Category Archives: Food

Trip report: Sweet tooth

June 8, 2010 Kate Leave a comment

I’m in a major blogging rut, having lots of trouble writing anything up. But I have tons of photos from the trip that I always planned to share with you, so how about I just jump back in and share a few tasty experiences per post until I can bear to actually write about what I’m cooking?

Today’s offering: Sweets

In Dingle, the town in Ireland where we stayed for the first couple nights (and near where my mom’s family came from), we fell for a fantastic local ice cream shop. The staff members had clearly been told to encourage tasting, and they had lots of ideas on fun flavors to combine with each other. Our favorite lady is in the background here, behind the cutest darn cones in history.

My combo was a scoop each of sea salt and caramel. This is not surprising if you know how I feel about last year’s trendiest flavor, salted caramel. I’ve been wolfing those french fleur de sel caramels whenever I could get my mitts on them since I first tried them at 13 or so.

The same shop sold these gorgeous lollipops, which I didn’t buy:

Up in Plockton, in Scotland, at the Plockton Inn (home of the first edamame/pea salad), we had the best sticky toffee pudding I’ve ever tasted. And I’ve tasted them anywhere they are on the menu, which in the UK is everywhere.

This winter I really do need to finally start making that at home.

A block or two down the road in Plockton, the next night, we ate a lovely meal at the Plockton Shores restaurant, and finished it off with rhubarb pie. Wow, we’re hitting all my weak spots! Salted caramel, sticky toffee, rhubarb…

On the left in the photo is whipped double cream. You could have spread it on toast.

In France our sugar came mostly from breakfast pain au chocolat, nutella, jam and fruit. These little palm-sized melons came from Morocco and were forcefully chosen for me by the man in the market stand. (“No! Do not pick by smell! Choose by weight! Heavy is ripe!”)

One after-dinner exception came from a really cool bakery near the town where we were staying, about which I will write more later. In addition to a regional specialty that I’m dying to recreate, they made Parisian-style macarons, and acquitted themselves quite well.

Finally, in Dublin, we followed the strong advice of my friend Laura and visited the famed Queen of Tarts café for lunch one day. Oh yum.

We shared a sandwich and salad, plus a pot of tea, and then in a fit of gluttony each got a dessert.

Ben got a sticky and enormous chocolate cake:

And I, sucked in by a lifetime of reading English novels and salivating over desserts I’d never seen, finally got to try a slice of Victoria Sponge. In this case it was filled with strawberries and cream. It was luscious and I was glad I didn’t have to share.

I know this is kind of a mean set of photos to post, especially in the late afternoon. I know I’m going to go attempt to eat a healthy snack instead of rifling through the pantry for something sweet!

Cooking, Cooking techniques, Food, Recipes, Travel

Travel inspiration: Pea salads for spring

May 25, 2010 Kate 6 Comments

Hi! We’re back. We got back a week ago, but you know how that always goes. If you want to take a look at where we were and what we were doing, from my perspective (which means with very few pictures of me!), check out this Flickr set.

One lucky thing about this pregnancy is that it hasn’t changed my vegetable obsession, it’s just made me a bit lazier about cooking things myself. Salads, especially those that don’t rely too heavily on lettuce, make me very, very happy these days, and we ran into a brilliant combination several times on the Scotland leg of the trip: Peas, edamame, some sort of greens and a bit of cheese.

The first (and best) encounter was in the charming town of Plockton, near the Isle of Skye, which despite a tiny population is blessed with a handful of very good restaurants. At the Plockton Inn (needs redecorating but the food was excellent), we ordered the pea/edamame/asparagus salad as a starter, and then I tried to eat as much of it as I could without Ben noticing. Sadly, I’d already divided it between two plates before realizing how great it was.

Super, super simple, but incredibly tasty. The sweet English peas and earthier edamame are a great pairing.

Later, in a random pub in Edinburgh, we ordered something similar, this time with rocket (arugula) as the green, no asparagus, and with the addition of chunks of feta. This photo is truly terrible, but it was very dark and the one light was coming straight over my shoulder, making big shadows!

When we got to France, I was still thinking about those salads, so on our first night in the house we’d rented I made my own version, using little fava beans instead of edamame.

Market spoils:

We just don’t have local produce like this here yet. It was luxurious.

Ben had never prepped fava beans before. He was taken aback by the layers of steps, but was an instant pro, especially at getting the pods open in one fell swoop. He cut the prep time by well more than half.

