Pantry Items

I am not somebody who spends her time wondering whether beets might snuggle up to pomegranates, creating a novel salad. Or tasty new ways with quinoa. Instead, I do lots of  wheelchair jenga. (Not wheelchair jenga.) Saturdays mean soccer practice. I rise early and head out to the garage, where…

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A more organized blogger would follow her pork rib curry recipe with something other than a pork belly roast. You know, somebody who is not me. A more organized blogger would also be on top of the weather report, realizing temperatures would soar into the high eighties this final week…

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Pork Rib Curry

October 18, 2017

I apologize for the quiet around here. We live about thirty miles south of Santa Rosa, California. As I write, firefighters are slowly gaining control over the fires. People are returning to their homes, or what’s left of them. Berkeley Fire Engine Six was called to help fight the fires…

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Occasionally you pick up a cookbook at random. You park it on your “to read” shelf with every intention of getting around to it. Meanwhile, various disasters transpire: dental work, feline illness, neighbor drama, spousal sickness, inept national leadership, world mayhem. Finally you open the cookbook. There, glimmering, is the…

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Bitter Melon Curry

August 27, 2017

Note: The full impact of Hurricane Harvey was reaching the news after I posted. To help those affected in Texas, from the New York Times: Donations to the Red Cross for those affected by Harvey can be made online, or text HARVEY to 90999. Donations to the Salvation Army can be made online. Catholic Charities is accepting donations online,…

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Chinese Takeout Noodles

July 27, 2017

Breezy little blog posts are increasingly impossible. This week gave us Chester Bennington’s death, the migrant tragedy in the Texas Walmart lot, Venezuela, Yemen, and Syria. Atop all this, a gibbering idiot is running amok in the White House. In this context, Chinese Takeout Noodles are beyond trivial. Then again,…

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In addition to being something of a food snob, your hostess is suffering recipe fatigue. She is heartily sick of recipes for s’mores, acai bowls, and anything involving avocado. She doesn’t want to see any more recipes using the words healthy or clean.  Surely she isn’t alone in this? It…

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This Thursday, Mr. IK is boarding a plane for Indiana, where he will participate in a large power soccer tournament. The preparations this journey have entailed would make one think he was parasailing to India. The IK has been busy buying bottles of Johnnie Walker to stash in the suitcase…

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Summer Fruit Tarts

June 7, 2017

Much as the IK would love to blame her recent internet silence on European travel or a fancy sea voyage, she’s been here all along, living her workaday if extremely annoying life. A life which has conspired, at every moment, to prevent her from posting. Rather than detail these piddling…

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From Wikipedia: Zebra is the American medical slang for arriving at an exotic medical diagnosis when a more commonplace explanation is more likely.[1] It is shorthand for the aphorism coined in the late 1940s by Dr. Theodore Woodward, professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, who instructed his medical interns: “When you hear hoofbeats, think of horses not zebras”.[2] Since horses…

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