A homemade hot fudge sundae. Sounds totally yum, right? Well, some times, things are not as good as they appear. Homemade hot fudge, delicious vanilla ice cream, some cookie crumbles. Except one thing … the hot fudge instantly hardened. And I am not talking in a good way. It became a supersized Tootsie Roll-like … and I hate Tootsie Rolls. Total culinary disaster.

It was also disastrous removing the leftovers from the bowl I store it in. Ouch. I am still cringing at the thought.

(Disclaimer: I didn’t make this. It’s totally not my doing.) Now, this cake? It’s a carrot cake. No, I am serious.  It’s a carrot cake with cream cheese icing. You know, the kind of icing that goes onto homemade cinnamon rolls? Yea. That. It’s a shame, because the carrot cake buried beneath the too rich, too sweet icing was actually really good. See, some times, things are better than they look.

The icing? We won’t go there.

It just goes to show that anyone can have a kitchen disaster: me, the person who made this cake, even you …

Spill: What’s your latest kitchen disaster?

The post Kitchen Disasters Revealed appeared first on Sarah's Cucina Bella.

When I hear the word, it makes me shudder a bit. Given the way the word is used, it isn’t exactly something I want to be called. It’s brandished about with contempt and even sarcasm like brat or WASP. It’s meant to mean someone who appreciates good food and drink. However, when I hear someone say it, it’s more like they are saying “picky, rude, food snob,” as if it’s a crime to actually like and enjoy good food. I mean, how dare someone taste an airy, light, puffy souffle and sigh with contentment and eschew a flat, poorly crafted, failed souffle? Seriously …

How did this word, meant to convey a positive, adoring relationship with food become such a pathetic shell of its intentions?

My husband jokes from time to time, calling me a “foodie.” The kids he calls “little foodies.” But are we really foodies?

Now, granted, I do love food and good food in particular. I choose certain ingredients over others because of quality and taste, even if those ingredients cost a little more. But I think that is because it takes good quality, good tasting ingredients to make good tasting food. But I don’t want to be called a foodie. I don’t want to be labeled with a term that has taken on such an abhorrent reputation.

So don’t call me a foodie. I am a lover of food, someone who enjoys a delicious meal with satisfying company. But I am not a foodie.

The post Don’t Call Me a Foodie appeared first on Sarah's Cucina Bella.

Retailers in the United States have gone too far.

We’ve barely left summer behind. The trees are only just beginning to change to brilliant shades of reds, yellows and orange. Halloween is still a month away. We’re in apple-picking season. It’s time for hayrides and pumpkin patches. I still need to find the perfect costumes for Will and Paige. Haunted houses and spooky hayrides are calling …

Yet, when you go to these mass retailers, you are smacked in the face with a holiday that is yet three months away. I don’t like getting smacked. I am not ready for the cheer of Christmas to invade my psyche.

This rushing of holidays — Halloween being packed away before we even need to tuck into soft sweaters — is a prime example of retailers trying to over-capitalize on holidays. Do you remember the days when retailers didn’t revolve their displays around holiday-pegged merchandise? When you could go to Caldor’s in September and just get some ball-fringe curtains without having to duck through racks of shiny ornaments and happy holidays greeting cards? I miss those days.

It’s not yet time for the glittering lawn snowmen and twinkling lights displays to tempt me. In fact, they serve only as a turnoff. I am very tempted to just not shop at Target, Linens-n-Things, and other holiday rushing retailers until the holiday is actually here. In my book, that is the day after Thanksgiving.

But then, what will be on display come November? Will Christmas gear be banished to a corner to make room for heart-shaped displays since Valentine’s Day will only be a few short months away?

I understand that retailers are concerned about making their budgets for the year. I even understand that someone somewhere honestly believes that if you deck the shelves with holly and tinsel, people will buy whether it’s June or December. Perhaps some people even will.

Not me though. And frankly, for me, it’s just a matter of choice not to waste my gas driving to the mass marketers when I can shop local stores. Sure, it might cost a little more, but so does driving to the big mass retailers, so it kind of all evens out.

Frankly, I think that mass retailers are stealing the joy from the holidays by shoving them down our throats way before their arrival. It’s not fair — not to shoppers, not to people working hard to stay afloat, not to parents, not to kids, not to anyone.

What do you think? Are you disgusted by the rushing of holidays?

The post Retailers: Leave Our Holidays Alone! appeared first on Sarah's Cucina Bella.

