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For me, baking is incredibly experimental, with room for great flexibility. When people ask me where I learned this, I simply tell them that "I grew up in my mother's kitchen." Continue reading

* because Apple Pear Honey-Bourbon Caramel Coffee Crumb Cake is just too long. Last night, I baked something amazing. Riffing on two recipes and a lifetime in my mother's kitchen, I pulled together an apple-pear coffee cake with honey-bourbon caramel and enormous chunky crumb-topping. The basic coffeecake recipe was from smittenkitchen.com, where all of my greatest culinary inspiration comes from lately. The caramel recipe was borrowed from a sassyradish.com

My boyfriend's restaurant is a drop-off point for the Enterprise Farms CSA, which means that every couple of weeks he'll come home lugging a giant box of dirt-encrusted organic fruits and veggies. It's amazing, and forces us to eat and cook with things that maybe we wouldn't have ordinarily picked out at the grocery store ourselves. This week's haul included squash, radishes, turnips, potatoes, and — a half-dozen of… Continue reading

When boyfriend and I were in San Francisco last week, it happened to be Fleet Week. We flew into SFO ahead of Jeanne's wedding, picked up our ferry tickets to Napa at Pier 39, and had a few hours to kill before our boat came in. We ate Dungeness crabs melts on SF sourdough bread, and watched the Blue Angels flying in formation over the bay. When we headed outside to… Continue reading

Baking the Star Wars Cake

This labor of love is also a result of my love for smittenkitchen.com. The cake is Deb's Best Birthday Cake. It is filled with her Mango Curd and frosted with her Swiss Buttercream, the instructions for which include the directive, "Patience, young Jedis." As per her brilliant layer cake tips, I made the mango curd and… Continue reading

For Cristo's birthday, I made reservations at Ten Tables in Cambridge — their second location, in the space the original Craigie Street Bistro used to occupy, and which actually has at least 14 tables. The food and service were amazing. Because we ate on a Sunday night, they weren't serving a full menu. But they were serving a $33 prix fixe. Here's a super-quick wrap of what we had. surprise!Amuse Bouche Chilled cucumber-mint… Continue reading

I love my adopted city, and have often blogged about its changing character. Feel free to explore my Harvard Square. Continue reading

Last weekend, I trekked the whole three T stops out to Davis Square to pick up some all-natural, grass-fed, hormone-free River Rock Farms beef from Dave's Fresh Pasta. I grabbed a pound-and-a-half of London Broil and a pound of sirloin tips.Last Sunday, Cristo took on the finer cut. He grilled it with cracked pepper and some of his fancy smoked salt, then threw some gorgeous portabellos into the grillpan… Continue reading

I wasn't expecting him. He is John Stewart, Henry Rollins, Bruce Campbell, Anthony Bourdain, and Agent Dale Cooper rolled into one amazing man. He says that I have a wonderful singing voice, and I believe him. He teases me for my goofy laugh and inability to whistle. He cooks me amazing things, and introduced me to some of my favorite foods—raw oysters, fish, avocado, mushrooms, artichoke hearts—I used to be a terribly… Continue reading

I promise I'm not turning into yet another food blogger.That said, two days ago, I got a text message from my boyfriend while I was at work. He had an idea in his head for some amazing burgers, and wanted me to bake buns.So I did. I found a recipe that most of the interwebs loved, and baked burger buns. Of course, I didn't follow it properly (the texture… Continue reading

Sundried Tomato Bagels and Rosemary Bagels: Everything Bagels at sunset: How'd I do it? With a little help from Smitten Kitchen, naturally…

Of course the first thing I do when I have a whole evening to myself is decide to bake something so intense, time-consuming, ambitious, and complicated that it borders on madness. But I got to break out the dough hook for my Kitchenaid stand mixer for the first time! A few weeks ago, Smitten Kitchen's bronx-worthy bagels recipe caught my eye. I bought all of the ingredients last week, including… Continue reading

I love to brag about all of the amazing meals my boyfriend makes me here. And I recently realized that I haven't provided you with nearly enough photographic evidence of all of these gorgeous things.So, here's the steak we ate Sunday night with pommes frites, and which was followed by a huge salad course of gorgeous tomato, avocado, greens and homemade (by me) bleu cheese dressing… Continue reading

I dropped my programming class. And to celebrate, I bought four canvases. I began digging into (quite literally) a massive, sculptural art project I've had broiling in the back of my head for months. It's top-secret for now, but David Lynch is its muse and it may end as half a diptych. Continue reading

Last night, my boyfriend wasn't feeling well; I found him in bed and inchoate when I got home from work. I brought him hot honeyed tea and ice water and let him rest while I worked on a web project, and then I started feeling hungry.He said he wasn't hungry, but I didn't care. I knew how to rouse him. I went to the Harvest Coop down the street and… Continue reading

I'm on an email list for a wonderful little local desserterie in Boston called Finale.Today, I got one of their occasional blast messages, and it gave me a good giggle. Scan the screenshot below, and see if you can spot what so amused the hell out of me.

So, Smitten Kitchen is basically my new lord and master. Not on a google-ish level yet, but close. Three weeks ago, when I was fantastically sick with this completely soul-crushing cold and couldn't bear to ingest anything, I made Deb's variation on the canonical "Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic" recipe floating around out there, along with Lemmonex's Blueberry Yum Yum: a blueberry and… Continue reading

Celebrate with your sweetheart, or maybe find a new one at The Channel Cafe on Valentine's Day, Saturday, February 14. Dinner served 5-10 pm Entertainment 6-10 pm Reservations recommended. No cover. Featuring: Burlesque by Miss Darcey Vintage and obscure records spun by DJ Frenchy Roller Waitressing by Boston Derby Dame Killary

My sister is a huge proponent of eating an-orange-a-day (and I think it's usually more than just one!). She considers them the perfect food, and has even blogged about the proper way to eat them.My favorite food, especially when I feel a cold coming on, is Odwalla Superfood (although I insist on calling it "Green Monster." My boyfriend knows what I'm talking about, and that's all that really… Continue reading