being not doing

I have this recipe that I found on the internet last year, for chicken with bok choy. I pull it out when I get bunches of pac choi from our farm share, which is a couple of times a season. It’s a tasty recipe, in a salty soy sauce kind of way, but […]

After searching high and low, I was able to find orzo at Whole Foods. Good to know for the future. For folks like me for whom cream is just a big no-no, orzo is the gift that allows us to have something resembling risotto. Which is what the Butternut Sage Orzo dish […]

On Monday, Election Eve, I had unwittingly double-booked myself. In addition to committing to help get out the vote in Virginia, I was meant to be contributing a dessert to a lunchtime program with a Russian1 theme. My assigned baked good was Medivnyk, Ukrainian spiced honey cake, which I suspect — and the […]

For the first time this year I attended my alma mater’s annual local potluck dinner. I signed up to bring a dessert, as I’m always glad to have an opportunity to make a pie or tart when there are others available to eat most of it! This time I chose to make an […]

Applesauce!
In order to preserve for future use the 30 pounds of apples acquired on our first apple-picking expedition, I chose to make applesauce. As with the apple pie filling, I used a mix of Stayman, Braeburn, and Empire. I used a recipe that called for 1.5 pounds of apples, 1 tbsp. of lemon […]

Apples!
All the best ones are out of reach.
Last weekend we drove up to Larriland Farm in Howard County to pick apples. I remember picking apples as a kid, but it wasn’t something we did every year. What I don’t remember is what we did with all the apples we brought home! We […]

For the first time, this week, I made active changes in what I was buying at the store as a concession to inflation. I had been conserving and trimming luxuries for a while, but yesterday marked the first time I downgraded in the selections I was making. It’s not that we haven’t been […]

The whole kit and kaboodle, pre-baking.
I think I’ve mentioned that I’m dealing with a bit of a squash situation? Right. Last week’s efforts involved an upgrade of squash-baked-with-garlic that was inspired by a recipe at Simply Recipes (a site I use as a starting point for both new ingredients and classics that I […]

Wild persimmons.
Last year we foraged wild (American) persimmons from an undisclosed location in our county. All the hippies we know seemed to be wild about the fruit, and having stumbled across a few trees we decided to give them a try. Persimmons being extremely astringent when not quite ripe, it was hard to […]

Four kinds of apples, two for eating and two for cooking.
I am generally hard-pressed to choose a favorite aspect of autumn, but apples are very close to the top of the list. Each time I come home from the farmers’ market, I bring more apples with me. More types in greater volume on […]