sarea | Project! Digsby! Peppermint Bark! etc.

So I've decided to embark on a cooking project for myself. My favorite restaurant in the DC area -- well, one of them -- is Bistrot Lepic. It's a French restaurant in Georgetown. My favorite entree there is the potato-encrusted salmon with grape sauce. The different textures and flavors go so unexpectedly well together. The first time I ever had it I was in heaven. Anyway, I have decided to try and replicate this dish. I'm not usually a very creative gourmet; I tend to follow recipes almost to the letter (with only minor adaptations for taste/ingredients), because I don't trust my culinary instincts enough yet. That's why this is an exciting project, because I'm really going out of my comfort zone to try and recreate a semi-complicated dish that I hold in high esteem.

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If you have to try to juggle a bunch of different IM programs because different friends/family use different ones, try Digsby. It basically combines them all into one, so the Digsby interface is the only one you see and it encompasses everything from AIM to ICQ to Gmail (even multiple accounts) to Jabber. I had given up on IMing a long time ago because it was just too lame to have to have so many different programs and keep track of everyone and what not, but now there's just the one. One I can manage.

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Prior to Christmas I was thinking of getting Gourmet and/or Bon Appetit magazines, as they were on sale for $10 each, but forgot due to vacation excitement. When I looked again they were $15 each and I procrastinated about getting them. Then I was on Amazon for something else, and lo and behold, Gourmet was back on sale for $9.97! Woot. So I went ahead and got it, so now I have that to look forward to. I've never been much of a magazine reader, but I love reading about food and getting new recipes to try, so I'm pretty excited about this.

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I need to remember to go to Whole Foods again soon to see if I can snag another box of peppermint bark while it's still sort of in season. I'm not done with the one I have, I eat stuff slowly, but I'll be sad when it's gone. Sorry the pictures are kind of discolored ... I took this at night in my kitchen without a flash, and this is how the camera compensates.

This is the tin it came in. Jo's Candies is the brand.

Here's the bark itself. You get four square pieces -- comes to 12oz total. They're fairly large. I think I mentioned before, but this bark has a very thin layer of dark chocolate and a thicker layer of white chocolate, and the peppermint is finely crushed on top. It's very white as peppermint should be; the photo is just a bit discolored. It's delicious!

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I'm liking Gossip Girl less the more I watch it. It partly has to do with having read the first 4 books in the series, and not liking the stuff they've changed. Blair has grown on me, as has Nate (though I wish he were the pothead he is in the books), although I don't like the two of them together. I really can't stand Dan. Or Vanessa. The best part of the show -- always has been true and I suspect always will be -- is Kristen Bell's narration. I love her to pieces. PIECES.