morsels & sauces

Ree se's Peanut Butter Cups, people ! Or at least something like that. It's almost the fourth of July! That means time for insane dessert treats.  This one qualifies. My mother, back in Illinois, has been complaining about the overabundance of rain and out here in California, we're aching for it. I am sitting in a coffee shop in Fort Bragg with a cup of peppermint tea, the fog is burning off, I just finished reading a collection of short stories ( The Hall of Small Mammals ) that I found delightful and strange, and I am contemplating a day of cooking (from my new cookbook, Honey & Co. (certainly, I will be featuring it here soon)). This is what vacation looks like. Before coming up to Fort Bragg, though, I took some time to convert my recently made chocolate ice cream from Big Gay Ice Cream  into a total diet-busting shake, and let me tell you, it was worth it.  Sure, sure, y ou can make all of this from store-bought ingredients, which...

Last weekend, I had the wonderful opportunity to go to Portland to visit three schools and see their English programs. What a pleasure it is to see good teachers thinking about their craft and to see the intersections between programs. Even in May, the act of seeing wonderful people teach can be inspiring and I am brimming with ideas for my own teaching back here in California. The only problem on this trip was that it was 80 degrees and sunny. People, you know I could move to the Northwest for the coastal climate, and I did not sign up for Midwest summer weather in May. Apparently, as soon as I returned home to California, the Oregon weather was far more seasonable and regional--overcast and 60s. Oh, Oregon, why do you disappoint me with all your bright sun and cloudless blue skies? Upon my return, I did some cooking, in part to prepare for the next installment of the CSA box. If anything, the hardest part about the CSA box is upping our daily vegetable intake in order to e...

 Adapted from Cookbook #54: How to Cook Everything (2008, 10th Anniversary Edition) Recipe: Raw Beet Salad with Carrots and Ginger Well, look at this--a page 210 recipe.  And I get to cook with the contents of the CSA box.  If you're joining me late, page 210 was my commitment all of 2010.  I cooked every page 210 from every cookbook I own in honor of 2010 (I was hard pressed to find cookbooks with over 2000 pages in them, so I settled on 210, and even then, I had to resort to page 120 for many cookbooks).  And I vowed this year that if I acquired any new cookbooks--which I (predictably) did--I would continue the tradition of cooking page 210. So here we are with page 210 from Mark Bittman's wonderful and comprehensive cookbook, How to Cook Everything .  Mark Bittman is an amazing man.  He is not a chef, but he is a cook.  He is a journalist and a food lover, and as such, he writes a weekly column (" The Minimalist ") for the New York T...