My friend Christine asked me to come over this week to advise her on planting a vegetable and herb garden. We stomped around her backyard, talking about what would grow well where, what's fun for kids to help with and what to do about watering and choosing seeds over plants. After a long winter, it ...
On Our Bookshelf in April
Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly by Anthony Bourdain -- A hilarious account of what really goes on behind-the-scenes in restaurant kitchens by the executive chef at Les Halles in New York. How to Read a French Fry and Other Stories of Intriguing Kitchen Science by ...
Spice of Life
Walking around downtown Denver a bit early for an appointment, I saw a store I'd driven by many times: Spice Boys of the Rockies. I walked in and was immediately swept up in what many of us are missing in our cooking--creativity, excitement, love--through the exotic sweet smell. The guys who run ...
The Communal Kitchen
You know that when you are regularly cooking, your kitchen just "works" better. You have ingredients on hand to use for several dishes; last night's rice gets re-purposed into tonight's stew, extra fresh herbs find their way into a brunch, a dinner and a snack. In a similar way, when I'm regularly ...
Delicious Afternoon
It was a gorgeous, sunny March afternoon this week as 7 moms and 11 kids gathered on my friend Monica's porch to test our "Deceptively Sneaky" creations from two recent books that suggest sneaking food into kids' meals (see my last blog). The kids took breaks from running around the yard playing ...
Deceptive, but is it Delicious?
This week, by cooking from the books Deceptively Delicious and Sneaky Chef, then gathering with other friends for a Deceptively Sneaky potluck, I'm attempting to try to understand how these two books have become bestselling cookbooks of our generation, talked about, cooked from and adored by dozens ...
Friends and Tea
In Pakistan and Afghanistan, people "drink three cups of tea to do business; the first you are a stranger, the second you become a friend, and the third, you join our family." This is from the incredible book I just finished reading, Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. ...
Sisterhood
I was recently telling a new friend about the idea of Cooking With Friends and her eyes lit up. It reminded her of when she was a little girl growing up on a farm, and her mother had a circle of friends who got together once a month. They'd do whatever the host chose, sometimes snapping beans from ...
On Our Bookshelf in March
Julie and Julia: 365 days, 534 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen by Julie Powell -- Channeling one of the best chefs of our time, a young woman shows you don't need a bells-and-whistles kitchen to re-create the genius dishes of Julia Child. Garlic and Sapphires by Ruth Reichl -- Reichl, ...
Who's Cooking What Online
from A Mighty Appetite, a blog of the Washington Post February 21, 2008 Who's Cooking What Online The big wide world of the Web is in constant motion, which means you practically need running shoes to keep up with the latest greatest sites, blogs and multimedia extravaganzas. Who would have ...