getting my squirrel on.

A few years ago during a road trip, a mouse got into our trunk and made a home for a few nights.  He slept in the instant oats, nibbled on the stump of a muffin, picked open a bag of corn chips but didn’t eat the chips themselves – and most interestingly, ate a whole …

retreat-worthy: chickpea potato salad

The winter is a time for heartier fare, but I also like to make these sorts of cooked salads – they are satisfying and nourishing, but digest easily.  This is a good example of something that I like to make – it’s also what I served to the students at a silent meditation a few weeks ago. …

a stack of crepes.

In another life, I spent a summer waitressing at a crepe restaurant in cottage country.  This was a year or so after a crepe restaurant would open up on a very busy intersection in the city I grew up in, and a few years before I would move to a city where yet another crepe …

“Everything was amazing.”

Said the Muffin Man, when I asked him what his favorite dish was from the night’s dinner. Well! We had a couple of friends over for dinner on a Saturday night, and I had greatly looked forward to an evening filled with good company and of course, good food.  As you may or may not …

A cookie, times three

My lovely friend S gave me homemade cookie mix for Christmas.  It’s a great gift, because it’s an excuse to bake and then I get a large Mason jar to store dried lentils in afterwards.  It was originally a recipe for “classic sugar cookies” but since I have a belligerent streak, and it was going …

Oh for palate’s sake

It’ll be Christmas soon, and that means one thing is certain: potlucks. I know we haven’t quite leapfrogged over Halloween yet, but I already see Christmas decorations for sale in the shops, so there. I’ve always wondered why no one brings a giant bowl of plain white rice to a potluck.  I suppose it’s because …

Cream of mushaboom

All that talk about Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom the other day gave me a hankering for my own version of creamy mushroom goodness. I have a copy of the 1960 edition of Elizabeth David’s French Provincial Cooking, which is said to have changed how the British cooked, just like how Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of …