Caitlin and I love our pumpkin treats. And when they’re bite-size and full of chocolate-chips, well, they’re just…
Apps and Sides
Beer Can Chicken
Cooking presents two ways in which to experiment. You can experiment with ingredients, and you can experiment with cooking methods.
Chicken, as I’ve noted, can get boring very quickly. You can bake it, roast it, fry it, and grill it, but in the end, chicken still tends to taste like – well, chicken.
Then I noticed beer-can chicken, and the method looked so easy, but so much fun. And it was. Positioning …
Buttermilk Pumpkin Waffles
Pumpkin isn’t just a scary face anymore.
Pumpkins dominate the fall season, their faces appearing on billboards and plastic buckets, their representatives occupying porch steps and window sills. When we think of pumpkin patches and Halloween, we have the Jack O’Lantern variety in mind. And that’s too bad. Pumpkins …
Pulled Brisket Sandwiches
Chicken pox is a highly contagious virus. Chicken saladitis, while not as lethal or infectious, is no less noxious, inserting itself into lunch menus on an almost daily basis.
During the week, I bring my lunch to work. And making a week’s worth of chicken salad is almost always…
Flan
There is, apparently, a right way and a wrong way to eat dessert.
When I lived in France, one of my favorite things to get at the Franprix was the flan four-pack. After a hot afternoon, jammed in a metro, one small satisfaction was getting home, pulling back the plastic top, and sinking my spoon into the cool caramel center. Whatever fleeting frustrations I had, melted away. You had to love a country whose grocery stores carried a fifty-cent flan.
Week after week, I enjoyed my flan. Break off a container, pull back the top, sink the spoon in, and enjoy. I might get lost in certain arrondissements. I might not understand the jokes in the movies. I might get frustrated with certain french customs. But I knew my flan. Or so I thought.
One night, I was at a small party, when…
Pumpkin Flan
After making a plain flan, I decided to try a seasonal adaptation. The pumpkin layers a little bit, but otherwise, this pumpkin flan …
Homemade Baguettes
There’s a certain moment in the bread-baking process where you remember exactly why you spent all that time kneading, crafting, and waiting.
It’s not the moment you take the bread out of the oven, or the moment you finally bite into a slice. It’s several minutes before that time. It’s the moment when you perk up, and notice that your entire apartment smells of freshly baking bread. It’s that moment, above any other, that reminds me why I enjoy the bread-baking process.
Of course, it doesn’t hurt …
Whole Wheat Grilled White Pizzas
After our adventures in Tuscany, we headed to Rome. And as the saying goes: When in Rome, eat like a Roman.
On our third night in Rome, we decided to skip the hotel concierge and consult a higher authority: Google. Google sent us to Pizzeria Baffetto in the Campo Marzio neighborhood.
The cab driver dropped us off as close as he could, and we set out on the cobblestone streets to find the pizzeria. After a minute of walking, we saw a line extending several feet out of the door. If this was the line at 9:00 at night, it had to be good pizza.
After forty minutes passed, we took our seat …
Crostini
Sometimes you just have to say, “Prego,” and go for it.
Between switching jobs, moving, and studying for the bar, Caitlin and I were having a whirlwind summer. Which is why, perhaps, it was only fitting that we decided to book a trip to Italy and Croatia with only two weeks to plan for it. But sure enough, a day after the bar exam, and three days after my belongings and I arrived in Cincinnati, we were on a plane headed to Florence.
As I said, sometimes you just have to say, “Prego.”
We arrived in Rome Friday morning, and scrambled …
Remembering what the Storm Washed Away
This is not a food post. Just this once, I’ve decided to stray from the general theme of the blog.
This past Sunday marked the Fifth Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina making landfall near the city of New Orleans. A few days before the anniversary, I sat down at my computer, and wrote out my thoughts on the subject. On a whim, I decided to submit the essay to several newspapers and magazines around the country. This past Sunday, the essay appeared in the Cincinnati Enquirer. You can also read it in my alumni magazine.
I was so excited about its publication, that I wanted to share the article with my readers. You can click here for a link to the article as it appeared in the Enquirer, or simply read it below. …