Hi there team! It’s been a hot minute. Life has once again unfortunately interfered with my ability to post recipes on the internet. Womp womp. I’m trying to get back on track, but stuff is legit crazy right now. And in the midst of the crazy, I’m trying to dig out of the social black hole I tend to create when life gets nuts and make the time to see my friends and hug them and their babies and husbands and dogs and tell them I love them. So recipes might slow down a little bit while my ship rights itself. Cool? Cool.

So while I’m here, let’s do a joke.

Q: Is your refrigerator running?

A: Yes, it is now, but for several days it was not, and I lost like a trillion dollars worth of food and everything smelled just awful and getting a new fridge was a total pain in the tookus because they kept giving me delivery windows like 6-8 PM on Saturday night, like HELLO? I’m extremely popular? But now the new one is here and I am very embroiled in the first world problem of not having enough door shelf space for my sixteen different varieties of mustard.

Um. I don’t think I got that punchline right.

Oh, also, for the record, when I refer to stuff being crazy we are NOT talking about a broken fridge. I know I’m a part-time half-assed food blogger but I promise I have a little more perspective than that. Actually, the broken fridge was probably a serendipitous opportunity to get rid of a lot of stuff that should’ve been tossed months ago. I am a bit capricious about dates on food, to say the least, and it would not be uncommon on a weekend afternoon to find Nor and I deadlocked in a best of 101 rock-paper-scissors match over whether a can of tahini that’s been open for six months needs to get thrown away or not.*

Some other serendipitous stuff that resulted from the broken fridge was being able to give away leftover cream cheese frosting to a friend’s daughter (it’s her favorite), rather than stick it in the fridge, still in the piping bag, under the pretense that I am going to make whoopie pies and fill them with it.** Also, I got assigned dessert for Mother’s Day dinner which meant I needed room temperature butter anyway.

I LOVED these blondies. I found them on Foodgawker with a search for “pistachio,” which is one of my mom’s favorite foods. They looked incredibly simple to make, but different enough to be worthy of a special occasion – and they lived up to that initial impression. The spice blend is distinct and rich without being overpowering, and the hearty bites of pistachio and chocolate sprinkled throughout both adds texture and mellows the spice. A+, would celebrate with again.

*IT’S LIKE PEANUT BUTTER. IT DOESN’T GO BAD.

**I never make whoopie pies.

Source: Simmer and Shoot

There are days that I really, genuinely like people. And then there are days I have to fly.

There’s something about flying that just seems to bring out the worst in people. Something about the cramped noisiness of airports followed by the stress of being 35,000 feet above the ground in a giant inescapable cylinder with far too many people…can you tell I don’t love flying? I don’t consider myself to be an irrational person, but airplanes defy my (extremely limited) understanding of the laws of physics, and every little bump sees me clutching my armrests and wondering exactly what my breaking point is before I spring up screaming “I AIN’T GOIN’ DOWN LIKE THIS!” and storming the drink cart.

Okay. Maybe flying just brings out the worst in me. But I do feel like flying exposes the lowest common denominator within each of us. If you feel like you remain a decent human being while flying, have no fear! I’m going to help you. Based on my extensive experience with air travel, I’ve written a handy instruction manual to help you make everyone else’s flying experience (and maybe even yours!) as miserable as possible. It’s easy! Just follow these steps.

How to Be an A-hole at 35,000 Feet (and below):

1. Do NOT, under ANY circumstances, turn off your phone, Kindle, or iPad when the flight attendants tell you to. That text you’re working on is far more important than FAA regulations, and if you don’t hit “like” on your buddy’s Facebook status before takeoff, you just know you’re going to hear about it when you touch down. And a Kindle isn’t really electronic, is it? It’s books. BOOKS, man.
2. If your bag doesn’t fit in the overhead bin, continue trying to cram it in there. The space will increase in direct proportion to the volume of your grunts. When it still doesn’t fit at the crazy diagonal angle that was your last-ditch effort, just leave it. Someone else will take care of it.
3. Bring your tuna salad sub onboard. You don’t want your fellow passengers to miss out on the gustatory delights that await you.
4. Be horrible to parents. They are pinching their babies and forcing them to cry just to annoy you. The nerve! Act like you are in a chapel, a library, the Holocaust Museum, or somewhere else where silence would be a reasonable expectation. Sigh theatrically with every whimper. Turn around and give your best hairy eyeball, making sure to break eye contact quickly if the parent happens to look up at you.
5. Recline! You know how uncomfortable airplane seats are. We all do. Thank God we can recline them three inches, thus making them exactly like our favorite armchair at home. As soon as the chime dings, get your finger on that button and don’t even mess around. Launch, no, hurtle yourself backwards. Do NOT check if the person behind you has a laptop out. That will just ruin the fun, and besides, don’t you want to witness the first-ever instance of seppuku by laptop?
6. Be ready to deboard. And I mean ready. Upon landing, we all know that everyone can get off the plane at the exact same time (that’s the laws of physics again). Be sure to stand up immediately when the seatbelt sign goes off. Glare impatiently at the people sitting in your row if they haven’t yet attempted a game of human bowling with the 150 people in front of them. Also, leave as much garbage as possible in your seat even though the crew came around with trash bags 14367 times. Gotta keep ‘em on their toes, right?

There you have it – if you don’t travel much, or if you do but you’ve been acting like a normal person for some reason while doing so, I hope this helps. Many people follow it very closely – which is why the only thing that cures my traveling woes is a big bowl of ice cream. Homemade? All the better. I’ve found that store-bought ice cream, even the really good brands, just don’t hold a candle to homemade. There’s something just so eye-rollingly amazing about homemade ice cream – I don’t know if it’s creamier, or richer. I can’t put my finger on it. But the ice cream I make in the ice cream maker has the same quality as the ice cream we used to hand-churn at summer camp – it’s just uniquely homemade. And maybe, after traveling, the “home” part is the key.

Source: Adapted from the vanilla recipe that came with my ice cream maker