Miscellaneous Items

Macaroni and Cheese–or Macaroni Cheese, if you’re a Brit–is a dish of infinite variety. A popular local restaurant menu offers Macaroni and Cheese with Enchilada Sauce, Mac n’Cheese “pizza style,” and, in perhaps the ultimate fusion dish, mac n’ cheese with Korean Short Ribs. Then there’s Nigella’s rightfully famed Mac…

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Blood Orange Ice Cream

January 21, 2024

Americans of a certain age might recall 1970’s Samsonsite luggage commercials. These advertisements featured a gorilla in an otherwise empty airport, trying and failing to destroy a Samsonite suitcase. This ad came to mind Monday, when my husband returned after a brief trip. He’d flown on the “good” airline, the…

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Tomato Soup

January 3, 2024

Of all the recipes a well-intentioned person can offer, soup is perhaps the most difficult to quantify. Laurie Colwin famously wrote about this in the essay “Soup,” found in Home Cooking. For the three people left on the planet who haven’t read Colwin, in brief, she describes soup as naturally…

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Winter Pate

December 20, 2023

You’ve made meat loaf, right? You’ve eaten cold meat loaf, yes? Then you’re halfway to being a an ass-kicking, name-taking charcutier. “Ooooh…pate, I don’t know.” Please. Campagne means “country” in French–which means even your country-ass can make it. Anthony Bourdain (who else?) Les Halles Cookbook Today’s recipe came about after…

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A Picture Post

November 20, 2023

A picture post, because I won’t have time for a recipe before Thanksgiving. Apples. Lemongrass. Helen Goh’s Take Home Chocolate Cake, from Sweet. Sunrise, as seen out the study window. Frozen bacon. Borlotti Beans.   Have a safe and happy holiday.    

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A Photo Post

September 11, 2023

A great deal of cooking has transpired recently. None of it is especially notable. Instead, it is the kind of cooking, or more accurately, baking, that occurs when people know you bake and are in need of three dozen brownies for fundraising purposes. Helen Goh’s Take Home Chocolate Cake, prepared…

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The world divides into two kinds of people: those who must have Huy Fong Sriracha Sauce with every meal, and those who think people like us are lunatics . Well, pity us Sriracha lovers, for the rooster has fled the coop. And nobody knows when the bird will return. More…

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Photo post

July 11, 2023

Hello all, It’s July 10th (now it’s the 11th) and I haven’t posted. This weighs on me. You, on the other hand, have better things to worry about. When not worrying, I visited the Berkeley Public Library. The blueberries, pictured above, were purchased for a recipe. Which did not work….

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Photographs

May 15, 2023

A photography post for mid-May. Downtown Oakland. More Downtown Oakland. Feeble attempts to mimic Hipgnosis record covers. Late by four decades. Flowers, grown by spouse. Pyrex cups, shot for a recipe that failed. Jasmine rice. See above. Wild rose season is upon us, in all its brief glory (it lasts…

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People assume every meal around here is a multicourse wonder, each dish more stunningly photogenic than the next. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, over the past few days, as markets filled with spring produce, I couldn’t think of a damned thing to cook, much less blog….

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