I popped a steamer basket in a pan of boiling water so I could use the same water to blanch the favas and the peas separately. Then I used it to steam the asparagus.

Such a tiny number of favas. I ALWAYS forget that you have to buy them by the kilo to have enough.

I mixed the blanched/cooled vegetables (I shocked everything in the coldest water I could get after cooking; I didn’t have any ice!) together with a mustard vinaigrette. That was a mistake; the mustard overwhelmed the little fava beans. But it was nice with the peas and asparagus.

Quiche for me, pizza for Ben, and bread, to go with the salad.

Last night I went for it again, this time using frozen shelled edamame from Trader Joe’s, and a handful of rather elderly-looking English peas from Whole Foods (via god knows where; LOCAL VEGETABLES, PLEASE ARRIVE).

Once again, I cooked the vegetables separately (the peas need 30 seconds, max, and the frozen edamame closer to 5 minutes), then shocked them in ice water to stop the cooking.

This time I just dressed them with lemon juice and good olive oil, salt and pepper (same for the salad greens, in a different bowl):

When Ben got home, I topped the greens with the peas/beans, to which I had added a bit of marinated feta from the WF antipasto bar.

And we ate on the porch—hurray!

With a handful of cherries for dessert:

I hope Ben doesn’t get sick of this anytime soon, because I’m planning on making a million versions of it this summer. Slightly mashed and spread on bruschetta! Served with buffalo mozzarella! On top of fish!

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P.S. Vote for Renee‘s community garden grant proposal! Vote here.

Cooking, Cooking techniques, Food, Recipes

Easy peanut noodles for lazy people

May 13, 2010 Kate 1 Comment

Noodle Quest got under my skin, and one night after deciding to try Smitten Kitchen’s adapted-from-GOOP ginger dressing, I thought I’d whip up some cold peanut noodles to round out the meal. My mom used to make something similar, and I’d eat as many as I could out of the bowl before getting my hand smacked away. This comes together in less than the time it takes to cook the pasta.

Since I still haven’t found the right chinese noodles (they’re square cut, not flat), I used regular spaghetti. Worked great.

I used a combination of my beloved local Teddie brand natural peanut butter (chunky), soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, chili/garlic sauce and sesame oil. (This is not the place for a sweetened peanut butter like Skippy. Too much sugar.)

I started by thinning the peanut butter with a little warm water, and whisking it until it stopped looking repulsive and smoothed back out. (Warning: These are not attractive photos. For real.)

Added in the other ingredients and whisked some more:

Added in my cooked spaghetti (I rinsed it to de-starchify) and mixed:

The noodles suck in the sauce as they sit. They started out all nice and glossy (see above), but soon got much drier (see final photo, below). That’s fine, but instead of being overdressed, as I’d feared, they were a little under-dressed. I also will make the sauce sharper next time, since all that pasta dulls it down. I tossed in a little extra soy sauce and vinegar after I’d already mixed everything together, and drizzled with sesame oil before serving.

As for the ginger dressing…. I need to keep trying. It was really bland, even after I added extra ginger. Maybe I needed more shallot? Some garlic? Perhaps my two small carrots were still more carrot than one large? I love the idea (I am obsessed with the carrot-ginger dressing you get on those tiny side salads when you order sushi), and now I have a huge tub of miso, so why not try again?

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I am on vacation, so this post appeared today through the magic of pre-scheduling. Comment away and I’ll reply when I get home!

City Life, Food

Sofra delights

May 10, 2010 Kate 5 Comments

A couple weeks ago I had the distinct pleasure of meeting up with fellow Boston-area blogger Katy Elliott, who is chronicling her unbelievable house restoration/renovation along with many, many pretty things on her blog. We had been wanting to try Sofra, the bakery/cafe from Oleana‘s Ana Sortun.

I was basically speechless as I considered my many options. Everything sounded so amazing! I finally settled on a sesame, walnut, kale and fresh mozzarella flatbread, which was cooking on a traditional middle eastern domed oven.

Katy ordered a spinach falafel with some sort of fancy beet spread:

After lunch, Katy treated me to dessert, and I jumped on the chance to try a rhubarb pastry I’d had my eye on. It was so simple—perfectly cooked rhubarb in puff pastry, with crunchy sugar on top—and I am dying to replicate it when we’re back. I hope I haven’t missed the rhubarb season!

