I’ve been tinkering with this recipe for weeks, and I’ve come up with a recipe I’m thrilled with. It’s easy, rises beautifully, and gives a loaf that’s got a great shattery crust, and a holey chewy crumb. And it’s so easy — five minutes to mix the dough in the morning, stick it on top of the fridge for 24 hours (my house hovers between 60 and 65 degrees, so a longer rise is necessary), then plop it on a board, shape it, and I’ve been letting it do the last rise wrapped in a floured towel and held in…
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Christmas is over and the seed catalogues are arriving! I pushed the remains of the Christmas baskets aside, cleared out the last of the cookies (the Pastura were particularly good, although the dogs got into them, and since chocolate is not good for dogs, well, it was a very fragrant Christmas eve around here), and have been happily perusing seed catalogs, dreaming of new varieties of endive and chicory, searching for an insect-resistant bean that won’t get skeletonized, musing over asparagus crowns and the idea of artichokes. Hmm. What to order?
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I was noodling around (okay, wasting time this morning) over on the fabulous new website, Serious Eats, when I found this sweet little piece over on The Ethicurean about farmer’s markets and the way having a good one can encourage you to eat foods you might have thought you didn’t like. It reminded me of when Patrick and I first moved in together in California — I discovered beets. I went a little mad for beets for a while — there were such gorgeous ones in the farmers markets. I too was one of those people who thought I hated…
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My trip to Chicago for Thanksgiving featured any number of family heirlooms — my grandmother and I went through a boatload of old family photos from the turn of the century, including piles of heartbreaking condolence letters received when her grandparents went down on the Lusitania, and a whole album of her own baby pictures (naked baby granny playing on the farm was pretty adorable). And then my mother gave me not only my great-grandmother’s silver flatware (more about that later) but this aluminum roaster. I love this roaster. The very first thing I remember learning to cook for myself…
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Big game season ended yesterday, and the Mighty Hunter didn’t get his elk this year. He got antelope and deer, so it’s not like any of us will go hungry, but no elk, which is too bad. I like elk. This morning I went over to check New West Network and found this terrific piece on the intertwined pleasures of hunting and providing for oneself and one’s family: “The Thrill and the Meat” by Greg Lemon. I realize that in most parts of the country that hunting is an anathema, but out here, a lot of people like Lemon rely…
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I’ve been meaning to blog about the No-Knead Bread recipe that Mark Bittman ran in his Minimalist column last week in the New York Times, but Luisa at The Wednesday Chef pretty much beat me to it. Go read her post — it’s terrific and says most of the things I wanted to say about this recipe. Like Luisa, I usually don’t even read the Minimalist columns — the food always seems sort of okay, but Bittman likes things much sweeter than I do, and seems to be a fan of my least favorite combo — fruit and meat. I…
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Some days a girl just can’t get it together. Sunday was like that — weekends are pretty much the only time I’ve got to do any real writing these days. The Corporate Job is full time nine-to-five so I’m trying to shoehorn my entire creative life into those two days a week. Some weeks it’s fine. Some weeks, well, I just don’t get anything done. Sunday was like that. I was rattling around the house trying to get down to work but mostly just frittering my day away. I did get some laundry done, but that was about it. I…
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I’ve been trying for days to figure out a way to write about this topic without sounding like a scold. Maybe the key is to ask you all (well, the three or four of you left after my various lapses in blogging) — what is it with dinner in America these days? Why is it so hard? Estimates vary, but it now seems that something like 30-50% of American families are not eating dinner together on any given night. I don’t get it. I’m not talking about pulling off some gourmet multi-course meal. I’m just talking about dinner — a…
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I’ve been meaning to write about this article, BACK TO THE RANCH: Consumers are going to the source for pastured beef, pork, poultry and eggs in the SF Chronicle food section since it came out (which to my horror, was a month ago). Anyhow, looks like more and more families in the Bay Area are buying meat directly from ranchers — I’ve written before about knowing your meat, and my astonishment that most Americans are totally freaked out by this idea. When Patrick and I lived in the Bay Area we talked about finding someone to buy a side or…
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Look what I found once the frost killed off all the foliage — a zucchini as big as my leg! I thought I’d done a pretty good job keeping up with them but this one was lurking in the back, hidden by the cucumber trellis. I may try to save some seeds from it — for now I just pose it places and take pictures. The garden is pretty much done. My other big surprise of the season was these beautiful raddiccio heads. I took them to a party where first we admired the pretty colors, and then the visiting…