I've learned a couple of things already this first year with the attempt of teaching my kiddo to cook.

Flat rich chocolate chunk mocha biscotti. Deflated buttery vanilla bean cupcakes. Flaky but in dire-need-of-salt pie crust. Baking flops. All of which happened in my kitchen while trying out to develop new recipes (I blame a good portion of it on the American education system and teaching us the imperial way to measure over the metric... I just can't seem to get a good reliable conversion for every recipe and it drives me nuts). Each and every one reminded me why I prefer cooking to baking.

Tasty little fiery piri piri peppers. They dot Portuguese gardens, vibrant red amongst the dense green leaves. You can find bottles of piri piri pepper sauce and oil on the tables of restaurants throughout Portugal. But I've found that the people who cook with it here are holding back when it comes to these little malagueta peppers.

January in a Portuguese kitchen with the stove on for 3 hours baking and getting lunch ready means you must be prepared for one thing: to freeze your butt off. Be sure to have a hat on your head and a sweater of some sort to cover your arms or you will be sure to shiver off any extra holiday padding that you acquired over December. Go outside though and you have to remove at least one of those extra pieces of clothing if not both.

January 1st, 2012. I love the first day of a new year. It feels like the beginning of things, much like when a new flower is about to bloom we can choose to start from scratch.