I’ve been away from here for too long, I’ve been distracted by little things. A new camera with a broken dial that needed to be sent back once and a bit more of a learning curve than the point-and-shoots I’m used to. An excursion to Michigan for a holiday weekend with extended family including a …
Main course
When I first saw this recipe, I was intrigued by its primary ingredient. Chickpea flour sounded so much more exotic than plain old chickpeas, which manage to make their way to my table in various forms on a regular basis. I couldn’t imagine how the knobby little garbanzos I know so well would behave as …
Lifeless in appearance, sluggish dazed spring approaches– William Carlos Williams, “Spring and All” Spring comes to Chicago in fits and starts. We swing from freezing temperatures to upward of 70-degrees and back again, sometimes within the same day. The sun teases us into thinking we barely need jackets, but the wind off the lake reminds …
Dan raised a quizzical eyebrow when he heard me say “barley salad.” It’s tough to make barley sound sexy. It tends to sneak into our diets unnoticed, flavoring our beers and bagels and scotch whiskies and malted milk balls, lingering in the background but seldom taking center stage. Basho, the seventeenth century Japanese master of …