Sweet Corn and Bourbon Ice Cream.

When I was growing up, I had a serious sweet tooth. My parents were convinced that I would give myself diabetes. If it was sweet, I loved it. Cookies, cakes, candies, and of course, ice cream. It took until I got to college to get rid of that sweet tooth. While my college was awesome in many ways, the food was uninspiring and the ice cream -- soft serve, mostly -- sub-par. The desserts were likewise somewhat bland. So I fell out of my love affair with all things sweet and never quite got back into it. The nail on my sweet-tooth coffin was the discovery of weird, bizarre, unique ice creams. Sweet corn, creme fraiche, olive oil -- delicious! I rarely eat "regular" ice cream anymore (honey-lavender was the last non-homemade flavor I had), but I will occasionally whip up a batch of something strange and exciting at home. If you too are a fan of unusual ice cream flavors, I strongly recommend that you invest in Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams at Home.

Watermelon Spritzers

Obviously this is an out-of-season post -- when summer comes around next year, I strongly recommend trying out these watermelon spritzers.

Homemade Tortillas

As you know, for several months we did not buy baked goods; I made them all instead. But, there are only so many loaves of bread you can make before starting to get bored. In my quest to find a different starch to bake, I ran into a recipe for what looked like delicious homemade tortillas.

Pizza bread

As a child, visits to my great grandmom always involved a stop-over at a local bakery. We would pick out a coconut cake for her, sweets for my sister and I, and most importantly -- pizza rolls. I lived for those pizza rolls. They were amazing. You could heat them up and eat them for a quick lunch or eat them cold, either way, they were amazing! So, when I saw a recipe for a cheesy pizza bread, I knew I had to try it and reclaim some of those memories.

Lavender Soda

Lavender is not for everybody, but it is definitely for me. I love a delicate floral flavor and can't resist it in anything -- hence my undying love of Traminette. Some days -- rarely, mind you -- I have nothing to do, get bored, and need to distract myself by making something delicious. The result of one such day was lavender soda.

Coyote Beaded Mask

The first function I went to with my now-husband and his friends took place in late 2007. It was a masquerade birthday party for one of his college friends. I was only a week or two out of ACL surgery and still on crutches at the time. By 2011, I was as firm a friend with the same woman as Hubs, and when she hosted another birthday masquerade party, I knew I had to make a very special mask for the occasion. Enter the coyote mask.

Pumpkin Pasta

One of my super fabulous sisters-in-law is coming down to visit me tomorrow. While I'm super excited to make something tasty and fancy for dinner for the two of us (some variant of duck burritos, anyone?), I realize that I've been remiss in posting the final foods I made for my husband (and his previously-mentioned fabulous sisters). So, without further ado, let's talk about pumpkin pasta.

Mango Margarita Sorbet

For hub's birthday, we were visited by his two beautiful sisters. I made a pasta dinner -- which I will hopefully remember to review soon -- and a dessert. Since I've been doing so much baking lately, I wanted to make something a little different for dessert. Naturally, my mind immediately went to ice cream or sorbet. When I went to the store to pick up food for the week, I was immediately inspired by the massive sale on mangos. And so, the Mango Margarita Sorbet, adapted from and inspired by this Mango-Agave Sorbet Recipe, was born.

Pumpkin Bread Pudding

My husband loves loves loves bread pudding. He also always complains about the bread pudding we get in restaurants -- no matter where we are, or what variant the bread pudding is, there is always something wrong with it. So, when I set out to make pumpkin bread pudding for his birthday, I was a little nervous that it wouldn't turn out well. And to be honest, while he raved about it, I think it can still be improved upon somewhat. We shall see if and when I make it again!

Orange-Maple French Toast

I work constantly. I get up around 6:30, get dressed, make a quick breakfast, and start work at 7. At some point, I go into the office. I get more work done on the 40 minute metro ride in, work at my desk, leave, work on the ride home. I grab a quick dinner and get back to work until 9-10 at night, and then I go to bed. I am not exaggerating -- you (those of you who know him!) can ask my husband and he will be happy to verify, largely because he works the same hours!

