Comunidad Health Foods

PHEW! Is anyone still with me? I wouldn’t be surprised if after the ghostly behavior I’ve exhibited toward this blog for the past week, a few people here or there lost faith in me. I haven’t lost interest or stopped cooking or been eaten alive by a giant jelly fish on the shores of the Atlantic ocean.  My vacation was, however, fuller and more time-constrained than I had anticipated, and so even with ample internet connection (and a week of safely avoiding killer jelly fish), I struggled to log on for updates. Every morning I woke up at 7am and quite literally did not finish my summer preparatory work for my dietetic internship until 2-4pm. Every. Single. Day. I hope you aren’t offended that with the approximate 4.5 remaining hours of daylight I chose the beach and boardwalk over blogging.

But now I’m back, and although I still have ridiculously demanding course work and case studies, I at least don’t have the beach and boardwalk shops to distract me. I’m even prepared to formally apologize for being so lame this week, and by apologize formally, I mean share a recipe for a really delicious brownie-muffin-cupcake-I-don’t-care-what-you-call-it-nutella-dessert. And it’s almost good for you, too! If you believe the Nutella commercials, then it’s definitely good for you. But in the real world, it’s just almost healthy, because nowhere but in an alternate universe could Nutella be considered anything but a jar of glorified, spreadable fudge. It is delicious, though, isn’t it?

So delicious, in fact, that these incredibly simple 3-4 ingredient muffin-cupcakes (I hesitate to call them muffins for fear of insinuating that they are proper Monday-Friday breakfast food) are equally, incredibly, magnificently delicious, too. They actually aren’t as overly decadent as the Nutella in them would have you believe – their flavor is subtle, with this low-key chocolate flavor permeating it. They used to be called brownies, as in, by the blogger who originally came up with the recipe. They are not brownies, they are light and fluffy muffins, but that’s ok, because a Nutella brownie-muffin by any other name does, in fact, taste as yummy.

I really shouldn’t post the recipe here because I didn’t change a darn thing except for doubling it to get 28 muffins (of very varying and not at all uniform sizes, oops), and forgetting the nuts, because if I didn’t forget at least one ingredient while baking then I wouldn’t be me. At least this time it was only a sprinkling of nuts. So anyway, the point of this was to say that you should click on over to A Thought for Food because she has the recipe, the beautiful, beautiful recipe, and it really is worth the extra click over to a different site. Enjoy!

P.S. these were really good crumbled over that Nutella FroYo I told you about a little while ago. Just sayin’….

P.P.S. Did you know that today is Chocolate & Almonds day? That’s kind of like chocolate & hazelnuts, which is kind of like what this recipe is all about. Would you look at that!

When I bought my package of chia seeds, I had no idea that they would be the basis for my new favorite recipe to make. I thought that I would buy them, use them, enjoy them, and then maybe buy them again once in a blue moon. Now, I don’t know how I ever lived without them! I enjoyed the peanut butter & banana chia pudding I made for my first foray, though my heavy-handedness with the rum extract may have detracted a little from my potential satisfaction. I also happily make my Omelet of Champions a few times each month. But what truly stole my heart and crossed me over to the wonderful world of chia seed infatuation was this recipe for Chocolate Chia Pudding.

If you are looking for a healthy, nutrient-packed way to satisfy your chocolate cravings, this is it. It’s not low-fat, so much like an avocado chocolate pudding it’s healthier but not necessarily lower calorie than its traditional, non-chia version. But seriously, this is not one of those healthy “chocolate” recipes that kind of leaves you satisfied, but a little part of you is still saying, “that wasn’t exactly what I was hoping for,” either. No, this is all that and a bag of (chocolate covered) chips. I throw in 2 tablespoons of peanut butter to make a full on meal of it (350calories), but if you’re looking for a dessert or a snack, feel free to reduce or eliminate the peanut butter (but if you’re a peanut butter fan, I really have to urge you to try it with the peanut butter just once, because it’s truly nothing short of heaven). 1 tablespoon of peanut butter will put the recipe at around 260 calories, and eliminating it completely will actually knock it down to 170 – how’s that for a little bowl of chocolate bliss to curb your cravings without sparking any guilt? It’s rich with just the perfect amount of sweetness to counter it, creamy with the occasional crunch from the seed…this recipe is a winner, that’s all there is to it.

