The First Reader and I were sitting and chatting the other day, planning for a Sunday morning breakfast with friends, which we would host. He wanted to serve pork chops and French toast. Oh, I said, I’ll make up brioche for the French toast, it’s so nice for it. Which led to to us talking… Read More The Brioche Formula
This is going to be a series, as I am attempting to learn how to make this delicious and deceptively simple dish. This is my first attempt, based on doing the grits in the instantPot for speed and ease, and a creamy sauce for the shrimp which is all wrong while being oh, so right.… Read More Shrimp and Grits: First Attempt
This recipe is a variant, loosely, on the Splendid Spice Cake recipe. With… changes. For one thing, I reduced the overall sugar just a touch. And I took the liqud back a bit, to allow for the addition of carrots. I customized the spice blend to favor carrot’s innate flavors, which included the addition of… Read More Carrot Cake
The First Reader loves coconut cream pies, and over the years I’ve blogged the recipe I usually make for him, which calls for fortifying a boxed cook-and-serve pudding. It’s an easy way to do it, but a few years ago it started to be hard to find the pudding mixes. I would buy half a… Read More Coconut Cream Pie
Food is love. When we moved to Texas a couple of years ago now, part of the motivation was coming into a community of friends that felt like family and were close enough to sit down and eat with from time to time. The group of folks who would become known as the North Texas… Read More Saturday Supper
One of the many things I like to do is pamper my First Reader. When we had an unexpected morning, just the two of us, and time to do things, I asked him what he’d like for breakfast. Waffles, pancakes, biscuits? I offered. Coffee cake? Oh, yes! His eyes lit up. What about the coffee… Read More Spice Coffee Cake
Sometimes, I use the blog as a readily searchable recipe card catalog. Which is why you’ll get posts like this, where I note down what I had scribbled in my kitchen lab notebook. Why don’t I just use the notebook? Well, firstly I’ve lost said notebook(s) over the years. Second, you can’t spill on the… Read More Virtual Recipe Box: Tabbouleh
It’s going to be a busy day. I have a lot scheduled, from a visit to the Farmer’s Market to recording a podcast episode, to a business meeting down in the city, to supper with friends to round it all off tonight. And then again tomorrow I’ll be experimenting with food again… The experimentation isn’t… Read More Three Moms of the Apocalypse
I’m a child of the North. I’ve never walked through an orchard of orange trees, with their heady perfume, but I’ve read about it. Perhaps some day. I do know that it is nothing like the same sort of stroll through a blooming apple orchard. Apple blossoms, fleeting delicate petals that begin to fall almost… Read More Orange Blossoms
Some mornings, when it’s a lazy day and the kitchen is clean, I’ll get on a creative baking kick. This was one of those mornings. I didn’t want something sweet, I wanted savory, and relatively fast to whip up, and to use up some random refrigerator odds and ends. Cheezy Breakfast Skulls 2 c baking… Read More Cheesy Breakfast Skulls
For Christmas this year, I got a little gift certificate from work, to spend at Amazon. What did I want? Well, books! I wrote about this a week or so ago, how my initial foray into selecting a few fun reads was stymied by the state of anthropology these days. I weep for it… but… Read More Christmas Books
I grew up with mincemeat. Mom made these mincemeat cookies that were amazingly delicious, but it was usually mincemeat from the jar, once a year. Great-Grandma Ella made her own mincemeat, usually using elk as the meat in it. I didn’t get G’Grandma’s recipe, sadly, but what I did inherit was her Oregon State Grange… Read More The Mincemeat Matrix