Cuisine. Culture. Commentary.
One if my great new cheese discoveries is dunbarton blue. It’s a blue cheese with cheddar as the base. The texture is more like cheddar so it doesn’t crumble the way you may be accustomed to. Even the people I was with who don’t like blue cheese liked this one. I had to have more…
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My brother is a great eater. If you go to a restaurant with him, he’ll order the most out-there item on the menu. Vegetables pose no threat to him and strange food combinations are exciting rather than gross. But that wasn’t always the case. Growing up, my brother’s diet consisted of three items: chicken fingers,…
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I wanted to use some very Fall flavors in the salad at Friday’s dinner party and that meant pomegranate and fennel. This is an incredibly easy salad to put together. Simply dump the lettuce into a bowl and top with chopped avocado, crumbled gorgonzola, shaved fennel (a mandolin comes in handy here), and pomegranate seeds.…
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Here’s a quick fix side dish idea for ya. Cook up some Israeli couscous and while you’re doing that, start sautéing chopped zucchini in a pan with a little butter. When the zucchini is about halfway done, add one clove of chopped garlic and a bunch of fresh spinach. I also added some fresh thyme…
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My plan for book club was to make one of my Mom’s pies. I got the recipe and was all ready to go…until I couldn’t find the main ingredient in the grocery store. So there I was, standing in D’Ag at 8:45 PM the night before, no idea what I was going to make. I…
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Ever have a feeling that’s so rare you need to pause and acknowledge it? Well last week I had the urge to bake muffins and since I never want to bake I had to stop and give this feeling some attention. I don’t bake because I don’t really like it – it’s too precise. At least,…
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I bought fig butter for a recipe recently and had half a jar leftover. I didn’t want to waste it so I worked to find a recipe that incorporated it. This may come as a surprise, but fig butter is not one of my go to ingredients. It is by no means a typical condiment…
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My first experience cooking polenta started out a little scary but it only took me a few minutes to pull it together and make a simple and satisfying Italian dish. The sweat started bubbling on my brow within 30 seconds of the cooking process. No no, girls don’t sweat; they glow. The glow took over my…
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I wouldn’t have known Monday was National Lasagna Day if Albert had not pointed it out to me. Thankfully, lasagna is an easy dish to throw together so I didn’t need much advanced notice to celebrate. But boring, standard lasagna doesn’t really say “celebration” so I wanted to update the recipe – something that’s easy…
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I had a nice bottle of champagne on hand and was determined to use it for mimosas on the roof this past weekend so I invited Beth over for a Saturday brunch. I couldn’t just serve mimosas – that’s just not the kind of hostess I am – so I prepared two summer salads. The…
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Peaches to Apples 