Posts filed under 'Spread'
fall even harder
I’m in the throes of my early-summer torrid love affair with strawberries. It’s an annual thing and, over the years, I’ve learned not to fight it. Instead, I embrace it—juice stained fingers, seeds in my teeth, and all. This year, I’ve been delighting my way through pint after pint in a few ways: strawberries sliced over a bowl of creamy yogurt, my first bites of the morning; plucked whole from the box, pinching the stem between my thumb and forefinger as I bite away the juicy flesh; baked into a simple but delicious cake.
But now I’ve got another strawberry destination to add to that list and it comes in the form of a small pot of strawberry honey butter. It’s essentially a sweet spin on compound butter and, like a pouchful of fairy dust, it magically makes everything it touches taste better.
My Thanksgiving Task (Besides the Pies)
When I arrived in Minnesota last Tuesday night, my mom promptly handed me a fat file folder full of recipes. I flipped through them, stomach growling, and asked her which ones made the final cut for the Thanksgiving menu. “All of them,” she replied casually. No, I thought. Not possible. How would so many dishes be made in one kitchen? With four burners and one oven?
And I remained skeptical until I woke up on Thanksgiving morning around 8 a.m. to the sounds of the pots clattering, rutebagas banging on the counter, and the dog barking. I made my way downstairs and into the kitchen, bleary-eyed. There, I found mountains of peeled squashes and potatoes, enough diced onions to require an entire box of tissues, and my mom’s pile of recipes neatly divided into three stacks: those that were complete (at 8 a.m.!), those that were in progress, those that were yet to be made. The last of these stacks was by far the shallowest. My mom flipped through that pile, handed me one of the recipes in it and poured me a cup of coffee.
Make New Habits, but Keep the Old
I have what one might call a slight magazine problem. I like them. A lot. Too much, really. I suppose it’s not that surprising, seeing as though I was a journalism major in college, with a magazine concentration. The food magazine problem, in particular, has gotten a little out of hand. There are piles of them all over our place, bookmarked, dogeared, stained and all around loved. (It must run in the family: my parents have a collection of back issues of Gourmet that makes my knees go weak.) I have a kind of ritual for savoring my food magazines: I like to read them cover to cover, getting lost in menus and grocery lists and serious armchair cooking along the way.
But I’ve made an exception to this tried-and-true routine lately for Bon Appetit. For the past few months, I do not pass go, I proceed directly to the column authored by Orangette‘s Molly Wizenberg. Without fail, I’m transported by her story and convinced to make something—a savory souffle, fresh mayonnaise, homemade sausage patties—that I had never before dreamed or dared to make. Like clockwork, it happened again this month. Molly spun a story that had me determined to make jam.
(Click “more” for the rest of the story, more photos & the recipe.)