i'm back! here's a lemon tart.

Did you miss me? You did.

How do you like the new design? Pretty swank. Black and white and food all over. I'll probably tweak it some more over the next few weeks, so don't freak out.

It's been a while. When was the last time I posted? February? I know! I had to take a little break to finish up my last semester in the gastronomy program. I'm done now! I have my Master's! It's crazy. They'll give them to anyone these days, I guess. Ba-dum-bum. Last week was commencement, where this awesome thing happened.

I also went to Africa in March. I'll write about that in a bit. Put some pictures up. I drank some banana beer, saw some giraffes, you know. I have certificates in cheese and wine now. Oh, cheese. If only every course could be cheese. The ridiculously amazing Ihsan Gurdal, of the ridiculously amazing Formaggio Kitchen, taught the class. It was insane. We went up to Vermont to visit some cheese farms. We ate twelve blue cheeses in one day and my tongue hurt when it was over, but in a good way. We ate some tangerine jam from Anna Tasca Lanza that will make you cry.

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portsmouth, new hampshire

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salt and pepper cookies

The Oscars are coming up this weekend. Is that something you are excited about? It doesn't matter. Let's talk about the Best Picture nominees. They changed the rules a few years back, and then changed them again, and now there are about 40 Best Picture nominees. So now the young people will watch? Who knows. Sadly, I have only seen one of them, so we have a long road ahead of us. Just like War Horse had, probably. That's not the one I saw. I'll just make some stuff up because I need some sort of topic to introduce these cookies (although this has nothing to do with the cookies - I will make some connection between the two that is a wild stretch a the end, like usual).

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braised beef over orange zest pappardelle

How bout them Super Bowl commercials? Pretty great, eh? Almost as great as how much talk there is about them. It must be nice to work for an advertising agency and you just film a dog dancing for 30 seconds and CNN reports it as news. "Wasn't that Pepsi frog funny? You are in the Situation Room."

I think the best thing about the Super Bowl commercials is the many surprises. What will GoDaddy do this year? It could be anything! Will there be at least ten commercials where men look like idiots? It could be more! I wonder if there will be a commercial with that talking baby? You never know! Even though there has been a commercial with the talking baby for the last decade or something, maybe this will be the year they switch it up?

Thankfully it was not the year, because that dumb baby just never gets old, just never ever ever gets old, literally and figuratively. I can only hope that when I'm 90 that baby is still on television being an ass, because how else will I know what company to use for whatever it is that baby is selling, I forget. If only there could be an ad where that snarky baby is riding a Clydesdale to visit the Coca-Cola bears one of whom is voiced by Betty White. Then all of our favorite things that never get old will be in one commercial and it will surely be the best commercial ever made (although Betty White does get old - that's the whole hilarious joke, that she is old and says mildly ribald things; good job advertising companies, just a very good job). 

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curry pumpkin soup w/ mustard croutons

I hate this time of year. I think October through December are the best months of the year and all of the other months are just spent waiting for that final quarter. Now there is nothing to look forward to. No cool holidays. Halloween is so far away. Spring is so boring. Ugh. I wish we hibernated from January through September.

Happy New Year! Did you have a good one? Did you make any resolutions or do you think resolutions are silly? Or do you not even need to make resolutions because what's the point? What could you even improve?

Did you do some traveling for the holidays? Or did you curl up in your jammies and drink cocoa and watch the very excellent holiday film "Will You Merry Me?" Do you get the very punny joke in the title? Did you like the part where the Mom who was really into Christmas asked if the Jewish Mom's "booby" made her latkes or some other stereotypically Jewish food and she was like, "My what?" and the other one was like, "You know, your booby," and she was like, "Ohhhh, you mean my bubby." Good times. Like I said, just a very good movie. A holiday classic. (Actually, compared to the very, very long, slow, and boring "Christmas Angel" this movie was It's a Wonderful Life-caliber, which, incidentally, despite my love of Christmas movies, I do not like all that much. Provocative.).

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