Like any good aspiring foodie, I find myself watching a lot of cooking and food television. Not long ago, on an episode of Alton Brown's Good Eats I saw a retro looking sign in the background that I suddenly wanted for my kitchen.

The Boulevard Luncheon series started about a year ago and I finally made my way over for the April luncheon. This month's local restaurant was KC Hopps, owner of Barley's, 75th Street and Odouwd's. This series is all about pairing KC's hometown beer with local eateries to showcase the best of Kansas City. Plus, it's held in the Muhlbach suite at the brewery which has one of the coolest views of downtown.

In honor of St. Patrick's Day I wanted to make something festive. Last year we made homemade Rubens, so I thought this year should be dessert, and to really celebrate, it should have beer. I Googled and found many variations on the same Guinness Cake recipe, but used this one from GroupRecipes.com with one serious substitution - I didn't use Guinness as the beer. I substituted Young's Double Chocolate Stout. I know what you're thinking, "Is it really an Irish cake if it doesn't have Guinness? And you used a British beer instead? For shame."

For my birthday, my boyfriend got me an awesome KitchenAid stand mixer. It's a 10-speed, bowl tilt, Professional HD model, and it's red - so I couldn't be more exicted. To break it in we decided to make homemade pizza dough and then top out pizzas with whatever we wanted. Not only did Aiden (the name for my KitchenAid) really impress me, but we had a lot of fun cooking and learning a new recipe.

Not too long ago I ordered an eggplant sandwich at a restaurant (well really a brewpub) and really liked it. So when we walked into the grocery store last night and saw that eggplant was on sale, we decided we would make our own. Usually when I try a new food or recipe, I do some extensive research, but this was really just flying by the seat of my pants, guessing what I thought I would need and what would taste good. It was more fun to experiment than follow a recipe, and I think the results were fantastic.

I’ve never had a real desire to have a garden before. I don't really have a green thumb and I have horrible memoires of my mother making me help her weed her garden behind the house. Though, I do remember really enjoying the outcome. However, as I have adventured into cooking with more flavors, having fresh herbs sounded really useful. So I’ve started small. I bought a cilantro plant and a basil plant and put them on the patio.

Last night we certainly weren’t in the mood to shop or really cook. We has just gotten home from a St. Louis, where we had eaten like kings all weekend. So I wanted to fix something light with what we had in the kitchen. I created White Wine Garlic Bacon Green Beans. It is a slight twist on the bacon green beans that are popular at summer cook-outs. These turned out to be sweet but savory and most importantly, really easy.

The first week of May, I went to Germany for nine days with my boyfriend Corey. This being my first trip to Europe, I really didn’t know what to expect. I expected to drink beer, see old buildings and not know the language. I didn’t realize how much I would learn and how relaxing and calm the European spirit is. I’ve posted a few pictures here on my website:

http://sarah-partridge.com/travel/germany

I really love olives and I really love dips so about a year ago I set out to create a true olive dip. Several recipes I have tasted, have olives in them, but they were more of just a dip with olives rather than an olive dip. I wanted to create something that tasted Mediterranean but still was using common ingredients, most importantly, lots of olives. This recipe has the texture of a tapenade, but a lot more flavors. I have made this dip several times and heard some good comments from my fellow olive lovers.