Thanks to the generosity of valmora, I have a nice peach pie in the oven as we speak. It should be done baking in just enough time for me to take it out to cool while I run (or rather, seeing as how it's ninety-three degrees outside, mosey) down to campus to see my advisor. Then, back home for salad and peach pie! Mmmmm.

Generally, bread pudding isn't something I eat. It's not that I don't like it; it's more that I never had it until I was an adult, and then I tried it at a restaurant and found it perfectly pleasant but not worth actually expending the effort to make. French toast made with homemade challah is plenty for me ( Read more... )

It will probably not surprise regular readers here that I really enjoy watching Julia Child's old show from the 1960s and 70s, The French Chef. Most of what she cooked in that era I probably wouldn't make for myself -- that type of old-fashioned northern French cuisine is just a little too heavy on the butter and cream for my taste, and there's ( Read more... )

This happens to be a week in which much cookery for company has been planned, along with one rather nice meal for myself. Accordingly, I've been making things that I don't often make, but which are kind of fun -- Norwegian butter cookies, tishpishti, pancakes, Indian rice pudding, that sort of thing ( Read more... )

So I had a quarter of a cabbage left over in the fridge, and I recalled that quiche is just the French for "leftovers pie." I don't think that the French usually put cabbage in quiche, but I did, and the results were surprisingly good. Much better than the dish for which I originally bought the cabbage (helpful tip: anadama bread and elderly ( Read more... )

I never learned to make omelets growing up, and I'd always had a difficult time making them as an adult. One of my friends showed me how, but somehow, the lesson never quite stuck, and I usually just gave up and made scrambled eggs. Then, after I saw Julie and Julia, I went looking for old French Chef videos on YouTube, and I found this one:

Click to view

( Read more... )

I am spending my 33rd birthday in a nice clean apartment baking bread for the quarter. I'll see friends tonight, and then my best friend is coming to visit for the weekend from New York.

Life is good.

So I have this lovely sorbet recipe that I've been fooling around with all summer. You don't need an ice cream maker to make it, because there's no milk fat. Just sugar, water, citrus juice, and fruit. The recipe was originally for strawberries, but I branched out and made it with raspberries, peaches, and most recently, a honeydew melon. That ( Read more... )

I have a quart of sour cherries. What should I do with them?

a) Hungarian chilled cherry soup
b) Lamb meatballs with cherry sauce
c) Something else luscious

Decisions, decisions . . .

Last time I bought bagels, the bakery had had one of its rare boo-boos. Usually, the bakery I go to makes the most excellent bagels, but these were puffy, soft, deformed . . . just NO. So today I decided that I was going to do what I'd been meaning to do for a while now, and try making a batch of my own bagels. I'd tried once before, several ( Read more... )