Blitz Kuche, Lightning for a New Year

Happy New Year!!!! While the UN has announced this as the year of the Pulse (grain legumes), I unilaterally declare this to be the year of Chocolate. My New Years Resolution this year is to make one new chocolate dish per week. Why? Because I got a new cookbook from my mother in law featuring […]

Toasted Millet Porridge Bread

Memory lived not in initial possession but in the freed hands, pardoned and freed, and in the heart that can empty but fill again, in the patterns restored by dreams. … The last thing Laurel saw, before they whirled into speed, was the twinkling of their hands, the many small and unknown hands, wishing her […]

Dim Sum Char Siu Bao and New Years Resolution Haiku

There is something paradoxically restful in the chaos of family visits over the holidays. The reassurance of roots, of home—the reminder of belonging. I made my Sourdough Surprises challenge early this month to take advantage of the New Year’s symbolism inherent in Chinese dumplings, the pork filling representing the prosperity and treasure tucked into every year, […]

Peanut Butter Brown Rice Krispie Treats and Stranger #1

New Year’s Resolution Case 1 of 12. Stranger 1. He is a charming boy, my adopted Peruvian son, Juan-David. For the first eleven days of January, by fluke of fate, the young suitor of my Peruvian neighbor’s daughter needed a place to stay that was decidedly not the same residence as his love, but as […]

New Years Resolution Oatmeal Wheat

Making a loaf of bread a day in 2013, okay, almost every day, was the best exposure therapy for my kitchen phobia. What began as desensitization to recipe-reading and basic ingredient identification has blossomed into near-foodie-ism. I now crave new culinary challenge. I now miss the kitchen when I’ve been out of it for several […]