Pantry Items

Apologies for the quiet Chez IK. About two weeks ago, whilst photographing for a post, I bent to retrieve my camera and dislocated my left knee, which refused to slip back into place. This caused a whopping case of bursitis. It got a little difficult to locomote. Also mildly painful. The above…

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Simple Chicken with Salsa

April 27, 2017

The ideal blog is flush with tempting meal options. Vegan, vegetarian, gluten free, low-fat, low-carb, no-carb, chosen from every cuisine under the sun–with a scattering of pomegranate seeds for good measure. Scan the options during your lunch hour, rush home, and get cooking. This is not that blog. Instead, it’s…

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In 1994, yours truly sat in a grubby apartment, roach-infested apartment, reading Laurie Colwin’s More Home Cooking. Building management suggested we purchase geckos to eat the roaches. Animals of the four-legged variety were not permitted. (Forbidden.) So a youthful version of yours truly sat in the chair she’d hauled in from the…

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Lamb Chops with Sumac

March 24, 2017

  Should your fingers do this–that is, roll inward and sometimes lock–you’ll be forced to stop whatever you’re doing, put down/let go of whatever you might be holding, and unlock the offending finger(s) with your free hand. As you might imagine, this isn’t always a realistic proposition. One cannot stop whatever…

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Cauliflower Potato Soup

March 6, 2017

Before going any further, Congratulations to Annelies Zijderveld for the IACP member of the year award and to Naomi Duguid for winning the IACP Culinary Travel Award. I have the uniquely good fortune of knowing both authors. Congratulations to all the winners. — Cauliflower is having a moment. It’s the reigning…

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If you want a recipe to fail, choose one you’ve been meaning to cook for at least a decade. Decide to cook it on a day when you aren’t home alone. A day when you must shop for ingredients before cooking. See chaos ensue. Of course you’ve chosen a recipe necessitating many…

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What interesting times we live in. When not attending marches, mopping up after barfing kitties, tending husbands with neuromuscular disease who caught cold (a volatile and potentially fatal combination), your hostess took it into her head to mess with a pound cake recipe. (Kitty and husband are fine. You were…

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Pork Belly with Potatoes

January 8, 2017

On December 18th 2015, the IK posted a recipe for pork belly with beans. By some weird coincidence, exactly one year later, on December 18th, 2016, the IK decided to make pork belly with beans again. While the foregoing makes it sound as if Mr. and Mrs. IK have eaten the dish only…

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Chicken Tikka Masala

January 1, 2017

We’ve been lagging in the post department round here. Sorry about that. The holidays, the news, all the usual reasons a blog goes dark. Never mind. It’s 2017. We’re back, bearing news of Chicken Tikka Masala. (A fair copy of a shot the IK took with her cell phone. This…

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Three-Cup Chicken

December 10, 2016

A few weeks ago the IK attended a literary event sponsored by the San Francisco Chapter of Les Dames d’Escoffier. There numerous Bay Area authors–and a few non-Bay Area folk–gathered to meet, greet, and share nibbles the authors had prepared from their cookbooks, conveniently for sale on nearby tables. Said event…

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