Reality

Soaring fuel prices are forcing many people, myself included, to reconsider everything we were taught about “good cooking.” Especially now, when we would normally be starting to prepare stews, bone-in roasts, and soups, dishes demanding hours of slow cooking. Gourds. Official harbinger of Fall. Well, these and pumpkin-spiced coffee drinks,…

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Pretty Pictures

August 11, 2022

But sadly no recipes. Two dishes I’d hoped to post weren’t good enough to share here. Another has passed muster, but putting a post together takes days, so here are some photographs in the interim. One of the failed recipes was an attempt to update a curry recipe. Below, dried…

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“Cheap” is a relative term, of course. At a time when the cost of living is soaring, and the price of food along with it, steak isn’t featuring in many diets. While porterhouse and prime rib are off the menu for the forseeable future, flap steak, a cut resembling skirt…

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So, hi. Sorry for the long absence. It was unplanned, unwanted, and just…well…let me explain. For some time my trusty Mac hasn’t been all that trusty. As in, taking five minutes or so to boot up only to crash, the photo app not working at all. Long story short, the…

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  I doubt anyone in the blogosphere is, apart from the occasional scroll….anything new? Nope? Click. Your hostess, meanwhile, has been working hard, cooking like a crazed person, and failing repeatedly, despite her many culinary efforts. That the faulty recipes involved cabbage had nothing at all to do with matters….

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Pickled Onions

July 14, 2021

Once again your hostess would like to apologize for being such a laggardly poster. It’s not lack of interest in the blog, or in you, my readers. The truth is the same dull reason it’s always been: my health. More precisely, my back. Last week I had yet another cortisone…

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Cooking Cucumbers

March 10, 2021

So, hi. I could regale you with the horror story entitled “my latest dental extraction,” but I’ve been gone for weeks. That says it all, right? For comic relief, it rained for ten minutes on Friday night. Northern California’s entire rainy season was compressed into those ten minutes. Trees, they…

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Pictures

February 23, 2021

I had a tooth yanked, and despite antiobiotics, got sick. So, here are some photographs, because who knows when I’ll be well enough to produce a post. Baking, from a post that never happened. Fresh currants. I was all hot on giving a recipe for scones, but then realized these…

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  Just as some people marvel at flour, water, and yeast becoming bread, I never cease to be amazed at the transformation that occurs when cabbage, some sort of pork product, and fat encounter a pot, low heat, and time. This decidedly dour vegetable softens into tenderness, its fumes turn…

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Greetings from your hostess…

December 19, 2020

Apologies for the radio silence. The IK has been contending with a protracted bout of ill health. (Not covid. Just her usual problems.) While a post is readied in the background, here are a few photos for your pre-holiday entertainment. It rained last week. With any luck, it will rain…

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