Our eyes (56 total) were maybe bigger than our stomachs

Hi! This is Pamela. I am your Massachusetts Rep for this experiment.

This is me:

I live here:

Just kidding (but that feels close, recently, with the snow we've been getting in Massachusetts.) I live here:

With these guys:

Anyway, HOOBOY 105 recipes are a lot of recipes when you consider that I am stuffing a huge amount of them into my pie hole. I may have just ordered some temporary pants off the internet which just arrived, turned out to be back pages of Parade Magazine pants, and this realization caused me to re-examine my life choices, specifically speaking about the number of times I have made the Whole Lemon Bars since we started this challenge.

It would maybe be one thing if I were to make a recipe, check it off our group spreadsheet (my current recipe completed count is 17, which puts me on pace to finish the challenge, but you will notice that that 17 does not include the recipe which calls for a mini blowtorch. (Which, don't worry, I've sourced. It's full sized, but this is okay, because I live two doors down from the fire station and, frankly, my kitchen could do with a remodel anyway.)) It is entirely another, however, when I make a recipe for 18 people when there are four of us, Hoover it up, and then make it AGAIN. Did I mention the snow, though? It's snowed a lot, and therefore I have given up on life and also on sunlight.

Anyway, while living in my igloo made of dirty snowbanks (I come to you from territory deep inside Snowmageddon 2015) I have completed:

1.) Whole Wheat Raspberry Scones
2.) Cheddar Swirl Breakfast Buns
3.) Kale Salad with Cherries and Pecans
4.) Honey and Harissa Farro Salad
5.) Emmentaler on Rye with Sweet and Sour Red Onions
6.) Butternut Squash and Caramelized Onion Galette
7.) Slow Cooker Black Bean Ragout
8.) Roasted Tomatoes and Cippolini Onions with White Beans
9.) Harvest Roast Chicken with Grapes, Olives and Rosemary
10.) Balsamic and Beer Braised Short Ribs with Parsnip Puree
11.) Maya's Sweet and Sour Holiday Brisket with Roasted Fingerling Potatoes and Carrot Coins
12.) Salted Brown Butter Krispy Treats
13.) Cranberry Crumb Bars with Mulling Spices (I also made the blueberry version from the website. Bonus points?)
14.) Whole Lemon Bars (No fewer than 5 times??? Send help.)
15.) Butterscotch Banana Tarte Tatin
16.) Mom's Apple Cake
17.) Grapefruit Olive Oil Pound Cake


So many of those I never, ever would have made if not for the challenge. The short ribs took hours and I don't normally do things that take hours, unless of course we are discussing naps. The Slow Cooker Black Bean Ragout  wasn't something I would have normally bothered with, but my kids LOVED it (particularly the cumin crema and pickled onion) so now it's in the regular rotation. The Butterscotch Banana Tarte Tatin looked really out of my league, but I managed to throw it together while half reading the recipe AND carrying on a conversation with a guest AND yelling up the stairs at my kids, and it smelled divine/ was delicious.

I am still nervous about the mussels.

-- Pamela