Category Archives: Cooking

Soup and Salad, December

The longest, although perhaps not coldest, night of the year has passed. And tonight, as my daughter and I prepare our fête de Noël, we’ll be supping on soup and salad. As Brother Victor-Antoine d’Avila points out (borrowing from Shakespeare’s … Continue reading

Posted in Am reading, Cooking, NOT a food blog, Reading the Year, Soup and salad | Tagged | 6 Comments

Soup & Salad, September

It’s officially Autumn in the Northern Hemisphere, my favorite season of the year because it means summer is 9 months away, and I detest hot weather. I’d take a wintry wind over summer’s humidity, were I ever given the option. … Continue reading

Posted in Cooking, NOT a food blog, Reading the Year, Soup and salad | Tagged | 2 Comments

Soup & Salad, August

True confessions time, again. I’ve never, ever liked raw onions. Well into my 30s, I picked around scallions, scraped aside slices and large chunks of red or white onion, even eschewed onion chutney delivered with my Indian food take-out. The … Continue reading

Posted in Cooking, NOT a food blog, Reading the Year, Soup and salad | Tagged | 7 Comments

Soup & Salad, July

This was an unusual month, since the two soup recipes required me to buy something for which I will have no other use: dry sherry (see my intro to my May Soup and Salad post). Long ago, traveling in Spain, … Continue reading

Posted in Cooking, NOT a food blog, Reading the Year, Soup and salad | Tagged | 7 Comments

Soup and salad, June

True confessions time. One of this month’s recipes brought back a memory that contains a lesson for all. I’ll preface this story by pointing out that these events happened 47 years ago. I was very young and blinkered. Carrying my … Continue reading

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Soup and salad, May

Items you’ll never find in my pantry or refrigerator: Lima beans, asparagus, eggplant, black-eyed peas, rutabagas, celeriac, spaghetti squash, brandy, sherry. Yet I hasten to point out that I’m not a picky eater, because that list is pretty much the … Continue reading

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Soup and Salad, April

Brother d’Avila likes cooking with eggs, and not just because it’s spring. His book of salad recipes offers 45 salads that use eggs, nearly four per month, and many of his soup recipes call for beaten eggs or egg yolks. … Continue reading

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Soup and salad, March

As I continue with Brother Victor-Antoine’s soup and salad cookbooks, I’m beginning to suspect that the various recipes aren’t necessarily organized by seasonality of ingredients. This month’s recipes feature ingredients normally at their best in the fall (squash, potatoes, apples). … Continue reading

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Testing the water

Yes, it’s been a while. But I think I’ve licked my case of the “don’t-wants” (as in “I don’t want to …”), and I’m ready to take this thing on again. 2020 and 2021 were years for reading widely and … Continue reading

Posted in Am reading, Cooking, History, Memoir, Reading the Year | Tagged , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Hodgepodge

I’m cheating a bit here, with brief notes on what I’ve been reading, in between packing for summer vacation. For those of you interested in the history of cooking and eating, here’s a book not about food, but about implements: … Continue reading

Posted in Cooking, Fantasy, History, Memoir | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments