Drama and simplicity: two words that most aptly describe this fun-filled pancake. I started research for this blogpost with the idea of expanding on my previous experiments with popovers. I continue to find popovers easy and delicious, but wanted to learn to make something even easier to make, bigger and easier to clean up after….
Author: Alexis
{Book Report} “Fed Up With Lunch” by Sarah Wu
I love the way Sarah Wu basically stumbled in to this project. While working as a school speech therapist, she forgot her lunch one day and decided to just eat whatever they were serving in the cafeteria. Shocked by the poor quality of food she was served she decided to eat school lunch for one…
{recipe: stone soup} Making Something From “Nothing”
I have always loved the folk tale of “Stone Soup” because in it a delicious soup is created from meager ingredients. I love the challenge of creating delicious food from not-so-obvious ingredients. Over one year ago I pledged to stop buying grocery store meat and this prompted me to start purchasing whole chickens at the…
{recipe} Popovers: my latest breakfast obsession
Popovers are my latest food obsession. Since having a baby a couple months ago, we’ve had guests staying with us periodically. Despite being preoccupied with the baby, I love to cook and have been relieved to have something special for our visitors that doesn’t require excessive amounts of my time. I have wonderful memories of…
{the new year} coping with mid-winter food blues
Maybe it’s being trapped inside at home with a new baby, but I’m prematurely feeling that mid-winter desperation about what to make for dinner every night. This feeling worsens when we’ve skipped a week at the farmers market and have no fresh, local produce. Local green vegetables are already becoming less prevalent and I can…
{from scratch holidays} Challah for Christmas
Some of my earliest memories are of my Jewish grandmother setting out a loaf of challah, along with a spread of white fish, cream cheese, lox and bagels. She never made any of these foods herself, but challah still reminds me of her. Recently I developed an interest in making challah bread myself. Thinking about…
{from scratch holidays} Sweet Potato & Kale Casserole
I don’t think I’d ever made a casserole before. I wasn’t even sure I had a casserole dish. My venture in to this new territory was made even more exciting for me because I didn’t strictly follow a recipe. I found a Martha Stewart recipe that resembled something I imagined was both healthy and tasty…
{from scratch holidays} Cheesy Pumpkin Thyme Crackers
Who doesn’t love crackers? Easy to buy from a store, but boring when you do. Here’s a great way to Do It Yourself when you’re prepping for holiday festivities. You can go the predictable cracker route, but I wanted to try something a little different. I found a couple recipes for crackers, but they mostly…
{recipe} Curried Butternut Squash Soup w/ Heirloom Tomatoes
I used to be a creative person. For years after completing a bachelors in art I made stuff and found ways to express myself visually. I am no longer like that. I have the usual excuses: child, work, household demands, tv, etc, but really none of them is adequate in explaining my lack of non-verbal…
{Hot Sauce} putting peppers to good use
I have a lifelong history of love and hate with peppers. I think they are visually stunning and as a printmaking major in college I often used them as subject-matter. I love the human-like gestures inferred from their twists and turns. They look beautiful to me, but sadly, when it comes to eating peppers I’m…
{In a Pickle} the asthetic charm of eggs pickled with beets.
I can’t remember where I first saw eggs pickled with beets, but I do recall being struck by the beautiful contrast of the complimentary yellow and purple. I had made pickled beets before (not knowing what else to do with them) which lead me to discover that I like just about anything pickled. I know…
{Savory} Yogurt Inspirations
I was 19 years old the summer I spent two weeks helping to build a wall around a schoolyard in a rural Turkish village. During breaks, villagers expressed their gratitude (or maybe just entertained their own curiosities about us) by offering us a drink called Ayran. It’s a salty yogurt drink that on those hot,…
{pizza week} Just Grill It
Usually, when it comes to cooking I am the stereotype of a woman and depend on my husband to work the grill while I stick to the kitchen. Although friends had claimed grilling pizza was easy, I was reluctant to try it myself. I had happily devoured grilled pizza prepared for me in the past,…
{garlic scape week} Infused Olive Oil!
The final product of this project was, to me, reminiscent of jars of formaldehyde, filled with dead snakes and sitting on the shelf of a biology classroom. Now that I’ve whetted your appetite, let me lure you further by emphasizing the ease of creating garlic scape olive oil. I got the idea from a Martha…
{recipe} spinach mushroom risotto
I know it’s corny, but making risotto brings back a memory from Italy. About ten years ago a girlfriend and I were traveling there for a few weeks and had grown restless from a few days on the Italian west coast. We headed in to Florence by train and suddenly found ourselves in the city,…
