Back porch garden

After several rounds of failed herbs and flowers over the course of the year, our miniature back porch garden is now blooming with sage, spearmint, basil, and lavender. 

The basil has already been put to use on a number of fresh caprese plates, but the fragrant sage is itching to complement a sheet pan of roasted chicken and vegetables.

My visions for the flowering lavender are less clear, but I'm thinking about a lavender honey, a lavender lemonade, and a lavender citrus shortbread. Sweet and savory ideas welcome.

Chocolate orange cakes

Chocolate, vanilla bean cakes with a Valencia orange peel, sour cream, cream cheese frosting.

And also, in fact, the first tray of decorating I've ever done!

Kitchen life continues

It's been just over one year since I decided to move permanently to California. I suppose I'm a bit late to report, but this has been a year of crowded farmers markets overflowing with California produce, biking to school on my blue cruiser, potted herbs on our little porch (though I also managed to maim two rounds before this one bloomed), much dining out, and, of course, a new kitchen. This kitchen, like those before it, is full of light.

Palo Alto, California

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Charlottesville, Virginia

I'm noticing now that it's actually been four years of radio silence and six years since I started writing in the first place. That actually means that this blog is something I've owned longer than many things in my life. For context, the baby on the purple birth announcement on my fridge in Charlottesville is now very much a little girl. 

I plan to be more diligent this year.

Haymarket

I just spent the last ten minutes scraping gluten-free french bread dough from in between my fingers and from the cracks in my signet where the antiquing would have been.  The would-be loaf is sitting on top of the stove taking its sweet time rising, so I thought I'd write. 

Let me put the bread in the oven.

In the last week I made the move to New England, which brought with it new markets to be explored.

Today around noon, LH and I traversed the city by T to brave our way to Haymarket, an open-air produce market with dirt cheap surplus.  As she had warned me, it wasn't a site for the faint of heart.  With a duffle bag strapped to my side, green bags in both hands, and my wallet clutched severely under my elbow, we pushed our way through the sweaty crowds, all swarming for $6 boxes of Haitian mangoes and 50 cent bunches of bananas.  $1 bunches of green asparagus and five pound bags of $2 sweet potato.  Cash only.  Count your change.  And your fingers for that matter. 

Amid the loud Asian, Hispanic, and Middle Eastern merchants were the much louder, much pushier natives (read: Bostonians), effectively slapping customer's wrists with their jeers any time someone tried to hand-pick their own produce instead of accepting what was given to them from the underbelly of the stand.  At one stand, a somewhat swarthy merchant made bets to passersby.  "Try this strawberry.  If it's not sugar sweet, I'll pay you $20!  I'll pay you $40!"  Beyond the noises were the smells.  As you pushed through the market, you wafted between the aroma of those summer-ripe berries and, more unfortunately, the somewhat putrid, distinct smell of rotting vegetable. 

Off to the side were the indoor markets, somewhat more permanent than the weekend market they girded.  A fish market next to a Halal butcher ("Have your next goat slain here") next to a grain store next to a cheese shop.  Each of these indoor markets seemed to beckon from below, with a set of stairs leading down into each one.

$15 later and I could barely waddle back to the T.  LH dragged a suitcase behind her.  Needless to say this is my new favorite thing to do on a weekend in Boston.  

The bread is done.  It's not exactly French Bread, but I'm not exactly French.  It looks and feels and tastes and smells like bread.  And it has no flour in it.  Success.

Kitchen life

I always had a fantasy of being a chef, because I like kitchen life.

In between digs right now, I'm missing my own, cozy kitchen.  Until the heat was switched off for summer a month ago, I would start my early weekend days with my knees leaned up against my heating unit, sipping strongly caffeinated tea and staring out onto the grass until my tea kettle started to boil.  When I popped open the rickety, wooden window, the apartment became suddenly fresh and chilly.  I would put on some music and make breakfast.  My Opa visited recently and told me the windows were bayerish (Bavarian), meaning they were big enough for a boyfriend to sneak in or me to sneak out.  They were big, at any rate.  Four feet wide.  

I'll cut the nostalgia though.  There was, of course, also plenty of food in the kitchen.  It will be August before I'm settled again (this time in an admittedly and significantly more northern locale).  But I'm excited for my new kitchen!