Recipe for Living

This month marks the two year anniversary of An Open Cookbook, and handfuls of new life lessons. Many components of my life have changed and evolved in the past year. A new job, a completely redecorated apartment, a new wardrobe, many new people, and a new perspective on life have been a few of those changes. Another change you may have noticed is fewer blog entries each month, although I get just as antsy to write. My new life lends itself to a variety of activities. When I do have the chance to sit down and enter a post, you can be guaranteed it is from the heart. With that said, here are the main lessons learned this past year...

Recipe for Living

Do a normal activity in a subtly different way every day, whether it is holding your coffee cup in the opposite hand or taking a slightly different route to work. These small changes lead to bigger ones.

If you break into a cold sweat at the thought of doing something, like whitewater rafting or having lunch with a stranger, do it anyway. You will undeniably grow from the experience.

Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else's.  - Class of '99; Wear Sunscreen Song

No one cares if you are sitting at the bar by yourself at a restaurant. What really matters is that you are there.

Upgrading your life can mean buying an expensive wallet or a new piece of furniture. Or it can mean becoming friends with a person that intimidates you. Whatever moves you forward in life, go with it.

Action expresses priorities. -Ghandi

Pushing yourself on the yoga mat, in the weight room, or at the stove prepares you for life's challenges. Sweat everyday for practice.

Everyone comes into our lives for a reason. Just go with it.

Our flaws make us human, and much more interesting.

It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are. -e.e. cummings

Do something creative everyday.

Sometimes the road we are on looks different than we had envisioned. Keep going.

Order the special from time to time. You can always go back for the regular menu.

Forget about the word 'should'...it isn't productive or genuine. Your heart knows best. Follow it.

Honesty will set you free.

If you get strongly defensive about something, you may have something to learn from the experience.

Take a few seconds before speaking during an important conversation. They can be more valuable than gold.

Sometimes getting to the next flight of stairs means letting go of the railing.

Fill your house and your life with people and things that inspire you and make you happy.

Take a sip of bourbon sometime. It burns going down, but your wisdom becomes greater.

Keep a list of goals in your wallet. Work toward them. Reach them. Make new goals.

Get the dark chocolate with hazelnuts and savor every bite. Just don't eat the whole bar in one sitting.

Bourbon and Maple-Glazed Bacon Cake

 It is recipe swap time again. Christianna of Burwell General Store located a new vintage cookbook called 'Nebraska Pionner Cookbook', featuring this month's recipe 'Pork Fruit Cake'. You read that correctly. If you need visual affirmation, please see below for details of handling the one pound pork.

But actually let's backtrack a second. One of my New Year's resolutions for the past few years has been to begin liking bourbon. This ongoing desire has been on of those nagging things in the back of the brain. I have consciously made myself like a lot of food items in the past few years. I used to have an aversion to eggs, tomatoes, mushrooms, and olives. It was so strong, that one might think I was a Mediterranean omelet in my past life. To top it all off, my aversion to seafood is even stronger. So much so, that I am quite sure I was a mermaid or pirate in my past life. That one is still going strong.

But over the past few years, I grabbed the fork, and started slowly but surely, exposing myself the above-mentioned items. And to my pleasant surprise, have come to love them. I now always have olives and eggs in my refrigerator. Tomatoes and mushrooms make a lesser appearance, but appearance nonetheless.

So recently, I drove myself to the grocery store and bought a bottle of bourbon. Maybe if I keep it in my house, I can try a sip here and there and learn to like it. The idea of sipping on a warm shot of bourbon is quite nice. And my bourbon-loving friend J came over last night, and helped me through the exercise.

So naturally, as I was coming up with an alternative recipe to the pork fruit cake, I thought, why not toss a little bourbon into the cake batter? It goes well with maple syrup, cinnamon, and vanilla. I have recently learned of candied bacon, so this seemed like a natural addition to the recipe. Everyone in Seattle seems to have bacon admiration, so why not join my neighbors and cook it into a dish that doesn't normally have bacon. T and M came over for brunch this morning after the hardest yoga class I have ever experienced...108 sun salutes. So we came home, ate quiche, bacon cake, peach bread, berries, and champagne..and life was good.

The best part of post-party remnants, is the evidence of a fun time.

Bourbon and Maple-Glazed Bacon Cake
8 to 12 servings


4 thick slices bacon
2 tablespoons maple syrup
ground black pepper to taste

1/2 cup maple syrup
2 tablespoons molasses
2 eggs
1 tablespoon bourbon
1 tablespoon cinnamon
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup flour

1 tablespoon brown sugar

Preheat oven for 350 degrees. Line an 8x8-inch baking pan with parchment paper or generously butter.

