Pad Thai is hands-down my favorite Asian dish, and has been for years. I don’t remember who first introduced me to Thai food, but I owe that person a debt of gratitude. The one problem with this favoritism has been the fact that until recently, if I wanted Pad Thai, I had to go out…
My favorite living situation ever was the year I spent in a garden-level apartment in downtown Royal Oak, Michigan. The building was a New York-style brick three-level with two apartments on each level – very old school. My friend Sarah lived in the apartment across from mine, and we spent our free time visiting each…
Ironically, I used to be a vegetarian. Three times, in fact. The first time was during high school, when I was experimenting with trends like any teenager. It lasted until I got tired of not being able to eat what my mom put on the table at dinnertime. The second was during college, when I…
When I was little, and my paternal great-grandma was still alive, we went to visit her at “the farm” (which was a fully operational farm in my grandpa’s youth) a few times every year. I have strong sensory memories of her and of those visits. In those days, the white frame farmhouse (in which my…
It was Sunday afternoon. I wanted french fries. I was making venison burgers, and I wanted french fries. That’s all. Sometimes I just crave french fries, you know? (The same way I crave chocolate, if you can believe that.) The problem was that I didn’t have any french fries in the freezer. I then realized…
A few days ago, my friend Shannon expressed a longing via her Facebook status for that estranged cousin of the brownie: the blondie. In an answering comment on her page, I promised to unearth my blondie recipe just for her. That night, I rifled through my cookbook shelf and found it: a small, stapled booklet…