Sorry for the silence (Marshall). Please, let us move through the excuses and on to what is really the most important issue at hand....
Birthdays! In particular, my little sister Abbie's birthday! With sincere regret in my heart, I could not be with her to celebrate, so I did the next best thing.
Yesterday as I was walking out of the apartment, I encountered my upstairs neighbor and his wife, with their hands full of silver mylar balloons complete with curled ribbons, pink and purple wrapping paper, and excited faces. They revealed to me that it was their granddaughter was turning five years old and would be honored that evening with a party fit for a princess.
These neighbors are a source of endless smiles for Matthias and me, as they are always quick to point out the delicious smells that come wafting upstairs from our apartment below. And remember those chocolate hazelnut spice cookies? They were so rich, that twenty of them were entirely too many to eat in a week, and so we gladly gifted some upstairs. (They have requested lasagna, or veal, but we have yet to grant those wishes. Please don't get me started on veal...).
I asked if they would like me to make cookies or cupcakes for their party and their faces lit up and they enthusiastically consented. 
And so, I set out to make cupcakes fit for a five year old little girl, with pressure for perfection, and a strange pang of longing to be five again once more with my gregarious little sister by my side. It was this nostalgia that led me to choose the recipe for Jamie Oliver's 'Tea-Party Cupcakes'. For you see, when we were small, one spring afternoon I very much wanted to have a tea-party, and several weeks before that, I had very much wanted my mom and dad to bring me a sister home from the hospital so that she could perform the role of guest at my very grand afternoon teas. My mom explained to me that Abbie was too small, but one day she would make a fabulous guest, and oh my goodness, what do you know? She wound up being my very best friend. So, it is on this April 26th that I give a five year old stranger, and my dearest wee sister the gift of tea parties and cupcakes and all other manner of little girl-ness so that they can both feel so delicate, because these tiny, lemony little cakes exemplify the word. 
Tea Party Cupcakes
adapted from Cook with Jamie, by Jamie Oliver
yield: approximately 20 cupcakes
Ingredients
for cake:
1 cup unsalted organic butter, softened
2 cups flour
1 tsp. baking powder
.5 tsp. kosher salt
.75 cup + 2 tbsp. organic sugar
4 large free range organic eggs
zest of 1 lemon
for icing:
2.2 oz. fresh blueberries (or raspberries or strawberries)
1.5 cups powdered sugar
juice of 1 lemon
Preheat the oven to 375 F.
Combine flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl. Set aside.
Beat the butter and sugar together until they are light and fluffy.
Add the eggs one at a time, fully combine them before adding the next.
Fold in flour and lemon zest, gently. Be careful not to overmix, you are essentially making a spongecake, but still, it should be delicate in the end, not gummy.
Spoon by heaping teaspoonful (the kind for eating, not measuring) into lined muffin tin.
Bake for 15 minutes, or until golden brown and springy to the touch.
Cool on a rack while you make the icing. (Which is just zizzing the berries in the food processor and adding them to the lemon juice and powdered sugar).
Use a teaspoon to drizzle the cupcakes with the icing. It will not be typical icing texture, don't fret. This makes it delicate and you don't feel like you have fur growing on your teeth when you are finished eating it, because there is nothing princess-like about that at all.
Garnish with fruit. 
Happy 22nd Birthday, Sistercat!
Love, Sissy, Matthias, and Yossarian
Last summer Matthias and I packed our bags with some standard picnic fare and headed to Central Park to sit on a patch of grass, get tipsy on overly sweet crappy Riesling and feed birds chunks of baguette. Truth be told, it was one of the nicest evenings we have ever shared.
Last week, spring finally arrived, bearing the gift of a beautiful 70 degree sunny day and the perfect evening for this year's first picnic. Rather than give you a single recipe of our own, we wanted to give you a formula of sorts for taking your food outside, eating tiny little bites, watching puppies play, smelling the new foliage, and slowing down to enjoy your time with the ones that you love. It sounds sappy, but it will be enough to pull you out of your spring restlessness and make you grateful for surviving another winter.
Recipe For A Picnic
serves 2-4
Farro with Coarse Pesto (the leftovers are great, and you will still have some even if you cut the recipe in half. a pound of farro is a lot, even when you like grains. a lot.)
Salumi
Cheese, Veggies, Crackers, or Bread
White Bean Hummus
Fig Jam (I made homemade fig newtons earlier in the week, and we thought the dough could use a little work, but the filling is spot on and was delicious on the cheese.)
Lemonade (Matthias puts lemon zest in the simple syrup and it makes all the difference.)
