Pound Cake

Yesterday I began an attempt to bake and cook my way through my new favorite book, "A Homemade Life," by Molly Wizenburg. She also writes the very cool blog "Orangette," which I started cooking from earlier this week. But yesterday I attempted both her Blueberry-Raspberry Pound Cake and her Stewed Prunes with Citrus and Cinnamon. Both were met with approval by Jon, my number one and highly variable critic. Some days I could basically place singed vegetables in front of him and he would eat them with abandon and other days I could present an arduously crafted sauce over salmon and he'd declare himself in suspicion of the sauce's main ingredient. So I'm never sure when he likes something if it is actually good. Generally I feel these where both a success and plan today to make a Chianti Marinated Beef Stew from Giada De Laurentis of Food Network Fame. So far, so good, in following through with my cooking therapy.
I think I would be almost totally content if I didn't have a paper proposal deadline and a grad school application deadline looming large and if I could garden. Sigh. Winter in New England is hard on this gardener, especially since the essential shadiness of my patch of earth prevents the thorough hours of planning that would go into planting edible plants. I instead wait. Hopeful that the pieces and bits of flora I planted last summer will survive and be glorious in spite of the shade.