I’m baack! I know, I know. It’s been months. But when I say we’ve been having life here at the house, I mean we’ve been having LIFE. Way more than I can get into here, but just know I was thinking of y’all and feeling guilty for not posting and not cooking. I *still* am not getting much cooking done, so since I don’t have any new recipes to share with you, here is one from Rouxbe.com.
Are y’all familiar with Rouxbe Online Cooking School? …

On a recent week night, after eating dinner, we decided we wanted something sweet. Something that was really dessert, but didn’t take a long time to put together. We had a movie to watch and we wanted to get to it.
 
So, I jumped onto the Food Blog Search (see box in the right hand sidebar) and typed in “quick dessert.” A whole bunch of things popped up, and a few items down, I found Millie’s Quick Dessert Cake. Not only did it, indeed, sound very quick, but it used canned pie filling – of which I have several I need to use up (how is it that I have several, I ask you? I never use them! Why did I buy them? I don’t understand). So, Quick Dessert Cake it was!

The theme for this month’s Sugar High Friday was chosen by Heather at Diary of a Fanatic Foodie – and it’s a fun one! Recreate a fabulous dessert had while traveling.

Oatmeal + strawberries = Fresh Berry Oatmeal Bars = yummy!

Some fruits are so delicious fresh and untouched that you can barely think to cook them. Others, I think, are improved with a little heat. Blackberries are like that for me. I love blackberries and so do my guys, but they have those hard little seeds in there that get stuck in your teeth and detract from the whole experience. But if you bake them, they soften and become much less of a distraction.

Have you ever collected a whole bunch of something without knowing how you did it? Recently, I realized that I had somehow stockpiled a huge amount of walnuts. Three giant 2 pound bags, to be exact. Why? How? I don’t even use walnuts that often. I can only assume that every time I went to the store, I thought I was out and bought another bag. I don’t remember doing that… but there the walnuts sit to prove it.
 
So, having this glut of walnuts, I’ve been casting around for ways to use them up. Whenever I am trying to use a lot of something up, it seems as though I can find tons of recipes, but each recipe only uses a tiny bit. True to form, that’s how it was with walnuts. 1/4 cup here, a handful there. It would take me forever to use up my 6 pounds at that rate.

I was excited to see the theme of this month’s Sugar High Friday – The Test of Time – Desserts Over a Century Old. You see, for most of my adult life, I have been very active in a Medieval re-creation group called the SCA, so this theme seemed right up my alley! And it being my first SHF since I began blogging, I’ve been looking forward to it all month.

Since I recently lost some weight, I often get asked, “How do you bake like that and still stay skinny?”

For your enjoyment, I present Strawberry Almond Tarts.