These are some humble suggestions, and made for a splendid dinner in Astoria Park. Find a little patch of green, pack your totebag (or your picnic basket if you're lucky enough to have one), pack some booze, or leave it out, gather some friends, or keep it intimate, picnics are the perfect excuse to leave your worries at home and a free pass to enjoy the little things that you cherish, and wonder about the ones that have yet to come.
There is something comforting about pockets. On cold days, you can pop your hands into them (if you are woefully underprepared for the weather, as I often am). You can carry things in them, like phones, keys, quarters, lint, receipts, pennies (God, the pennies), Simpson's Individual Stringettes (The NOW String), iPods, love notes...basically, your whole life. I'm told, by parties unnamed, that women don't carry things in their pockets, as their pockets are tiny and ill-suited for carriage of useful things. This is the direct result of women's clothing being much more form-fitting than men's and aren't we all glad that men's clothes aren't so form fitting.
No, hipsters, you aren't included.
Hannah wears Smocks on warm sunny days. I call the pockets upon the smocks, Smockets. They too, are useful.
Pockets can be made from most anything. Felt, denim, canvas, a pita, and perhaps the most versatile pocket of them all:
The Aluminum Foil Pocket.
Yes, dear readers, the Aluminum Foil Pocket (or as my friend from Southend-on-Sea might pronounce it, "Aluminium."). Reynolds and his Wrap saves the day once again. I've used it previously with tilapia and assorted veggies, some herbs, and butter. Yes, the butter.
Today, I had a day off from the TV show that I work on and it was spent with Hannah. We didn't do terribly much and usually when it gets to that point, we gravitate towards the Food Network. We aren't terribly fond of Emeril and his BAM middle of the BAM sentence ex-BAM-ations of his notch kicking. But today he was on making some chicken.
In pockets.
He made them in Parchment Paper, but when one of his guests asked him, "What if you don't have any at home?" He said, "I use aluminum foil at home."
Hannah said we should make the recipe. And so we did.
We took our own deviation, mixing Jamie Oliver's recipe for beurre blanc with whatever the hell it was that Emeril was doing and created a Lemon Beurre Blanc Cream Sauce to put on top of our veggies. Emeril also told us to not include fennel, but we will be damned to one degree or another if fennel is not going into our pocket. Since Hannah can't eat the chicken, we also substituted some cannellini beans for one of the chicken breasts.
It was fabulous.
Chicken and Vegetables with Lemon Beurre Blanc Cream Sauce
(Adapted from Emeril and Jamie Oliver)
1⁄2 Fennel bulb, sliced
2 carrots, cut into strips
2 small zucchinis, cut into strips
2 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into slivers
1 tablespoon minced shallots
1 3⁄4 teaspoons herbes de Provence, divided (we used fresh parsley, rosemary, thyme, tarragon, and bay)
1 1⁄4 teaspoons salt
3⁄4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 (6 to 8-ounce) boneless, skinless chicken breasts (optional if you are veggiesaurs)
1⁄2 can of white beans (7.5 oz) (butter or cannellini, optional if you are meatosaurs)
4 teaspoons dry white wine
Lemon Beurre Blanc Cream Sauce (recipe follows)
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.
Using good knife, cut the zucchini, fennel and carrot into thin, strips. Place the strips in a bowl and toss with 1 tablespoon of the butter slivers, 3/4 teaspoon of the herbes de Provence, 1/4 teaspoon of the salt, and 1/4 teaspoon of the pepper. Set aside.
Lightly season each chicken breast on both sides with 1/4 teaspoon of the salt and 1/8 teaspoon of the pepper. Set aside. Season the beans as well.
Tear off about a full wingspan of aluminum foil; fold in half. Place the chicken (or beans) in the middle, cover with half of your vegetable mixture. Drizzle with a couple glugs of white wine. Roll up the sides and the top, sealing it off.
Place the bags on the prepared baking sheet. Bake until the chicken is cooked through and the vegetables are tender, about 30 minutes.
Spoon lemon butter sauce over the chicken or the beans, garnish each plate with 1 parsley sprig, and serve immediately.
Lemon Beurre Blanc Cream Sauce
1 1⁄2 C white wine (we used some crappy kind of Sauvingnon Blanc with a cigar smoking bird)
2 lemons, peels off and quartered
1 diced shallot
ground pepper
herbes de provence (we used fresh parsley, rosemary, thyme, tarragon, and bay)
6 or 7 tbsp unsalted butter
1⁄2 cp heavy cream
Combine the first five ingredients in a saucepan and bring to a boil. When the wine has reduced to half or so, strain the flavored wine into another container. Then wisk in the butter, a tablespoon at a time, until it’s all melted in. Add the heavy cream, and blend. The sauce should retain a thin consistency.