You can’t go wrong with flowers and a card, and this fingerprint valentine couldn’t be simpler. (It make take a few tries to get it just right!)

A great way to show someone you love them is to cook for them! So how about giving them a great cookbook and picking out a great meal to make together? I’d love for this cookbook to be accompanied by a plane ticket…

How about a batch of heart-shaped Oreos for dessert (or any time of day, really)?

Here’s another cookie option, if you’re shipping to someone far away… love the packaging and there are plenty of price points:

Surprise your loved one with a closet full of heart balloons!

Share your favorite playlist with this cool “tunes for two” heart headphone splitter.

This would be a welcomed gift, but I might just buy it myself if I survive the month of February:

I didn’t want last weekend to happen in the first place. I was still recovering from the weekend before that, which had consisted of three consecutive nights of drinking in excess (a networking happy hour – in which no networking was actually done; a goodbye party for a friend embarking on an adventure; and Edgar’s “welcome to Seattle” party), and a week that consisted of two interviews, several client meetings and a whirlwind day-trip to San Francisco and back again. “It’s too SOON for another weekend!” I cried on Friday morning.  I was in charge of hosting a wine night on that night and then celebrating the 30th birthday of a friend on Saturday- both of which were manageable but only because the rest of my weekend plans were to watch television, cook and clean.

Wine night ended up being lovely (I made six different pizzas and the company was great), but things started to unravel on Saturday. Our best-laid birthday plans went awry and it was a scramble to reshape them into something celebratory given that airplanes were late, dogs had been attacked, fathers were in town and I was cranky. Somehow we managed to pull it together and have a pretty nice evening at Hale’s Ales and the Burgundian, and things looked even better by the time we reached The Little Red Hen and found a guy who was willing to buy everyone in our group multiple rounds of drinks. How generous!

And then, at 10:30pm I noticed that I had several missed calls from my next door neighbor. I darted out the back door of the bar to return her call in which she informed me that the front door of my apartment was wide open, my television was gone and my house was ransacked.

I immediately turned to go back into the bar only to discover that I had left through an emergency exit and was subsequently locked out, so I ran around the block, elbowed my way past the line of people waiting to get in the bar, flashed my hand stamp at the bouncer, yelled to my friends that I’d been robbed (that was before I knew the difference between robbery and burglary), grabbed my stuff and ran back out to catch an Uber and find out what damage had been done.

At first glance, it appeared that my television had perhaps been the only stolen property, especially because my laptop was still sitting on my bed (albiet it had been closed and was upside down). I immediately pulled back my bed to find out if the iPad that I had let slide between my headboard and mattress that morning was still there. Thankfully, it was – for once, laziness actually worked in my favor.

Then, as I turned around it was obvious that though my two most prized and essential pieces of technology had survived, my entire jewelry collection (save a few pieces) had gone missing, as had the purse collection on my closet shelf, a basket full of business cards, gift cards and my social security card and all of my power cords for my electronics. My roommate faced similar destruction – her work laptop was taken as well as all of her jewelry and her laundry basket, which the thieves had emptied and used to fill with their loot. God knows what else they found in our drawers – all had been pulled out and obviously rifled through – I’m sure it will take months to figure out what they took.

the drawings i submitted for my police report

I detailed what exactly to do when your house is burglarized over on my Seattle blog, but over here I thought I might talk a bit about how being burglarized is not only traumatic, but how in our case, has also set off a series of unfortunate events that make me feel like I might be starring in my own version of Groundhog’s Day – which just so happened to be the day we were robbed.

We were pretty upset about the next day. Our neighbors kept coming over to check up on us and rehash the events of the night – they’d all been home when the burglary occurred and were rightfully freaked out. They’re all smokers and dog owners and somehow the burglars managed to time their trip well because apparently no one needed to let the dog out or to have a cigarette between the hours of 7:30 and 10:30pm.

My roommate decided to cope with her rage by going to the gym and the grocery store to pick up a few items to make Oreo cookies for a Superbowl party she didn’t really want to go to, but since we couldn’t watch TV, there wasn’t much else to do. And cooking always makes me feel better and so of course I agreed to help her… but that’s when things started to go completely downhill – which shouldn’t really have been possible.

While checking out at the grocery store, she discovered that she had somehow lost her debit card the night before when she had carelessly thrown it back into her purse but not put it directly in her wallet. Losing one’s credit and debit card is stressful enough – but on top of being burgled? (yes it’s a word) – it sent her over the edge.

