Writing the good read
Sorrel is a lemony perennial leafy herb. It grows easily and is hard to kill. There are variagated varieties that are pretty, but are tough and don’t taste as nice as the French culinary variety. It’s worth growing, especially if you like this soup, because you can’t usually find it in large enough quantities…
I never grow enough peas or beans. Each year, I would plant a few vines of each, just enough to satisfy me as I picked them as they ripened. No peas or beans ever made it to the house. So I decided to plant more. I have three kinds of peas growing — shelling, mange-tout…
People send me free stuff. Sometimes it’s food items, like Health Warrior‘s Chia Bars, which make for a tasty, but healthful snacks, or Kate Farm’s organic, soy, gluten and dairy-free protein drinks, Komplete meal replacement shakes. They’re okay, and Darling Son liked them. But they’re something I’d drink of necessity rather than choice. Of the…
Cold weather makes me want a hot bowl of tomato soup. But sometimes I want something a little different. I saw a recipe a while back — I don’t remember in what magazine — for a tomato and artichoke soup and thought it sounded interesting. So I trotted off to the kitchen to play. I…
I love cassoulet, a French stew that traditionally includes beans, sausage, chicken or duck and pork. But the traditional variety includes ingredients I wouldn’t use in everyday cooking (like duck and other fatty cuts of meat) and can take a long time to make — days for some recipes. I saw one recipe on line…
I found this recipe a couple years ago in Cooking Light and have made it regularly ever since. I don’t always make it the same way: I’ve used parsley rather than cilantro; forgotten the cilantro; used wine to deglaze the pan rather than chicken broth; added celery; had no turmeric and used curry powder instead…
There are days when a bowl of chili or a steaming plate of spaghetti sounds nice, but the chopping involved doesn’t. Here’s a secret: the start of both a nice red sauce and a good bowl of chili are remarkably similar. You can do a whole bunch of chopping on a single day and cook…
So all these soup recipes and what to serve with it? Lately, there’s been a whole lot of press about no-knead breads. I’ve seen recipes in newspapers, in Mother Earth News, in Cook’s Illustrated (you need to sign up for a trial membership if you aren’t a subscriber to get the recipes) and even on…
We have been teased here in the great Northwest with glimpses of spring, only to be surprised by a sudden snow shower and/or lower than average temperatures. So it’s still soup season here. And there are some soups that are best in spring, when the ingredients are at their peak — think fresh pea and…
A little over a year ago, I hosted a soup swap as part of National Soup Swap Day, an event made up by a really nice Seattlite a few years ago. I wrote about it at Nerd’s Eye View and got my first national clip writing about the trend in USA Weekend. This year, though,…