There are some things that are just WAY too good not to share. Now that I’m free to share some non-Gourmet recipes, I knew that this one had to be my first.

A couple weeks ago I came home from work on a half day, positively ravenous, and in the deepest depths of my love affair with Fall that I seem to go through every year – you know the love affair with Fall when you live in New England, when you day dream of apple-picking, crunching blissfully-colored leaves beneath your feet, dressing in the cuddliest of fabrics and warmest of colors.

PT and I went apple picking last weekend and for the price of a dinner for two, were allowed to roam through a local orchard in Ipswich, chomping on apples, and occasionally dropping the most perfect red, round orbs into a peck-sized bag.

It was a gorgeous day, bright and crisp, and the orchard was helpfully marked with signs indicating where the various tree varieties – fuji, macoun, macintosh, golden delicious – were located. After a visit with the farm’s miniature horse, Possum, who was delightfully sweet and gentle, and a satisfying afternoon snack of fried whole belly clams and clam chowder, PT and I were headed home with more apples than I knew what to do.

I know I’ve been bad about posting lately, but, it’s been with good reason. It’s not that I haven’t been cooking – I have – I’ve just been cooking some of my favorite, comforting, familiar dishes. I love those dishes that I’ve cooked a couple dozen times, don’t need to look at a recipe, don’t need to make a grocery list before heading to the store, and can cook lazily and absent-mindedly, while letting my mind ponder other things.

Unfortunately, repetition and familiarity don’t produce any new Besotted posts…. So, I thumbed through my cookbooks and magazines until I found the dish that would snap me out of my culinary lethargy and back into the exciting world of experimentation, and this recipe was it.

I had intended to share a recipe for Gourmet’s Black Pepper Buttermilk Biscuits to accompany the Souther Fried Chicken and Mustard Vinaigrette Green Beans from last week, but, quite frankly, I wasn’t crazy about them.

They had a few things going for them, in that they were easy and took less than 20 minutes of prep time, but the result wasn’t exactly what I was looking for – they were nice and airy, but didn’t have enough flavor. I’ll tweak the recipe, post at a later date, and let you decide for yourselves.

In the meantime, I have been meaning to post about a recent weekend trip out to the Wisconsin Lakes.

So, unfortunately, I don´t have visual representation of our meals yesterday, which were superb, particularly a little ´snack´ we ate before visiting the Rembrandt exhibit at the Albertina.

PT wasn´t all that hungry, but, in an unsurprising development, I was… we stopped at a beautiful cafe outside of the museum and decided to share a plate of items that were just barelz indiscernible. Within minutes came a plate of spectacular salmon, whipped cream cheese and creme fraiche laden with fresh horseradish (nothing like its supermarket cousin), pate with fresh raspberry and mango jam, prosciutto, and buttered toast. It was unbelievably delightful!

The Northeast suffered one of its erratic weather spells last week, casting the lot of us into dreary, dull raininess for nearly five solid days. Five days of nothing but Wellies, wet hair, and wistful remembrances of sunny Spain. Clearly, a little pick-me-up was in order….

Nutella smeared between two discs of sunny shortbread seemed like just the cure for five days of oppressive rain…. and, wouldn’t you know it, these shortbread sandwiches snapped me right out of my rainy-day-blues mood.

In case you hadn’t noticed, I am a woman who loves to experiment. The words “oh, just leave it be” rarely cross my lips, and the baking extravaganza that took place in preparation for PT’s birthday party afforded me ample opportunity to flex my experimental muscles.

The Burnt Butter & Sugar Cupcake with Cream Cheese Frosting and Ginger Chips was probably my most avant-garde cupcake. A very basic, but delicious cupcake recipe becomes the center of attention with bright green frosting embedded with sugary ginger chips.

It was PT’s birthday a few weeks ago, and I admittedly went a bit nuts in the cupcake preparations. I had fully intended to back a sheet cake sized to feed the 25 party attendees, but after reading Smitten Kitchen’s quite frankly frightening list of do’s and don’ts regarding sheet cake preparation and transportation, I decided that cupcakes would be much more practical…. Three days later, I could be found in my apartment-turned-bakery grooving to Lady Gaga with 3 types of frosting in my hair, surrounded by cooling racks, and stepping across boxes of cupcakes.

First off, I’m so excited to finally have the new Besotted website up. In case you hadn’t noticed (and I’m guessing you had), Besotted is now located at its own dedicated URL and has a new, much improved, look and feel! This took quite a bit of work, involved more than a few expletive-ridden rants, and increased my level of CSS stylesheet proficiency from ‘abysmal’ to just ‘really, really bad.’

In any case, I’m thrilled that it’s finally up and running smoothly (as an aside, please do let me know at jessica@besottedgourmet.com if you find any bugs, broken links, etc.) But today’s post isn’t about the new design, it’s about one of my favorite concepts… one that loses quite a bit of its appeal as we careen helplessly towards bathing suit season. Nevertheless, I thought it was time to dedicate a bit of energy and space to the ‘Breakfast for Dinner’ concept.

I am not one of those people that is capable of restraining themselves in all areas of their life at once. I never could, and wouldn’t expect myself to, pinch my pennies, watch what I eat, hit the gym every day, log in extra hours at the office, and be kind to strangers, all at the same time. It simply can not happen.

With the recession in full-swing, and having imposed a temporary ban on shopping at Barney’s, I feel fully justified… nee, compelled to assuage my spirit with a little culinary over-indulgence.

Potato chips are one of my greatest weaknesses. I may wax poetic about farm-fresh eggs, local butchers, and in-season produce, but put a bag of Doritos or Lays in front of me, and all of that Organivore/Localvore dogma goes right out the window, and I get downright gluttonous.