As we reflect on what happened in the past year in our lives and in the world, it’s hard to remember each moment and what happened when.

Just this past year, Osama bin Laden was finally found and killed, Will and Kate had their magnificent wedding, Steve Jobs and Elizabeth Taylor passed away, Japan was ravaged by a 9.0 earthquake and a tsunami, and the list goes on and on.

In my year, I spent time in Northern California, Vancouver, Minneapolis, and Montreal. I went snowboarding and wine tasting, I learned how to make cheese, I saw Bono, Lady Gaga and Usher perform live, and I found out I will become an aunt.

I’ve been thinking about the past year a lot since one of my biggest recent projects has been creating a social extension for Yahoo!’s popular Year In Review program. Year In Review brings together data and insights gleaned from search and news trends and packages it up into top 10 lists, blog posts and videos. Looking at it from a social perspective, we knew we could make the year’s stories even more personal.

We had a lot of ideas, and ultimately created My Year In Review, a Facebook app that brings together the top headlines and images of the year with a user’s own activities in a timeline set to music. The experience is dynamic, beautiful, and emotional, bringing together moments you may have not thought of for month.

Depending on how heavy a Facebook user you are, the more times you play the experience, the more different versions you’ll see, with new pictures, news events, and timeline images to share.

Don’t just let me tell you about it, though – see your 2011 My Year In Review.

Tips for the best experience using My Year In Review:

• Allow all the required and optional Facebook app permissions for the most personalized experience. The app will not post any stories to Facebook without your initiation and it does not store any of your data.
• Turn on your computer speakers so you can hear the music.
• Play again to see different views of your year. Depending on how heavy a Facebook user you are, the more times you play the experience, the more different versions you’ll see, with new pictures, news events, and new timeline images to share.
• Share with your friends and family, and add tags for the people that show up in your shared timeline photos.

Happy New Year!

This past weekend, we went to the Clinton Foundation’s Decade of Difference concert at the Hollywood Bowl. It was my very first time going to the bowl, and also my first time at a concert with such huge names. Lady Gaga, Usher, Bono, Stevie Wonder, Juanes… it was incredible.

And in true Hollywood Bowl form, we decided to do a picnic dinner, which sent me into full-on food mode. In August, I made a great picnic dinner that we took to LACMA on a Friday night, and it was basically a modification of this same recipe with a few vegetable swaps and mozzarella cheese instead of ricotta.

This time, armed with my new cheese-making abilities and a better stocked fridge, I stuck closer to the recipe from The Vegetarian Epicure, and what I ended up with was a beautiful, tasty pie that traveled well – and was big enough to feed 15 or so!

We finished less than half before the concert, but I just wrapped it back up, stuck it in a bag under my seat, and it looked and tasted just as good at the afterparty.

Saag paneer and freshly baked naan

During our cheese class last weekend, we learned that the queso blanco we made is essentially the same recipe as Indian paneer, the main difference being we used lemon juice instead of vinegar to curdle the milk. Evan and I both love Indian food, so I was really excited to try out this new cheese recipe in a dish I’d never thought I could make at home: saag paneer.

I went to see if my new World Vegetarian cookbook by Madhur Jaffrey had a saag paneer recipe – and as expected, it did. It also had a tamatir paneer recipe – basically a quick tomato and onion curry. I also tried this one since I had an abundance of tomatoes left over after pizza night and it turned out incredibly well — flavorful, beautifully rich in color, and a great highlight for the fresh cheese. I didn’t take any pictures, unfortunately, and Evan was working late so he didn’t even get to have any.

After successfully making the tamatir paneer, I knew the saag paneer wouldn’t be far behind. So I made sure to order spinach in my veggie box this week. The day after it arrived I got to work.

I made a fresh batch of paneer (there’s a recipe in the World Vegetarian book, but I used the very similar queso blanco recipe from my class), and got to work cooking down more than a pound of greens – I didn’t have enough spinach so I also used kale and beet greens since I had them on hand (about 6oz of each of the greens – I imagine you can sub in other greens just as easily as needed).

Once the greens were soft and mashed up to a texture that seemed about right, I added in just a tiny bit of cornmeal (possibly to absorb some of the water?). I cooked up some chopped tomatoes, onion and ginger, added them to the spinach and added some spices (cumin, cinnamon, cayenne, salt). I cooked it all just a few minutes longer and then added the paneer. Five more minutes of gentle cooking, and we were ready to eat.

I also made some fresh naan from a Peter Reinhart recipe. Thankfully I had made a batch a few weeks ago and saved 4 portions in the freezer, so I just had to thaw them out, shape them and cook them quickly in the oven. Sidenote: I love that dough freezes well.

