I never imagined when I started this blog nearly five years ago that someday my dishes would appear in a cookbook, but if there’s anything I’ve learned this year, it’s that life throws you the most wonderful curveballs sometimes. I’m thrilled that four (!!!!) of my recipes appear in the new Food52 Cookbook, I’m humbled to share the pages of that book with so many talented home cooks, and I’m delighted that I can call a good number of them friends.

On that high note, I’m saying goodbye to this space, at least for now. I can’t imagine a happier place to be in life than where we are right now, and I can’t thank you all enough for sharing the highs and lows, losses and celebrations with us here for the last five years. My priority right now is feeding Julian, and these days that doesn’t leave me time for much else, but I want you to know that you’ll always have a place at our (real or virtual) table.

Be well, savor life, and again, thank you.

This week, the folks at food52 have challenged members of the community to submit one “Recipe You Want To Be Remembered For.” This contest theme got me thinking, of course, being 20 weeks into this pregnancy, smack dab in the middle of building our little boy on the best food I can give him. I’ve thought a lot about what I’m eating now – not just what health and developmental benefits I hope to provide for our son through my diet, but what (if any) impact the foods I’m eating will have on his future likes and dislikes.

I probably spend even more time musing about what and how he’ll eat as he gets older. What will food mean to him? What will he look forward to eating, love above anything else, wrinkle his little nose at? Will he have my allergy to oranges and grapefruit, or share his father’s aversion to melon? What will he remember when he’s all grown up and he thinks of me and his dad and the meals we shared as a family?

I can’t tell you how many times over the last few months Mike and I have been sitting at the kitchen table and the conversation has turned to our son and food. We talk about how we can’t wait for Sproggy’s first taste of fresh spring peas, of raspberries picked from the vine, of a tiny tomato bursting with juice and still warm from the sun. About taking him to the farmers’ market and introducing him to the wonderful people who grow and produce so much of our food. About how best to express gratitude for what we eat and the work that went into making it. We talk of rituals, of holidays and gatherings, of our family traditions, of how they might change and evolve over time, and how this little one will be part of them.

I get a little giddy when I think of our son helping Mike bake bread or make pizza, rolling out dough with chubby little hands, flour speckling his clothes. Every time I make tortillas from scratch – a skill I’m still learning – I think about doing so with him at my side, about the smell of toasty corn rising from a hot griddle, and how that scent transports me immediately to my grandmother’s kitchen. I wonder if that aroma, or others, will trigger such great memories for him someday.

We want him to know where and how things grow, to meet chickens and pigs and cows and sheep, to be accustomed to living in a home in which canning jars line the shelves, full of delicious things we’ve grown, picked, or put up ourselves.

But back to the original question – is there a particular dish or meal I that want our little boy to remember above all others? Meatballs, migas, macaroni and cheese, soft scrambled eggs, a lobster roll on a toasted bun, homemade pickles, the family rice and beans, or a crispy chicken cutlet? I can’t possibly choose one thing.

I want to share all sorts of food experiences with him, whether it involves meals we’ve cooked at home, or just sitting with him while we share one perfect cheese, a tin of great sardines with Triscuits and mustard, a juicy ripe peach, cold briny oysters, or a hot dog in the park. I look forward to sitting back and watching him figure out food and flavors, learn his likes and dislikes. I look forward to how he’ll inspire and influence me in the kitchen, and maybe someday, when he’s all grown up and I’m an old woman, he’ll ask me to make him his most favorite thing ever, and I will happily oblige.

But we’ve got a whole lot of eating to do before then, and I look forward to savoring every moment.

I don’t know what to say.

It’s well into February and I haven’t posted here in what feels like forever. We’ve been cooking up a storm, working on projects in the kitchen, eating some truly wonderful things, but I just haven’t had it in me to post.

There’s so much to tell you. But I can’t talk about it just yet.

I do want to talk about this pasta, though. It seems like every time I talk about this dish, something big happens. I last posted about it here in 2007, to an enthusiastic response.

