Back from the fresh air

Happy New Year everyone! It’s good to be back after a looong pre-and-post-holiday hiatus. I took a little break from cooking while we trekked through Michigan and Indiana for Christmas. (This photo was taken during a Christmas Day walk in the woods with my family, just before sunset.)

Restful stays in three(!) locales meant that I got to catch up on my reading. I finally combed through the December issues of Gourmet, Bon Appetit and Cooking Light, as well as the cookbooks I received as Christmas presents: The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook and the new North Market Cookbook.

By the time I returned to Columbus with dog-eared cooking magazines and cookbooks in hand, I was ready to fire up the ovens, and I did so in earnest for three days straight. The result of my labors was a steady parade of warm-you-up recipes: baked oatmeal, baked eggs with prosciutto (which looked just darling in their little ramekins), black bean soup with chicken and chorizo* (using chicken chipotle sausages from Wild Oats to kick up the heat) and Tuscan-style white beans. (For recipe, scroll down to "legumes.")

*In Bon Appetit's January 2008 issue, p. 28