After about 14 months of recipe testing and photography for my cookbook, I am finally finallydone. No more waking up every morning and consulting the massive spreadsheet of recipes and the to-do list. No more schlepping to any of the three New York Chinatowns for ingredients (unless I’m teaching a class or blogging for Appetite for China.) No more months of eating Chinese food almost every single day.

It’s a little bittersweet, actually. I really enjoyed the cookbook writing and photography process, as hard as it was. But it is nice to finally be able to cook different cuisines at home again. It’s funny — while many fellow Americans try out Asian food to spice up their home cooking, I couldn’t wait to try out (after a year in which my diet was 95% Chinese food)…tuna noodle casserole.