I, on the other hand, was feeling like I had come out on the better end of things, having really only lost my jewelry and television – UNTIL – just moments before Beyonce’s halftime show – I got a call from the Wells Fargo credit card fraud department.

Insert ominous music here.

The thieves had somehow managed to grab a debit card that I literally didn’t know that I still had or that was linked to my account and went on a shopping spree in Marysville, WA. They hit up 7-11, Wendy’s, Fred Meyer and Wal-Mart, and completely drained my bank account. They also attempted to shop at Nordstrom in Seattle (read about why this is significant).

So not only did the burglars steal my STUFF, they prevented me from being able to replace it in a timely manner because they took all my money as well – it was supposed to take 3-5 days for my fraud claim to be processed and in the meantime, I needed to cancel all of my bank account information – credit cards, checking account, savings account – the works.

I went to the bank the next morning and cancelled it all, and withdrew the like, $100 that I still had and went over to City Target to buy myself a new power adapter for my laptop. I was literally paralyzed without access to my computer (but thank god I still had one!) – I just started a new contract that is extremely time-sensitive, I have been waiting to hear back about a second contract AND I had an interview for a third – and no way to communicate other than my phone (which had a cracked screen, by the way).

I purchased an $87 “universal adapter” with seven different plugs that made it compatible with a whole long list of different computers. It turns out that “universal” is a subjective term, because when I opened it the next morning, not one of them worked with my Samsung laptop.

Day destroyed (I’d needed to prep for an interview, which I had to reschedule), I headed up to the Northgate Target to return it, get my money back and then purchase the correct one at Best Buy. Imagine my utter dismay when Target would NOT give me money back in any form except a gift card. I almost lost it – I needed cash to buy a new adapter.

Then, I checked my (new) bank account and I had more money than I had anticipated, leading me to believe that the fraudulent charges had already been reversed. Hallelujah! I marched down to Best Buy and got the correct adapter and ordered a new phone while I was at it.

I was back in the game. Or so I thought.

I had also had to go through the process of getting a cashier’s check to pay my rent to my landlords, since I don’t have new checks yet. With my new bank account balance in mind, I went and got the check, congratulated myself on having overcome that particular obstacle and went about my merry way… until today when I received an overdraft notice via email and discovered that the Fred Meyer fraudulent charge had cleared my account and I was charged an additional $35 fee, catapulting me into the red zone, and I’m not talking about football.

Will this ever end?

My roommate, for her part, has taken it upon herself to find her missing laptop. We’re assuming that the cops have better things to do, but I’m pretty sure that if you could give me access to the security footage at 7-11, Wal-Mart, Wendy’s and Fred Meyer I could find the jackasses who stole my debit card. She had some pretty specific software on her computer and it’s making her feel better to be pursuing justice, though if she actually DID find her computer I’m not entirely sure what she would do.

Her boyfriend loaned us a television that is mercifully the same as mine (meaning that we didn’t have to reprogram our remote). It’s just a decade older and cuts out when you have it on HD channels and that I can tolerate. But then the batteries on the remote died and I cried for a couple minutes because that was just one more thing. She got a new loaner computer at work which won’t show a video she needs to watch for school, and then she got a parking ticket, so the insults just keep adding to her injuries.

Neither of us have access to any money (she cancelled all of her accounts too, so we’re both waiting for new cards, checks, etc), we have no jewelry, we have no real evidence that our crime is being solved and we both have an incredible amount of work that is piling up behind us because WE WERE ROBBED and there’s the emotional trauma that comes with that too.

I don’t really know how to describe how I FEEL about all of this. I understand VERY clearly that it could have been worse. They could have stolen my laptop, which would have ruined my business. I wouldn’t have been able to replace it because they also stole my money. My cat could have escaped through the open door and never been seen again. They could have taken my iPad, which was a gift from a client and only saved thanks to my laziness. We could have been home when it all happened – adding a whole new level of terror to this experience.

But in the end I don’t feel unsafe in my apartment. I don’t particularly like BEING here right now because I’m sad, but it’s not like I need to stay anywhere else. I don’t want them to come back for the things they left behind, so I’m super diligent about locking doors and windows and always leaving a light on, which I am sure will do wonders for our power bill (not to mention I feel guilty about using too much energy – but we’re talking safety here, right?). I’ve noticed subtle differences in how I treat my stuff – I have taken to sort of hiding things from view, which has been super confusing when I can’t find it in the morning – and of course I immediately think we’ve been robbed again.

While I’m also hyper-aware of myself, my possessions and surroundings, I’ve also become a bit of a space cadet because I’m distracted. I forgot to get off the bus today and went two stops too far. I left a folder of SUPER important information about my new bank accounts on the counter at the bank.

