It's been exactly one year . . . I know, don't tell me

Seriously, don't even tell me. I know it's been a year. One whole year (to the day) since last time I blogged about anything. I actually was going to blog about something last week, but then noticed it's been almost a full year, and wanted to get exactly to the day, because I thought that would be more poetic.

It's not that I forgot about you. It's more that I've been primarily eating spoonfuls of extra-crunchy peanut butter (thank you, Costco, for having mercy on us poor graduate students). And while I know there are plenty of things you can do with peanut butter, I haven't been doing anything that requires a recipe that I can give you. I've just been eating it straight from the jar. 

I have also been just a little busy: writing a dissertation; updating my house one agonizingly slow piece at a time; trying to be a good son / brother / uncle / cousin / grandson to my very large family; form meaningful and lasting relationships; running a stupid marathon, two half-marathons, and subsequently giving up distance running forever (I'll probably come back eventually, but we're taking a little break from one another right now); serving in my church responsibilities; planning for the future (this grad school thing has to end eventually, right?); traveling; developing my faith; and doing lots of other things with my life. 

So don't get me wrong, I love to cook. I love having dinner parties for a few friends. I love cooking-themed dates. I love getting in a big kitchen and presiding over a 4-course dinner for 55 (4th year in a row, coming up). However, the vast majority of my life is spent doing things of great or not-so-great importance away from my stove. While I love experimenting on and developing new recipes, it's just something I haven't spent a lot of time doing lately.

So here's the deal. I'm gonna' keep writing on this thing, sharing the good that I have found. Some of it may be newly developed recipes. Some posts may just be good recipes found elsewhere passed right along to you. Some may be commentary on life from the food's perspective (I'm not entirely sure what that means, but it sounds kind of cool). So look forward to a new little twist on this blog, and hopefully some good eats in the future.

Here is just a little glimpse of some things that happened in the last year. I'm not even going to try to catch up, so this is all you get.

This wasn't that good, and now that I look at it more closely, it doesn't look that good, either. What a waste of perfectly good pine nuts. Sad.

Special thanks to AP for this amazingly fresh (straight from the CSA box), amazingly good little summer number. Go grab some fresh mozzarella and make this a part of your life.

I tend to buy spinach by the bushel, so I tend to try different things to do with it. Sometimes it's pretty good. Sometimes it's not.

I have been told that I have an uncanny talent for ruining perfectly good, traditional, Southern recipes. As I've said before, I care much less about tradition and much more about awesome, but not all southerners agree.

In all honesty, I don't even remember what's under that shell. Maybe chicken pot pie? And what on earth was I thinking with that design?

Warning: if you're going to start making Indian food, you need to own about 17 different spices that you've never heard of before. However, once you have them, you can make awesome things.

Why yes, there is a skull and crossbones made of puff pastry in this picture, thanks for asking. There's a story behind it, too, but I'm not going to tell you about it. I'm trying to let the mystery build.