Tristan's milkshakes bring all the toothless to the yard!

I got all four of my wisdom teeth removed about 80 hours ago. I had been surviving on pureed soup, pudding snack packs, yogurt, plain hummus, and applesauce until Tristan started blending up some whole milk/full fat/no-holds-barred strawberry milkshakes and cookies-n-cream milkshakes yesterday. It's been at least two decades since I've had a milkshake and I forgot how delicious they are. He blended together a hefty portion of ice cream, half a cup of whole milk, about a teaspoon vanilla extract, and about two teaspoons of sugar. Decadence! Trading in a few useless teeth causing overcrowding for whole milk full fat milkshakes? Do not mind if I do! (Note: this does not count as one of the 133, consider it a bonus).

recipe 3: egg white scramble with sun-dried tomatoes, asparagus, fresh basil, and feta

Good morning loyal readership of n=2! Here is a healthy brunch option (that I invented years ago) to start off your Sunday! Goes great with sourdough or whole wheat toast.

EGG WHITE SCRAMBLE WITH SUN-DRIED TOMATOES, ASPARAGUS, FRESH BASIL, AND FETA (serves 2)
Ingredients:
-a pat of butter
-4 or 5 egg whites
-a splash of milk
-salt and freshly ground pepper
-4 stalks of asparagus, ends removed and cut into bite sized pieces
-handful of sun-dried tomatoes, chopped
-6 leaves of fresh basil, chopped
-feta to your liking

Instructions:
1) melt the butter in a pan and saute the asparagus as you whisk the egg whites with milk, salt, and pepper in a bowl
2) add the egg white mixture to the pan and scramble
3) when the eggs are almost cooked, add the sundried tomatoes and basil
4) when the mixture is fully cooked, stir in the feta until it melts

recipes 1 and 2: chicken piccata and roasted parmesan broccoli

I'll start off with an easy and delicious meal. I apologize for not having pictures of most of my 133 tried-and-trues. As I move along with this project, I will definitely start taking pictures. The chicken piccata is an adaptation from a Giada De Laurentiis food network recipe. The roasted parmesan broccoli is an adaptation from a couple of combined food network recipes plus my own added twists.

CHICKEN PICCATA (serves 4)

Ingredients:
-1 lb chicken breast cutlets
-salt and ground black pepper
-flour for dredging
-1/3 c lemon juice
-1/2 c chicken stock
-1/4 c capers
-1/3 c chopped fresh parsley
-4 T butter
-a swirl of extra virgin olive oil around the pan

Instructions:
1) season the raw chicken cutlets with salt and pepper and dredge in flour on both sides
2) in a skillet large enough to fit all of the chicken, melt 3 of the 4 tablespoons of butter and add the olive oil
3) when the butter and olive oil start to sizzle, add the chicken and cook for about 3 minutes on each side
4) remove the chicken and transfer to a plate
5) in the pan, add the lemon juice, chicken stock and capers; bring this to a boil, scraping up the bits from the bottom of the pan
6) check for seasoning, return the chicken to the pan and simmer for 5 minutes (or until the sauce is reduced to your liking)
7) remove the chicken to a platter
8) add remaining tablespoon of butter to the sauce and stir vigorously in the skillet
9) pour the sauce over the chicken and garnish with the parsley 

ROASTED PARMESAN BROCCOLI (serves 4)

Ingredients:

-1 head of broccoli

-1 T olive oil

-salt and freshly ground black pepper

-2 T of good grated parmesan

-freshly squeezed lemon juice to your liking

Instructions:

1) preheat the oven to 400 degrees

2) cut the broccoli lengthwise and arrange in a single layer on a baking sheet
3) drizzle the broccoli with the olive oil, salt, pepper, and lemon juice and lightly toss
4) roast this in the oven for 15 minutes; halfway through, lightly toss again
5) sprinkle the parmesan on top and roast for 5 more minutes 

What on earth is this blog? An intro of sorts...

This little undertaking is a blog aimed at compiling 365 tried-and-true recipes, adding up to a year's worth of deliciousness. At this very moment, I am up to 133 144 156 173 195 201 tried-and-trues. So that leaves 232 221 209 192 164 to go. In all honesty, this will take awhile because I anticipate a rate of one new recipe a week... at best. I will only post recipes that are good enough to make a second time. So the anticipated rate of one new recipe a week accounts for the inevitable flops, because even if I make a few new recipes a week, they won't all be post-worthy keepers. The recipes will be a collection of childhood favorites (either untouched how I remember them and/or with new twists), imitations (where I will certainly post my source if I have it), and new creations. I think everybody should eat some homemade goodness every single day of the year, and this blog aims to accomplish just that. This project is inspired by the love of my life's mother, who created a cookbook of the family's favorite recipes for each of her three sons the year before she unexpectedly passed away. She was an amazing cook. I learned so much from her in the relatively short period of time that I knew her and you'll see some of her recipes here. This blog is dedicated to her memory as well as the memory of my grandfather. Grandpa taught me how to be a bon vivant... his first question always went like this: "Oh yeah? But how was the food?"

