Sweet

Passion for food and cooking. My friend MF has it. A long, long time ago, we worked together at my very first advertising agency. It was a scary, scary place and those of us who've worked there all share a special bond over the experience. As MF describes it, it's as if we're survivors of an abusive family. Haha! I can only laugh about it now. I think it was she who once calculated the number of hours we were working and concluded we were getting paid less than minimum wage. (Note to self: Getting paid $8-10 an hour in the kitchen isn't such a bad deal after all). Sometimes I wonder if 7 years at that place damaged me beyond repair and has put me in a permanent state of "advertising burnout."

Anyways, MF was always bound for great things, and I'm amazed at her courage to live out her love and passions. First, she left the "abusive family." A big step. Then she became a freelancer. Then she moved to paradise. Yep. She relocated to Hawaii. And now she's put out a cookbook of her very own, called Just Sweets. It's a momentous occasion because she was always making tasty things to share with her fellow orphans at the old agency, and I had always hoped she would take her cooking to the public, maybe open up her own little place. I remember after tasting her red velvet cake for the first time. I was hooked. And her boozy eggnog (yum). And her mac-and-cheese (pure comfort). I was so excited to see that she shared her red velvet cake recipe in this book. Other appealing recipes I'm looking forward to trying are her Haitian-style Bread Pudding, and Beata's "Superduper" Sweet Cake.

Available at Lulu.com in downloadable PDF format for only $5.00.