E and I must both be in denial. I'm going to DC all next week ( Read more... )

I made the Russian dinner for J in the sukkah tonight. It came out even better than I had hoped. The sauerkraut soup tasted like the best thing ever, and one of the other guests had three bowls, and then a fourth after dessert. As soon as J smelled it - before she took a taste - she said, "This is really a Russian soup. It's full of dill." I made ( Read more... )

Now that J has me thinking about those Russian cheese pancakes, I want to make a whole Russian dinner one night of Sukkot. It would start with soup, because J is insistent that Russian dinners begin with soup. "Always," she says, and "Soup," with an emphasis on the final "p" that I think is the little vestige of her Russian accent ( Read more... )

When J dropped R off from her sleepover on Sunday morning, I made J read the label on the bottle of rose hip, mint and echinacea syrup that I got in the grocery store in Brighton Beach. I still can't figure out what would be the perfect thing to do with it. J grew up in the Soviet Union and sometimes I can get her talking about the food she ate as ( Read more... )

Seven species salad ( Read more... )

E and  R went to pick fruit at an old lady's house today. They got supercrisp apples, still-green pears that will ripen in a paper bag, dry oranges and five figs. One of the figs was split open and I ate it, standing on the driveway. It tasted like sex that grew on a tree ( Read more... )

I got a package in the mail today: a case of gluten-free organic beef jerky. It's so much beef jerky that it came with a store display ( Read more... )

I don't know how I turned into that girl who makes all those pickles.

Kosher style dills, carrots with Indian spices, red cabbage for Banh mi, preserved lemons, kimchi, daikon tsukemono


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I made another white cake. It turned out nicely and it tasted fine with the rose mint syrup ... but it wasn't special. I just served the cake plain with fruit. I am thinking I need to go in another direction with the syrup. Maybe I will try putting it in a salad dressing. I am going to have to just make the actual gulab jamun, too.

I have been thinking about gulab jamun since June. E and I went to and Indian restaurant and got a tasting menu with a dessert. As obsessed as I have been with Indian food, I have never been that interested in Indian desserts. They just didn't look like something I wanted to eat, with their bright colors and syrupy shine in the glass case at Vik's ( Read more... )