Sugar & Spice by Celeste

There's a funny story that I think of every time I have country-fried steak.  It was actually the very first meal that I ever cooked my husband, on one of our first dates.  I wanted to pull out all the stops and make him a home-cooked meal.  For some reason, country-fried steak was my meal of choice.  Can you blame me?  It's comforting, delicious and easy to make.  I figured I couldn't go wrong.  I was only about 19 years old at the time...boy, how my cooking style has changed since then! About half-way through the meal, my clumsy self managed to spill a full glass of sweet tea all over Brad.  Boy, was I embarrassed!  He must not have minded too terribly much, because he's still hanging around.  A little spilled tea apparently wasn't enough to scare him off (thank goodness!).  :) These days, I don't really deep-fry much anymore.  I'm always on the look-out for lighter versions of my favorite dishes, so this lightened up...

What do you say we celebrate this beautiful first day of spring with a beautiful, fresh recipe?  Seriously, I'm obsessed with this salad.  After delighting in my very first bite of this exquisite meal, I proclaimed "This might be the best salad I've ever had in my life!" Friends, I'm not exaggerating. The inspiration for this meal came when I acquired a gorgeous bag of freshly foraged watercress from my new friend, Tim Pfizer from Herb Inc. in Birmingham, AL.  I went into The Fish Market here in town to purchase some Cobia for a photo shoot for the gulf seafood cookbook I've been working on, and met Tim in the process.  He gave me a bag of watercress to try, and my mind went to work figuring out how to put it to good use. The solution?  Beatrice Peltre had the perfect recipe in her cookbook, La Tartine Gourmande, Recipes for an Inspired Life .  I changed it a bit to suit my tastes, and the results were mouth-watering.  I've included my chan...

Whenever I eat fudge, I think about vacations in the mountains for some reason.  It may have something to do with the fact that every mountain town has that quintessentially cute little fudge shoppe, that you just can't resist going into.  And once your inside, well, then it's over.  At least it is for me. I mean, how could you resist the rows and rows of fudgy delights??  There's fudge whipped up in every flavor combination you can imagine, with the smell of sugar and chocolate in the air.  Oh dear, I should have written this while I still had fudge left.  Now I'm craving it again! My wonderful hubby loves, loves, loves rocky road anything, so when we were craving fudge a few weeks ago, the flavor was an easy decision.  This particular recipe is incredibly easy.  Maybe one of the best things about this recipe is that no candy thermometer is required.  It comes together easy and would make a perfect little gift wrapped up in a pretty p...