We also each loaded up on things to take home. For dinner that night, Ben and I had an indoor picnic of sorts, with the fluffy pitas, muhammara spread (Wiki says it’s traditionally peppers, ground walnuts, breadcrumbs, and olive oil), a little chickpea and goat cheese pizza, and a turnover filled with, supposedly, bacon and brussels sprouts. Only I’m 99.99% sure they were peas.

We still have lots of the spread left, and a few nights later when Ben wasn’t home for dinner I fried eggs and ate them as little sandwiches on the pita, with some of the muhammara. Tangy and delicious!

It’s the rhubarb pastry that I can’t stop thinking about, though. If only I’d taken a photo! Ah well. I’m currently in Clafouti Land in the midst of cherry season; let’s see if I can’t come up with something worth sharing!

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I am on vacation, so this post appeared today through the magic of pre-scheduling. Comment away and I’ll reply when I get home!

That pre schedule thing is a lie. Had to post manually from worst computer in France because wordpress bites. xoxo

City Life, Cooking, Cooking techniques, Food, Recipes

Rooftop grilling and Spontaneous Sabayon

May 6, 2010 Kate 3 Comments

Our friends Megan and Dave live in an unbelievable (if slightly crumbling) townhouse, and a couple Saturdays ago they suggested bagging on restaurant plans in favor of an impromptu dinner party to take advantage of a nice night on the deck.

A mere hour or two later, we showed up to find that they’d prepared a feast of fresh fish, salad, asparagus, potatoes… After staying on the roof until the sun set and we got too cold, we dug in downstairs.

(I am so in love with this table/dining area)

There was an incident with a cork that crumbled while we were trying to open it, eventually requiring two corkscrews, a knife and scissors to extract enough that the rest could be pushed down into the bottle. Producing a geyser effect. It started so prettily:

But…

(Note Dave’s grilling headlamp in back of the wreckage.)

The wine was apparently delicious, though. So at least it was worth the mess!

Once we had recovered a bit (and eaten our way through most of the leftover mango salsa), it was dessert time. I’d brought over blackberries, whipping cream, and a Whole Foods angel food cake, since I didn’t have enough warning to make dessert at home. The berries macerated in sugar and lemon juice while we ate, but Dave took a look at the options and decided he’d whip up a nice sabayon sauce to top things off. Impressive, right? Here’s his mom’s recipe:

Cold Sabayon Sauce
From Dave’s mom

5 egg yolks
½ cup sugar
¾ cup sweet white wine (or add extra sugar to dry white wine)
1 Tablespoon finely grated lemon zest
½ teaspoon vanilla
1 cup heavy cream, whipped to hold a soft shape

Combine egg yolks and sugar in a heatproof bowl (metal is good) that fits over a pot of simmering water. Whisk yolks and sugar until combined. Add white wine. Set over simmering water and whisk constantly until mixture thickens and coats a spoon and is too hot to leave your finger in. Remove from heat, add lemon zest and vanilla. Allow to cool or, to cool quickly, set bowl in a bowl of ice water and whisk. When mixture is cool, fold in whipped cream. Cover and chill until serving time.

And the action shots:

How gorgeous is this double boiler?

And the heavenly, heavenly result:

I have to admit, I’d never made sabayon. It was so simple! And SO GOOD. A huge step up from plain old sweetened whipped cream, and a welcome addition to an only-mediocre cake. The berries were helped a lot by the maceration, and were great with the bit of tang in the sauce.

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I am on vacation, so this post appeared today through the magic of pre-scheduling. Comment away and I’ll reply when I get home!

Cooking, Cooking techniques, Food, Recipes

Noodle Quest 2010: Entry 1

April 27, 2010 Kate 3 Comments

I am so obsessed with noodles, you guys. I always have been; my known weak spots are generally fried dough (donuts, elephant ears, churros, etc.), assorted other fried foods (clam strips, sausage-stuffed olives, duck fat fries, etc.), flat breads, and noodles. Mmmm, carbs and fat. Also garlicky kale, thank god.

