In sum, my weekend was macaroons. Macaroons linked everything together, sort of like a common thread (or flake, if you will), because:

• I completely burned and ruined an entire batch of chocolate-espresso-hazelnut cantucci on Thursday. This upset me because a) I’ve never burned a whole batch of cookies before, and b) I was really looking forward to having cookies to dunk in my coffee, on Friday morning. And c) I tried the boil-in-baking-soda-bath method of husking the hazelnuts, before putting them into the dough, and it worked.
• Friday I ended up working from home for the afternoon. This gave me the opportunity to rectify the cookie and kitchen prowess situation. While biscotti would have taken up too much of my time, I found a great vegan macaroon recipe that took up only about 10 minutes of my “working” hours.
• Another 20 minutes or so were taken up enjoying the supremely beautiful March afternoon, out in our garden. Not a bad Friday.
• After finishing up with work, and fueled by two macaroons, I mustered up the motivation to get outside and do an interval run, in a light rain. On a muddy hill. Monitoring my heart rate, all the while. Managing to not fall down. Success!
• Midday Saturday, I made a successful batch of lemon anise cantucci.
• I went rock climbing outside on Saturday afternoon with two most excellent people, Josh and Julie, both of whom are macaroon fans, but one of whom (the former) is a ENORMOUS fan of macaroons. So I shared the remainder of the macaroons with them and some other friends and strangers who showed up at the crag. Coconut = love.
• On Sunday morning, I got out for a great two-hour trail run with friends. It’s likely that the macaroons from the day before helped fuel it, especially as I had a very egg-heavy, carb-light breakfast.

  

• Inspired by kitchen success, I attempted and succeeded at making flan for the first time. The same recipe allowed me to use up the Mexican chocolate that we’ve had in the cupboard for years. Flan is magic, even if I had to bake it twice as long.
• I likely had to bake it twice as long because for the first 20 minutes, the pan of flan ramekins had to share the oven with spare ribs.
• The spare ribs we had for dinner (with garlic-braised broccoli) were most excellent.

Foodie weekend. Plus yoga, climbing, running, and Dr. Who. Macaroons!