Last August, my parents came out to visit me in San Francisco. One of our excursions was to the Serramonte Farmer's Market, our favorite farmers' market for fresh fruit. My mom was very excited when she saw the fabulous blueberry vendor. She immediately bought a couple of quarts of blueberries and made three blueberry kuchens for us and friends.

The kuchen was simple to make and it was absolutely delicious. Hungry Bear got the recipe from my mom, but sadly, we didn't make a kuchen before blueberry season ended. We thought we'd have to wait until summer before finding high quality, reasonably priced blueberries again.

A few days ago, we were trying to survive the craziness at Costco and stumbled upon big packages of fresh blueberries. Hungry Bear declared that we should buy some blueberries and make a kuchen! It turns out the blueberries are from Chile and the growing season down south is November to March. So much for eating local, as the blueberries looked too good to turn down, and we needed a blueberry fix badly!

In our quest to eat lighter and less rich meals, I made Italian white bean and spinach soup today. It's been rainy and chilly in San Francisco, so a nice bowl of warm, comforting soup was perfect for dinner.

I wanted a quick fix meal and opted for canned cannellini beans. Sometimes you just don't want to presoak beans or simmer them for an hour. And instead of using the traditional pancetta or ham, I replaced it with healthier ground turkey. It's a super simple recipe that can be made in thirty minutes or less, definitely less if you aren't snapping pictures.

The soup has great flavors from the herbs, onions, garlic and ground turkey. Add a dash of hot sauce, and it's even better. We had crusty Italian country bread with the soup. It's a simple, satisfying soup that's easy to make. What else would you want, besides a bowl right now?

I'm a big fan of peanut butter and honey sandwiches (PB&H). Forget about the jelly, it's better with honey. With peanut butter, I prefer the simple sweetness of honey over fruity jams and jellies.

One of my favorite breakfast items is an open-faced peanut butter, banana and honey sandwich, a PBB&H if you will. It's open-faced because I use a thick cinnamon swirl bread from Trader Joe's. It's a hearty wheat bread with a great cinnamon flavor. For breakfast, I usually toast a piece of bread, spread it with creamy peanut butter, slice a banana and drizzle a little bit of honey on top. Two open-face PBB&H sandwiches are very filling and keep me fueled up during long bike rides.

The funny thing is, I refused to eat peanut butter for almost fifteen years. My disdain for peanut butter started during nursery school. My family and I just immigrated to the States and I was literally fresh off the boat. Well, we took a boat from Saigon to Hong Kong, and flew the rest of the way to a small Pennsylvania town, New Cumberland.

Each day after nursery school let out, I would go to a classmate's home, whose mother baby-sat us until my mom finished work. This is were I was first introduced to peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I recall it wasn't too bad initially, but I was used to savory banh mi, pho and rice plates.

I never use nuts in my chocolate desserts. I wouldn't dare put them in our chewy chocolate chunk cookies or in our brownies. Call me nutty, but I like to keep our chocolate desserts pure and simple.

The one nut I'll make an exception for is the macadamia nut. I love the richness and creaminess of this nut. As I was flipping through some cookbooks, I stumbled upon Jamie Oliver's two-nuts chocolate torte recipe, which uses almonds and walnuts.

The recipe looked simple enough, so I used it with a few changes. The first modification was substituting macadamia nuts for the almonds and walnuts. When I walked to the local supermarket, the only macadamia nuts available were roasted and salted nuts. I figured it would be okay, since most cake recipes ask for around a teaspoon of salt. Since macadamia nuts are higher in fat content than almonds and walnuts, I cut the amount of butter. The final change was the addition of vanilla extract to enhance the chocolate flavor.