Seakettle

Bird Seed Snowman [...]

There's this hilarious Friends episode where Rachel is making Thanksgiving dessert and mistakenly combines recipes for trifle and shepherd's pie, ending up with beef sauteed with peas and carrots between layers of ladyfingers and custard. Everyone else is revolted but pretends to enjoy it to keep Rachel from realizing she had ruined the dessert. Hilarity ensues, of course, when their deception fails, but the funniest part is Joey declaring, "I like it." "Are you kidding?" asks Ross. Joey replies, "What's not to like? Custard? Good. Jam? Good. Beef? Goooood." [...]

I have to say that I love all things pumpkin, a penchant that I am unfortunately not allowed to indulge for the first nine months of every year. Now that it's fall — well, as close to fall as it gets in these parts — I can finally break out the gallon of pumpkin purée from the freezer that is the last mortal remains of last year's Halloween decorations. (There's this great Mexican grocery store just down the street that sells, among other things, amazing carne asada and super cheap, huge pumpkins, so we buy them by the armful every fall.) [...]

What's Halloween without pumpkin carving? Just an excuse to wear a costume during your Saturday morning surfing session. (No, seriously that's a real thing.) While I love the idea of pumpkin carving, when it comes down to it I always struggle coming up with a design that is sufficiently cool to merit disemboweling that poor, innocent little—or not so little—pumpkin. Last year I managed to tap my Mexican ancestry and carved a calavera (skull) for Día de los Muertos, which also gave me a good excuse for why I had carved my pumpkin several days after Halloween. (Día de los Muertos is November 2.) [...]

There comes a time in every man's life when he must replace the as-is Ikea dining chairs he bought secondhand on Craigslist with something a little more, I don't know, stylish? Sophisticated? Less self-assembled? That day has finally come courtesy of a set of six bentwood chairs Jennifer found on Craigslist. [...]

There's something about the weathered texture and classic muted red that I love in salvaged brick. Growing up, we always had plenty of it around due to the stockpile my dad accumulated from the neighborhood chimneys toppled by the Northridge earthquake. This Valentine's Day I stole a brick from the remnants of that stockpile to fashion into a gift for Jennifer. Knowing that she loves typographic details, I decided to carve our initials into one face of the brick. [...]

This year for Jennifer's cumpleaños, we consumed cupcakes and cocktails with a few of our comrades! But all alliteration aside, what better way to celebrate a birthday than with baked goodies and rum? [...]

Greg here. If you've followed my periodic contributions to Seakettle, you may have noticed that when it comes to creative projects, I'm a two-trick pony: cheesecakes and log slices. True to form, when Jennifer went out of town last month, I decided to make her a cheesecake to welcome her back. I figure that if I shower her with gifts and/or treats when she comes home, she'll be more likely to hurry home the next time. Though I'd never heard of a piña colada cheesecake before, it occurred to me that it would make for a great summer dessert. Something about the sweet, tropical wonderfulness of the cocktail seemed like it would go well with the creamy richness of a cheesecake. Plus I like experimenting and knew that Jennifer likes piña coladas. [...]

Cheese bread (or cheese biscuits) always sounds like such a good idea, but is so often disappointing. Somehow, no matter how much cheese you add, it never tastes cheesy, and you're left with mediocre bread at best. Thanks to the methodical recipe testing of the folks at America's Test Kitchen, we've finally found a great cheese bread recipe! [...]

This year I got a Dremel for Christmas from Jennifer's Aunt Gail. I was excited to try it out and thought that a wood-working craft would be a good first project, since I had some previous experience and the supplies on hand. A snowflake thank-you ornament seemed perfect, considering the season and the white Christmas we had last month. (Actually we only had a white Christmas morning, since we flew from St. Louis to LA on Christmas Day.) And though a snowflake project seems like an unusual way to welcome February, the blizzard conditions across the country make it oddly appropriate! [...]