Surviving the Holidays
One day my kindergarten teacher put some clay out for us to play with. I was thrilled until some boys started flinging it at each other. I crept outside to hide by the milk machine. The milk machine stood just outside the classroom door. It was tall and cool and…
Lemon Cake with Almond Flour
As I write, California is experiencing terrible fires. Here are some ways to help: The United Way is helping people affected by the Camp Fire. The American Red Cross is also accepting donations. The North Valley Community Foundation is accepting donations. To help animals impacted by the fires, the Conscious Cat…
Stir-fried Rice Cakes with Pork
As lunatics in the wider world wielded guns and mailed pipe bombs, your hostess was busy dealing with crooks and idiots. It’s been that kind of few weeks. Or maybe that kind of two years. (Not indicative of above.) — Stir-Fried Rice Cakes with Pork comes, in part, from Georgia…
Pasta with chickpeas and spinach
Pasta with chickpeas and spinach came about because I could barely walk. Not the most felicitous of culinary circumstances, but there you are. One never knows where a good dish will come from. Your hostess has a bursitic knee, long treated with cortisone shots. Last week the doctor decided further…
Mu-Shu Pork
When I was a child, I knew a woman who collected penguin figurines. When the local fish place went out of business, she acquired their namesake, a ten-foot tall penguin, and had it installed in her yard. The interior of her home was equally penguin (penguinic? penguinesque?): the garbage…
Marble Pound Cake
The past week saw your hostess dealing with rodents in kitchen (that screaming you heard? it was me), and a near automobile accident. The other driver–who was at fault–attempted to confront me. (That screaming you heard? It was me.) This driver, who was backing out of a parking lot…
Perfect Pound Cake Variations
You are either a baker or a cook. Very few people are both. Merrill Stubbs, A New Way To Dinner I believed the above until my late forties. Then humiliation got the better of me and I taught myself to bake. Because I was in my late forties–I am fifty…
Recipe failures and other disasters
The IK has been woefully quiet of late, and not for lack of interest. It’s at times like this that I recall David Lebovitz, who writes of having a 40-post backlog. This must be a source of confidence, virtual money in the bank, as it were. (It’s also a fine way…
Spicy Cold Chinese Noodles
More properly referred to as Spicy And Numbing Cold Noodles, Spicy Chinese Noodles hail China’s Sichuan Province, a place known for hot, muggy summers and the ingestion of chile-laden foods to counter said wet heat. I’ve prepared Spicy Cold Chinese Noodles with corn, wax beans, red peppers, chile peppers, fresh…
Miso Steak with Noodles
This is a fermented paste made from soybeans and grains, and it is used as a base for sauces and soups. Look for it in Japanese groceries or natural foods stores. Mollie Katzen, defining miso in The Enchanted Broccoli Forest. Until the early aughts, most Americans knew miso as the…
