Lately I have been reading about the Japanese cooking philosophy, washoku, in a wonderful book of the same name by Elizabeth Andoh. Included in the principles of the washoku philosophy are considerations of: the five colors (go shiki), five tastes (go mi), five senses (go kan), and five ways… of preparing food (go hō). These principles are used to prepare meals daily, from elaborate multi-course kaiseki to the simplest of breakfasts. While they can easily be identified in Japanese cooking, and the Japanese certainly do a beautiful job of interpreting their philosophy, guidelines like these are an excellent way of exploring any meal or cuisine. While the list may seem daunting, it’s quite simple, and quiet effective in guiding us to create healthful, satisfying meals.

I just got back from Uruguay so all things Latin are still on my mind. I have been wanting to try this cake for forever. With the sun and beach of South America still fresh in my memory I decided to take the plunge and I am so glad I did. You will be too if you try this. I warn you though, the taste and texture are addictive.

Some foods are so hearty and so beloved that selecting one among the many variations is like waging war upon all the others. This is probably the case with beef chili, which some claim to have evolved from a Northern Mexican dish, and some a purely American one. My childhood memory of beef chili would more accurately be: “ground beef with kidney beans,” or the faintest memory of that other, “vegetarian” kind, which never held my attention for more than a few bites. In fact, I never really understood what the “chili” part of the dish was referring to, except for some faint red spice bombarded by too much oregano and cumin.

You can’t go wrong with hearty soups and stews in winter. They make any snowfall feel like the best of snow days, they restore your body and relax your mind, and they simply and deliciously warm you up from the inside out. My family doesn’t eat pork all the time. But when we come across a really good spicy pork sausage, we immediately find a big soup pot to put it in. Allowing the thick coins to soften and infuse a light broth with their rich, spicy, fatty goodness can change your whole outlook on cooking in winter. There must be a group of people out there who have devised recipes that showcase turkey and chicken sausage, but this soup is not one of those recipes. Furthermore, I am not one of those people. The fat and spice is what gives peasant-like soups their umph. It’s why you find yourself leaning in over the bowl and breathing in deep. And fat certainly puts the soul in good ol’ chicken soup.

The farmers’ market here, while quite small in the winter, is rightly so quite proud of its produce. We recently bought some sweet, purple garlic from friends of Matt’s Teague and Kosma Channing, who founded Gemini Farms outside of Santa Fe. We also brought home these two huge, beautiful ruddy beets.

I sit two feet to the left of our fire. It sputters and pops and burns and desires way too much wood due to its intense updraft (we’ve gone through a full carload - truck, seats, and all - of wood in one week). But it is fire and its flames lick high up towards the chimney. I’m sure all kivas were not created equal and this one definitely serves the decorative gods not the heat gods, but we love it and tend to it just the same. Its heat radiates just enough to touch the right side of my body and all the way up to my cheek. Sometimes I walk over to it and stick my butt out to get it a bit toasty before sitting back down.

Matt and I did some driving during Christmas break. Quite a bit, actually. We finally, after almost 10 years, moved out of NYC. It involved not only an anticlimactic exit culminating in hours of Jersey traffic, but also countless hours packing our car chock full of everything we felt was worthy of making the trip. It was a liberating and slightly nauseating experience.

We drove 2,300 miles through PA, Ohio, and Missouri, narrowly missing the snowstorm I’m sure covered many of you back east. We then met up with the Mother Road, Historic Route 66 and drove through the heartland, across the Panhandle and into the Southwest. Our little car and all our worldly possessions headed up the mountain to Santa Fe, New Mexico on Tuesday, December 22rd. The following day we surprisingly found an adorable adobe house, were all starry-eyed at how this would never have been possible on Christmas Eve in NYC, and settled in for a dry, snowy Christmas.

I sometimes realize how incredibly lucky we are that we all cook, not only cook but love to cook.

With all the holidays and a disaster or two thrown in, I have not had much time to write either on the blog to all of you or to work on our cookbook. I wanted an uninterrupted 3 hours or so with no other responsibilities so I could just dive in. Sometimes writing is like painting, it takes time to submerge yourself. That, in my experience, is when my writing starts to live and breath. Austin, Anjuli’s brother is back from Bulgaria. He is tall and lean and vegetarian. It is hard to keep him full. We all, including him, take turns.

I enjoy a good chewy sugar sweet, especially tiny squares of creamy caramel. I love sucking on them until you have just a tiny little drop on the tip of your tongue. Of course anything sweet paired with salt is a wet dream for your taste buds. I also love the more complex caramel flavor of dulce de leche. It’s the most beautiful reddish brown and has a velvety texture that hold its own but doesn’t feel like a thick, sticky caramel sauce. Oh, did I mention, I just adore dairy and sugar combined? Well, if my professed love of caramels and milk wasn’t cloyingly sweet enough for you, please, read on.

It’s that time of year again for lugging out the decorations. Thankfully in this house anyways, most of these decorations are homemade and many of them edible. Last year we made homemade gingerbread stained glass cookies. This year we finally decided holiday or no holiday we did not want to be chomping through some perfectly delicious gingerbread and encounter an insidious “lemon” or “orange” flavor at its center. We are also not about sugar that causes you to first bounce around the walls and then five minutes later fall on your face. So we opted for some homemade candy to accompany our hearts, stars, and spaceship, errrr, penis ornaments that hang on the tree.