All-American Girls

I joined flower girl Stella and her mom Maia at the American Girl store in Natick for a birthday brunch this morning. I thought about taking my first generation Felicity doll to the hair salon, but I refrained.

Star-shaped butter for Stella Bella!

How sweet it is

It sounded weird, but it was oh-so-good: sauteed chicken with a sweet potato-spinach salad, from the February 2009 issue of Real Simple.

Perfect breakfast

One of my favorite childhood treats: a dutch baby topped with strawberries and powdered sugar:

Real simple comfort food

The February 2009 issue of Real Simple was full of goodness. First, we had chicken pot pie:

Then pasta, with roasted broccoli and walnuts:

Then, from Cooking Light: brown-butter gnocchi with wilted spinach:

Hummus for dinner

It's so good, we had it twice this week: chickpea, lemon, and cumin stew over polenta.

Just another day in paradise

When we are visiting Brent's folks in Scottsdale, we love to eat at Paradise Bakery. Their cookies are fluffy and soft and delicious. I was thrilled to find their sugar cookie recipe online. They tasted just like the real thing!

Island flavor

I'm almost reluctant to post this, because it doesn't look very appealing in the picture. But Island Papaya chicken is one of our favorite dinners. It's comfort food around here -- chicken sauteed with papaya with a sweet and spicy marmalade sauce on top of coconut rice. I suppose it would look better sprinkled with cilantro, as the recipe calls for, but I can't bring myself to buy a whole bunch of cilantro for garnish. Trust me, it's so good. For the coconut rice, we make jasmine rice, substituting low-fat coconut milk for half the water and adding some sugar.