On our to-cook list: Smitten Kitchen

It’s embarrassing how little I cook these days; I’m lucky if I can whip up a batch of pasta and have time to add a few bay leaves to the Trader Joe’s sauce.  Who knew that doing all the reading for all my classes this semester would take up so much time?

It certainly doesn’t help that Deb of Smitten Kitchen has been on a hot streak lately, posting a series of hearty fall dishes for my eyes to feast on while my tummy rumbles.  As a result, I’ve built up quite a backlog of recipes to try:

Apple and Cheddar scones

Mushroom lasagna

This one’s raving review had my mouth watering.

Roasted eggplant soup

Perfect blueberry muffins

Beef chili + sour cream and cheddar biscuits

Damn her gorgeous photography and appeal to comfort food!  I will have to leave the books to go grocery shopping soon.

(Click on the photos for links to each of  her posts.)

Learn to Pair Beer with Food (and other links)

Apologies for the gap between posts.  We’ve been going through a dry spell (in both the literary and alcoholic sense) due to midterms.  Yet we’ve had a few bright spots here and there: A Sierra Nevada hefeweizen, consumed with sunny side up eggs on toast and hash browns after a late night finance problem set, comes to mind.

But for the most part, we were quaffing more caffeinated tea than anything else, wistfully dreaming of the end of midterms and the beginning of a regular circadian rhythm.

Here are a few related links that (in surreptitiously minimized windows) kept us entertained during long study nights:

Learn to Pair Beer with Food — Lifehacker

Beer Brownies — Tastespotting via The Kitchy Kitchen

The San Francisco Bar Experiment: One Woman’s Mission to Drink at Every Bar in San Francisco (complete with reviews!)

There’s Always Money in the Banana Stand

Ingenious.  I have been doing this incorrectly for years.  via Ahmed.

Meanwhile, when I was in preschool, this is how my dad used to prepare bananas for my morning bowl of Life cereal, if I woke up on time and was really really good:

How to Slice a Banana Before it is Peeled (Wikihow)

And finally, you know you want to watch this again — hurry, because Hulu is scheduled to take it down at the end of the week.