Category: Vegetable Sides

  • For the first time in my cooking life, I'm finding it hard to cook good food for myself. The accumulation of sleep deprivation over the past 8 months means that now, when Hugo goes to bed and I've finally got a few minutes to myself in the evening, I collapse on the couch and wish…

  • The other day I was reading one of those year-end round-ups of annoying things that food bloggers do and halfway down the list was this (paraphrased): STOP TALKING ABOUT KALE CHIPS OMG. This made me laugh out loud, because just that morning I had practically dragged my mother into my kitchen to show her how…

  • In the last two weeks, I have cooked four pounds of plums into four jars of jam, I have boiled pretzels in lye and baked them into chestnut glossiness and I have turned nine lemons from my mother's companion's garden into creamy limoncello. I have made lentil soup and panna cotta and roasted cauliflower and…

  • 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…

  • When I first roasted parsnips a few months back, coated in olive oil and sprinkled with salt, I did a double take when I started eating them. A double and then triple take and then, mouth still full of sweet, nutty, roasty parsnip, I narrowed my eyes. Who exactly, I wanted to know, was responsible…

  • Artichokes. So delicious. Such a pain to clean. (And when I say "clean", you know I mean peel and whittle and acidulate and peel some more.) I used to think that as much as I loved eating artichokes, I was far, far too lazy to prepare and cook them myself. Whenever I saw artichokes at…

  • You know, most days I think I'm a pretty good catch. I have all my teeth, I earn my own keep, I speak four languages and I can cook (at least perfect spaghetti, a decent loaf of bread and poached eggs the old-fashioned way). Then along comes one man and cooks me a dinner made…

  • It is confounding to sit halfway across the world, safe in my warm little office, with food in the fridge, my beloved books in their shelves, my loved ones wanting for nothing, and contemplate the havoc and terror wreaked on Japan. It leaves me speechless. All I can do is read the reports and look…

  • I found myself staring into the salad plate today at lunch, wishing I had a silk shirt in exactly the color of that vinaigrette. Or maybe a stiff little canvas skirt with a bit of swing, perfect with tucked-in white tee-shirts and flat sandals. Better yet, a wedding bouquet made of peonies in this hue,…

  • When my beloved told me yesterday that we had to turn the clocks back this morning, it hit me like a small sack of lemons in the gut. But I haven't prepared!, I howled. I'm not ready for this to be the last time we still see daylight at 5:00 pm until next spring! But…