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2013 Recipe Fails

December 26, 2013 by Erica

It’s the moooost wonderful tiiiime of the year. And that’s because it’s time for the post where I get to show you all how much I f#*%!ed up in the kitchen this year.

We can all share a good laugh and I’ll pretend like this isn’t a blow to my ego. Secretly I’ll be sobbing behind my laptop as I look at each one of these images and relive the hours of effort I put into making this totally disgusting food. And this obviously isn’t even half of the stuff that went wrong behind the scenes of this blog over the past twelve months; these are just the dishes I thought were worthy of documenting… before I tasted them, that is.

Without further ado:

2013 Recipe Fails

Let’s start with birthday cupcakes gone wrong. I thought it would be a good idea to make “brownie mosaic” peanut butter cupcakes (inspired by this brownie mosaic cheesecake) with chocolate frosting. Um… Too. Much. And if I say that, it’s really true. They tasted like I had closed my eyes in the baking aisle and just dumped the first five boxed mixes I touched into a bowl together. Not good.

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Kitchen Confessions II

November 27, 2013 by Erica

No recipe today – the fam is here, and we are saving up all our cooking energies for tomorrow. Soooo how about a few confessions? Here we go…

Kitchen Confessions II

My family brings out a side of me that looks something like this.

I feel much more involved in my youngest sister’s life since downloading Snapchat.

I didn’t use my crockpot once last winter.

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Vegan Chocolate Coconut Pudding with Coconut Caramel Sauce

October 3, 2013 by Erica

Chocolate Coconut Pudding with Coconut Caramel Sauce (Vegan)

This is up there with the longest post titles I have ever published. Let’s just go with it, though, because it’s a special occasion.

One year ago today, I posted my first recipe on this blog. The site wasn’t beautiful, the recipe wasn’t great, and the food photos were taken with my iPhone on my living room floor. But I posted it anyway, because I knew I had to start somewhere.

I actually registered this domain name and published an introductory post almost 2 weeks earlier. But then I was kind of… paralyzed with fear. What should I write about? Should my first recipe involve quinoa? Crap, I don’t even know how to develop my own recipes – I always follow other people’s! So my little blog sat with no content for a while, until I figured it out. And that’s why I’m considering the date of my first recipe post as my blogiversary – the day I decided to put my food out into the world and see what happened.

Chocolate Coconut Pudding with Coconut Caramel Sauce (Vegan)

I knew that a year later, I might not be blogging anymore. And if I was, I would be embarrassed to look back on my first posts. I knew there were thousands of other bloggers out there who would always do it better than me. I decided to be OK with that and just take baby steps.

So here I am, a year later! The proud mama of a little toddler one-year-old blog. Happy to say that I am still blogging and that yes, I am embarrassed of my first posts, especially the pictures. But also that I know I have a loooot further to go… and I fervently hope that a year from now, it’s these pictures I’ll be embarrassed of, because I will have progressed that much further. There are still thousands of bloggers who do it better than me, and I’m still OK with that. Because the truth is that I love creating recipes and sharing them here with you all. It’s the best creative outlet I’ve found, not to mention such a great community. That means YOU! Thank you so much for reading this food-related mumbo-jumbo that I post here. Every comment and email means so much to me – seriously. I feel so lucky to have you all as readers and invisible internet friends.

But enough of the mushy stuff. Let’s eat dessert, shall we?

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Kitchen Confessions

September 2, 2013 by Erica

Kitchen Confessions // Coffee & Quinoa

I go to the grocery store at least three times a week.

I’ve eaten ice cream for breakfast. Recently.

I use my linen closet for dish storage. (I think that’s the opposite of Carrie Bradshaw.)

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Funny Blog Keywords

February 12, 2013 by Erica

Funny Search Terms | coffeeandquinoa.com

I was just looking back through my recent Analytics data, and chuckled to myself over some of the funny and random search terms that landed users on my blog. I couldn’t help but share with you. Dear searchers for the following things, I don’t think I have what you’re looking for:

– cheese that looks like chocolate

– chocolate from goat

– cobwebs in quinoa

– coffee flavored quinoa

– girl scout cookies political correctness

– his and hers simple wedding cakes with blue

– how to harvest quinoa in the fall

– i got you a goat but

– quinoa adapting

– who is the author of garlic coffee

– yoga cakes

And my personal favorite:

– what to call a girl when they call you peanut

I get lots of random searches for quinoa that land on my site. (More on that later in the week!) Do you see any patterns like that in search terms for your blog? Any funny ones?

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