Let’s be people that host parties.

Let’s not just have people over… let’s host parties.

Let’s be people that look effortlessly elegant all night… even if this just means wearing the perfect pair of flattering jeans.

Let’s be people who always have perfect lipstick. Let’s be people who wear comfortable and stylish heels all night. Let’s be people who rock the most appropriate obscure playlist.

Let’s be people who start the game of Pictionary.

Let’s be people who send guests home with full bellies and warm cookies.

It all starts with a perfect cheese plate! And it’s totally not even hard! Come on… Play along!

The Perfect Cheese Plate!

These are just suggestions.  It’s totally a create-your-own-adventure situation:

You’ll need a clean board, a piece of parchment paper, or a large brown paper bag, cut open and crinkled.

4 to five cheeses.

Try an aged cheddar like Hook’s 12 year cheddar. Pair cheddar cheeses with sweet cherry or blackberry jam. The sweet fruit and sharp cheddar combination is stellar.

Try a French cheese like Abondance. Semi-hard, raw cow’s milk, almost Swiss like cheese with salty pickles and crisp crackers. Straight classy!

Try a a creamy goat cheese like (mmmm!) Truffle Goat Cheese. Let the truffle take center stage. Simple crackers and a sprinkling of black pepper are totally major. This is a popular cheese. It will be gone in a flash. Be warned!

Try a stinky and bold blue cheese. This cheese is made from raw cows milk… Making it even more crazy tangy… It’s also aged in grape leaves. This strong, blue-veined cheese pairs really well raw honey. The sweetness eases the aggressive nature of the cheese.

These are two VERY simple recipes.  Feel free to just eyeball it all.  Keep it simple.

Under no circumstances do I want you to come to this blog, read it, and leave with the sense that I have my act together.  I don’t have my act together.  If it looks for a moment like I have my act together… I’m just barely holding on.  Hear these words.

I was reading a website last week, and the writer posted a picture of her nightstand.  Perfectly mundane.  Perfectly innocent.  Except… the nightstand had three things on it.  Something fancy made by Steve Jobs, something that probably smelled like roses in heaven, and a perfectly placed tube of designer lip gloss.  Perfect layered on perfect, with a dash of perfect. Maybe I freaked out a little on the inside.  Maybe my nightstand is a dusty clutter of books that I’m currently ignoring.  Maybe I can’t find my lip gloss… and if I could it surely would not be designer… and it surely would have cat hair on it.

I’m not much for comparing myself with others… but I am for comparing nightstands apparently.

Mine is not put together.

Also… while we’re here… you should also know that I have to throw my phone in the back seat of my car to keep myself from texting and driving.  All the way in the back.  Otherwise I can’t help myself.

Oh.  Sometimes I daydream about running into the boy I used to date earlier this year.  In my fantasy, I look fantastic… like fatally fantastic.  I’m also with my new (majorly amazingly tall) new boyfriend…. thus making this dummy dude feel like a total shrimp.  I so so so wish for that to happen.

See?  I’m fickle, and messy, and texty… AND I CAN TOTALLY COOK SOME APPLES!!!! So there…

Apples are just bonkers right now.  I say we take advantage of this!

What follows is the most simple recipe for warm, soft, cinnamon-y apples.  I started with crisp Fujis.

Essentially, what we’re going to create is the inside of an apple pie… without all the hassle of pie crust.

One might argue that the crust is the best part of an apple pie.  Fair enough.  Fine.  You’re not entirely wrong.

But pulling these apples out of the oven might change your mind.

You might also consider baking these apples instead of lighting a scented candle .  Your house will smell exactly like heaven.

Why don’t spas smell like warm cinnamon apples?  Someone really should take this into consideration.

I love these apples on yogurt with granola.  I love these warm apples on cold ice cream.  I love these apples on breakfast oatmeal.  I love eating these apples, piping hot, standing over the sheet pan with a fork.

Some things are just simple and delicious.

Everything is as sweet as dessert in the summertime.

Living is totally easy:

Morning warmth and sunshine.  Just like dessert.

Granola with berries and sweet coffee.  Reminds me of dessert.

Chicken salads and pink wine for lunch.  Desserty.

Peachy blue sunsets, popcorn for dinner, and roasted apricots for dessert.

Gin and tonics.  Totally dessert.

Sleep.  Wake.  Repeat.

(Oh, but let’s not forget the fact that we still have to totally work hard, and get our hustle on, and keep our eye on the prize, and keep our nails did, and eat our vegetables, and pay our bills, and stay inspired, and just when we think we’ve worked hard enough… we have to try to work a little harder)

But other than that… summertime is totally all dessert, all the time.

Summer fruit is just stunning.  I ate most of these fuzzy little apricots just standing in my kitchen, trying to dream up a way to bake them.  They’re delicate and sweet, and absolutely my favorite fruit of summer.

Wait… did I say that about peaches last week?  Did I say that about strawberries the week before that?  I can’t decide.  I’m in summer heaven.

I dipped apricot halves in granulated sugar and roasted them under the broiler.

The fruit stays firm, but the tops get crunchy crisp, as the melted sugar creates a light candy shell.

I topped these little gems with honey sweetened marscarpone cheese and a bit of mint and lemon balm.  Lemon balm is like lemon mint.

So simple.  This dessert takes 5 minutes to create.

You could also try this recipe with ripe plums, ripe peaches or nectarines.  It feels fancy… but it’s really just good, simple, summer food.

If feeling:

lonely, bored, restless, hungry, smell deprived, sleep deprived, cold, greedy, kooky, crazy, cabin fevery, sun deprived, snow deprived, sullen, extraordinary, sluggish or spicy…

Might I suggest turning up the oven and roasting a bulb of garlic?

Hello, garlic.

I’m gonna chop your head off and put oil in your brains.

Salt and pepper.  Salt and pepper.  Salt and pepper.  Salt and pepper and paper.

Wrap it up.  Tie it up.

I used parchment paper and a kitchen string.  If you want to use foil… you totally should.  I was out.  I got creative.

When roasted, garlic turn into something sweet, aromatic, creamy, spreadable and utterly dream worthy.  Your breath will still me an absolute nightmare… but  just deal with it.

I hid my freshly roasted garlic in between butter and mashed avocado on this (burnt) toast.  I didn’t need the butter or the avocado… but I like layers of delicious.  I also like burnt toast.

There are wildfires raging all over Southern California and although I don’t live in the danger zone, the thick air and daunting skies make the fires impossible to ignore.

Driving around at dusk tonight, listening to the fire coverage on my car radio, I remembered that between the ages of about seven and eleven I would proudly proclaim that I wanted to be a firefighter to any adult that would ask.

It’s funny the reasons you choose to declare your future profession when you’re a child.  See,  I don’t particularly like fire, or being hot, or tall ladders or carrying heavy things.  I’m not much of a hero.  I don’t have that life saving gene inside me, aside from not killing the cricket that was in my kitchen last night.

My seven year old brain wanted to be a firefighter for several unheroic reasons: I liked (loved!) how awesomely clean and shiny fire trucks were.  I also really liked color and something about the red truck and the yellow suits and the black and white Dalmatian was totally exciting.  This is going to sound totally weird, but I used to love to do pull ups (I know, nutty), and my child brain somehow connected the ability to do pull ups with the ability to save lives and fight fire.

So I wanted to do pull ups and be a firefighter, until I wanted to own a zoo and be a vet, until I wanted to be a brooding writer, until I wanted to be a lady baker.  Phew… figuring out that stuff is nearly exhausting, and I’m not even done dreaming yet.

How about some squash?