A Food Year was a challenge I set for myself to eat a different dinner every day of 2006. Although it probably looks like a panned out version of some sort of drunken new year’s eve dare now, it was actually an ambitious effort to write a cookbook that ended up developing into the website that you see here. An actual book never made it into existence, but would likely be a cleaned and buffed up version more or less of what you see in the 2006 archives with better pictures, less spelling mistakes, recipes that can actually be followed with positive results and so on.

Over the year I overcame a few aversions; the taste of cilantro, the seemingly impossible task of making any recipe coined east of Ukraine… ate some atrociously bad dinners; such as a few aforementioned Asian recipes and anything involving tofu… made friends with many new-to-me flavor combinations, and, in general, learned a fair amount about food and cooking - which was kind of the point. I had a few mishaps (an exploding casserole dish comes to mind) and learned a few tricks. For example, flambé is neat.

It was tough at times. There were some days where I made several dinners in one night to replace missed days due to circumstances out of my control or general laziness. By the end of the project, I was eating in restaurants half the time because I’d burned out, I’d run out of ideas for what to buy, what to make. To make matters worse, I moved to Montreal with nothing but a few pieces of luggage and had to do without a functional kitchen. But I survived, I did it, and when it was over, when I had my pick of any dinner I desired, after everyone kept asking me, “What’s the first thing you’re going to eat when you’re done?” I failed to repeat myself for yet another week.

There were 692 recipes uploaded to this site over the 365 period, which doesn’t include every time I ate at a restaurant or at someone else’s home. You can view them all here as one ridiculously long list or here as a pictorial calendar overview, which is probably preferable.

I never would have guessed that the last meal of A Food Year would be eaten at a cruising altitude of 10,000 feet while ringing in the new year with cheap Air Canada wine. Ironically, I always thought "That's A Wrap!" would've made a good title for the final dinner, but I think I used that already, so "A Wrap Up" will have to do.

By my own goals I had set out at the start of the year, this project has been a failure. I did not receive the mass audience I had tried to attract and I have no received any offer for publication like I had hoped. Over the last week I have read the books that my project has often been compared to.

"Rachel Ray's 365: No Repeats" seems as though it should be more similar than it is, but is more about how to get the most mileage out of a base recipe, rather than a different dinner every day of the year. Similarly, I picked up a "A Dish A Day" book, which contained recipes for drinks and such that just don't classify as a "dish" at all! Certainly the recipes are more palatable than some of the things I've churned out over the year.

"The Julie/Julia Project" bears little resemblance other than being a year long project involving a blog and food, though I am under the impression that the book is nothing like the blog at all. I enjoyed the book; it is easy to read and entertaining, but it contains very little food content. I am assuming that has everything to do with Julia Child's cookbook being the basis for all the recipes.

We are both totally different people, Julie and I (especially from the waist down) but I still wonder how similar my own "recap" of the year will be to her book, once I reflect on everything as a whole, rather than on a daily dinner basis. Would it be as much about the food or more about how my life changed through making it? In the end, she may have the published book, but I cooked over 150 more recipes than her from many different sources while she only had one outline, so I'll consider us even.

The most difficult task over the last year has been maintaining this website, as is probably evident to anyone who has been a reader over the last six months. I still retain a passion for cooking and new recipes, so please feel free to contribute your suggestions! I'd love to hear any feedback you have on basically anything. Make an account, try some recipes, leave your comments.

It's been a slice.

My grandma took me out for dinner tonight. I was having a craving for a big ol' steak, so we were going to go to The Keg. However, the line up was more like a waiting room filled with people pushing their way to the front and I didn't feel like waiting, so we went to the Barcelona instead.

I've had notoriously bad food here; usually over or undercooked and always overpriced. In that regard I was pretty much a fool to order steak and lobster, which I would certainly be unsatisfied with. The lobster was wholly disappointing, but the steak was cooked quite well. That is, cooked to my liking, not to a tough piece of leather. The brandy peppercorn sauce was absent of any brandy flavor, but was still quite suiting.

I'm not sure about that sprig of thyme since thyme doesn't particularly bode well with asparagus or cabbage in my opinion, nor make a very decorative garnish. Rosemary would have been more appropriate. In case anyone from the Barcelona is reading this, please change your garnish. Thank you. Also, your cabbage was really dry, which is quite the feat considering.

