Chicken Broth
One of rare disease’s more entertaining aspects is its unpredictability. There’s the gradual dawning that your body works differently than everyone else’s, and that differently doesn’t signify you’re the next Wayne Gretzky or Nadia Comaneci. Next comes the quest for diagnosis. Once you have a name for your special weirdness,…
Italian Meat Loaf
What makes this meat loaf Italian? I honestly haven’t a clue. But the recipe, which comes from Tamasin Day-Lewis’s Supper For A Song, is one I’ve made countless times. By its nature variable, this is a kitchen-sink meatloaf: in the recipe headnote, Day-Lewis says one should “inspect your fridge for…
Paula Wolfert’s Autumn Squash Soup
You’d think we Californians would have little call for soup. Enter fog. When not suffering unseasonable ninety-degree heat, Northern California often shelters beneath thick layers of the stuff. Said fog is often accompanied by a uniquely bone-chilling damp. While not precisely cold, neither is it warm. And indeed, as the…
Duck Confit
Given the hugely happy response to cheese biscuits (thank you!), it’s tempting to skip writing about duck. I’m not sure why duck makes people nervous, but it does. Tell people you make confit at home and get funny looks. Here is your intrepid author, reflected in her kitchen window at 7am this…
Chicken Without A Recipe
People with chronic health problems spend a lot of time at doctor’s offices. There is a misconception that we of the poor health enjoy this. We do not. Countless hours are forever lost at doctor’s offices, tumbled deep into a pit called “waiting.” In the case of incurable disease, one rarely emerges from…
Back to School Chicken Wings
In the early nineties, a friend and I cultivated a yearly back-to-college ritual involving a local brewery serving platters of fiery wings accompanied by a sour-cream dip. We slathered the chicken in dipping sauce before sucking each wing dry, washing everything down with rivers of house I.P.A. Thus fortified,…