Last year, before we went to Portland, I got some great food suggestions from a friend. We followed up on a lot of them – notably Voodoo Doughnut and Beast – but didn’t make it to The Farm Cafe. In my pre-visit research, however, I noticed that the cafe had received much praise for its…
Middle Eastern Mezze from the Grill, featuring Smoky Baba Ganoush
I love meals that consist of a variety of nibbles: bento boxes with their little jewel-box compartments of rice and veggies and pickles; rich and exciting dim sum served in little bamboo steamers from rolling carts; kaleidoscopic tapas spreads full of surprising flavors; and mezze, the rather less well-known Middle Eastern style of shared small-plate…
Salade Nicoise
Holy moley, look at the temperature out there! It’s been hovering near 100 for a week. Not when you want to heat up the house with cooking. It is definitely salad time. So last night I fell back on an old favorite: Salade Nicoise, a French composed salad. As with so many iconic dishes, there…
Quick Cucumber Kimchi
Without a doubt, kimchi is a love-it or hate-it food. I’m pretty fond of it. Arne is crazy for the stuff, but even he admits it’s a strange thing to love. Many foods are based on controlled spoilage – cheese and beer, for example. Like blue cheese with its veins of mold, though, traditional kimchi…
10-Minute Indian Cabbage
The other day I was throwing together a simple Indian dinner – Indian sour chickpeas (channa) with some brown and wild rice I’d cooked weeks before and stored in the freezer – and it needed one more element. One quick, simple element I could throw together in no time from what I had in the…
Chile-Lemon Roasted Brussels Sprouts
A year or so ago, Arne and I visited a very hip restaurant in Colorado Springs (or so it seemed to me, though I may not be the ultimate arbiter of coolness): Nosh. I was first attracted to it by the koi in its logo and the idea of small plates, which are my very favorite…
Easy Grilled Asparagus
Spring has sprung! It’s grilling time. Asparagus will soon be ubiquitous in stores. And that works out well, because one of my very favorite things to grill is asparagus. It’s the perfect side dish to grilled meats, fish, or tofu and, if you’re grilling already, will add almost no time to your dinner prep. I…
Stuffed Collard Leaves with Savory Pork Filling
It turns out that a name is not just a name when you’re writing a blog. My poetry group used to tell me that about poem titles too (“Kristin, you can’t just call them all ‘Untitled!’”), but I think the reasoning was different. With a food blog, you need a descriptive title so that someone…
Basque Piperade (Red Pepper and Tomato Stew) with Eggs
Arne and I traveled to Portland for Thanksgiving this year. While the family festivities were near the coast, of course we had to fly into Portland – previously covered on this blog as my favorite food city. And while we were there, naturally we had to try a couple of new restaurants. We had breakfast…
Peasant Casserole of Potatoes, Tomatoes, and Cheese
This is true peasant cooking. Which means, essentially, “What-have-I-got-in-the-fridge” cooking. It’s in the tradition of folks all over the world who rummage through their root cellars, vegetable crispers, and bread boxes to summon forth delicious, hearty, nourishing meals for their families out of what may seem like nothing. True, this isn’t a soup made from…