February 4, 2024 In my culture, you got married after college, and then you got a KitchenAid, the holy grail of kitchen implements reserved for those elevated to the status of wife. I did not follow this plan. I remember declaring defiantly that when I graduated from law school, I would buck the system and honor my achievement by buying my own. Several years out of college, and a law degree, but...
January 17, 2024 For years I said I was a cook, not a baker. I don’t do well with precision but I’m great with improvising. There you go. When did this change? I attribute it, at least the sourdough part, to Michael Pollan’s chapter on bread in Cooked, whose rapturous account of the glorious, almost holy, nature of the transformation of flour and water into bread gave me shivers...
February 5, 2024 I had an order to start fulfilling the same night I had to take my son to urgent care with a severe case of please don’t let it be pinkeye, a play for the preventative doctor’s note a parent seeks to keep their kid in school rather than being sent home mid-day by surprise. It wasn’t pinkeye. It wasn’t an infection either, deduced by another doctor brought...
January 14, 2023 I went hunting for ways to use up bananas that didn’t involve bread, and naturally found my way down a rabbit hole of puddings. I’m not southern, but I’ve lived around enough of them in DC to understand the value of a good banana pudding, and to know I wasn’t willing to work that hard. No buying Nilla wafers, no baking my own. I wanted something less than...
January 23, 2024 When someone is hurting, or celebrating, or the source of help or hope in your life, don’t you feel the urge to do something about it? Words like “I’m sorry,” “hooray,” or “thanks a ton” float up naturally like bubbles, but as quickly can burst with hollowness, as you push up against their limits. Don’t you ever just feel the...
January 17, 2024 Photo by Curtis Yee, @supercurtisman A friend offered to bring cake to our weekly small group meeting, but held off when she heard I was planning to bake a cake. “My dessert can wait til next week. I can’t say no to a Jeannie Rose cake!” I replied, “It’s mostly an excuse to use up some clementines that had gotten too hard to peel. Cake is like the...
January 16, 2024 You probably know, if you like bread enough to read these, that a boule is a round loaf, and a batard is an oval loaf. You probably also know, but in case you don’t, one step in the bread-making process is called proofing, where the dough rests, ferments and rises, typically in baskets that give the dough shape. These baskets can be boule shaped (round), batard shaped...
January 13, 2024 Ana-Maria entered the house laden with bananas. At least three bunches, but once you’re at a certain volume of bananas, precision becomes difficult. We stashed them on the toaster oven, which surface they were more than sufficient to cover. Her friend had thought she was ordering six bananas. You can guess what she got instead. So she shared with Ana-Maria, who in turn...