I have been absent. But I have not exactly been remiss. Real life — academic obligations, travel to parts Midwestern, the lack of a working kitchen — has kept me from posting here for the past two weeks. But this blog, and you, dear readers, have never been far from my thoughts. Regular posting will […]
Long story short, this bread is sort of a happy accident. For about a year, I’ve been working on a whole wheat brown bread — tweaking it, modifying its parts, trying to come up with a workable dough that would yield an open crumb, a thick crust, and a ton of flavor. Last week, I […]
So where have I been, you might ask, friends of the blog that you all are. I haven’t seen you ’round much, you might say. Have you been avoiding us? Have you stopped writing? Have you cooked at all this week? The answer, dear friends, is that no, I have not abandoned you. But life, […]
For more than a month, I’ve been wanting to make this plum galette that David Lebovitz featured in one of his posts about the fortieth anniversary of Chez Panisse. And for more than a month, for one reason or another, the stars have not aligned. I didn’t have time when I was in Los Angeles […]
I thought, since I didn’t include a recipe with my last post, that I’d give you a quick one here. Dinner rolls aren’t exactly sexy. They aren’t exactly the height of culinary fashion, unless you have a group of friends who are really keen, say, on chicken tetrazzini, or macaroni salad, or casseroles laden with […]
As the season draws slowly to a close, you may consider this my thank-you note, or perhaps my sappy sappy love-letter, to my farmers’ market. Last year, Roxborough had no farmers’ market. There used to be an Amish farm stand that would set up in a parking lot near the Post Office once a week, […]
** Update: The answer, dear friends, to the question of whether my yeast problems would kill this beer, is a big, resounding yes. I bought some additional yeast this morning, thinking that I would re-pitch. And when I opened my fermentation vessel, what I found was kind of horrifying: colorful, clearly bacterial colonies floating on […]
I intended to make a peach galette for dessert Friday night. I really did. It would have been sweet and tangy, rustic, crusty, and glazed with homemade jam that my friend Linda had gifted me a couple of months back. I had the dough for the crust ready and everything. But then I went and […]
This makes two non-food posts in a row. This trend will cease, I promise. Before you know it, I’ll be back to recipes, or write-ups of my local farmer’s market, or odes in verse to Manchego cheese, or what have you. But like I said with regards to our recent spate of inclement weather: sometimes […]
Sometimes we cook. And sometimes the world impinges. Hurricane Irene came through Saturday night, bringing with it wind and rain, and knocking out power on half our block. The neighbors, like Sarah and I, came outside onto their porch to watch the spectacle. They told us that the people on the news were calling it […]