Bear in mind, I am not even close to complaining. I work constantly because I love to work constantly. However, to keep up the pace, I need to make sure to steal a few moments to fuel up for each awesome day with an awesome breakfast. Today, I'd like to share with you a fun twist I whipped up on french toast -- orange-maple french toast.

Orange-Ginger Caramel Popcorn

A few months ago, I posted one of my caramel popcorn adventures -- honey-chile caramel popcorn with a cream cheese glaze. This recipe turned out to be a big hit, and I got to share it nearly immediately with two dear friends to celebrate their move into their new home.  The only thing better with deliciously addictive food is sharing deliciously addictive food with fabulous people!

When I shared this recipe with y'all, I was also recommended to try curry caramel popcorn and ginger caramel popcorn. I have not tried curry caramel popcorn yet -- I have big plans for that one! -- but I have experimented a little with ginger. So, I present to you my first pass at an orange-ginger caramel popcorn.

Savory French Toast

I know this is a total shocker to you guys, but I have a pretty huge backlog of recipes and crafts to post here as I find the time. I was scanning through my photos, trying to figure out what to post  today, and realized I had yet to share with you one of my delicious triumphs: savory french toast.

One day, I came home from work with a very specific craving. I wasn't sure exactly what I wanted. I only knew that it had to include eggs in some way -- but not whole or scrambled -- had to have carbs, and just needed to be savory. Obviously eggs + carbs immediately made me think of french toast, but french toast is usually sickly-sweet to me. I despaired of solving my craving dilemma momentarily before it occurred to me that there was no law against making savory french toast. Fortified by this thought, I went about developing a recipe.

Honey Whole Wheat Bread

One of our cost-saving measures -- and one of my favorite new activities! -- is making our own bread. For our first bread experiment, I went with a delicious classic: honey whole wheat.

Buttermilk Pancakes

I am loving our recent push to cut back on our grocery bill to under $200 a month for the two of us. It allows me to explore all kinds of recipes I never really contemplated when we weren't watching our food finances. Turns out that I'd been missing out on a lot of easy and tasty recipes, like this recipe for buttermilk pancakes.

Rosemary Cheese Soft Pretzels

My dad loves soft pretzels. They are one of the food items he cannot resist whenever we go out (one of the others being hot dogs . . . he is a very special dude!). So, to crown off the bake-celebration, I made him some delicious home-made rosemary sea-salt pretzels with rosemary cheese sauce, courtesy of the baking brilliance of two peas and their pod. Apologies in advance for the even-worse-than-usual quality of the photographs in this post -- for some reason, my camera was acting up.

Family Dill Bread

And now to return to our regularly scheduled programming. One of the other treats I made for my mom and dad was our family-favorite dill bread. This is actually the first bread I ever learned to make; my mom taught me when I was still quite young. I loved cooking with her. She always let me lick the bowls -- and oh, I still have yet to meet a dough or batter that I don't love. It is also the most addictively delicious bread I've ever had.

Cake Pancakes

So, we're taking a brief break from our family bakefest to explore one of my obsessions: cake batter. I love cake batter almost as much as I love icing. The other day, I had a severe craving for cake batter but did not want to commit to a full cake. Too many leftovers. So, I whipped up a quick and easy crave-fixing recipe for cake pancakes using store-bought cake mix.

Spiced Pumpkin Bread

While the pumpkin waffles were largely for hubs and I (to give us enough energy to continue cooking and baking all day), the next carb I prepared was for mom and dad: Spiced Pumpkin Bread.

Pumpkin waffles

Our summer is busy, busy, busy as we are getting prepared for hub's law school and our subsequent transition into being expert hermits. So, we crammed a celebration for mother's day, father's day, dad's birthday, and my parents' anniversary into one weekend. First, we picked up their dog and house/dog/cat sat over Saturday and Sunday. Second, we arranged for tons of food on Sunday evening for a celebratory dinner. Hubacious got crabs to eat with dad, and I made breakfast plus lunch/snacks times roughly four. I took advantage of being at my parents' house by using an appliance they have but we do not: a waffle iron. And thus, pumpkin waffles came into delicious being.

