use real butter

My back is nearly 100% recovered! I even did a little rowing on the machine today before biking and it didn’t seem to aggravate my back at all. I firmly believe that my daily hour of intense cardio has helped my mending process (in addition to a lot of ice). Thanks everyone, for your various forms of advice.

kitchen tutorial: pad thai
I spent a couple of hours cooking in the kitchen tonight without any back trouble, so I know things are nearly back to normal. I made Thai food. Here’s one of the dishes:

**Jump for more butter**

Jeremy and I had debated having dinner in town, but I opted for homemade sushi. I like homemade food because I think it’s healthier in general than dining out. I like knowing what goes into my food.

Happy New Year, all!

I had a major kitchen day, in which I spent nearly 10 hours cooking all sorts of goodies to celebrate the new year properly. I made Chinese hot pot with tons of traditional ingredients like tofu, fish balls, pork meatballs, shitake mushrooms, bamboo shoots, preserved mustard greens, napa cabbage, bean thread noodles, water chestnuts. I also prepared a batch of potstickers from scratch, and stir fried bok choy with mushrooms and water chestnuts.

But that’s just the savory stuff. I also made some sweets. My leftover boozie drinks from last night were poured into the ice tray and I made Jeremy a sort of granita version of a lava flow in the afternoon.