Favorites from 2012

Before we bid adieu to 2012, let's take a look back at some favorite moments, OK?

Favorite Recipe We Made in 2012: A tie between the cream-braised cabbage and our bolognese.

My Favorite Photo from 2012 (from the rajas poblanas attempt):

Matt's Best Shot in 2012:

Psyyyyyyyyccch! In the words of Matt, "I look like an escaped circus clown photobombing a nice family portrait."

OK, so seriously, I think this is Matt's best shot, at Langer's, no less:

Matt's Favorite Song of 2012: A tie between Japandroids' "The House That Heaven Built" and Tanlines' "All of Me."


Amelia's Favorite Song of 2012: A tie between Tanlines' "All of Me," Twin Shadow's "Five Seconds," and Cat Power's "Manhattan."


Amelia's Favorite Album of 2012: Lord Huron's Lonesome Dreams.


Favorite Passage from a Book I Read in 2012: A tie.
From Adam Gopnik's Paris to the Moon:
"The stories are mostly about life spent at home and include a lot--some will think too much--about the trinity of late-century bourgeois obsessions: children and cooking and spectator sports, including the spectator sport of shopping. Yet life is mostly lived by timid bodies at home, and since we see life as deeply in our pleasures as in our pains, we see the differences in lives as deeply there too. The real differences among people shine most brightly in two bedrooms and one building, with a clock ticking, five years to find out how and why."

And Annie Dillard's Teaching a Stone to Talk:
"Now I no longer concurred with my shipmates' joke; I no longer wanted to 'come back' as a sea lion. For I thought, and I still think, that if I came back to life in the sunlight where everything changes, I would like to come back as a palo santo tree, one of thousands on a cliffside on those godforsaken islands, where a million events occur among the witless, where a splash of rain may drop on a yellow iguana the size of a dachsund, and ten minutes later the iguana may blink. I would like to come back as a palo santo tree on the weather side of an island, so that I could be, myself, a perfect witness, and look, mute, and wave my arms."

Favorite Podcast from 2012: The Inner Landscape of Beauty with John O'Donohue

Favorite Sports Moments of 2012: A tie.
Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh Jennings' victory over China in the semifinals was a sight to behold. These women put the extra As in amaaaaaaazing.

AP Photo/Petr David Josek via here

You guys know I love gymnastics, and as much as I loved the moments where team USA took gold, this clip from the mini documentary on Aly Raisman, Quest for Gold, really stuck with me. Particularly, the end where after a grueling practice, Aly's coach tells her, "Get a massage if you can get. Get a jacuzzi if you can get. Relax. Okay?"


I know the categories are a bit random, but hey, so was 2012! But what about you guys? Favorite moments from the year? Would love to hear them!

And of course, we're looking forward to an amazing 2013.

Your best friends forever,
Amelia, Matt, and Mavis