This week I treated myself to a Chocolate Bliss Cheesecake http://www.kraftrecipes.com/recipes/chocolate-bliss-cheesecake-55885.aspx. It was pretty good, a little dense -- on the scale of all the cheesecakes I've ever made, I'd rank it an 8 out of 10. I always think the best thing about homemade cheesecake is how easy it is to make them. For all my acquaintances and friends who think that it's too hard to make one at home, just try it!

I also just made a batch of Ghanaian Peanut Soup http://www.guamdiner.com/recipe/recipe.php?recipe=113. If you were serving it to guests you might want to strain it but we didn't and it was fine. Being that it's Lent, I substituted canned vegetable broth for the chicken stock and it still tasted rich and delicious so it would be a nice experiment to try it with stock. There are many many versions of this soup on the internet but this was so simple to make and a very very nice light soup.

Have you tried the homemade ice cream yet?

My mother recently came home from a river cruise excursion to Belgium and Holland and brought home all sorts of Belgian chocolates, cheeses, and a big bottle of the Dutch Bols Genever gin. One of the Belgian chocolates was called "diamond chocolates" - expensive but superb. I can't wait to try to genever - I always bought the young gin, in a terra cotta bottle, but this genever was aged for 6 years and the vintner said that it has "six layers of flavor." Stay tuned for the review!

Until the next recipe . . .

Read my previous post:

http://open.salon.com/blog/ciocio/2010/03/18/living_life_one_recipe_at_a_time_32