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).
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!
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