Cooking in clay is one of those things that you read about in cookbooks and wonder what the fuss is all about — or at least I did, until my mother gave me this funny little pot one year for Christmas. I have no idea where she found it, it was an odd gift, even for her. For the first few years I had it, I assumed you could only use it in the oven. It wasn’t until I was at a party during one of the Squaw Valley Writers workshops and saw Barbara Hall using hers on her stove…
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Way back in my youth I worked in New York for a company that repackaged magazine material into cookbooks — our biggest client was Gourmet Magazine. So I’ve watched with great interest as Ruth Reichel has taken that hoary old magazine, run by women from the suburbs who at least in the late ’80 were still known to come to work in plaid skirts and knee socks (knee socks! I remember my shock that grown women would go out dressed like old girls — oh, and in blouses with those big floppy bows that women wore in the ’80s in…
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It’s raining today — a nice soft spring rain, so I took the poor scraggly herbs from the Winter Herb Garden and put them outside the back door. The rosemary seemed particularly crunchy, but it did it’s job — it didn’t die. The thyme has been remarkably successful — the last few weeks it’s been sending out delicious little soft green shoots. I also got my act together last weekend and organized my seeds. As you can see — my “system” is nothing fancy. A couple of cheap bins from Pamida and a paper bag — but by the end…
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There’s a vigorous and healthy debate going on in the blogosphere about school lunch. Congress is gearing up to revise the Child Nutrition and WIC act, which includes the school lunch program, and the forces of Hope and Change have ideas. (Click through to the actual essays linked, my summaries necessarily oversimplify.) Alice Waters started the debate on the NY Times Op-Ed page, advocating that we double the lunch subsidy from $2.17 to $5.00. She also, no surprise, wants a program that works with farmers to get organic local produce into schools, and advocates rebuilding school kitchens. This suggestion, particularly…
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Took the storm insert out of the front door today and replaced it with the screen insert. Temps in the mid-50’s, sunshine, and with the kitchen window and front door open, had a chance to air the house out after a long stuffy winter. Despite the light cover of melting snow on the ground, hung laundry on the line, put the leggy over-wintered mint outside the backdoor for a little real sunshine, and in general, felt like the big blue ball has once again turned on it’s axis. Spring is in the air. Tulips and daffodils are beginning to poke…