Pixelated Crumb

My sister sent me an article from the New York Times the other day that lamented the “disreputable image of a mongrel” that Irish coffee has earned itself. What? Irish coffee, a mongrel? Really? I have only the highest respect for Irish coffee, and this was news to me. I figured the very least I could do in the name of Irish coffee was to profess my love for it here and spread the word for this simple but tasty after dinner drink (or mid-afternoon or morning, or whenever you like to drink your coffee and whiskey).

I’m not sure why, but I was a little skeptical when my sister and brother-in-law first served me an Irish coffee a few years ago. Any doubt I had vanished after my first sip. Even though I wasn’t really a coffee drinker, the concoction of coffee, whiskey, the slightest bit of brown sugar, and whipped cream was more than enough to win me over.

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Ironically, the same day Joseph and I went to the store to stock up on lots of garlic and olive oil so that we could start making our own garlic olive oil for our pizza instead of buying it, the store was out of the fresh tomato sauce we usually buy for pizza. Why not make that too, I figured?

Of course I’ve known all along that we could make our own sauce, and we have done this occasionally, but we often make pizza on Friday nights and after a long week, yes, I’ll admit it, we cut some corners and tend to just rely on store-bought sauce. The small Italian store near my office makes some great marinara sauce and it’s pretty cheap. So pure laziness wins out.

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I know, I know. It’s the first week of January. The holidays are over and you’re cookied out. But we haven’t had the full 12 days of Christmas so the holidays aren’t really over yet, are they? Plus, it’s not too late to celebrate the new year! Because I still have two more cookie recipes to share with you!

The first are these chocolate mint cookies that are really fast to throw together and fun to make. It starts off ordinarily enough. Cook up some simple but tasty chocolate cookies and you may think you’re done there, but no! This is where the fun begins!

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Between the scent of fresh pine in the air, festive lights everywhere, lots of time with family, and spectacular food, this is just about my favorite time of year. This year has been especially fun because we spent Christmas with my two nieces: Amelia, who is 3, and Sophie, who is just a couple of months old. This was Amelia’s first Christmas where she had some sense of what was going on and her joy and excitement were contagious. Watching her put out cookies and milk out for Santa and running down to see what he had brought her brought back fond memories of my own childhood Christmases. Granted, she was possibly more excited about the act of unwrapping presents than some of the actual gifts she got, but she had a blast.

We were also treated to my mother-in-law’s amazing cooking, including pork belly, Bing Ssäm (her adaptation of David Chang’s Bo Ssäm), paella, sangria, lumpia, and sinigang. And those were just the dinners (she also made some amazing French toast, crab scramble, and more!). I would share some photos of all her amazing food, but frankly I was too busy eating to stop and take pictures. We cleansed our palates with biko, Christmas cookies (including my two versions of jubilee jumbles and black and white holiday bark among many others), and some spectacular chocolate pretzels bars that Amelia made (with quite a bit of help from her mom).

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