I was late to the pickle game. It wasn’t until my late twenties that I discovered the charms of these vinegary briny nuggets. Even now, I go for long stretches without eating anything pickled, and to be honest, classic dill pickles are fine, but they don’t do much for me. Dan, on the other hand, …
It is apple season again. Time for pie and cider and eating out of hand. Time for wondering where these variously charming and exotic names of these heirlooms and hybrids came from: cox orange pippin, jonafree, fameuse, sunrise. I think of apples as a comfort fruit. I like them prepared simply. A bit of sugar, …
I love peaches. The summer after I graduated from college, I worked at a farmers market fruit stand, and after crawling out of bed bleary-eyed at 5:00 am on Saturday mornings and taking the bus up to a parking lot where I’d unload a truck and set up tables and a tent and load little …
September is back. And I find, still, that I miss school. I miss the stuff of it. It’s been too many years since I’ve bought school supplies. No crisp clean notebooks, no colored pencils, no folders, no protractors, no scientific calculators. No Trapper Keepers. There is hardly any Velcro in my life. I miss the …
There’s something about this meal that is just so honest. It isn’t flashy. Or even particularly pretty. It is eggplant, slumped and simmered. Simple. Weeknights beg for meals like this. For things you can set on the stove while you relax and open a bottle of not-too-expensive red wine while you pad around the apartment …
The market has been full of beautiful peppers. The usual bell peppers in red, orange, yellow and green, jalapeños, Hungarian wax, Trinidadian perfume, poblanos, and fiery habañeros. They are bright and inviting, but to be honest, I hardly know what to do with most of them. Oh, I use bell peppers in all sorts of …