Strawberry Torte

I'm cheating:  back-posting to 2007 to share one of my earliest attempts at baking...recipe from allrecipes.

Christmas:

Fightin' off the summer heat of spring

...with the perfectly creamy combination of OQ coffee's decaf espresso from Oromia, pulled over a small scoop of vanilla bean ice cream...an unplanned yet much welcomed surprised. 

Hey over-heated-spring, that's affogato to you!

shot of the week

Looks so good you could smell it

If you thought gardening just wasn't your thing, or worth your time---think again.  Some gentleman at the Slatton Manor (namely Ben and Paul) tend a garden in the middle of New Brunswick--in which there is nothing fancy involved except some time and care.  They have but a narrow sliver of soil upon which a handful of seeds have blossomed into some of the most heart-breakingly-beautiful flowers.  Throughout, there is also scattered some herbs here and there... Occasionally, a hearty sunflower that survived a spring storm, proudly stands up tall.
Ben came over with a bouquet of these last week, [: and the vivid colors exploded all over my apartment for days.

It may be a touch late now to drop some seeds as we near the end of May, but there is always the Fall...and then again, there is always next Spring.
...looks so good you could smell it:

May Mason Jar

They don't call it "spring" for nothin'

leave it to the NYT to host the task of my dreams:  find out what people all over the world are doing at the exact same moment in time.  It's brilliant...And no research funding necessary!

Check out the New York Times photography blog post at Lens

Here is an excerpt:

So far, that portrait seems to be one of surprising tranquillity. No one has to tell readers of The Times, or just about anyone else, how upended and violent the world seems to be at the moment. But our respondents tended to show moments of repose, rather than anxiety; of warmth, rather than heat. It may not constitute a “realistic” view of the human condition, but it does offer something of a balance to the images of suffering and destruction that are more often a staple of the Lens blog.

2 May 2010 - Highland Park, NJ