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I'm smitten with Smitten Kitchen, a funny, informative, beautifully photographed food blog by Deb in New York City. Just perusing a week's worth of posts will leave you wishing that Deb was one of your friends, and that you got to come over to her place for dinner to enjoy some of that, and some of this, and oh yes that over there, some of that too. You too could sit with Deb and obsess over the perfect dumpling, chocolate cookies, or vanilla beans.

On vanilla beans, Deb writes:

So what am I doing with these beans, besides sticking my nose in their jar and whispering sweet nothings to them whenever we are alone together? Most embarrassingly, not much that I can share with you. The rice pudding of half-bean fame, so decadent that I felt that I was eating an entire fresh white truffle, in Paris in an outdoor café on a sunny spring day by the Seine, went ka-pouf before I took a picture. The tapioca pudding that my husband rejected (”What… IS… this? Oh, god. It’s rubber. I can’t chew it. Why would you feed me this?” he sobbed), was swallowed up by my spoonfuls in just three days, the act of pausing my consumption long enough to take pictures seeming ridiculous.

And on "World Peace" chocolate cookies:

If you haven’t yet abruptly stopped reading this tired-and-typical battle of weak will versus good intention and rushed to the kitchen to gather your butter and cocoa, perhaps this will convince you: the cookies are as sandy and light as you would expect from a sable, but dark as midnight and as zeroed-in on flavor as a pressed fudge brownie. It’s impossible to eat one warm from the oven without a milk chaser, right from the carton. Those tiny dabs of bittersweet chocolate are like that good thing that happens on a day you thought couldn’t get any better. “For me? You shouldn’t have!” But she did. And I did. And it’s getting bad, so bad that I didn’t work from home today as I had originally intended to for the sole purpose of putting some distance between me and World Peace. I’m sure you understand.

Smitten yet? Check it out.