Oh yes, I did!
Homemade Sriracha-lime mayonnaise, spicy, citrusy, and smooth. I may just be a mayo convert!

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Each season NPR.org selects its best cookbooks.
And guess what?
United States of Pie was chosen!
To read the article, and to see the other cookbooks selected, go here.

Do I like bacon? Yes.
Do I LOVE bacon? Not really.
Do I find it physically painful for throw away food? Absolutely.
Do I love a new cookbook? You betcha.
What about magazines? Sure thing.
When needed, do I take Metro-North Railroad? On occasion.
Do I then complain about my bum falling asleep due to the uncomfortable seats? Every time.
What do almost all of these questions have in common? They led to me the making of bacon jam.

Not being the type of person that is absolutely ga-ga for all things bacon, bacon jam is not the sort of preserve that I would normally make. But as with virtually any food, there is a story behind it– here’s mine.
I had gotten the new book, The Back in the Day Bakery Cookbook, a little while ago. (It’s very charming, by the way.) I enjoyed thumbing through it, trying to decide which recipe to try first. Fast-forward a few [...]

Here’s a post that I never thought that I would write. Mayonnaise. The name alone used to send shivers up my spine, and now? Now the shivers stop at my waist.
Several years ago, I decided that I had had enough of my food taboos. I had never been an overly picky eater, but there were certain foods that were off limits: raw tomatoes (cooked were fine), nuts (especially walnuts), lamb (too gamey) to name a few. Frankly, it was exhausting. Systematically, I began to force myself to eat all of the foods that I once detested. Before long, the foods that I once reviled, I loved. It really was as easy as that. I believe that disliking certain foods is simply a matter of ones palate being unfamiliar with those flavors. Once I had eaten enough ripe, juicy tomatoes, I began to appreciate the grassy flavor, and detected the sweet [...]

I recently taught an autumn pie class, and at the end of the course one of my students gave me a vintage Pennsylvania Dutch cookbook she had picked up at an estate sale. I had told the class that I have a fascination with heirloom cookbooks. The book was her thank you for teaching her to face her culinary fears of pie dough.
As I’ve looked through the book (it’s really more of a spiral-bound pamphlet), fascinated by the advice on how to make a meal out of so little, one recipe stuck out– noodles for soup.

When I was young, I remember my grandma, though not Pennsylvania Dutch, making the richest, most satisfying soup with her own homemade egg noodles. Any time she roasted a chicken, she always made stock from the carcass. She would drop off a large tupperware of the soup to my parents at work. The noodles were [...]

Do you know that song by Lionel Richie? “Stuck on you, got a feeling down deep in my soul…dah, dah, dah, Yes, I’m on my way–” (Hum the rest, because if you’re anything like me, you NEVER know the correct words to ANY songs.) Well, that song kept playing over and over in my head as I made this caramel corn.

Making this caramel corn was a sticky endeavor. But it is delicious!
With autumn comes no more humidity on the East Coast. Yay! This means a variety of things are now possible for me. For one: pants. Now I can wear them and be comfortable. Not that I was going bottomless before, I was just much more likely to be in a dress or a skirt when it was sticky outside. I love girly clothes, but I also love my jeans.
Two: Dry air means not only is it possible to keep [...]

My word!  Is it August already?  Where is the summer heading to?
I had good intentions about blogging while I was in the Bay Area, I really did.  My days were full of family, friends, and food.  I know that sounds like the perfect thing to write about.  That’s sort of what Nosheteria is about, right? But, you know how it is– sometimes life just gets in the way of blogging!
It was good to be back in Berkeley though.  The restaurants, the markets, and yes, the politics.  I took this picture near my old apartment, not far from Berkeley Bowl– a market to beat all markets.  I’m guessing someone crawled up the billboard in order to leave their mark.  It’s kind of great.  Message received.

In Berkeley, some things never change.
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As the weather got progressively stickier along the Eastern sea board, I began to count down the days until our annual trip to California.  There may be heat in the sunshine state, and thick smog hanging over the San Fernando Valley, but there is one thing there is not– swampy humidity.  I can handle a little bit of dry heat any day!
When we touched down in Los Angeles about one week ago, I already was dreaming about the food destinations we would visit.  The Santa Monica Farmer’s Market, with its numerous vendors hocking summer stone fruit, and perfect heirloom tomatoes, Susan Feniger’s newest restaurant, Street, a culinary homage to street foods around the globe, and who can ignore, one of my favorite old standbys, Philipe’s, for a classic French dip.

Philipe’s is the supposed originator of the French dip sandwich– a traditional roasted meat sandwich where the bread is dipped in [...]

My step grandmother always called them tor-till-a chips, with the second syllable rhyming with hill. She lived in Missouri, but was born, and lived for the first half of her life in Germany. She was rather persnickety, and very set in her ways. When I was a child, my mother and I flew out to Missouri one summer for a visit. She rented me a stack of Ramona video tapes from the library, and tried to fill her house with kid-friendly snacks– like tor-till-a chips. As Hedy was showing me the snacks she said, “And here, I bought you some tor-till-a chips.” I looked at her inquisitively and said, “You mean tor-tee-ya chips, right?” But it made no difference. Her house, her pronunciation.
Over the next week, I made a big deal whenever I would go to kitchen cabinet to get a [...]

Last Saturday, a dear friend dropped by unexpectedly and delivered a fabulous, edible present that was local– very local. It wasn’t honey, or fish caught in the Sound, it wasn’t even a vegetable that he had cared for and grown on his patio. It was something that he had foraged. I’m not even sure why, but this made it all the more exciting– I was thrilled! Inside an old shopping bag, was a jumble of dirty ramps, the roots still clinging to the rocky soil in which they were buried.
For those of you who are not familiar with ramps, they are also called wild leeks, but I think that they have a taste all their own. It is a bit like green garlic– delicate and highly fragrant. However, they are far too pungent to be eaten raw. But when cooked they are mellow and sweet, [...]