Chocolate Dipped Shortbread Cookies

A typical Christmas with my family consists of a full day's worth of Chinese hot pot. Three meals (and snacks in between) of beef, lamb, fish balls, squid, napa cabbage, taro, tofu, seaweed, noodles, and my mom's famous dipping sauce. Cookies, especially home baked cookies, are usually nowhere to be found. Not exactly your typical American Christmas, but it's what I always associate with the holidays. It's what makes me nostalgic; what all the lights and buzz remind me of.

It's been a few years since I've spent the holidays with my family, life takes you in other directions sometimes. So last year, yearning for a piece of home, Phillip and I went out for hot pot in Chinatown on Christmas day. It wasn't as good as mom's, but it did ease the homesickness a bit.

In a change from tradition, this year there will be lots of cookie baking and no hot pot (only because I already got my fix last week). However, I still want to honor the non-typical ways people can celebrate Christmas, so I present to you a slightly non-typical cookie in the form of chocolate dipped rhinos.

Pear Cake with Salted Caramel

The days fly by. You couldn't ask for a more perfect New York fall. I watch the sun set at work most days, we have a panoramic view of the city from our office. It reminds me every day how beautiful life is, and if I had one desire, it would be the ability to slow it all down. It comes with the territory I suppose, time moves too fast in moments of content, and it trudges along slowly in moments you'd rather skip right through.

The markets have been bursting with apples, pears, and grapes lately. Picturesque fall. Last weekend, at every stall that carried them, there were huge swarms of honey bees all over the gorgeous and fragrant cartons of concord grapes. They were so damn happy. And for every bee present there was a person squealing about them, either in excitement or fear. It was truly a sight to behold. I decided to take another route from the bees, purchasing what may have been a few too many bartlett pears to make pear cake. It was a tasty decision.

Roasted Plums with Vanilla Bean Ice Cream

Tomorrow marks the first day of fall, where did the entire month of September go? Here I am scrambling to get this post out before the 23rd officially rolls around, so in the spirit of being constantly late to the game, I'm sharing one last late summer recipe with you guys because I'm not ready for six months of winter squash.

Just like the recipe, this post is going to be short and sweet, mostly because I don't really have much to say today, but also in part because I've been trying my best to enjoy time away from the computer screen lately, doing things like biking, walking, and for the first time tonight, climbing! Work's been good, I've been super busy, I went to a launch party for Sam's new cookbook (which you should buy because it's amazing and she's one of the most talented ladies ever), and I've been obsessed with making a vegetarian Chicken Shack at home, so much so that it was dinner almost every day last week. And that's it, that's my life update, that's all I got.

Brown Butter Peach Ice Cream Cake

I have these images in my head about how things in life should turn out before they happen. How a conversation with old friends will go, how a new city will make me feel, how I'll impress someone I haven't met yet, what my first day somewhere will be like. Inevitably, nothing ever turns out the way we picture it in our heads, and we're left with the determination that things will be different next time.

It was one of those single digit birthdays you don't quite remember with perfect clarity as an adult. My mom had bought me a cake, chocolate, decorated with white and yellow frosting, tucked nicely in a box for transporting home. I absolutely insisted on carrying it during the short walk from our car to our apartment, I had pictured myself gracefully gliding to the doorway as mom opened the door for me to step through like a princess. She insisted against it because she was afraid I would drop the cake. I won. I tripped. I dropped it on the hot August pavement. It was a devastating moment for my younger self as not only had I ruined my birthday cake, but I also got slapped in the face with a lesson in humility on the very day where it's okay to be unapologetically self centered and arrogant. Nothing like I pictured. We ended up eating the cake, mom scraped off the corner that got smushed to the ground, redistributed some of the frosting, and worked out some crafty angles for the photos. And as horrifying as it was at the time, it was character building—a learning experience. Never again would I be so careless with cake.