Did you know that today is National Peanut Butter Day? Now that you do, are you surprised that I’m just about bouncing out of my chair to tell you about it? I was talking to L and he commented that it might as well just be called Jess Day, with the amount of peanut butter I consume on a daily basis. I can’t really argue there, though I’d imagine I’m not alone in that boat.

One of my most recent peanut butter creations (the way I worded that made it sound like I developed the recipe – I absolutely did not) was a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup Brownie Bite, which is exactly how it sounds – a miniature peanut butter cup baked in the center of a small brownie. Yeah, it’s also as delicious as it sounds. In this dessert you get the quintessential Reese’s flavor surrounded by a fudgy brownie. I’m pretty sure I wound up eating my weight in them on New Year’s Eve – I’ve already explained how I’m pretty bad at controlling my portions with miniaturized desserts – so I might prefer to next time either make a sheet of brownies studded with the cups and cut my own slice, or put a whole reese’s in a brownie batter-filled jumbo muffin pan (now that sounds dangerous!). I just can’t get over how amazing these brownie bites are – on their own, with vanilla ice cream, really any way at all.

I used whole wheat flour and the stevia MoreFiber blend instead of the white flour and sugar, and for once no one could detect the stevia at all. I think it’s because there was still a decent amount of brown sugar, plus the refined sweetness of the actual peanut butter cups. I figure that Stevia might just need to be an ingredient you use to partially replace something rather than swapping it out completely. It might be a little overwhelming on its own. The only other change I made was to try to decorate the tops with rainbow sprinkles, only to realize that – newsflash! – basically all sprinkles (not the granulated ones, just the jimmy-like ones for ice cream sundaes and whatnot) are made with hydrogenated oils. Go figure. So I got a little bummed, scraped my pretty decorations off, and lamented at how plain the brownie bites wind up looking without any garnish. If I were you, I’d decorate them somehow – some mini m&ms, chopped peanuts, mini chocolate chips, a drizzle of brightly colored royal icing….just something to perk them up a bit. Your taste buds won’t give a hoot, but it’ll make your display look a little more festive. 

Floptimism is turning into a little blog entry factory, isn’t it? It’s this time of year. I may be the only college student who is bored out of her mind by finals week. I can’t help it. Classes are over so I don’t have any more assignments to worry about, SDA inductions have passed so there’s not much else to do extra-curricularly, and let’s face it – how long each day can you really spend studying? I max out at a few hours, and that still leaves a whole lot of spare time. I’ve come down with a pretty serious case of the baking bug from all this boredom, but I just can’t justify making more baked goods when I’m currently trying to eat my way through one of the most obscenely large collections of leftover desserts currently occupying space in my little freezer.

So, since I can’t bake, I better write about all of those delicious leftovers instead, right? And today, National Cocoa Day, how can I not tell you all about these chocolate cupcakes that I made earlier in the semester for my sister’s boyfriend’s birthday? When I heard that he liked that Entenman’s Chocolate Marshmallow Cake, I thought I’d recreate it with a recipe I saw for chocolate cupcakes and the easiest, neatest marshmallow frosting you will ever find. Seriously, you just put 1 marshmallow on top of each mostly-baked cupcake and return it to the oven for no more than 5 minutes. And you have a melty, gooey, absolutely delicious (and totally messy, I’ll admit) frosting. Mine were extra messy because I was using these monstrosities of the marshmallow world that are probably 3-4 times the size of any normal, self-respecting marshmallow. I did cut each giant ‘mallow in half, but they still slowly took over the baking pan and left me with one heck of a mess. So, use a normal marshmallow, or even several mini ones. You don’t need much.

As far as the actual cupcake goes, I was decidedly unimpressed. I found it dry and uninteresting. In fact, I was ready to completely write it off and move on in my search for The Perfect Chocolate Cupcake, but then something unexpected happened. I wound up only frosting about half of the cupcakes, and so I stuck the other ones into the freezer. For SDA Inductions, I figured I would take them out, thaw them, and slice them up into thirds to make little cake-lets. I’d frost them with some chocolate buttercream I had hanging out in my freezer (I’m really not kidding – I have more frozen desserts than any normal person should ever have in her position at any given time). To my surprise, the once-dry cupcakes thawed into these almost-too-moist little cakes! In fact I had trouble getting some of them to not fall apart and get totally smashed. In order to layer the cakelets in the Tupperware once frosted I actually had to freeze them again just so they wouldn’t turn into one jumbled mess! Those chocolate cupcakes that I swore were not good enough wound up tasting fantastic and they were a total hit at inductions. Now, I personally want a chocolate cupcake that’s better when fresh rather than needing to freeze and thaw it to get the right consistency, but regardless, I was impressed by the end end product.

