2012 Wrap Up

Well here I am, wrapping up another year. And this, my friends, has been a hell of a year. My personal life has been filled with ups and downs, good and bad. I've gone through enormous life changes, almost all for the better. This was my building block year. I got a lot of things straightened out that should make for happier times moving forward.

The biggest things that happened to me this year:

I ran my first 5K and 10K.

I bought my first ever new car.

I lost two friends way too young.

I had three surgeries.

My heart got broken.

My heart got better.

I learned how to Snowboard.

I became friends with Lindsay, Danny, Dani and Meredith... fantastic additions to my life.

I hugged all my parents without going to England.

I met and passed my goal weight.

I reconnected with Dana.

I became a happy, healthy person.

I cooked. I wrote. I lived.

This year I created a lot of recipes that I am delighted to have in my repertoire. I've learned a lot in the kitchen and I'm really working on building my food legacy in a strong strong way. So with that in mind, here are my personal favorite recipes from this year.

Thanks for being here. Sometimes I feel like I'm writing out into an invisible void, but I know you're out there somewhere.

 

Poached Eggs with Tomato and Avocado

 

 

Apple, Cheddar and Sage Flatbread

Meatballs with Homemade Barbecue Sauce

Cucumber Mint Sparkler

Clams with Corn and Heirloom Tomatoes

 

Cinnamon Chocolate Coffee Cake

Fall Corn Chowder

And next year? Well.... next year is going to be really really interesting. I've got a big project that I'll get to share soon. I can't wait!

Lemon Paprika Chicken Thighs

Sometimes, things get really complicated and you just need something simple.

I'm coming off a really rough trip back East where I had to take care of a lot of personal stuff and attend a funeral. I'm really over cross country flights, so I'm taking a break from them for a while.

It's been a hard couple of months for me, but I think I'm finally getting myself into a good place. I'm trying not to be too whiny here, but the universe really did smack me around a little and I've decided that I'm done with that. I'm ready for things to start going my way and to start feeling happy again. With that will surely come more food and a stronger presence here on Salted Spoon. Thanks for your patience with me. It's appreciated.
 
Right now, all I want these days is simple food. I'm eating salads and cantaloupes, multigrain cheerios and poached eggs, sweet potato fries and quick and easy chicken dishes. When the going gets tough, the tough raids the freezer for simple cuts of meat.

These chicken thighs are super easy. You could mix everything together and marinade the chicken if you like and it'll be yummy, but for me I used sprinkle everything over because I'm usually in a hurry.

Lemon Paprika Chicken Thighs

4 Boneless Skinless Chicken Thighs
2 Teaspoons Lemon Juice
1/2 Teaspoon Paprika
1/4 Teaspoon Freshly Ground Black Pepper
Salt
Pinch of Cayenne Pepper
Olive Oil for Cooking

In a cast iron skillet or non-stick pan, heat up a drizzle of olive oil. Trim any excess fat off the chicken thighs. Cover each chicken thigh with a little lemon juice. Mix together the paprika, peppers and salt and then sprinkle those over both sides too.

When the pan is really hot, lay the chicken thighs down and let cook well on one side to get a sear, then flip. Cook and flip until the chicken thighs are cooked all the way through, about ten minutes.

Serve with rice and peas, or anything else you can find in your freezer.

Eat at the dining room table while watching the last episode of Newsroom and being stared at by your adorable cat.

Serves two.

Cinnamon Chocolate Coffee Cake and Being Owey

I'm hanging out in bed today, medicated and resting while my body calms down after the second of my three surgeries on my left leg. This one wasn't as bad as the first. The first one was a bit heavier and they had more trouble finding my veins.

So I have just one more to go on Tuesday, and then hopefully I'm done. I'm confident I'll be back to normal soon.

Speaking of normal, I finally managed to get into the kitchen. It was lovely. I've really missed cooking these last few weeks. I frequently forget how happy it makes me. I finally finished reading Stephanie Izard's book Girl in the Kitchen. I have to say, I really didn't much care for it. I have a huge amount of respect for Stephanie. I think she's brilliant and talented, and I'm fascinated by her food, but I felt like her book wasn't really very accessible. She uses a lot of top shelf ingredients that are easy to find when you have a good restaurant supplier, but are a bit harder to find if you are just a normal person. Her recipes are extremely complex. She also spends a good potion of time talking about all the restaurants she has worked in. I didn't get a sense of her as an individual. I marked a few recipes to try, but all in all I was a bit disappointed.

Since I've finished that, though, the next book in my stack is the Joy the Baker Cookbook by Joy Wilson. I love the tagline of her book "A Celebration of Butter and Sugar". I thumbed through it a little the other day, looking for a recipe for coffee cake. Now I'll read it cover to cover, like I do with so many cookbooks, using post it tabs to mark the most inspiring recipes. I've been looking forward to this one.

