Alright folks — are you ready for this? Here it is. My geekiest dinner party fantasy. One day, some day when I don’t have quite so much other work hanging over my head, I’d like to host a sci-fi dinner. I’ve been thinking about it for years, on and off, slowly planning the menu. It […]
My friend Linda thought that I’d call her crazy. She thought that I’d tell her that her plan was too much, or too ambitious, or that our freezers could never hold all the bounty. She thought, perhaps, that I was not quite so committed to the cult of the cloven hoof as she. But Linda, […]
Surely, I’ve thought to myself, all these many months that I’ve been posting here — surely, I’ve already written about semolina bread. It is, after all, a perennial favorite in this house. It is, after all, a regular in my bread rotation. But I did some searching through the archives yesterday, as I was thinking […]
Seeing as how this is a mid-week post, you’ll forgive me if it is a little bit short. I was planning to save it for the weekend, but I looked back at my mac-and-cheese pictures, and I thought: how can I keep this to myself? How can I deprive you (dear readers!) of something this […]
You all know the story of the pasty, right? If you don’t, you should. As I am given to understand it, this little jewel of meat and vegetable, wrapped in golden flaky crust, was developed by the families of Cornish miners as the original hot lunch-in-a-box. The wives of the miners (wives, of course, because […]
Earlier on in my life — from the time I was about fourteen almost until I graduated from college — I was a vegetarian. I know. It seems difficult to believe, given the thrust of this blog, given my posts about pig parts and chicken feet and so forth, given the number of veg-heavy recipes […]
When is he going to make another post about collards? I know, I know — that’s the question that’s been on all of your minds. You can’t resist those broad leathery leaves, dark green in both look and smell. You can’t resist that bitter taste, or that extensive history, or that big shiny 1000 on […]
I’m sick. Again. For the second time this month. I don’t want to make too much of it, because two colds in a month is hardly a sign that the world is coming to an end. But it means bad sleep, and daytime raggedness, and not wanting to do a whole lot of anything. And […]
Standing by the counter at Godshall’s Poultry, waiting for my number to be called, I found myself chatting with the woman ahead of me in line. Like me, she had come for stock-making provisions — pieces and parts, cheap bits, to populate her pot. She pointed the poultry man in the direction of the necks […]
I have, as you may have guessed about me already, a great deal of sympathy for ham obsession. I have myself, on a number of occasions, made the circuit in Philadelphia from the Reading Terminal Market, to the Di Bruno Brothers, to Claudio’s, looking for just the right crudo to pair with scallops, or melon, […]