And, remember this? Neat, so do we. Look into Foodie Crush where Modern Mannered has its long awaited debut. Hope to see y’all there. We’re ready for worldwide (okay, so at minimum across several large states in a Southern and Westernly direction) domination. The real question is: Are you?

I had just outed myself in the process of a telling a full out lie. Fantastic. I love Chex Mix. It wasn’t purposeful, they sit there in their little rows in gas station after gas station. Mile after mile of business travel I shoveled in these crunchy, salty, chocolate squares. I came home, bought a bag at the grocery store and another at the drug store. What have I become? There is no excuse to explain my behavior. I love good food, real food, home cooked farm-to-table food; and yet, we all must have our Achilles heel. As for now, Peanut Butter Chex Mix is mine.

Hayley's apricot tree: This is what happens when you bring garden's overabundance to my house.

Needless to say, we’re excited and well, Saucy and Kitsch and I? We’re hoping you like it.

A reliable family standby, altered via black magic. As our matriarchal sugar-hound, my grandmother would have turned a blind eye to its alcohol content, developed selective hearing of the tongue. A few dinner parties, a Utah State Fair blue ribbon and the dessert table of a Fall wedding later, they have evolved into the single most requested item to come out of the kitchen. Guinness brownies. Chewy and dense with a bit of savory, unmistakably chocolate.

I don’t often share recipes. Mainly due to never writing anything down, not out of any sort of proprietary notions. You can thank San Francisco, a bar full of sailors and the bartender at O’Reilly’s. Inappropriate? Possibly. Really, it is just a beautiful and generous city during Fleet Week and the couple of free pints it inspired.

Oven 350 / 9 x 12 pan / one bowl / add in order

1 c butter / melted
8 oz bittersweet chocolate / melted
3/4 cup cocoa
2 c. sugar
3 eggs
1 c. Guinness
1 c flour
2 c. coconut
1 c. chocolate chips

Use it, love it, alter it to make your own. Let me know how it goes, and then thank your grandmother.

Looking towards Fall in July, the phones came out and calendars were marked in tandem. A necessity when we are at work more often than not, are responsible beyond any reasonable sanity. Bikes, lunch and row after planted row of apples. This is third year we’ve come to Rachel’s family orchard to pilfer and plunder. The third year of apple pies and applesauce, pretty pink apple jelly and dried apples.

Picking and educating on the perfection of an apple dumpling. Lunch on the porch, green as a grotto; loving our chosen company and fully sated. A ride through cherry and apple orchards, promising to not take for granted the place in which we live.

Still, the sky beckons Winter.

Oh time machine, take me back; a meal, an evening in the garden. Lessening sunshine on and on and still: Through the quiet bees hum a certain kindness. Familiar. Honey with bits of honeycomb, raspberries & shiny strawberries whose seeds leave transparent tendrils of white through to its center. Violets, an unexpected awakening to old-fashioned sensibilities. Pimm’s No. 1, Anglophilic in excess.

There was more, but not much and most certainly not as good, or as clearly Summer.

Bees and berries. There may have been some Brie involved somewhere....

One part Pimm's, three parts lemonade. That's the ratio on record, anyway.

Bottom layer: Hazelnut chocolate with hazelnut praline and dark chocolate ganache; Top layer: vanilla bean with rose filling covered in honey-vanilla buttercream. Photo by David Newkirk.

It was the sort of day where I longed for that mythical magical unicorn in the forest of life: A personal assistant. 6:30, the clock ticking slowly in the wrong direction with a wedding cake on the schedule. Two tiers of delicious sugar and yet, I should say with all honesty, I wasn’t in the mood. Unexpectedly sad, and feeling over-worked, cakes require a lightness of heart that I just didn’t have in me.

While it came on gradually, I noticed it all at once. Chopping chocolate, putting it on the scale, a storm-less wave that started to flow without the anticipated ebb. Again when brush in hand applying hazelnut oil on one layer after the other, soothing unto itself, a beautiful repetition. Just watching the whisk whip around the bowl of Italian honeyed buttercream lulled me into a stupor.

It took the process, the kitchen, the food to produce a blessed calm, quiet sea on which to sail.

2 pounds of bee magic. The only place in Zion for honey with the comb.

Fig. Plum. Strawberry. Walnut. Rose. Huckleberry. Syrupy preserves eaten straight from the jar. Needless to say when presented with so many almost-intravenous sugar options I become a little distracted. This is my holy land.

European Tastees (those two e’s are no spelling mistake), a small market and deli tucked discreetly behind a tuxedo shop at the end of strip mall. We are in Salt Lake, do places like this truly exist? A small table sits in the back, men speaking in tongues between the orange blossom honey and kolaczki. Women at the counter dispense kolbász and samples freely. And yet, my overactive imagination longs for mystery amongst friendly customers. Russkaya mafiya, I’m sure of it. Oh poorly lit corners, what else lurks within your refrigerated cases?