California Bay Nut Brittle
This fall, I’ve been gathering, storing, and roasting our native bay laurel nuts. For Christmas, I decided to invent a recipe for bay nut brittle.
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Gin & Meyer Lemon Marmalade Cocktail
What to do after putting up a tree’s worth of Meyer lemon marmalade? Add some good gin, a splash of triple sec, a hint of mint.
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A Family Tradition: Blanched, Butter-Roasted Almonds With Salt
Yesterday, I made three pounds of buttery, salty roasted almonds. It’s a family thing — if a slightly complicated one. My biological dad’s mom taught my mom how to make them. My mom and dad split up when I was small, but my mom carried on the holiday tradition of making the almonds because, in…
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Curried Zucchini Apple Soup
Last week, we spent a night at the rustic West Point Inn on Mount Tamalpais. I am shaking my head that it was a first-time visit for me, considering that I grew up here and the place is pretty much in our backyard. Astonishingly, a stay costs very little — only $35 per person per…
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October Unprocessed: My Three Rules
I’ve met Andrew Wilder, the proprietor at Eating Rules and the host of the October Unprocessed challenge, only once. At last year’s BlogHer Food conference, I tried to stab him with a giant fork. We happened to be standing next to each other in the long line for a photo booth, and the three-foot long…
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F is for Fennel, Grapefruit, and Mesclun Salad
This is a somewhat labor intensive salad. Still, I should have been able to pull it together in less than an hour, not the four days it ended up taking. I got distracted — by fruit, by summer, by the opening of our county fair — which is why my June veggie challenge post is…
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E is for Eggplant Caponata
Shae is in Alaska for another week, so she asked me — Spike, the guest-blogging porcupine — to handle her monthly veggie challenge post. If you remember, she is working her way through the vegetable alphabet to see if she can get herself to like vegetables better and eat them more often. This month she…
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D is for Daikon Carrot Pickles
It’s month four of my personal veggie challenge, in which I am learning to appreciate vegetables by getting better acquainted with least one of them every month. Somehow my challenge guidelines morphed into an alphabet thing, so here’s what we’ve had so far: A is for Artichoke (Artichoke Soup) B is for Bok Choy (Soba…
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C is for Celery Citrus Salad
We are having warm spring temps here. It’s almost 80 degrees! That pleases me for many reasons, mostly having to do with the garden and a long list of dirt-digging tasks. But it’s also a perfect day to have this Celery Citrus Salad for lunch. Doesn’t it look like spring? Last week I wrote about…
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Cauliflower Pie in the Sky
Today we did airport things. Very soggy airport things . . . You know how it is. The waiting. The opportunity to spend way too much money on way too much food. Mostly bad food, at that. This time I decided to do air travel differently. I packed all of our food for the day…
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Gluten-Free Bananacot Cake
In my post on making sugar-free jam, I mentioned that I am able to easily metabolize large quantities of sugar. The same does not go for flour. I’m not gluten intolerant to the degree of many folks I know, but there’s no doubt I do better without it. There’s also this: You would see a…
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B is for Bok Choy Soba Salad
When I began my monthly veggie challenge, I didn’t plan to make it alphabetical. But as soon as Stewart brought home January’s artichoke, the idea took stubborn root. So now we have month two, brought to you by the vegetable letter B. And I get to look forward to not just one, but more than…
