The thing about salads in winter, is – they have to have some ooomph there, you know what I mean? In summer I’ve been known to eat a head of romaine plain, one leaf at a time…munch, munch, munch. But in winter I like meal-worthy salads with hearty components like beets, apple, sweet potatoes and more. With garbanzo beans, slow…
Cooking
The Corpse Reviver No. 2
Back in the late 1800s, Corpse Reviver drinks were promoted as hangover cures – think “hair of the dog” for the 19th century inebriate. There were all number of drinks that claimed the potency to bring even the most hungover “corpse” of a drinker back to life. Only a few of the Corpse Reviver recipes survive – and of these, the…
3 Easy Steps To The Juiciest Lemons Ever
It’s citrus season, which means a couple of things around here. One, any pretension of even halfass locavorism goes out the window. I’ll take all the citrus California, Texas and Florida can manage, please, for as long as they’ll ship it up to me. Two, I start going crazy making lemon curd, salt-preserved lemons and limoncello. (I also…
Maple and Spice Old Fashioned Cocktail for Winter
Like people, cocktails can be organized into families. There are the sours, the champagne cocktails, the duos, the trios….many families. And the great, great, great granddaddy of them all is the Old Fashioned. The first known definition of the word cocktail was in 1806. Back then a cocktail was spirits, bitters, water, and sugar. Nothing more, nothing less….
White Bean, Sausage and Cavolo Nero Kale Soup
Yesterday afternoon my son was doing his best impression of a barnacle, stuck to me in an emotional rebound reaction to going back to school from Winter Break. Getting anything done was challenging. My husband walked in, back from his daily round of corporate servitude, our pre-teen daughter trailing in behind him. “How was school?” I asked her. “Is…
When And How To Use Dried Herbs – Kitchen Tips Everyone Should Know
Look, I’m pro-fresh-herb. I love giant huge bunches of cilantro, I consider it a crime that parsley isn’t used as a vegetable, I’ll drink chimichurri sauce by the shot glass. Who has two thumbs and loves fresh herbs? This girl. And yet – there is a place for dried herbs. Usually, that place involves a big…
The Fig Old Fashioned
I have a fig tree, and this fig tree has my heart. What this fig tree does not have, unfortunately, is a reliable second crop of figs in our cool-summer climate. So, after the breba crop ripens, that’s usually it. This year, I dried all the breba figs I could, to try to extend our enjoyment…
Egg Rice: Good, Fast, Cheap Food
Last fall, while I was deep in the trenches of recipe testing for my book, I found myself frequently confounded by dinner. Now you might think that, after 12 hours of recipe testing, dinner would be totally easy because I’d just serve the recipe tested food to my family, right? It rarely worked out so conveniently. Oh, sure,…
What Makes A Cocktail A Sour?
Many of the cocktails I share here are subtle variations on a theme. That theme has a name: The Sour. Ignore, for now, drinks with “sour” in the name like The Whiskey Sour or The Pisco Sour. While these drinks are in fact sours, not all sours announce themselves so obviously.
The Aronia Gin Cocktail
“This one’s a keeper. What should we call it?” I asked my husband after our initial tasting of this shockingly pink cocktail, a classic gin-and-citrus shakeup made interesting with aronia berry simple syrup. “We should name it after the ducks!” My husband suggested. “Aronia….Ancona…very similar!” “Nothing about this drink is duck-like,” I argued, and took another sip.
Green Herb & Peanut Pork Meatballs in Lettuce Cups
Great news! My publishers have given me permission to share several recipes, photos and tips from my soon-to-be-released book! The Hands-on Home is now so close to launch that it’s time to start promotion – which means giving you guys a little taste of what’s inside the book. These herby, peanuty pork meatballs are one of my…
Easy DIY Tonic Water For The Best Gin and Tonic
There’s only one cocktail I make deliberately light on the booze, and that’s the Gin and Tonic. Is there a more perfect summertime drink? Refreshing, charmingly straightforward and with the added bonus of warding off both malaria and scurvy – the G&T is a classic for a reason. A Gin and Tonic has four ingredients: gin,…