So far 2008 is shaping up to be way better than 2007, but the end of last year did see something pretty great: Treat Street! Cooler than a bake sale, cheaper than a pastry shop, Treat Street is a traveling bakery that occasionally pops up around my neighborhood, bringing with it delicious treats with a sense of humor. Their most recent sale was in early December and featured holiday-themed goodies (cupcakes decorated like reindeer!), autumn/winter flavors (chocolate cake glittering with pomegranate seeds, pumpkin cookies) and other assorted yumminess.

I came home with a bagful: a coconut-chocolate bar, an eggnog cupcake, a pumpkin-chocolate cookie and nature's greatest hybrid...the duffin. A cross between a donut and a muffin, it's the cinnamon-sugar-sprinkled lovely in the foreground. You may notice there is a bite taken out of it. That's because on the walk back home, peeking into the paper bag, I couldn't resist its sparkly charms and took it out to take a giant chomp while waiting at a crosswalk. It was totally worth it. Is it a fried muffin? I do not know. But I'd love the duffin no matter what it turned out to be.

I was pretty obsessed with Japanese yogurt while living in Japan. Nearly every morning for two years I ate the following: one hard-boiled egg, one slice of super-thick toast with butter and one small bowl of plain yogurt over sliced fruit. I also drank one glass of carrot juice. If any of these elements was missing, I would start the day slightly grumpy. Um, can you tell I like routine?

Back in the U.S., I searched for yogurt like the kind I ate in Japan. It should be creamy but not heavy, tangy but not too tart. It should not, under any circumstances, contain fake sweeteners or be made to taste like any sort of pie. I searched in vain.

But I was hopeful. A few months before leaving the land of delicious yogurt, I read about making your own yogurt on 101 Cookbooks and hatched a plan to one day brew my own perfect yogurt. As plans go, it was fairly simple. All I needed was a yogurt maker, a candy thermometer and a quart of milk. My sister provided the Salton Yogurt Maker as a Christmas gift (thanks, Jo!) and everything else fell quickly into place.

I was a little nervous while cooking up my first batch, visions of uncongealed milk floating through my head. There are a few places where the process can go wrong -- if your utensils are dirty, if your milk is too hot or too cold, if your starter is old -- but on the whole it's pretty straightforward. I brought four cups of organic milk and a bit of powdered milk to almost a boil, let it cool, added half a cup of yogurt as a starter, stirred, put it in the yogurt maker and waited four hours. Then I opened the lid to reveal my very own homemade yogurt, wonderfully congealed, which went into the fridge for cooling and further setting.

And how is it?

SO GOOD. So good I sometimes daydream about it at work. So good I've already polished off half the second batch. It's creamy and perfectly tangy and has a fresh bite that reminds me somehow of green apples. I eat it every day for breakfast -- unadorned, no honey or fruit or anything -- and I know if I were to run out, I would start the day extremely grumpy. So, yeah. If things didn't work out with the duffin, I think I'd marry my yogurt, that's how good it is.

Maybe you already suspected this, but I am only the second most famous person in my household. My Japanese candy super-fame melts like Meiji chocolate in the face of Rob's actual international super-fame. Okay, he's not a household name (yet!), but this commercial of his was even seen in Turkey and he did once stumble upon a message board of Mormon women talking about how hot he is. And isn't that practically the definition of super-fame? Mormon women on the internet talking about how they want to do you?

So here is his latest commercial, which is currently running on TV. I was thinking about posting it and then Rob told me "jokingly" to post it, which means he actually does want me to post it. But not really. But kind of. And so...