Sebastian has this superstition about New Year's: the overall feeling of the holiday portends the year ahead. We thought we were in an unprecedented position to ring in 2007. We had the most exquisite gustatory experience of our lives, we got engaged, hell, we were in Paris. I spent that whole week smiling, and when I wasn't smiling I was kissing, and when I wasn't kissing I was eating, and when I wasn't eating I was walking down little Parisian streets and, well, smiling. I look back at the video we shot there and find myself positively radiant. It was the happiest I've ever been in my life.



But then there was the tail end, the part where I was aching with food poisoning and passed out waiting for the bathroom on our flight home and when I came to had a coven of British flight attendants buzzing around me with oxygen masks and clucking over my new ring (that last part I didn't mind). And then Sebastian became violently ill, and we still had six hours of a trans-Atlantic journey ahead of us. It is not overstatement to say it took every ounce of strength, will, and faith in both of us to convince ourselves we would make it home alive. Needless to say, we were really sick.

And that, in a sense, is really how our year has gone down. There were crazy heights, and some really low lows, all of which would be tedious and cringe-worthy to detail here. Suffice it to say there were hurdles and road blocks, resurfaced demons, empty bank accounts, but thankfully, no more vomiting. I don't think we could have handled that.

To ring in 2008, we are driving up to a snowy cabin with my best friend, my sister, and my brother-in-law. We have plans to cook, hike, read by the fire, drink a lot of champagne, and have at least one barefoot impromptu dance party (I'll be spearheading that last item on the agenda).

So what does that mean for the year ahead? It means fewer dizzying heights, true, but it means something else, and something which I am craving: Next year will have a quiet, secure happiness that this year, for all its tumult and excitement, lacked. That means more farmer's markets and fireplaces, food to be made and friends to come over and eat. I expect in the next year to be spending more time with my friends and family and less time doing just about everything that seems meaningless by comparison. And it also means, I am sure of it, another year with my beau of smiling, kissing, eating and walking, though perhaps over paths of pine needles rather than Parisian cobblestones. And I am so okay with that.



101 Things in 1001 Days

If you haven't seen this meme yet, I can't encourage you enough to go check it out. Having a particular penchant for lists, I think it's brilliant. But I also think that life can slip right by -- days turn months and then, whoa, another year gone! -- unless you are positively vigilant about assessing what you want and making sure you get your hot little hands on it. Perusing people's lists is positively inspiring, with items from "fold 1,000 paper cranes" to "bake a challah" to "try tai chi" . Perhaps one of the greatest things about this project, though, is that it reclaims resolutions from the land of self-improvement (though there is still plenty of room for that) and puts it squarely back in the land of fun. Will you go camping? Will you learn to crochet? What will you do?

Happy holidays to all! Here's wishing your next year is the very pink of perfection!

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One Christmas, too many years ago to count, something (I can only guess that it was an appeal to her imagination) possessed my mother to buy a buche de Noel from our local French bakery. Is there anything more delightful to a seven year old girl than the gleaming pastry case in a bakery? Perhaps the only thing better is when the glass case opens and a fanciful Christmas cake come home in a white box tied with twine. As a girl with a particular fascination with gnomes and cozy forest creatures, this yule log captured every ounce of my imagination. Covered with lichen and mushrooms fashioned out of meringue and carved with bark and rings revealing its age, it was like a toy you could eat, and it was pretty much the coolest thing I had ever seen. But for some reason, probably expense, there was only one year of buche de Noel at the McColl house until we fell back on the tradition of cranberry crunch.

The yule log had to come back this year, I felt. Roughly twenty years is long enough to keep a cake in hibernation that embodies such childlike fun and whimsy. Or maybe I was just hoping to bring some of the wonder back to Christmas. The kids in our family are too old to lay awake in the dark of morning debating whether or not it is yet an acceptable hour to pad downstairs in their pj's to empty out the stockings and see what Santa has brought. And Christmas, I now think, is a holiday truly for children. The people I know have everything they need and treat themselves to the things they want. There's not much I can imagine wrapping up and placing under the tree that would excite them the way our Hot Wheels, Casio keyboards, and Care Bears once did. Children bring a bright-eyed wonder and rosy cheeked brilliance to Christmas morning that we just don't have in us anymore.

