Back around Christmas I fell in love with the cookbook Plenty at my favorite local beautiful-things store, Hey Jhonny. (Yes, it’s meant to be spelled that way.) I was desperate to own the beautiful, pillowy-covered, extravagantly photographed object. But I didn’t know if it was a good cookbook, and besides, I was supposed to be shopping…
Ricotta-Stuffed Fried Squash Blossoms
This is the culmination of a dream. I don’t even remember where it is that I once tasted a battered, fried zucchini blossom. But ever since, I’ve wanted to make them myself. They’re so elegant, so unexpected, even kind of crazy. I mean, we do eat flowers – broccoli, for instance, or artichokes – but…
Sweet and Tangy Plum Frozen Yogurt with Lemon
Well, friends, there’s no denying it – summer is here. And though that means great things for my garden, I find it less friendly to me personally. I hate to be hot, I hate to sweat… so, let’s face it, I’m not a huge fan of summer. But the season has its upsides, and one…
The Garden Takes Off!
Apparently, this year I’m doing something right. My garden – as you may remember, two tall raised beds in our sunny front yard – has exploded into life. Everything is flowering and starting to bear fruit. The two eggplants have beautiful purple blossoms, and the yellow squash have huge golden ones. (See Unfussy Epicure on…
Back from BlogHer Food!
I just had an adventure. I’ve been to conferences before: a couple in college, several related to my current day job. But none of them were anything like BlogHer Food. I’ll start with the people. They were almost all women, and most of them were very friendly. (I only met a couple of men, and…
Baby Lettuce Salad with Lemon and Olive Oil
When I was a kid, “salad” meant one thing to me: iceberg lettuce drenched in fluorescent orange Kraft Creamy French Dressing. Catalina, a red French and my mother’s favorite, would do in a pinch, or maybe Italian. But I was devoted to the slightly chemical tang of my orange dressing. In restaurants, before choosing between…
Chicken with Beer BBQ Sauce over Creamy Calabacitas Salad
I had to figure this dinner out in a hurry. It was 5:30. A pot of Sticky, Spicy Beer BBQ Sauce was simmering on the stove, thickening to perfect glossiness… and I had just discovered that the racks of baby back ribs in the refrigerator would need several hours to cook to tenderness. I…
Sticky, Spicy Beer BBQ Sauce with bonus recipe: Perfect Baby Back Ribs
I’m sort of a barbecue sauce fanatic. Though we skipped it this year because last year’s entry line was hours long, we love to attend the annual Fiery Foods Show, paying special attention to barbecue sauces. And that’s a lot of barbecue sauces – enough that the official name of the event is “National Fiery…
Orange-Scented Strawberry-Rhubarb Crisp
The first time I tasted rhubarb, I hated it. I can’t remember exactly why. The dish was a Rhubarb Brown Betty. I can’t remember the flavor well enough to be sure why I disliked it so much – it’s entirely possible it was just the unfamiliarity of it. Or maybe it was really badly made….
Friday Food Truck Pod and Pod Schedule
It seems like not a day passes lately without interesting news from our Albuquerque food trucks. The proprietors are trying out all kinds of new things, making their presence known at festivals (The Seasonal Palate will be at this weekend’s Celtic Festival) and workplaces (Intel), hospitals (Lovelace Women’s, UNM Cancer Center), coffee shops (Michael Thomas)…