna go all gourmet. I use steak instead of hamburger, slice the potatoes extra thin for even cooking. Kosher salt! Cracked pepper! Perfect seasonings!

You know what always happens?  Mine taste crappy.  And the ones made by the family in the next tent, that cheated and used a Lipton onion soup packet, come out perfect!  Lesson learned: Don’t be a food snob in the wilderness.

This chicken en papillote is much, much better than all of that.

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I know for some of you the weather is getting a bit too warm for a soup like this, but I wanted to sneak it in before the summer.  It is one of my favorite soups.   It has tons of fiber, tons of vegetables, and tons of flavor.  I make it, freeze it, and then anytime I want to feel good about what I eat, I pull a bowl of it out my freezer and heat it up for lunch.

Though I changed this recipe so much that it is definitely my own now, my inspiration came from a book my friend Shannon gave me.  It’s by America’s Test Kitchen and is called The New Best Recipe.  It’s a fantastic cookbook, and I would recommend it for anyone who is a serious cook.  My starting point for this lentil soup was their “hearty lentil soup.”  I switched mine to vegetarian, and changed some other things around, but I couldn’t have made this good of a soup without the book.

Oh, and I just want to briefly mention that the toast in the picture there is from the same baguette I froze a couple weeks ago.  All I did was pop the frozen pieces in the toaster.

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My friend sent me an email of flower photographs for Mother’s Day. I thought I’d send you all one from me.

Here’s a little interview I did with my son after we went out and bought him The Last Olympian, the fifth and final book in the Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan.

sm: How did you first find out about the Percy Jackson series?

srr: Last year, I won a reading contest at school and got a $50 Barnes and Noble card as a prize.  With the money, I bought books 1, 2, and 4.  I bought the rest later.

sm: Tell us about the books.

srr:  There are 5 books in total, written by Rick Riordan (pronounced “ry-er-don”).  They’re about a kid who is half Greek god, half mortal.  He goes on different quests in each book.

sm:  How did you like them?

srr:  They’re the best books ever!

sm:  Even better than Harry Potter and the Chronicles of Narnia?

srr:  (nods his head with his thumbs up)

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