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So I bought these amazingly good nuts in honey from the store and decided to try to recreate them. It's not really cost-effective to DIY but I wanted to see.

I bought some miso paste the other day. So far all I've done is made soup, which is in and of itself pretty awesome (and of course I couldn't resist adding attitude to it), but fairly tame.

3 cups boiling water
4 tbsp light miso paste
2 mushrooms sliced thin
1 shallot sliced thin
1/2 cup firm tofu diced
1 tbsp tamari
1 tsp ginger powder
1/2 tsp cayenne
1 tsp dried sumac

Combine the ingredients in a pan and pour boiling water over them. Simmer and stir until the miso is thoroughly dissolved.

So I'm a big fan of improving prepared food by addition. I almost always add some extra toppings to frozen pizza, for instance. My recent improved canned good has been Progresso Tomato Basil augmented with some garlic, shallot and grape tomatoes sauteed in a bit of olive oil. Hit it with a pinch of Old Bay (a new favorite---how did I live without this stuff before?), herbes de Provence and a healthy grind of black pepper and you're good to go.

For some reason I seem to have a thing for chicken soup, which is very malleable and fun to make, keeps well for up to a week, and does a heck of a job warming you up. Well today it's snowing like all get out so I decided that some chicken soup would be in order. This time, with one small exception, I kept it pretty traditional, although I'm sure I use way more spice than Grandma would have.

It's late fall and thus time to make chili. I normally improv a little when I'm cooking this, and often take the opportunity to use up ingredients that are getting a little past their prime. I made this:

Last year I had Chicago style Italian beef and watched Sacha Baron-Cohen. This year I went on a restaurant crawl through Manhattan's Chinatown, not high on my list of favorite places in Manhattan.