Chocolate marble pound cake was our mom’s go-to dessert when we kids. Although she’s an excellent cook, she never really liked baking and would always use a box mix for pound cake. Her signature was to create a chocolate marble pound cake by mixing in a bit of cocoa to half of the batter. When […]
Food
Roma Eats: La Carbonara

When we got to Rome, Ryan looked up some nearby restaurants where we could have lunch. He found La Carbonara, open since 1906, which exceeded all of our expectations. La Carbonara is a small, family-run restaurant just an easy walk from the Roma Termini.
Bologna in Bologna, the Learned, the Fat, the Red

Bologna was our next stop after Parma and Modena. Bologna is often called La Grassa (the Fat One) because of the city’s tremendous cuisine, and we made sure to eat our fill here. We stayed at a bed and breakfast in what seemed to be a couple’s apartment off Via Guglielmo Marconi. Our room was […]
One Bowl Brownies

Here’s an easy recipe for simple one bowl brownies. Even though there is no melted chocolate in this recipe, the cocoa and the beating of the mixture allows for the one bowl brownies to be squidgy and fudgy. Although these decadent brownies are dense and fudgy as well, they use rather a lot of melted chocolate. […]
Parma Ham and Parmigiano Reggiano in Parma

Ryan, Sami, and I cooked our breakfast in our Modena hostel before leaving for Parma. We prepared our giant cheese-filled tortelloni from the market with pesto; cheesy-noodles with pesto; grape tomatoes; sausage; bread; peaches; and tea – and everything was exquisitely delicious. The three of us returned the car and then took the train to […]