All of a sudden, the summer is as awesome an any summer could possibly be–the days are no longer oppressively hot, swinging from a temperate high seventies to mid-eighties and the humidity has dropped–and just like that, it is also almost over. Noooo!

I’m not handling this very well. I don’t want summer to be almost over. I don’t care that I love fall; I love even more not having to wear jackets and toe-covering shoes and socks. I hate socks most of all. Everyone knows that fall is abundantly short-lived and all of a sudden you’re catapulted into the longest, winter ever, and …

I’m not ready.

And yet, there’s something happening in our kitchen that subverts my insistence that summer must not end. I made a tiny braise (it was vegetables but still, a braise), I’ve started missing that butternut and chickpea salad we made almost weekly last winter and now this too: I put cinnamon in a coffee cake.

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One of my favorite things about cooking is being surprised. As much fun as it is chasing some childhood recipe or flavor ideal I caught a whiff of at some restaurant, somewhere, nothing matches the surprise of finding a recipe that you’re not entirely sure will be your thing, trying it anyway and then spending the rest of the night going “this is good,” “wow, this is so good,” and “wow, I had no idea it would be this good.”

Well, that part is kind of boring to anyone but the person experiencing the delicious surprise but still, this recipe is one of those. I have to admit that my fearful-of-combining-sweet-and-savory husband has poisoned me a little, and when I see warm spices like cinnamon and allspice in a savory recipe, I’m doubtful I will like it. Not that it won’t work, per se, just that it won’t work for me. Even though a good part of the world adds these spices to their savory dishes and surely they can’t all be wrong.

But these meatball skewers are awesome. Awe-some. And then some. I expect that some astute readers might have noticed that I rarely feature meat recipes; I’m not enthralled enough with it that I am easily impressed into trying new recipes. But when I am, well, hot damn. I didn’t think I could even like a meat anything this much, nonetheless a meatball. They’re spicy and juicy and delicious charred at the edges, and the minty yogurt sauce is the perfect contrast for the kefta as well as the zucchini skewers and I want more right now.

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Be glad you’re not in the room with me these days, because I’ve been singing, or “wailing” as Alex likes to call it, “getting to knooooooow yoooooou” for days. Except that’s the only line I know, and as usual, it has not stopped me from restarting the tune every 20 seconds or so. Oh, and I don’t even know what “pitch” is or how to approximate attaining it. Really, I’m a delight.

Nevertheless, as painful as it might be to hear about in person, I really do want to get to know you better and I’ve finally buckled down and begged Alex (see how I did that there?) to put together a questionnaire-type thing that will help me towards that goal. Despite the fact that you’ve given this site such a fun and enthusiastic comment section, I suspect that only about 5 to 10 percent of you have ever chimed in, which is totally fine but means that the rest of you are something of a mystery to me.

For example, do you like pie after a movie or are you completely tired of me overusing this True Romance reference? Do you like your pancakes with butter and jam or maple syrup? How many days a week do you eat PB&J for lunch? Is four too many? Do you think that I could shatter wine glasses with my high notes?

Okay, fine, I don’t really get into any of those questions, mostly I just want to know a little bit more about who you are, where you’re from and how you feel about cooking, and the answers are just for me, me me–not some marketing research group or an ad network–and to satisfy my curiousity, so I hope you’ll consider taking a few minutes to answer 15 easy questions. In fact, I’ll even leave it open for a whole week, so you know, you’ll have no excuse not to regale me with your answers.

[The Smitten Kitchen Getting to Knooow Yooou Poll]

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I am sometimes certain that I wait all year for tomato season, you know, the way a more normal person might be excited for the Giants to get back to the field or eagerly anticipate whatever sleek and minimal trinket Apple has coming out this fall. But for me, it’s just tomatoes. I eat them on eggs, in sandwiches, cooked and raw in every possible format from paste to pasta to chili and seriously, don’t even try to bring me a cream cheese-schmeared bagel without a thin slice of tomato on it. Alex did once and let’s just say, it didn’t go over well. Poor Alex.

I love tomatoes so much that I even occasionally take part in the blasphemy that is “sun-dried tomatoes,” most of which are about as dried out in the sun as I am this week–unfortunately not the case for either of us. But lets talk about what sun-dried tomatoes aspired to be before their dreams were co-opted by food packagers and evil-minded chemists: tomatoes roasted slowly at a low temperature.

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Alex’s birthday was this past weekend and in case you are new here, let me give you a loose outline of a Standard Dessert Alex Politely Requests: Chocolate. Chocolate with chocolate. Chocolate with caramel. Chocolate with toffee. Chocolate with coffee. Chocolate with hazelnut cream. Chocolate with Oreos. Chocolate cheesecake with brownie chunks. Chocolate icebox cake. Chocolate with raspberries. Chocolate with white chocolate. Chocolate with dulce de leche. Chocolate with banana cake.

What, can you sense a theme or something?

This year we added one more to the chocolate cake pile: Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake. Well, actually, the technical title of the cake is Sour Cream-Chocolate Cake with Peanut Butter Frosting and Chocolate Peanut Butter Glaze, though it is actually a Sour Cream-Chocolate Cake with Cream Cheese Peanut Butter Frosting and Chocolate Peanut Butter Glaze, but all you really need to know is that if you know a chocolate-and-peanut-butter lover, you must make this cake.

