So, the fingerless gloves call to me once again, this time via the Toast catalog. These look easy enough to whip up with a set of circular needles, so I’m not at all tempted to buy them, but the colors are nice and muted.
How beautiful are these embroidered mittens via Knitting and Some More? [...]

Did anyone try these cold soups by T. Susan Chang? I have been an embarrassing pool o’drool over the concept of Fresher than Fresh Snowcones (I mean, agave hibiscus, espresso and mexican cane sugar? YUM!), but as I have no snowcone access, I resign myself to other summer-colored concoctions.
The berry soup looks like [...]

If you’re in the Northland, I highly recommend Espresso dell’Anatra. I judge everything by the breve. They make a fantastic breve, and my husband can attest to their mochas. All their dairy comes from Shatto Milk Farm, their coffee from PT’s.
My favorite Kansas City coffee is a breve from Westport Coffeehouse. [...]

We are obsessed with noodles. These are all from Kim Long’s in the Rivermarket.

A friend emailed me an article from the New York Times on the perfect chocolate chip cookies. Yum. How many times have I made chocolate chip cookies, usually good (I mean, chocolate chip, right?), but occasionally really, really amazing? And I had no idea why…until now. Chocolate chip cookies, [...]

I made this pie on Monday night (around 10 pm!) after we thought we’d recovered enough from our shared illnesses. Quick question: why would anyone who loved you not tell you their house was full of a summer plague? If I were that sick, I would guide possible guests towards the Holiday Inn [...]

We’ve been a bit crazed here, at the little one acre. That happens sometimes–this life thing! At any rate, week 4 of our CSA involved a lucky-draw–lots of zucchini, beets, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, purslane (used in an egg-salad concoction last week)–all really good stuff. We purchased an additional 2 gallons of blueberries [...]

It is a naughty cookie, but it is delicious. Heidi’s Banana Chip Cookies (dried banana chips, chocolate chips and walnuts)–you can find the recipe here. I had to freeze most of them so I wouldn’t keep dipping into the cookie jar. A note on fats: she uses butter, which I recommend, as [...]

Oh dear–we’ve been moved to Saturday pickup instead of Tuesday, so our Week 3 items already came in, hence, an early post on Week 2:
I love how the CSA allows us to try things we normally wouldn’t, like the 9-grain bread from Rayville Baking Company.
The strawberries, we sprinkled with sugar (macerated), and after they sat [...]

We signed up for a CSA this summer because we’re relocating parts of our vegetable garden closer to the house and didn’t have time to plant enough for summer eating and canning. The photo above shows last week’s offerings–mmmm…and sausage and bacon–what a treat!
We were able to make:

salsa
stir fried peas and pea shoots with [...]

Can I just complain really quick and say, Flickr, you sometimes suck. I am working on my flickr account–trying to make it more manageable for people who visit (over 10,000 photos, oye…the power of the uploader). At any rate, I mass-changed the privacy on my photos, which changed the URLs for image source, [...]

Chocolate Bread dough, expanding at the speed of glacial retreat.
Wait, I think that analogy is sadly, official irrelevant!
Normally, I love T Susan Chang. Her food exploration inspires me to no end, and I love her anecdotal way of telling food stories. I feel like yes, I just passed you on my way to [...]

It’s that time of year again. Or rather, it’s that time of year that makes one suggestible to the slightest mention of comfort food!
A few months ago, I had a great grilled cheese sandwich at Michael Smith’s in KC. It had a white cheddar, arugula and fig jam. That sandwich eaten [...]

Two summers ago, I ate my way through a few ramen restaurants in San Fran, as well as Seattle. I LOVE ramen, and noodle soup in general. When I found out about the Noodle Shop in Brookside, we just had to go.
Noodle Shop is good, bowls of somen, udon and soba noodles, broth [...]

Empanadas using yucca dough make for a wonderful pastry. We fried and baked them for comparison and found them to be delicious either way. The yucca made the dough light and fluffy when fried. No eggs or butter needed when using yucca…wonderful stuff.
Recipe for Yucca-based dough–
1 1/2 cups of *mashed yucca
2 1/3 [...]

The perfect New Year Cookie
I love this recipe–it’s so flexible. You can use different types of nuts, different types of fruits and extracts…so many possibilities! Because the recipe doesn’t use leavening, you may put up to 15 cookies per cookie sheet. The recipe as shared with my by my friend:
Pistachio Coins
Makes about 80 cookies. (Note: [...]