A couple weeks ago I met my cousin Sara for lunch at Blue Ginger, out in Wellesley, where chef Ming Tsai has recently added a Noodle Bar to the lunch menu. I ordered the yakisoba (“Ramen Noodles and Garlic-Ginger-Tamari Sauce, served with carrots, bell peppers, onions, cabbage and scallions”), subbing in pork for chicken, and received a heavenly (spicy) bowl of chewy noodles and ridiculously flavorful minced or ground pork. I ate all the noodles and as much pork as I could shovel up with my chopsticks, but I had plenty leftover to mix with a package of ramen at home for dinner that night. (I left out the “flavor”/MSG packet and let the sauce on the pork do the work.) When Ben returned home from the trip that was allowing me to eat noodles multiple times a day without anyone knowing (until now), I decided I’d try to recreate the dish at home.

And by recreate, I mean I made noodles with pork. Flavors and vegetable content ended up being totally different. Perhaps because it was only now that I looked up the menu online and saw tamari listed as a key ingredient in the sauce. This will be an ongoing quest, unless Chef Ming decides he wants to share his recipe. I did meet him briefly at the restaurant, where he was styling food for a photo shoot, but I failed to beg for the recipe. He was super nice, though.

I patched together a sauce with pretty much everything in the fridge, plus a crazily hot black bean/chili sauce I grabbed at Whole Foods. I kept adding splashes of this and that, so I have no proportions or measurements, but I used hoisin (fatal mistake), soy, rice wine vinegar, the black bean/chili stuff, sesame oil, and maybe some of the chili-garlic sauce I keep around. Eh.

I chopped up spring onions and napa cabbage, minced garlic and grated ginger.

Then I cooked about a pound of ground pork in the wok, with half of the garlic and ginger. At the end I poured in some of the sauce and cooked it off to coat the pork.

Set that aside, then stir-fried the onions with the rest of the garlic/ginger.

And then the cabbage.

Once the cabbage was wilting, I added in the rest of the sauce and got it simmering.

And then the unruly mass of the cooked noodles entered the scene.

OMG. I really need to get a source for the delicious square chinese noodles my mom always used. The ramen were SO hard to deal with, all curly and tangled together. I adjusted the flavoring with more soy at that point, because the hoisin had made everything too sweet.

The final result was tasty, but it didn’t hold a candle to the Blue Ginger dish. I will track down the right noodles and some tamari and give it another go when we’re back from Europe.

Does anyone have a noodle dish they swear by? I have a good-looking recipe from my mom to try out, but I welcome all suggestions.

Family, Food, Recipes

Aunt Kay’s Sugar and Spice cookies

April 22, 2010 Kate 8 Comments

This is a special one, guys. Two years ago Ben and I went to visit my wonderful great-aunt Kay, my maternal grandmother’s sister. She was 91 or so, and I was there to talk genealogy and take on the role of family historian. We spent a few hours going through photos and family trees, and when we first arrived she dashed into the kitchen and emerged bearing an enormous tray with a complete tea service and a platter of fresh cookies. I’ve never seen Ben move so fast in his life; he was over there and carrying the tray in about a second and a half. But I’ll never forget the image of her, so tiny, coming out of the kitchen with that huge heavy tray as if she weren’t rapidly approaching the century mark.

She had baked the cookies that morning, and with one whiff I knew they were the same sugar & spice cookies I grew up eating. I had recently asked my mom for the recipe but she couldn’t find it, so I asked Aunt Kay to let me copy it down.

Me with Aunt Kay (one of the many Katherines to precede me in the family tree) at that last visit:

Though she’d been in wonderful health, Aunt Kay died unexpectedly last year at 92, and her husband of 65+ years, George, died this winter. A month or so ago I got two big boxes in the mail from one of my mom’s sisters, with my name written on the side in pencil, in Aunt Kay’s writing. She had put aside all the miscellaneous family history stuff for me—piles of photos and a crazy assortment of documents, including the bill of sale from my great-grandfather’s purchase of his shoe store. Sorting everything out is one of my urgent to-do items before the baby arrives.

After all this time, I still hadn’t made the cookies. And for some reason I’d mentioned them to Ben, who, as we’ve established, is the baker in these parts, and while I was making dinner the other night he whipped up the batter.

Recipe first:

Sugar & Spice Cookies
My Mom says this was a recipe her mother made all the time. She emailed me: “One time a neighbor who raised eggs asked Mom for a recipe for customers and they used that one, so it’s kind of famous.” My aunt says it’s a Deerfield (Old Deerfield, MA, where they grew up) recipe, in general. Either way, it’s easy and delicious; you will not believe how good these smell.

