Oh, rhubarb. You ubiquitous late spring presence, you vegetable of desserts. I can never resist you when I see you at the farmer's market, all brightly colored and stalky and tempting. I've done rhubarb pie before on this 'blog, but I was thinking it might be delicious to do something slightly different than the standard combination of strawberry and rhubarb. Don't get me wrong; I adore strawberry rhubarb pie, but decided to mix raspberries with my rhubarb instead, just to mix things up a bit. I know, it's crazy, but everything turned out all right in the end, I promise. Won't you come along for the ride?

Ride on, soldiers, at girlcate.com.

Chocolate pie, my friends. I think that's pretty much all one needs to know. Last weekend was super duper cold in this city, and the cold always ups my craving for comfort foods. We had a small get-together on Friday night, wherein Boots made delicious, delectable pizza, and I pulled out a recipe for a chocolate souffle pie from the good folks over at chocolate bar. I'd made it before, a few years ago, and had nothing but fond memories of sinking my teeth into this rich, chocolatey, melty pie; I was certainly ready to relive the experience.

live and let pie, below the fold.

I miss my family sometimes. You see, most of them still live in Northern California, and what with my being holed up in Brooklyn with student loans to pay off and a pay cut to deal with, I don't get to visit them nearly as much as I would like. But sometimes, Kenan has things to do in San Francisco, which means that we get to take a nice little trip out there to sling comics and gallivant in the hills and sip wine and stuff. Which is exactly what we did, just a couple weeks ago.

get your filling, over at girlcate.com

Once upon a time, by which I mean about two months ago, Kenan had an idea.

Actually, I should maybe give you some background first, before I get to the idea part: You see, Kenan and I are fortunate enough to have a plethora of friends (and friends of friends) who share our proclivity for blogging and photographing and drawing and such. As it also happens, all of them like to eat good food, even if they don't themselves make a project of creating it (for more information, see my 'blog roll, ladies and gents; they're all worth a read). Kenan and I often talk about how living in a city like this is so great for community; not only are there great multitudes of talented people around doing amazing, beautiful things, but a good number of them live in our neighborhood, and having their stuff around to keep up on and learn from is both inspiring and happy-making. So, Kenan had the idea to get a group of said bloggers and photographers and generally epicurean folks together for one big, extravagant, entirely blogger-created meal.

mealing and dealing when the dinner bell rings.

It's always good to get out of the city. Kenan and I took the opportunity presented by the long weekend to hop a bus down to the outskirts of Baltimore to visit Kenan's uncle Ephraim, for the Fourth of July weekend (once again, this post is a couple weeks late coming out, but bear with me - it's gonna be fun). Ephraim and his wife, Sarah, live in a big old plantation house so beautiful and full of awesome things that it makes me want to rethink my existence as a city dweller. When the weather's nice, they eat all their meals on their patio, surrounded by Sarah's gorgeous garden. And not only are the house and grounds stunning, but there's a trampoline, a ping pong table, a swimming pool next door, and a goofy, friendly German Shepherd who always seemed to be wandering around looking for someone to throw a ball for her. Needless to say, all of this made our stay both full of fun and relaxing, certainly worth making our asses numb from sitting so long on the bus to get down there. In order to repay our gracious hosts for the use of their house and grounds, we proposed that we prepare dinner and dessert on Saturday.

preparations proceed around the bend.

Last Saturday, we finally had a reprieve from the near-constant stream of rain and clouds that have been glowering and pissing over the city lately, and Kenan and I took the opportunity to take a leisurely walk down to the farmer's market, where we ran across some lovely rhubarb at Red Jacket. I didn't actually have any baking plans in the works, but after seeing the rhubarb in all its red n' green glory, and considering the sudden hint of summer in the weather, I decided that it might be a good time for pie. I would even have a venue in which to present said pie, as we were going to dinner on Sunday at Kenan's dad's apartment.

the view from the venue, next stop.