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.

We love Trader Joe's. It's our favorite place to pick up staples for the pantry. While the quality of the produce and meat isn't as good as Whole Foods Paycheck or our neighborhood supermarket, the remaining items are just as good or better. And it's definitely the best value among our local grocery stores.

Besides saving us money, we go to TJ's for their unique and interesting products. We loved the Emperor's New Cloves garlic, but sadly they don't carry it anymore because the garlic was grown in China. Anyway, there's always something new to discover at Trader Joe's and I'm constantly on the lookout for them.

My one complaint with TJ's is the overabundance of cookies, chocolate and candies in the aisles. It's so hard not to grab a box of treats with each visit. Damn you TJ, for constantly pushing your sweet crack on me!

Most of the time, I'm strong enough to resist picking up a box of cookies. But there are a few items I never leave without. So, here are a few five of my favorite things...

• Organic Clusters Cereal - a good combination of textures and flavors. Our three favorite cluster cereals are the raisin bran, vanilla almond and maple pecan. The raisin bran is the healthiest one.
• Organic Peanut Butter - by far the best store bought natural peanut butter. You won't go wrong with creamy or crunchy.
• Tempting Trail Mix - it has several types of nuts, dried cherries, peanut butter chips and chocolate chips! Salty, crunchy, chewy and sweet... yum!
• Cinnamon Swirl Bread - a thick wheat bread full of cinnamon. You can make a great open face peanut butter, banana and honey sandwich with it.
• Cheap, Interesting Wine - we can always find inexpensive, but good, wine at TJ's. From the slideshow, the question mark wine is a 2005 red table wine from Oreana Winery. The happy face wine is a 2005 syrah from Project Happiness. We have no idea if the wines are good, but we couldn't pass up the labels.

That's my top 5 list. If you shop at Trader Joe's, what are your favorite things? I would love to know.

The first time I was offered a tofu chocolate chip cookie, I made a funny face, probably the same look that some of you are giving me right now. With a little hesitation, I took a bite and much to my surprise, the tofu cookie was really good. Ever since then, I've always looked forward to eating the cookies made by our friend, Jeanne. In fact, I like them so much, I've made football game bets with Jeanne, pitting her tofu cookies against my chewy chocolate chunk cookies.

The recipe was created by Jeanne's friend, a certified nutritionist, who wanted to make a healthy alternative to traditional chocolate chip cookies. Butter is not used in the recipe and is replaced with peanut butter and cream cheese. In addition to the soy protein from the tofu, the cookies are made with high-protein egg whites and the aforementioned peanut butter. Lower glycemic index (GI) oat flour is used instead of all-purpose flour. The oat flour is also higher in protein and is gluten-free.

We made the tofu cookies for the first time last week and used white whole wheat flour instead of oat flour, which we couldn't find at the local supermarkets. We thought about using all-purpose flour, but decided to stay true to the healthy intent of the recipe and went with the whole wheat. The tofu cookies were good with predominant flavors from the whole wheat, peanut butter and Valrhona 61% chocolate chunks. I don't think anyone would be able to tell that the cookies contained tofu.

Vietnamese fresh spring rolls? Summer rolls? Salad rolls? What do you call these things? It's goi cuon in Vietnamese. The literally translation is salad (goi) roll (cuon). Whatever you call them, they are light, refreshing and delicious. Most restaurants serve salad rolls with nuoc cham, a fish sauce based dipping sauce, but did you know, it's ten times better with a spicy peanut Hoisin sauce.

A few weeks ago, Hungry Bear had a major craving for goi cuon after Nikki, a.k.a. Canary Girl, asked me to share my recipe. My version is a common shrimp and pork salad roll recipe that most Viet people make. As long as the ingredients are fresh, especially the lettuce and herbs, the salad rolls are going to be good.

I made goi cuon this past Sunday night as part of our Vietnamese/Chinese New Year celebration dinner with our SND friends. Every time I make a batch of salad rolls, I have more respect for my mom's ability to crank these things out. They are easy to make, but time consuming to prep and roll. My mom can probably roll 2 or 3 batches in the time I can make one. Next time, I'm just going to do the prep work and we'll have a salad roll rolling party.

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.