Beans are an elemental food. We take them for granted because we usually buy them in a can, drain and rinse them, and then add them to other things where they fade into the background--little more than a pleasing texture or a cheap ingredient to add bulk.
But beans, along with some other...
Two years ago, I combined flour and water and waited. This was the initial act of faith that has spawned countless loaves of bread and an incredibly complex and varied relationship between a girl and her sourdough starter. A relationship that has survived summer heat and winter chill, stretches...
Even if you haven't bought into the organic lifestyle wholesale (and there's much debate over how accurate/honest the organic label really is), you might be wondering if there's something to it. I mean, even if you're not paranoid about pesticides, herbicides, fungicides and the like,...
Okay, I'll be the first to admit it: my initial kumquat purchase was a total impulse buy. I thought they were quite possibly the cutest fruits I'd ever seen.
Being a child of the South means that I didn't grow up with a wide array of citrus fruits. In fact, I don't think I had...
If there's anything that pains me greatly in the kitchen, it's wasting food. Most tasks, including washing dishes (and we don't have a dishwasher), I perform without complaint. This may be because I've resigned myself to doing them or because I genuinely don't mind. However, cleaning out the...
Citrus season is an exciting time for those of us living in temperate zones. In fact, I know some who would argue that citrus is the only good thing about winter (I would retort that eggnog is another, but that's quite a different matter). In our house, it's a happy time of marmalade,...
Hurricane Sandy has us all thinking about natural disasters and how to prepare for them. Since we live in a very rural area, we always have emergency supplies on hand, as a snowstorm or even a large tree that falls across the road could mean days without electricity or the ability to get out for...
After our Building A Better Pantry series on dairy products, I thought it fitting to expound upon the cheese plate. Even if you don't care to make cheese of your own, I'm sure most of you still enjoy eating it, and, let's face it, cheese made by passionate professionals is just hard to beat....
Included in the 1936 edition of the Joy of Cooking, and basically unaltered since, hamburgers are perhaps the easiest and most-loved grilling fare in America. With the rise of boutique burger chains from coast to coast, it seems like a good time to remember that the...
