• Happy Paczki Day!  Also, Happy Fat Tuesday!  Instead of king cake, folks around these parts celebrate the day before Lent with something we recently discovered is basically a jelly donut on steroids.  Paczki (pronounced “pooch-key,” “punch-key,” “poonch-key,” or any and all of the above) are Polish pastries made with rich dough, filled with a variety of fruit and/or creme fillings, then deep fried and glazed or dusted with powdered sugar.  It’s probably a good thing that Paczki Day is only once a year.

• Speaking of holiday/food traditions, it’s not too late to make homemade corned beef for St. Patrick’s Day!  The beef has to brine for about a week, so there’s still plenty of time to procure all the spices (the recipe we use calls for 10 different spices) and pink curing salt (not a grocery staple, but readily available online.)  The result is well worth the effort.

• My brother J sent me this awesome link to a collection of “food fails,” in which people attempted to recreate beautiful baked goods they found on Pinterest and — you guessed it — they failed miserably.  Bless their hearts for trying.  And for posting the photos of their attempts on the Internets for all to see.

• Here’s an interesting post on the suggested shelf life of various foods.  We don’t necessarily agree with all of them (in our experience, apples last a lot longer than a month in the fridge and asparagus will keep longer than 2-3 days in the fridge if you cut about 1/2 an inch off their stems and stand them up in a container with a little water in the bottom), but it seems like a good starter resource if you aren’t sure how long certain foods are going to last.