photo courtesy of Annie

When I started Smells Like Home almost 5 years ago (this April!), I was a newlywed and I had just started to develop a love for cooking.  Actually, I should clarify; I had always loved to cook but let’s just say that I wouldn’t have made the cut for Worst Cooks in America only by a small margin.  I had a 7-meal rotation that was supplemented with pasta and sauce, toss salads, and take-out.  At this time, food blogs were in their toddler years.  David Lebovitz, David Leite, and Simply Recipes had been around a while and Smitten Kitchen was barely a year old.  For a new blogger, it was a lonely world but I was a part of newlywed cooking board where starting a food blog was becoming ever-popular…and that’s where I met Annie, Courtney, Elly, and Josie.

Over the years, we’ve bonded through our similar love for food, learned to cook and bake from each others posted recipes and advice, and developed a friendship that only few can understand.  I’ve cried for them when they have dealt with life’s most difficult moments, have cried with joy when Annie and Josie had their babies this year, and have cried when their words have supported me through times when I have been at my lowest.  (Obviously, I do a lot of crying.)  At the same time though, you can find me whooping and squealing with excitement when I read about their triumphs and accomplishments, both in real-life and blog-life.  We email everyday, several times a day, via endless Gmail threads and keep in touch via Facebook, Twitter, and texts as well.  I “talk” to these girls more often than I talk to my mom and my best friend.  They have become some of my very dearest friends and I never ever imagined that this blog would lead to me to such amazing friendships.

photo courtesy of Josie

I realize the point of this post was to tell you about our recent weekend in Richmond, but I felt that you needed a little background first to really understand my story about this weekend.  As you may have read last week, Courtney is expecting her first baby in a few short weeks and right before Christmas, Annie, Josie, and I (Elly wasn’t able to join us ) decided to surprise Courtney with a visit to Richmond to celebrate with her in real-life.  It was the kind of get together we had talked about doing for months – a group get together where we could hang out, cook, and relax with each other.

So on the Friday we planned to meet in Richmond, Courtney had no idea that I was in the car driving down from CT or that Josie and Annie were flying in with me eventually waiting at the airport in Richmond to pick them up.  (For the record, I squealed with delight when they got to my car.)  We had been in touch with Courtney’s husband, Eric, to arrange all of the details and without a clue as to what was going on, Courtney walked into Julep’s that night to find us sitting at a table, having a few drinks, waiting for her and Eric to arrive for dinner.  Her level of surprise was just awesome to see!

And from that point, our weekend took off.  We fell into a level of comfort with each other that I don’t think I had expected…it was as if our email conversations morphed without missing a single beat into real-life conversations.  Dinner at Julep’s was insane – upscale Southern food that was homey, comforting, and memorable. (See the bottom of the post for what I ate during the weekend – no photos though, sorry.)  We stayed up like college kids that night chatting until 2am – something I haven’t done since before my wedding with my bridesmaids.

photo courtesy of Josie

A bleary-eyed Saturday morning led us to Lulu’s, where Josie had made reservations for brunch and where we planned an informal shower for Courtney.  We had anticipated an awesome menu (because really, would a bunch of food bloggers pick a less-than-awesome menu?) but I was truly blown away by my choice, a “fancified” version shrimp and grits.  From Lulu’s Courtney took us to the Carytown district where we hit up a gorgeous Penzey’s (it was Josie’s first time!) and then walked a few blocks to the most mind-blowing chocolate shop I’ve ever encountered, For the Love of Chocolate.

photo courtesy of Annie (iPhone)

Aisle after aisle filled with virtually every kind of chocolate you could imagine.  Walls lined with glass jars of malted milk balls (swoon), chocolate covered espresso beans of all different flavors, chocolate covered pretzels, popcorn, marshmallows.  Cases lined with dozens and dozens of different types of handmade truffles, fudge, bark, and chocolate covered cherries and Oreos.  This place was like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory on steroids.  I circled the whole store twice and still probably missed 25% of what was there.  On my last trip around, I came upon Josie as she actually shouted her excitement to have found 4-inch in diameter peanut butter cups in at least 7 different flavors (photo below).

