I usually don't get too personal in my posts and just stick to the basics (good food, good photos, good recipe). For the most part, I don't think you are interested in what Hungry Bear and I do outside of our adventures in the kitchen. But, I'm making an exception with this post to fully explain why we made these decadent cocoa brownies.

I've mentioned our NYC friends, Jeff and Aimee, in the past. They organized our first cupcake tasting tour. I met Jeff in 1990 when I was a sophomore at Penn State. Despite getting off on the wrong foot (Jeff initially disliked me, imagine that?), we become very close and eventually lived together for a year and half.

Over the last few weeks, Hungry Bear and I have bought a ton of strawberries from Rodriguez Farms, our favorite strawberry vendor at the Serramonte Farmers' Market. The berries were sweet, juicy and a great value, a flat (12 baskets) was only $14. And their organic berries were just a few dollars more.

Needless to say, we've eaten a lot of fresh strawberries lately and needed to make something with them. After pondering what to bake, we decided to turn our amazingly simple blueberry kuchen recipe into a strawberry kuchen. The only changes to the recipe were the substitution of lemon zest and vanilla extract for the cinnamon.

Last year, we watched the Barefoot Contessa make chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter icing and thought it was a brilliant combination. We actually made them for dessert in our first post (scroll down) on the site. They were a big hit, so we made them again this past Sunday.

Although we loved Ina's union of chocolate and peanut butter, we thought her cupcake recipe had too many ingredients. I'm sure the cake part tastes great, but we would have bought sour cream and buttermilk, used half, and eventually thrown the rest away.

Instead, we turned to one of our favorite chocolate cupcake recipes by Gale Gand (BTW, her fudgy frosting is killer). We love the simplicity of the cupcake batter... no eggs, no butter, no mixer required.

Hungry Bear and I are almost done moving. It's been non-stop packing, unpacking, organizing, purging, contractors coming and going, dusting, sweeping, vacuuming and crying... we can't wait to finish so we can finally enjoy the renovated digs. The first SND in the new kitchen is this coming Sunday and we're going to prepare a major feast to celebrate!

Over the last few months, we've had many great Sunday nite dinners. Sometimes I took pictures and other times I just wanted to eat and not bother with documenting the meal. Who wants to carry around camera equipment, a tripod and a lighting rig all the time? I'm kidding about the lighting. Although, I would bring my own lights if it weren't such a hassle.

In the slideshow, you'll see a roundup of SND meals going back to January. For some reason (waiting for recipes, bad lighting, awful photographer... me) or other, I haven't shared these meals until now.

Mexican at Deb and Brennan's  (January 7)

• Vegetarian Tortilla Soup
• Caesar Salad with Chili-Cilantro Dressing
• Turkey Enchiladas
• Crème Caramel

Chinese Hot Pot at Jane and Mark's  (January 27)

• Chinese Hot Pot (beef, lamb, chicken, tofu, meatballs, spinach, mushrooms, etc.)
• Chocolate Crackle Cookies

Hawaiian at Tracie and Eric's (February 16)

• Japanese/Hawaiian-Style Potato Salad
• Salmon Tofu Salad - tofu, salmon, onions, tomatoes, watercress, and bean sprouts with a soy sauce-based sauce
• Broiled Sushi - crab, mayo, plain yogurt wrapped with nori
• Steamed Dungeness Crabs
• Clams
• Lemon Cream Napoleon
• Butter Mochi with Coconut Milk

Simple Sardines at Jane and Mark's (March 2)

• Grilled Sardines with a French baguette
• Mixed Green Salad with Heirloom Tomatoes

Sorry for not including any recipes. I'm hoping to get back on a normal posting routine shortly. I'll leave you with a picture of our new range. The next Sunday nite dinner has to take advantage of all the new features (pot filler, wok grate, griddle, savory oven and sweet oven). We're thinking a pasta course, a stir-fry, a big roast and a baked dessert. Any suggestions on what to make?

Carrot cake again? I know, I know, how much carrot cake can someone eat? Well, I've eaten entirely too much of it in the last two weeks. After Hungry Bear made her fantastic carrot cake, I wanted to make a light version while her normal, full-fat version was still fresh on our minds.

The light carrot cake recipe was adapted from Cook's Illustrated (CI). I used all the CI fat reducing steps...

• Reduced the amount of oil from 1 1/2 cups to 1/2 cup
• Reduced the number of eggs from 4 to 3
• Used Philadelphia Neufchatel reduced-fat cream cheese
• Lowered the sugar quantity in the frosting

Then, I kept the majority of the normal cake's other ingredients to keep the flavors similar, which means pineapples and coconut flakes were included.

Cook's Illustrated's light cream cheese frosting recipe uses 12 oz of reduced fat cream cheese and no butter. I didn't like the idea of buying two 8 oz boxes of low fat cream cheese and not use 4 oz. So, I modified the recipe to use 8 oz of cheese and added a little butter.