Food, Photography and Bon Mots
Guilty food pleasures. Mine are Ranch Dressing, Cheetos and refried beans. Yours? And about that Ranch Dressing… The recipe here is a homemade version of the iconic dressing introduced in 1950 by Steve Henson under the name Hidden Valley Ranch. Henson was a former…
Summer salads are a “thing” at my house. Cool and light after a hot day, a salad is the perfect way to wind down the day and ease into a cool evening with a good book and a sweet pup. Here is a…
What is the world’s largest edible bean? Look that question up on the Internet and you are in for a trip down the rabbit hole. There is a Guinness record for the World’s Tallest Bean plant. (46.3 feet/2003.) There is a record for “The…
Koolsla? Koolsla is Dutch for what most Americans call coleslaw–cabbage salad. Dutch settlers in New York introduced koolsla to the American table in the 17th and 18th centuries. This Mango Slaw recipe, with its sweet lime dressing, is a delight. It works with barbecue or as…
A couple of swells… Are you trying to place that expression? It’s from the classic 1948 MGM musical Easter Parade. It was the highest grossing MGM movie in the 1940s–a real crowd please, apparently. Here is the link: Astaire and Garland: A Couple of Swells. Aah.…
When I was twenty-two and had my own kitchen for the first time, I knew absolutely nothing about cooking. Nothing. So…I bought my first cookbook–a used copy of the 1963 edition of The New Good Housekeeping Cookbook. The book’s provenance is interesting. The name Sugar Bardy…
I’m a gadget girl. I have drawers and drawers (and drawers!) of cooking tools–some whose function I no longer remember. So, like most of the rest of the cooks in America right now, I’ve been doing some pandemic kitchen cleaning and organizing. I’ve put off…
This is a beautiful salad inspired by Hetty McKinnon’s recipe for Pickled Beetroot With Puy Lentils, Baby Spinach and Cheddar in her wonderful cookbook Community. You have a lot of colorful choices within the beet (Beta vulgaris) family, too. You can make this salad as…
Who doesn’t need a good condiment now and then? That is particularly true now. Those creative dishes we are all making with pantry staples can get a wee bit boring. This over-the-top lime-flavored cucumber dish rocks. If you are a lime juice devotee…
Memories. This coronavirus crisis has given me a lot of time to explore my food (and other) memories. I imagine you have done a lot of that, too. On a lazy afternoon recently, I asked myself where I would most like to revisit (and dine)…
