Adventures in Eclectic Home Cooking
Posted in Food Features on Feb 8th, 2010
While on a recent grocery trip, I noticed that the outdoor produce section of our favorite market was currently undergoing some major reorganization. Every stand was being cleared off, and at first I was sad that we wouldn’t have an opportunity to peruse what is usually a very diverse selection — that is, until I [...]
Posted in Recipes on Jan 25th, 2010
After all these pickle experiments, I’ve noticed that there’s only so many pickles I can eat. When I started this summer, I only had a few jars, so in order to try a new recipe I had to hurry up and finish one of the jars I already had. Now, after I’ve collected jars for [...]
Posted in Recipes on Jan 18th, 2010
Weeknights have become busy around here, between new year’s resolutions, birthdays, and the usual. This is the time of year when I know I need food to function but I can’t always bring myself to whip up something new each night. The lack of fresh produce in the house doesn’t help either.
It would be really [...]
Posted in Food Features, Recipes, Technique on Jan 4th, 2010
Half sour pickles, sometimes called “new pickles”, weren’t my favorite growing up. They were overlooked in the quest for the most lip-puckering sour garlic pickles. As my taste buds matured, however, I came to appreciate the more delicate saltiness of a good half sour pickle. From what I’ve noticed, half sours are made from very [...]
Unfortunately for me, growing up I never knew a good pea soup, let alone one outside of the school cafeteria. My mom didn’t make pureed soups from scratch often, so for me the words “Split-Pea Soup” conjured up images of gelatinous vats of over-salted green-gray mush, not unlike in the Exorcist, that would send me [...]
Posted in Food Features, Recipes, Technique on Dec 5th, 2009
Of the three kinds of cucumber pickles I experimented with since the summer, the most successful were the “bread and butter” pickles. Because of their sweetness, these usually aren’t on my crave list. When I think of bread and butter pickles, I think of almost-neon manufactured, sickly sweet, acidic spears that seem to last indefinitely [...]
Posted in Pondering on Nov 20th, 2009
I’ve mentioned before how I have more of a salt-tooth than a sweet one. There’s no better example of this than my childhood favorite: garlic cucumber deli pickles. The saltier, the more sour and garlicky, the better. Ask my mom, she’ll tell you that pickles were pretty much a food group in my diet as [...]
I was a pretty adventurous eater as a child, but not all of my cousins and siblings were. Every kid has at least one food they won’t touch with a ten-foot fork. From what I remember, it didn’t have much to do with taste. We just picked a food we were going to hate (mine [...]
Posted in Food Features on Oct 25th, 2009
Move over Nutella, I’ve found a chocolate spread that’s richer, thicker, cheaper and easier to get my hands on. I’m not sure I’ll ever look back.
Posted in Food Features, Recipes, Technique on Oct 22nd, 2009
This post has been a long time coming. I really wanted to make sure I liked these little guys before posting them. Last night, we finished the jar of lemon pickles we made around the time we had Iron Chef Lemons at work. That’s how many lemons there were – it took over three months [...]