Gas has risen from the mid-$2 range one year ago to the mid-$4 range now. Ten years ago, gas hovered at the $1 mark. My, how things change. When I bought my car, $10 got me almost a full tank. Now, it gets me barely two gallons.

Blame it on whomever you want: oil refineries, gas companies, foreign companies, lawmakers . . . who’s to blame is of little matter.

What matters is that we’ve been bamboozled into feeling comfortable living a little farther from the office for better schools and accepting that strawberries can be purchased in December. We’ve been tricked into embracing larger vehicles to accommodate our children and pets and whatever else we need for a day trip or weekend away. Meanwhile, we’ve been complacent about developing alternative technologies that could power our lifestyles without raping Mother Earth.

So now, we’re stuck. Unlike 75 or 100 years ago, when people still knew how to grow their own food and could handle long walks to town, we’ve been birthed and raised into a society powered by fossil fuels. How can we change, and change fast, to protect ourselves, our families, our lives?

You are affected whether you drive or not. Something has to power the machine that makes those solar panels. Something has to fuel that truck that carts the produce to market. Something has to heat that plant that makes and packages that pasta. And the more that something costs, the more people will hurt.

Are you hurting yet?

We should be outraged that legislation to help deliver some relief from the high-costs has failed in Connecticut. We should be outraged that there are large parts of the United States that lack adequate public transportation. We should be outraged that the price of gas here is impacted heavily by futures trading — a fantasy game with our wallets that makes players rich and pawns like the rest of us poor. We should be outraged that the best lawmakers can come up with is saying there is no quick fix.

While we spend billions on an unpopular war — another country’s civil war, at that — and let thousands of our sons and daughters die, we are hurting on the homefront. How much longer can our country afford to hurt like this?

Perhaps the biggest question of all is: What are we going to do about it?

The post Outraged Yet? I am. appeared first on Sarah's Cucina Bella.

Okay, I am being a bit melodramatic. But this is serious.

For as long as my husband and I dated and for as long as we have been married, there has been one constant in our lives: our gigantic roll of professional cling wrap. It has wrapped itself around all-protein dinners during our Atkins phase and covered leftovers from dinner parties and holidays. It has traveled with us as we took cakes, cookies and other goodies to others. And, it even moved with my husband from his old condo to our marital house. It’s been sturdy and durable and super sticky. It’s like a part of the family . . . if that part of the family was an inanimate object that’s sole purpose was to keep things covered.

Well, last night, that trusty roll of wrap unrolled for the last time. After more than six years, we have run out of wrap. It’s like a chapter of our lives has just been closed.

Okay, stop laughing.

Seriously though, I don’t know a thing about the plastic wraps on the market. My Costco membership has lapsed, so I can’t run right out and buy another roll of this. So what now? What kind of plastic wrap is good? Help! I haven’t a clue what to buy.

Silly? Yes. Serious? Yes. HELP!

The post The End of an Era appeared first on Sarah's Cucina Bella.

Things that really, really irk me:

• - Fat, middle-aged men who park in the Stork Parking at the mall. Okay, that beer belly may look a little pregnant, but it ain’t no baby! So toddle your big ‘ol car to the back of the parking lot and leave the Stork Parking to those of us with kids (or who are pregnant).
• - Arrogant men in big SUVs who honk and flail their hands as you (and all of the other drivers in line) wait patiently for a SAFE break in traffic to merge onto the Saw Mill Parkway. I’m not sorry either. My unborn child’s safety and mine too are far more important that the minute you lose waiting. If you don’t like it, endanger yourself, not us.
• - Being told that the baby must be coming soon. Well duh. Yes, I am pregnant. Yes, I have a pregnant belly. But dammit, this baby better cook for as long as she’s supposed to! This is the only in utero time she gets and furthermore, I don’t need anyone telling me how big my belly is.
• - People who don’t say ‘excuse me’ or ‘thank you’ when they A) bump into you, B) push past you, C) walk through a door your are opening, or any other number of instances. Get some manners people!
• - If I could predict the exact day I am going to give birth, I would be a rich woman. I can’t. Sorry, not that clairvoyant!
• - Back to drivers for a second: anyone who puts on their high beams while behind another car. WOW that’s rude. If you want to go faster, pull into the fast lane. I think 5-10 miles over the speed limit is just fine.

So, what are your pet peeves?

