Cinnamon Roses and a (Re)Start

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cinnamon rolls, roses, dough, homemade, diy, jessica's dinner party, recipe, yeast

The last year has been a very transitional time for me: saying goodbye to Paris, seeing my sister get married, and moving back to Korea.  I felt a bit up in the air, heading somewhere but nowhere in particular at the same time.  It took be awhile to find my grounding and to be honest I’m still adjusting to this new phase in my life. I was looking for a good moment to revive JDP, a pause in my life when I could get all my thoughts together and let everyone know what was going on.  But things are always changing, and life continually transitioning, if I didn’t jump in at some point I was afraid another ghost of a year would pass by.

I’ll slowly get around to all the new changes that have taken place since I last posted (one being that I started a new job!), but before getting there I wanted to kick start my new blogging momentum by changing the look of this site! There are still a few kinks to be smoothed out, and it will continue to undergo some changes, but I hope this is a good (re)start!
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Croissant à la Vanille, Pouchkine

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jessica's dinner party, croissant a la vanille, paris, pouchkine

I’ve been doing a little reminiscing about my time in Europe these last couple of days; going over places I visited and things I ate.  I don’t really miss being there, but sometimes I do get fleeting thoughts that maybe I didn’t take full advantage of all my surroundings. However, I don’t have big regrets and I know I’ll go back again…just maybe not soon.  In the meantime, here’s one of my favorites from Paris: Pouchkine‘s Croissant à la Vanille. My friend who interned there introduced me to it and it’s absolutely amazing. There are tons of different croissants in Paris, but this one stands out as most memorable for me. It has the perfect ruffle and crisp of a croissant with a defining presence of vanilla in the middle. It’s quite large for one person so I always split it with a friend, but I’m beginning to feel like maybe I shouldn’t have!

My friend didn’t quite find out the secret to that filling (which is more of a buttery addition than a filling filling), but maybe one day she’ll whip up something similar at her newly opened patisserie in Quebec! I’m dying to go, and one day I will, but if any Quebecer readers are out there, check it out!
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A Cheesecake for the Conscientious Glutton

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jessica's dinner party, cake, cheesecake, birthday

January may not be the best time to post a new cake recipe, especially with all those new year’s resolutions to “eat healthier” and “lose weight.” However, deprivation is anything BUT what this site is about. Detoxes and crazy wheatgrass diets have never helped me achieve those goals in the long run.  Aside from the obvious: exercise regularly and eat balanced meals, the best strategy I keep for myself is: glutton prevention. It may sound funny, but I can eat a lot.  I always get my money’s worth at a buffet, and have at one point out eaten 99% of the people I know (adolescent boys included).  When I was 16 that was ok, but today not so much.

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My New Gadget and Gizmos

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jessica's dinner party, ipad, blogging

If there’s anything great about the holidays being over, it’s that there’s finally time to enjoy all the gifts that you received.  Out of all the wonderful things I got this past Christmas, one stands out in particular and seems most relevant to this site: my new iPad mini!  I never saw myself owning an iPad, especially because I have an iPhone, but now that I have both I can’t imagine life without either.
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Tarte Tatin and a New Year

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jessica's dinner party, tarte tatin, pastry, seoul, korea, eats

The start of a new year always feels like a pause between everything that happened in the past to all that lays ahead in the future.  There are regrets in what could have been but also hope for what can and will be. Usually I spend a lot of time suspended in this moment trying to neatly timeline my life in chronological order, but life is anything but neat and (chrono)logical.  Everything is intertwined, looping together from ahead, below, up, and behind. So instead of trying to unravel what will forever be tangled, I am deciding to focus on today, whatever knots it may hold from the past, present, or future.
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