V.H.

-Oatmeal this morning with maple syrup and blueberries picked and frozen this summer -Banana chocolate chip muffins that we are enjoying now slathered with Kerrygold salted butter -Salt dough ornaments for the kids to paint this afternoon -eyeballing some brie I have and wondering if there is puff pastry in the freezer downstairs -not sure what dinner will be, pizza perhaps. Should probably throw my dough together if that's the plan. Intermittent breaks to try to figure out this dead electrical circuit in our house. Fortunately it doesn't affect the kitchen!

Overall I think they turned out okay. I think I underbaked them slightly since I had a fear of overbaking. I used a recipe from Gourmet and it's a touch too salty when eaten alone. Sandwiched with a bit of lemon curd it was quite tasty. I'll definitely try this again since it was pretty straightforward and not too time consuming.

My first ever batch of macarons is currently baking in the oven. Keeping my fingers crossed that they won't be a complete disaster. I had some freeze dried strawberries from Trader Joes so I threw them in with the almonds when grinding. So far they look pretty good.

Trader Joes carries a box of 12 (half chocolate half vanilla) for $4.99. They're a little on the small side and are kind of okay but not something I would purchase again. They're in the freezer section and defrost in about half an hour. When you bite into these macarons, they frequently crumble in your hands. I've bought macarons a few times from Michel Patisserie and have not had the same problem. The cookie portion is a little too dry and doesn't taste like it has enough almond flour in it. It seems more like meringue with a little almond flour folded in. If you've never had a macaron before and want to know what the fuss is about, I'd pass on these.

What is in it that would require FDA examination?

Looks fantastic! Harris Teeter carries Turduckens but I wonder if they're raw like yours was.

Ages ago Mktye suggested parchment paper to me and it works like a dream. I prep the pizza directly on the parchment, slide the parchment onto a cookie sheet for transfer to the stone, and bake the pizza on the parchment. This way you can prep a bunch of pizzas at the same time too and are only limited by counter space.

Shoppers Food Warehouse has had them in the past.

I'm thinking of smoking some bluefish fillets this weekend and was wondering if anyone had any tips or favorite recipes to point me to.

Artisan Confections has a big 50% off clearance sale going on right now through Friday, their last day in this location. 50% off boxed chocolates and loose pieces. I went yesterday and they were seeing brisk business with the sale. For those who are a huge fan of the alcoholic flavors (like me!), scotch bon bons are available as part of the 50% off clearance.

My friend is moving soon from Arlington out to Herndon. One of the things she'll miss most are the great independently run restaurants that are abundant in Arlington. I'd love to be able to give her a gift certificate to a great place near her new digs. My preference is casual so that if she loves it and wants to go back all the time, it won't break the bank. She and her husband have a two year old who is very well behaved so family friendly is nice but not necessary.

I generally find that the champagne mangos found at Asian grocery stores are much sweeter and less fibrous than the larger ones you see at American grocery stores. The champagne mangoes are a deep golden yellow when ripe and very fragrant.

I don't believe that the marinades traditionally used in Korean cooking for bulgogi and kalbi contain seafood based sauces. Many Vietnamese dishes do contain fish sauce and recipes are likely to vary from restaurant to restaurant so my recommendation would be to go to a place like Present, explain your allergy to all things seafood, and ask them for a recommendation. They may have dishes where the entire dish is made from scratch and soy sauce can be subbed in for the fish sauce. Things to avoid at Vietnamese places would be pho or grilled meats where the large batch of broth will likely have fish sauce or the meat is premarinated with fish sauce.

Tweeting about what you're making is going to be disastrous for the rest of us. After seeing a tweet about chocolate and coconut covered cashews this afternoon, I threw the kids in the car and ran out for a couple of bags.