3/4 cup shortening (we used butter)
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1/4 cup molasses
2 cups flour, sifted
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon ground cloves
3/4 teaspoon ground ginger

Preheat oven to 350.

Combine wet ingredients (cream the butter and sugar together, then add egg and molasses).

Combine the dry ingredients and then mix into the wet batter.

This is a very sticky, stiff dough.

According to Aunt Kay: “Drop by teaspoons on a cookie sheet. Flatten with a fork.” I took over from Ben at this point, and followed what I thought I remembered of my mom’s method, rolling the cookies into balls and dipping them in sugar before pressing down with the fork, or not.

Basically, I knew my mom’s didn’t have fork ridges. Once I asked her about it, I learned that she pressed them down with a buttered, sugared glass. Ah-ha! Ridges are for peanut butter cookies in my family. I tried a few ways, and used both granulated and sparkling sugar to see which was better.

Bake 10-12 minutes. DO NOT OVERCOOK, says Aunt Kay. The cookies are very soft when they first come out, but they firm up, and you want crisp edges and chewy insides.

Granulated sugar, pressed down with fork:

Sparkling sugar, no pressing down:

Side by side:

I preferred the pressed-down ones; the thicker ones got a little overcooked on the edges before the middles set. Ben likes those better, though! So compatible.

One more photo, for the road. This is my grandparents’ wartime wedding. My mom’s parents, Tom (who I never met) and Meg, are on the left. Aunt Kay is second from the right, with my grandfather’s brother.

In the boxes I got in the mail were two letters written by my grandmother to Aunt Kay right before she got married. My grandfather wrote snotty comments in the margin in pencil. They’re a hoot; I need to transcribe (and scan) them some day.

Late dinner tonight. Time for a cookie or two…

Cooking, Cooking techniques, Farm Box, Food

Spinach, tomato and bacon sauté with poached eggs

April 6, 2010 Kate 5 Comments

Sometimes all I really want is a giant bowl of greens. Garlicky kale is my favorite, or maybe chard, but spinach will do, too. (Not the baby stuff, that goes mushy too fast. Save it for salads.) But this dinner was really inspired by the divine confluence of the arrival of a care package from my mom, containing a pair of “Poach Pods,” and the simultaneous arrival of an early egg share from the farm. Fresh gorgeous eggs! I silicone helmet that is supposed to make poaching eggs foolproof! Clearly I needed to find something to top with poached eggs.

Spinach. Wilted spinach salad with bacon dressing. Maybe some cherry tomatoes. Toast. This was an easy plan! Of course, I ended up making more of a sauté than a wilted spinach salad, but who cares? We were happy.

Once I had cooked the bacon and softened the red onion, I added in red wine vinegar, a pinch of brown sugar, and a forkful of dijon mustard, and stirred it together with the rendered bacon fat to make a dressing/sauce.

I threw in the tomatoes, which I’d quartered, and cooked them a little bit. (This was a mistake; should have added them at the same time as the spinach.) Then in went half of the very vigorous and enthusiastic spinach. Once there was room, I added the other half.

I cooked that on low heat until it was wilted.

Meanwhile, the Poach Pods!! Wonderful for adorning grapefruits and salt cellars; also great for poaching eggs!

And let’s discuss those eggs. Oh my GOD. I have missed the farm eggs so much over the winter. No matter what fancy organic natural free range heaven-sent eggs I bought from Whole Foods, the yolks were pale and the whites were runny after six months of eggs from the farm. But back to the pods. You oil them (to prevent the eggs “sticking like glue,” according to my mom), break an egg in each, and then set them afloat in an inch and a half of simmering water. Cover the pan, wait four to six minutes, and voila! Poached eggs!

I had a surprise when I cracked open the two huge eggs I’d chosen from the carton: they BOTH had double yolks!

Off to sea:

Finished, if slightly overcooked (my fault, I panicked because of the double yolks):

You scoop the eggs out with a spoon, and they plop onto whatever you’re serving them with in perfect little domes.

The eggs were delicious, despite not being quite runny. Light and creamy and fluffy. Ben claims he hates eggs, but the farm ones don’t seem to count. They “don’t taste eggy,” he says. He’s right, they taste like heaven. I have used 8 of the dozen since Thursday, pacing myself AND going out of town for the weekend. Just look at the color of those yolks and tell me you aren’t dying to get your hands on some!

Cooking, Food, Life in the Big Woods, Travel

Don’t forget meatloaf!