Some of my loot included a smattering of different truffles (which I’m saving to celebrate the first night in our new home this weekend) and a PB&J chocolate peanut butter cup which is being portioned off day-by-day this week as a stress-reliever as I get ready for the aforementioned new home.

photo courtesy of Annie (at Whole Foods)

We spent the rest of Saturday afternoon deciding what to make for dinner at Courtney’s house that night.  And by the rest of the afternoon, I mean that 4 food bloggers spent almost 4 hours scouring cookbooks, food magazines, blogs, and websites.  It was quite an amusing process but we ended up with a grocery list at Whole Foods to pick up what we needed and then back at Courtney’s to cook a three course meal.

It has pretty much been our collective dream to be able to cook together and I couldn’t have been more excited about our menu: baked tex-mex pimento cheese dip, a cozy chicken pot pie in honor of the snow we had that afternoon, and a nutella pound cake for dessert.  The dip (which I’ve made before) and the pot pie were outstanding.  The cake…a massive kitchen fail. Oh the irony!  You could imagine the look on our experienced baker faces when the cake got turned out of the pan.  Needless to say, no photos of the cake were taken by any of us.  Courtney, however, saved our evening because she just happened to have some of this cake sitting in the fridge.  Divine blogger intervention at its best.

photo courtesy of Josie

The whole night was filled with chatter about food, our families and kids, blogging, life at home and work, and so many great laughs.  At just after 3am, we left Courtney’s and headed back to the hotel where my head hit the pillow at 4am.  It was such an awesome day but as the night wore on, my sadness grew at the thought of having to leave those girls the next day.  I couldn’t have imagined the amount of fun we had had that weekend and so watching Courtney and Eric take Annie and Josie to the airport the next morning wasn’t easy.  I cried watching them leave, just as I cry when I leave my best friend’s house after a weekend visit.  These girls, without a doubt, are some of my closest friends and I miss them terribly every day.  The drive back home to CT was a long and thought-filled one.  In between the malted milk balls (don’t judge), I couldn’t help but think about how thankful I am to have these girls (and Elly too!) in my life.  I firmly believe that girlfriends are what make life so sweet and that the bond true friends have can never be broken.  Thank you Annie, Courtney, Elly, and Josie – I love you all and I can’t wait until we can do this again!

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Julep’s: Shared starters of a cheese platter and fried green tomatoes and dinner entrée of bourbon marinated pork porterhouse over sweet corn-brown butter spoon bread, fried Brussels sprouts, local granny smith apple marmalade and pork glace

LuLu’s:  Shrimp and stone-milled pimento grits served under poached eggs, hollandaise sauce, and grilled asparagus

Is your pantry as neurotically stocked as mine is?  I’ll bet some (most?) of you always have some type of canned tomato, canned or dried bean (which may or may not be stored with the popcorn), 3 or 4 different types of vinegar (I compulsively keep 7), and too much dried pasta to feel like you’ll ever use.  However, when it really comes down to it, you know that pulling together a meal directly from the pantry isn’t ridiculously out of the question.

For us, these past few weeks have been about our household economy.  We’ve been scrimping and saving during the past 4 years and especially in the past few months to put the finishing touches on our new house…so we can install things like this in our kitchen:

And so to keep our grocery bills way down, most of our meals have been planned around what’s in the freezer and pantry.  This lentil and black bean soup is the perfect example of one of said meals.  While you could certainly use chicken broth or stock, I opted for veggie broth.  At $2 per quart, I figured I’d splurge at little , considering I already had all of the other ingredients in the house already.  I am always looking for new lentil soup recipes and this one, with the addition of black beans, hit the nail on the head.  We truly adored this soup and with its thick and almost chili-like consistency, it’s a filling and healthy meal that will continue to stick around on our menu long after we move in (and you know, rebuild our savings account).

