Caramelized Onion Sauce

While I was cooking dinner tonight, I found myself putting together a variation on a classic expat supper. This basic recipe, tossed with seasonal veggies, made an easy supper when we were hungry for home food.

Onion
Sugar
Red wine of dubious quality
Pasta
Garlic (optional)
Tomatoes (optional)
Oil or butter


Slice the onion into thin rings, and lightly saute in butter. If you're going to add garlic, add it now. When the onions are translucent, add sugar to coat. When the sugar is absorbed, add the red wine. If you're adding tomatoes, add chopped tomatoes now. Simmer as the sauce thickens, pour over cooked pasta.

If you're at home, this is greatly improved with parmasean and basil, and maybe cooking up some meatballs, too. If you're living in Asia, without dairy products or Italian spices, something about the garlic, wine and pasta in this is deceptively Western and will curb your cravings for home food.

Cupcake Bar

We stopped in at Coffee and Crepes with some friends last night, and I was pleasantly surprised to discover cupcakes from The Cupcake Bar on offer.

I've been interested in trying out the Cupcake Bar since I first heard of this local bakery, but it seemed like something that would have to wait for a special occasion. A dozen cupcakes between just The Boy and me seems like an awful lot, and they're pretty expensive so I'd feel obliged to eat them all immediately just to make sure they wouldn't get the slightest bit stale... And I haven't actually tried it, but I imagine that eating ten cupcakes in a row might not be excellent for my health.

It was hard to choose between the vanilla-lemon cupcake and the mint-chocolate one, but I finally did.

Cupcakes are kind of wasted on me, because they're automatically delicious, but this was a particularly good one. Soft cake and sweet-but-not-sugary icing. Mmm.

Goodberry's Frozen Custard

Goodberry's Frozen Custard
1146 Kildaire Farm Rd
Cary, NC 27511
(919) 467-2386

Let me throw it out there: I love Southern food. I love biscuits, grits, hush puppies, and sweet tea. I love Chik-Fil-A and the Boy loves Waffle House. Goodberry's is another Southern taste that our friends and family told us to try.

I was first disappointed by the scarcity of flavors. Chocolate, vanilla, a rotating special flavor, and a sugar-free vanilla. All this excitement for four flavors?

The secret is in the concrete. A concrete mixes Goodberry's frozen custard with flavored syrups, fruit and/or candy pieces, to make a tasty solid sundae with the consistency of... well, you know.

With the huge array of add-ins, Goodberry's has endless flavors. They have suggested concrete combos, but you can make your own combinations with whatever strikes you. I'm partial to a chocolate custard, coffee syrup and peanut butter cup combination. In the interest of research, we visited a couple times. (The Boy and I are very dedicated.)

The Boy says one can also get milkshakes and non-concrete dishes, but I don't know why.

Servings are what we knowledgable food bloggers refer to as "freaking huge." Definitely worth a visit for a sweet treat!

FruitSlinger

I've been meaning to tell you all about Fruitslinger for a while now, but there always seems to be something else to cook, or eat, or write about. This blog involves some of my favorite things: Seasonal recipes, the perfect-imperfections of really good food photography and zany real-life interactions.

Free Pizza

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Tony's Pizza. All opinions are 100% mine. (Because this is our food blog where we always share our opinions.)

The folks at Tony's Pizza think the Boy and I need some free pizza. I don't know, maybe it's our college student vibe? Anyway, they were nice enough to send us some coupons to try their pepperoni, plain and supreme pizzas.

We were pretty excited because, if you haven't noticed, we really like trying new foods. But we don't really eat a lot of frozen foods. We love to go out, and the Cary / Raleigh area has a lot of great places to eat. I also really like to cook (I've been considering adding Boy and Girl Stay In to this blog, but as much as I love to cook and eat, I'm miserable at food photographs, so every one of my recipes would end "Trust me, it's good."). These were quick to make, and tasty, and the ones with toppings actually had the toppings, not just a lonely piece of pepper on top of the cheese. (I'm looking at you, Lean Cuisine pizzas.)
Now we'd like to share some of these coupons with you! To win free pizza, you'll need to leave a comment with your email, and your favorite place to eat out. Of course, you don't have to be local to comment and enter, but the chances of us checking out your suggested spot are much better if you're near Raleigh.

You can also have an extra entry each time you spread the word. Post on Facebook, mention us on your own blog, tweet this, send up smoke signals, whatever. Just leave a comment with the URL letting us know where you linked us for an extra entry.