I adore brussels sprouts. I adore Georgia Pellegrini. When Georgia posted on brussels sprouts recently, my objects of adoration collided and it felt as if our virtual bond was forever cemented. I love anyone who loves brussels sprouts and her photos are a tribute to this under-appreciated vegetable.

Georgia is a food fanatic, chef, writer and TV personality who hunts down artisan food experiences and profiles those food heroes on her blog and in her soon-to-be-released book, appropriately titled “Food Heroes.” Georgia and I are passionate about the same stuff – hand-crafted food, the slower, old-fashioned way of preserving culture through food. We both support keeping it local and authentic. And I have a feeling she’s as into independent, small Mom-n-Pop producers, chefs and restaurateurs as I am. I will watch her food journey very, very closely.

Getting back to the food… If you hate brussels sprouts, and I’d be so disappointed in you if you did, please dig into Georgia’s easy recipe. Here’s a snippet of her post:

“As you know, I like changing people’s minds. It makes me fuzzy inside. Most people don’t like brussel sprouts. It’s the black sheep of vegetables… “eeew brussel sprouts,” is the default way to use it in a sentence. But they really are lovely little things…”

Read the rest of Georgia’s post here. Thanks for the brussels sprouts inspiration, Georgia! (Oh, and by the way, all the photos here were taken by Georgia, not me.)

I am in love with Fall. It’s my very favorite season. Alas, in New England, Fall sort of whizzes by and Winter presents itself way too soon. I treasure every moderately cool moment. I also treasure finding new sites that inspire me to want to cook, nest, drink and discover new ways to celebrate the season. I’ve been blessed with finding so many new friends via Twitter this year and I wanted to celebrate some of their very fun sites, as well as give a nod to some of my oldies but goodies. I look forward to a beautiful Fall with you all!

Clare Barboza: I met Clare Barboza via Twitter last week and have so enjoyed clicking through both her blog and food photography site. She takes great photos and tells great stories.

Gourmet Worrier: I have too many great things to say about Nanette. She’s a wonderful photographer, a great story teller and puts so much of herself into her pieces. Oh, and I just love her savory baklava.

Eating out Loud: Allen producers some great material, and tempted me tonight with these fun Pumpkin Nut Bars. I’ll be using up some canned pumpkin this weekend.

Cookbook Catchall: These are some seriously lovely photographs!

Life’s Ambrosia: If you want to think light and fresh this Fall, check out Deseree’s site. She’s a newlywed; her husband helps to take the site’s photos. The recipes are totally refreshing.

Last Night’s Dinner: Jennifer makes some good-looking food, including this pretty Potato Leek Soup with Cheddar and Dill. She also cares about local and seasonal just as much as I do. She’s got a great series of comfort food recipes all shiny and new on her site.

The Kitchenist: I discovered The Kitchenist this Summer, along with Ele’s cookbook review blog and kitchen design blog. They’re fun and very well done. And I don’t know about you, but I must try these Spicy Corn Fritters soon.

My Polaroid Blog: Polaroid may have gone out of business, but you wouldn’t know it to look at Jen’s blog. She styles with ease and her photos make me feel… hugged. She also has the most fun web site ever.

Andrea Wyner: I love Andrea’s photos. Whether travel photos or food photos, her images should be paintings because I want to swim in them and thread my fingers through all the colors. Oh, and if she needs someone to carry her bags on any of her trips, she knows who to call…

Simply Breakfast: There is an art to breakfast and Jennifer is an artist. However simple or everyday the dish, she elevates it to gorgeousness. Her photography site is inspiring too.

Pink of Perfection: Sarah’s site promises to be “a thrifty girl’s guide to the good life” and truly is! She kicked off Fall with a great list of 30 activities for the season. Will you do them all?

Ice Milk Aprons: Fall is about cooking and I want to wrap myself up in one of Ashley’s vintage-inspired aprons and cook up a storm this season. I love to read about her heirloom pursuits on her blog titled “preserves”.

Cowgirl Chef: I love the Cowgirl Chef and am hoping next time I’m in Paris, I get a guided tour! I met her through Twitter and let’s just say, she had me at… Nutella Bunuelos.

Georgia Pellegrini: Georgia is always on the hunt for local food (like me!) and her easy sage-filled beans make me think it’s time to go back to making my weekly Sunday potfuls.

Drinks Are On Me: Dale knows wine and knows exactly what to recommend whenever I’m stumped on a pairing. He’s also so handy when I need a pal to virtually toast over our yummy dishes. See you at Wine Riot, Dale!

Thank you, Heidi. Thank you for having a friend like Nikki. Thank you for visiting Nikki recently and discovering this beautiful recipe for her healthy cookies. Thank you for sharing it on your beautiful site, 101 Cookbooks, last week.

To make a long story short, I’m going through one of those phases. How can I describe it? Hmm.