So whether you’re making chocolate cupcakes and plopping a marshmallow on top or swirling them with chocolate buttercream (and, admittedly, garnishing with a cranberry when the plain, piped buttercream wound up looking just a little bit too much like dog poop for comfort….), these actually wound up being pretty great! In fact, after inductions I just piled all of the leftovers into one Tupperware container, forming a giant mass of crumbly chocolatey goodness. I’m not at all dreading the night I sit down and dig into that freezer leftover!

 Godiva, Ghiradelli, Lindt, Fererro Rocher – these brands conjure up an haute-couture decadence in my mind in which I can’t resist closing my eyes, as though I really had a morsel of their chocolates melting in my  mouth that very moment. A mental image of a molten chocolate cake with pure white, vanilla ice cream succumbing to the temperature of the warmed, gooey center has virtually the same effect. Give me dark chocolate and my heart goes aflutter; give me white chocolate and the little girl in me, the one who loved anything coated in this blanched “chocolate” – comes alive. I am a chocolate lover, and though I fully admit to never having the luxury of tasting some of the more lavish varieties – the ones that make Lady Godiva herself look like cheap Hannukkah gelt – I can appreciate the more mainstream chocolate indulgences.

Now, with that being said, I have a confession: I will forever be loyal to a trusty bag of m&m’s and a classic bar of plain Hershey’s chocolate. I love how rewarding they both are in their simplicity. There is just something insurmountably enjoyable about possessing a handful of M&M’s or breaking into a segmented bar of Hershey’s – something that even the highest quality of chocolate can’t compete with. So, naturally, when I heard about Hershey’s new aerated chocolate bar, so-called “Air Delight,” I knew I had to try it. The purist within me was skeptical, but ultimately I am a food risk taker, and a new concoction intrigues me beyond belief. I tracked one down last weekend at a local Target, paid the friendly cashier, and marched out, new chocolate treat in-hand. I placed it in my car’s cup holder and rolled my windows down, letting the breeze be my air conditioner on a very warm (most people would call it hot), sunny day. I dropped L off at his house and drove to my sister’s new apartment – I had told her I would take a look and possibly help set up if need be. I arrived after driving for maybe 20 minutes, pulled into a parking spot, closed my windows, and reached down to grab my chocolate…liquid? What? In the 20 minutes of sitting in the car, not even closed up or abandoned, Hershey’s Air Delight had turned into a packet of fluidity. There was not a speck of solid chocolate to be found. My heart sank a little, fearing that in melting it I had ruined the chemistry of the aeration. At least the advertisements were true, I thought as I marched toward my sister, the air bubbles really do make the chocolate dissolve easily…just not, in this case, in my mouth!

I stuck the bar in her freezer, but then had to bring it back home with me. Of course, it melted again, and so into the freezer for a second time it went. Surely I had ruined it – surely all of my efforts in searching for this new candy would turn out to be futile, and I would be left with a regular (albeit still delicious) Hershey bar. Finally, I made a third trip – to L’s house – where we would share it for a post-dinner treat. This time, it melted just sitting in his cool basement, and so it met the refrigerator for a few minutes to firm up. We were convinced we would open the wrapper and find a standard Hershey bar. What we really found, though, was so much different…

 Yes, those are gaping holes – we had on our hands a cratered bar of chocolate, like the moon had been packaged into confectionery form and dyed a light, creamy brown. Still, we broke into it, and were amazed to find that many places still had the small bubbles advertised by the company – apparently this little bar was sturdy enough to withstand the relentless abuse I subjected it to that day! Happily, we each sampled some, and I have to admit, it was very enjoyable. The air bubbles give it a volume uncharacteristic of a typical Hershey Bar. While the thin rectangles are perfect for s’mores and ice cream mix ins, it can be nice to have a little more heft to bite into when you’re eating it on its own. Two thumbs up for that part. Aside from that, the taste of the chocolate is virtually indistinguishable from a standard bar, and so the novelty may wear off to reveal a buy that isn’t worth it in the long run.

