Can we talk about fish sauce for a minute? It smells terrible, but it tastes delicious—so salty and funky with all of that wonderful umami flavor. When I was a vegetarian (before I slid into pescatarianism and then back to omnivorism), the only exception I made was for fish sauce. I didn’t eat anything made …
Dairy free
I have this love-hate relationship with eggplant. Almost anyone who has ever been a vegetarian has been served some sad bitter under- or over-cooked eggplant dish as the vegetarian option at a mediocre catered event. Maybe it’s a greasy, oddly chewy eggplant parmesan or part of the sad filling next to the limp and watery …
When one of your best friends from college has spent most of her life in the intervening years in various countries halfway around the globe, the bad part is that you hardly ever get to see her. The silver lining (other than the part where she pretty much gets to live her dream) is that when …
I tend to think of rhubarb as a fruit, even though, botanically, it’s a vegetable. I make the traditional crisps and crumbles and jams and pies with it. I usually toss it with sugar and cook it until it slumps into a puddle of its own juices (like in this rhubarb crumble or these strawberry …
It is officially spring. But official spring never feels like the spring that exists in my imagination. The mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful spring with green shoots and sun peaking through rain and warm breezes and new beginnings. Official spring in Chicago is something altogether different. It is one day in a series of false starts. It is …
January has been a month of getting back into the ordinary and the routine. Since we packed up our old apartment, moved into our new condo in October, travelled to both ends of the country in November, and enjoyed the usual rumble of holiday frivolity in December and the beginning of the new year, we …