Category: Pickles, Preserves & Condiments
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Poppets, do I have a story for you. Four days before my manuscript due date, last Thursday, to be precise, I woke up feeling rather strange. This strangeness got worse all day and by the end of it, I found myself in the hospital with an anesthesiologist pumping stuff into my arm just before some…
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It's been confusing, to say the least, to be a vegetable-loving individual in Germany this past month. For a while, to be on the safe side, all I did was eat stewed vegetables, which I didn't mind in the least. Braised zucchini and slow-cooked Romano beans are very fine indeed. But then the summer sun…
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I don't know about you, but strawberry jam tastes like Band-Aids to me. It always has. How would I know what Band-Aids taste like, I'm sure you're wanting to know. I'm an absent-minded cuticle chewer, that's how. You'd be surprised how many inadvertent bites of Band-Aid I've had in my life. I like eating strawberries…
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Christmas is sneaking up on us unusually quickly this year. Or maybe it does this every year and every year I am surprised anew at how caught unawares I am. You'd think, by now, that the relentless reliability of it wouldn't quite discombobulate me so much, but it does. To make sure that gifts arrive…
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Cranberry sauce is all well and good. Chutney serves a purpose or two. But peppers for cold meats? Well, welcome to your new obsession. You can thank me later. But wait, can I tell you how good this stuff is? So good that I went out and bought a two-pound pork loin, just so…
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What to say, how to say it? I don't really know how to broach it. It feels awkward and out-of-place. But since it's also residing in me like a 900-pound gorilla, I don't know how to write around it anymore. I'm having a hard summer, folks. I keep waiting to get up one morning and…
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In the last week, I have eaten harissa with boiled potatoesstewed beansscrambled eggs and a 3-minute eggpasta (I know, I know)andsardines on toast. Yes, it's true. Apparently, harissa is something that goes well with everything. I had no idea. I really didn't. Would you know that harissa used to be something I looked at sideways,…
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It takes a particular breed of nut to roast peppers when it's 93 degrees out and humidity hangs in the air like the fug in the monkey house at the zoo. Am I such a nut? Apparently, dear reader, I am. Here's the thing. I wanted to get rid of some walnuts that have been…
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Wednesday: seated uncomfortably on a small wooden chair, still damp from the thunderstorms, under a tent hastily erected on the Water Taxi Beach. The sun is out again after the deluge, but low in the sky, pink clouds threading through the skyscrapers as it sets. The sand crunches underneath and we eat toasted bread soaked…
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I crossed a life goal off my list this weekend: making cheese. It was so easy it felt like cheating. A pot full of hot milk and buttermilk was transformed into a firm bundle of cheese in about 30 minutes. It took me longer to half-heartedly scrub a few lines of grout in my bathroom…
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