The other point I’d like to make is its potential lack of versatility, what I fear is this candy’s biggest pitfall – and really, if you’re just buying it to eat on its own, it’s completely irrelevant. However, being me, and incapable of leaving things alone (I’m working on it, kind of), I broke the bar up into pieces and stirred it into a small bowl of coffee ice cream, thinking it would create a pleasant mocha flavor. What it actually did, however, was harden up the Airy Delight into an almost chalky, flavorless, certainly-not-chocolatey confection, and the bar lost all of its appeal. Being as temperamental as it was earlier to the heat, I should have guessed that the opposite temperature extreme would wreak just as much havoc on this poor, sensitive chocolate bar.

So, with all of that in mind, what’s the verdict?

Well, Hershey’s Air Delight will certainly be a welcome addition to any Hershey’s chocolate-lover’s arsenal of treats – it is creamy and smooth, and doesn’t stray far from the tried-and-true original. Moreover, its added volume helps make even a small serving of chocolate feel satisfactory and filling, making it even better for a diet-conscious chocoholic who wants to enjoy a taste of the real thing without derailing his/her entire day of hard, nutritious work. However, anyone looking for a novel twist on a classic s’more or a mix in for another dessert may want to look elsewhere. This chocolate bar was made to stand alone. Take a page out of a book that I’m still trying to grasp – some things in life are better off enjoyed simply, purely, without pomp. Hershey’s Air Delight is a perfect example of this, so do go out and try it – and enjoy it to its simplest, 100%-unadulterated fullest. Bon Appetit!

For more information: The Official Airy Delight Website

Today is a perfect day to bake cookies!

…What? What?!

Ok, so it was 80 degrees and humid when I left for class at 7:15 this morning and can only imagine the havoc the heat is wreaking outside of my air conditioned academic building this very moment. Perhaps this one sticking point is enough to make it a very imperfect day to bake cookies, but let me explain.

Temperature and oven heat aside, I can see myself returning home from class this afternoon and whipping up a batch of delicious baked treats simply because I have finished all of my class work for the day and aside from a workout and an overflowing hamper hiding in my closet, I have nothing planned ahead of me. It’s a day like this, though few and far between when school is involved, that the urge to bake strikes me unrelentlessly, and the heat is really not enough to deter me. Of course having no one to feed these cookies to is a hang-up, so I might just settle for telling you about these slice and bake cookies instead.

I’ve made these cookies before, technically. I say technically for two reasons: (1) I made the dough but left the actual baking to ma mère because I had to run off for a few days to the beach and wouldn’t have time to get them in the oven once I got back, and (2) these are so adaptable that last time I made a lemon poppy seed variety, and this time the two flavor combinations I chose resulted in wildly different cookies. The original recipe comes from Smitten Kitchen, and it’s a fantastic blank palate to keep in your repertoire. They are moderately time consuming due to their chill time, but ultimately easy to whip up and full of possibilities. My only complaint is that if you do choose to make several separate flavors at once, you can’t easily make one batch of the base and just mix each flavor into portions of it. Maybe I’m mildly incompetent at the logistics of this, but I found that I needed to make half of the dough and flavor it, and then make the other half and flavor it with my second set of add-ins. In the future I will try to play around with the recipe to make it easier to work with in that sense.

I chose to make a lemon-thyme cookie and a chocolate-espresso one, and I have to urge you to try both of them, though the thyme in particular stole my heart. The chocolate was rich with a soft, chocolatey depth of flavors that was very enjoyable, but in the end, the lemon-thyme (which really wound up tasting more like a butter-thyme cookie) was above and beyond what I could have imagined. It certainly is not for everyone, but pair this with a cup of tea (iced or otherwise), and you have yourself a real treat.  The glazes – coffee for the chocolate and honey for the thyme – didn’t really pan out, with the honey retaining its liquidity like a champ (as honey is apt to do), and the coffee just not being very detectable, but I still highly recommend both versions of the slice and bake cookie.

