“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…
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 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…
Reading a New York Times article on the USDA’s mixed signals about cheese made me think about my own conflicting cheese emotions. The USDA, like a person with the two hemispheres of his brain separated, tells us “Eat less fat—don’t have so much cheese!” and at the same time encouraged…
It’s not true that a watched pot never boils. What happens is it hovers on the edge of almost-boiling for so long that after a long stretch contemplating the quiet liquid and floating vegetables you sigh and turn away and get involved in something else so that by the time…
“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…
My husband, Wayne, and I disagree on broth. He claims that the key to excellent broth is long simmered chicken bones and parts. Or those of beef or pork. I’ll admit that plenty of world culinary history backs up his contention. Still, because I don’t eat chicken, beef or pork,…
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