I made the coffee cake as I limped around on Wednesday, still testing what my leg can and can't make. Her initial recipe called for a topping as well as a filling, but I decided to skip it, choosing to add in a bunch of chocolate instead. I took the cake to work where it was devoured my many hungry and brilliant technicians and circus performers. I loved it and I'm absolutely making it again. Please excuse the less than stellar picture. My photography is not at its best when I'm on painkillers.

Cinnamon Chocolate Coffee Cake
Adapted from Joy Wilson's Joy the Baker Cookbook

This cake is moist, decadent and delicious. You can use full-fat milk and sour cream, but I tend to only keep non-fat in the house.

For the Cake

3/4 Cup (1 1/2 Sticks) Butter, softened
1 1/2 Cups Granulated Sugar
1/3 Cup Light Brown Sugar, packed
2 Teaspoons Vanilla
3 Eggs
3 1/4 Cups Flour, sifted
2 1/2 Teaspoons Baking Powder
1 1/4 Teaspoons Salt
3/4 Cup Non-Fat Sour Cream
1 1/4 Cups Non-Fat Whole Milk

Preheat the oven to 350F. Butter and flour a 9x13 baking pan.

Cream together the butter and sugar and pale and fluffy. Add the vanilla and the eggs and mix well. Sift in the flour, baking powder and salt, then add in the sour cream and milk. Make the filling.

For the Filling

1 Cup Light Brown Sugar, packed
2 Tablespoons Cinnamon
1 Teaspoon Nutmeg
3 Tablespoons Cocoa Powder
1 Cup Semi-Sweet chocolate chips
1/2 Teaspoon Salt

Mix all the filling ingredients together. You may want to use your hands because brown sugar tends to be a bit clumpy.

Spread half the cake mix into the pan. Scatter over about three quarters of the filling. Spoon over the rest of the cake mix, then sprinkled over the rest of the filling. With a spoon or spatula, marble the cake by dragging the spoon through the whole thing in swirls or figure eights. Don't mix it too much. You just want to kind of swirl it up so that it isn't a uniform layer.

Bake in the oven for about 55 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean. Let it sit for thirty minutes before cutting in.

Enjoy with a glass of milk propped up against your kitchen counter, or hand out pieces at 11:30pm to awesome technicians as they are clocking out for the night.

Makes about 20-30 servings depending on how big you cut them.

 

Faster Times, Healing Times, Busy Times

 

I got back from my August Dark (a dark is when a theatrical production is closed) under a week ago and since then I've been exceptionally busy at the Circus. One week in four, I have longer days and this last week happened to be my week. Because of this, I've been subsisting on Single Girl's Lunch Salads, leftover Moroccan Chicken, and grapes. I haven't cooked at all. It's been weird and I've felt like a bad blogger.

I'm worried because tomorrow I have to go in for the first of three small surgical procedures on my left leg. Let me back up a bit and tell you the story.

A year ago when I had been living in the desert just a few months, I gained a fair bit of weight. It didn't look like a lot to other people, but it ended up being just under 20lb in the space of three months. Finally, last Fall I got a kick in the ass and decided for the first time in my life to start exercising. I couldn't run for a minute without having to stop. I was in bad shape. I have overweight people in my family and I've lost several family members to heart disease at very young ages (like, my age... seriously). Time to make a change.

There are three grocery stores near my house. One is 0.5 of a mile away, one is 1.3 miles and the other is 1.8. I started walking to them instead of using my car, the nearest first and then the ones that were farther. Soon, instead of walking there I was jogging.

I started running and walking a few times a week and then I got it to where I was doing it more days out of the week than not. I started exercising portion control as well, and thought about what I was eating instead of just mindlessly munching away on things.

I ran a 5K in March, and today I hit my best ever run time of 3 miles in 26:44. That isn't exactly the most showy of times for runners, but it was absolutely huge for me.

With a lot of hard work, many tears, and a lot of impatience and frustration, the weight came off. I lost 23lb and now I'm a healthy manageable weight.

As the weight came off, though, I noticed some pinching sensations in my left leg, and realized that one of my veins was getting more and more prominent. Buried under my tubby leg was something I didn't know I had... a venous insufficiency. It's not that bad, but it causes me discomfort and it sure doesn't look pretty. I found out I have four veins in my left leg that basically need to be shut down.

So, tomorrow I start getting those done. I know it's probably going to hurt and be uncomfortable. I know I'm probably going to be very annoyed during the recovery process. I don't know how my body is going to react. I could be back to normal a week after the last one, or I could be limping for a month, we'll see.

So anyway, I don't have a recipe for you today, because I've been running every morning in order to create some kind of buffer for Wednesday when I can't. I'm sure I'll be spending lots of time in the kitchen whilst I'm healing up. It is my happy place after all!

So thanks for your patience and sorry that I'm not a good blogger right now. Things will be back to normal soon. Wish me luck!