Cream the butter on medium speed until smooth. Add the powdered sugar and continue beating until the mixture reaches a smooth and silky consistency again. Beat in the egg yolks, salt, and any mix-ins you choose. Reduce the speed on the mixer to low and add the flour, mixing until it just disappears. If in doubt, it's better to under beat here, incorporating the remaining specks of flour with a spatula. Turn the dough onto a counter and form it into a ball. Divide the dough in half, wrapping each separately in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Once the dough has chilled, remove it from the refrigerator and form each ball into a log measuring about 1 to 1 ¼ inches thick. Wrap each log in plastic and chill for two hours (or freeze for one). At this point, you may freeze them for up to 1 month or refrigerate for up to 3 days – just make sure they go in an airtight container.

When you are ready to bake them (remember to thaw the dough a little if you opt for freezing first!), divide your oven into thirds using the oven racks and preheat it to 350 degrees. Line two baking sheets (or as many as you need) with parchment paper.

Meanwhile, use a sharp and slender knife to portion them into roughly 1/3-inch slices. If you make them any thicker, just be aware that the baking time will likely need to be increased. Place the cookies on the baking sheets with around ½ an inch of space between each one.

Bake the cookies for 12-14 minutes, watching for them to set but not brown. Transfer the cookies to a cooling rack to cool to room temperature before applying a glaze (if necessary).

June 01, 2011: the perfect day for a new beginning? It’s hard to believe that we’re just shy of halfway through 2011 already. Wasn’t I just making a resolution to perfect my cookie decorating skills? Wasn’t I just heading back to school for the most challenging semester of my college career? Wasn’t I just digging my car out of mountains of snow and fighting for a good parking spot in the barely-plowed lots? There is a feeling within me that all of these things happened not yesterday or even the more accurate 4-5 months ago, but that they took place in another lifetime. This part of me is screaming, “How is it only June 2011?” Yet it still feels hard to believe, somehow.

Today, on this balmy and overcast first day of June, I bring to you a recipe and a confession. A la the eat-your-broccoli-or-no-dessert mantra, the latter will actually come first. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this blog lately. Not that reader traffic and high prestige keep me in this game, but I have been focusing a lot of these thoughts on how to improve this blog to appeal to and reach more people. More specifically, I have been thinking about the things I haven’t done very well as a blogger, and in taking steps to improve my abilities, I hope that I will inadvertently open the Floptimism doors to new, wonderful people. If this doesn’t turn out to be the case, I will see myself still in good company, with the incredible few who support me now, and I will continue to enjoy this blog as a record for all of my culinary attempts.

So, then, what have I been doing wrong? More than anything else – and this is where my confession comes in – I have been a dirty hypocrite. It’s true. Let me explain. Anyone who has stumbled over here more than once will know that I am the Queen of Novel-Posts. Sometimes about a focused topic and others about little to nothing at all, my entries tend to go on and on before getting to the recipe at hand (this post, I confess, is already proving to be no different). In and of itself, I don’t find this to be a mistake or a black mark on my talents or success as a food blogger. However, when you combine my pension for length with this one little secret I have, it becomes a problem: I confess, I rarely read other blogger’s entries. There are a few, particularly the ones who have so graciously chosen to follow me, that I take the time to read from start to finish. I also never comment on an entry that I haven’t read. There are several others that I skim through. Most, though, are used solely for their pretty pictures and promising recipes. I realized that if I’m going to continue to be a story-food blog, a hybrid of soap boxes, memories, and recipes, then I need to re-examine the way I treat my fellow bloggers. If I will not devote the time to take a blog for more than its recipe – that is, if I am to treat bloggers and their posts as means to an end rather than ends themselves (this is very Kantian of me; L would be so proud), then I cannot expect another individual to treat me and Floptimism any differently. Either I need to apply the brakes and take the time to appreciate words as well as ingredients, or I need to forego my dreams of this being anything more than a personal chronicle of food.

In keeping with the theme of hypocrisy, I move on to my next transgression: despite hardly giving a second glance to entries that link to rather than internally post a recipe, I have resorted to this short-cut on numerous occasions. Now, on the rare occasion that I don’t touch a thing about a recipe, I find it important to redirect readers to the original post – after all, the original blogger deserves the credit and the extra traffic. However, I cannot possibly think that I will cultivate a personal, perhaps even loyal relationship with anyone if all I do is send them elsewhere. Similarly, in the situations where I do redirect without posting the recipe on Floptimism, I must acknowledge that there will be people, as I have done so many times before, who will simply “x” out of the tab when they realize there is no recipe to be found.

