On a quiet day last fall I flipped to an article in the latest Harper’s entitled “American Electra: Feminism’s ritual matricide” It didn’t really seem like an uplifting topic, but I was pulled into reading. I often find discussions about feminism relevant to the topic of cooking and other disappearing domestic skills. It’s a tricky association [...]
For the past year I have had the pleasure to spend 15 hrs straight each week in the lovely kitchen of the Marin Headlands Center for the Arts assisting Eduardo Morrell in the production of his naturally leavened breads, which are sold primarily at the Berkeley Farmer’s Markets as “Morrell’s Bread”. The video below was [...]
Over the past few months I’ve changed my relationship with these sourdough beasties I’ve befriended to leaven and flavor my baked goods. I’ve both expanded the amount and variety of goods that I can make with them and I’ve let the little things be warm and active for longer periods. That is to say by [...]
Thursday, October 15, 2009
This summer I spent a lonely week with a terrible cold. I passed the time watching the first three seasons of Bewitched, the old sixties sitcom. I got through so many episodes because, as the show progressed, I felt like I was getting a different impression of Samantha Stevens than I had ever before (since [...]
Friday, September 11, 2009
We were on foot for four weeks. We never stayed in one place longer than an overnight. Staying around would have meant less time on foot and more time in a hitched ride or bus as we only had the four weeks to get from San Francisco to Portland. The 27 nights went by like [...]
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Last week I found myself in a strange rut of trying new things. That is I couldn’t be satisfied with an easy dinner standby and over and over kept trying new dishes that ended up not working out very well and taking a ton of time. I tried a slow roasted salmon which I don’t [...]
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
There is nothing like that validating feeling of when something you’ve done for years for out of necessity starts to become “a thing”. This is especially nice when the trend towards becoming “a thing” indicates something positive happening in the world. For me this is the appreciation of the tiny living, and more specifically [...]
My experience with so called “no-knead bread”, the article I got the recipe from, and your subsequent experience baking this bread is like an endless mirrors in mirrors of people wanting to make perfect “artisan bread” and then, yes, doing it in their own kitchen. It’s like some kind of carnival promise really coming true.
The [...]