One of my absolute favorite flavor combinations is sweet and salty.  Sit me down with some potato chips and a handful of M&Ms or chocolate-covered popcorn and I’m in trouble!  So you could imagine the level of my excitement when I flipped through Baked: New Frontiers in Baking for the first time and saw my nemesis flavor combo in a cake.  Add some salted caramel to a chocolate cake and I’m pretty much done for.

Now admittedly, I’ve had this cookbook on my shelf for well over a year and I’ve yet to make the cake.   It’s hard to justify making a whole cake for only two people just for the heck of it so the cake has ended up sitting on my list for what seems like forever.  And then came Courtney’s Virtual Baby Shower.  Among the many reasons why Courtney and I are such great friends (real-life friends, not just blogging friends!), I firmly believe that our love for Baked’s cookbooks links us together.  And while I’ve never visited the famous bakery in Red Hook, Brooklyn, Courtney and her awesome husband, Eric, did a few years ago during a trip to NYC and they had a blast.  (For the record, I’m jealous.)  This cake is perfect for Courtney.  She is seriously one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met and would go to any length to help a friend, but she’s also got this “salty” side, a sense of sarcasm, dry humor, and frankness that I adore.  I was lucky enough to be able to spend a whole weekend with Courtney this past weekend with Josie and Annie in Richmond when we surprised her with a visit for a real-life baby shower.  It was an insanely fun girls weekend filled with soothing Southern comfort food, a chocolate shop that blew us all away, tons of laughs, and so many memories I have to cherish with some of my best friends.

These sweet and salty cupcakes are truly an outstanding creation.  I used Baked’s sweet chocolate cake recipe (next time I’ll use my favorite chocolate cupcake recipe as I miss the domed cupcakes) and merged it with Sweetopolita’s recommendation of a salted caramel Swiss buttercream.  Need I say anything else?  Rich, sweet, salty, dreamy.  Perfect for my dear friend Courtney as she prepares for baby C’s arrival in the next few weeks.  Courtney, pour yourself a glass of milk, put up your feet, and enjoy!

Josie from Pink Parsley is hosting Courtney’s shower to be sure to head over there (and to Courtney’s blog as well!) to catch up on all of the other amazing treats nearly 15 other fabulous food bloggers have contributed to the shower!

Have you had Panera’s Signature Mac and Cheese yet?  It’s insanely amazing!  Velvety, creamy, cheesy, and worthy of only a spoon since it’s the closest utensil to a shovel.    And here is the recipe for you!  I know I lamented back in the fall about this being the very best mac and cheese recipe out there but until today, I’ve still yet to post a quick stove top mac and cheese recipe.  I’ve tried a couple different stove top recipes in the past year but none of them really had the “wow” factor I was looking for.  But this one…oh this version is different.

What I felt about other versions not tasting like they were cooked enough is not an issue with this version, even though the salt, dijon mustard, and hot sauce (oh yes!) aren’t added until right before the pasta is stirred into the sauce.  All of the unique flavors blend so beautifully and result in an unforgettable white cheese sauce that nestles itself into the shells and wraps itself around the spoon.  Kyle and I both love the slight hint of dijon that peaks out of the cheese sauce mostly because it reminds us of the mac and cheese recipes our moms made for us as kids but you can always decrease the dijon a little – don’t cut it completely though because the sauce really does need it.  This recipe has made it to our menu twice in the past two weeks and I used skim milk both times with great success (and a lot less guilt) but use whatever milk or cream you have on hand.  So the big question for you is…is this on your menu yet??

Disclaimer Note: This is not a sponsored post.  I simply adore this recipe – no compensation has been received for writing this post.

