To Renew: Happy Spring After Hibernation

At yoga today, the teacher was talking some talk about how astrologers (or at least her friend) believe the dawning of spring to be the real start to the new year. And, since finally it's nice out in DC, I'll take it. I'll believe that this is the time to begin anew, start fresh and to pretend that I was hibernating for a couple weeks from blogging.

So, happy spring! And, as the teacher jokingly said at the end of class: Happy New Year!

Highlights while I've been away (highlights = things I took pictures of)

i like serving fruit when i'm serving a pastry. but those mandarins were lousy.

My parents & cousin came to town to celebrate mother's birthday. So, that morning I had them over to have her open presents while having a small snack of babka. It's chocolatey & buttery and despite its rather intricate looking design, not all the difficult to make. Pretty time consuming. I used Smitten Kitchen's recipe that was adapted from my best friend (unrequited) Ottolenghi.

i forgot to add the yeast at the right time, but i think it was still a-okay!

The next day we had brunch for the family. It included green shakshuka, home cured bacon (by M.) & hasselback potatoes. To me, an egg dish like that (with runny yolk) is superior to a scrambled egg type dish. Plus, with all those greens it's super filling and really healthy. Also, everything was done in like an hour!

For dinner we had my favorite kale salad, Ottolenghi's cauliflower salad with pomegranates & parsley & nuts, octopus salad and fresh salmon. I love having a million flavors, and we did.

During hibernation, it was St. Patrick's Day. We celebrated on Saturday so we could have corned beef hash for brunch the next day. The cabbage was roasted & the brussels sprouts were pan seared with some worcestershire sauce for extra umami. I learned about umami for the first time from Ross Gellar, but now M. is always talking about it.

Hash: potatoes, beets, corned beef, and a poached egg. Duh.

Once upon a time, I made fish in parchment paper. It went pretty well. Then, I saw you can do a sort of similar thing with chicken. I'll want to remember that for some day when I'm wanting to add chicken to my lunch salads. The salad was a take on the wedge but with cabbage AND it was grilled. I LOVE grilled lettucey things, usually, I've had romaine grilled. "It's too fibrous."-M. I liked it.

We took a cooking class! Fried chicken, coleslaw, biscuits, chipotle sweet potato salad & chocolate pie. We're going to try to make this again when we fly to Boston in April. So. More on that later.

Admittedly, this shit was ugly. It also only tasted okay. I'm not super into chocolate. 

avant-garde?