But if my eyes danced with bright-eyed wonder this year, it was from the deep thrill baking this cake gave me. I don't have the patience for baked goods made to resemble people or things -- but holy baby Jesus! This buche de Noel looked just like a log and really wasn't fussy at all. A quick, deft rolling of the slim, flat cake with only one brief moment of panic. From there it was all light and dreamy, covered with a deep dark frosting, and I was hopping around the kitchen proud as a new mother.

The origin of this traditional French and Quebecois cake is debated, but some say that Napolean once ordered Parisian households to shut up their chimneys one winter due to a popular conception that cold air would cause medical problems. Unable to gather around a fire for traditional Christmas merrymaking, clever French bakers fashioned a mock log to serve as a hearth centerpiece. To this day, the fires may well be roaring in your living room, but I promise, if you make this cake, people will delightedly gather 'round it.



Buche de Noel
adapted from Feast by Nigella Lawson
Serves 8

for the cake
6 eggs, separated
3/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

for the icing*
6 ounces semisweet or bittersweet chocolate
2 cups confectioners sugar
2 sticks butter
1 tablespoons vanilla extract
additional confectioner's sugar for "snow"

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line a jelly roll with parchment paper leaving a generous overhang at the ends.

In a large bowl, whisk the egg whites until foamy and thick. Then add 1/2 cup of the sugar and continue whisking until the whites hold peaks.

In another bowl, whisk the egg yolks and remaining sugar until pale yellow and thick. Add the vanilla and sift in cocoa powder before gently folding to incorporate. Next, fold a few tablespoons of the egg whites into the yolks, before gently folding in the remaining whites in thirds.

Pour the cake mixture into the lined cake pan and bake for twenty minutes.

While the cake is in the oven you can make the icing. In a double boiler (or a bowl placed over a pan of boiling water), melt the chocolate and butter. Stir in the vanilla and confectioner's sugar.

When the cake comes out of the oven, let it cool for a few minutes before trimming both long and short ends (this will make it easier to roll and give a neater look). Spread on a thin coat of icing. Then, starting at the short end, tightly roll the cake into a cylinder. Slice one or both ends at a gentle diagonal -- you can use these pieces to make a craggy log. Cover the log in frosting and then drag a toothpick or fork through the icing to make bark and age rings. Sift on confectioner's sugar for snow. Gather 'round, and after appropriate oohing and ahhing, eat!



*I found that I had a lot of icing leftover over -- about twice as much as I needed. Next time I would probably halve the icing measurements for less waste.

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"Can I make guacamole any more fattening?" said Nigella Lawson, "Why yes I can!" I was asking her about her recipe for Roquamole--an avocado dip with blue cheese. And her answer was so animated that when she leaned over, the coral-colored lace of her bra edged up into view. My, she's marvelous.

Roquamole
adapted from Nigella Express

1/4 cup blue cheese
3 tablespoon sour cream
1 jalepeno, minced (she uses canned; I prefer fresh)
2 avocados (slice into halves; then make cross-hatching marks with a knife--to dice before scooping out of its skin)

Blend the first 3 ingredients together in a bowl, mashing the blue cheese with the back of a spoon. Then fold in the avocado. Blend well.

My love of simple, sincere guacamole is well-established. But since Nigella has such brilliant ideas about how to spend a Saturday--she visits galleries with her husband, goes out for lunch and then comes home in the early afternoon to take a bath and change into her pajamas--I approached her variation with curiousity and an open mind. It's delicious.

