Last week, I was recipe testing a few quick breads, trying to find the right one for gift-giving (that's about all I can tell you before Christmas - and no photos). I made one batch, tasted it, was pleasantly surprised, and then quickly ushered it out of the house with Ryan to work so that I wouldn't be tempted to eat the whole loaf.Some of our friends who got a taste of the bread have asked for the recipe - and since it makes such a great Christmas gift (pack the dry goods in a jar), I have to oblige.I adapted it from this Sunset magazine recipe, and it's SO easy to make. *If you don't have any...
Friday, 17 December 2010
Tuesday, 14 December 2010
soup in a big, pretty pot.
Recently, with the holidays approaching, I've become obsessed with making everything pretty. And without giving too much of my holiday gift-giving away, I've become equally obsessed with the Japanese art of furoshiki, in which you wrap something in a reusable cloth (tea towels are perfect for this!) instead of gift wrap. It's so wabi-sabi, so ordinary but extraordinary all at once. All that to say, I love tea towels. Somehow, tea towels make everything more beautiful. This amazingly gorgeous pot of mine is made more lovely just with the simple (and extremely useful) addition of a tea towel. Quick...
Monday, 6 December 2010
healthful eating
For quite some time, I have focused my cooking on completely natural ingredients; fresh, local, and organic vegetables; and seasonal eating. I've even been vegetarian for a year, which should just scream "healthiest eater around!!" right? Wrong.What I've recently learned is that while I cook fairly healthy, there's always room for improvement. A quick look at my most recent blog posts points to cheese, caramel apples, and a dinner without protein. Don't worry, I'm not giving up the good stuff. But this weekend, we took a brave new approach to eating. Nothing was covered in cheese, and we didn't...
Tuesday, 16 November 2010
fall, can i keep you?
We've finally hit my official vegetarian anniversary, and I must say it's working out quite nicely. The connection between mind, body, spirit, and food is fascinating; I feel totally connected in many new ways as I've taken this vegetarian journey. I think I have opened up my cooking lexicon to experience new things because of it (cous cous still is not something I enjoy, but bring on the mole, curry, and miso!). Here are a few things that we've been eating lately. Rainbow chard (topped with cheese), wine-laced caramel apples, roasted acorn squash with brown sugar and dijon mustard.Fall is my...
Tuesday, 26 October 2010
AP. Like the flour.
Well, it happened. I'm a married woman. And now my initials are AP, like the flour, as one friend pointed out. (The rest of the friends didn't get it right away. AP = All Purpose. Funny, right?)We had an extraordinarily wonderful wedding, with handmade details at every turn, and it could not have been more perfect for us if it tried. Our family and friends made it that way - their outpouring of love and support humbled and amazed us. And then we came home. Not a lot is different, but somehow it indeed better. Ryan resumed his normal activity of building fires in the backyard and I got back into...
Friday, 17 September 2010
canned beans.
So the last, oh, two months haven't involved a lot of cooking for me. And what cooking does ensue usually involves frozen, albeit organic, vegetables and pasta. Or rice. But pasta cooks faster, so, you know. . . usually pasta. In fact, last night I considered it an achievement beyond the greatest realms of possibility that I actually cooked a full, healthy, delicious meal. This meal was, as one of my friends puts it, "what the rest of the world eats every day." Rice and beans. So why was it fancy? Because I busted out the cast iron skillet to heat up the canned beans, that's why. AND I sprinkled...
Tuesday, 3 August 2010
routine.
It's been one whirlwind of a month, and I may have come out of it a little worse for the wear. At least, that's how I feel at the moment. There has been much soul searching and self investigating, not to mention planning, party throwing, appointment making, furniture assembly, moving, painting, eating out, shedding of tears, and not enough running, playing, relaxing, laundry, painting, and (as I'm sure you've noticed) cooking. So I'm looking forward to finding a routine again soon. Two days into this week, and the mornings have had a little bit of structure; I've made it out the door both days...
Saturday, 17 July 2010
in the summer swing
The past few weeks in the kitchen have held preserving (I put up 25 pounds of figs on Wednesday night, by myself, without a dishwasher), one bad batch of sweet pickles (sorry that I gifted you a pint, Mom—they did indeed turn out terrible), one fantastic red cabbage stir fry (the photo is a sneak peak), a spelt muffin experiment that turned out great to me but was not a crowd-pleaser, and a whole lot of grilling thanks to the new charcoal appliance in our backyard. This all to say that I've been too busy doing to do much writing about it. But stay tuned! I have a few recipes to share, and will...
Tuesday, 29 June 2010
the perfect summer gratin
Imagine being home alone on a warm summer night, the kitchen all to yourself, and six glorious ounces of fresh, local chevre burning a hole in your pocket. Pour yourself a glass of wine and settle in, folks. You are not going to want to miss this recipe.My soon-to-be-husband was out for a work happy hour (or five), which meant that the kitchen was mine to do with what I pleased. Which ended up meaning I'd take my time making a dish that I knew I'd love. He's not the world's biggest fan of goat cheese, so I had put this recipe on the "make especially for myself" dockett. And wouldn't you know,...
Thursday, 17 June 2010
that's good enough.
For some folks, an afternoon of therapy involves a clinic, or maybe a shoe store. But for me, therapy is most often found in an afternoon cooking and conversing with my mother, in the kitchen of the home I grew up in. Unlike standard therapeutic practice, I find myself wanting to share with you what happened during this particular session. Mainly because it resulted not just in me becoming much more at peace with the world in general . . . but because my mom and I just might need our own cooking show. Think, Julia Child meets the Three Stooges.Thankfully, I now know that my aloof kitchen moments,...
