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Every day that passed still felt like one day farther from the possibility of a VBAC, and on top of that, a bunch of work deadlines for B2 meant that the later Clara came, the shorter his leave might have to be. By noon the contractions started hurting a little more and seemed to be coming closer together–four minutes, three, two and even one–but they didn’t hurt so much that I couldn’t “talk or walk” through them like we thought they were supposed to when it was time to go to the hospital. After around an hour of pushing, I could feel Clara’s head crowning–which was a feeling I don’t think I’ll forget anytime soon, although the anesthesia made it so comically far from the painful experience I’d imagined that I kind of felt like I was cheating–and things did get a little more intense. It feels simultaneously like years ago and like yesterday, but the feeling that we’d had the night before Clara came what I keep remembering when I think about her birth.

This time around, we’ve all been felled with a bug he brought home from preschool, and pretty much all I am doing is my best imitation of a beached whale, lying on the couch buying Magic Beans and going fishing , and just managing to shuffle to the kitchen to make a 30-minute pot of shortcut dduk guk for the new year. All kidding aside, Lunar New Year has always been a holiday that embodies family for us, and the fact that it’s falling just before our little family is scheduled to grow by one does make it feel even more special than usual. In the event you’re feeling more ambitious in the kitchen than me this week (and haven’t already squared away your plans for Lunar New Year), here’s a little collection of recipes for your consideration. Wishing everyone a happy, cozy Lunar New Year filled with friends, family, and food, and a prosperous Year of the Pig.

But with the year winding down and a little more time to process all that’s happened, I thought I’d share a few snippets of our year in photos and a few of my final thoughts about what writing A Common Table and seeing it out in the world this year has meant. In the introduction of A Common Table, I wrote that the spirit of the book is really our son, who will grow up Korean, Chinese, and Irish but most of all, American, and who will grow up eating foods from all sorts of cultures from one kitchen, at one table. One of B2’s friends wrote words about the book that I thought were better than anything I wrote myself: “[The] stories and family photos embedded between the recipes speak to an unassailable[] truth: Food is culture. At its simplest, I was happy if the book could be nothing more than a personal history of our family and the things we like to eat, and if nothing else, it could be the book I reached for in the kitchen to cook for my own family.

There are variations galore, but at its essence, jianbing is something like a stuffed crepe, where the crepe is made with a nutty mix of flours that can include anything from mung bean or buckwheat to millet and soybean, spread with a thin layer of egg and a vibrant mix of sauces like sweet bean sauce, hoisin, and chili sauces, stuffed with bright greens like cilantro or scallions, and, most excitingly, folded around a crackling, fried wonton skin-style cracker or, depending on where you are, youtiao. Sprinkle that with fragrant cilantro, scallions, and a bit of pickled mustard greens, then layer it with the egg batter (the night before, if you like! ) and throw it in the oven, no fussing with crepe pans needed. Finally, best of all, right before you eat it’s all buried under crispy wonton wrappers and still more fresh herbs, and the result is all the complex, surprising interplay between soft and crunchy textures, sweet and savory flavors from the hoisin and egg (and ham or bacon, if you like! ), brightness from the herbs and heat from the spicy chili paste, that you’d never guess this was the easiest thing since the sliced bread it’s made of. 2-3 tablespoons broad bean chili paste (douban jiang), sambal oelek, or sriracha (or more, as needed) ½ cup sliced scallions, plus more for serving ½ cup torn cilantro, plus more for serving Heat oven to 350 degrees and generously grease a 1 ½-quart baking dish.