I Tweeted that the search field almost auto-filled when I Googled “Covid symptoms negative test,” but it was only half a joke. Both of us were ailing when we were due to host a dinner party but decided to proceed. My subconscious must have been thinking “capsaicins boost immunity,” though, because I built the menu […]
I always follow recipes to the letter the first time I make them, even if I foresee terrible trouble, just so I know whom to blame if they don’t work. (I almost never read comments, but I know the worst start with “I substituted/tweaked.” That failure is you.) So I ordered black walnuts off Amazon […]
Twitter is not dead yet since I still get good responses every time I Tweet about how community cookbooks are often the best cookbooks. (Most recently, I was moved to type after coming back from a neighbor’s estate giveaway with a clutch of ’em but no other “keepsakes” and noting: Throw out all your shit. […]
My consort always says you could set the atomic clock by my remorse, and he’s definitely right about my cookie regret. It’s coming up on three years that I have been baking nearly every week for a neighborhood church’s free-lunch program, and I really wish I had kept track of all I’ve done. I use […]
I was borderline anorectic when I lived in Philadelphia in the late Seventies, so I’m not sure I ever had these amazements when they were in the cookie jar at the cash register at the Commissary on Sansom Street. But this is the second time I’ve made them from Steve Poses’s singular cookbook, and I’m […]
I have camera-shot almost everything I have cooked (and most of what we’ve eaten) over the last two years, but I keep forgetting to document what we pack up on Friday that I’ve baked on Thursday for the church’s lunch program on Saturday. I know there’s a story in the variety, and the tweaks to […]
Feliz* did us a real favor by pulling the Joy of Cooking Bob brought to the consortium out of the kitchen bookcase to play with the red ribbon bookmarks last night. I actually cracked the thing open today and found no end of enticing high-yield/low-effort recipes for cookies (baked in a jellyroll pan, cut into […]
I’m still finding a new recipe every damn Thursday to bake for the church, which is pretty impressive given how many cookbooks offer only four (chocolate chip, peanut butter, oatmeal, ginger — over and over and over). My shelves of Junior League-type collections consistently yield winners, like this super-easy and quite spicy high-yield one. It’s […]
Halfway through making a third side to our perfect striped bass* I Tweeted that I was worried I had violated Rule One of dealing with a notoriously tricky vegetable: Putting all the okra in one recipe. But it turned out to be a great one, modified from an amazing vintage cookbook a friend insisted I […]
Eventually I may have to take up my friend/neighbor’s idea of writing the plagiarist’s cookiebook. Just back from the most exhilarating/restorative getaway to Phila, our first trip since xmas 2019, also to Phila, I had to come up with 48 packets for St. Michael’s and pulled one more dusty cookbook off the shelf in my […]
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