Bread, Wine, Salt

I kind of hate pizza delivery. It's never fast enough, it's never very good, and if you're ordering for a crowd it's always about compromise. Have you ever had pizza with someone who wanted exactly what you wanted? I also prefer baking with whole grains most of the time. Some pizza places will offer a whole grain crust, but they're not serious about it, so it's terrible: more biscuit or cracker than yeasted dough and too sweet. Blech. This dough makes it easy for me to make pizza at home because it takes just a few minutes to mix up and then it sits in the refrigerator waiting for me. The only downside is that you can't start when the craving hits and have pizza half an hour later. The obvious solution is to eat pizza once a week, and make a new batch of dough while you're cleaning up. I'm not from New York or Chicago and I do not claim to be a pizza expert. There are plenty of pizza experts out there who will teach you how t...

You may be aware than I am a big fan of homemade birthday cakes. But my husband doesn't want cake, he wants a cheese custard with a crust. Sure, we call it cheesecake, but it's not cake. I feel like I'm cheating somehow, serving up custard pie when I should be making layers and frosting them, and maybe even trying out some of the tricks I learned at the cupcake workshop I attended a while back. But no, he wants cheesecake and it's hard to argue that the layer cake means I love him more than the cheese pie he really wants. So it must be the best cheesecake possible. Naturally I turn to someone known for being meticulous about recipes, Jack Bishop of America's Test Kitchen. The cheesecake is fabulous. It is creamy with just enough sweetness. The crust holds together but doesn't require you to hack at it with the knife. We will ignore the fact that this recipe comes from gimmick cookbook Cooking with Friends where the Friends in question live...

Sometimes astonishing things happen. The chocolate chips and hazelnuts are even better in your oatmeal cookies than you imagined they'd be. (That's 1 cup chocolate chips, ½ cup chopped raw hazelnuts, if you'd like to try it at home, and I recommend you do. You may never buy a Pepperidge Farm cookie again.) An old friend you'd written off calls out of the blue to say she's in the area and can she stop by for 20 minutes. A new(ish) friend says something really lovely about you about you for no reason. You out your blog on your facebook page and no one points at you and shouts “You're one of those blog blogging blogger people? Why on earth would anyone read that?” Your blog stats tell you that you have a reader in Canada even though you don't know anyone in Canada. (Seriously, neighbor to the North, please say hello, because I love you the most of all of my anonymous readers.) So in honor of astonishing things, I give you a picture-less, but astonishing...

I am bad at follow-through.  I have excellent intentions about a lot of things: my prayer life, my exercise regimen, my writing, and most definitely my intake of fresh vegetables.  Thus, the state of my crisper drawer is usually quite sad.  I had a bunch of beautiful rainbow chard that needed to be used quickly and I had no brains left in my head, so last night for dinner we had the rainbow chard version of clean out the crisper tart.  Olive oil whole wheat crust with rainbow chard and Romano cheese The key is the crust, a super simple whole wheat olive oil concoction I found at Chocolate and Zucchini .  I've used it multiple times and it has never failed me.  Are you afraid of pie crust?  I've never made a proper pie crust in my life and will shamelessly admit that I buy them in a box in the refrigerator case, but this crust is so easy even I can make it, which means you can make it, too.   Now, the elegant Clothilde makes her tarts...