Because did I mention the chocolate cake? With the chocolate-peanut butter ganache (I bet you didn’t even know such a thing existed, I sure didn’t and my life may never be the same again. I wish I could quit it.) And the cream cheese peanut butter frosting and filling? Actually, let us pause on that last part. If you’re anything like me, the thought of cream cheese and peanut butter intentionally mixed probably gives you a bit of pause. I don’t know cheese + sweetened peanuts? That can’t be right, I thought. Well, I was wrong. They are perfect together, with the tangy/saltiness of the cream cheese helping the peanut butter hit all the right notes.

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I am tortured by two opposing forces in my life: the fact that I love poached eggs–on anything and everything, from asparagus to slow-roasted slices of tomato, crisped cups of Canadian bacon, black bread, I could keep going… — and the fact that I’m terrible at making them.

And this is why it is so ridiculous amusing that I am giving you–or at least the eleven of you that said you were afraid of poaching eggs–a poached egg tutorial today. And by “today” I mean two days because it took me two tries to even get one worth photographing (though in my defense, holding the camera in your right hand while lowering an egg into a pot with your left does have a certain inevitability of disaster).

Obviously, this makes me sort of expert, so let’s get started!

How to Poach an Egg

There are about as many methods to poaching eggs as there are eggs on this earth, from plastic wrap (sorry, ew) to poaching cups to cupcake liners seriously, I’ve lost track but I am sure that people will be eager to share their own in the comments. This is simply the one that works for me. When I’m not holding a camera in my other hand.

First, heat a pot with a few inches of water in it.

Put a splash of vinegar in the water. This helps tighten up the egg. I know there are strong pro- and anti-vinegar in egg-poaching waters out there, but like I said: this is just what works for me!

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I spend a good lot of my spring, summer and fall weekends on my friend Jocelyn’s roof. Not only do we get to catch up with friends, drink an unthinkable amount of pink wine and/or Pimm’s cups, shoot awesome pictures of sunsets, Joc has a consummately awesome grill, allowing us all of the summer deliciousness we’re deprived of in our Manhattan apartment. It’s a good deal if there ever was one.

However, some weekends Jocelyn goes out of town. And occasionally, Alex and I have family or other friends to go see. And sometimes, we go a whole two or three weeks without making it onto Joc’s roof, and it makes us very sad. Because we miss the grill.

Which brings me up to the purchase that broke the Smitten Kitchen’s back: our new grill pan. The history of this is that pretty much any time I ever say to Alex, “ooh, look at this [kitchen item]! We should get it!” his standard response is “That’s great, honey. But where will we put it?” To which I respond, “Blah, blah, blah… We’ll FIND a place.” And you know what? We usually do. (Please don’t ask about the wedding cake pans in Alex’s closet. It’s a best-not-touched-on subject.)

But this grill pan doesn’t fit anywhere. And it weighs a metric ton. And it might literally be the first time in Smitten Kitchen history that I will admit that Alex was right: maybe we should have figured out where it went before I bought it. Right now it lives on the floor under the single cart/counter with god-knows-what and its good friend, I’d-rather-not-think-about-it. This is not an ideal long-term solution.

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Alex loves limes. I mean, loves them. He eats them, and no, I don’t mean dusted in sugar. No, not squeezed into a glass of seltzer. He simply eats them, the way that most people eat those slices of oranges that come with your fortune cookies at suburban Chinese restaurants. He eats the wedges that people put out on their bars for cocktails, the slices that come on top of a pile of Pad Thai, those on the side of a sizzling fajita platter and the other half I haven’t used in a recipe, lying unloved on the cutting board.

The first time I saw him do it, I was taken aback. “Did you just eat a lime?” Perhaps it was because it was from my gin and tonic, it was an early-on date and he’d obtained it in a “Are you using that?” kind of way. But I loved that he didn’t think it was the least bit odd. I love that now we’ll be at a party or bar and one of our friends will notice his lime-eating ways for the first time and be shocked.

I seriously think they dipped his baby bottle in vinegar. It’s the only logical explanation.

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Stop. No, seriously. Stop everything you’re doing. What are you eating for lunch today? Are you going to one of those delis that will put whatever you want in the salad and mix it with some mysterious, better-not-closely-considered dressing in a squeeze bottle and charge you $10? (Is this a NYC thing, or do they have these everywhere?)(Further, have I waded so far into the NYC bubble that I no longer know what people outside it eat for lunch?) Well, I want you to take a good long look at it and repeat after me: No more deli salads.

Because have you seen this beauty? This should be your lunch tomorrow. This salad dressing is so good. So so so good. Oh, and the salad isn’t half-bad either.

People, I’m in love. Like just about everyone else who bakes, I seem to always have buttermilk left in the fridge, but it’s always too little to make something something frosted and fancy. I had no idea there was such a simple dressing out there that could use it up in half-cup increments, or heck, give you an excuse to buy more because it’s so darn good.

All I’m saying is, don’t say I didn’t warn you, okay?

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I uploaded pictures of this recipe yesterday onto Flickr, but didn’t get to telling you all about it because I was feeling a little lackadaisical after that whole seven days in a row of posting thing. Three hours later, I received this comment: “Omg, post the recipe already!”

Hmmph! I thought. The natives are getting restless.

But who could blame them? Just look at these things! And, oh, to taste them. (As I just did. Because the memory of their deliciousness was vague and I had to. For the sake of clarification.) They’re tart and buttery and fruity and tangy and crumbly… And well, I understand why anyone would get impatient. Can you imagine how much people would revolt if they knew that I had baked these a whole five days ago and have kept them from you since?

It could get ugly.

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