Reviews

Delicious Butter and Cheese from Vermont

Prepping Rolled Grape Leaves for Grilling

Growing up, we used margarine and called it butter. We made butter cookies with margarine. We buttered our bread with margarine. When our chins reflected the yellow of buttercups, we pronounced ourselves butter lovers, but really meant margarine, the only butter we’d ever known.

I vividly remember discovering real butter.

One evening ...

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Massaging Kale: Review of Wild About Greens by Nava Atlas

Kale, Pear and Radicchio Salad with Raspberry Vinaigrette

Though not a vegetarian, I’m an avid fan of greens, both wild and domestic. I’ve studied them extensively and cook greens regularly. I’ve read and used every English and Greek language book about greens I can find. When I heard Nava Atlas, an accomplished vegetarian cooking authority, had written a ...

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Alaska Flour Company Sells Alaska-Milled Barley Products

Barley Ready to Be Milled

“A flower company in Alaska?” That’s my friends’ reaction when I talk about visiting the Alaska Flour Company (AFC). As I describe the mill, they realize their mistake. More than one has said, “A flour company in Alaska sounds pretty crazy.”  It may sound crazy, but AFC and the man ...

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Too Cold or Too Hot? A Black Bean Soup for Any Weather

Chil Soup with Black Bens and Barley

While other states are sweltering under heat waves, Anchorage is having the fourth coldest summer on record. It’s been cold and rainy or overcast, punctuated by rare bursts of sunshine. Everyone here is complaining and too many are uncharacteristically cranky. It’s not just people; vegetable crops are suffering, production is ...

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Orange Cakes and BeaterBlades

Do you ever feel like the universe talks to you?

For a week I’ve been trying to develop a cake flavored with spruce tips and orange. I started with 2 Tbsp. spruce tips, orange peel, and orange juice. It was a delicious orange cake, with no flavor of spruce tips.

I upped ...

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Review: Jasmine and Fire by Salma Abdelnour

Tiss'ye (Fatteh Hummus)

Jasmine and Fire: A Bittersweet Year in Beirut is Salma Abdelnour’s story (with recipes) of returning to Lebanon, where she hadn’t lived for thirty years. During her year in Lebanon, Salma contemplates the meaning of “home,” travels throughout the country, and thrives on eating and cooking Lebanese food.

With my gaggle ...

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