Happy New Year!

I'm late, I'm late! This post has been sitting around for at least a couple of weeks. But do want to wish everyone a Happy New Year!

Been running behind since the week of Christmas.  I had dreams of beautiful bags of cookies and jars of jam as holiday gift but that didn't happen this year. After many jars of jam [some for gift most for the restaurant] and last minute catering order for brownies, cookies and lemon bars, things just didn't turn out how I picture it would be. 

Slow Cooker Blackberry Vanilla Jam that was suppose to be a gift

And of course, this spiraled into my dreams of our New Year's eve meal. I really wanted to make a great meal starting with a beautiful hot bowl of ozoni made with homemade dashi. But all the new year's cleaning wiped me out and this stupid cold started brewing . . .

dashi and kombu maki ingredients

So I ended up in bed, cold [I'm never cold], with too much clothes on, getting suck into watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy and stayed up to Midnight to finish it. [happy new year! shhh! WG is sleeping--the restaurant is open on New Year's Day]
My New Year's eve meal turned into New Year's day early dinner of Kombu Maki and rice with Ozoni to finish the night when WG got home from the restaurant. It tasted delicious even a day later. I love the Ozoni with homemade dashi--totally worth making. Got a little fancy with the carrot. I eve had time to whip up some dessert a new favorite Cannoli Pound cake from smittenkitchen.com. 

Ozoni with homemade dashi

My new favorite--Cannoli Pound Cake

Not bad for a person with a cold, I even made kimpira on the 2nd with the leftover burdock/gobo.

Kimpira right out of the pan

Hope you have happy and healthy New Year!