If you were paying close attention, you would recall how I declared a set of things I wanted to learn hot to cook. The Learn-How List! Today I kicked off with one of the hardest. A cooking challenge that has eluded me for some years now, and whose rewards are potentially legion. Crumpets. I love [...]
Tagged adventures in cooking, The Learn-How ListYou might not have noticed, but it recently became a new year. That means we observe the fact that, since 1 January 2011, the planet has done approximately one loop around the sun. It also means bloggers whip themselves into a foam of introspection, self-reflection and planning, usually expressed through lists such as “Top 10 [...]
Tagged adventures in cooking, The Learn-How ListFood bloggers, listen up. The following must stop immediately: 1. Referring to food as naughty, sinful, etc. This isn’t the Dark Ages: I think we can stop tying values of good and evil to the freaking bread basket. These value judgements are not useful. Fer Christ’s sake — no, scratch that: for the sake of [...]
Tagged banging on, foodIn my house there’s a big red pot and that big red pot gets more big red love than anything else in the kitchen. Okay, maybe not more. The wok and the enormous mixing bowl probably are equal contenders. But I love that dern pot. Originally bought for the purposes of making no-knead bread (you [...]
Tagged adventures in cooking, awesome“Get off, Napoleon! Make yourself a dang quesadilla!” And so the legend was born. Inspired by Napoleon Dynamite, a friend of the awesome ilk invented the Dang Quesadilla. Take yourself some tortillas — homemade unless you’re a lazyboneroo, and I’ll get to that in a sec — and spread half with chopped banana and a [...]
Tagged adventures in cooking, awesomeIt was a close thing. I mean, I thought I would easily escape success when I decided to make crème brûleé with soy milk. C’mon, doesn’t that sound like disaster? But after suffering through the success of my soy-based clafoutis and the soy crème caramel – both terrible, terrible victories that left all tasters stricken with [...]
Tagged adventures in cookingA big, freshly-washed salad of diverse junk, drizzled with a tangy vinaigrette of curiosity and resting on a bed of soggy disappointment croutons. That’s what the food blogging corner of the internet is. I love food. So I love reading about food, food blogs, forums, etc. etc. Awesome places to yammer about yeast, waffle over [...]
Tagged banging on, foodCrutching around at home is not as fun as it sounds. Oh sure, I can read, write, knit, email, chat, play the clarinet, sit on the back porch….okay, there are some pluses. Turns out I have a huge perverse streak that fixates on what I can’t do — or, worse, what I could do but [...]
Tagged adventures in cooking, banging onFirsts! I did some things for the first time. Neither is about sex or drugs, but keep reading anyway. Go on. Today I made biscotti! Never done that before. Today I also built a garden bed! Also never done that before, and, while satisfying, it was slightly less interesting than the biscotti. Although both lacked [...]
Tagged baking, banging onThe funny thing about pie is that it is never quite what I anticipate. It’s never quite as robust, never really a hand-held affair. In movies and such, people pick up fat wedges, take a bite and it doesn’t spill out the sides and all over their clothes. I don’t think I have ever had [...]
Tagged awesome, baking