Late summer in Michigan means gardens overflowing with zucchini. My grandparents and my dad, who live next door to each other yet have separate vegetable gardens, spend August giving away what seems like an endless supply of zucchini – to their friends, neighbors, anyone who happens to stop by (you might think they’d have learned…
Summer means cucumber salad. My mom’s cucumber salad. It can show up on the picnic table alongside anything from burgers to brats to barbecued chicken and perform as the perfect side dish. I’ve also been known to eat it as a one-dish meal. It’s also, oddly enough, the dish that got me to like raw…
The day before I first made dinner for Eli, my friend Becky asked me what I was planning to cook. I rattled off the menu, which included dessert of blueberry crumble. The following week, Becky sent me a link to a Smitten Kitchen post on something called blueberry boy bait. “Is this what you made…
I love pie. Apple pie made from Michigan apples hand-picked in an orchard on a crisp Saturday afternoon in fall. Pumpkin pie with extra cinnamon and nutmeg, crowned with a dollop of cream whipped by hand. Lemon meringue pie, Meyer lemons juiced for its filling. Blackberry pie at the height of summer, a scoop of…
Two months ago, my food life was boring. Well, my dinner life was boring, anyway. Breakfast is always pleasurably familiar, and lunch usually involves something simple like yogurt and fruit or a salad, but dinner is when I’m generally serious about cooking something that takes more skill than a pancake. However, around the beginning of…
I have no idea where bread pudding has been all my life, but thank goodness I’ve finally discovered it. During a recent visit to Chicago, I met my friend Katy for breakfast at m.henry, a French-inspired “New American” eatery in Andersonville that serves breakfast and lunch, focusing on local and organic ingredients (which scores extra…