Love bbq brisket but mine tends to be a little dry due to the rather lean brisket available at Costco. Smoked boneless short ribs today that were incredible. Treated them like brisket with a rub for 24 hours, smoked for 3 hours, wrapped in foil and back in the smoker for another 3.5 hours, let rest on the counter for 1 hour before slicing. My only regret is that I only smoked 4 lbs of short ribs. I did learn that Costco will sell you Cryovac'd packages of boneless short ribs if you ask. The pieces they have in the case are cut up into 1.5 inch thick pieces which were thin for what I wanted to do.

Ask if they have a bushel or half bushel price. I always buy my apples this way at the Arlington market and it is way more cost effective than getting just a couple pounds. Also, consider making the trek back to Frederick now and then and loading up on fruit. My in-laws live in PA and when we go visit, I'll frequently buy a bushel of peaches in the summer or apples in the fall. Peaches picked when they're still slightly firm but look ripe (color-wise) will keep in the fridge for up to two weeks. They'll ripen on the counter in a day or so and be absolutely perfect and juicy. Apples will keep for months in the fridge.

Went to this stand this afternoon and they had a pretty decent selection of things from Lewis Orchards in Poolesville, MD. The woman running the stand said that they pick up fresh produce daily for the stand from the farm. It's definitely a nice alternative for those of us who can't make it to the market on Saturday mornings or want to pick up things midweek.

I've made the Catfish simmered in Caramel Sauce, Shrimp simmered in caramel sauce (awesome with head-on wild east coast shrimp), and the southern salad rolls. I haven't made the Pork and eggs simmered in coconut juice and caramel sauce, but it appears to be very close to the recipe I currently use. I had to return my public library copy and just received my Amazon copy so I'm excited to try everything else in the book.

My mom is an awesome Vietnamese cook. I've eaten out occasionally at Vietnamese restaurants in the area and find them all to be just so so in comparison to the stuff that comes out of my mom's kitchen. I've also eaten in lots of Vietnamese homes and while those meals tend to better than restaurant cooking, they rarely are up to par with what I grew up with. Unfortunately, my mom doesn't measure things and while I have been to learn some things from her, I felt like there were so many dishes I loved that only she could make. I've since come across a really wonderful Vietnamese cookbook, Into the Vietnamese Kitchen by Andrea Nguyen. I've made a few things so far and they've all come out wonderfully. If you like Vietnamese food, you owe it to yourself to try out some of Andrea Nguyen's recipes to experience meals that taste like they were prepared by someone's mom. She also has blog where she posts recipes, definitely try her Lemongrass grilled pork.

Blueberry picking is awesome. I did it for the first time in PA last year and even though I had a baby in the Bjorn and a whiny four year old, I got 12 pounds in about 30 minutes. This year I'm expecting to go back sans kids and get at least 20 pounds in the same amount of time.

We're going to bring a watermelon and a knife in addition to some sort of dessert.

Ditto for us. We now have a 1 yr old and a 5 yr old and they are both big eaters despite their tiny size.

We looked at the Asus EEE 1000HE and saw lots of praise for it. In the end we ended up getting the Asus EEE PC 900 because it was less money and my husband only needed it run some cycling software that doesn't run on our Macs.

The veggie garden experiment is humming along nicely. I've been pretty impressed with how well things have been coming up given that we're first timers and started everything from seed. So far we've harvested sugar snap peas and some lettuces from our garden and the excitement level is way high with the five yr old. She took our laptop outside one day while Skyping with her grandmother to proudly show off how everything was growing! I recall as a kid being forced out into the garden at the crack of dawn on the weekends to weed our garden alongside my younger brother and sister. My parents had a decent sized garden, growing lots of vegetables and herbs commonly used in Vietnamese cooking. I really detested that vegetable garden when I was little, not just because of the work that took us away from our precious Saturday morning cartoons, but because it meant at least three different green vegetables with every lunch and dinner from June until October. Fortunately, by the time I got to high school I realized how awesome my parents' cooking was and that the garden couldn't be all evil if it produced such delicious meals.

We will come and bring a dessert.