Bread, Wine, Salt

If you're not already a baseball fan, then Caleb Joseph is the reason you should become one. A year ago, Caleb Joseph was stuck in the minor leagues. After four seasons with the AA Bowie Baysox, he was up a level at AAA Norfolk, making almost no money, not as much money as a man with a new wife and hopes for a family would need. He’d planned to give it up, to go find a real job and be a guy who had once played professional baseball but that you’d probably never heard of. Maybe he would tell stories, and maybe he’d be a coach somewhere in his spare time. He didn't want to quit, of course, but four years in AA ball is not how you get to the Major Leagues. I’m sure he thought it was time to grow up and stop dreaming about baseball. It was Caleb Joseph’s wife who convinced him to give it one more shot, one more season of minor league ball, one more season of watching hotshot prospects get called up, of playing with big leaguers when they came to the minor leagues to rehab af...

A Christmas Feast: ( Maud started it .) The most important part is the julekake for breakfast, which we had with scrambled eggs. Well, the most important part is to play with the presents. But julekake is a close second.  I also made enough to share with everyone in the known universe. My dough bucket overfloweth. Well, not yet, but soon after this picture was taken. Sausages : I sent the husband to the store with a list which said bangers and he returned with a variety of flavors of pork and chicken sausage, none of which could be said to be banger-like. People ate them anyway. It seemed fine. Potatoes : What can go wrong with potatoes, cream, cheese and garlic ? Nothing, except when you don't read the recipe properly ahead of time and find out it has to cook for 90 minutes, not 60.  Dinner was a bit late. Carrots: Gingered, as before . Went off without a hitch.  Brussels Sprouts : Shredded, with the food processor which I ...

I have a problem, which is that I have a fear of talking about my book because people might think it's incredibly lame that I have written a book.  So for the last couple of days when I've seen people in real life and they ask me what's been going on I'm all, "Oh, you know, the usual . . . " and then we nod at each other like "Yep, the usual, yep."  I don't say "Hey, I wrote a book, and I'm going to get serious about publishing it soon and I'm very excited and nervous and some other things, too." But it's true. I did get serious. I had it professionally edited and then professionally formatted so that it would look nice in people's e-readers and I swallowed hard and I sent it out into the world. And then I told Facebook about it and not one of my friends said "It's incredibly lame that you have written a book." At least none of them said it out loud, to me. What they said to me was that they thought it wa...

Sunday: Cheeseburgers with roasted potato wedges Monday: White Beans and Cabbage Tuesday: Red Bean Peanut Stew Wednesday: Seitan Stir-fry Thursday: Black Bean Soup Friday: Pizza Saturday: Stuffed Peppers What are you eating this week?

Are you on Pinterest? I got on Pinterest a few weeks ago and have been pinning happily since then. One of my boards is titled “Intriguing Recipes” and it's there that I stick the recipes for things I might want to try, if only I can remember that I want to try them. One of my early pins was a recipe for Butter Chicken without the butter from Julie at Dinner with Julie. I love Indian food and Julie's recipes are always solid, so I knew I'd like it. I'd just have to remember to make it. I probably wouldn't have remembered, except that the pin generated some discussion with a friend, first on pinterest and later by email about cooking with chicken thighs. I know some people have a problem with chicken thighs because they're greasy and dark and have a flavor. (And don't tell me it's a weird flavor. It's a chicken flavor and we've all been beaten into blandness by the industrial chicken breast.) My chicken-thigh-averse friend asked if I...

Mary Bailey: Bread so that this house may never know hunger. Salt so that life may always have flavor. George Bailey: Wine that joy and prosperity may reign forever. Bread, Salt and Wine are traditional housewarming gifts.  We all know this because we've seen "It's a Wonderful Life." Perhaps some of us assumed that it exists because of "It's a Wonderful Life."  But the tradition goes back to a time before Frank Capra, and it's a lovely idea, one I'm in favor of keeping alive. Depending on who you ask, the tradition is either Russian, Polish, Jewish, or Italian, unless it's Lithuanian, or something else.  Of course it's possible, that similar traditions grew up in different places.  Many cultures value bread, salt and wine. It was a Russian folk custom for local merchants to present the gift of a round loaf of bread covered in salt to the visiting emperor as a sign of hospitality. In many cultures bread, salt and wine are given ...

Except for the occasional magically delicious pasta salad , I am actually pretty bad at winging it. If I get towards dinner time and I don't have a plan then I end up saying “spaghetti” and grabbing the jar of sauce from the pantry. It's not that there's anything wrong with that, it's just that I'm happier when I don't feel like I'm resorting to an easy meal quite so often. So I need to plan. I went to the grocery store today, and before I went my husband and I talked through a partial plan. Here's what I'm going to make in the next couple of days: Black bean quesadillas (actually made these tonight.) Chili with beans and either chips or corn tortillas depending on the results of a future trip to the store. Beans and cornbread, adapted from the Pioneer Woman's recipe Braised cabbage with red beans and rice from the Mediterranean Vegan Kitchen Vegetable soup And there are two things I'd like to get to making in the next week: K...

Michael over at Herbivoracious is working on a cookbook. I'm very excited about it, and you should be, too if you're at all interested in vegetarian cooking that uses real food and plays with flavors. As part of writing the book Michael put out a call for recipe testers and I volunteered. He sent me a recipe for Pozole Rojo de Frijol, a vegetarian version of a traditional pork stew. I loved it. The kids liked it. The husband liked it. It must be said that not everyone at the table liked it, but I think that was my fault for misjudging the audience, not the fault of the recipe. I will make a couple of changes next time: I'll use slightly less lime juice, slightly less water, and I'll up the chiles. I used the minimum this time, and there was very little heat. Obviously someone trying to write a cookbook doesn't want his recipes reproduced all over the internet, but I am allowed to link to it. So go read the recipe , try it for yourself, and then ch...