It was especially hard to say goodbye to grandma this time. She's a tough, stubborn woman but I swear she got a bit misty with me. I think maybe when we moved originally she thought we'd just move back. I think maybe she realized that we're actually moved now, not on a vacation. I just really wish she weren't so stubborn and would actually come visit us here. She's old, but she's the healthiest old person I know. There's no reason for her not to come see our beautiful city! After dinner I went and played a couple hands of poker, making enough money to pay for my cab ride to the airport tomorrow morning.

Before we moved I was hoping to try a restaurant called Woosabi that had been in the works for some time. Unfortunately they did not open before the move, so I didn't get the opportunity to. I think they'd blown their budget on advertising long before they could actually open to the public, because months before they were ready to open their doors there was a constant barrage of radio advertisements.

Anyhow, obviously I got the opportunity to try it out tonight or I wouldn't be mentioning it. The restaurant is situated in a strip mallesque office complex. There is no hostess station (is hosting the politically correct term? hosters?) so I felt a little awkward standing in the door way waiting to be seated. As we watched more people come in, also standing awkwardly while someone attended to them, this became an obvious layout flaw.

I really liked the tables because they were quite long, making it easy to place a lot of plates of sushi in front of you without making it awkward to eat. It does make it a little awkward for quiet folks like me to talk to people across from them without leaning in a whole lot though.

We ordered some sort of mixed combo platter, prairie fire rolls and a half order of duck risotto. The prairie fire rolls were really good, in a "beginners guide to sushi" sort of way, much like a California roll, with no real intimidation factor whatsoever. Totally encrusted in toasted sesame seeds and with some crushed red chilies, it's pretty much everything my unsophisticated sushi palate enjoys.

The platter had a selection of the different types of sushis I can't remember the names of. There were the California rolls, which are the seaweed in the center, rice on the outside type… the seaweed around the outside, rice on the inside type… and then an assortment of the seafood on top of the rice type. One is nigiri, one is futomaki and then there's the other one, but I'm not really sure which is which.

The smoked salmon was probably my favorite of the fish on top version. The squid piece neither of us wanted and just left to go to waste. I always forget how filling a platter of sushi can be, it just seems like such light fare. The duck risotto was horrible. The duck was kind of chewy and even though it was supposedly loaded with shittake mushrooms and such, it basically had no flavor whatsoever. Just this mushy and chewy mess of flavorless crap. Luckily, we got that taken off the bill.

Majors has been around as long as I can remember. It's possibly the only place left in Grande Prairie that offers "home cookin" and caters mostly to tree planters and rig crews that stay at the nearby motels, one of which I happened to be staying at.

I thought for certain I'd be able to find something I haven't already eaten this year, but I couldn't. Not really. I've already eaten a Burger, but this one was different. This was the GP burger, you see. Over 180,000 served! McDonald's it is not, and it is fairly dissimilar to my own creation, so I'm giving it the go. It was acceptable. I tend to prefer a lot less bun on my burger and the processed slice of "cheese" kind of ruined it for me, but at least it was cooked well.

Likewise, I already made Fries, but I have not had them with burgers, oh no! I asked for some mayo to eat with them, which is something that I've become quite accustomed to since moving to Montreal where everything has a bit of European flare. I ended up with a side dish of Miracle Whip, which does not a good fry condiment make. The fries were perfectly crisp though! I don't how so many places tend to screw up something like a French fry, when it's basically served everywhere, but it happens all too frequently. To me, there's nothing worse about American cuisine than a poorly cooked French fry.

I think I've eaten at Earl's more over the last year than any other restaurant. I ordered the Tokyo steak wraps, which is a new menu addition and oddly exactly what I was craving at the time. I also ordered the Green Curry, but it came with the wrong sauce and was altogether not pleasant, so I barely ate any of it and it was taken off the bill.

The wraps came with what I assume the Moo Shu Pork's Mandarin pancakes were supposed to be like, sort of a light, airy crepe; and they were quite plentiful. The little bamboo steamer that the meat came in leaked all over the table, which was my only complaint about this dish. The meat was tender and flavorful and the vegetables were not overcooked. It came with a little avocado and cranberry guacamole, which I thought would be a little strange, but complimented the whole thing perfectly.