The post Pet Peeves: People can be so irritating! appeared first on Sarah's Cucina Bella.

In any case, the whole tainted spinach scandal topped the news almost exactly one year ago. That being so, you can imagine my surprise when I read that there are concerns over salmonella tainted spinach again. Talk about deju vu. Apparently a different California farm had some spinach test positive for the bacteria . . . fortunately, thanks to increased safety measures, it was caught almost immediately and that day’s batch has been pulled from shelves and stockrooms.

But really. Really. It’s time for the farming industry to look beyond safety control and instead work on rectifying the situations lead to tainting. And maybe, just maybe, it’s time to start focusing more on small time farming and less on corporation farming. I buy almost all of my veggies at local farms . . . in fact, most of our produce comes from my cousin’s farm. I know our growers. And I trust them.

When you are getting your produce from unnamed farms in far off states, how can you garner that same level of comfort and trust? Simply put: you can’t.

The post Deja Vu? Potentially Tainted Spinach Recalled appeared first on Sarah's Cucina Bella.

So, I suppose you are wanting to know about The Terrible Chocolate Yogurt Incident now, eh? Well, I will tell you . . . but I never want to hear about it again. The very thought sends shivers through my every nerve.

There I was, a medium height, relatively thin 16-year-old in my journalism class junior year at Pawling Jr./Sr. High School. I didn’t have a lunch period, so I munched in that class everyday while working on stories and copy edits. I was, after all, the big self-important copy editor (which is somewhat of a laugh if you know my track record with spelling and punctuation . . . but I could put a hell of a sentence together). Anyway, I was wearing my puffy, ruffled shirt (actually it was a bodysuit shirt — it was the 90s after all). And when I opened my nonfat chocolate yogurt for lunch SPLAT! It came flying out at me. In disbelief, I looked down at my dark chocolate stained ruffles. And, no, a little water DIDN’T help get it out. I was, in a word, mortified. It was even more mortifying that I had to wear that stupid shirt for the remainder of the school day (3-4 class periods) and to work that night, since I couldn’t just run home and change – no car, no license.

Needless to say, that was the last time I took chocolate yogurt for lunch. Or any yogurt for that matter.

And that brings me back to today when I peeled back the foil on a little unsweetened applesauce cup. What happened? I wore it. Right down the front of my brown dress . . . wonderful!

Really, I think fate just needed a laugh today.

The post Fate Needed a Laugh appeared first on Sarah's Cucina Bella.

So after fighting with the store (who weren’t too helpful), the extended warranty contract company, etc, etc, it was fixed about a week later. Or so we thought (insert dark and dreary music here). A little more than a week after that, it broke again. The repair company came back and got it running. A little more than a week after that, kaput . . . again. Repair company comes back and finally admits that they can’t isolate the problem (which is a leak somewhere in the system) and it cannot be fixed. Contract co. says that if that’s the case then they will cut us a check for the fridge so we can get a new one.

That was two weeks ago. The contact co. has since said that they will do no such thing since no one’s found the actual problem yet. Blah, blah, blah. I’ve gone nearly a month with a touch and go situation with this fridge, and you want to tell me NO?!? Well, I reached my breaking point and decided that they can answer to the Better Business Bureau and the Department of Consumer Protection. This is just asinine.

So we bought a new refrigerator. Hopefully this one will last more than three years. Guess where we didn’t buy this one? There is no way that I am EVER shopping in that store again, after the co-owner was so rude when I asked for the loaner we’d been promised (if it ever broke) when we purchased it. Yes, yes, love the truth in sales.

In the meantime, I have a beautiful new fridge and a broken one in the basement that we hope will either be fixed (so we can eventually sell it with the house and take the new one) or we’ll be given a refund for.

Say hello to my new friend! It’s spacious, and lovely and shocker of shockers: stays cold. Aaahhhh, the simple things in life. I love the style and design (sorry about the lackluster picture, haven’t been home during the day to take a good one).

The best features? Room for full platters of food, a water dispenser INSIDE the fridge, and room for many, many gallons in the doors (leaving the shelves for more important items). I am so in love.

Now, back to cooking.

The post FINALLY! A Real, Live, Working Fridge! appeared first on Sarah's Cucina Bella.

In the meantime, we are using the mini-fridge and the regular fridge because I am not confident the fridge will hold out. UGH. This just stinks!

The post Oh no! Not again! appeared first on Sarah's Cucina Bella.