Hey look, two posts in one day for New Year’s Eve, the last day of 2022. Must be special.

Here I am with the last food post (and probably the most simple one) I’ll share. This is my mom’s recipe for tofu skin soup. If someone asked me, “If you could eat only one thing in your life, what would it be?”, this soup would be my answer. It only has like 5 ingredients but it’s my favorite soup.

Recipe

Ingredients

• ~1 lb of pork spare rib bones (can also do a mix with chicken bones)
• ~6-8 oz or 200-300g of dried bean curd/tofu skin sticks
• ~1.5 L of water or half a large stockpot
• 2 eggs, beaten
• ~2 tbsp chicken bouillon
• Salt and white pepper

Instructions

Blanch bones for 5 minutes in boiling water to boil off scum. Then, simmer bones in water (covered) for 1.5-2 hours. In the meantime, soak bean curd sticks in hot water for at least 30 minutes. In the last thirty minutes of simmering. add bean curd sticks, chicken bouillon, a lot of salt, and white pepper. Let simmer period finish then drizzle in beaten egg for ribbons into soup. Salt and white pepper more to taste. That’s it. If you’re like me, you’d eat this with rice and that would be a 5-star meal.

There’s something that feels a little poetic about ending this year on a simple note.

Looking Back: Year in Review

Funny how a year can pass really quickly. Here’s some quick stats:

Number of desserts made: 31

Number of savory things made: 22 (23, if you count this one)

Shortest Post: Brioche Twists in Coriander Sugar (325 words)

Longest Post: Prime Rib Roast (2767 words, jeez)

Total # of rambling words: 50 735 words (this was a novel in the making)

Personal favorites:

• Sate Ayam skewers (an express, one-way ticket to Flavortown)
• Triple Oatmeal cookies (my favorite cookie)
• Anything with pastry cream (the real MVP of a lot of my desserts)

I started this blog as a response to my mom’s complaints that I never took pictures of or kept track of what I made. This was also a way to document progress on my new year’s resolution–challenge myself to try new things, get faster at cooking, and make use of the cookbooks that I impulse-bought. As I look back this past year, I’m pleasantly surprised at the progress made.

I’ve learned a lot! From jumping into different rabbit holes of food science and history behind different dishes to learning from failures and what to do next time to learning new techniques, I found the process of making new things pretty fun and exciting. It became something that I looked forward to doing when I had the time. Even the act of reading through cookbooks or coming across recipes online became exciting and something I went into with more intention, as I figured out what to make next.

Every experience of making something new gave me the confidence to try even more new things and roll with it when things don’t turn out according to the plan. I also learned how to apply past learnings to new experiences and build on it, which helped me move faster in the kitchen too. This became a way to productively spend my free time, rather than not…do anything…or spend my idle time doing God knows what.

2022 has had its ups and downs for me but the experience of keeping up this blog was definitely a highlight. This became something that I’ve grown to be pretty passionate about–the learning experience and even using it at times as a way to engage with other people. It was a way to connect with my mom about how my week has been going. Or maybe it was documenting a recipe that she passed down to me or making a dish because it reminded me of a friend. Sometimes, it was even being encouraged by some of my friends who are patient enough to read my ramblings.

I’m not gonna get too philosophical with this and try to somehow connect making food with some personal character or spiritual transformation. However, I will say that there are (very obvious) three conclusions I’ve made from this experience:

1. Maintaining a blog is a good way to track and keep one’s self accountable to their new year’s resolution.
2. Discipline can breed passion over time. Not to say that there wasn’t excitement to begin with but over the year, the challenge transformed into a hobby I genuinely enjoyed doing, rather than just a challenge.
3. Be specific/targeted in what you choose to dive into; it makes things a lot more doable and less overwhelming.

That is to say, cooking/baking 52 new things and documenting it is totally doable and fun. This resolution ended up being a cool way to highlight one aspect of richness to my year in 2022. I’d recommend it to anyone looking to grow in their cooking skills or take up an interesting hobby.

So, now, here’s a question: will I continue this in 2023?

Looking Forward into 2023

I’ve had some time to think about this. Do I want to stick to the same resolution and continue this in 2023 or try something different? This blog is called, “Things Nicole Tried”. Food doesn’t have to be the only thing I try on here.

This year, I want my new year’s resolution to be a little different. A commitment that I made (that I haven’t done a good job keeping at all) from a previous church retreat was to learn more hymns and treasure their words. I was reminded of that forgotten commitment at the most recent retreat when I was hit again with the power behind praise and hymns.

To be honest, my library knowledge of hymns and praise music is very limited. It has been on my mind for awhile to expand in that. Since playing the piano at a few people’s weddings this past year, it has also reminded me how much fun playing the piano is and how much I miss learning and practicing new pieces.

Welp, it’s a new year, what is a better time to revisit it than now?

So here’s the new challenge:

• Learn, practice, and document the following by the end of this year:
  • 12 hymns (not just keys but like, DT piano bgm level)
  • 12 praise songs (again, not just keys but think Dan Musselman vibes)
  • 12 songs of my choice (anything goes. anything.)
• For each hymn and praise song, I’ll talk about a verse or something about it that stuck out to me.
• Keeping with the theme of 52 things, I’ll keep the remaining 16 things dedicated to opportunities for trying out new recipes.

I’m not completely sure what this will end up looking like but the idea is that I would have the opportunity to learn roughly three new songs per month, which seems doable.

To be clear, I’m not looking to become some piano virtuoso. I don’t have the time for that. However, I will keep the way I approach these songs simple to keep this sustainable. Maybe some months, this would be too much to do and other months, I can even do more than three. However, regardless, I hope that by the end of 2023, I would have learned and be familiar with 36 new songs. Which isn’t too bad at all.

We’ll see if this ends up being too ambitious.

Here’s to 2023.