Bucatini in Tomato Saffron Cream with Wild Salmon

Pasta and cream. Not exactly a New Year's resolution friendly dish. But that is kind of my point. I am posting this simply because I feel like it.

Let me back up and explain.

I have noticed an off-putting proscriptive tendency creeping into some food blogging lately. Year-end posts have popped up here and there purporting to be the last word on what food blogging should and should not be, and what we bloggers must and must not do.

As snarky as I know I can be, I find these proclamations - even when they claim to be tongue in cheek - a little too self-congratulatory for their own good.

It's my blog, after all, and I make the rules here. So if I want to put text on a photo, I will. If I get a bee in my bonnet to bake and post about the much-maligned cupcake, that is exactly what I am going to do. And if I feel like going a little crazy and listing every last ingredient in the title of my post, then deal with it. No one is forcing you to read it.

That said, if you list "cake mix" as a recipe ingredient, my eyes will glaze over and I will move on to the next blog. But you should do it anyway, if that's what you feel moved to do.

And so ... back to my pasta dish. My fattening, lovely, luscious pasta dish. (Some bloggers have put "luscious" on their list of words food bloggers shouldn't use. Oh well.)

It's rich, a bit unseasonal, and it's a shameless re-do of another recipe of mine, my fish meatballs in tomato saffron cream. But oh my is it good, and it's worth the extra 30 ... okay 60 ... extra minutes you'll have to do on the treadmill.

To make this, follow the instructions for the aforementioned tomato saffron cream sauce, only poach the wild salmon fillets in it instead of the fish meatballs. While that's going on, cook the bucatini to al dente. Once the salmon fillets are finished, remove them from the sauce, stir in the pasta, and serve, topped with salmon and thyme.

Devour.

Happy New Year - and if you make only one resolution, may I suggest that you vow to do things your way, no matter what anyone else's blog post has to say about it.