Beef stir-fry with leafy greens and rice sticks began as “Beef Slivers With Water Bamboo” from Fuchsia Dunlop’s  Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook. Korean rice sticks, called tteokbokki are stubby, chewy, and completely addictive. I keep mine in the freezer, where they tend to crack. This has no impact on their better qualities. I used…

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Candied Citrus Peel

January 15, 2018

Some people excel at marketing themselves. They read self-help manuals filled with buzzwords; they engage in tactical online behaviors; they practice affirmations before mirrors. Me, I’m terrible at all that. This is a long-winded way of saying I keep forgetting to tell you my photography is now available at Shutterstock.com.  You…

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Mandarin Beef Stir Fry

January 2, 2018

So, hi. It’s a new year. The holidays are behind us. However you spent the past week, we can all heave a sigh of relief: the fuss is over until next December. You’re wondering about the stir-fry. Even as we vaccuum up those pesky Evergreen needles, here I am, fussing…

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Chocolate Gingerbread

December 7, 2017

This being the holiday season, my non-Jewish spouse asked if I might bake him some Christmas cookies. Jews don’t inherit boxes of Christmassy cookie cutters from elderly relatives. This meant I had to shop for some. (The cutters, not the elderly relatives.) My tribe, we’re good at shopping. In short…

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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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Beef Rendang

November 14, 2017

Rendang daging sapi, or beef rendang, is a specialty of West Sumatra. Rendangs are dry curries, not loose affairs you pour over noodles or rice. While beef rendang begins as wet curries do, with copious amounts of coconut milk, it diverges in cooking method. Prepared in a wide, shallow pan instead of a…

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Long before David Lebovitz became David Lebovitz, he wrote a little book–literally, it’s not even 8 x11–entitled The Great Book Of Chocolate. Within The Great Book Of Chocolate resides a recipe for Cocoa Marzipan Pound Cake. Cocoa-Marzipan Pound Cake is full of ingredients that make it a resoundly unphotogenic brown:…

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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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This post was written last week, before events in Las Vegas or Tom Petty’s untimely death. Much as I’d like to add some sensitively worded writing about either event, words fail me. Thank you for reading. — Last week found me at the used bookstore, where I found the companion…

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