Kate Flaim (Girl Reporter)

It may be pleasantly cool and grey today, but the weather has finally caught up to the whole ‘It’s August” thing recently, which means I can’t bear to drink hot coffee while sweating my brains out in my tiny office. Luckily when I was in Oregon in June, my dad taught me his spiffy new [...]

Our last night in Italy I fell so much in love with the bottle from our mineral water that I actually packed it in my suitcase and brought it home with me. I also discovered that photographing clear glass is incredibly tricky. Once we got home I soaked off the small label that was on [...]

I am still sorting and uploading Italy photos, but on the off chance that anyone is going to be in Venice in the next 24 hours I thought I’d better post a quick and urgent message: Go to the Gritti Palace Hotel, sit on the veranda outside, overlooking the Grand Canal, and feel smug and [...]

We are back from Italy, and thoroughly exhausted. So many things in 8 days–next time we will start in the city and end in the country instead of alternating. My feet! A quicky recap of things we saw: Giant mountains as we wound sloooowly (and car-sickly) through the Dolomites: Our name everywhere in Ben’s Dad’s [...]

Do any of you get the Zingerman’s mail order catalog? When I was in preschool we lived in Ann Arbor while my Dad was in grad school, and my parents were big fans of the then-new Zingerman’s Deli. They now have an amazing mail order service, and my mom always ordered stuff from them as [...]

At my Whole Foods, at least, bone-in short ribs are on sale for $3.99/lb this week. That’s about $2 cheaper than usual. I picked up a few to freeze. Things I’ve made with short ribs: Beef-barley-leek soup Suzanne Goin’s braised short ribs (a few times) and Boeuf a la Niçoise from Sunday Suppers at Lucques.

Oh, brussels sprouts, I love you so. The one downside to the CSA was the fact that they didn’t grow (or had bad luck with) sprouts, broccoli and cauliflower last year, and since I was working my way through what they DID grow I never bought any, either. Ben actually accused me of withholding sprouts, [...]

I am unnaturally obsessed with vegetables, but even I know that most people don’t get too wound up about the root vegetables that locavores in northern climes are working their way through this time of year. I also think we should all give up on the word Rutabaga altogether, and follow the Euro lead in [...]

You know, if I were to write a parody of Real Simple and other magazines aimed at over-scheduled upper-middle-class suburban moms (and those of us who will no doubt be OSUMCSMs (catchy) in a few more years, heh) I would probably focus the food section on how rotisserie chickens are The Answer! To Everything! And [...]

Early in November I went out to Oregon for a short visit, to hang out with my family and help my mom with house stuff. Obviously, since what my family does is talk/think/obsess about and consume food, we….ate. The first night, Mom made pizza bianca (from the America’s Test Kitchen recipe, I think), and a [...]