Even on a chilly winter day, iced coffee is my preferred morning beverage. Since this spring has been feeling more like summer lately, my iced coffees are even more refreshing. I like just a hint of sweetness in them so I add a bit of coffee syrup. I used to order coffee syrup from up …
My spring celebration continued last Sunday with a ramp, mushroom and linguiça tart. The original recipe didn’t call for linguiça but I wanted to punch it up. Linguiça is a Portuguese pork sausage made with garlic and paprika. I order five pounds at a time from a place up in New Bedford and store it …
While they’re in season, I’m getting local strawberries everywhere—in our CSA share, from Produce Box and Bella Bean Organics, and even from the supermarket. I made a delicious strawberry crostata last weekend following a New York Times recipe for the pastry and another recipe for the filling. Crostatas are easy because they don’t require much …
On a warm Sunday, I heated up my kitchen for several hours making an Italian-style beef stew recipe from Fine Cooking. It was supposed to be Italian-style beef and porcini stew, but neither my local Food Lion nor my local Lowes Foods had dried porcinis. Boo. I subbed fresh shiitake mushrooms and, luckily, had some …
I finished The Leavers by Lisa Ko before our long weekend away in the North Carolina mountains—which is why you didn’t see a Bookshelf post last week. It’s a story about the separation of a mother Polly/Peilan and her son Daniel/Deming. Deming’s an interesting character. He never gets over the separation because he doesn’t know why …
Last week, I finished Men We Reaped, Jesmyn Ward’s memoir about her poor, rural, black southern community, her family, and, most of all, the five young men who died within four years when she was in her mid-20s: her brother, cousin and three friends. Her writing makes you feel like you’re eavesdropping from the corner …
Local strawberries are starting to appear. I received two quarts of strawberries in last week’s Produce Box delivery, and saw on Facebook that our nearest strawberry farm is opening this weekend. To celebrate the season I made strawberry bread on Sunday morning. Next time, I might add a streusel topping. In the afternoon, I put …
I didn’t make as much time as I would have liked for books this week, so I’m still reading these three: The Leavers by Lisa Ko A Life of Spice: Stories of Food, Culture and Life by Monica Bhide Men We Reaped: A Memoir by Jesmyn Ward Next week, I’ll let you know what I …
Regular readers, ahem, Mum, you may be thinking to yourself, doesn’t she usually publish her Kitchen post on Fridays? Why yes, that’s correct, but I’m doing it on Saturdays from now on because I need to work, not play, on Friday mornings. But Saturday mornings are all mine and, besides hiking, I can’t think of …
Happy St. Patrick’s Day. If you’d like to get into the Irish spirit, check out the post I published earlier this week, On My Irish Bookshelf. It includes a list of recommended ebooks by Irish authors—historical fiction, fiction, non-fiction and cookbooks. If you haven’t read Kindred by Octavia Butler, do it. This is one of …
Grabbing the Gusto 