The “52” Challenge

I’ve never been much of a cook, but I love what food represents: community, family, health, love, adventure, joy… For me, spending a few hours on Sundays in a tiny apartment kitchen is like “soul therapy;” after hours of staring at a screen checking emails or writing or binging TV shows, it’s rejuvenating to use my hands to create rather than consume. However, I tend to always pull out the same few recipes (I’m looking at you, baked lemon chicken) and soon I felt like I was in a food rut, which is a complete waste when you think of the myriad tastes readily available to us.  So in January 2017, I made it my goal to expand my cooking abilities and make 52 dishes I’d never made before.

Spoiler alert: I succeeded! (Thus this humble-brag of a blog post.) But in all transparency, I didn’t cook one item per week; in fact, when life got super busy, I got behind–enough so that I made my final three items on New Year’s Eve Day and met my goal with less than an hour and a half to spare.

What matters most–more than cooking frequency or numbers of dishes or how well I cooked them–goes back to my sentence above about what food represents: I felt like I had “taken back” food and, consequently, my health; I could share my creations with family and friends; I supported Indiana farmers as much as possible (about half of the dishes listed below included ingredients picked up at farmers markets in Broad Ripple and Zionsville); and the simple act of cooking helped me slow my overloaded mind and focus on a simple happiness.

So, on to what you’re probably most interested in: what I made. All 52 are linked to their original recipes, most from the New York Times’ robust cooking section, and pictures in this post are actual photos of what I prepared. I’m not a food stylist, and naturally some foods just don’t look all that great on camera (sorry, blueberry-peach cobbler and cottage pie–you were both delicious though!), so the foods pictured are simply the ones that wound up looking yummy and less like Pinterest fails.

P.S. Kudos to my husband, who patiently waited to eat each meal until after I painstakingly tried to photograph it. Such is the unfortunate life of an Instagram husband. Then again, our first year of marriage involved spoiling him with 60ish home-cooked meals, so he probably got the better end of the bargain. 😉

Honey-soy glazed salmon with toasted sesame seeds (#1)
Avocado-lime grilled salmon, pictured above (#14)
​Ligurian risotto with roasted shrimp (#47)

Smothered pork chops (#8)
Chicken shawarma (#10)
Roasted chicken and potatoes with greens and garlic yogurt (#12)
Stanley Tucci’s homemade meatball recipe, pictured above (#21)
Cottage pie (#23)
Chicken florentine with wild rice (#26)
Roasted pork loin with apple-onion chutney (#31)
Obama’s short ribs (#34)
Pan-seared steak with red wine sauce (#41)
Doro Wat, Ethiopian spicy chicken (#42)
Miso-apple glazed ham (#49)

Minestrone (#3)
Beef and broccoli stir fry, pictured above (#13)
Pasta sauce (#18)
​Creamy corn pasta with basil (#28)
Cabbage, leek and potato soup (#35)
Green tomato soup with bacon and Brioche croutons (#39)
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Jalapeno popper wonton cups (#4)
Winter fruit salad (#5)
Green rice pilaf (#15)
Heirloom tomatoes with ricotta and herbs (#20)
​Cabbage and onion torta (#25)
Pesto-stuffed cherry tomatoes (#27)
French potato and green bean salad (#29)
Harvest salad with Pumpkin Goddess dressing (#37)
​Baked brie with blackberry compote, pictured above (#38)
Rosemary roasted nuts (#50)
Roasted sweet potatoes with horseradish butter (#51)
Hummus (#52)

Bacon-and-egg casserole (#6)
French toast (#7)
Strawberry and sour cream streusel cake (#17)
Baked oatmeal with strawberries and bananas (#19)
Lemon-ricotta pancakes with blueberries and powdered sugar (#22)
Peach-blueberry cobbler with almond-flour biscuits (#24)
Apple cobbler (#30)
Upside-down caramel apple muffins (#32)
Homemade hash browns (#33)
Gruyere-olive bread, pictured above (#40)
​All-purpose biscuits (#48)

Deep dark chocolate cheesecake (#2)
Chocolate Guinness cake (#9)
Peanut butter pie (#11)
Apple pie (#16)
Pumpkin flan (#36)
Sicilian pistachio cake (#43)
Peppermint bark, pictured above (#44)
Ginger-molasses cookies (#45)
Hot cocoa cookies (#46)

So, what’s next for me? A new challenge involving 3 seasons of the Great British Baking Show’s Masterclass and my newest kitchen addition, a pistachio KitchenAid stand mixer. Here’s to a lot of yummy baking (like my first bake of the year: a chocolate-walnut streusel coffee cake, pictured below)!