Almost a year later, with Mike in New Orleans for Tales of the Cocktail and me at home in Providence, I watched wide-eyed as my site meter shot skyward, topping out at 12,127 hits – twelve thousand, one hundred twenty seven hits – thanks to a post on a Yahoo! Shine blog which linked out to that old Linguine con Sarde post.

And now my recipe for this dish, this humble pantry supper I’ve been making for us for years, is the latest addition to the second food52 cookbook.

As in book one’s scallop competition, I was up against the incredibly talented cook melissav, and today, I learned that my Linguine with Sardines, Fennel and Tomato came out on top in the voting. Sardines with pasta! People are cooking this, and enjoying it, people are eating sardines, and that’s not just big, it’s huge. I couldn’t be happier, or more proud.

To all of you who voted, who commented, who are a constant source of support and inspiration, THANK YOU.

I had no idea, as we planned our meals for this week, that last night’s dinner would turn into such a big fun celebration. We’ve spent most of our time planning for and looking forward to today, our fifth wedding anniversary, and the meal we’ll share tonight, as well as making plans to continue the celebration over the weekend. We’ll have other things to celebrate then, too – my parents‘ 40th (!) anniversary, and my niece‘s second birthday, so much joy packed into a few short days.

But boy did I get a surprise yesterday thanks to the folks at food52 – they chose my Hunters’-Style Chicken as a Wildcard winner, to appear in the second food52 cookbook alongside Amy‘s amazing Short Rib Ragu and countless other mouthwatering dishes. It’s always a rush to have a recipe chosen as a finalist or an Editor’s Pick in a competition, but to have my dish deemed worthy of inclusion in the book just on its own is really something special. I’m incredibly humbled, and so thankful, and it was such a fun coincidence that I had already planned to make this dish last night.

I’m sure we’ll be raising many a glass over the next few days, and you can be sure that as we toast to all of the things we’re grateful for in our lives, we’ll be thinking of all of you and this incredible community we’ve become a part of.

Thank you for sharing our food and drink, our laughter and tears, our sorrows and joys this year. We are so grateful for you all.

There are times when I really have to pinch myself and ask, “Is this really my life? How the heck did I get here, to this place, with these people… how the heck did I get so lucky?”

This past Thursday was definitely one of those times.

When I heard Amanda Hesser would be speaking at the Boston Athenaeum as part of her book tour for The Essential New York Times Cook Book, Mike and I knew we’d want to attend. When I got an email that Amanda would like to share a post-event dinner with us and a few other Boston-area food52 folks (Dave and Mary Reilly, Peg Loftus, and our wonderful coordinator Steven Dunn), I was even more excited. I had met and even gotten a chance to cook with Amanda (and Merrill Stubbs, her food52 co-founder) a little over a year ago at the food52 launch party, and though I was nervous as could be about meeting someone I so admired, I found her to be incredibly warm, funny, and totally down to earth, so I was thrilled to have another chance to spend some time with her.

What made this dinner extra special was the venue, Chef Jason Bond’s not-yet-open restaurant Bondir in Cambridge. Jason and his staff greeted us warmly, handing us flutes of bubbly as we gathered around a roaring hearth, and then proceeded to treat us to a wonderful feast. There was cheese, heirloom apples, and tiny sweet carrots draped in tissue-thin sheets of house Mangalitsa pork guanciale which we nibbled on in front of the fire, then once seated in the dining room, we were each presented with a pair of sweet tender scallops harvested that morning from waters off Scituate, Mass.

Also from those waters, beautiful lobster tails, poached in Vin Jaune and served with buttercup squash, crosnes, Roxbury russet and onion greens. Chef brought out a beautiful copper roasting pan with racks of roast Tamworth pork next, the aroma of succulent meat and bronze fennel filling the dining room before he returned to the kitchen to carve and serve it forth. The finale was probably the biggest revelation, a tart of Jerusalem artichokes enrobed in a black pepper caramel and served with a cardoamaro cream. As I’ve said many times, I’m not big on desserts, but this one hit all the right notes.