For the most part, Kyle and I agree on pretty much everything that comes out of our kitchen.  It makes for pretty easy living in this house and loads of fun when I menu plan and decide on what kind of sweets to bake.  The only recent exception to this lovely mutually agreeable relationship is cream cheese frosting.  While I can eat the tangy frosting with a spoon, Kyle can take it or leave it.  And yet I keep making it not because I forget how he feels about it, but because I think I can change his mind with different recipes.  It never works.

So when I made red velvet cupcakes last weekend, I ended up with a few extra frosted cupcakes and a moment of panic about what to do with them since I knew Kyle wasn’t about to bring Valentine’s cupcakes to his construction site at work.  It took me all of about .2 seconds to decide what needed to be done: repurpose them!  I scraped off the frosting (did you really just question what happened to it?), cubed up the cupcakes, sliced some fresh strawberries, and pulled together a no-bake cheesecake filling for some Valentine’s Day trifles.  And when I tell you that we both swooned with the first bite, I’m not kidding.  The silky filling has a touch of lemon that blends perfectly with the strawberries and soaks into the cake layers after a day-long refrigeration, resulting in a decadent and brightly-flavored dessert that would make the perfect ending to any sort of Valentine’s Day celebration.  We were hoping to celebrate this year in our new home but after another delay (?!*$), these trifles will be the perfect way to be celebrate how happy we are together, regardless of the situation.

It’s known far and wide around the interwebs that anything red velvet is humungously popular around Valentine’s day and strangely enough after almost 5 years of blogging, I’ve yet to post a red velvet cake recipe.  So after quite a few reader requests in the past couple of weeks for a great red velvet scratch cake recipe, I decided it was about time to share.  And believe me, it wasn’t like you guys had to twist my arm!  I scoured a few recipes on Pinterest and my favorite blogs and decided on this one since it’s made with both buttermilk and vinegar to boost the tang that is so beloved in red velvet cake.  Topped with a swirled dollop of silky cream cheese frosting, these red velvet cupcakes are an outstanding way to say “I Love You” to the hunnies in your life.  And yes, if you’re thinking about making a layer cake instead of cupcakes, Annie says that it’s a great recipe for that too – just grease three 8-inch pans, divide the batter, and bake for 25-30 minutes at 350 degrees F.

There’s something intrinsic about lasagna that makes it such a wonderful winter meal.  It’s more than likely that oodles of cheesiness has something to do with how a great lasagna can warm the soul on cold winter nights, very much like how soup has the same effect, but I think that the right recipe can do so much more.  The right recipe creates memories.  It evokes memories of crowded Sunday dinners at the grandparents’, of a hearty meal after a day of sledding or ice skating, of a full buffet table at a christening or anniversary party.  This spinach lasagna recipe is that type of recipe.

Made with a creamy béchamel sauce, three types of cheese, fresh spinach, and no-boil noodles that you’ll soften with hot water before using, this lasagna is a bit hit around here.  It’s a fun recipe to make with a helper since there are a few steps, but the effort is well-worth the end result.  Layer after layer goes in the baking dish and after 20 minutes of baking and a few minutes under the broiler to brown-up the cheesy top layer, you’ve got truly the best spinach lasagna ever.  We’ve made this recipe a handful of times in the past year and always get the same reaction from whomever we serve it to: more please!  This is definitely a recipe we keep in our book of favorites and don’t hesitate to serve time and time again.

Anyone will tell you that the process of creating your own baking recipes is a difficult one.  There’s this “science” to baking that we bakers know about and live by…how just the right amount of yeast, baking powder, or egg whites will make sandwich bread, fluffy biscuits, or a soufflé rise perfectly…how flour packed into the measuring cup is actually a different amount than flour fluffed into the cup…even how soft the butter is affects how the water and fat molecules in butter react in a recipe.  The science of baking is often the reason so many of us home bakers leave the recipe creation and testing up to the pros – let them figure out the nuances and tell us how to overcome them.  I’m totally fine with that!