Pan-fry bacon slices in a skillet over medium heat until almost done, about 6 minutes per side. Pour in maple syrup and sprinkle with black pepper. Cook, stirring and flipping occasionally, until bacon begins to crisp and maple syrup and bacon drippings start bubbling, about 5 more minutes. Remove bacon from pan; let cool on a plate until crisp. Crumble bacon when cooled.

Whisk maple syrup, molasses, eggs, bourbon, cinnamon, vanilla, cream of tartar, baking soda together in a bowl until evenly combined. Stir in flour; mix until smooth. Fold 3/4 of the crumbled bacon into the batter. Pour batter into prepared pan.

Bake until the edges of the cake begin to pull away from the sides and the center bounces back if you press it, about 20 minutes. Remove from oven and sprinkle cake with brown sugar and remaining 1/4 bacon crumbles. Bake until brown sugar starts to bubble and bacon crisps, about 5 more minutes.

Cool in the pan for about 10 minutes before removing and transferring to a cooling rack.

Chicken and Artichoke Marinara

My coworkers and I had a stint of Friday lunches at a little Italian restaurant. They make fresh pasta daily, and post the menu just before opening at 11am. Naturally, our stomachs began rumbling at approximately 10:55am. On one such day, they tempted us with a 9-layer lasagna oozing with Bechamel, sun-dried tomato pesto, and Bolognese sauce spread onto the layers, respectively. If that wasn't enough to give someone vertigo, they strategically inserted hard-boiled eggs into the mix. Yes. The richness continues.

Almost in unison, we peeled ourselves off the floor, gathered our wallets, and run-walked down the street. We were slowly cranked on an invisible pasta wheel to our epic fate.

We arrived promptly at 11:30 with our forks held high. Our steaming plates of freshly cut 9-layer lasagna arrived just as punctually. There are a few times in life where I consciously eat slowly, savoring every bite. This was one of those experiences. Conversation stopped and small noises escaped our lips. We were shaking our head no, meaning yes. I saved almost all of my hard-boiled eggs for the last five bites. By the time I had eaten the majority of the dish, defeat started creeping in...but I pushed through. Napkin thrown into the cleaned bowl.

We crawled up the stairs and slowly made our way to the couch displays in the back of a furniture store. The three of us aligned ourselves on the white leather couch and took a ten minute nap before rolling back to the office. The walk helped, but about two hours later, A looked over to find my head on the keyboard. Food coma won.

Chicken and Artichoke Marinara

2 to 4 servings

This recipe is a concoction of stocked ingredients I used for girls' dinner party the night before a vacation. As you can see, I lean toward Italian-style ingredients and wanted to recreate the lasagna coma, without the pasta. Serve over fresh pasta for a full meal or alongside bread, cheese, and pate.

1 tablespoon olive oil

1/2 red onion, thinly sliced

4 cloves garlic, chopped

1 cup chicken stock

1 cup tomato sauce

1 cup water

2 tsp dried thyme

1 tsp dried oregano

3 tablespoons tomato paste

3 chicken breasts, cut into large pieces

Salt and black pepper

1/4 cup whole wheat flour

1 to 2 tablespoons butter

1 cup chopped green olives

3 hard-boiled eggs, sliced in 1/4-inch rounds

Heat olive oil in a large skillet over low heat; saute red onion until browned and caramelized, about 15 minutes. Add garlic and stir until fragrant, 1 to 2 minutes. Stir chicken stock, tomato sauce, water, thyme, oregano, tomato paste into onion and garlic; cover and simmer, stirring occasionally, until flavors have blended, about 10 minutes.

Coat chicken pieces generously with salt and pepper on both sides. Sprinkle and press with flour until fully coated. Heat butter in a separate skillet over medium heat. Cook chicken in the melted butter until no longer pink in the center, 6 to 8 minutes per side. Add cooked chicken, olives, and eggs to the simmering marinara. Season with salt and pepper. Cook for a few more minutes to combine flavors.

Lemon Tahini Spread

It is Recipe Swap time again. Christianna of Burwell General Store has paged through her vintage cookbook and arrived at a lovely lemon sponge cake recipe for us. We have taken a few months off from the swap and are back and ready for action. The second I saw 'lemon' in the title I was happy. We have been having warm summer weather in Seattle for the past week and anything lemon sounded refreshing.

