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,...

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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,...

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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...

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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...

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