Last but most certainly not least, I confess that I have not treated myself, in the form of this web site, with the utmost respect. I write my posts in the blogger window and rarely look back. I do not edit, and I rarely plan a post. I throw an entry together on a whim, churning them out every other day in order to keep my presence up on feeds and websites like Food Blogs. Although I do try to take attractive, inviting pictures with my little Canon point-and-shoot, the process is still hurried, and I know in my heart that I will never master the art of food photography in this manner. Overall, if I am going to get serious about making this blog the best that it can be, presenting myself the best that I can, and hoping to virtually meet even more talented and enjoyable people, then I need to prove to you that I care. I have not done a good job of this up to this point.

This brings us to the moral of the story, then, the pinnacle of the script, the most important step in the road of knowledge: what am I going to do about it? Well, for starters, I am writing this as a word document, very properly, and will even pause when I finish to wash the dishes from dinner before returning to edit. I have been turning ideas for this entry in my head since yesterday.  And although I do not see a pricier camera or a dinner-turned-cold-as-I-stubbornly-create-the-best-ever-shot in my future, I will make an attempt to incorporate more of the advice I have read about photography into the photos I share with you. And, I will sit down and read the words of the blog entries upon which I stumble. There will be entries and perhaps even whole blogs that I continue to follow solely because the quality of the recipes far surpasses my interest in the story behind them (though likely, this is not the case regarding anyone’s blog who is reading this now) – after all, good food is why we’re all here, right? However, I will not take you for granted. I will not take myself for granted. And I will not take this opportunity for granted.

I believe in the first of June – I believe in it as a chance to start again, to make note of where we were six months ago and where we stand today, and to do something about it before another full year has come and gone. Second chances are what life is all about.

Earlier last semester, I gave a second – and third – chance to this promising Chocolate-Mint Pudding. I was in the throes of a madwoman trying to empty out her kitchen in preparation for The Big Move, and I was turning ingredients into dishes that only a partially insane person could dream up. That is where this pudding recipe was born, and it had the potential to be something great. But then, without thinking, allowing my emotional drive to rid my pantries of all excess foods, I dumped a bag of crushed mints into my pudding to melt them. And by dump, I mean quite literally just that – there were no measuring utensils or even estimated ratios. I wanted to use up a leftover bag of mints, and so that is precisely what I did. Unfortunately, my lack of attention to proportions resulted in more of a Toothpaste flavored pudding than anything else, and I looked upon the enormous bowl of chocolate tragedy with a heavy heart. After my attempt to use rather than waste my food, would I simply be throwing this in the trash? Over the course of a day, I periodically took a finger-full of the pudding, hoping each time that the refrigerator had mellowed it into something palatable, and each time the outcome looked more grim.

Frugality and stubbornness in full force, I refused to toss this pudding. I had slices of flourless chocolate cake on hand, and so one night I combined the two chocolate desserts and confirmed that the problem with this pudding was nothing more than an over-abundance of mint; adding the extra chocolate countered that flavor beautifully, and I finally had a way that I could enjoy the pudding. But soon, the chocolate cake ran out, and I was left with the pudding on its own once again.

Stale bread redeemed this pudding for a second time, in my first-ever attempt at a bread pudding. I eschewed recipes and ratios again (a bold move), tearing up the stale bread and pouring the last of the pudding over it. It marinated in the fridge for five hours, the hard bread softening under the rich cloak of chocolate and mint flavors, and then I baked it in the toaster oven for 25 minutes. Cautiously, I removed it and brought it back to my living room chair. I sat down and, with trepidation, I took my first bite…and suddenly, I felt the weight of a recipe-gone-wrong lift from my shoulders. This mixture of past-their-prime ingredients turned into the most beautiful, gooey, externally crunchy dessert I had ever thought up on my own!

If I can find a way to turn toothpaste pudding back into its chocolate-mint intention – twice! – then surely I can alter the course this blog is taking, too. I love writing in here, sharing what I learn and what I see with all of you. I love seeing what crazy, enticing, elaborate, and sometimes even perfectly simple foods you create, and yes, I love reading the stories and confessions that go along with them.

And so this was my confession and, I hope, the start of my redemption.

One Year Ago: Floptimism, Put to the Test (fittingly, a recipe-free post)