Treats from the Tipsy Turtle

I was in a foul state of mind this afternoon so I decided to bake. Normally if I am feeling restless or down, I cook and just the distraction and activity make me feel a bit better. I chose this recipe because it was simple and didn't require me to haul out any of the equipment, but a foul mood is not a good baking companion. I managed to make a mess of nearly every single ingredient--flour, butter, both sugars, salt, the blueberries went rolling. I spent more time cleaning up than I did in the actual cake prep. It's fortunate that the result was worth it. Here's today's cast. Half a bag of frozen blueberries went into a small pan on medium heat, along with a teaspoon of sugar. I blasted the pan with nonstick and floured it. It looks awful where the flour clumped up but I really didn't feel like taking the time to butter it properly. The blueberries and sugar were mixed together and as they bubbled, I mashed them with the back of the spoon. After a few minutes, they

It's been such a busy two weeks that even though I have been doing a fair amount of cooking, I haven't felt like blogging much. This was one of the quietest weekends I have had in months so, here we go!  I am not a huge fan of olives. I love olive oil, of course, but I really don't care for the taste and mouth-feel of olives in general. A little chopped Kalamata is nice over a cucumber/tomato salad and a couple of Castelvetranos are tasty as part of an appetizer, but I won't just snack on black olives and I really don't want them on my pizza! Yet when I saw this recipe, I really, really wanted to make it. No idea. Here's the cast--I did decide to sub Castelvetranos for the Kalamata that the recipe called for. It was hard to judge how many olives to use. The recipe called for half a cup, chopped, but I wanted to have some bigger pieces in there. I decided to eyeball it and see how it went. I rinsed the brine off the olives to remove the excess salt. These olives