Wednesday, 9 June 2010
hello to a kitchen
Forget that dark old kitchen with particle board shelves and a smelly old pantry. Why did I even wax nostalgic about it at all? I am in love. Head over heels. Our new kitchen is as charming as it could possibly be, and I don't even care about the dishwasher. We've even decided that the old fridge has a certain je ne sais quoi.It's that window. The glorious window. Any time of day, it lets amazing amounts of natural light in and gives the whole kitchen, every square inch from the pantry to the recycling bin, a glow. That and the paint color. The galley kitchen may be small, but it's so fresh and...
Friday, 4 June 2010
goodbye to a kitchen
We're moving tomorrow. It's one of those momentous moves; we're leaving our apartment and moving into our first house. It's been a big year for us, to say the least; plenty of life changes (not the least of which was turning vegetarian, I'll add, just to keep this on a food track) have kept us on our toes. Hence the great swaths of time between blog posts here.I really did not anticipate any feelings of nostalgia for my little windowless apartment kitchen. But this week, as I packed up a seemingly endless cupboard-full of kitchen supplies, I realized that this was the place where food came to...
Thursday, 20 May 2010
the conflict continues: why i'm still a vegetarian
A few months ago, I gave a few of you the impression that I was rethinking my vegetarian ways. I've moved on now from doing the "vegetarian thing" to calling myself a vegetarian. And being proud of it. Admittedly, I have slipped up a couple of times; tried a bite of famous tuna salad here, accidentally taken a bite of baked potato with a bacon crumble there; but for all intents and purposes, I have been a vegetarian for a solid seven months. Over the course of the last year (since ditching processed foods and eating mostly organics), the headaches I used to get frequently have completely dissipated....
Wednesday, 28 April 2010
easy weeknight healthy and delicious lasagna
Oh, hello food blog! *My mom brought by—and I do not exaggerate—5 or 6 pounds of swiss chard this weekend, not to mention our fridge is FULL of other fresh garden veggies (carrots, shallots, kale, collard greens, etc.). The chard wilts the fastest, though, so I needed to make a couple of recipes with it right away.First up? A garden quiche with farm-raised eggs, home-grown shallots, and sauteed chard. It was wonderful but I don't have a photo to prove it. Then we put together a chard-based soup. Also delicious and unbelievably healthy.But last night I threw together the easiest lasagna ever, jam-packed...
Monday, 22 March 2010
caramel popcorn
Ryan has been on a popcorn kick for a really, really long time.In the last year, though, he's discovered stovetop popcorn. The man whips up a mean batch of organic popcorn—which is infinitely healthier than the microwave stuff. I mean, it's perfect: never burned, always perfectly salty, light, airy, and full of flavor. I'm craving some right now, thank you very much. He's a bit of a purist when it comes to popcorn, though; a kosher salt and melted butter kind of guy. And that's fine, but then there's me... The experimentalist who has a soft spot for sweet-salty Kettle Corn (thanks, church camp)...
mushrooms: the other white meat
Let's count the months, shall we, since I've had anything meat-related?I have had a total of five bites of meat or fish since Thanksgiving, two of which were given to me by my grandmother (thanks for pushing that prime rib on me, Nan, it was the best I've had) and the other three, mussels in a saffron-infused white wine reduction from one of our favorite east Austin bistros. Of course, I'm excluding the organic salmon I had in NYC the night Ryan proposed.So that brings us to a veggie-versary of... four months this week. Adjusting really hasn't been that difficult; in fact, I have really enjoyed...
Tuesday, 16 March 2010
inedible.
Folks, I've been upfront with you since the beginning.I mess up. A lot. (Can we just run through a quick list of items—not meals—I have destroyed in the kitchen? Blender, countless wooden spoons, one enameled cast iron Dutch oven, several Mason jars, many glasses, one Pyrex measuring cup, two nonstick skillets, the juicer pitcher...) So today's post is less of a recipe and more of a word of encouragement. Because when you're just trying to make caramel popcorn and you wind up with this:Well, it's just necessary to take a deep breath, step back, and believe your unbelievably patient fiance when...
Thursday, 25 February 2010
pantry-purging granola bars
I'm glad to know that I'm not the only one with a fondness for anything that comes out of the Smitten Kitchen. (Beware: clicking on either of those links will begin a new obsession for you!) After an unexpected snow day in Austin, TX, I made it home from work a little early with just enough time to throw something fun together before preparing a heart- and hand-warming soup for dinner. These granola bars were just the thing. In fact, I didn't even take the time to read the entire recipe before tossing remnant trail mixes and such into a bowl. As I went along, thankfully, I had all the necessary...
Friday, 12 February 2010
my conflicted food journey
This whole "vegetarian thing" began as a challenge to myself. In fact, I call it that because I don't feel that I've earned the merit badge to call myself a full-blown vegetarian yet. It's been a year of tackling physical things I didn't think I could: an 85-mile bike ride, a sprint triathlon, and this weekend, a half-marathon with my fiance (I realize I shouldn't go touting its completion when the day has yet to arrive; consider this self-motivation). So it seemed to follow suit that this would be the year I took my diet to a new level. In the last couple of years, I've been phasing out things...
Tuesday, 19 January 2010
the year of the coupon
I could spend a paragraph or two telling you how much I've missed posting here, but... I'll save you the drama. Suffice it to say... It's been a whirlwind since the holidays and I've been turning to a lot of my staples in the kitchen. Mac and cheese, namely.I do, however, have some money-saving tips to share. If you live in the Austin area, where natural foods stores have begun running rampant, these tips are for you. But that's not to say you can't adapt them for your area; the basic tenants are to identify what you like to eat, where you can get it, and then begin the search for the best prices...
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