Looks a little different around here, doesn’t it? Welcome to the new Thyme Bombe, everyone!

I know I’ve been gone for a while, but it’s because I’ve been working on some things behind the scenes for the last few months that are just now ready to come to light – the first of which you’re seeing now. This isn’t just a facelift though, there are some other changes happening to this site that I hope you’ll be just as excited about as I am.

Firstly, from here on I’ll be focusing mostly on recipe creation. Not every post will be a recipe, but all posts will be very focused on food and less focused on personal stories and day-to-day life. I want to continue sharing my personal goings-on with all of you, but from now on those things will be shared when they are relevant to the food I’m sharing too.

Next, I want to start providing you with more informative, quality content. No more pictures of some random dinner I threw together last night. I want to delve into the history of different foods, the origin of exotic ingredients, and how these things can fit into your life and your own style of cooking.

And finally, I want to present all of this to you with stunning photos of beautiful food. I have learned a lot about photography in the last year, and while I have a long way to go before I feel like I really have a grip on it, I am definitely a stronger photographer now than I was at this blog’s beginning. From now on, dimly lit photos snapped without much thought or care simply won’t make the cut.

I imagine it’ll take some time before I figure out exactly what belongs on this blog and what doesn’t, so I hope you’ll be patient with me as I work through it, but hopefully what you’ll see in the coming months is a movement toward a better blog with more interesting and beautiful content. I really think you’re gonna like it.

And stay tuned in the following days for another big announcement that has been over a year in the making! If you’ve been reading that long, you may be able to guess what it is…

January 24, 2013 Alayna Discussion 10 comments

I don’t know why, but this feels like one of the busiest years of my life. Time is flying by at a dizzying pace. It seems like it was just Christmas not too long ago and yet here we are already in hot-as-hell summer and just a few short months away from having lived in our new rental house for a full year. Time flies when you’re having fun, or when you’re really busy, I guess.

And so, because of said busy-ness, I’ve let so many goings-on go untold. Here’s what’s been up with me lately…

1. Donut peaches are in season! My favorite fruit is a tie between a perfectly ripe strawberry and these squat little donut peaches. I’ve had one of these babies every day for 2 weeks now with no end in sight.

2. Apparently I like olives and mangoes now. I have hated both of these foods my entire life and suddenly I can’t get enough of them. What’s next, cherries? Blech!

3. My car got crunched. It was parked in the street for a day and one of our neighbors backed into it on her way out to work one morning. They were super cool about it and left a note, so we were able to deal with all the insurance stuff right away and get it repaired quickly. Good as new now.

4. Jeff and I have been working on a mobile game app together. He’s gotten into game development over the last year and tinkered with a few game ideas, we’ve finally found one that’s stuck. He’ll be doing all the technical stuff (which is WAY over my head) and I’m working on concept art and story ideas. Maybe in a year or so you guys will be able to download a game we made!

5. The cats are broken. Lucas has been sneezing out giant gobs of snot for over a month now. He’s on his second round of antibiotics and seems to be doing a bit better. Liam lost an adult tooth last week for seemingly no reason. They’ve both needed shots and yearly checkups. These little f%&$ers have been expensive this month.

6. I sliced the crap out of my thumb. I was trying to slice a stale loaf of bread in half lengthwise to use in a book recipe photo and ended up mangling my thumb knuckle. I promptly fainted…twice. Luckily Jeff was home that day to help me or I could’ve conked my head on the floor and bled out. Ok…I probably wouldn’t have bled out, but it was still really scary. And now I have a creepy-looking gash on my thumb that is not going to heal prettily. I’ll spare you the photo.

7. I was supposed to photograph my very last book recipe today, but the recipe was a dud. I made wasabi pea crackers and learned after several batches that wasabi flavor just disappears when exposed to high heat. I think I have something even better planned to replace it though. Here’s another one that sounded good on paper but just didn’t turn out well: Asian pear poached in black tea with honey mascarpone, walnuts, and candied ginger. Asian pears just don’t poach well, it leeches out all their flavor leaving a mealy husk.

8. Jeff has the flu. He’s been miserable for 5 days now and I’ve been doing my very best to take care of him. So far, I haven’t gotten it from him (:::fingers crossed:::) We were just talking yesterday about how completely differently we like to be cared for when we’re ill. He needs to be doted on, touched, and made to feel loved. I need to be alone. All I want when I’m ill is a huge blanket, no responsibilities, no touching, and an alternating schedule of a 2 hour movie followed by a 2 hour nap continuously until I’m well again.

9. After a 2 month hiatus, I’m restarting the LiveFit program somewhere in the middle. I got really busy for a while with book stuff and wedding cake stuff and gym time got cut in favor of focusing on those things. It feels really good to get back to working out regularly. I love strength training!

10. I finally get to make an all-buttercream wedding cake! I mentioned that I’m doing another wedding cake in September. Well, we just finished ironing out the details for it and I’m really excited to make this cake now, especially because I’ve really wanted to try doing a fondant-less cake for once. I can’t say any more about it though because it’s a surprise for the bride (the groom picked out all the details) and I don’t want her to read about it here before she gets to see it on the big day.

Whew!

That’s what I’ve been up to, what about you?

July 23, 2012 Alayna Discussion 16 comments

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!

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.

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!

January 10, 2012 Alayna Discussion 6 comments