Summer

I love pie. But I have to confess, it’s never been my strong suit as a baker. My pies tend to be respectable, but… Oh. My crusts sometimes shrink during blind-baking, and when I don’t blind bake I tend to find the bottoms insufficiently crisp. My crimping skills are so-so. I theoretically understand how to …

I’m bringing you a simple one today. It’s a lemon balsamic grilled chicken. It comes from Ruth Reichl’s lovely My Kitchen Year. Which is just the sort of cookbook to turn to in a time of upheaval because it’s about her life in the wake of the abrupt shuttering of Gourmet Magazine (where she was editor) and the ways …

I’ve been thinking, lately, about the space that food occupies in our lives. There’s a food blog trope about feeding our families and friends being this generous act of nourishing and the motivating force behind many people’s drive to cook (and let’s be honest, most of these people are women). And I don’t doubt that …

This sugar snap pea and farro bowl tastes like spring. It is vibrant and earthy like a rain-washed field. Green with sugar snap peas, pops of pink from watermelon radishes, and delicate barely-tinged-green-white from the fennel. There’s crunch from the vegetables and nubbly goodness from the farro, which gives the dish a textural dynamism I …

Dan and I have been spending our evenings more often than not lately listening to jazz and sipping cocktails, sitting in the part of our apartment we lovingly call the library because of its enormous bookshelf on one wall, with our feet up and our and our eyes fixed on our respective laptops. Sometimes we …

I’m sitting here cuddled up on the couch with my dog, Inka, for the fifth day in a row (!). It seems she’s learned, after more than two years of mostly keeping a watchful eye on me from her chair (or actually, one of her chairs…), that curling up next to me is a sure …