Several weeks ago when I was reading Ruth Reichl's Garlic and Sapphires, I discovered one of the most comforting meals you could ever have: Aushak, i.e. Afghan dumplings that are stuffed with scallions, served on a layer of garlic-spiked Greek yogurt and then topped with a gingery tomato sauce and roughly torn mint leaves. While…
Even though I hate being cold, I love the winter. I think this preference largely stems from my belief that it's much easier to warm oneself than it is to cool off: you can have a piping hot cup of hot cocoa or the always popular (even in summer, at least for me!) hot toddy;…
Before leaving California this year, the Greek and I decided to have our own little Christmas dinner the night we exchanged presents. While it was but a humble feast since I largely spent the day grading papers and the Greek had to make an early evening lab run, we ate well and discovered some recipes…
On his way to the kitchen, he stopped at the closet and took an accounting of the coats, then he hurried on to the kitchen, where everything was as it had been a few hours earlier. He was that future self he had many times foretold but always dismissed as an impossibility. It was dizzying.…
“Spend the afternoon. You can't take it with you.” -Annie Dillard I'll be honest with you: not many of the recipes I make and post on this blog go through an experimental "let's try this and see how it tastes" test run. And this isn't to say that everything I touch automatically turns to gold.…
"One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well." -Virginia Woolf (A Room of One's Own)It's hard to believe that I've now had this blog for 8 months and also that today's post is my 50th! In the great scheme of things, this isn't all that much time, but still,…
Dining with Dostoevsky 