Oct 30
One bite of a pumpkin cheesecake sample at Trader Joe’s last week and my pumpkin spice floodgates burst wide open. I’d been sort of inadvertently avoiding it all fall, but it’s nearly impossible to walk around in fall wonderland of the Midwest and ignore the most potent of fall flavor profiles. And when some quick googling told me I could easily work some pumpkin puree into granola, my path was set. Read more
Apr 18
It comes as a surprise to no one, especially me, that Aldo starting to eat solid foods has been one of the most rewarding and fun parts of this whole ordeal. (Can you call having a baby and raising it for nearly eight months an “ordeal”? That seems simultaneously too negative and way too casual. Like I’d need at least 10,000 more words to describe what it’s like, but a decent percentage of them would be way more positive than “ordeal.”)
Also unsurprisingly, a lot of people ask me what he’s eating and what our general philosophy is on how and what he eats. Baby led weaning? Homemade? How quickly to introduce allergens? What to introduce and when? The way we’ve gone about it is a fairly good indicator for how we’ve done most things as parents – do some reading, pick and choose the elements we like to form a generalized plan, then see what works and what doesn’t, reformulating the plan nearly on a dime as needed. If there’s anything I’ve learned it’s that you can’t go into anything with too many expectations or being too rigid, because this fantastic little guy is actually a human, and he has plenty of his own thoughts and preferences.
And through everything (and we’re not just talking about food here, but also sleep, and play, and everything else he does), I get more and more of this sense that he’s going to be just fine. We can provide a general structure, but as long as we go with our intuition and take note of the signals he sends us, it’ll all work out okay. Read more
As the holidays approach, I can sense a growing anxiety in the conversations about food that I have with other people. From simple office potlucks to special holiday feasts and everything in between, this time of year can be particularly taxing for folks who start to feel overwhelmed by what needs to come out of their kitchens. There’s pressure to make something exciting and to keep up with traditions, to make things that feel special, and to get it all right, even when you’ve maybe never made the dish before. Sharing and enjoying food you’ve made can be one of life’s best moments, but it’s easy to let anxiety build and overshadow the experience. I get that; it happens to me too.
What’s my advice for overcoming it? Oh boy. It’s woven through my classes and through all the conversations I have with anxious home cooks, but it would take a bit of thinking and a fair amount of time to write it all out – and we all know this isn’t a time of year prone to excess time hanging around. So for now, I’ll just leave you with a secret weapon – a caramelized apple Dutch baby.
It’s been a bit rough around here lately – at one point I was nursing two injuries and two forms of illness, all at the same time – and along with work and school and everything else, we haven’t been cooking as much as we normally do. I did make a really fantastic pizza last week – pesto, mozzarella, kale, chicken, and artichoke hearts on a whole wheat crust – and hopefully soon I’ll be posting here about that. But really, considering the doozy of a month we have ahead of us, don’t be surprised if there’s a bit of radio silence in these parts.
To get you by, some baked eggs:
Feb 19
When I wrote a few weeks back about how much I love the slow mornings we try to wrest out of our week, I heard from many of you that you love these mornings as well, and that you too work hard to wrest them out of your weeks. This tells me two things – first, that we need more of the quiet mornings and less of the wresting, and second, that we have a special love for the food we eat in the mornings, whether they’re slow or fast. We each have foods we eat to make our mornings, perhaps in an attempt to steer the rest of the day in a direction to our liking, and we hold these foods with special regard, whether they’re routine or more improvised. As far as I’m concerned, breakfast is the official opening to the day regardless of when it’s eaten, and I generally put a good amount of intention into what I choose.
If you’d like to open the day in a particularly lovely way, these waffles might be the ticket.
My name is Bowen and I'm a cooking instructor/food writer/home cook in Seattle, WA. I'm dedicated to community-based food systems that nourish people and planet alike, and this site is an extension of my kitchen - seasonal, fresh food and cocktails made with heart (and sometimes an indecent amount of olive oil) to share with friends and loved ones.
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