Some very belated, and very disorganized, and unforgiveably unreciped, tidbits from the past weeks:

Lucky boyfriend got three birthday cakes this year: favorite flourless chocolate, pumpkin cake, and a (very messy but delicious) triple-layer mint chocolate chip ice cream cake with mint chocolate ganache and whipped topping (one layer was another flourless chocolate, so this might’ve had an unfair edge on being the best of the three.)

I flew home for Thanksgiving to be with my family and spent three days straight cooking: multiple loaves of Mark Bittman’s No-Knead Bread (I feel like an idiot for ever having even experimented with bread recipes other than this one). Savory cornbread to turn into a marvelous stuffing and sweet cornbread (for which I made homemade buttermilk for the first time) to bring to a family friend’s Thanksgiving potluck. Melissa Clark’s Mashed Potato Casserole which I worried would verge on Deen-esque and did, gloriously so. Roasted sweet potatoes tossed with olive oil, salt and chili powder. Very garlicky hummus. Brussels sprouts steamed with caramelized shallots. Vegan wild rice pilaf with sauteed onions, apples and raisins and toasted chopped almonds. Turkey. My mom made cranberry sauce, as she does every year, with a recipe I just found out this year is her grandmother’s. She does the pies, too, before the sun rises, and made an extra that my dad and I ate for breakfast and lunch. I made apple yogurt cake, trying to recreate one that I’d invented before but not written down (successfully!). And flourless chocolate cake, again. And vegan pumpkin chocolate cake. And pumpkin butter with fresh-squeezed apple juice and lots of ginger that turned out even better than Trader Joe’s. I couldn’t stop. It was the perfect vacation.

So, whatever, I am like an eighth Jewish and sometimes my Jewisher friends like to tease me about it. Then I have to prove myself by doing things like eating chopped liver by the pound. I am only bummed that because my oven is broken, I had to buy Zabar’s challah and couldn’t make honey cake from scratch, but I’ll atone for it on Yom Kippur.

Apples & honey, for a sweet new year.

An ENTIRE FISH, because I’m hardcore. This apparently has to do with Rosh Hashanah literally translating to the ‘head of the year’, and also something about being ‘the head and not the tail’ - leaders rather than followers (the shiksa blog claims this appears in Deuteronomy. I grew up going to Unitarian church where we were busy making bird feeders out of pinecones and not learning this stuff, but I can tell you that an entire tilapia can be purchased at Pioneer for three dollars, that it’s a very impressive presentation, and that with a little olive oil, salt and lemon, it tastes pretty darn good.)

Fish heads, fish heads, roly poly fish heads.

KASHA VARNISHKES! I love kasha varnishkes. Kasha varnishkes from the 2nd Avenue Deli got me hooked, but this was the first time I’d tried making them from scratch. They are fairly impossible to screw up, containing four main ingredients - buckwheat groats, onions, farfalle (which my boyfriend pronounces “farfle”) and olive oil or schmaltz. I knew they’d be better with schmaltz, but I couldn’t figure out where to buy it - anywhere legit enough to sell me some was closed today - so I did them with olive oil and The New York Times recipe. My Polish great-great-grandmother Loewenstein would’ve been proud.

Challah from Zabar’s. The round kind, braided into a circle, represents the cycle of the year. The way this particular loaf tasted reminded me how excited I am for Christmas panettone. We had it with Trader Joe’s honeybear honey and kosher cabernet. 

Apples & pomegranate - new fruit.

Last night at dinner with my boyfriend’s family I ate liver and onions to prove my cred after he asked if I ‘needed help ordering.’ Last year we did eight days of vegan kosher for Passover together (advice: never try to make vegetable sushi with a potato ricer instead of sushi rice) but now that I’m back to omnivorous eating, this year the biggest struggle will be waiting to open the $50 order that arrived yesterday from Peanut Butter & Co.

I like liver as much as the next girl, but I was really excited for leftover flourless chocolate cake and coconut macaroons for breakfast. I grew up eating macaroons, my Italian father’s favorite cookie.

“Culinary historians believe macaroons can be traced to an Italian monastery. The monks came to France in 1533, joined by the pastry chefs of Catherine de Medici, wife of King Henri II. Later, two Benedictine nuns, Sister Marguerite and Sister Marie-Elisabeth, came seeking asylum during the French Revolution. The two women paid for their housing by baking and selling macaroon cookies, and thus became known as the “Macaroon Sisters.” Recipes for macaroons (also spelled “mackaroon,” “maccaroon” and “mackaroom”) appear in recipe books at least as early as 1725 (Robert Smith’s Court Cookery, or the Complete English Cook).

Italian Jews later adopted the cookie because it has no flour or leavening (macaroons are leavened by egg whites) and can be enjoyed during the eight-day observation of Passover. It was introduced to other European Jews and became popular as a year-round sweet. Over time, coconut was added to the ground almonds and, in certain recipes, replaced them.”

- Wikipedia

I think traditions are important. They’re something to look forward to, comforting and special and your very own. Some traditions, like Valentine’s Day, feel less personal than others. Once middle school marked the end of decorating Kleenex mailboxes and painstakingly glueing pink construction paper hearts to doilies, I started to find Valentine’s Day more or less a disappointment. At worst, in college it was an excuse to drink. At best, a high-pressure “fancy” dinner with tables-for-two crammed so close together the atmosphere was about as intimate as a school cafeteria. But it turns out you get to make up your own traditions, silly ones, ones that don’t belong to everyone else. Like vegetarian General Tso’s tofu and cold sesame noodles on 64th and 2nd, surrounded by eighth graders on awkward dates, old men eating alone, entire families who would rather eat chicken and broccoli with their kids than get a babysitter just because of a Hallmark holiday. Last year on Valentine’s Day at China Fun I was vegan, employed, drinking a lot of enthusiastic Jack&Cokes, wearing an inappropriately short dress and too much makeup, and so deathly afraid of dating seriously that I spent ten minutes making origami out of the receipt in order to avoid eye contact. Things change. I’m immeasurably happier this year, better, healthier, not scared of anything. I still wore a much too short dress and made origami at the table. But now that’s just part of the tradition.