This has been an awfully good and awfully busy year. So busy that I've been collecting pictures of delicious foods and doing nothing with them, outside of gazing at them longingly when randomly thumbing through the year's snaps. Here's what I've been eating (and what I've been up to) in the last few months:

 

I studied maniacally for my qualifying exams, forgoing food until April. At least that's what the photographic record suggests. When cooking recommenced we made this Seared Mushroom Salad with toasted hazelnuts over a bed of arugula from the May 2011 issue of Esquire. I will never think of mushrooms the same way again:

 

After years of fantasizing about fiddleheads we picked some up a package at Wegman's to make Creamy Fettuccine with Peas and Fiddleheads (recipe more or less from Great Food Fast). These leftovers kept me going while writing up a grant proposal for the Society of the Study of Evolution:

We got really into tacos this spring and summer. That might sound like a mundane thing to say, but these black bean tacos with spanish rice, avocado, grilled peppers and greek yogurt were better than tacos have a right to be:

Warm weather meant analyzing data on the front porch by day (complete with visits from wandering woodchucks) and grilling dinner by night. Nathan honed his chicken wing cooking skills and we tweaked a favorite Peach Barbecue Sauce recipe from Tyler's Ultimate to top these off- as it often is, the answer was "more chipotle". Want to try it yourself? This recipe is close: just add 1 cup peach preserves and chipotle chili powder to taste.

Between data (re)reanalysis and trips to Massachusetts and Colorado we took to grilling pizza. Thanks to beautiful tomatoes from our CSA we tried many versions, though this one with pesto, bocconcini, tomato slices and prosciutto was my favorite.

And now? After all that grilled summer goodness fortified me through playing with data, wrangling beetles and writing up drafts, I can say I've submitted my first manuscript. I'm looking forward to making lentils (!) until we hear back from reviewers.

Like I said, it's been an awfully good year.