I’ve been feeling ambitious in the kitchen lately. Well, not today. But I was last week. So when I made some pate (I’ll post about that later), I decided to try making some homemade crackers to go with it. I looked up several recipes, decided on a strategy, and headed into the kitchen. Ambition only…
Pennsylvania Dutch Baked Oatmeal
Yup, I’m back with another oatmeal recipe. I’m starting to wonder if I should change the name of this blog to “The Oatmeal Diaries.” But there are reasons, great reasons, for this obsession. Oats are convenient: They wait patiently in their cardboard tube (I buy them in bulk, but decant them into the familiar blue…
Michelena’s Tres Leches Cake
Until I moved to New Mexico, I had never tasted tres leches cake. And the first few times I did, I couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. The samples I had in local restaurants didn’t have much flavor – and, shockingly, they were actually kind of dry! I couldn’t figure out how they…
Chewy Cherry-Almond Granola Bars
We go through granola bars like crazy in my house. Arne eats two for breakfast on those days when we don’t have the time or organization to eat breakfast together. (Or when the cat lets me sleep in.) Plus he eats them for snacks, and we always take them when hiking and disc golfing. The…
Overnight Brown-Sugar French Toast
A couple of years ago, my friend Dianne hosted a brunch. I think it was on New Year’s Day. In any case, there was a lot of delicious food there, but what everyone kept coming back to was a big pan of gooey, decadent brown-sugar-topped French toast. Happily, our hostess declared it easy-peasy and photocopied…
Nigella’s Coconut and Cherry Banana Muffins
Perhaps my most exciting holiday present this year was The Flavor Bible, a cookbook with no recipes. It’s more of a reference guide. The book is an alphabetical list of various ingredients (bananas, cardamom) and flavor profiles or cooking styles (Spanish cuisine, grilled dishes). Under each ingredient or style is a list of flavors that…
Alta Lodge Granola
I do not care for cereal. Cereal is boring. It’s what you eat on grumpy, hurried mornings when you can’t think of or don’t have time for anything else. It’s pale brown and lumpy, and poured out of a pasteboard box. If you don’t eat it fast enough, it gets soggy in its cold milk…
Perfect Buttermilk Pancakes
In Berkeley, California, there is a diner called Bette’s. Bette’s Oceanview Diner, in fact, though it is nowhere near the ocean. Perhaps there is a story there, though it’s not on the “All About Bette’s” page of their website. In any case, Bette’s is beloved, and not just by me. It’s a classic place –…
Elsie’s Gingerbread
This is the first gingerbread I ever made, and still the best I’ve had. It’s rich and spicy and soft and moist, with the unusual touch of a bit of streusel on top (which takes no extra effort, as it’s just a bit of the dry ingredients before the wet are added). Gingerbread is one…
Forging ahead with flatbread
I love flatbread. Naan, pita (soft fresh ones, not those kangaroo breads at the grocery store), parathas, roti… you name it. A few weeks ago I had dinner with friends at a new restaurant in town, Lucia. The entrees were very nice, but the appetizers eclipsed them. And the thing that really stuck in my…