My version of four-day weekend fun: reorganizing, alphabetizing, and extensively labeling my collection of spices. I cook all over the map and prefer to make my own blends from whole spices, so I have a large variety.

Bonus: egregious use of fancy Japanese label maker.

So my friend Carl had a birthday recently and when I asked him whether he had any birthday requests, he thought about it and said "make anything you think I'd like but make sure it's something you haven't made before" because he knows how much I love cooking new things.

How, you might ask? Well, apparently you can hydrate your cookie dough in under a minute by putting it in a chamber vacuum sealer. The way the dough changes texture and color in a split second right at the end feels like some sort of magic.

So when I say that I just made the best chocolate chip cookies of my life, it means something. These are the best chocolate chip cookies I've ever made. 🍽️🍜

I've tried a LOT of different recipes and method tweaks, trying to make cookies just a little bit better each time. During lockdown, I did a recipe bake-off of some of the most popular chocolate chip cookie recipes out there.

🎶 it’s the most wonderful time of the year 🎶

It’s been a weird few weeks watching places I care about being literally and figuratively on fire. And spending Chinese New Year away from home always makes me melancholy. So I spent five hours making laksa from scratch this weekend.

Starting off our whirlwind NYC trip with tacos because Mexican food is sadly not well represented in Vancouver.

Clockwise from top left: lengua (tongue) with chicharron crumbles, carnudo (fried pork belly — I did not know I wanted siu yoke tacos to be a thing, but I’m really glad it is), maciza

I ate these tinned scallops tonight with some plain porridge (made with leftover Thanksgiving turkey stock) and they were SO GOOD. Garlicky, spicy, briny. Gotta pick more up the next time I'm in New York.

Mac and cheese with a panko topping, no recipe because at this point I could make this in my sleep. One of my biggest challenges is that despite my overwhelming love of food and flavor, the love of my life (my spouse) only eats very basic foods and has an extremely limited palate.

When I have the opportunity to use farmers market carrots, the contrast between savory, sweet, charred, spicy is so good. If I'm using supermarket carrots, it's fine but nothing to write home about. Hidden message: shop your local farmers market, friends.

This recipe is super reliable and letting the batter rest in the fridge for 24-48 hours makes it all the better. (Photo from prior date)

Miso butter onions from Ottolenghi Flavor food52.com/recipes/8416....

Really tasty and just ridiculously easy to make. Tastes like onions but not aggressively so. An unusual and delicious side dish. Would make again!

Get a butt end half ham if you like a richer flavor. Get a shank end half ham if you prefer easier slicing.