We were at a party

Happy first birthday, The Dinner Takes It All. I made you some carnitas tacos--your favorite.

Also some English muffins. Sorry that they're a little flat. I find that they usually puff up too much so I did everything I could to make them flatter. I succeeded beyond my wildest expectations.

I started this blog at kind of a weird time in my life and I have to say that the intervening year has gone much better than it would have gone had I not started a food blog. I was coming across the Bay Bridge today at sunset and somehow I got this sense of--hey, I think everything has really come together in the past year. Well, you can't make brioche without drowning in butter for a few minutes.

If you're coming in late, here are a few posts most likely to succeed from the past year.

- Making preserved lemons before a Flaming Lips concert.
- How to make gnocchi the DeAngelis way; not for the faint of heart.
- Stalking my food blogging idol with winter citrus, vanilla, and tarragon.
- Bacon-filled doughnuts.
- In goat cheese I find respite from choir-related nightmares.
- I contemplate my future life as a lion farmer.
- Jeff and I go to Glacier National Park, make glacierdillas.
- A recipe post... I kind of like organizing things in my brain this way. I need to do more of these.
- The annunciation and green beans.

Okay, gotta keep movin', like a shark.

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Recipe roundup...

Carnitas came from my housewarming party based on a recipe by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt posted on Serious Eats. Heirloom tomatoes with salt, guacamole with bell peppers, a few tortillas toasted over the gas burner on our stove. Maybe I ate five.

English muffins based on Peter Reinhart's recipe from The Bread Baker's Apprentice, as posted on the sadly defunct pete bakes!