The other thing that I’d like to mention – and I’m quite sure that none of you have made it this far in the post, so I’m just saying this for myself – is that it’s particularly interesting to hear what everyone thinks should happen to the criminals, if and when they’re brought to justice. Lots of people want to beat them up and lock them up. I, on the other hand, would like to sit them down, tell them all about how they’ve basically ruined my life (I assume they’re about steal my identity too, by the way. If they don’t, then I’ll just tell them this long sad story about how crappy this week has been and what the consequences have been, for me) and then I personally would sentence them to 30,000 hours of community service so that they can make the world a better place. Obviously, it’s the restorative justice background in me that embraces the idea of sitting them down and having a conversation, rather than tossing them in jail because there are no good lessons to be learned in a place like that. I’d thank them for not hurting me, my roommate or Mozel, and ask them what they think their punishment should be. I’m sure they won’t be able to reproduce my jewelry collection or personal documents, but maybe they can put some good out in the world to counteract their bad – and hopefully, for their sake, before karma comes to get them.

We resurrected our book club this year, setting the slightly ambitious goal to read 10 books over the course of the year. We also nearly doubled the number of people in the club, diversifying beyond just our immediate group of friends. I’m so excited about the group of girls and I’m really looking forward to the year.

Last year, we picked our books by choosing different genres from a hat, and then finding books that fit within the category, but this presented the following problems: 1) in addition to scheduling meetings, choosing the next book to read at each meeting was difficult, and 2) sometimes people had trouble finding the books and reading them in a timely manner. So this year we took a different track:

Each person came to the meeting with five book suggestions (or more, some people couldn’t resist) and they wrote them on Post-it notes and put them up on a board next to the appropriate genre. Then, we went through one-by-one and briefly outlined the plot of the book and discussed why it might be a good pick for the club.

After going through all of the books, we were each given seven gold stars (an arbitrary number, really) and each person stuck them on the books that they would like to read most. The books with the most stars were then moved over to the left side of the board so we could evaluate whether we had a good range of genres, old books and new books, and we checked their availability at the Seattle Public Library.

Here’s the final list:

FEBRUARY: The Westing Game, Ellen Raskin
MARCH: Hells Angels, The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs, Hunter S. Thompson
APRIL: Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer
MAY: Lamb, Christopher Moore
JUNE: The Sex Lives of Cannibals, J. Maarten Troost 
JULY: Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn
AUGUST: Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry
SEPTEMBER: Wesley the Owl, Stacey O’Brien
OCTOBER: 2312, Kim Stanley Robinson
NOVEMBER: Where Did You Go, Bernadette?
DECEMBER: Post Office, Charles Bukowski

Choosing our year of books this way allows each person to start collecting the books whenever they want. I can take the list with me to Goodwill or Value Village and search the shelves each time I go, or I can order it on my iPad, or buy it new – but we’ll all know exactly what’s coming up and can even read ahead if we want to.

But my favorite part (besides all of the great conversation) is that we also have a list of 40 OTHER books that we could read at our leisure. It was proposed that we make it a competition and the person who reads the most books wins a prize, but that was quickly abandoned because obviously I would win. (Just kidding, I rarely even make it past the first chapter of book club books… I’m all about the food.) Here’s the list of the rest of the books that were suggested:

Fiction:

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
The Bean Trees
The Elegance of the Hedgehog
12 Tribes of Hattie
The Five People You Meet in Heaven
Monsters in Black Tie
A World of Clicks and Class
One Hundred Years of Solitude
War and Peace
Les Miserables
Room
Game of Thrones
Sacre Bleu

Humor:

Bossypants
Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? And Other Concerns

Graphic Novels:

The Watchmen

History:

The Kingmakers Daughter
Year of Wonders
Let the Great World Spin

Mystery: 

The Racketeer
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Bel Canto
The Stone Cutter

Biography/Memoirs: 

Team of Rivals
The Six Wives of Henry VIII
Memoirs of Grace Coddington
Year of Magical Thinking
The Art of Racing in the Rain
The Distance Between Us
Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness
Crazy Love: A Memoir

Romance:

The Reader

Food: 

Thanksgiving: How to Cook It Well

Young Adult: 

Looking for Alaska
Perks of Being a Wallflower
The Book Thief
Divergent
The Fault in Our Stars

Non-Fiction:

All About Love
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
The Signal and the Noise, Nate Silver

On the menu for this meeting? Smitten Kitchen’s pancetta, white bean and swiss chard pot pie, potato latkes, chocolate chip cookies, and wine.

