Last weekend I visited a local farm stand. It was the first time it had been open all year, a little early thanks to an unusually warm spring. The stars of the show were unquestionably the strawberries, freshly-picked, cheerful, and two weeks ahead of schedule. But lurking at the back of the stand was one [...]
Going out and making lunch from your lawn is a wonderful feeling. Turning weeds into food—it’s so resourceful, thrifty, adventurous. It makes you feel like a hunter-gatherer, in touch with ancestral ways of life. Alas, I did not have that feeling today. I bought my dandelion greens, and I think my father would be appalled [...]
Until a few weeks ago, I had know idea there was such a thing as hummingbird cake. I was getting ready to go home to for my younger sister’s birthday. Of the two of us, she’s the more enthusiastic baker—she’s received not one but three marriage proposals thanks to her famous molasses cookies—but on your [...]
Today’s post will be a bit of a break from routine, thanks to a photo-preventing thunderstorm. Someday I will build myself a lightbox. But today, I’ll share a few things I’ve been eying this spring, mostly food-related, but with a few other things thrown into the mix. I just bought this book and have been [...]
In spite of my best efforts to plan ahead, whenever I go away I end up frantically using up edible oddments that will not last through my absence. I just get so darn excited about vegetables that I can’t seem to stand having fewer than three meals’ worth around at any given moment. This time, [...]
I’m not sure why, but there’s something about going to this particular store with this particular friend which exposes all the unexpected gaps in my culinary education. We’re standing in the bulk aisle at a natural foods store at Jean-Talon, marveling at all the different varieties of nuts. Not only are there about ten different [...]
This is the time of year when I most miss my dancers. Late April and early May are the times when Morris and Rapper dancers have the most to do, at least in the Northeastern U.S. There’s the New England Folk Festival Association’s annual gathering, an extravaganza of all imaginable kinds of folk dancing and [...]
Today I remembered the waffle iron. Oh, somewhere in the back of my mind I knew I had it. My dad is the waffle guru of our family, and very generously gave me his old waffle iron when he got a new one. I’ve no idea how old it is; it’s been a fixture of [...]
I have slowly been developing an ever-more elaborate series of rituals surrounding the end of exams each term. It gives me something to look forward to, a bit of carrot to counteract my self-imposed stick during finals. In its current incarnation, the ritual looks a little like this. 1. I emerge from my last exam [...]
