morsels & sauces

Sweet business.  These strawberries are fabulous. Okay, so you may know that I am participating in the Food in Jars Mastery Challenge (you may also have noticed that I am behind in posting), and I am slipping this one in at the last minute.  People, April has been busy. Before I tell you all about quick pickled strawberries, allow me a slight digression. April has seen us moving from a small duplex in our beloved neighborhood in Oakland to a house with a spectacular view overlooking Wildcat Canyon. We miss the walkability of our old neighborhood, but we love the fact we cannot hear the highway, and once I am fully healed, hiking is at our doorstep.   Fully healed? Well, you see I was putting up curtains while standing on my cluttered desk (like you do). And I stepped back, thinking the chair I had used to climb onto said desk would be there. It was not. And then I was on the floor. And the only thing that happened was that I broke my tailbone. Seriously, it coul

So, I was sitting at Kirala , one of my favorite sushi places, eating lunch, which happens to be across the street from the Berkeley Bowl , and I thought, "Hmm, I should make dinner tonight."* Such is my life. While eating one meal, I am often contemplating the next one. This was the result.  *Full disclaimer, that day was not today, as I am laid up in bed because I broke my tailbone (I fell). But I was recently  sitting in my favorite sushi place having these thoughts. Because I am in an admitting mood, I am going to reveal a few things here: 1.) This is a lazy, lazy dinner. The amount of work here is almost miniscule, and it makes me wonder why I have evenings where I cannot bring myself to cook (enter popcorn and pickles. Again, don't judge. I like salt.) 2.) What sets this apart from other lazy dinners I normally make is the the chile and pumpkin seed combo tossed in with the sweet potatoes. Yep. This launches this little puff pastry concoction i

In this  Cook Your Books  series, I have chosen 15 books to read in 2017 based on somewhat arbitrarily chosen categories. My theory (bogus it might turn out to be) is that all 15 of these books will somehow connect to food. And I plan to write about that food in what appear to be rather long-winded posts (seriously, these are long !). This fourth installment is  a book about food.  Okay, the choice of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake  by Aimee Bender was an easy one. We all knew that this would incorporate food in some meaningful way. But come on, from time to time we need an easy path. So let's take it. But I have a question to ask: why is so much food connected to innocence or to its loss?  I have some answers, some of them perhaps flimsy, but answers nonetheless. We often associate food with our families, and when did we spend the most time with our families?  Or more specifically with our parents? And if we are parents, with our children? When we were young, and (most

Where has March gone?  Where is April going? I cannot keep track of this spring and it seems to be slipping away. For example, I made this duck confit (post on how to make duck confit itself, here ) and then I made this pasta and then two months passed and now we're here .  And here seems to be spring break, our move to Richmond (oh, Oakland how we already miss you), and a life lived out of boxes, which admittedly, we have been doing lately.  I have come to appreciate the well-labelled box, and to shake my fist at my past self who labelled far too many boxes "Miscellaneous."  Those are the most frightening boxes. Until we have a full kitchen, I am resurrecting old dinners that I haven't posted and am subsisting on pickles and popcorn. Both of which I love. Don't judge. I just love salt, okay?  Maybe I'll just get a salt lick for the new kitchen. It could happen. However, if you're feeling fancy (and we both know you and I li