A few years ago I came across an Alton Brown diatribe against one-use kitchen gadgets (or "unitaskers," I think he calls them) and thought it would be a good rule not to buy them for our New York kitchen. This more or less worked (mostly thanks to B2 putting his foot down on random Amazon purchases and the fact that we just had no room, lest we ...
Occasion
custardy crème fraîche apple pie
What a strange, hard week this has been. It feels like it has been hard in every sense of the word -- difficult, unyielding. I hope everyone is okay. This is the first of a number of recipes I've had saved up for these first few baby-filled months, and, thankfully, it is so very easy. I think "easy" was going to be my mantra in the kitchen for ...
curry puffs
This week we've been reveling in finally getting around to all the things that had fallen by the wayside in the last month or so. B2 led the charge on some direly needed spring cleaning, from finally unpacking our bags from LA right down to dusting everything in sight and wiping down the ceiling fan (which I would never have remembered to do?!), ...
cheesy garlic pull-apart bread
We've had adventures this week! Last Friday, I braved the pre-blizzard craziness at the supermarket to buy the only things I thought we needed for a snow day -- (a) pork and (b) bok choy for (c) lion's head meatballs. And maybe also some seltzer. While the person ahead of me lugged gallons of water out of the store and the person behind me ...
fig jam & goat cheese thumbprint cookies
We're in Hawaii! I had a filing the night before that kept me in the office about a million hours later than I expected, we packed half the things we meant to pack and none of our laundry, but we made it on the plane (I think I set a new record for the most hours I've or anyone has ever slept on a single flight) and now I'm sitting at B2's family's ...
miso-glazed scallops
It's my dad's birthday today! My brother and I are patting each other on the back because we enrolled him in a Beer of the Month club for his birthday this year and saved ourselves him from getting something like socks or his fourth Roger Federer cap. His two great loves are beer and tennis (well, and Chinese food), so part of me is wondering how ...
peppermint mochi
Oh man, it's been not-enough-hours-in-the-day days around here lately. Most of the time it is safe to ignore me when I say that because I spend about half my waking hours huffing to B2 about the "million things I have to do" and then the other half of those hours on the couch doing zero of those things until it is too late to do them, but for ...
sticky date cinnamon rolls
Hi friends! How was your Thanksgiving? We spent ours with my parents and my brother last week, in a couple of slow, wonderful days at home. It was pretty exciting -- we sat around and told the same stories for the eighty-seventh time each, I woke up way earlier than you'd ever usually find me so that I could have sleepy coffees with my dad, my sole ...
thanksgiving leftovers “red beans” & coconut rice
I'm boring when it comes to leftovers. (Strategy: Remove from refrigerator and eat. Alternatively, freeze, forget about, then find three months later and still eat.) My mom, on the other hand, makes magic with them -- I can't remember a single time that she tossed out leftovers in our kitchen, or a time that we didn't ask for the rest of our dinner ...
potato, garlic, & leek soup
Every once in a blue moon, usually when we're just about to fall asleep, B2 likes to come up with ideas for things I should cook next. I use "ideas" loosely, because it's mostly a sleepy, intentionally goofy dialogue that consists of "what about ..." followed by a long pause and things like "... homemade hot pockets!" (to be fair, that would be ...