To make up for it, I’m plowing ahead with menu-planning this year, and I’ve come up with too many things to make for 2 meals. This year my dad is saving me the trouble of cooking a standing rib roast, and has instead ordered one from Whole Foods – along with a whole host of different side dishes. (Did you know you can do that? Kind of genius.) I’ve been asked to contribute just one side dish and dessert, which is actually harder than just planning a whole meal because I want them to be THE BEST and there are so many great options to choose from.

On the flip side, dinner for three at my mom’s doesn’t really warrant making a huge spread either, so I’m doubly-forced to scale back my kitchen ambition in real life… but here? on my blog? Here, I can dream.

I made a Pinterest board for all the elements of my most perfect Christmas feasts, and with the ones that are most likely to make it to the table below:

Parker House Rolls

Caramelized Onion, Mushroom, Apple & Gruyere Bites

Blood Orange, Beet, and Fennel Salad

Braised Romano Beans

Braised Short Ribs with Mashed Potatoes, Swiss Chard and Horseradish Cream

Brandy Snaps

image via Veggie Belly

My latest “project tofu” experience was born out of a need to get rid of all the food in my refrigerator before I depart for 10 days in Colorado. I had purchased an emergency package of tofu (the normal, 14oz-size) just in case the big block that I’d let sit around for weeks had expired, and instead of packing my suitcase, I decided to make Veggie Belly’s “Chinese salt & pepper tofu”.

I wrapped the tofu up in paper towels and pressed it before slicing it into cubes, putting it in a bowl and throwing 4 tablespoons of cornstarch, a few pinches of salt and some ground pepper on top and tossing gently to coat. I heated up some oil and fried the tofu for just a few minutes and then drained it on some more paper towels before I speared a piece with a toothpick and put it in my mouth. It was both crispy and soft, salty and eventually spicy when I dunked it in some sriacha.

I think this might be a perfect recipe for a party appetizer, though my apartment really reeked after all of that frying so I’ d have to make them way in advance and hope they didn’t get soggy. Overall though, a great dish and I will definitely make the leek saute to go with them next time. Success!

photo via gilt taste

Fresh off the success with vegetarian lettuce wraps and with half a log of tofu still left, I turned to an article and recipe I’ve been eyeing on Gilt Taste for months: “How To Make a Better Mapo Tofu“, by Ruth Reichl, one of my favorite authors. Gilt Taste appears to be defunct as they haven’t updated their recipes page since September, but I check regularly just to make sure and keep coming back to the tofu article, trying to muster up the courage to try it.

Part of the problem was that this article teaches you how to make a BETTER mapo tofu, but I’ve never tried a bad version, or any version at all – so I had nothing to measure mine against. But how bad could it be when one of the key ingredients is SAUSAGE?

Anywhoodle, buoyed by the success of Project Tofu (part 1), I embarked on Part 2: Mapo Tofu. Not nearly as simple as the lettuce wraps and with several more steps, I was instantly thwarted by two things: I don’t own a wok, and I didn’t have any Sichuan peppercorns.

How much could that matter, I wondered? I unearthed a giant skillet and tried to recall everything I”ve learned about cooking with a wok from television (not much) and then I opted against walking across the park to the only place that MIGHT have Sichuan peppercorns and decided to skip them entirely.

The final result? Pretty frickin’ awesome, if I do say so myself. I understand where the peppercorns flavor would have played a role and enhanced the dish, but without them, it was still beyond edible. It was devour-able. Scarf-able. Phenomenal. (Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but it was damn good.)

You’ll want me to make this for you in the future, friends.

image via the pioneer woman

image via the pioneer woman

A few weeks ago, I woke up craving the fried tofu from a bowl of pho. Not the pho itself, but just the tofu – so I went up to the store and bought a block of extra-firm tofu at the grocery store. I did my research and learned how to press the water out and fried it with moderate success- in that it was edible.

A few weeks later, I was wandering the aisles at Cash & Carry and I was blinded by a deal (as so often happens at Cash & Carry, resulting in all sorts of unnecessary bulk purchases) – an enormous block of tofu for something ridiculous like $3.99. I couldn’t resist. I really couldn’t.

I’m sad to say that the giant block of tofu sat in my refrigerator through the Thanksgiving holiday, giving me anxiety. Despite my mediocre success with simply frying up tofu, I felt a bit nervous about opening up the watery package and having to fully commit to several meals made out of the stuff. But finally I ran out of other things to make and it was the only thing left in my fridge, so I decided to go for it.

