...now that the holidays are in the belly

After a week of indulging in my family's delicious and plentiful cooking in the Okanagan, then tasting as much of Portland as we possibly could in the three days we spent there, I came home full of that special combination of exhausted and inspired that makes a person quite ready to be back home and, you know, their own kitchen.

I sit now with my laptop rested on a belly full of steak, curried portobello mushrooms, brown rice, and a little too much raw cake batter as I: look through pictures from the holidays; wait half-patiently for this chocolate cake to bake, wondering how it will turn out due to the changes I made in the recipe (most of them relating to the pre-baking consumption of a good portion of the chocolate that was to go in the cake); daydreaming about Portland, that wonderful city, and what might come of the email address a young lass scribbled down for us after we got to chatting about an apartment exchange in the summer...