Eating and Reading in March

I must admit, there’s a lot of things that I have never considered might be related to accessibility for people with disabilities and even more things that likely actually had nothing to with accessibility but end up being accessible. While several things over the last few months have made me think about possibilities, a conversation about pre-peeled oranges that occurred on twitter and beyond really opened my eyes the most. Many thanks to my friend Kelly who linked to some of this first.

I think it’s because as I write this I am also planning to make bread (yeast bread) and I haven’t had breakfast yet, but this recipe for beery caramelized onions (and beer bread) is speaking to me. The plan was just to make bread and yogurt (trying a new recipe from Hands on Home), but maybe I need caramelized onions too.… Continue reading →

How to Salvage a Quiche When Everything is Going to Hell

All I wanted was quiche for my Certified Cicerone exam day breakfast.

I love quiche, but like my good friend Marielle, I usually default to frittata. In fact, a draft post on this very blog that I haven’t been able to make come together is about frittata.

But, in truth, while I make frittata regularly, quiche is the “egg pie” I actually want to be eating. Why? Because it’s custardy! It’s delicious! It HAS CRUST! So, sometimes even when I’m not up to making pie crust (and, trust me, my skills are mediocre currently1), I make quiche. By buying pie crust.

The bad news is it’s been impossible (so far) for me to find in PDX the deep dish pie crusts I prefer for quiche.… Continue reading →

Why, Yes. That is an Apple Sandwich.

A week ago, I made apple sandwiches for dinner.

I mean, I made apple and caramelized onion sandwiches for dinner.

I mean, I made sandwiches containing apples, caramelized onions, goat cheese, and smoked tomato jam for dinner.

Man, those sound really different, don’t they?

While making the sandwiches, all I could focus on was finding some way to save dinner. See, my original plan sounded dreamy to me. And simple. And oh, how I need simple after work these days. And the plan was chicken sandwiches.

Unfortunately, I got home, started getting things ready for sandwiches, and discovered that the leftover roast chicken looked bad. And I was bummed. And freaked out, because I had to figure some substitution fast. Because while chicken sandwiches with caramelized onion, goat cheese, and tomato jam sounded good, without the chicken it somehow no longer sounded good.… Continue reading →

An Unexpected Travel Frenzy Lead to Onion Soup… Sorta

I was in town for only a week between trips just now. While Bill and I travel often, this sort of thing is much more commonly his domain than mine. In fact, he’s nearly in the same boat. Just as I was leaving for San Diego, he was sent by work to New York City to do some things over a weekend. This time, though, he was the one back sooner.

As we have a once a week vegetable delivery from a local(-ish) farm, this sort of travel can lead to excessive veggies in our fridge. Combine that with our farm telling us to please use or freeze the onions as quickly as possible, and our having done a surprisingly good job gardening to get a recipe for me finding myself last Friday staring at a bunch of food that I either needed to deal with before we left this morning, or hope was going to be good when we returned.… Continue reading →

Experimenting in the kitchen

How to Cook Everything, Revised Edition by Mark Bittman

I’ll write this up fully later, but I just wanted to share a couple of photos with you. I’ve been in the kitchen more than my silence might indicate, but mostly doing simply things like hummus. Today’s my first experiment in awhile.

Well, I call it an experiment, but like the cautious cook I usually am, I took Marc Bittman’s recipe for “Braised Oxtail with Garlic and White Wine” and messed with it as I cooked. For one thing, I used beef neck instead of oxtail. It looks just as (if not more) tasty than the oxtails I’ve had, but was astoundingly cheaper. If this works out, I may never go back to oxtail.

His recipe also calls for 4 ounces of bacon. I didn’t remember that before I started quick thawing the beef neck.… Continue reading →