It’s been a hot summer in Chicago. This July and August we’ve watched the mercury climb into the nineties more days than I care to count. Too many. I’m not a hot weather kind of girl, give me seventies and a light breeze along the lake, and I’ll take eighties with a cool drink, but …
Don’t they look lovely? A little bit exotic? I know I’ve seen them before, sitting in baskets at the farmers market, pale and papery, like tiny tomatillos or ornamental lanterns. I knew they were commonly called ground cherries, and they always seemed intriguing, but somehow, until this morning I had never eaten one. I was …
I am not, usually, a low-fat baker. While I don’t exactly pour pounds of butter into things and often use whole grains and sometimes nip a tablespoon or two of fat out of a recipe, I tend to believe that a treat should remain a treat. I think that a sliver of flourless chocolate cake …
The Tuscans have a way with beans. If I came away from my year in Italy learning one thing about food, it was this. As much as I love pizza and fresh pasta and gelato, and, oh, do I love those foods, my most memorable meal on the boot shaped peninsula involved none of them. …
We are in the bleak mid-winter in Chicago, the ground crusted with snow, the wind face-bitingly, finger-numbingly cold. Apart from the rare bit of blue sky peaking out at us today, we have been living in a palette of whites and muted grays. I am getting tired of pilling scarves and hats and salt stained …
Some days I don’t want to make the effort. I really don’t. I love good food, but I’m tired, I’m hungry and I just want to order a pizza. Or stop by the freezer case in the grocery store and pick up something I can have done in fifteen minutes. Or maybe just have some …