I spent the summer between high school and college working two jobs, one as a hostess at a Chinese restaurant and the other as a waitress at a T.G.I.Friday's. Most of my time at T.G.I.Friday's was spent (1) trying to raise my voice enough in the kitchen that they could hear me when I asked for more ranch, (2) forgetting to enter orders, or (3) ...
spring
tea-soaked dates with mascarpone
Granted, my threshold for feeling accomplished has always been, shall we say, modest ("I added the perfect amount of sugar to my matcha latte today I can do anything!") but ever since I was introduced to these supremely distracting pudgy cheeks, I'm finding smaller and ...
hazelnut coffee cheesecake
For as long as I can remember, hazelnut coffee has been my dad's way to start the day. Almost every day of my childhood and every day that I'm back home now, I've come downstairs in the morning to find him sitting in our sunny breakfast nook, already up for hours, with an oversized mug of coffee in his hand and a newspaper spread out on the table, ...
garlicky spaghetti with lemon, capers & almonds
So, our freezer is officially ready to burst. I wish I could say that it's packed to the brim with healthy, ready-to-heat casseroles and nourishing breakfasts that I tucked away for the zombie days ahead, but that's only about 30% true -- maybe more like 0% true depending on how you interpret "healthy" or "nourishing" -- and the remainder is more ...
molly’s all of the alliums fried rice
I think fried rice may have been one of the first things I learned from my mother and grandmother in the kitchen. I imagine it must be like Sunday gravy in that every family has their own little way of doing things, though I don't know that ...
mentaiko spaghetti
In the last week or so, in what seems to be the norm for this time of year, B2 and I have been basking in a much-needed respite from a couple of busy months at work. Mostly this has consisted of me procrastinating all my non-urgent responsibilities by streaming the Olympics for ...
pasta alla vodka
The very good news is that we've officially moved into a place to call our own in LA (hurray!) and the accompanying not-bad news is that, because we got rid of all our furniture in our move last month, we're very slowly figuring out how to furnish it (adjusting to new and foreign concepts like What Makes Sense or What Looks Nice and not ...
whole wheat milk bread & little sliders
asparagus, spring pea, & goat cheese quiche
For the first twenty-two or so years of my life, my experience with quiches was limited solely to the miniature frozen variety -- the ones from Costco that came in boxes of half Lorraine and half Florentine (or, in my mind, half yellow and half green), most often bought for my mother's potlucks or just for late-night snacks, pale and anemic until ...
bubble tea oatmeal, hot and cold
Yep, it's true. I went and made oatmeal out of bubble tea. (Or bubble tea out of oatmeal?) I have no idea how it happened. The idea landed in my lap when I was making, not any other kind of kooky oatmeal, but the simplest one I've had in years -- on a particularly blustery day in this reluctant spring we've been having, I had a hankering for ...