Yucca Pun Intended Last Letter and Ingredient of the Year

My final challenge of the year was yucca.  Unfortunately, I wasn't able to really figure out what to do with it and with back to back business trips after Thanksgiving, it made it increasingly difficult to put the yucca on the plate.

I wasn't able to get a picture of the boyfriend's plate before he started eating this less-starch like root vegetable and so to that, picture unavailable.  I sauteed the yucca in some butter and salted it.  To add a little bit of flavor and color, I added some turmeric.

The results were well, tolerable on my end but the boyfriend liked it.  I'm almost starting to think he's being a bit too generous in likes this year.

As a result, it made picking our top dishes of the year rather difficult.

In the year 2013, I set out to do 52 different ingredients for each week of the year.  With the number of issues we faced, the boyfriend's apartment getting remodeled due to mold and a quick move, and new job of mine having to travel virtually every other week, we completed 34 of the 52 ingredients.  We narrowed it down to our top 10.

Want to know what our top 10 were? Well, that's a going to be for another blog to close our the year in style and to help us ease into a new challenge for 2014.  The theme of 2014 will be reveled at that point too.

Meanwhile, my final challenge of the year: cooking a belated Christmas lunch/dinner for my parents.

Cornstarch Pudding Pie

After about a two month forced break from the food challenge of 2013, I think we are back.  I was to do lychee before the whole mold and moving apartments fiasco, but by the time things got settled within the new apartment, fresh lychee became nonexistent here and canned lychee was not a favored option to me or the boyfriend.

Cornstarch Pudding Pie

As a result, the boyfriend sent me his grandmother's cornstarch pudding pie.  I have to admit, cornstarch pudding doesn't exactly entice me much.  If we added a little bit of rum, I think I would've been okay with the taste of it.

The results of this brought back a number of memories for the boyfriend.  Which I think is ultimately the point of the food challenge.  The memories he has growing up in the Midwest before moving to Washington D.C. for Graduate School then back to the Midwest to now the San Francisco Bay Area, result in him opening up a little more.

We are both onions when it comes to our emotions.  Every layer that is peeled is every layer exposing our inner selves.

Either way, the food challenge of 2013 is back for the remainder of the year.