While I've been tucked away in my downtown baltimore castle (read highrise), hidden away up here waiting to be rescued (ha!), I've been waxing experimental with food. For the most part, I don't do recipes. I'm all instinct, intuition, and cheap knock-offs of the Barefoot Contessa's ideas. For the last several years, for a number of emotional and practical reasons, I have not given free reign to my creativity in the kitchen. Now, however, it is being reawakened. Today, completely spontaneously, I decided to make sundried tomato dip. I didn't have any cream cheese, so I made do with mayo and sour cream. It would have had more body and weight if I had had the cream cheese, but I liked this prototype a lot.

I'm excited to try and make jambalaya next weekend. Sarah has given me a couple of great "starter" cookbooks, and there is a recipe in one of them I'm going to use as a jumping off point.