Well, I just started exercising four times per week with a trainer who mocks me with her heavy weights and complaints about my hip strength. (I mean, who knew I had no hip strength?)

And after years learning about food, ingredients, and the details behind everything I put in my mouth, I’m actually starting to eat healthier, preferring a pile of gently-braised collards, kale and swiss chard over a pound of butter-soaked mashed potatoes. (No offense, potatoes. You’re yummy, but a pound of you soaked in butter does my body no good.)

On top of all that, I’ve become a huge fan of local foods and organic ingredients. My most complicated food dilemma involves deciding whether to eat the local ground cherries that I picked myself or the sweet, sexy, plump organic figs that someone flew in from California. Really, I struggle over these types of decisions daily, as I truly want to put my money where my mouth is, but when you’re invited to a luciously extravagant meal at the latest hip Boston restaurant, you can’t beat yourself up about how that sweet, raw fish is flown in from Japan, daily. I try not to cry over the environmental impact and the fact that our north shores have some of the best fish in the world. Alas, fresh Gloucester fish is not covered in foie gras and truffles and homemade potato chips and gently-braised garlic and sea urchin and… oh, never mind. You get my point.

So to make a long story long, I’m going through one of those phases where I worry about food and exercise and our environment on a daily basis. And when I worry, I crave sweet stuff. And when I crave sweet stuff, I usually want chocolate. Not super healthy dark chocolate, but super sugary milk chocolate. The stuff that puts weight on my oh-so-not-strong hips.

Heidi’s web site has become a beacon of hope for me in this troubling food world we live in. She reinterprets traditional comfort food into healthy, vegetarian, sometimes-vegan delights. I heart Heidi, and am not an ounce jealous that she gets to whip up foodie miracles as a full-time job. Not. Jealous. One. Bit.

So, thank you, Heidi. (I hope I get to say that in person some day, at some food festival or one of my trips out west, and perhaps interview her for this site someday.) These cookies, packed with healthy rolled oats, unsweetened coconut, almond meal, mushy bananas, coconut oil and some other fine stuff, is just the sort of thing I needed this morning when my cold is apt to get the better of me and compel me to feed it. (Feed a cold, right?)

I did opt to substitute the dark chocolate with organic milk chocolate chips. I did this just because I could. I had expensive Swiss dark chocolate in front of me, but reached for the milk chocolate instead. I figured a few chips won’t hurt, right, my fabulous, sweet, gorgeous trainer? These healthy cookies are delicious, moist and have just a touch of sweetness from the bananas. If I had kids who didn’t like healthy-tasting foods, I might add a spell of maple syrup to sweeten it up a bit more.

Oh, and one final note, don’t get discouraged when you can’t find unsweetened coconut in any mainstream supermarket. Mainstream supermarkets simply don’t care about sugar content; they care about putting good deals in front of customers and good deals often involve processed, unhealthy grossness. I ended up getting mine at Whole Foods. It was fairly affordable too, go figure.

My local organic farm CSA brings in a variety of organic vegetables during the winter. Each week, I pick up a few bags worth of goodies. Some are old standbys, while others are new to my kitchen. I’ve tasted blood oranges before, but never really cooked with them. That said, I endeavored to search the Web, learn all I can about them and get to cooking. I learned so much over at The Food Section, and started searching food blogs. Here are some great recipes I discovered during my online travels. I hope to try a few in the next week and report back here.

Roasted Beet and Blood Orange Salad with Spicy Greens Recipe – A recipe Heidi posted back in 2005

Blood Orange Sorbet – Such a lovely photo.

Blood Orange Tart – Inspired by a Bon Appetit recipe.

Blood Orange Tapenade Citronette – From Chef John in San Francisco.

Blood Orange Margaritas – From a food blogger in Baltimore, Maryland.

Blood Orange Jelly – Looks so delicious and so easy.

Blood Orange Chocolate Cake – Chocolate goodness over at Eat Drink.

Blood Orange Curd – This looks absolutely divine. This may be the first recipe to attempt.

Blood Orange & Blackberry Gelees – I made gelees similar to this in December.

Blood Orange & Fennel Biscotti – Figs Olives Wine in NYC made these biscotti, and I may have to follow suit this week.

Lychee Rose Parfait and Orange Blossom Macaroons – I could never make these myself, but they are so darn cute.

Chocolate & Zucchini is one of my favorite food blogs. Ever. The photos are lovely and the tone is very conversational, kinda like talking to a friend. I actually met the blogger Clotilde Dusoulier last April at her book signing at Chez Henri in Cambridge, MA (a lovely boutique restaurant you absolutely must try). She was so humble and sweet and very friendly, not at all what you would expect from a young French woman who has become famous practically over night, cooking on The Today Show and meeting fancy celebrity pastry chefs.

