These are currently my favorite chocolate bars — the Ritter Sport whole hazelnut bars, either in milk or dark chocolate. And they are often on sale at Target!

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A quick day trip to NY for a meeting meant I only had time for one meal. I decided to finally stop at Pomme Frites. Just frites sauce on mine. They were quite tasty and perfect, I only wish I was hungrier. But I had a super-early meeting and my body never really woke up. I could barely eat half the cone!

On my next NY trip I’ll bring my appetite and get through the entire cone.

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I spent yesterday in the kitchen. I attempted to make my own Hostess cupcakes, but had a few issues.

1. I don’t think I whipped the egg whites for the buttercream long enough before adding the sugar-syrup. And then I think I rushed adding the butter to the too-warm mixture. I stuck the mixing bowl, with about half of the butter added, to an ice bath and then continued to add butter after the mixture was cool. The icing then seemed to be fine and I filled the center of the cupcakes and stored the rest of the vanilla buttercream in the refrigerator.

On to the ganache to coat the cupcakes—I added the chopped chocolate to slightly warm cream, began to stir the mixture and then it separated! I did some quick research and found that if I added a little bit of cold cream and beat the mixture it would re-form. It did and I poured the ganache over the tops of the cupcakes.

After the ganache cooled I took the vanilla buttercream out to pipe little swirls on top of the cupcakes. Guess what, after bringing the buttercream to room temperature, it too separated. I tried putting it in the mixer and even adding a touch of cream – in the end it looked liked cottage cheese.

Btw, the picture is that of the cupcakes (tops sliced off for flatness) filled with cream, awaiting the ganache.

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At the mall today and we decided to stop at the Johnny Rockets in the food court for a quick lunch. I ordered the veggie cheeseburger with no mayo or mustard. My burger came–with mustard. So second burger was made to spec, but I wasn’t thrilled with the burger. They basically only warmed it on the grill, so there wasn’t that crisply crust on the outside. Maybe I should have just gotten my usual grilled cheese and tomato.

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We often eat lunch at the Green Papaya. Yesterday it was veggies in Thai red curry. I was a bit disappointed that I only got one piece of eggplant–my favorite veggie of this medley. And yes, I always pick out the peppers!

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