There’s a local cafe that serves chocolate chip cookies that should be illegal and morning glory muffins that really do make my morning glorious. Since I have an ethical and financial problem paying $6.50 for a muffin and cup of coffee, and since it behooves my expanding ass to stay away from the chocolate chip…
Cooking
Just What The Internet Doesn't Knead (Updated)
There’s about a 95% chance that you’ve heard of the famous No Knead Bread recipe, put out by the New York Times and re-posted by…well…everyone. For the 5% of you that have yet to become master No Knead Bakers, I offer up my personal lionization of the technique. It’s simple, it’s fool-proof, it’s delicious, it…
The Addictive Power Of Pork Fat
Well, I don’t usually echo Emeril Lagasse, but pork fat really does rule. I’ve known vegetarians who hot-rodded their Boca patty with bacon when they thought people weren’t looking, and any meat product that can find its way into desserts is a force to be reckoned with. But pork fat isn’t just bacon. For as long as…
The Simplest Salad In The World
Salad days are here. My lettuce is responding to our cool drizzly weather by growing big and verdant and tender. Say what you will about a crappy, sunless spring; the lettuce loves it. Thanks to an over-eager over-seeding of lettuce back in February, I have a bed of lettuce to eat, and it all looks like this:…
Japanese Style Leek And Beef Skewers
When we pulled the last of the season’s leeks from one of our beds, we ended up with quite a few leeks. Several people asked me what what in the world I was going to do with all those leeks. Well, the first thing I want to clarify if that, as a family, we eat…
Lacinato Kale and Roasted Sweet Potato Salad (Plus Variations!)
Kale is a hearty green. It is tough and fibrous and people think you have to cook it to make it palatable. But kale can be fabulous raw, in big-time cold weather salads that double as a meal. One of my favorite combinations is finely shredded raw Lacinato Kale (also called Tuscan, Cavolo Nero, or Dinosaur kale) with…
Rosemary Salt Rubbed Pork Chops
The pork chops aren’t from the garden, obviously. But this time of year you need to be grateful for what you can harvest. And a year-round flavoring in my kitchen is garden-grown rosemary. I step outside the kitchen at least once a week and snip from the rosemary hedge alongside the house. I’ll cut a…
My Simple Cast Iron Seasoning Technique
I’m partial to cast iron cookware. I also use stainless-clad aluminum pots and pans for soups and blanching vegetables and making oatmeal, but my daily-use pans are a set of five Lodge Cast Iron Skillets. I say ‘set’ like I went down one day to my local Williams-Sonoma and got a deal for buying the…
Curry Roasted Squash Seeds
Inside that tasty, tasty beast of a Sugar Hubbard squash was a whole other garden gift: squash seeds! Now I don’t bother to pick through and roast the seeds from every squash I harvest, but when you have a big squash you have some big, tasty seeds. So especially on your large winter squashes (squashi?),…