Ice Cream Chocolate Chip Cookies

In addition to making those beautiful oreo cupcakes, my friend and I decided to finish off the day of baking by making some cookies. Now, I am usually not a fan of chocolate chip cookies. As my husband knows, I rarely make them, not even at Christmas. However, I could not resist these cookies and neither should you: chocolate chip cookies made with ice cream (yes, as part of the batter!) courtesy of Picky Palate.

Oreos in Cupcakes

Recently, I had a fun mini baking day with a dear friend of mine, who is also not-that-kind-of-a-doctor. We put her beautiful stand mixture to great use making, to begin with, cookies and cream cupcakes as featured on Annie's Eats.

Easy Baked Eggs

This fall, hubs goes to law school. I am so, so excited for him, and so, so sad for our collective pocketbook. We'll have to cut our food budget dramatically. So what will that mean for our food future? Well, cheese will be mostly out -- it just costs too much to support my cheese habit. We'll probably have to eat less meat as well. Soups, rice, and pasta will definitely be over-represented. Still, I hope some new adventures will come from our budget cuts. Maybe we'll get to the farmers markets for fruit and vegetable seconds. Maybe I'll bake all of our bread instead of buying it. Maybe I'll start canning and making jams and/or peanut butter. Only time will tell, so stay tuned and feel free to offer any super-cheap suggestions. Otherwise, the next four years may yield only posts detailing different flavors of ramen and the many frozen vegetables that can be added to them to spruce them up!

Speaking of super inexpensive, delicious, easy food, another great breakfast we have pretty frequently is oeufs en cocotte.

Scale Maille Cloak

The hubacious doesn't just make things for me, of course -- he also makes plenty of pretty, shiny, awesome things for himself. One of the very heavy, very awesome things he made for himself is a scale maille cloak. It's only aluminum and still way too heavy for me to ever wear or carry around. Shiny!

Octopi are Awesome

Hubs has a habit of making me pretty shiny things to ensure that I attend Renn Faires with him. Earlier this year, while I was making the octopus hat, he had a brilliant idea -- to make me a matching octopus hard corset as a birthday present. Brilliant!

Chicken Goat Cheese Salads

The statistical consulting group to which I belonged at my old University would have a "farewell" lunch at the end of every semester. Once during this lunch, when I was trying to be healthy, I ordered a salad with a smattering of fruit and what I thought would be a smattering of chicken. It wasn't. It was an entire grilled chicken breast. So much for healthy! But, while that lunch might not have been as low-cal as I was looking for at the time, it was an inspiration for a simple salad that I could make at home.

Avocado Ice Cream

There were a few moments during Hubble-Telescope's and my relationship when I briefly doubted the foundation of our love. One of those moments was when he revealed that he didn't like avocados -- outrageous! Fortunately, I have obviously since recovered, and his declaration has never really influenced my avocado consumption. Phew, crisis avoided.

This past winter, the Hubs bought me an ice cream maker. Months later, I finally broke it in by making two ice creams back to back. The first, which is the focus of the post today, was Avocado Ice Cream.

Cream Cheese-Chile Powder Caramel Popcorn

The guiltiest of my guilty pleasures has to be caramel popcorn. Whenever I make a batch, the hubacious (!) and I devour it instantly. I have put many things in caramel popcorn over the years, including:

1. Molasses
2. Peanut butter
3. Honey

All were successfully, particularly the peanut butter caramel popcorn, which I talked about previously on Everyday Creations. Almost immediately after making (and instantly consuming) the honey popcorn, it occurred to me that I needed to really break out of the box and try something with more zest. Naturally, I settled on a sweet-and-spicy combination: Honey and Chile Caramel Popcorn with Cream Cheese Glaze.

Duck and Cherries for the Win

I'm back and more married than ever! The wedding was lovely and the honeymoon was fantastic, as most such events tend to go. Very exciting all around, but I'm glad to be back and eating healthy again.