All in all, the dinner took just a little over an hour to make, including making the cheese, and it probably could have even gone a little faster had I been more prepared. We’ll definitely be making this one again.

The class itself was a lot of fun. Evan and I went together, and we learned all about making fresh cheeses, including mozzarella, ricotta, queso blanco and mascarpone. We also made creme fraiche and butter. The chef teaching the course was pretty hilarious, and kept us entertained through the demonstrations and all the hands-on cooking. We also had a great lunch of all the items we’d made plus fresh bread, berries and tomatoes.

The only thing that was a bit strange about the class is that we didn’t get to bring anything home. We made pretty decent quantities of cheese and butter, and though we ate a good deal at lunch, I expected to be taking something home – especially some of the mozzarella that we pulled and formed into little balls ourselves.

In any case, not bringing cheese home gave us the opportunity to start making our own right away. Sunday we went out and bought some cheese cloth, organic milk (not ultra-pasteurized), and buttermilk. That evening, we made ricotta and queso blanco – both quick, fresh, and delicious. Even though they’re not melting cheeses, I used them on two pizzas, which turned out great.

The next night, I used the queso fresco in tamatir paneer – an Indian dish with tomatoes, onions, lots of spices and fresh cheese all cooked together – as queso fresco is essentially the same recipe as Indian paneer, it turned out perfectly.

Now we have ordered some additional supplies, like vegetarian rennet, so we can start trying out other cheese recipes soon. We’ll definitely be making more of these.

Fresh Ricotta

Queso FrescoTomato, basil and fresh cheese pizzaPlum and fresh cheese pizza with balsamic and basil

Tomato, basil and fresh cheese pizza

Plum and fresh cheese pizza with balsamic and basil

Today, Anna and I took a needle felting class at the Urban Craft Center in Santa Monica, and we made these adorable little goldfish in jars. This was my first try at the craft and I was amazed at how we were able to turn fluffy pieces of wool into dense felt creatures with defined shapes and details. I’m looking forward to heading back to the Urban Craft Center to test out other classes — it was a relaxing way to spend the morning, and we made something fun.

Any thoughts on names for the little guy?

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One of the more fun and fanciful assignments in my drawing class was an exercise where we took a stain (in my case some wine I spilled on some paper), and drew what we saw in it. My stain had this funny little outcropping that I thought looked like an elephant head, so I started there and just let my imagination go — and I ended up with an elephant flying through the clouds!

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During my drawing class one interesting exercise we did was drawing a white and black object. We looked at the range of values in each object and really looked at how a black object isn’t fully black — or at least one black — and a white object isn’t fully white. I think my black object turned out better than my white one. I also found out that I really like drawing with charcoal pencils.

Evan and I recently went to a “Sauce Soiree” where everyone came bearing a homemade sauce and competed for prizes. A lot of people brought barbecue-type sauces, since it was sort of a barbecue, but I made a peanut sauce that a make pretty frequently. After much deliberation on the 12 or so sauces, mine won in the Most Creative Sauce category — and got a giant trophy! With a pig on top!

Since this sauce is one I make frequently, I don’t tend to use any exact recipe, I just scoop and pour and adjust things to taste. I’ve tried to approximate the amounts of each ingredient below so if you’d like to try this you can at least get started and then play around until it tastes good.

Peanut Sauce

Ingredients (approximate amounts)

• Unsalted natural peanut butter (.25 to .5 cup)
• Rice wine vinegar (2-3 tsp)
• Soy sauce (2-3 tsp)
• Sesame oil (1-2 tsp)
• Lime (1 small fruit)
• Fresh cilantro (1-2 tbsp)
• Fresh basil (1 tbsp)
• Thai chili sauce or Sriracha (to taste)
• Water to thin the sauce (.5 to 1 cup or more)

Heat peanut butter, vinegar, soy sauce, sesame oil and water in a small saucepan. Add the lime, herbs, and chili sauce or Sriracha toward the end, and add additional water to get the sauce to the desired thickness/thinness.

I typically eat this sauce on a tofu and veggie stir fry over rice.

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Here’s something I did recently for a drawing class I was taking — a 6-part study of the Zsolnay sculpture Evan gave me for my 25th birthday in Hungary. The assignment was to try 6 different styles. I used pen, pencil, charcoal and pastels. The middle two are my favorites.

The idea was to create a sense of “interspace,” a balance between positive and negative space, by creating a photomontage and deciding which areas to use as positive space, and which as negative. I had a lot of trouble at first, not liking my compositions and not feeling inspired — I was also really short on time. So I turned to a past photomontage project I’d done — decoupage chairs, and decided to use them as inspiration.

Here’s what I came up with:

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Here’s the original photo I took of the chair so you can see what I was working from.