The first cookbook I was ever given was the Nancy Drew Cookbook. I think it was a Christmas present one year, but I can’t really be sure. I remember cooking breakfast out of it in the old farmhouse my parents sold when I was 7. The blue dot on the cover is a color of paint used for the sets one of my professors volunteered me to design for the Miss Glomerata pageant one year in college. (The Glom is the college yearbook that apparently required a beauty pageant in its honor.) I have no clue how it landed on the cover of my oldest & dearest cookbook.
Category: cooking
A tale of chicken soup.
I am the first to admit that cooking meat is my culinary weak spot. Touching raw meat grosses me out. The idea that it could leave all sorts of nasty germs all over my kitchen freaks me out further. Really, I could go on & on about my beef with cooking meat, but I’ll spare you. Continue reading
Sweet Potato Coconut Curry Soup.
Remember back in January when I said I’d write about some of the cookbooks I had acquired at my cookbook swap? I’ve finally gotten around to cooking out of some of them! Continue reading
Something not soup.
I love to make big pots of soup this time of year. The house just feels cozier with something good smelling simmering on the stove all afternoon, you know? However, given that the habit of making a big pot of soup for dinner starts sometime in October, it begins to wear thin with some members of this household about this time of year – sort of like the grey sky or the weather forecast with the words snow or ‘polar vortex’. They’re just done with all of it. It certainly doesn’t help that I expect said pot of soup to serve as dinner a few days in a row as well as maybe even some lunches during that stretch. Change is needed and the easiest place to make it happen is the dinner table. Continue reading
It’s fun to fondue!
It’s no secret that the people who inhabit our neighborhood use any sort of excuse to host a get-together. As the snow continued to accumulate Thursday, Dahlia sent out an email asking if anyone else thought this was cheese fondue weather. Our thoughts may have been more along the lines of, good gosh let’s get out of this house and drink with other people, but hey, fondue worked. A few emails (and phone calls) later, we appeared to have a plan. Continue reading
Garden thoughts in January.
I like to plant tomatillos in my garden every summer for a variety of reasons. For starters, I love salsa verde, which is made of tomatillos. They are also a wickedly cool looking plant to have in the garden, because of their dramatically hanging fruit which look like little lanterns.
I just spent a few hours over several days looking for a good shot of a tomatillo plant, combing through the last four years of summer garden shots and that is the best shot I had. And it’s not even mine, it’s Leni’s (from summer 2012). Continue reading
College Football Food.
Saturday’s plan was to sit and watch college football most of the afternoon & evening, which never fails to inspire me to cook a big pot of something and maybe even bake a batch of bread to go along with whatever is in the pot. This Saturday, with it’s line up of conference championships, inspired me to make some recipes from college friends. That and some Double H andouille sausage I picked up at the Holiday market. Pat asked if I was going to make gumbo with the sausage. Considering I have at least 3 different batches in the freezer and it not being a favorite of at least one household member who says watching football with her parents is sort of like this beer commercial, I decided against it. She was already in for a long day of football with us (First SEC Championship, then the ACC & Big 10 games) and I didn’t want to antagonize her. Besides, gumbo takes time – not just the time to chop all those vegetables, make a broth and a roux, it needs to simmer for a few hours and is really best after all the flavors have had time to meld – next day gumbo is way better than fresh gumbo. Instead, I went for jambalaya, which is infinitely easier and far quicker. You can start chopping your veggies and an hour later, your jambalaya is ready to serve. Not so with gumbo. Continue reading
An Early Christmas Present.
I got a message from my neighbor Steve the other day, he was cleaning out his mother’s things and was I interested in some old cookbooks and loose recipes he wanted to see to a good home? Continue reading
Scenes from a holiday.
Accidental Self Portrait
Pizza lately.
Pizza for dinner is a regular occurrence around here. I make a batch of dough and split it, creating two slightly thin crusts. One becomes something more standard for whatever kids are around for dinner and one gets to be some version of clean out the fridge pizza, using up whatever I have on hand.
Lately, that means what Edie dubbed “fabulous pizza” when she about 3 or 4. The rest of the world may know it as Pizza Margherita, but in this house, pizza made with tomatoes, basil and fresh mozzarella is fabulous pizza.
My most recent pizza experiment that turned out surprisingly well used tomatillo salsa for sauce, monterey jack cheese, arugula, jalapenos and Caromont Farm fresh chevre. The tomatillos, arugula and jalapenos all came from the garden, as did the tomatoes and basil on the fabulous pizza. It was one of those dishes that is better than the sum of its parts. The mildness of the jack cheese was a nice counterpoint that tied together the creamy- savory-with a bit of a bite thing going on.
Chicken Wire & Paper Flowers 