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About a book

Thank you a million times over to all of you who jumped in with praise and encouragement at my announcement that I’m writing a cookbook. I have been very reluctant to share this on the blog, mainly because once you say something out loud it becomes real and then there are people to hold you accountable!

I wanted to wait until I had enough of it done to actually begin projecting when it would be finished, which I’m hoping to be around the end of March. The vast majority of the content is written, it’s just down to taking all of the 90+ photographs and enlisting my software engineer husband to help me with the formatting. I currently have about a quarter of the total photos needed, so it’ll be a major crunch to actually cook all of this food and photograph it in time for my self-imposed deadline. At least I get to eat it all too!

Recipe: Chestnuts 1

As many of you know, my personal cooking style trends heavily toward various asian food styles, most notably Japanese. People hear that and often they say things like,”Oh isn’t that unusual!,” or, “How exotic!” But to me, there is nothing strange or exotic at all in the way I cook. The food I make is typically very homey and comforting and most of all, dead simple to make. With this book, I really wanted to take Japanese cooking and make it accessible. Or rather, not make it accessible, but show that it always was.

I’ve thought for a while that the biggest impediment for people to branch into a new cuisine is not so much the new recipe ideas as the new ingredients. Cooking Japanese may be simple, but it does require you to use a lot of ingredients that are not a typical part of the Western pantry. I can completely understand how this can be intimidating, and I also understand that no one wants to buy a giant tub of miso only to use it once and then just have it take up space in the deepest recesses of the refrigerator.

Ingredient: Matcha

Matcha

For this book, I’ve taken 30 common Japanese ingredients and described their appearance, common usage, and flavor; and provided 2 dead simple recipes each that highlight that ingredient. I’ve also made sure that each of the ingredients showcased in the book can be found at either a regular grocery store like Kroger or Publix, or at least at a “gourmet” grocery store such as Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s. No need to head to an asian market 50 miles away, all of the ingredients are relatively easy to find and easy to use.

Not all of the recipes are classically Japanese either. Some are my personal shortcuts to recreating Japanese staples with fewer steps and ingredients. Some are recognizably Western, but with a Japanese ingredient used to give the dish a new spin. So even if Japanese food has never interested you before, there are still sure to be a few recipes in the book that will be appealing and surprising.

Thank you again for all your support. It means a lot to me when someone likes something I made. I hope you’ll love it as much as I do when it’s ready for it’s big debut!

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A better 2012

I totally dropped the ball on most of my goals for last year. It’s just the truth.

When Jeff and I decided to let me quit my marketing job, the agreement was that I would spend my time learning new skills to put toward a future career that I would make for myself. I know that I will never be happy working a regular job with regular hours for someone else, so I was excited to have the opportunity to work towards self-employment.  So, last year was about honing new skills and working on projects that may one day earn us a small income, namely through writing and photography.

I did not do the best job I could have of learning or using those skills last year. I’ve realized that my perfectionist mind has a way of stopping my progress completely if for some reason I feel that the work I’m doing isn’t perfect. I also have a bad habit of dooming myself with feelings of futility, that I’m doing months and months of work that will never pay off. And lastly, I’m realizing that I require a lot of unsolicited praise. If I’m not told that my work is good, I’ll just assume it isn’t.

In the last month or two I’ve finally started to pull out of that thought process. I’m starting to see value in my own work, to feel like it’s adding up to something worthwhile, and to accept that it won’t be perfect but that it will still be good. I wish that it hadn’t taken a year to feel that way, but I’m hopeful that I can do better to impress myself this year, to work hard to get the things I want, and to be who I want to be.

So maybe I should tell you exactly what has been causing me so much grief in the last year and what it is I’m finally excited to be working on. I’m writing a cookbook. It has been a ton of work but it’s finally coming together enough to see that all that work is adding up to something good. But not just that, I’ve also been learning how to take professional quality photos, for the book and also in the hopes of making a career out of photography some day.

Whew! I’ve waited so long to share that! Here’s a little sample of what you’ll find in the book…

Persimmon Walnut Breakfast Bread

Pork Katsu

Pork Katsu

 

I can’t wait to share the finished product with you! Cheers to a better 2012!

What is something that you hope to accomplish this year?