I started by going to to see what The Pioneer Woman had to say about tofu. I didn’t expect it to be much, and I was right. There are only two lonely tofu recipes in her repitoire, not that I was surprised – I mostly love her because of all of the meaty goodness on her blog. But I knew that if I tried whatever it was that SHE made, the likelihood of it being delicious was high.

The recipe was Vegetarian Lettuce Wraps. Simple enough to make, a very short list of ingredients, and pretty decent comments and reviews by people who tried tricking their families into eating tofu (most of the time it worked!). I knew it was worth a shot.

The dish took less than 15 minutes and was deliciously crunchy and flavorful and was the healthy meal that I needed after a straight WEEK of crap food, caffeine and booze (ah, the life of an event planner during the week of the event). I felt good about nearly every bite – the exception being the very end of the lettuce which was tough and couldn’t fit any of the tofu mixture on it. But that was easily discarded. I devoured several lettuce wraps in mere minutes and had plenty leftover for lunch today.

Project tofu, meal one was a success!

I’ll be teaching groups how to make holiday entertaining easy with three super-easy appetizers (total crowd-pleasers, I took a survey of my friends to find out what they liked best), two mocktails (no booze, sorry) and two crafts – we’ll be stamping our own wrapping paper and making cookie mixes in mason jars – a great gift for the culinary-challenged OR the perfect thing to leave out for Santa Claus.

Click on over to the deal page where you can read more about the event! Let’s make it a smashing success!

thinking big, folks.

This year, I took a different approach to Thanksgiving. I didn’t host anything, I barely made plans at all and I decided that if I did cook, I wouldn’t be too ambitious about it. As you can see from year’s past, (2010, 2011) I tend to go overboard on planning and cooking. There are always too many leftovers and way too many dishes to wash afterward.

I think my lazy approach has something to do with the fact that Thanksgiving is just so darn early this year. And the day after Thanksgiving marks day 1 of the 32 day holiday season. I’m sure the retailers are much happier about this than I am – that’s 1/12th of my life that will be spent in the holiday spirit.

More on that later, for now I’d like to share my scaled back Thanksgiving menu. This year, Eliz and I flew solo and had Thanksgiving at Kendall’s with the poopies, and I actually halved all of my recipes and made an appropriate amount of food! I was so proud of myself.

Roasted Stuffed Onions - my perennial favorite, but this year I skipped the arduous process of hollowing out the onion shells. Talk about a time saver – plus, no one ever really eats the shells like I want them to, so why bother?

Kale Dressing - this was a recipe I flagged from the November issue of Bon Appetit. It was pretty good, except that I wasn’t all that excited about the kale I was using (from a bag, Trader Joe’s), it’s a two-part recipe which I didn’t realize until it was too late and it wanted you to use only the inside part of the bread, not the crust. But overall it was nice to try something new.

Balsamic Glazed Brussels Sprouts - I could eat these all day every day.

Mashed Potatoes – I shouldn’t have to link to a recipe for mashed potatoes. If you don’t know how to boil potatoes, drain them, and then add a ton of butter and sour cream, then I can’t help you.

Pumpkin Poppers - I’ve been making these a lot over the last few weeks and they’re a major hit.

Turkey Breast - this was the real time and money saving aspect of Thanksgiving. You can buy turkey breasts, pre-cooked at Safeway! Sure, it wasn’t the BEST turkey I’ve ever eaten in my life, but since I don’t care about the turkey very much, I was happy to focus my attention on the sides.

Cranberry Sauce – from a can, man!

Apple Dumplings – I would have never ever ever ever have thought to make these, and that’s because the recipe calls for a can of Mountain Dew. MOUNTAIN DEW! Ew! But that also made it intriguing enough to try and they were fast and pretty easy to put together. What a pleasant surprise – they are fantastically delicious and I will make them again. Mountain Dew, who knew?

Pumpkin Bread – Eliz whipped up a couple of loaves of pumpkin bread which we are currently enjoying while watching the second season of Homeland. I have two puppies on my lap and I’m full and happy and thankful for all of the wonderful people and things in my life.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Sorry ’bout the total radio silence.

My blogging attentions have been consumed by my new Seattle-centric blog, which I’ve talked about having for forever, but was finally bored enough to start a few weeks ago. It’s been really fun to be writing Yelp-style reviews again and sharing all my insider knowledge about the Emerald City. Pop on over and take a look! 

Lucky for you, it’s almost the holiday season which means that I’m piecing together a new holiday gift guide/wishlist, as well as some of my favorite entertaining tips for an event that I have coming up. There’s a possibility that I’ll update with a new theme too. Lots to think about!