The food, drink, and conversation flowed, the cozy space was filled with laughter, and though we were there for hours it felt all too brief as Mike and I bid our farewells and headed back to South Station to catch the last train back to Providence. I felt more than a little zombie-like on Friday as I struggled through my workday on just a few hours of sleep, but it was so worth it.

Huge thanks to Amanda, to Chef Jason and Monica and the staff at Bondir, and to my wonderful food52 friends. Evenings like this are truly what community, what gathering around a table and sharing the gift of a good meal, what savoring life, is all about.

We love a good pot of chili, and our kitchen has turned out dozens of variations over the years. Mike is partial to a meaty, Alton Brown-style version, while I tend to favor a chili with lots of beans and sometimes no meat at all. With the weather turning colder I decided to make chili my next project, and set out on Sunday to come up with a version that would satisfy both of us.

For the meat, I used Aquidneck Farm beef short ribs, boned out, trimmed, and cut into chunks. I made a puree of chiles and spices, added fire-roasted tomatoes and some rich dark beer, and let everything cook low and slow for the better part of the day. I added some crushed tortilla chips for texture and a hint of toasty corn flavor, and a hit of fresh lime juice at the end for brightness and balance. And after my pot of chili had cooked for the better part of the day, I cooled it down and let it sit overnight. We ate it on Monday with a bevy of garnishes, and I have to tell you, it was so worth the wait. You can get my recipe at food52.

I won’t go into the multitude of things that have been keeping me away from this blog, but I did want to stop in and let you know that despite the lack of posts here and my nearly four day twitter blackout (what on earth did we do before twitter? thank goodness my account came back last night), I haven’t actually dropped off the face of the planet. However, life has gotten even crazier than it was a week ago, and it likely won’t slow down any time soon.

On top of all that, we have a dear friend coming to visit for a few days and we’re looking forward to eating and drinking our way around town, but with my usual great timing, I seem to be coming down with a cold. I made this soup a few nights ago, and Mike packed some for my lunch today. I used fresh cranberry beans instead of cooked dried beans, and since we were fresh out of potatoes I added a little extra pasta to the mix. I’m hoping the one-two punch of the leeks and garlic confit will chase any bugs away.

You can get my recipe at food52.

One of the very best things I did this week, one of the best moments of my life, was to call my beloved Grandma on Wednesday evening. I called to tell her that her name, and my recipe that was inspired by a dish that she has made countless times over the course of her 89 years, a humble pot of beans, no less, was featured in the New York Times. Those beans, those beans that I *had* to figure out how to make for myself years ago, those beans that she makes as effortlessly as breathing, no measuring, like all of her beloved dishes, they just come together, perfectly, every single time. My spin on my Grandma’s borrachos, with her name-checked as inspiration, is in the New. York. Times.

When I ask my Marina in person (way, WAY not often enough), or on the phone (also not often enough), how she makes X, or Y, or Z, there are never measurements. It’s just How We Cook. Handfuls and pinches, and “a leetle beet” – “everybody’s hands are different,” she always, always says. She is WHY I cook, she is my star, she is my heart, and if you could have heard how this amazing 89 year old woman giggled when I gave her the news that these beans, OUR beans, hit the big time, it would have made your heart grow about three sizes. And then melt. It did mine.

So check out this awesome interactive feature which highlights not just our beans, but 19 other amazing potluck-friendly recipes curated by (food52 Team Awesome) Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs. And if you live in Providence, don’t be surprised if you can’t find a copy of the Sunday NYT – Amanda’s got an incredible piece in the Magazine about her new book, and WOW, I’m in that piece too, and Mike and I will be up bright and early tomorrow to buy up copies of the paper to send to our people back home. Most importantly, to my Grandma Marina, mi Abuela, my heart, my biggest inspiration.

Mike dubbed this Curryflower Surprise. I was just happy he liked it, so I kept the goofy name. Get my recipe at food52.