How to Celebrate Your Second Anniversary - via Food

1. Organize the menu (consult Martha Steward's Everyday Food magazine). Get excited about cooking with cherries that match your cherry apron.



2. Get excited to be able to use your new food processor for the first time! Even get excited to peel off the sticker and wash the parts. (This is all very exciting, if you didn't catch on to that yet.)

3. Get all your Mise En Places en place.

4. Get the dessert ready first. Use the new food processor (wahoo!) to mix up the "cup" portion of your Lime and Cherry Cups.

5. Look online for alternatives to pie weights. Turns out rice works fine, too. So that's how they do it... Bake the Cups.

6. Place your hand-pitted, halved cherries into the Cups. Cover with the limey-custardy mix. Avoid spilling to the best of your ability. Pop back in the oven. Bake again.

7. Admire how much they look like the photograph, and pat yourself on the back for succeeding at the most important part--dessert.

8. Reward yourself for making a great dessert by next mixing up the cocktails: sherry spritzers. (Tip: Any cocktail will likely look awesome and much fancier with a slice of citrus.)

9. Complete the rest of dinner: Skirt Steak, Warm Bean Salad, Bacon-Wrapped Corn on the Cob (with a little salt and cayenne pepper - sooooo good!).

10. Adore your hubby's look of (posed, forced?) excitement.

11. Enjoy a glass of port as your after-dessert dessert, remembering all the great port you had during your wine-country-California honeymoon. Best served chilled, in champagne glasses marked with the year you were married, purchased just after New Year's Eve of 2009, on sale for a few dollars from Pick n Save.

12. Reminisce about 2 great years and look forward to many more!

(All together now: Awwwwww...)