I am not a master chef. Definitely not. While cooking is not my number one passion, it is right up there on my list of passions. My job is my first passion, but my cases are confidential. Although my clients are my soul, you will find no trade secrets here. Travel is my second passion, but I definitely do not have enough time or capital to travel to a blog's worth of destinations*[see below]- posts would occur at an infinitesimally slower rate than the recipe posts. Snooze. I also love to devour books**[see below], but I don't feel qualified enough to provide high brow literary criticism and commentary. I love food***[see below], but I feel even less qualified to review restaurants than I do to review books. And I adore adventures, but most of these thus far have been embarrassingly dorky****[see below]. This leaves me with creating a compilation of recipes, which will probably only be viewed by my boyfriend Tristan (if I set up the link for him on his computer), my family (if my mom learns how to turn on the computer by herself), and my close friends (because, let's be honest, they obviously miss the heart-on-my-sleeve-let-it-all-hang-out style of my former facebook page and are hoping to recapture that essence-of-tiff here, which may or may not happen... no promises). Which is totally, totally fine. I would be honored with that particular captive audience. While I am no Iron Chef Morimoto, I am creative in the kitchen and getting more creative as I gain momentum. Here goes nothing!

*Here are the best places I've been in no particular order, for either nostalgic reasons, sheer beauty, or whole-package completeness: Italy. Greece. Spain. South of France. Tokyo. New Orleans. Thailand. Australia. Miami. Paris. Buenos Aires. Greenland. Montana. Negril. Hawaii. Glacier Bay, Alaska. The Southwest. Kyoto. Vegas. Sweden. California. Oktoberfest in Munich. The Sahara Desert. (And my slightly more local haunts: NYC, Philadelphia, Boston, Ithaca, Dewey Beach, and yes, the Jersey Shore). 

Where I am going next: Morocco. India. South Africa.

**Here are my favorite books ever in no particular order:  The Alchemist. Breakfast at Tiffany's. Love in the Time of Cholera. Going After Cacciato. Valley of the Dolls. Brave New World. Fortress of Solitude. The Poisonwood Bible. Winesburg, Ohio. Lord of the Flies. The Great Gatsby. Rosencrantz and Guidenstern Are Dead. A Thousand Splendid Suns. Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Catch-22. Candide. 1984. Peter Pan. Billy Budd. The Corrections. Prep. Macbeth. To Kill a Mockingbird. Gone With the Wind. Bonfire of the Vanities. Wild Swans. Anna Karenina. Me Talk Pretty One Day. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Middlesex.  (And as a child: Marvin K. Mooney Will You Please Go Now?. Little Fox Goes to the End of the World. Very Worried Walrus... I really identified with that fictional little fox who did, in fact, go to the end of the world, as well as that fictional walrus who was, in fact, very worried).

What I am reading now: The Brothers Karamazov

What I am reading next: We Were the Mulvaneys. A Visit from the Goon Squad. Olive Kitteridge. The Hunger Games Trilogy. The Interpreter of Maladies. The Virgin Suicides. The Marriage Plot. Shantaram.

***Here are my favorite restaurants ever in no particular order: NYC-Torrisi Italian Specialties. Peter Luger. Caracas. Hill Country Chicken. Commerce. Union Square Cafe. Felidia. Sushi Yasuda. Pearl Oyster Bar. Veselka. Di Fara. Momofuku Noodle Bar. Num Pang. D'Amico Foods. Blue Ribbon (particularly for the oysters). Le Bernardin!  The Redhead. Totto Ramen.
Elsewhere- Sally's Apizza (New Haven). Dinosaur BBQ (upstate New York). Toro (Boston). Daiwa Sushiya (Tsukiji Fish Market, Tokyo). Morning Glory (Philadelphia). La Cholita (Buenos Aires). Loveless Cafe (Nashville). Katsuya (LA). Mercato di Vetro (LA). Jardiniere (San Francisco).

****Observe: I semi-starred as Jafar in my ballet studio's 1993 production of Aladdin; my 19-second solo involved dry ice, a cape, dramatic timing, and a very menacing facial expression. I slept in an igloo north of the Arctic Circle; my contacts froze in their case and, clad in a reindeer pelt, I melted the contact ice cubes in my hands before I popped them in my eyes and moved along to a dog-sledding adventure which was the "cheaper" dog-sledding option and involved much scrappier and scarier dogs than the "regular" dog-sledding option. I recently created a "watch-30-lawyer-movies challenge" for myself; although I stuck with it to completion, this was not a fun challenge. I've seen the AFI Top 100 movies- all of them; some of those older ones are really something else. Note: my favorite movies of all-time are "Little Miss Sunshine" and "Amelie," neither of which made the AFI Top 100 movie list. In 1996, I collected 6000 Snapple labels; I met the Snapple lady, won a Snapple refrigerator, and wrote my college application essays about this venture. As an entrepreneurial six-year-old, I started a business called "Scarf City" whereby I wove scarves on my Fisher-Price weaving loom at the velocity of a sweatshop fiend and sold them solely to my grandmother for five bucks a pop. In high school, I won the foreign language honorable mention in "French Enthusiasm"; there was also a "French Excellence" award but I took home neither the award nor the honorable mention in that category. In eighth grade glee club, I swallowed my bottom retainer. As a crew coxswain, at the Head of the Charles, I managed to slice a boat in half without hurting anybody... this was actually not funny nor an adventure. See? Dorky!