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Hippity Hop Hop, Easter’s On Its Way: Candied Citrus Peel

candied orange peel in sugar| dailywaffle

When it comes to food and Easter, the thing I look forward to most isn’t a Cadbury egg (never liked ‘em) or the Reese’s eggs w/ twice the peanut butter you get in a regular peanut butter cup (stock up now!). The thing I wait all year (er, 3 or 4 months) for is a batch of Hot Cross Buns. And what is it that makes a Hot Cross Bun so deliciously dunkable in your morning cup of joe? The candied and dried fruit.  But have you noticed candied orange and lemon peel can cost an arm and a leg?  Last year I bought tiny tubs of both for $8.50 a piece! Granted, you don’t use a huge amount in the buns, but there’s no reason to drop that kind of dough. Making candied citrus peel is dead simple.
Dahlia Bakery English Muffins
  When I heard Tom Douglas was going to be at Costco signing copies of the Dahlia Bakery Cookbooka couple of months ago, I expected organized chaos a la Giada de Laurentiis’ signing. I rolled in about 30 minutes before it was slated to start and Tom was already there. No need to pre-purchase a book, get in line outside and have a handler scribble your name on a post-it for the inscription.  I walked right up, got a book (one for me, and one for my mom), had a chance to have a little chat with Tom and then was on my merry way for the rest of my Costco shop.
Be My (Pizza Spinaci) Valentine
  Every Rom-Com, every book, every platitude says when you meet “The One,” you’ll just know.  We didn’t lock eyes in a crowded airport terminal or pass each other on a train platform or have an awkward conversation about the weather in biology lab.  We met on the Internet.  And it’s like….magic. I have fallen completely, utterly and irrevocably in love. We are M-F-E-O (made for each other). My husband? What?  No, I met him in a bar.  I’m talking about the Baking Steel.
Happy World Nutella Day!
When you talk about shopping at Costco, everyone laughs and says, “Do you really need 6 packages of toilet paper? Or 3 cartons of milk?”  Just like with 20 pounds of rice, no one says, “Two jars of Nutella? Do you really need two jars?” Ever. Because obviously. I joke that the tagline for DailyWaffle is “Home of the Nutella Fudgesicle.”  It’s my most popular post,  a Zoku pop recipe that went viral (thanks peeps on Pinterest!). Just two ingredients, hazelnut milk and Nutella, you can either freeze it into a popsicle or heat it up for a cup of hot chocolate. And if you choose to spike it, well, that's between you and your Nutella. Any which way, if there’s one made up food day I have to honor, it’s World Nutella Day.
Cubano-Inspired Pulled Pork Sliders
cubano-inspired pulled pork There’s nothing quite like a good Cubano sandwich. Layer on layer of pork – roasted loin, ham and salami with Swiss cheese, pickles and a schmear of mustard, pressed like a panini until the cheese is melty. On the West Coast, unless you’re at a Cuban restaurant, it’s not a sandwich you see all that often. There are exceptions – the last one I had was actually a couple of years ago at Matt’s in the Market here in Seattle. We also have a Caribbean place called Paseo that’s supposed to have a great Cubano-like sandwich.  But really, there's no reason you can't make a pretty good Cubano, or  perhaps more accurately here, a medianoche sandwich at home. (The main difference is the bread). The mojo(ish)-marinated pork started as tacos for Saturday night’s dinner, but as I thought about the leftovers, Cubano-inspired pulled pork sliders seemed like the perfect lunch for us and a great idea for the Super Bowl next weekend.
Quick & Easy Spinach and White Bean Burgers
  Anything shaped in a patty has a homey feel to it, doesn’t it? A hamburger, Salisbury steak, mashed potato cakes, they’re either home food, or diner fare. And for the most part, they’re fast.  Mix this and that together, form a disk and fry it up in a hot pan. But the thing is, you don’t have to limit your notion of a patty to meat. You can sit down to a delicious dinner in 20-25 minutes if you’ve got a can of beans (and a reasonably stocked pantry). This recipe germinated in my mind as a chicken meatball, but my pantry dictated. “Beans," it said. “It will be Great Northern beans.” It'll do that on a Wednesday when you don't have time to go the market. And so, Spinach and White Bean Burgers.