I’m sure I say this every single year, but I’m amazed that this one is about to be over. 2019 flew by. Technically speaking, a lot happened this year. I finished ten years of grad school, wrapped up my internship, and became a dietitian, all of which are important milestones that I worked hard for. In many ways, though, not a lot seems to have happened this year. I had the idea that passing the RD exam in September and being free of…

For me, the holiday season presents an opportunity to look back at the year behind me and practice gratitude for all I’ve experienced. One of the highlights of 2019 was having the opportunity to travel to South Korea, where I learned the story of Nasoya kimchi. I’ve long been a fan (and a proud ambassador) of Nasoya foods. The brand’s tofu is my go-to at home. I was so excited when I first got to sample Nasoya’s kimchi this summer: it’s completely vegan,…

It was a spectacular week of recipe fails around here, which is why I haven’t had anything to post. Not just recipes that needed fine tuning, mind you, but real duds. It was frustrating. Needless to say, I reacted by bearing down and retesting everything, which only resulted in repeated failures. Finally, I decided to take a real break. I took the end of the week and the weekend off from cooking, assembling simple stuff and focusing on my baking adventures instead. I’m…

In addition to being the first day of the month, it’s also the first day of Advent. I grew up observing the Advent season at home. My holiday celebration is different now that I’m older and on my own, but I do still try to keep Advent in my heart and soul throughout December, regardless of how busy the month tends to be. Last year, I was too distracted with my internship to really feel the coming of Christmas, but I think it’ll…

I’m writing this post as I make my way home from a faraway place. I’ll be sharing more about the trip next weekend. For now, I’ll say that this experience has made me grateful on two fronts: grateful for the opportunity to leave home and explore a different part of the world, and grateful to be coming back. It’s the gratitude for home I want to focus on today. Last week, I wrote about my exercise in journaling about things that make me…

This week, I tried a new exercise: each night before bed, I made a quick list of the things that had given me happiness that day. It was surprisingly illuminating. I’ve done gratitude journaling before, but this was different. Whereas the list of things that I’m grateful for is usually long and unchanging (family, friends, shelter, food, health, home…and so on), the list of things that had made me happy shifted around a little from day to day. They were much more minute…

There are a lot of things that should have gotten more of my attention than they did this past week. What got most of my attention instead was my bread baking. A set of new loaves every morning. Bread baking has been a part of my life since the spring of 2017, when I was limping my way through a breakup and found Ali Stafford’s Bread, Toast, Crumbs. Soon after, I found Emilie Raffa’s Artisan Sourdough Made Simple, and my love affair with homemade…