January | 2014 | abril's corner

My first real foodie post on the blog!!! If you follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and/or Pinterest you are well aware of my love for food, so it should come as no surprise that I’m posting about it on the blog now. I’m pretty much as passionate about food as I am about fashion. In fact, I can’t believe I hadn’t blogged much about it so far. But that’s about to change.

For the past several years I had thought and considered making Beef Bourguignon, the quintessential French beef stew, but I have to admit I was a little daunted by the challenge. As much as I love food, I gotta confess I’m not much of a cook. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy cooking -a lot- but my cooking skills are still very much in diapers. At home I usually cook very simple meals, and anything beyond the basics for me requires following a very detailed recipe. So that’s exactly what I did on New Year’s Eve after deciding I was ready to tackle the Beef Bourguignon challenge, I did an extensive Pinterest search, studied several recipes (including Julia Child’s famous version!), and finally settled on Tyler Florence’s yummy recipe.

Let me tell ya, it turned out absolutely, amazingly delicious! Of course I can’t take the whole credit for it because I did have my mom and even my 14 year old stepson helping me with the prep work, because oh boy, it sure is a lot of work, especially when making a huge quantity like we did (we double up Tyler’s recipe!). But all the hard work was so worth it in the end. We made some slight modifications to the original recipe (like adding more flour to thicken it up, and adding carrots for some color) , something I’m usually not comfortable doing, but having my mom to back me up gave me the confidence to go for it. And that’s when I realized… it all comes down to confidence.

It is such an obvious thing that confidence is key in everything we do, but I hadn’t realized until now that one of the reasons keeping me from getting better in the kitchen was the lack of confidence. After a few unsuccessful cooking attempts, the fear of messing up and ruining a meal, the anxiety of people not liking what I cook, took over and made me slightly neurotic about following a recipe, and stopped me from trying and experimenting anything on my own.

Granted, I’m not denying practice makes perfect, and I still believe following recipes is a great way to learn our way around the kitchen, but I shouldn’t be afraid to screw up… Let me rephrase that, I can’t let the fear of screwing up stop me from trying, because truth is I’ll probably still be afraid and nervous about screwing up, I just gotta handle it differently. I gotta apply to the kitchen what I already believe and try to live by in other areas of my life: embrace the mistakes! Embrace them fully for they are the greatest teacher, and not only do they tend to make us better, they often make for the best (and usually funniest) stories!

I can’t think of a better way to have wrapped up a wonderful year than having had a wonderful homemade 3 course dinner, shared with wonderful people, my family. And no better way to begin the new year than with this great reminder of one of my favorite life lessons. So 2014, bring it on! I’m ready to cook more, fear less, screw up, learn and laugh about it all.

P.S. Our dinner menu consisted of the following:

First course: Pear & Gorgonzola Green Salad. Second course: Beef Bourguignon served with Rosemary Roasted Potatoes and Sauteed Mushrooms. Third course: Champagne Poached Pears.

To get most of these recipes and more, you can follow me on Pinterest and go to my Cravings! board.

Another year has come and gone, one truly for the books. I am so grateful for everything 2013 brought to me; I can honestly say it has been the happiest year of my life so far. It was a year of new beginnings, of adventures, of traveling and exploring, of discoveries and rediscoveries, of new wonderful people coming into my life, of reuniting with life-long friends, of taking new directions, of loving and feeling loved, of dreams come true.

Ever since I can remember I have dreamed of traveling the world, and I’ve been blessed with many opportunities to do so. Some years have brought more opportunities than others, and 2013 was extremely generous in that regard. I got to visit beautiful places, explore countries I’ve never been to before, like Canada and Dominican Republican; visit old familiar places, like my beloved New York and my now dear LA; reconnect with my own country and my roots, visiting some of its most charming places.

All this traveling allowed me to meet people from different corners of the globe and I feel so lucky I now get to call many of them my friends, for knowing them made my travels that much richer. Traveling also allowed me to spend some serious quality time with my dearest childhood friends, and with family, solidifying some of the most important relationships in my life.

It was also a year of important decisions, like closing the cycle on a 10 year very rewarding career working with kids to pursue another one of my passions, writing. However, the most important decision of all came after turning 29 and realizing that I do want to have kids of my own someday; despite the fact that motherhood had been a childhood dream while I was growing up, over the past several years I had seriously questioned if it was something I really wanted. Now I know I do, and when the time is right, I will gleefully embark on that journey.

Of course I can’t talk about 2013 without mentioning one of the most important moments in my life, my wedding. A moment that came after 9 years of being in a relationship with the love of my life, of having been together for better or worse, in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer… which turned this event into a big celebration and reaffirmation of our love and commitment to each other. To have the most important people in our lives, our immediate families and the friends that have been with us thru our crazy ride, come together for this occasion only made it even more special and filled with love. I’ve been truly blessed by their love, and I’m forever grateful for each one of them. My happiness on my wedding day felt like one of those happy endings from the movies, but with the realization that it wasn’t an ending at all but rather a very happy beginning.

I can’t wait to see what 2014 has in store for all of us, but I know it will be great as I firmly believe the best is yet to come. But for now, all I have to say is thank you, thank you, thank you friends, thank you family, thank you life, thank you God, thank you 2013 for all the happiness and blessings, you will go down in history as my lucky 13.

abril's corner

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Monthly Archives: January 2014

Food: Beef Bourguignon

Lucky 13