So when I came across the idea for these chocolate chip toffee bars, a) I knew I would need extra time at the gym this week, and b) I knew the America’s Test Kitchen/Cook’s Illustrated Thick and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe was the only recipe that I would want for these bars.  It is by far my go-t0, most beloved chocolate chip cookie recipe and if I were to combine toffee (uh yes please!) with any chocolate chip recipe, there was no question which one it would be.  And when I tell you that the toffee bits melt into the cookie dough and that the two blend into a rich caramel-milk chocolate cookie bar, I’m not lying.  I swear, this cookie bar was heaven.  Soft centers with a little crunch on top and the occasional nibble of a toffee bit that survived the oven temperature.  Seriously, go make these now and don’t let anyone fool you into thinking that the ATK/CI recipe is anything but perfection (both for cookies and bars like this one).  And, I can’t stress this enough – when you’re looking for a fabulous recipe, be sure you know who really created it – it makes all the difference in the world to have a truly credible recipe to work with.

I am a complete sucker for mall pretzels.  And it’s a darn good thing that you’ll only find me at the mall once or twice a year because more trips would like equal more pretzels.  And as much as I love them, I’ve only made them once before, admittedly to great success but since Kyle isn’t a huge fan (crazy boy), I haven’t made them again.  But in all the years since I first made them, there’s been one recipe I’ve been saving and I finally decided to bust it out just in time to share it with you while you’re all getting crazy planning your Super Bowl (or maybe anti-Super Bowl?) party menus.  For the record, we’ll both be watching movies this Sunday, as is our annual tradition, while the rest of the nation is either watching the Super Bowl or waiting for the commercials (rarely both).

So this recipe isn’t any big secret; in fact, it’s probably the most widely adored one out there but if you haven’t made it yet, you need to get.on.it.  Like now!  And don’t be intimidated by making homemade soft pretzels either because this recipe is practically fool-proof.  I not only halved the recipe (something that isn’t always recommended with yeast recipes), but I also refrigerated the dough overnight after the rise (something that is usually done to yeast dough before the rise, if at all).  I let the dough come back to room temperature for about 2 hours before using it and the pretzel bites turned out like a dream.  Seriously awesome soft pretzels.  And dipped in the homemade cheese sauce (no processed ingredients with this recipe!), I was floating through mall pretzel heaven.  Josie made this recipe back in October and suggested brushing the pretzels both before and after baking them and I couldn’t agree more – buttery soft pretzels might just be the perfect snack food!

If there’s one recipe that I’ve been meaning to share with you guys over the past 3 years, it’s this one.   And for the most part, it’s because as many bloggers know, the problem with blogging certain recipes is that sometimes the dish needs to be served hot, before there’s any time to snap a few photos.  Take into account the time needed to adjust camera settings, fiddle with the light source, ensure all props are in place (none of these things are ever right even after test shots are taken when the food is still cooking), and essentially the dish starts getting cold by the time the photos are finished…every one of us is all too familiar with eating luke warm dinners.  But this doesn’t fly when you’ve got a room full of hungry people eying the steaming and bubbly spinach and artichoke dip that’s just emerged from the oven – we all know that.

So in honor of the Northeast dominated Super Bowl next weekend, I decided to make the sacrifice (ha!) to remake this dip and blog about it for you because you NEED this dip at your party.  Now, I can count on one hand how many times I’ve actually watched the Superbowl (for the record, I just don’t get football), but I’m definitely all about understanding the snacks that go with it.  This old-standby dip is kicked up a few notches with a secret ingredient: alfredo sauce.  I almost couldn’t believe it the first time my friend Andrea brought this to a party and revealed her secret but it’s true!  The alfredo sauce adds to the creaminess of the dip without having to use mayonnaise and with few other ingredients and minimal effort, I can assure you that this dip will be gone in less time than a Super Bowl commercial break.

Need more Super Bowl snack ideas?  Check out the sidebar for a bunch of winning snack ideas!