Food facts of life: Everything is super delicious in tortillas. Also, cherries make everything delicious. Finally, duck? Also delicious. Noticing a theme? Combine the three and you have a three-ingredient nom-fest that is classy, simple, and not too terribly unhealthy.

Hub-to-be's Mask Outfit

Hello world! In two days, the boy and I are getting married, which is pretty much extra-exciting. So, after this post, I'll be on vacation from everything -- including the blog -- until May 21st. Given our upcoming nuptials, I thought it appropriate to share one of his creations in this last pre-vacation post -- his outfit of masks.

Roasted Salmon with Leeks

This recipe for roasted salmon with caramelized leeks was my first experience working with leeks. By the way? Leeks, while quite dirty (split those suckers and wash them thoroughly), are absolutely delicious. They are like onions-light, and are absolutely addictive caramelized. Now that I have experienced the deliciousness that is leeks, I sometimes get leek cravings and wish I could have a whole bowl of caramelized leeks. That's how good they are. Seriously.

Bone Octopus Hat

A few months ago, I experienced a sudden and inexplicable urge to make a leather hat with an octopus on it. This nebulous idea rapidly evolved into a goat leather steampunk-inspired top hat (using this tutorial) with a bone octopus as decoration.

Orange Soda Cupcakes

And we're onto the final cupcake recipe in the wedding cupcake competition -- Orange Soda Cupcakes.

Woodsy Outfit -- Chain mail and leather

Let's mix it up for a change, shall we? Today, I'm sharing some leather and chain maille that the boy made for me. I really love shiny things, so I occasionally request that my terribly talented husband-to-be make me something pretty to wear. In the past year, I started craving a "woodsy" outfit with a hard leather corset. And my goodness, did he ever deliver.

Goat Liver Curry

We recently signed up for bi-weekly delivery from a nearby dairy. They sell happy chicken eggs, happy cow milk, happy cow cheese, and lots of happy animal meats. While browsing through their happy animal meats, I found something that I knew I had to try: Goat organs. I've never eaten organs before -- except in pate -- and I've been on a mission to be brave and eat foods that scare me. I even started eating shrimp, scallops, and mussels in the past year. Ridiculous, I know, but it's a big step for me. I figured, since I love goat cheese, surely I will also love goat organs, right? Flawless logic. So, our goat organ exploration began today with goat liver curry.

Egg Cups

If you are a big fan of egg-in-a-basket, want a similar flavor in something vaguely muffin-shaped--and have an extra 30-40 minutes for breakfast--I recommend these delicious egg cups.

Cupcake and Wine Party, Round 2

Obviously (or not so obviously, depending on your love of cupcakes and wine), we needed to have some food at the party besides cupcakes. Since we were serving wine and mini-cupcakes, we decided that we would have two themes when picking out the food: 1) it would all feature cheese, and 2) where possible, it would be as tiny as the cupcakes.

Cupcake and Wine Party, Round 1

A little while ago, we hosted a wine-and-cupcake tasting party to evaluate potential wines and cupcakes for our wedding. The wines were pretty horrific (3 buck chuck, good heavens), but the cupcakes were pretty awesome.

Eggs in a Basket

Three and a half years ago, the boy and I went to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, and shared a beach house with some dear friends of ours for a week. We went boat fishing, did some karaoke, walked along the beach, read good books, and just spent time together. To save some money, we split up making meals. One morning, our friends introduced us to the easiest and tastiest breakfast, which  changed the course of our lives in a delicious and eggy fashion: Eggs in a basket.

Red Wine and Chocolate Raspberry . . . Cupcakes

I have -- or may not -- have mentioned that we tried out 10 cupcake recipes for our wedding. If I haven't mentioned that yet, let me correct that now: We totally tried out 10 cupcake recipes for our wedding. And I learned that making cupcakes is: a) always delicious, both before and after the baking, and b) a whole lot of fun. Of course, I forgot to take pictures of roughly half of the cupcakes I tried out. Whoops! I did, however, find some pictures of two delicious cupcakes: Sangria Cupcakes and Chocolate Balsamic Raspberry Cupcakes.