My all time favorite guacamole recipe, however, is the one I've been eating lately. It's inspired by the sexy Condesa hotel in Mexico City--they use pomegranate seeds in theirs--only I've added tomatillos, which cut through the richness of the avocado and make the whole thing taste super-fresh. Paired with soup or canned black beans and toasted tortillas, it makes for a lovely weeknight supper. Enough with the commentary.



Guacamole, evolved

2 avocados, diced
3/4 jalepeno, minced
2 large tomatillos, diced
1/4 cup pomegranate seeds (plus more for garnish)
juice of 1/2 lemon
fresh cilantro

Stir all ingredients together in a bowl and sprinkle with additional pomegranate seeds. Oh, and waffle makers excell at toasting tortillas (to make tortilla chips).

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Mondays have a tendency to chew me up and spit me out, so that when I arrive home, tired and worse for wear, I want life to feel easy. Soup, with its bare requirement of casual stirring, and its gentle steam bringing the flush back to your cheeks when you finally lean over a bowl, spoon poised, fits the bill quite nicely.

This is not only my favorite soup but my favorite kind of recipe. I call it Alchemy Cooking. The list of ingredients is so humble that I am always somewhat astonished at the flavors that burst forth in the end. Better still, the satisfaction of making something is only magnified when its beginnings are so unassuming and its final form so great.

A couple Mondays back I decided to take the the subway to the far reaches of my neighborhood. I thought some French-style exercise would do me good, and few things put me more at peace than a chance to enjoy the charms of Brooklyn. It was the perfect night for it, as this was the last sigh of mild night air before a fast descent into winter. That is, all seemed perfect as I was peeping into undraped windows when all of a sudden the sky opened up and began to rain fat drops on me and my tote filled with the ingredients for this soup.

Had this been a typical Monday, the next part of this story would involve me cursing under my breath and having thoughts that sound more than a little like violins playing. I can't say what it was exactly that prompted me instead to put up the hood of my jacket and laugh a little at my luck and wet toes. Perhaps it was knowing I had a bottle of wine at home to warm up with, or that I knew I would soon be eating this soup, or maybe it was the burst of endorphins from scurrying along the slick residential streets. Whatever the reason, what would have been an annoying inconvenience became a serendipitous delight, and I wish I knew how to make that happen more often.



White Beans and Greens Soup
Serves 4-6

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
2 large garlic cloves, minced
1 bunch dark, leafy greens, such as collard greens, kale, or Swiss chard, stemmed and roughly chopped
1 15.5 ounce can white beans
6 cups chicken stock
salt, plenty of pepper, and grated parmesan

Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil in a large pot over medium heat, and sauté onion and garlic until soft and translucent. Stir in greens and cook, uncovered, until wilted. Add chicken stock and white beans, and raise the heat to bring soup to a gentle boil. Reduce heat and let simmer for 5 minutes. Add salt, lots of freshly ground black pepper, and serve topped with grated parmesan.

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Is it just me, or is waking up just plain hard, no matter how you slice it? No matter if it's the weekend and the sun is streaming in through the window, or I crawled in bed early and have been dead to the world for 9 hours (my requisite), I just have trouble getting up and at 'em. The new bed has only made the job more difficult.

Truly the only way for me to make like an early bird is to have little motivations. When I open my eyes to a small hobnail vase and fresh flowers on my bedside table, I feel like my life has a modicum of grace -- even if I am running late and will soon be eating a scone on the subway platform. Granted, fresh flowers are a luxury, but what payoff! Sometimes you simply can't resist the Key Foods bargain of 2 dozen roses for $12 or the $4 bouquet of space alien mums. Certainly, a splurge worth making every now and then.

You don't need floral tape to put together a nice arrangement. Put your office supplies to work by making a grid across the top of your vase with transparent tape. This will help anchor the flowers at angles that defy gravity and reason. Dropping in a splash of bleach will help keep the water and flowers fresh longer too, ensuring you catch the worm for as many mornings as possible.

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