When I was young, around the age of 6, I discovered zucchini pancakes. My Mom, trying to feed a family on the budget of a newly opened small business, was not about to let summer’s over-abundance of these long green squash go to waist. She started by slicing and steaming […]
Summer has truly arrived in New England which means, if you take off at a dead sprint, somewhere between noon and 5 PM and keep running for at least five minutes, you might just break a sweat. It also means you have too much zucchini. The fact is, even if […]
Watercress always seems so fancy, relegated to delicate soups and in precious finger sandwiches of chopped, hard-boiled egg and mayonnaise on crustless, thinly sliced bread laid out on silver platters at ladies luncheons. Which, now that I mention it, sound lovely. While the life that included ladies luncheons and called for a studied knowledge […]
Tomorrow at 1:18 my flight departs for home in DC after the past two weeks spent here at my family’s home in Western Mass(achusetts) writing my next cookbook. At 48 pages this stands to be the shortest of the three books I have written, and it only covers one subject: vinaigrettes. I prepare a vinaigrette […]
Temptation relies heavily on its co-conspirator, convenience, particularly when it comes to those high-calorie foods we realize are best kept in the every-once-in-a-while-as-a-treat category. With that thought in mind, I came up with the perfect solution: I can eat just about anything, anytime I want, but I’ve got to make it […]
This morning I thought about duck fat-fried fingerling potatoes in a rosemary chimichurri. How did I get there? It went something like this… Despite a firm lack of commitment, the weather seems to be trending steadily toward spring, a fact I am reminded of daily by the hyacinths budding in my […]
Last Friday night, my husband’s four day work trip unexpectedly turned into nine with a trip home to Ohio. On Saturday night, with the novelty of spreading out in bed and not having to share the remote control wearing thin, I invited my friend Seth over for dinner. During the […]
When I first launched this blog it was titled “What I haven’t cooked yet,” which was the answer I would give when people asked, “what is your favorite thing to cook?” This works out well for me because I am a terrible planner. It’s not my skills that are lacking, […]
Farmers are a conservative lot. My former boss, employing a great talent for turns of phrase, would say” they are in a race to be first to be third.” What makes them so bearish? The weather. Let’s compare them to you. It’s sunny and creeping up on 80F today here in DC. […]
According to Wikipedia, Pope Gelasius I* established the feast of St. Valentine on February 14 in the year 496. He listed St. Valentine amongst those saints “… whose names are justly reverenced among men, but whose acts are known only to God.” In other words, they didn’t know a thing about […]
