Another giant bag of giant carrots this week? No big whoop. Make little whoopie pies. Little carrot-cake whoopie pies. Carrot-Cake Whoopie Pies Adapted from a recipe for Inside-Out Carrot Cake Cookies I ripped out of Gourmet about 10 years ago. I prefer a zippier, “cakier” cookie than the original recipe yields, so I up the flour a…
Category: ate it up
consumed
Spritzerdoodles
Just a quickie, squeezed in-between long retail shifts, delightful social engagements, and walking two dogs – twice a day – while Sheila’s scampering around Scandinavia. These are basic, butter Spritz cookies (cue the Sven-Ole arguments whether they’re originally Swedish or Norwegian or Danish) that sub out some of the butter for a healthy(?) glug of egg nog. Dust with a little…
Swap-Box Hero: Roasted Pumpkin Butter
Five pounds? According to John Oliver—in an epic rant against all things pumpkin-flavored—that’s how much pumpkin the average American eats each year. Maybe so. Nevertheless, there were three lovely little Kikuzas and a Queensland Blue in the swap box at the end of last week’s pick-up. So I grabbed a couple. Five pounds. I’m doing my…
Swap-Box Hero: Riches-to-Rags Edition
Ropa vieja. Old clothes. And sure, a stew of shredded flank steak jumbled with strips of poblano peppers does look a bit like tattered rags. But my more romantic etymological theory is that this dish’s name derives from the ease and comfort of a favorite shirt. That’s right, the one Marie Kondo gave you permission to keep—even though…
Ketchup for What?
For fries. For burgers. For schnitzel. For brats. And, yes, for dogs. Three test batches and a couple dozen spoonfuls later, I’m ready to stop tinkering and send Curry Ketchup to the cloud for safe-keeping. I’m going to want to refer to this recipe again. Curry Ketchup So good it made me violate the Chicago Dog rule. Also…
I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold
You could blame Brooks Robinson and George Brett, but mostly you should blame a slap-hitting, drag-bunting, slick-fielding, former Atlanta Braves farmhand named Terry Muck. Terry played short and sometimes second on the Aurora SealMasters, a men’s fast-pitch team from my hometown that won a bunch of National (and World) Championships when I was a kid. Sounds corny, I suppose, but they…
Blackberry Galette for Two
Galette is the fool’s pie. Which is not to confuse it with a fool. Or a crumble. Or a buckle. Or a betty. Or a cobbler. It’s just a scruffy, free-form, beautifully lazy way to have fruit and crust with minimal fuss. Simple, Summer-Fruit Galette I used blackberries, since my canes are berserk this season….
Another One-Pan Wonder
You may have noticed I have a thing for stews—particularly, chicken stews—one-pot (mostly), unfussy (definitely) dishes that are simple to assemble, easily scale up or down, take advantage of seasonal produce, and taste as good leftover as they do on Night One. There was the Riesling-fueled, Alsatian riff on Coq au Vin; the Mexican corn-and-poblano take; the Southern-influenced, peach-tomato-okra jumble; and,…
Squishy Squash: Spreadable Summer
Decades before Farm-to-Table was a nationwide THING, Madison’s L’Etoile (est. 1976), was championing small, local growers, constructing seasonal menus, and pushing vegetable-centric cooking beyond lentil cakes and baba ghanoush. A summer-squash compendium on the kitchn last week reminded me of a meal I’d had at L’Etoile close to 30 years ago—a meal that kicked off with a warm loaf of crusty bread and…
A Tree Grows in Philly
It’s not a giant tree. I think, actually, it’s a “semi-dwarf” tree. But now, in its seventh full year in soil, it’s cranking out quarts and quarts and quarts of sweet, plump cherries faster than we can pick and eat and process them. Over the past 18 months, the vacant lots behind us have gone from an…
Boxing Day 