Featured Recipe Blogs

In the Woods

This weekend we packed up cars with coolers and tents, filled water bottles and bought sunscreen. Stoves and fishing poles were procured, firewood and flashlights. We headed east, over the mountains, past peaks and lakes and through small towns. Until we found ourselves in the forest, at a campsite. I recently wrote ... more

Pro Series: The What and Why of a Book Proposal

When I started working in the publishing industry I read book proposals. In more than one of my early jobs, I was the first person to lay eyes on a proposal when it came through the door. People, I have seen a lot of book proposals. Thousands of them. I am sometimes ... more

It Has Begun

As I got in my car to leave the garden the other day, a thought popped into my head. We’ve turned this place into a berry plantation. Mind you, it wasn’t a bad thought. Who wouldn’t want a berry plantation? I had just spent the afternoon planting beans in the semi-circle ringed by ... more

Climbing Mountains

Have you ever found something that makes you feel free, makes you feel strong, makes you feel more YOU than anything else? For me that is hiking and camping and backpacking. Ever since I was thirteen and my mom sent me to backpacking camp against my will (thanks, mom), ... more

Crackers, Dips, Kindness

A little over two years ago I received the tin you see above in the mail. It came from Ivy Manning, a fellow-food writer who lives in Portland. I must have mentioned to her that I was feeling ill, because she decided to send me a care package. By ... more

Its Name is Shakshuka

Shakshuka, shakshuka, the name is hard to beat. Shakshuka, shakshuka, is awfully good to eat. [Have you seen The Music Man? I sing this to the tune of Shipoopi.] I can’t say I’ve known Shakshuka long, but I suspect we are going to spend quite a bit of time together ... more

It Never Occurred to Us

I grew up in the country, in the rolling golden hills of West Marin. There were creeks that flowed through our town, woods where animals lived, trees to climb, places to hide, and you could spend all day exploring, picking blackberries, or trying to catch waterskeeters with your bare hands. We did ... more

Field Trip: WSU Discovery Garden

Monday of this week found me in the car heading north, Seattle suburbs giving way to open fields, farmhouses, barns: the Skagit Valley. About an hour north of the city is the farmland that helps feed us, and a lot of other people too. This is berry country, known for its ... more

Love Water Memory (and Salad)

If there is one thing I’ve learned about writing it is this: writing may be a solitary pursuits, but having a writing career requires community, it requires support, you cannot do it alone. One of the best things for my writing life this past year has been getting involved with other writers ... more

The sprouting life

I love reading about polar exploration. No idea why, but I find accounts of bewhiskered Victorians tramping through the ice eating their shoes endlessly fascinating. All the more so now that I live within shouting distance of the Arctic Circle.I was reading about William Edward Parry, and how he kept his crew ... more

Picnic season

Picnic season is here. It doesn't matter if you are in the "sit on a nettle, eating a wasp" camp or constantly babble "everything tastes better outdoors". Like it or not, at some point between now and the end of September you will be balancing a sandwich on your knee. ... more

Salad

Better weather, sunshine, the first timid buds showing...spring is late this year, but it will come, eventually.A meal of salad, paté and toast, with some rhubarb and custard at the end, is perfect.The crayons and pencils and watercolours come outdoors after a whole winter inside, and so we ... more

Lentils, pressure cooked.

I guess now is not a very good time to convince people that pressure cookers are perfectly safe, convenient little gizmos that don't explode. They really don't, you know, unless you make them. But I can see that the image problem is not likely to go away, so I suggest we call them express ... more

Back to blogging

Hello dears.I've been away for a month and during all that time I would think "oh, I have to do a post about this" but then I'd forget, or I'd have to meet a deadline, or I'd rush off to the other end of the Mediterranean, or I'd go to a wedding, or ... more

Off to Sicily

New readers, enjoy my Sicilian posts of last year. Old readers, take another look and tell me how lucky I am to be going again to the Anna Tasca Lanza cookery school. Béa of La Tartine Gourmande is doing a workshop. You will never see buckets ... more

Cocido Madrileño

Cocido means boiled. It sounds simple, and it is. Hunks of meat, a bunch of chickpeas, some vegetables, water, time. Everywhere where there are pots and pans and beans and bones there is some sort of cocido.However, half the point of cocido, or puchero, or potaje, berza, olla, fabada, caldo or escudella, whatever you ... more

Paris

Tartare, originally uploaded by Lobstersquad.Aren't you glad I'm going to spare you a bunch of fuzzy edged high contrast yellowed out Instagram pics?I don't even have any sketches, because it was very cold and stopping for even a second was impossible. We walked and ... more

Business Cards

Business Cards, originally uploaded by Lobstersquad.I'm off to Paris, to the Gourmand cookbook fair. Just as a spectator. But because you never know, I've made a batch of business cards to take with me. Handmade, since moo.com offers so many choices that in the end I couldn't ... more

My favourite 5 minute meal

Not that I want to fetishize speed. No sense in that. It may be fun to see Jamie Oliver run around like a wet hen making a 15 minute chicken bolognese, just like it's entertaining to watch a fully grown man lock himself into a briefcase.  Not to be tried at home, but ... more

Dill-Cucumber Cole Slaw

I recently bought the cookbook Smitten Kitchen. I follow the blog, and Deb is  a wonderful writer so I had high hopes for the book. Well, let's just say I am not disappointed. At all. The book is beautiful, and Deb's texts are as good as ... more