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.

Yesterday, I wanted something Asian for dinner... Vietnamese, Chinese, Thai, whatever. I just needed something comforting over rice. Hungry Bear suggested making a stir-fry with flank steak and I reminded her about the asparagus in the fridge. So, she whipped up garlic beef with asparagus and shiitake mushrooms.

The key to any stir-fry with thin slices of beef is not to over cook the meat. Hungry Bear made it perfectly as it remained tender and moist. The stir-fry was really flavorful from the oyster sauce, soy, garlic and shiitakes.

A few weeks ago, Hungry Bear and I went to lunch at Ella's, our favorite breakfast place in San Francisco. Usually, I order a burger or a heavy egg scramble for lunch, but this time I went with a mushroom, onion and gruyere sandwich on a buttermilk bun. The sandwich was great and I knew immediately, we were going to make this at home.

We tried to replicate the sandwich a couple of days ago. It was easy to make and only required sautéing onions and mushrooms. Our version of the sandwich included portobello mushrooms, crimini mushrooms, onions and provolone on a focaccia roll. It was supposed to be gruyere, but our Trader Joe's didn't have any... not that provolone is a second class cheese. The sandwich was simply delicious. We served the sandwich with a tomato and English cucumber salad. If we had a ripe avocado, it would have gone into the salad too.

We rarely participate in blogging events, but when I recently learned about Barbara's LIVESTRONG With A Taste of Yellow event, I knew we had to make something yellow for LIVESTRONG day (May 13th). As an avid cyclist, I'm a Lance Armstrong fan, but I'm a bigger fan of the Lance Armstrong Foundation, which provides survivorship services for people affected by cancer.

Over the years, I've had a few friends battle and survive cancer. And I've had a few relatives lose the fight. For the last four years, I've worn a LIVESTRONG bracelet every single day in support of people living with cancer and each year, I make a donation to the LAF. I know it's not much relative to the funding required to fight cancer, but every penny counts. So if you have the means, please make a contribution to the Lance Armstrong Foundation. It's a wonderful charity with a great cause.

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.