Today I am pleased to present a guest post. This past weekend was 2 members of the TFIMB family's birthdays, the design team! since I was all the way across the ocean, I was unable to celebrate so I had to give posting dutys to someone who could. This post is all about kim, but rich, happy birthday to you as well. The rest of this post will be written by my good friend steph, but i may leave a comment in italics. Happy birthday guys! leave some love for them in the comments.

For those of you that may not know...I love Birthdays...in fact I love any reason to celebrate at all. Kim's Birthday this Saturday was perfect timing to get my baking skills back up to par. I'm a huge fan of cupcakes instead of cakes for birthday desserts for two reasons. One being that you have the opportunity to have various designs and colors without looking over done. Second, in my personal opinion I feel that people are more likely to grab a cupcake then to grab a piece of cake that has to be on a plate and ate with a fork. Cupcakes are low maintenance and fun to eat. That being said....I have been hearing lots about Amy Sedaris' cupcakes, and wanted to give them a shot. If you don't know who she is, I'd suggest watching some Strangers with Candy. I decided to stick with the vanilla cupcake recipe and add a special touch of stuffing them with some chocolate frosting.

My sister has made the most heart attack inducing, cholesterol raising, trans-fatty incredible meal that she wanted to share with the world the only way she knew how, with a guest post on TFIMB!  She will take over for the rest of the post and I may have some comments in red.

Since the 1st Celtics playoff game vs. the Atlanta Hawks, there has been a feeding frenzy at my house.  One of our regular group, who has been there for every game, could easily take on Kobayashi in a hot dog eating contest. Since the beginning of the playoffs, he's been talking about the chili and cheese corn dog fries that he saw on Phantom Gourmet.  My promise was that they would happen when we made it to the finals.  Well, here we are, game 2: the C's vs. Lakers.  

We went to Amy’s for a Cuban dinner party this past weekend and it was a great time.  I have never had some of the ingredients and flavors she worked with and I was excited to try them all week.  Mandi went over and helped her take pictures and cook in the afternoon, then we all showed up around 7.  Amy will be writing the rest of the post, but I may leave a few comments in red.  Also the Recipes (as usual) are at the bottom of the post.

Today I have a guest post from the design team.  Rich and Kim had a few friends over Rich and Mike’s apartment and served them a delicious looking duck dinner.  When a bunch of friends get together like this, it makes me wish I could be back in Boston hanging out with them.  But in a few weeks, I will be making them jealous with weekly beach trips so it isn’t so bad.  Rich’s comments will be in green, and I might make a few in black.

"Cookin' Up Some Quack"

Kim, Mike, Steph, Alex, Amy, and I were the 6 party people on Friday...  good thing there weren't any more people than that, even though I invited 5 other people who couldn't come.  The amount of food ended up literally being just enough and there was only 1 piece of Duck left over.

On Sunday afternoon I was making some Chile-Chocolate Ice Cream. Rich emailed me saying that he and Kim were making Chili with vanilla in it. I really thought it was weird that we were making exact opposite foods. Click below for the story...