This weekend I made a new (to me) cookie that turned out pretty well. So here it is ( Read more... )

So out of the blue I messaged a friend and we got to talking and suddenly we were baking focaccia. Which neither of us had done before, but how hard could it be? Well, kind of hard when you only have whole-grain flour and yeast that won't properly proof. Oops. I'm convinced this would have worked otherwise. The taste was close to right (though not ( Read more... )

Okay, score another one for my cookbook and improvisation. I balked at the "or cheddar" in the original recipe, but the cheese is not the star of this show, anyway. The original recipe claimed to serve 4 and used over 2 liters of stock(!) so I tried to clean up a bit. This still should easily serve four in my opinion. (So, I have leftovers if you ( Read more... )

It's been forever and a day since I've posted a recipe! Tonight I made ratatouille. I looked up a couple recipes online, and read the one in my funny British vegetarian cookbook that I found at the bargain bookstore, and while they were kind of similar, they were kind of all different, too. Mostly they varied on which vegetables to use, how to cut ( Read more... )

I was thinking the other day that it's been about half a year since the last installment, so maybe it's about time for a state of the groceries address. Actually, I was wondering what horrible new grocery products I've bought in the last six months, and I was hardpressed to think of any. It was pretty easy to come up with exciting new-to-me ( Read more... )

I bought myself an apple slicer last week. It's a fantastic little device, really. You just set the thing on top of an apple and push, and you have eight slices and a core. Brilliant. It's perfect for slicing apples to snack on, or for helping to start a rough dice for my newest makeshift recipe ( Read more... )

Some five months or so back, I posted five of the best and worst personally-new finds in the grocery store, and it's time for the Summer 2007 version of this thing! I guess I was surprised to discover I'd purchased ten "new" things in the past six months. So here we go!

( The Worst of Groceries - Spring/Summer 2007 )

Last week, I was in the bread aisle, reading ingredient lists and cringing. I stopped buying a certain kind of bread a couple months ago after noticing high fructose corn syrup as the second or third ingredient, and have been opting for "old-fashioned recipe" versions that use honey or sugar. But still, there's a lot of weird, unnecessary ( Read more... )

The pizza from scratch turned out really well, except I didn't roll the crust out flat enough. I got all paranoid because I often tear my crust when I roll it out--but that's pie crust, which is considerably different than pizza crust. Ah well. It made the entire pizza thicker, but the flavor of the onions and fennel and kalamata olives, along with ( Read more... )

I woke up this morning around six, and I couldn't get back to sleep. I remember waking up around three because some jerkoff and his girlfriend were loudly fighting in front of my apartment building, and I remember waking up around five and reminding myself that it was Saturday, but I got out of bed just after six. I had my alarm set for 7:30, so ( Read more... )