April 2, 2010 Kate 4 Comments

I know, it’s going to be 70 degrees this weekend, and all you want to eat are salads. I’m just going to put this out there: Consider making a meatloaf for the leftovers alone. Meatloaf is America’s pâté! Cold meatloaf makes one of the world’s best sandwiches for your celebratory Spring picnic.

I use my mother-in-law’s recipe, which she cooks in a pyrex instead of a loaf pan. It makes all the difference in the world. Recipe is here.

We ate it for dinner on one of this week’s final disgusting sopping wet days, when warm food felt just right. Roasted broccoli and mashed rutabaga (yum!!) on the side:

I smugly ate sandwiches for the remainder of the week. The last piece awaits today, but since Ben has the day off of work I might have to fight him for it.

Enjoy the gorgeous weekend if you’re out here on the East Coast! I think we earned it, after all this awful rain. And last time there was that crazy 70-degree Saturday, Ben and I drove up to Dixville Notch, in Northern NH, and went snowshoeing. Oops.

There were some rough bits towards the bottom:

But for the most part, plenty of only-slightly-squishy snow:

I was obsessed with this gorgeous shelf fungi; look at those soft shades of mink brown! (Grace, avert your eyes for two pictures.)

We were told to take a route that would take us past this crazy ice “sculpture,” formed by water spraying out of a pipe punched full of holes, all winter long.

I hope those are the last pictures I post of snow until next January. From my mouth to God’s ears.

Food, General

Food world stargazing/hero worship

March 29, 2010 Kate 3 Comments

Last week we went to a panel at BU called “Food and Memory: Biography, Autobiography, and Film,” featuring an unbelievable panel made up of Jacques Pépin, Judith Jones, and Alex Prud’homme, with Corby Kummer moderating. It was basically an “I knew the real woman” conversation about Julia Child, followed by a showing of “Julie and Julia.”

One of my biggest regrets (an indication that I’m pretty lucky, I guess) is that I didn’t get to attend an event at BU while I was a student there, in which Jacques and Julia did a demonstration together. I found out about it too late to get a ticket, saaaaadness. I wasn’t about to miss this one! The event, I’m sorry to say, was not particularly well-run (as a BU alum I have to be clear and point out that it seemed to be organized through the continuing ed program, not the college itself, which tends to run everything with military precision), but the panel! I mean, how many chances do you get to see Judith Jones and Jacques Pépin in the flesh? And Alex Prud’homme was delightful, full of insights into Julia-as-a-person. The talk was full of fun nuggets about working with Julia and the delicate balance Meryl Streep achieved in terms of capturing her drive and toughness in addition to the showy hamminess that everyone saw on her tv shows. I got a chance to speak with all three afterward, at length with Mr. Prud’homme, and all were lovely.

Fellow Boston-area food blogger Adrienne Bruno was able to join me and Ben at the last minute, canceling dinner plans to do so, and it was great to meet in person. She was also way better positioned for photo-taking during the panel; all of my shots are mostly made up of the large head of the woman in front of me. So thank you to Adrienne for the photos!

Adrienne also took a picture of me looking a little crazed (agh!) with Jacques Pépin. I was thrilled to buy a hardcover copy of The Apprentice (have you read it? READ IT!) and get him to sign it. One of my favorite food-memoirs ever, which is saying a lot.

I did find it hilarious that at an event like this, talking about Julia for an hour+ and then watching her eat her way through France, the “reception” consisted of pretzels, popcorn and Julia’s favorite cocktail snack, goldfish crackers. I made my dinner out of about three bowls of goldfish crackers and a Jamba Juice smoothie from the food court downstairs. Further hilarity was provided by the mostly extremely, um, mature crowd, which arrived early and was enraged not to be allowed in to claim seats right away. I really though there was going to be a slow-motion cane fight by the time we finally went into the giant auditorium. The old folks didn’t stick around for the movie, by the way.

Kate Flaim

Category Archives: Food

Trip report: Sweet tooth

Travel inspiration: Pea salads for spring

Easy peanut noodles for lazy people

Sofra delights

Rooftop grilling and Spontaneous Sabayon

Noodle Quest 2010: Entry 1

Aunt Kay’s Sugar and Spice cookies

Spinach, tomato and bacon sauté with poached eggs

Don’t forget meatloaf!

Food world stargazing/hero worship

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