A Photo Post
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…
Canned Tomatoes
This is a long post. I know some people dislike reading long posts, but this one discusses how to safely can tomatoes. If you will never can a tomato in your lifetime, feel free to look at the photographs. If you want to can tomatoes but find my blow-by-blow…
Easy Blueberry Cake
I know what you’re thinking. It’s broiling outside, and I’m asking you to bake? Hear me out. Easy Blueberry Cake may be baked from a standing start, so to speak. The batter is mixed in a single bowl. The butter is melted, meaning it doesn’t need to be at room…
Hot Sauce at Home (Fake Sriracha)
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…
Photo post
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….
Pesto
Pesto may have become more popular than is good for it. Marcella Hazan, Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking A few years ago my husband offered to plant some kitchen herbs for me. “What would you like?” he asked. “Basil?” I responded tentatively. Three years later, the basil plants are merrily…
Fish Cakes
Before moving to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1998, the closest I’d come to sampling a fish cake was the McDonald’s Filet-O-Fish. I say that without sarcasm. In 2000 I found work at a large university. My colleagues and I often lunched out. One of our haunts was a…
Nearly Summer Salad
Why nearly summer? Well, I don’t know about where you are, but where I am, it’s still cool. We even had rain a few days ago. More importantly, as salads go, it’s still too early for luxuries like heirloom tomatoes or baby cucumbers. Instead, nearly summer salad relies on some…
Minestrone
For the non-Italian, deciding to prepare Minestrone can feel a little intimidating. Minestrone itself–a substantial vegetable soup–isn’t difficult to make. The problem is deciding which minestrone to make. Elizabeth David, writing in Italian Cooking, gives five recipes for minestrone. In The Essentials of Italian Cooking, Marcella Hazan offers a recipe…
Photographs
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…
