If you’ve never tried these flavors together, it probably sounds weird—sweet potato and peanut and soup. But trust me on this one. I can relate to your skepticism. I remember the first time I had peanut butter in something other than a pb & j or chocolate candy cups. It…
“Salt in hot chocolate?” I wondered aloud, reading from the can of unsweetened Hershey’s cocoa. It was my first time making hot chocolate not from a mix. “Leave it out,” my husband Wayne yelled from the other room, with the conviction of one who happily omits any ingredients he deems…
Even though I have great admiration for traditional miso soup, I don’t make it at home. The soup that I make has miso paste in it, but is a whole meal with noodles and various vegetables, and is much more suited to my attention-deficit-style of cooking. In Japanese restaurants, miso…
I am immensely grateful that in one of his cleaning frenzies, my dad rescued a forgotten artifact from my childhood: a recipe book my mom had begun to create with me when I was in elementary school. We apparently only got as far as three recipes—including French toast for one…
I’m the kind of person who worries before going to dinner at someone else’s house if there’s going to be enough for me to eat. There’s no danger, by the way, of me wasting away. It’s just that I’m mostly vegetarian and also really picky so if I have to…
I ordered first, a cup of the creamy squash soup and a sandwich but, as usual, soon second-guessed myself. “You’re getting a bowl of soup and a sandwich?” I asked my husband Wayne, imagining him still enjoying his steaming bowl of velvety orange soup while I, saving a buck, would…
Technically, you can turn anything into pizza. That’s what I used to believe, anyway. When I was in middle school, I used to pride myself on being able to make pizza out of any starch we had around the house. I don’t know exactly how this began, but when I…
Ravioli are fussier than my usual fare—usually consisting of forgiving indelicate creations—but I wanted to try my hand at them, especially if I didn’t have to make my own pasta dough. (Someday I will get a pasta machine, but maybe not until I have a kitchen large enough to accommodate…
“Vegetarian French onion soup? How do you do that?” everyone wanted to know. I wasn’t exactly sure, but I had a plan: use Julia Child’s method for the onion part of the soup and for the “French” part, that is, the browned, melted cheese suspended on toasted bread, which then…
For years, ever since I moved into this house, whenever a recipe called for oil to be brushed onto bread, vegetables, or a dish, I’d pour some onto my fingers or onto a paper towel and attempt to spread it around that way. It works in a pinch, but a…