Clotilde’s most recent entry is Potato Leek Soup. I happened to have a huge pile of organic leeks in the fridge and 2 potatoes in the cupboard, so I felt karma was pulling me to this recipe. I am also trying to eat as healthy as possible – I mean, who isn’t at the start of a new year, right? (Don’t worry, give me a few months and I’ll be back to IV-ing cookies and candy. After all, Easter is only 2 months away.)

I did edit this recipe slightly. All Clotilde’s measurements were lovely and though I liked the soup, I wanted a touch more depth tonight. To do this, I added 2 tablespoons of light sour cream to the pot once I had pureed the entire soup. It added a touch of tang and creaminess, without adding cream or creme fraiche. I did plop a little more light sour cream upon serving, but that’s totally unnecessary. Unless your a dairy-addict like myself. Then go ahead and plop it on. By the way, I also did not add the super green pieces of leeks back into the pot. My husband has texture issues, and I didn’t want to give him the rope with which to hang me. Speaking of…

I’m not sure how many times I’ve stated that the husband hates vegetables. But he loved this soup. I think that his Irish family placed so many too-well-done-and-mushy veggies in front of him as a kid that he hates ALL veggies now. I’m slowly trying to re-educate his palette, introducing old veggies in new ways. He loved the soup, and had two servings.

Lunch Bucket Bento is so talented. (This is her photo.)

I hate chocolate mousse. I hate chocolate ice cream too, and chocolate fudge and chocolate pudding. I hate any sort of overindulgence in that flavor. Please, don’t flame me. For me, chocolate is just too strong and needs to be enjoyed in small quantities or with other flavors (like orange).

So when I stumbled upon a recipe for Chocolate M-o-o-usse with Olive Oil over at Delicious Days, I was about to move on… but then thought, “Hmm… if it tastes more like olive oil with a little chocolate, then perhaps I’d like it…” Since it was just a few ingredients and even fewer steps, I gave it a shot.

Oh my gawd. OH MY GAWD. My husband will be lucky to get a small serving when he makes it home tonight. I’ve been licking every bowl, spoon and surface used during the making of this luscious dessert. I am in love. It actually tastes like olive oil, with a rich chocolate flavor added in. I did happen to muss up the measurements slightly. I always get thrown when converting grams to ounces. But it was yummy just the same.

We’re in the midst of more snow right now up in Boston, and I plan to stay home most of the day. I have 4 pretty white cups of the m-o-o-usse in my fridge. Hubbie, I wish you the best in getting home, and getting a taste. Good luck to you, sir. Good luck.

I’m not shy about my passion, love, obsession for Nigella Lawson. I’ve watched Nigella’s Christmas Kitchen over and over and over again this past week. I found a recipe for her pistachio fudge via Glorious Food and Wine. It’s from her latest cookbook, Nigella Express, which I have yet to receive for Christmas yet… which is why I found this recipe on a fellow blog and not while sifting through the actual book… hint, hint, hint!

I need to say that I am not a huge fudge fan. My mom and aunt made fudge every chance they could, and we’d overdose on it at the holidays. They spoiled me for future fudge recipes, so I rarely eat it nowadays. Not the same for my husband, though! He likes fudge and I wanted to make a small batch for him to dig into over the holiday season. Alas, he hates nuts in food. He thinks it’s an Irish thing but I’ve only ever witnessed his mother have the same aversion. Like mother like son…

So I made one batch of this very easy recipe – VERY EASY – and pressed it into a tin foil wrapped baking sheet. (I pressed it fairly thin, though others may like a big thick nugget of fudge, I can only take a little thin sliver.) I then pressed some pistachios into a long sliver of the sheet, so that I may taste it as Nigella originally intended. I like it. I like it a lot. I don’t think I’m ready to overdose on it this season, but it will be sweet to grab a little bite every time I want to feel a bit closer to Nigella.

I worried about this recipe. I adore Heidi Swanson over at 101cookbooks.com. She’s innovative, special and very real – and so are her recipes. I fell in love with this Hazelnut & Chard Ravioli Salad Recipe last week and planned to make it for some friends on Saturday night. But she’s all vegetarian, all the time. So when our friends canceled on Saturday night (Hope you’re feeling better, Kim!), I worried that this all-vegetarian recipe wouldn’t be enough for my all-carnivore husband (he daydreams about a pig tattoo blessing his arm). I decided to throw my hands in the air and throw it all to the wind, let what will be will be.

I am so glad I did. Not only did my husband clean his plate, but he said the last thing I thought he would say…

“Wow, this is very filling.”

I served it hot, not cold as one may serve a salad. I also bought some fresh, yummy butternut squash-pumpkin ravioli from Whole Foods. I’m so sad my friends missed out. It was truly comforting. (Heidi’s photo is much better, but I’m learning; baby steps.)