Dear Readers, I’ve been cooking – but I haven’t been cataloging in the way that once characterized how I approached cooking. Life has simply been more rushed lately. But the memories and the meals are with us still. For those of you who continue to find me and visit, thank you. These days, we are…
30 Minutes or Less
I blame the pesto. Yes, we are growing basil again this year, and no, I am not making pesto. Too busy. But my husband loves pesto, which you may have inferred if you read last summer’s post about making pesto. Perhaps, in a moment of longing (and delirium) about the absence of pesto, he went…
Like Stars
The Internet tells me there are more than 40,000 varieties of rice, which seems entirely plausible, a reasonable number. It might have been much higher, given that for some three billion people, rice is part of the every day. Once upon a trip to India, I remember going to a local Kolkata market in the…
Opposites Attract
I realize I haven’t posted any Bengali recipes in awhile. I’ve been cooking Bengali food – but it hasn’t been all that pretty, especially when I am rushing around and getting ready to serve dinner by a certain hour so that L can eat with us (after which, she is covered with food and must…
Spring Chickens Revisited
About a year ago, I posted an entry about a green apple chicken salad. I am partial to chicken salad, and even more partial to apples in a chicken salad. With a bit of tart and a bite of sweet, a crunchy apple offers just the right complement to the celery and cranberries which accompany…
Leftovers
After a few days of cooking, the fridge is full of this and that. I play a game of “I Spy” and reclaim Sunday’s pork roast, excavate mushrooms from the crisper drawer, and hope the red bell, which is old but not forgotten, still offers sweetness and summer crunch. But first I rummage around for…
Big Blue
I have always been fascinated by the pot roast, or more appropriately, by the idea of a pot roast. Growing up, it was a Sunday dinner staple for a number of my friends, but for me it was a marvelous and unknowable mystery. I remained captivated by the pot roast, for it was on television,…
Just Guess
It started with a birthday dinner for a vegetarian guest of honor. The weather has been topsy turvy and a slight nudge of chill and wet revived my longing for soup. I settled on a variation of vichyssoise but wanted the onion flavor to be less dominant and substituted a vegetable. Somehow, the vegetable became the…
Warming Up
I didn’t make kima for years. To be truthful, I didn’t make it at all. Ever. The thinking went . . . who needs to make some Indian variation of ground meat hash when there’s so much other stuff to cook? I ignored the kima completely but little did I realize that others were making…
Under the Chicago Sun
Every year we buy two sweet basil plants. They are easygoing herbs and ask for little. They withstand storms and seem impervious to bugs. The basil flourish, and right around this time each year, the plants delight in flowering and producing seeds, wanting to continue their enchanting circle of life. But we frown when our plants…
Remember the Taste 