morsels & sauces

In this  Cook Your Books  series, I have chosen 15 books to read in 2017 based on somewhat arbitrarily chosen categories. While we're well into 2018, I did finish reading this book last year--these posts take longer than I anticipate. My theory (bogus it might turn out to be) is that all 15 of these books will somehow connect to food.  And I plan to write about that food.   It turns out that these entries are a sort of long-form blog-post. So settle in.   This twelfth installment is an Oprah's Book Club Selection. Oh, this book is brutal. Sexism, rape, systematic racial injustice, torture, cruelty. Compassion, community, family, love, magic realism, metaphor. Certainly,  Ruby  by Cynthia Bond was all the talk of the Oprah airwaves in 2015, and I chose it for this twelfth installment. And what a whirlwind it was. The book opens with Ruby Bell wetting herself in the street as the men circle on a center-of-town porch, jeering and j...

In this  Cook Your Books  series, I have chosen 15 books to read in 2017 based on somewhat arbitrarily chosen categories. My theory (bogus it might turn out to be) is that all 15 of these books will somehow connect to food. And I plan to write about that food.  And it turns out that these entries are a sort of long-form blog-post. So settle in. This seventh installment is a book published in 1917 . Where there is a fallen woman, there is usually an apple.  Even for the venerable Edith Wharton. In Wharton's little novel  Summer , published exactly 100 years ago, Wharton likes to talk about eating. A lot. She is not particular about the food, itself. But eating--well, eating and its environs take center stage. Eating becomes a place of transaction.  And apples, both in their pie and in their unsliced, unsugared, and unbaked forms, show up a lot .  But then again, we've got a fallen woman, the Fourth of July, and New England. Seems just about ri...

Do you really need a recipe for this salad? Not really. Do you sometimes need a nudge to eat better for yourself than you have been? Probably. Or at least I know I sometimes do. Consider this your nudge. This Cobb Salad from the fine folks at Food52  claims to be a rebellious kiss off to the more traditional Cobb Salad. And sure, perhaps it is. Normally a classic Cobb Salad would have tomatoes, chicken (or turkey), bacon, and iceberg lettuce. So, I suppose this is a nice riff on the Cobb Salad, wherein the beets stand in for all things meat based, olives make a briny appearance, and the dressing has eggs blended right into it, rather than just having your hard-boiled eggs scattered across the top of your shredded lettuce and cubed chicken.  Bonus:  The beets get their own vinegar infusion during the steaming process. So while they are not truly pickled beets (a favorite around these here parts), they have a little zing to them. Which I always appreciate. ...

Life has been complicated as of late.  From switching jobs again to moving homes, from having our new home burglarized (man, oh man!) to a quick visit back to Illinois, my personal world has been somewhat hectic. (The burglary was scary, but everyone's okay, including the cats. And we're still in the annoyance of figuring out insurance. No one was home and the damage was, all things considered, minimal.)  I could say something pat that this is an uncomplicated dish in response to a complicated world, but I think this dish is a little more nuanced than that as were the experiences of the past three months. But one still needs good food even when trying to figure out insurance itemizations. From Tara Brady's  Seven Spoons , these baked eggs  have some complicated spice mixtures. It is similar to   shakshuka , and I can get behind anything that pairs eggs, tomatoes, and spices.  When I was young, I used to make scrambled eggs with every s...