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The long blog hiatus is over and the relaunch of the Extending the Table Blog is here.

Here’s what you’ve missed since the last episode of cooking….or…

How to take a hiatus from one’s blog:

1) Take the last two months of finishing a phd….

2) Combine vigorously with packing up and leaving one home….

3) Add in another new city, another new apartment, another new kitchen..

4) Take a deep breath and add a new full-time job.

5) Defend one’s PhD while juggling steps 3 and 4

6) Endlessly internally debate how much of an online presence one’s new job allows

7) Garnish with continuing food allergies.

But…..I also bring you:

Recipe for Continuing a Project

1) Start with a summer in which you have time to breathe, think and take stock of your surroundings

2) Liberally mix in a good dose of guilt everytime you catch sight of your beloved Extending the Table cookbook

3) Simmer in a broth of “I am not a quitter, I finish what I start”

4) Gently saute in getting-used-to-new-place and possibly like though not necessarily love New York

5) Garnish with a new dose of enthusiasm, curiousity and sense of adventure.

So, cooking friends, I have returned to both the cooking and the writing about cooking. I can’t promise that I am going to do this as regularly as before but I really want to finish this project!

I wasn’t sure exactly where to begin again – at this point many of the most delicious-sounding recipes have been done. In fact, many of the remaining recipes have been left because they either

a) contain a difficult ingredient to procure (please remember that I am a purist about these things)

b) sound like they might take up ALOT of time…(that’s right 5 hours to rise Bannock, I am looking at you)

or

c) frankly sound kind of disgusting…(poor kim chee – I promise I will try)

Being that it is currently summer in Brooklyn and the latest ongoing challenge that the sous-chef and I have set for ourselves is living without air conditioning, I decided that the first new phase of Extending the Table will consist entirely of the recipes that don’t require cooking or heating up the apartment. So, I went through the whole book and any time I saw the words: pre-heat, boil, simmer, saute, scald, carmelize, etc. I turned the page.

That has left a rather odd list, primarily consisting of yogurt-based recipes and/or condiments.   Not sure yet what I plan to do regarding the latter but it just so happens that I have been eating ALOT of yogurt lately so I decided to plan around those. We happen to live a few blocks from what has to be THE most incredible frozen yogurt place on the planet – no kidding – it really is MIND-blowing yogurt. I confess that I actually went there twice in one day until I decided that I was skating dangerously close to the addiction line.

Since I had already gone to aforementioned fro-yo place for lunch, I decided to go for a yogurt-based recipe for dessert tonight:

Kela Raita (Banana Yogurt Salad)  India,   page 118

Ok, ok…I KNOW I picked an easy one to start with but I just didn’t think I could cope with something too difficult – I needed an easy win!

This was beyond easy – I used Activia yogurt (another of my favorite foods) combined with bananas, lemon and shredded coconut. It was delicious. And we are off on a new start!

This photo gives the odd impression that life in Brooklyn is all in black and white! Not so....actually very colorful here!

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