From the kitchen of a semi-vegetarian with a serious sweet tooth
For some reason, I seem to have it in my head that foods like meatballs and meatloaf are particularly time and labor-intensive, and so I seldom make them. In reality, they’re pretty much the easiest thing you can do with ground meat, other than just cooking it up and tossing it into a sauce. In fact, the most involved step of making these BBQ chipotle turkey meatballs is cooking the ...
In my high school biology class, we did a unit on the human digestive system, and for the unit test, we had to describe the digestive process for various types of foods: fats, carbohydrates, etc. I still remember that test: it read, “Sam eats a spoonful of mayonnaise. Describe how he digests it.” My first thought was, He doesn’t. He barfs it back up because that’s DISGUSTING. I mean, really, how ...
It has been almost five years since I moved from California, and you know what I’m still not used to? Summer rainstorms and the staggering attendant humidity. Snow and the bitter cold I can handle – although I’ll gripe about it along with everyone else, for sure! At least I was mentally prepared for the cold. I mean, it’s all anyone talks about when you say that you’re moving to Michigan. ...
Every kid has at least one food that he or she dreads seeing on the table come dinnertime. Liver. Brussels sprouts. Toad stroganoff (as imagined by the ever hyperbolic, notoriously picky Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes). In retrospect, I can see that I had it pretty good, but nevertheless, for me, that food was tofu. The only time I was ever happy to be served tofu? When it came dressed as dessert, ...
I somehow managed to go this whole year without seeing any Girl Scouts selling cookies. Granted, I wasn’t actively seeking them out, but usually you don’t have to try, you know? They're practically everywhere. I even remember seeing them when I was an undergrad, lining the main walk through campus during finals week. It kind of seemed like they were sliiightly taking advantage of our ...
When I was a writing instructor, I used to caution my students against using sweeping or obvious generalizations to start their papers (“Since the beginning of time…” “Mankind has always…”), but that is exactly what I’m about to do: Sometimes, life gets unexpectedly hectic. ...
This post has been a long time in the making. For one thing, I had intended to make a mimosa-inspired coffeecake for New Year’s Day this past holiday season, but as is the case with many people (or so I suspect), I was overly ambitious in estimating what I’d have time/energy to do and ended up having to ignore half of my holiday to-do list. C’est la vie. Secondly, I’d been meaning to take the ...
The other day, I spotted a solitary ripe banana languishing on the counter. In my household, ripe bananas mean it’s time to do some baking! Rummaging through the fridge and pantry, I found some leftover homemade caramel sauce and an unopened bag of pecans, and the idea hit me: caramel banana pecan muffins! ...
Last week, my boyfriend and I were eating this Thai-inspired peanut quinoa salad for dinner and watching an old episode of Modern Family. In the episode, Jay is trying to convince Manny to try pickles, and Gloria jumps in and suggests that in exchange, Jay should try blood sausage. As someone who doesn’t eat a lot of meat in the first place (and who has always been somewhat of a picky eater), ...
After I graduated from college, life got a whole lot busier. While I still loved to cook, I found that I simply didn’t have time to whip up a whole meal every night or even every other night, as I typically did during undergrad. I eventually settled into a routine of cooking one or two big meals (like a tuna noodle casserole or a pound of spicy peanut noodles) over the weekend and then ...
