New Year, New You?

Welcome, 2012!!

This blog was inspired by my best friends Meryl and Dani. Meryl made a blog last summer about her time over in Italy (jealous) and Danikins is going to be in Israel for January. I never thought to make a blog, nothing so special to write about. But for Christmas, I (my dad, but it's mine now) received a cookbook, "around my french table" by Dorie Greenspan.
OMG.
And thus begins my epic January adventure of cooking and making yummy things all the while keeping track of calories and working out at the gym with my new personal trainer, Robbin.
My mom suggested that I take pictures of everything I make and post them here.


I hope you guys are hungry, because today I made........
Gougères!!

For those of you who don't know, this little morsel is basically just cheese bread... but not just any old cheese. Gruyère cheese. It's a hard cheese that comes from Switzerland that is sweet, but has a little bit of salty. Which is *muah* perfetto!

I started around lunch and these beauties have turned out very well indeed. This is for you, Lisa!!!

Making the dough was a bit intense, as it's over the stove and you don't want the whole milk to scald, and then stirring in the eggs definitely takes a bit of elbow grease if you don't have a mixer, but the end result is buttery, beautiful, cheesy goodness.

This is my southern table.

My sous chef, Fritz!

The source of inspiration, with all my notes in it.

Raw dough. I added a bit of cheese on top, not included in recipe.

While baking...

And the finished product?

Glorious. Simply glorious.
I cooked these for around 30+ minutes.

I guess my hour of cardio tomorrow has just become an hour and a half.
Enjoy these pictures! I wish you could smell the kitchen. If there is one thing I love to smell, it's cheese.
And chocolate. But that's for another day.


Happy New Year everyone! And as Paula Deen says, "Best Dishes!"