Last night, the founding members of the start-up company I just began working for had a cocktail party-slash-information session for friends and family regarding our upcoming trip to China. I offered to bring an appetizer, and luckily my mom had just the recipe up her sleeve. Over the years, she's brought Martha Stewart's "Endive with Goat Cheese, Fig, and Honey-Glazed Pecans" to countless classy gatherings, and it never fails to impress. She has also, of course, been tweaking the recipe along the way, so the result is nothing short of perfection.

The dish is a rich combination of flavors and textures; it is slightly bitter, creamy, crunchy, and sweet all at once. At the end of the night, there was one filled leaf remaining on the plate, left untouched only because it had fallen upside-down and looked empty.

Recipe for Endive with Goat Cheese, Fig, and Honey-Glazed Pecans
Adapted from Martha Stewart's Hors d'Oeuvres Handbook

Ingredients:
3/4 cup pecans
5 tbsp honey
4 oz. fresh goat cheese, softened
6 oz. cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup port wine
6-7 heads endive
2-3 sprigs parsley
9 whole fresh purple figs, cut into 3/4-inch wedges

Place softened cheeses in a medium bowl and stir until fully combined. Cover and place in refrigerator until stiff enough to work with, at least 20 minutes.

Rinse endive and slice about one inch off of the base of each head. Trim the tops and remove any brownish outer leaves. Place 36 large to medium-sized separated leaves on a kitchen towel to dry.

Preheat oven to 350 and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. In a small bowl, combine 2 tbsp honey with pecans and toss. Spread out in a single layer on prepared baking sheet. Bake 4 minutes, stir, and continue baking until shiny, about 4 more minutes. Set aside to cool.

Remove cheese from refrigerator. Using two teaspoons, form 36 quenelles by transferring small scoops of cheese back and forth between the spoons. Place each quenelle inside one endive leaf, and arrange on serving platter.

Place the port and remaining 3 tbsp honey in a small nonstick saucepan. Cook over low heat until mixture has been reduced to a thick syrup, 5 to 8 minutes.

Place one slice of fig and one glazed pecan on each quenelle, and drizzle with port wine reduction. Garnish each leaf with a small piece of parsley.

Now that my blog has been formally introduced by me and (I hope) talked up around the water cooler by you, it's time for me to share my first recipe. It's a big deal, this post. First impressions are important. I don't want to set the bar too high (rabbit stew and handmade croissants) or too low (PB & J's and ants-on-a-log). I should go with something basic, something classic, maybe something that I think is a good representation of my culinary style.

But in the end, I'm going with what I felt like making yesterday.

They're healthy.

They're hearty.

They're delicious.

And they are so, so glamorous. People, I give you:

The Bran Muffin.

These are not your average bran muffin. They are moist. They are dense, but not too dense. And best of all, they are the perfect autumn breakfast. I am a perfectionist, fall is my favorite season, and I think breakfast is the best meal of the day. Remember that time I said that my first post should be representative of my culinary style?

Looks like my style is a bran muffin. Like I said: G-L-A-M-O-R-O-U-S.

Recipe for Apple Butter Bran Muffins

Ingredients:
3 cups Kellog's All Bran cereal
1/2 cup boiling water
1/2 cup oil
1-1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs, beaten
2 cups lowfat buttermilk
2-1/2 cups flour
2-1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
12 oz. apple butter

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

In a small bowl, combine 1 cup cereal with 1/2 cup boiling water. Add in oil and stir. Set aside.

In a medium bowl, sift flour, baking soda, and salt. Stir to combine. Set aside.

In a large bowl, mix rest of cereal with sugar, eggs, and buttermilk. Add bran/oil mixture and flour; stir just to combine. Finally, stir in apple butter and mix until dry ingredients are full incorporated; do not over mix.

Bake in lined, regular-sized muffin tins for 20 minutes. Makes approximately 36 muffins.

Nutrition Information: 133 calories, 3.7 g fat, 24.5 g carbohydrate, 2.1 g fiber, 2.4 g protein per muffin.

This blog has been a long time in the making. I have started food blogs in the past (Who remembers "A Vegan Traveler" from my Regensburg days? Don't worry! This is NOT a vegan blog!) but never really kept up with them. I've had a plethora of excuses for discontinuing said food blogs or refusing to start new ones, but lately the excuse has been that I don't know the first thing about food photography.

I am an avid follower of Foodgawker.com. I read it like it's the New York Times, and the big story of the day is how to bake mini pear tarts in mason jar lids. That site is like crack to me. I can't look at just one page of pictures; I have to scroll through at least three and usually only end up stopping because I am either late for something or get too hungry to continue. I love the way that each picture links to its respective food blog and recipe, and yes, it is a dream of mine to some day be linked to that site as well. Dream big, Kaci! Dream big!

So I couldn't bear the thought of starting a food blog (especially one linked to my website and travel blog) if I couldn't provide you with quality photos of my culinary projects.

Now that I'm back at home, I've been able to enjoy the luxury of having every cooking utensil and piece of machinery imaginable. (Except a stand mixer, but I've resigned myself to the fact that I won't have one of those until I get married. Which won't be any time soon.) I did a lot of cooking this past year in Germany, and I had to be pretty creative at times to get around certain obstacles, like a shortage of bowls (mixing and serving), a tiny workspace, and a refrigerator one-third the size of what would be considered normal in the States. Which I shared with a roommate. But I gained a lot more experience with cooking, and went from "becomes paralyzed without detailed recipe" to "is capable of baking cookies without one."

Since being back, I have been cooking and baking up a storm. It was one of the ways that my status as "funemployed" manifested itself. I have a job now, but the hours are flexible since it's a start-up company, so I anticipate being able to keep up in the kitchen.

But what about the pictures? you ask in a polite but concerned tone. Well. You would think that since my mother is a professional photographer, I might know my way around a camera better than I do. But I guess maybe I've just never shown enough interest in learning, or never felt the need to since she's already got enough skills for the whole family. Those days of complacency and ignorance are over now, though! I've got my hands on her old camera (a Canon something-something) and through five-minute tutorials from her here and there and the great big world of the Internet, I will be learning to take Foodgawker-worthy photos in the days and weeks to come.