coconut pinkcherry yogurt

Like ten zillion other brides with mile-long registries, I received an ice-cream maker as a wedding shower gift two years ago, but when I finally busted it out last summer, I ended up really struggling to find good recipes. Why so much sugar in a cantaloupe sorbet? Isn’t it already sweet enough? Why should I add an equal part of water to watermelon puree? It’s a weak flavor to begin with, why dilute it so? Why do so many frozen yogurt recipes call for oddities like gelatin and milk? Can’t you just freeze yogurt? These questions nagged at me as I tried recipe after recipe, and save for a single strawberry sorbet that I still dream of late at night, each final product disappointed me in the exact ways that I predicted it would.

Recipe

cellophane noodle salad with roast pork

You know, it’s so easy to get in a rut. Invite some friends over, get what you need, hustle to have everything ready, as people arrive when they may either slightly over or undercooking certain things because it’s impossible to perfectly time, bring out a big platter or two of what-not, “ta-da!” it, dig in, eat and drink too much and well, then what? Is that all there is? It’s not the company but the routine threatens makes it less wild the eighth time around.

Recipe

my bacon is always crisp

Today, I have failed you as a food blogger. I’m not proud. I cooked and cooked, we and our loved ones ate like kings, there was not a single recipe that shouldn’t be archived and returned to and yet, in the whirl of things we forgot to pick up the camera. (Hangs head in shame.) You get no photographic evidence of the shredded hash browns, chive biscuits, egregious amount of thick-cut maple-cured bacon, baked almond-orange French toast, insanely spicy bloody marys, plain yogurt I flavored myself with real vanilla and just a pinch of sugar. You’re just going to have to trust me that it was grand.

Recipe

raspberry-topped lemon muffins

Oh my god, people. Just OMG. Let’s just make this one succinct, for once? Surely, I am capable of concise thought, right? These muffins are the shockingly good. Make them.

Recipe

pickled garlicky red peppers

Flashback: The Great February Pickle-athon: Inspired by Cathy’s fantastic account about pickling Brussels sprouts with fennel fronds on Serious Eats, I decided it time that I go beyond the giardiniera and the lightly-soused red onions and into the great thereafter of vacuum seals and factory-like precision. Of course, I didn’t use her recipe–why would I do that? I knew it would work! What fun could that be?–but one I’d seen several pickle junkies swear by on Chowhound.

Recipe

pineapple upside-down cake

I get so boring in the summer. As soon as that warm weather hits and a bright blue sky becomes de rigeur and not something worth stopping the presses over, any near-religious attraction I had to the shiny and the new goes into hibernation until the fall. Do I want to start a sourdough that will take seven days to make? Well, since you asked, not really. How about that baked pasta dish that been buzzing like a bee in my bonnet for weeks? Um, well, maybe. If it rains or something and there’s nothing else to do. Do I want to try some new, crazy variant on a classic cake with cardamom? No, no, no!

Recipe

corniest corn muffins

Some days, I’m pretty sure this site is turning into something of a Dorie Greenspan Fan Club. Let us review, shall we? Dorie brought one of my favorite surprise Paris treats into my very own kitchen, directed us to the most amazing chocolate cookie, ever, her deep, dark ganache tart was the kind of easy dinner party dessert that nobody complains about and just last week, her lemon sables were the ideal palette upon which I could paint my margarita cookie aspirations. Everything you might think you like about my baking, you really like about hers. Today, her latest book ushers in another recipe that I am certain will be a repeat hit (once, of course, I get over my addiction to the shiny and the new).

Recipe

barley, corn and haricot vert salad

I have an affliction of sorts; no matter how fantastic, transcendent a recipe has been or how much I’ve sung it’s praises from the high mountaintops, I almost never make it a second time. I thought I could blame this website, always pushing me forward and urging me to try new! different! shiny! things, but who am I kidding? I’ve always been this way. Though I always say I’m just looking for tried-and-true recipes to laminate, frame, and keep forever, those that will never fail you or me so that I can stop looking, it’s not true. I’m still looking. I’ll always be looking.

Recipe

chicken empanadas with chorizo

[Note: These empanadas got some fresh photos in 2020.]

Wow. I just… I mean… wow. These are so good, you’re going to kiss the cook, so be careful if her husband is in the room, okay? I don’t want to be the indirect cause of narrowed eyes or awkward silences. But first, in light of The Great Chicken Cutlet Hate-A-Thon of Aught Seven, I feel it is only right for me to add little more to this picture.