It’s pretty amazing how much can change in a year. I’m looking back and photos from this awkward week between Christmas and New Years and really seeing how fast it all goes by. One of the things I look at is what was most popular on the blog this last year. The most visited post was, oddly enough my last one, Potato Corn Chowder with Crusty Homemade Bread. And while a good majority of readers come from the U.S., I was surprised to see Canada, Brazil, Australia even South Korean readers (amongst many others). So hello world! We are ready for you!

 

 

We are ready to start the new year. I’m getting ready to meet my new nephew in March and Ro is turning 2!!! 2!!! Wasn’t she just born? We are already plotting and thinking about what to plant next year, at the end of this season we got really into pickling/canning and storing what we could from our garden.

 

And I complained about having an overabundance of jalapenos all summer, but I have plowed through nearly all 12 jars of pickled jalapenos we’ve stored.

 

So many tomatoes left also meant crushing, peeling and canning those for sauce this winter! The yellow ones in the pictures are all the heirlooms. I thought about slicing them and canning then almost whole, but this way they seemed more likely to get used. We love our Sunday Sauce!

 

 

In our freezer, we also stashed shishitos, fried eggplant, pesto and we have a ton of cayenne pepper drying in our kitchen to crush up (everyone keeps asking me if it’s real).

We rounded out Christmas with our Second Annual Christmas Day Brunch which was far more successful and less stressful than the year before (since now I know wtf I’m doing). I made 3 kinds of Quiche but one of the most popular is, of course, my signature Spinach, Mushroom, Bacon and Swiss Quiche.

 

I have a few posts stored up from this year that I’m going to try to write up and release over the week so keep an eye out! They might be a little summer/fall-ish but in the future (2018) we live in a world where we can get fresh produce year round! Amazinggggg.

So to wrap this up, 2017 was an all-around great year but we are already looking forward to 2018! My New Years resolution is to stop sweating the small stuff and to enjoy myself more (keep cooking and writing here because it’s fun!).

Cheers!