I spent this whole weekend doing as many outdoor activities as possible, like walking to brunch to meet the girls, going hiking at Discovery Park with M, driving with windows down to Alki beach, climbing aboard T's boat all day yesterday, and taking a swim in Lake Washington. I couldn't ask for a better weekend. When I got home from the boat yesterday, it was still pretty toasty outside and inside the apartment. So I leaned toward creating a recipe that didn't involve turning on the oven.

One of my coworkers recently recommended the cookbook 'Purple Citrus and Sweet Perfume' to me because I tend toward Mediterranean-inspired cooking. After paging through her copy, I immediately ordered one for myself. All the pictures are vibrantly inspiring, so I sat with a cup of coffee yesterday morning looking for a lemon-based recipe.

Tahini is one of those ingredients I always forget about, but love when I have it. It feels like a big commitment to buy a whole jar of it. But now with my newly remodeled apartment, a stack of new cookbooks, and a nice summer breeze wafting through the apartment, I am encouraged to discover new ways to incorporate it into my cooking. Which also means more dinner parties to be added to the calendar. Thanks Christianna for giving us a nice lemony platform to start our week!

Lemon Tahini Spread
Makes about 1/3 cup
Inspired by Purple Citrus and Sweet Perfume

Serve alongside pita bread or whole wheat tortillas, cucumber slices, and olives for a rich and creamy addition to the appetizer plate. Sprinkle with fresh herbs for a nice color and flavor.

3 tablespoons tahini
2 tablespoons water
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 lemon, zested and juiced
1 clove garlic, roughly chopped
1/4 teaspoon cumin
1/4 teaspoon sugar
Salt and pepper
1 pinch black sesame and white seeds

Place all the ingredients except the sesame seeds in a small food processor; blend until smooth. Garnish with sesame seeds.

Chocolate Oatmeal

What could be a better way to start the day than with a nice bowl of chocolate-infused oatmeal and peanut butter? Well atop a new kitchen table of course. Pictured above is a small slice of my new kitchen table. Beside it needing chairs, my apartment remodel is nearly complete.

Upgrade 2012 has been going along quite smoothly. I have upgraded my couch, buffet, kitchen table, and wardrobe. Getting rid of large pieces of furniture is quite liberating. I have never sold furniture while still living in the same apartment. When S and A and I moved from our little Smurf house in Colorado, we had a huge yard sale with such items as couches, sombreros, handmade dresses, thrift store dishes, and silver spray-painted tables. It was time to say goodbye to college living, and hello to a new chapter.

M and T and I then lived together in two different houses here in Seattle, where we had huge yards sales at the transition. Our first sale was at our Northgate cottage. This was one of those never ending houses. Room after room of fun. We had one ridiculously large room, called 'The Party Room', that we painted Hulk green. The Party Room hosted a pool table that converted into a ping pong table, along with dozens of dance parties to Ja Rule. We ended up selling the table at our yard sale for more than we bought it for...quite the business women.

Then we moved into another house that we lived in for about a year. This house's specialty was a giant kitchen, unruly rhubarb in the back yard, and a host of many roommates coming and going from the extra bedroom. By the end of our stint, we had a storage unit full of unclaimed items and a yard sale to match. It was one of those sales that lasted Friday through Sunday. Every evening we would put a pile of stuff on the corner of the street, and by morning it would be gone. Brilliant way to get rid of stuff.

Then I moved to my current apartment and have at least one yard sale a year...except this year. I tried my hand at Craigslist for the bigger items, which proved to be quite nice. I have met so many different people in the process and have felt really good about all the new homes my furniture has been adopted into.

So in the spirit of upgrading and making space for newness, I tried this recipe for chocolate oatmeal. It was a morning I didn't have much in the refrigerator, and I had just read a similar recipe on Allrecipes. No time like the present to add a little chocolate to breakfast.


Chocolate Oatmeal
Makes 1 serving
Inspired by Allrecipes.com

Unsweetened cocoa powder adds a low calorie richness to oatmeal. Stir in your favorite sweetener and peanut butter for a hearty start to your day.

1/2 cup oats
1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder
1 pinch salt
1 cup milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon ground flax seed
1 teaspoon honey
2 teaspoons peanut butter

Stir oats, cocoa powder, and salt together in a saucepan. Add milk and vanilla extract. Heat oatmeal over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until desired consistency, 5 to 10 minutes. Transfer oatmeal to a bowl. Stir flax seeds and honey into oatmeal; top with small chunks of peanut butter.