Once upon a time, a person stood in a kitchen holding a tin bowl full of cauliflower florets. A beeswax-coated cloth, which such person can use instead of plastic wrap, sat stiffly on top of the pile of cauliflower like a mortarboard. The cauliflower was a bit aged, old enough to graduate from the refrigerator … More Tempura
Late one afternoon, shortly after taking a wander around my office and confronting a number of things that are either possible to eat or things that people seem to think other people might eat, if those other people are just desperate or human dumpsters, I had some thoughts. I thought: I am going … More Scallions
Of the many surprisingly wonderful things that there are, one is a dough blender, one is a cherry pitter, and one is this group of tuba and euphonium players performing “Down in the River to Pray.” I thought tubas were mostly for deflating white supremacists or expressing defeat. But they are not! They are, apparently, … More Dramatic music plays
In times of uncertainty or likely impending crisis, I often decide to cook. This makes little sense, because usually the crisis is my cooking, so cooking in a crisis is just creating a set of interpenetrating disasters. A little while ago, I was facing down a four-day period of solo parenting, the school-work-transportation-afterschool-food logistics … More The shovel option
Some chefs say that the best tool in the kitchen is your hands. I was thinking of this one evening while striving to dig out some oil-marinated ciliegine from a plastic container with my fingers, my fingers which are roughly as dexterous as a bunch of almost-ripe bananas. I had read that tongs were for … More State of the divide
Is it a Christmas miracle, a solstice miracle, a day-after-Hanukkah miracle or a five days before Kwanzaa begins miracle? No, this is just me passing along a granola recipe that was provided by Jinx Watson, who is herself a miracle. I have two notes on this recipe. ONE! I greatly dislike shredded coconut, as it … More An actual recipe
One night, I was sitting on my son’s bed, “reading” him a book about vehicles, which involved pointing at a skid steer loader and calling it a skid steer loader, and then pointing at an excavator with an orange peel grapple and announcing that it was an excavator with an orange peel grapple. My daughter … More Total Clarity and Unstinting Glamor
