Casa Bonita: Adventures in Decor and Unappetizing Food

There is a restaurant in Lakewood, a bit west of Denver, called Casa Bonita. It’s a restaurant with a theme-park atmosphere. We’d heard fabulous things about the decor and horrible things about the food. They all turned out to be true. To get the bad things out of the way first, it’s best to start [...]

Sushi! Featuring Seaweed, Avocado On Top, Plus Pacific Mercantile Indulgence

I recently got goaded again into making sushi for a potluck at Drew’s work. This has caused me to become more efficient with the sushi-making itself, as most of it has to get done in the morning before he goes to work. I could always make it the night before, but there’s two problems with [...]

How Not To Make A Piña Colada

Did you know that you don’t use coconut meat to make a pina colada? The recipes I’ve found online call for cream of coconut or coconut milk, with no coconut meat involved at all. However, having a coconut on hand, I decided to blatantly ignore this fact and make up my own recipe. To crack [...]

Hooray For Chocolate Cookies!

This last week has been exceedingly busy, meaning I haven’t had time to sit down and write a proper post. Alas, only time for improper posts. In any case, here are some cookies to tide you over in the meantime: Chocolate cake mix cookies, with chocolate chips and pecans added in for good measure. The [...]

Pillsbury Cheesecake Swirl Brownie Mix

I love box mix brownies. I rarely make brownies from a recipe because box mix brownies are already so freaking good. So we recently got a box of Pillsbury Cheesecake Swirl brownie mix. The only thing cheesecake could possibly to do brownies is improve upon them, so this had to be a good thing, right? [...]

Refried Beans with Pork Lard

Here’s a confession: I had no idea refried beans contained pork up until I actually tried making them. I’ve bought a few cans of refried beans with “vegetarian” on the label back in the day, but I thought this was bizarre, as of course they’re vegetarian, they’re beans! I figured it was the equivalent of [...]