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.

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.

Last week, I planned on making a tomato based penne. But as we were grocery shopping, I saw a cheap can of crab meat (1 pound for $7.99). Since we are on a recession budget, I decided to give the canned crab a try. And the penne dish morphed into an asparagus crab pasta with leeks and mushrooms.

I tried to keep the pasta simple and make it a one pot dish... well two pots, you need another one to cook the pasta, but you get my point. After I sautéed the garlic, leek, asparagus and mushroom mixture, I gave it a taste and it was great by itself. I opened the can of crab and finally realized it was all claw meat... damn it! No wonder it was so cheap.