Stay tuned!

I'm heading overseas for a little under two weeks for a trip with my family. We're returning to Barcelona, where I studied abroad last semester, and also visiting Paris.

I'll be back soon with lots of new posts as I Eat, Explore and Enjoy in Europe.

¡Nos vemos!

Lunch on the Lake

We have had nothing but blue skies since the cloudy streak ended this week, and I have been soaking up as much of the sunny weather as possible (which means I also learned my lesson and will be using more sunscreen from now on... ouch).

I caught up with a good friend the other day at a restaurant on the lakefront.

The town in which I grew up is located on the lake; water activities were always a fun part of my Minnesota summers as a kid.

We had a great view from our table. The tulips were so bright and cheery, I couldn't resist taking a picture!

I love that I grew up in a quaint community and that my best childhood friends lived just down the street. Now, it's always fun to come back and take a walk around town with old friends. There really is no place like home.

Minneapolis Farmers Market

Well it looks like my wishful thinking last night paid off! I awoke this morning to beautiful blue skies.

I headed off bright and early for the Minneapolis Farmers Market to see the spring flowers, pick up some fresh produce for dinner, and get some much-needed fresh air.

Toll House Cookie Pie for Colgate Day!

Where I go to college, we have a special tradition where we are obsessed with the number 13. As the tradition goes, the school was founded by "thirteen men with thirteen dollars and thirteen prayers." The first two numbers of the zip code are 13, and the rest add up to 13. The president of the school encourages us to get over our "triskaidekaphobia" (the fear of the number 13) because as a student, the number will be lucky for the rest of our lives.

And today, Friday the 13th, is the luckiest day of the year. (Unless, of course, there is more than one Friday the 13th).

There are a number of ways to celebrate Colgate Day. Alumni and students alike wear Colgate gear wherever they are, students held a dancing flash mob in the dining hall, and 13 members of the Colgate community even rang the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange on a Colgate Day in 2010.

One tradition that is especially exciting to people with a sweet tooth (hint: me) is that the Colgate Inn serves its famous Toll House Cookie Pie at a discounted price of $13 a pie.

Although I am over 1,000 away from campus today, I decided to make my own Toll House Cookie pie to celebrate Colgate Day.

If you're a Colgate alum or student, you can use this same recipe to help celebrate your love for Colgate. But even if you have no idea about Colgate, Adam & Eve, Willow Path, or triskaidekaphobia, you can still make this gooey, chewy, chocolatey treat for your own celebration.

Visiting Grandparents

I consider myself very lucky to be able to say that I am so close to my grandparents. They live about a 20 minute drive from where I grew up, and "going to grandma's" was always a constant in my childhood. Now that I'm older, I realize how special this is, and I really treasure our time together.

A few of the things I love about visiting my grandparents:

Welcome...

...to my new blog! After blogging my study abroad adventures in Barcelona and across Europe at Sigame a España, I was inspired to keep a blog following my other experiences at home here in the U.S. Now that finals are over, I plan for this blog to help document the sweetness of summer before my senior year of college as I "Eat, Explore, and Enjoy" in Minneapolis and San Francisco over the next few months.

"The Sweet Talker" has been inspired by a number of blogs over the past couple of years, namely The Pioneer Woman, CakeSpy, Joy the Baker, My Baking Addiction, Oh Joy! and Cupcakes and Cashmere (do you notice a trend here?). I hope that I can follow their footsteps to provide entertaining blog posts that are both a visual treat and fun to read.

It might take me a couple of weeks to get this blog really swinging, but stay tuned to see where my culinary and everyday endeavors take me!