Mom, grandma and I went to East Side Mario's for dinner, before mom and I went to see The Good Shepherd, which made me very sleepy. Ah, East Side Mario's. No place better embodies the bastardizing of Italian food than this place. Unlimited quantities of pretty bland pasta dishes and some salad. It's reasonably priced and their bar food is decent, I give them that. At least, it usually is. We ordered some Hot Wings that were so disgustingly awful I couldn't even eat them. They were battered and fried and appeared to be missing their hot sauce. The batter was absolutely saturated with grease and they tasted like fried flour.

I had the asparagus and ricotta cappelletti, mostly because it was the only pasta I was reasonably certain I hadn't already eaten. It's sort of like a tortellini, I guess. It was smothered in Alfredo sauce that was more milky than creamy and otherwise fairly bland. Even a healthy dose of black pepper did little to revive it. I picked out the roasted red peppers and ate a couple of the cappelletti before getting my fill.

This was what I suspect will be my final Christmas with my quasi-family the Fontaine's. This year they went all out, with a ham and a turkey (organic, free range, I think!) as well as good quality sausages. The sausages were wonderful this year, perfectly crisped up while roasting in turkey fat. I could really go for some more sausages at this point.

I'm not really sure if any of this constitutes a different dinner. I've already done Cranberry Sauce, Mashed Potatoes, Stuffing, and whatever other vegetables are buried under that in the photo that I can't recall at the moment. You know what though? It's Christmas. It's just going to have to do. Consider it a present to myself.

Jessica sent me home with a bag full of "baked" goods made in the microwave that were all very good! Peanut brittle, rocky road somethingerother, this stuff called "puppy food" (peanut butter and chocolate coated Crispix cereal) and some ginger snaps. Technically they were for both Shannon and myself, but I ate them all. Combined with the rosettes from my grandma and whatever else I've been snacking on, it's all enough to give me a pleasant tummy ache.

When I arrived in Grande Prairie it was dinner time. All the restaurants were closed and my mom and grandma saved me a plate of food from grandma's kitchen. It was a simple ham dinner with peaches for dessert. My camera was still packed in my luggage, so I didn't get a chance to take a picture. So, I'll document my lunch with grandma later on instead.

When I was a little kid, as I've mentioned before, I spent a lot of time with my grandma. She taught me how to bake when I was very little, always let me pound down the dough, sift the flour and so on. No one showed me how to cook, I had to find that out on my own, but she showed me how to make bread.

She was not really up to the idea of making bread with me again. I went to the store and picked up some yeast and flour, since she had neither, and went to work by myself, using the original recipe from the cookbook I remember from my youth. The binding is somewhat ruined and it's somewhat falling apart, but perhaps it has always been that way.

I made both Bread and Buns with the recipe. I am notoriously bad at following recipes, which is why I rarely, if ever, bake. Strangely, I can make bread without a recipe quite well, but in following this recipe I screwed it up twice. The first I used twice as much yeast because I halved the recipe to make buns and the second time I forgot to add salt. Oops.

I love everything about making bread. I love that it takes all afternoon. I love the feeling of dough in my hands. I love the smell it fills the kitchen with and, of course, I love to eat the warm loaves that come out of the oven. Unfortunately my bread was sort of subpar, but I'm vowing to learn how to make the perfect loaf of sourdough in the new year! I ate the results with a bowl of Campbell's vegetable soup while grandma knit me a new toque.

2-1/2 teaspoons yeast
1 teaspoon sugar
1 cup warm water
4 cups flour
2 teaspoons salt
1 tablespoon shortening
1 tablespoon butter, melted

1. Dissolve yeast and sugar in warm water and let stand until foamy.
2. Sift together flour and salt. Stir the shortening into the wet ingredients and slowly incorporate the flour and salt until you have a soft, elastic dough.
3. Knead the dough on a lightly floured surface for several minutes, then transfer to a lightly oiled bowl. Cover with a clean tea towel and put in a warm place to double in bulk, about an hour.
4. Pound down dough and return to the bowl. Cover and return to a warm place until doubled in bulk again.
5. To make buns, roll out dough to 1/2" thickness and cut out buns with the rim of a pint glass and place on a baking sheet. To make bread, cut dough in two and press into the bottom of greased loaf pans.
6. Return buns or bread to a warm place to rise.
7. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
8. Bake buns or bread until golden brown and sound hollow when you tap on the bottom, about 45 minutes.
9. Brush the top of the buns or bread with melted butter to prevent drying.

Makes 12 servings