I didn’t mean to disappear on you. I’d intended to start the year with soup, as I always do. I made a lovely-but-not-lovely-enough winter minestrone and then a red lentil situation but neither really seemed spotlight worthy and it can be hard sometimes but I really don’t want to publish anything here I don’t want to sing from the rooftops about. All of our time is worth more than that. While I was debating my next soup move, my friend texted and said “Can u believe the wedding is two weeks away??” and I bolted straight up in bed because, well, no. I could not believe it at all. I mean, I knew I’d told her I’d make her wedding cake. We’d discussed the headcount and flavors they liked. I had a loose idea of it in my mind and looked forward to really getting started on it… in a couple weeks. Needless to say, this is where the rest of January went and I’m going to tell you all about it next week — it’s going through some rigorous retesting and is going to be worth the wait because it’s probably one of the most delicious cakes I have ever made. But still, let’s never go on a break again.

The other kind of thing you miss very much when you’re three Kitchen Aid bowls deep in buttercream is vegetables, especially those coated in salt, acid, and heat. and I received the wonderful Diana Henry’s (she of the Bird in Hand and How to Eat a Peach fame for highly cookable recipes) most recent cookbook, From the Oven to the Table, full of sheet pan-ish meals, last fall and my favorite thing happened: I immediately bookmarked four dishes. This is what we always hope will, that we’ll instantly shake off a cooking rut we may not even have realized we were in at the suggestion of something new. I made the salsiccia con patate e pomodoro (wonderful), melting baked onions (I think I undercooked them but the potential is definitely there), toad in a hole with leeks and cheddar (soon!), a Persian-spiced spatchcooked chicken (ditto), and now this.

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