Fall has always been my favorite season. Lately, I’ve been focusing on the particular pleasures of the autumnal shift. The apples and the sweaters and the foliage and pictures of my friends’ with their baby on her first visit to a pumpkin patch. Stuff that makes me feel good. Like new socks. My dog’s tentative …
Vegetarian
Every September, I look forward to the baskets of fragrant grape varietals that Klug Farm brings to the Green City Market. Canadice, Einset, Interlaken, Jupiter, and Thomcord grapes bear little resemblance to the blandly sweet red and green grapes that you find at most supermarkets. And unlike Concords, they don’t have pesky seeds. They’re complex, …
Plums are farmers markets’ harbingers of fall. They come in with the peaches and the berries and go out with the apples and the pears. When plums show up, summer heads out. This raspberry plum crisp is a sort of summer’s last hurrah. It’s comfort baking at it’s simplest and best, like a light sweater …
There’s something about baking in the morning in the summer. Something about the quiet. The gentle sunlight. The way that puttering around the kitchen gives me a sense of purposeful ease. There’s a tactile pleasure in it. And a tangible satisfaction in feeling like I’ve accomplished something so early, which lets me off the hook …
It may not be obvious from the multi-day layer cakes and precisely-scaled candy projects, but most days, I am a lazy cook. Like most people with full lives, cooking doesn’t always make it to the top of my priority list. There are plenty of days when the question “what’s for dinner?” gets answered by ordering …
This ginger syrup is a favorite for me. It makes the best ginger ale. It’s sweet and spicy and complex. I used to imagine ginger ale was one of those mysterious beverages that required a lab or a factory or complicated equipment to produce. (I used to feel the same way about tonic.) It turns …