I am naturally a little bit restless. When I talk on the phone, I pace throughout my apartment as if I’m a cartographer trying to figure out what every inch of the place holds. At the office, I get up frequently to get water, or tea, or a snack. I do this at home too, now that I’m working full-time from home (which I am very fortunate to be able to do: my brother got laid off two weeks ago, and I know this has happened to many of my friends, too). I had the week before last off (a previously planned staycation that was a bit more confined than I’d originally expected), and I got into a rhythm of spending a lot of my time cooking or baking. I made two loaves of bread, I made breakfast and lunch and dinner, I thought a lot about the perfect cheese sauce for tater tots. Then a friend of mine* made cherry tomato confit, a recipe from Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, and I was like, okay, this seems like another fantastic use of my time!
Read Morechickpeas & labneh: variations on a theme
I’ve had this post skeleton scheduled for a few weeks, but I guess it’s coming at the right time, as many of us are staying at home as part of social distancing, self-quarantine and isolation. Many of us have also stocked up on pantry staples, but if you can’t go out very often to replenish, you might find yourself eating the same things over and over. Even if you can go out, you might find this; the recipes in this post come from a week in early January when I was working from home, made a ton of chickpeas and then had to figure out how to use them all (plus homemade bread plus the labneh that had been languishing in my fridge). I did what I do best: consulted the internet and my cookbook collection to figure it all out.
Read Morefeeding a crowd (with mashed potato casserole, bagel dogs, & mulled wine)
Back in November, my friends and I went to the Poconos for a weekend, sharing a house next to a near-frozen lake. It was to jointly celebrate two friends’ birthdays, which was honestly a brilliant idea. These are friends from my last job, where we bonded over stress and shitty hours (lol, remember when I worked overnights? I don’t recommend it); I love them all dearly, and obviously volunteered myself to cook a meal.
The day we were to leave, the 2019 Joy of Cooking arrived in the mail. I was originally thinking about bringing a Julia Turshen book, or maybe Smitten Kitchen; something, anything, that wasn’t so enormous and heavy. My girlfriend told me not to bring it. My brain told me not to bring it. My heart, and my friends in a cooking Facebook group that I mod (hi!), told me to just do it, and I did, and I had no regrets. I mean, aside from its weight. It’s a delight, a beautiful new addition to the Joy of Cooking catalogue; the recipes I recognized felt like old friends, and the ones I didn’t, new journeys in food.
Read Morethe easiest 26th birthday cake
In the days and weeks and months leading up to her birthday, my girlfriend told me repeatedly that she wanted me to make her a cake, and she wanted a very specific one: box mix brownies, doctored the way I always do them, made into a layer cake with Pillsbury Funfetti frosting. I knew better than to assume she was kidding, but I also really like going overboard, so my task for myself was figuring out a way to put my stamp on a cake made of mass-produced products.
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