Butternut bisque

I really am not a huge fan of soup. Not that I hate soup, but most soup recipes are just far too insubstantial for my tastes. I am much more of a fan of hearty soups and stews like black bean, split pea, and (deliciously bad for me) cream-based chowders. Once in a very rare while I see a soup recipe -- such as a recipe for butternut bisque with cider syrup -- that looks simple, delicious, and totally worth trying.

Way Late Christmas Cookies

I love baking. I learned to bake long before I learned to cook "proper" food. Of course, when I was really tiny, "baking" meant helping mom or dad gather the ingredients, and then diligently licking the bowl clean once the real baker was through with their work. Over time, I learned the non-dough-licking joys of baking. The actual combining of ingredients (so that's where the dough comes from!), shaping or rolling cookies (not all of them making it into the oven . . . ), fighting with yeast (possibly the most spiteful helpful organism with which a baker interacts). I knew I "graduated" with my beginner-baker degree the day I was first able to successfully make our family's yeast-based dill bread.

Despite my love of baking, I rarely actually make baked goods anymore. For one, it's much harder for me to clean out a bowl without losing all of my appetite for dinner. It's also much harder for me to eat 5 -- let alone 1! -- post-oven cookies without gaining roughly 20 pounds. Yes, my body defies the laws of physics and biology. So, baking now just means I end up with more cookies than I know what to do with. Unless, of course, it is Christmas. One of the reasons why Christmas has remained my #1 holiday is that I get to bake for days on end, and then give all of the beautiful cookies away before they do too much damage to my waistline!

So what do bake-a-holics do when they break their baking fast? Last Christmas, I made candy cane cookies, cinnamon sugar crispies, molasses spice cookies, candy cane biscotti, chocolate-dipped toffee, and inside-out peppermint bark.

Super Easy Pumpkin Grilled Cheese

It's been awhile since I featured a Hungry Girl recipe on this blog, so I thought I'd share an oldie-but-goodie: pumpkin grilled cheese.

Chicken with Apples and Depressed Cream Sauce

I am always learning new things about ingredients in my quest to lighten foods. Today, I'm sharing with you one such experiment gone somewhat awry. While the chicken with apples and cream sauce tasted okay, my cream sauce change-out resulted in a less-than-dreamy sauce appearance and texture.

Super Easy Baked Apples

Here's another delicious fruit-based dessert to try: Baked Apples with Chai-Spiced Maple Syrup.

Apple Grilled Cheese

Who doesn't love grilled cheese? Apparently, the gentleman who blogs on Closet Cooking is particularly in love with it -- and I can't say that I blame him! Unfortunately, I am just not able to enjoy the grilled cheese concoctions he makes directly as they are. So, I modified his caramelized apple grilled cheese to better suit my oh-so-slow metabolism.

Another Late-Taste of Fall: Roasted Acorn Squash

I just can't dig my way out of this old-recipes hole! Today's update is a delicious, savory-sweet treat that the boy and I had for the first time this past fall: maple-ish roasted acorn squash, recipe courtesy of Closet Cooking.

Butternut Squash Gratin with Blue Cheese and Sage

Ah, yet another fall recipe. This butternut squash gratin with blue cheese and sage is delicious and relatively easy -- once you get past the part where you have to cube that squash.

Baked Pear with "Streusel"

Another brief blast from the past -- baked pears with streusel filling.

The Wedding Cupcake Blitz Begins

Being somewhat compulsive can result in a lot of stress when I run out of things to compulse about. Since we've made such great progess on all of our wedding items thus far, I've decided to add another "to do" to my list in order to feed both my compulsions and belly: Cupcakes. As of now, we've tried out 8 recipes and we have two left to try. Mmmm, delicious experimentation. Today, I'm going to share with you the first recipe--and I think, still the best--that I made: Champagne Cupcakes, courtesy of the fantastic blog, Gimme Some Oven.

Korean style pork tenderloin

Over the next few weeks, I'm hoping to work through all of the 2011 recipes I have left to discuss . . . beginning with the Korean style pork tenderloin.