Well, y’all, it happened.

On Christmas Eve, I made my 300th new recipe of 2025. It feels absurd not because I’m shocked to have logged so many recipes but because it didn’t feel that difficult to do. I am so head over heels into this cooking thing that I haven’t really contemplated just how much time and energy I’ve devoted to it. I guess that’s probably a good thing - it means I really enjoy it, right? Like, I’m not just weirdly obsessed with it, I love it on top of being obsessed with it. It’s not a problem if you love it!

The year kicked off with pink butthole pasta (I mean, spizzulus) but hit S-tier just a day later with #2 pink cavatelli in a roasted garlic and tomato sauce. Thus began my love affair with cavatelli. Only four days later, we had our first taste of #4 masala poutine, a craveable Indian twist on the Canadian classic which may or may not be on the coming week’s menu.

Fast forward a bit to the spring when we first enjoyed #62 dakdoritang (Korean chicken & vegetable stew) which remains one of my favorite uses of gochujang. I went a little southern for a dinner of #78 buttermilk fried chicken, #79 salt-and-vinegar potatoes, and #80 collard greens salad with a mustard vinaigrette. The savory acidity of the salt-and-vinegar potatoes easily secured them a place as the top potato dish of the year. We did a bit of spring traveling, too, to Angola for spicy #55 roasted piri piri chicken, to Georgia for creamy, garlicky #88 shkmeruli, to Japan for #90 onigiri and #92 shoga-yaki, and to Egypt for #73 koshari which remains one of the most memorable meals of the year!

The summer flew by too quickly for my memory to retain much of what happened, but I do have clear memories of #155 Neapolitan meatballs. Disregarding the near baseball size of them, I figured I should make a double-batch to last both of us for lunch all week. This resulted in 16 massive, tender, sauce-drenched meatballs, and we ate every last one of them without much effort. You think I would have had my fill, but I find myself craving them at the moment…

The summer was also when #161 salt & pepper pork schnitzel with Chinese ranch first entered my life. Two different kinds of burgers, #163 samosa burgers which truly tasted like samosa and #168 black pepper beef burgers with spot-on Chinese takeout vibes, demonstrated the deliciously diverse adaptability of the burger. Then #173 basque cheesecake and Yemeni #178 khaliat nahal (honeycomb bread) came along and disrupted dessert expectations with their complex sweetness.

In the fall, we popped by Iran to see what the fuss is all about with pomegranate through #232 aash-e anar (pomegranate soup) and #233 fesenjoon (chicken in a walnut-pomegranate sauce) just a few days after Haiti had introduced us to funky, vegetal #226 pikliz and the fried porky goodness that is #228 griot. By mid-fall, I had become an #236 Arkansas possum pie prophet. We had a homemade Chinese takeout night thanks to beautifully sesame-forward #237 sesame chicken and a hearty supply of #238 Mongolian beef. A special birthday meal with #263 shio koji-marinated flank steak as the focal point has us convinced that all non-shio koji-marinated steak is meaningless now. Colder weather brought warming bowls of #271 Vietnamese meatball & watercress soup, coconutty #281 Thai green curry chicken & vegetables, and the most deeply-flavored ramen to date, #294 French onion ramen.

On Christmas Eve, I logged #300 with a fresh pan of German blueberry streusel cake. I mistakenly posted on Instagram that our radicchio salad with roasted fennel and pears accompanying our Christmas Eve supper steaks (shio koji-marinated, of course) was #300, but a just-corrected archive error (accidental double-entry of early December’s #286 sweet-and-sour ribs) confirms the streusel as queen at #300.

The year isn’t quite over yet, so there’s probably a little more to come for 2025. If the same madness continues into 2026, please know that I’m not intentionally aiming for these numbers…I just can’t help myself!