We gathered around a table decorated by five-year-old Sasha Belle, who made sure we not only knew where we were meant to sit, but also, what she imagines our faces look like. Her proud parents Kim and Steve, her three year old sister Zella, and my fond old biology student David formed this year’s Thanksgiving […]
Category: Yeast Breads
California BLT (Bacon, Love and Turkey)
I present the following to suggest variations on a theme, which is of course, Thanksgiving. Bacon Lettuce and Turkey, a perfectly acceptable alternative to the traditional BLT when we are in abundance of turkey come Thursday night. BLT could also stand for Big Love Thursday. The Big Love came to visit me and KP last […]
Sunflower Flax Bread and Leek Soup
The walls and the furniture have become easels. My mother in law and I are painting the place like Bohemians. I love how color sabotages the ordinary. I am cursed by an eye-condition that only allows me thirty minutes at best in a day to paint fine detail before my vision collapses. The brevity of […]
Bake This Day Challah and Home
“All bread is the bread of heaven, her father used to say. It expresses the will of God to sustain us in this flesh, in this life. Weary or bitter or bewildered as we may be, God is faithful. He lets us wander so we will know what it means to come home.” ― Marilynne […]
Pesto Pine Nut Bread and Eudora Welty
In the style of Sesame Street, for lit geeks like myself, this Monday is brought to you by: Eudora Welty and two full French Press carafes of coffee. “For her life, any life, she had to believe, was nothing but the continuity of its love.” ― Eudora Welty, The Optimist’s Daughter I could not imagine […]
Quinoa Bread
All the time that I would spend coming up with some clever drivel to write here I conscientiously divert to the husband who has been gone for six weeks. Meanwhile, enjoy this happy commercial for easy quinoa bread. Quinoa Bread Adapted from Five Minutes a Day Artisan Bread 3 cups whole wheat flour 3 […]
Cinnamon Swirl Bread and Human Training Wheels
I can think of few things for which I am more grateful than my mother coming to live here during my first two weeks of intern year, human training wheels. She has been busy sprucing up the dwelling, cooking meals, kissing my bulldog and mowing my stubborn grass patch with an impossible push mower—basically a […]
Emmer Tartine Bread and Bright Colors
Just before KP and I left Rochester, where we had painted our home fuchsia and lime, my grandmother Gigi sent me this evocative image by Brian Andreas* which spoke to the compulsion I have long since had ever after living in New Orleans—to splash walls (literal and figurative) with bright colors. To my delight, this […]
Buckwheat Bread with Lemon and Lime Trees
Slowly, slowly, the chaos around me is giving way to order. One broken box at a time, the familiar things are finding their way back onto shelves, into cupboards and upon new walls. Home feels just enough the same, just enough different. I had been focusing on the inside of the house, where it is […]
Brown Rice Bread and How We Survived the Move
It is fair to say we entirely underestimated the difficulty of moving from Rochester to New Orleans. Entirely. Usually the result of such misjudgments is panic, chaos, and discord. I am proud of the way KP and I have managed to keep cool and to move through the many upsets with grace. I think it […]