Unfinished Business

Welcome to my culinary “to-do” list!

I was inspired to publish this list after seeing a similar list at Eat the Love, who was inspired by Michael Ruhlman’s book Unfinished Business. I have had a list going in my head for sometime, but am glad to put pen to paper and have a place to keep track of them. I will be posting links to the finished items on the list as I accomplish them and adding things to the list as I think of new things to add.

This list is by no means complete and finished. I’m sure I’ll triple it in size in the next year alone, but the point isn’t to cross off everything, it’s to keep reaching for new goals and accomplishments. So here we go!

1. Artichoke. I would like to find a way to prepare this that I like and cook with it more often.  See Artichoke Pasta!! I LOVE IT!!
2. Make a tiered wedding cake.
3. Improve my cake decorating skills
4. Make chocolate candies and truffles, I tried once and wasnt successful.
5. Biscotti! I fell in love with a seasonal Christmas one that Starbucks made and when I can I order a large box of them. Pumpkin Pie Biscotti, it is to-die-for!
6. Fondant, make it, work with it, decorate with it… this feels like a momentous item on the list also because I don’t love fondant as others seem to like fondant Here I finally bought some, pre-made, but practiced working with it! 
7. French Macrons. I have been piling up recipes for different flavors of macrons and I want to make a bunch of rainbow-colored, varied flavored macrons for Mei’s first birthday party!
8. Canning! I finally got a copy of Put ‘Em Up! by Sherri Brooks Vinton and cooked many preserves out of it but have yet to actually can any of it. Probably because I eat it too quickly to have any I want to can… I made the best jam to date AND canned them in Weck jars!
9. Make my own cheese from scratch.
10. Make my own mozzarella.
11. Sous vide. Anything…. ! I have been seeing this on Top Chef and had a silly moment where I stuck a piece of chicken breast in a heavy-duty  Ziploc bag and cooked it at a steady temperature in a water bath (that had no thermometer in it) and tried to “sous vide” it…. it eventually cooked through but I’m not sure any real chef would call that “sous vide.” They would probably turn up their noses and turn their head… as it should be.
12. Make my own fresh pasta & gnocchi.
13. Go clam digging & geoduck digging… even though I am allergic to clams.
14. Dive for scallops… in Maine? I like that idea very much! It would make for a great vacation!
15. Cook through Thomas Keller’s Ad Hoc, so far all the recipes I have made have been so delicious!
16. Pick wild blueberries
17. Take Mei to a “pick your own” farm, pick all the berries, fruit and veg that we want and make something delicious with it all! Had a great time this year with a great  new tradition for our family!
18. Harvest olives in Italy
19. Pick a pineapple in Hawaii
20. Find some ways to truly appreciate cilantro. It smells just like the weeds that we would pick as kids and make our own pretend food to eat in our treehouse and I have a hard time dissociating the smell from the weeds and eating it…. I’m not sure what it is about this pregnancy but I have LOVED cilantro every time I have used it and use it more and more in a lot of my recipes!
21. Bite the bullet and make holllandaise from scratch for my own eggs benedict because it’s easily one of my favorite breakfasts!
22. Cure my own lox. I would like to time making this one for when I make bagels for my cookalong I’m doing with Peter Reinhart’s “Artisan Breads Every Day”…
23. Food Styling and Photography…. it needs work.