morsels & sauces

In this  Cook Your Books  series, I had chosen 15 books to read in 2018 based on somewhat arbitrarily chosen categories; I failed. I failed not to read (I read a ton), but I failed to blog.  So I reignited the quest in 2019. My theory (bogus it might turn out to be) is that all 15 of these books will somehow connect to food.  And I plan to write about that food.   It turns out that these entries are a sort of long-form blog-post. So settle in.  This  first for 2019  installment is  a novel about anxiety. About a year ago, I sat around the dinner table with part of my family and I asked for four recommendations for book categories, and this (a book about anxiety) was one of them. And I have to tell you, outside of non-fiction, this was a tough one. A lot of fiction may include anxious characters, but not many where the anxiety rides front and center, but John Green's young adult novel, Turtles all the Way Down , does just tha...

Life has been complicated as of late.  From switching jobs again to moving homes, from having our new home burglarized (man, oh man!) to a quick visit back to Illinois, my personal world has been somewhat hectic. (The burglary was scary, but everyone's okay, including the cats. And we're still in the annoyance of figuring out insurance. No one was home and the damage was, all things considered, minimal.)  I could say something pat that this is an uncomplicated dish in response to a complicated world, but I think this dish is a little more nuanced than that as were the experiences of the past three months. But one still needs good food even when trying to figure out insurance itemizations. From Tara Brady's  Seven Spoons , these baked eggs  have some complicated spice mixtures. It is similar to   shakshuka , and I can get behind anything that pairs eggs, tomatoes, and spices.  When I was young, I used to make scrambled eggs with every s...

Oh, sweet lord. I have already spoken here about this little week-long project I have taken on with  Food52 .  You see,  Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs, Food52's founders,  have put out a cookbook with the premise that you spend Sunday cooking and then the rest of the week eating. So that's what we did.  From Stuck Pot Rice with Creamed Kale and a Fried Egg to Lamb Shoulder Chops with Stuck Pot Rice, our dinners this week have been fabulous. See pics above and below. As one of the Sunday recipes, this Stuck Pot Rice debuts as a side dish to Lamb Blade Chops but then doubles back for at least three days of lunches with the Creamed Kale and a fried egg.  Then, if you still have leftover rice, might I recommend it in a quick stir fry? Or thrown into a pot of soup? (Clearly, I have been thinking of ways to use up turkey from Thanksgiving as well.) So, stuck pot rice. Let's get d...

Here we are, about to hurl ourselves into fall tomorrow, and I am giving you a recipe for a spring dish. What?! Can I tell you a secret?  I made this recipe about two months ago, and I am just getting around to posting it. This is what happens when you spend August traveling and getting ready for the start of school. And then you spend the opening of September launching that school year. No matter how prepared you think you are, you're not prepared.  September. Post Labor Day. Full on ready for pumpkin lattes and wool sweaters and tart apples. And it appears I was cooking with rhubarb. I was not. (But I was. Back in July (which for many places might feel a bit late, but in California, rhubarb does seem to have a long season)). I liked these little meat balls. There's not an ounce of bread in them, so if you're all up in the Paleo diet, these will do you just fine. If you're like me, however, and all up into the feeling...

What I love the most about my CSA box is the surprise every Tuesday. While Full Belly Farm sends an email newsletter on Monday announcing what they will be sending, I like to resist that siren call and to open the box to find tomatoes and grapes and basil and potatoes.  It's like my own Tuesday-afternoon version of Chopped. Recently one of my mystery ingredients was cabbage. As in more cabbage . As in this is the third time I have gotten cabbage this summer. I never knew there wold be so much cabbage in July.  While certainly this is the tail end of the season for cabbage, it is the key ingredient in all of your slaw needs this summer.  And what better way to make a slaw than one that accompanies an ahi tuna poke bowl?  Have you noticed, by the way, the recent popularity in rice bowl cooking?  They're  everywhere .  As in   everywhere .  Everywhere .  This fascination with servi...