I was a latch-key kid. But please, don’t feel sorry for me– I loved the time alone. There was something so settling about a quiet house to come to, with no one pestering me about schoolwork that had yet to be completed. The school bus would drop me off just houses away from where I lived, and I would trudge home, appropriately exhausted. After dumping all of my books, and stacks of handouts, in a basket near the front door, I would make a bee-line for the pantry.
If the pantry were the refrigerator, surely my mother would have reprimanded me for standing in front, letting all of the cold air out. I gazed at the various packages of food for what seemed like hours. Sometimes I would have some cereal, a replay of my morning meal. At times a can of [...]

Well, it was time to do a little spring cleaning, or windy, snowy January cleaning as it may be. In its older iteration, this blog served me well, as a place to post what I have been cooking in the kitchen– and it still is. But I thought that it could use a bit of face-lifting, donning a new outfit to get the year off to a good start. You know how it is, sometimes you need a brand new dress to wear in order to face all of the exciting tasks at hand.
So I hope that you enjoy the newer, slicker, more streamlined version of Nosheteria. Have a wonderful New Year, here is to a fabulous 2009!
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I always buy all of the November food magazines. I like to see what menus the editors have planned for the gluttonous holiday, Thanksgiving. Sometimes I find a recipe for yams that looks tempting, or a new way to shred my brussels sprouts, but usually I stick to the tried and true standbys that I love to make each fall. What can I say? I am a traditionalist. But the magazines stay dog-eared, pages crumpled beside my bedside table for the whole month of November.
But this November was different. Amongst the recipes for Fennel, Red Onion and Focaccia Stuffing, which I won’t be making, I saw a recipe for homemade ricotta cheese in Food and Wine magazine. Well, I love a good project. And if that project involves a mess of milk, a bit of cream, and not a whole lot else, well– [...]

Have you ever had one of those moments, maybe you were cleaning out your closet, and discovered that old blue sweater in the back recesses that you never really wore when you bought, but trying it on now, years later, it fits beautifully, and is warm and soft– precisely what you have been looking for. Or maybe you have finally found the ideal ball point pen, just narrow enough to make a serious stroke yet fluid enough so that it has a bit of caché. Well that’s sort of how I feel about my latest discovery.
Branston Pickle Relish is hardly a new product to any Brit out there. But for me, an American with more of a, shall we say, austere palate– it was a revelation. It all started a few months ago, as I was getting ready to leave New York. I had dinner in [...]

Things are changing around here. Do you see that stack of papers above? That is my manuscript, fresh from the editor. I know I’ve been tardy and rather delinquent in posting lately, but this unedited manuscript means that I’m going to be even more tardy and more delinquent. I gotta turn this baby around in a few weeks. And…did I also mention that Brian and I are moving? Well, we’re moving. When it rains it pours.
With all of this commotion, it seems like a good idea for Nosheteria to take a brief summer vacation. So, I will be writing to you in a few short weeks, with a newly-edited manuscript from my new home in the Nutmeg State. Bear with me.
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Everybody has a story to tell. I suppose that is why blogs are so popular; it can be liberating to tell a tale. But what about food blogs? They might be about sharing recipes, from my table to yours, but they are also about the story behind the cook.
In this month’s issue of Natural Health there’s a story all about my life in the kitchen. Why would they ask me, a regular old food blogger to write a story for their magazine? Well, I have an unusual tale to tell and, in the interest of complete disclosure, here it is:
When I was 21 years old, just finishing up college, I suffered a hemorrhagic stroke due to an arteriovenous malformation (AVM). It left me completely paralyzed on the right side of my body. The next few years were a blur, of doctors, of therapists, of rehabilitation, and of frustration.
So what [...]

There are times when going out to eat can inspire great cooking at home. I went out for tapas with some friends recently. We had plates of serrano ham, thick fried potatoes with a garlicky aioli, roasted baby brussels sprouts swimming in earthy olive oil, and chewy baguettes filled with spicy tuna, and hard-cooked egg. What can I say, we feasted.
We also had a plate of roasted grapes. A fruity side dish that was definitely not my favorite dish of the evening, and I will tell you why. They were beautiful and plump, wrinkled slightly like a sigh, sitting tightly in clusters– these grapes were begging me to try them. So I did, plucking one from the bunch. And you know what? They were cold! I’m not talking slightly cool, these grapes had been sitting in the fridge for hours. [...]

Sometimes you just get a certain food stuck in your head, or maybe it is more apt to say, stuck in your stomach. Like a nagging craving, the flavor is gnawing at you like a dog gnaws on a prized bone. I have always been one to give into these cravings. I figure, if your body is crying out for precious food– give it what it wants! This is of course assuming that what your body is crying out for is not an entire pint of Fudge Ripple ice cream or a large, oozy pizza, extra anchovies.
I have been thinking a lot about beets lately, in all of their many incarnations. Roasted, steamed, boiled, sauteed, or shredded. Beets have become my Fudge Ripple ice cream. I know, I know, you’re probably saying, “Beets? Beets? Come on, you have got to be kidding me. Now this girl is going to wax [...]

Before Brian became my husband, he was my forever boyfriend. No, he was not my high school sweetheart, but I did meet him when I was still in college. So, he robbed/saved me from regaling you with horrific dating stories, of scrambling around trying to find a date for some holiday party or another. But I do have one.
I was 18, had just moved out from under my parents roof, and I had my first real, honest-to-goodness boyfriend. A Frenchmen we’ll call M. With a penchant for fast-talking, heavy black framed glasses, and a haircut like Tin Tin, M was the man of my post-adolescent dreams. We met on the subway, and a romance was quickly born. We lasted a handful of months, one of which was December, that month of candy canes, egg nog, and holiday parties.
I brought M home with me [...]

I moved from Berkeley to New York in August, that sticky month of the year, when the city smells like the armpit of a sweaty construction worker, and you really wish that it were permissible to just run around the crowded streets in your underwear. But when Brian and I arrived, in typical Northern California fashion, we still had our light sweaters to ward off a chill in the evening. We learned quickly that a sweater was never needed in August in New York. And that same summer, I also learned about the wonders of seltzer water.
We had been in the city a total of two days. We were still waiting (not-so) patiently for our furniture, which had been sent ahead to arrive from California. We were sleeping on our new “Klik-Klak” sofa-cum-bed-cum-dining table-cum-coffee table-cum-every piece of furniture you would ever need. We Klik-ed [...]