Photo: Courtesy of Art & Lemons

Yesterday, I told my boyfriend I had cake for dinner. Since I’ve been trying to get him to eat healthier, he blanched – “Cake? You’re tsking my Chinese food, and you had cake for dinner?” I explained that it was actually quite healthy – a whole grain, butter-free version of Smitten Kitchen’s mushroom crepe cake.

I’m happy to say that it looks like I’ll be having cake for dinner again quite shortly. No pink frosting for me – just this insane-looking, potato-mushroom mound that Art & Lemons’ Nikki Gardner made, served alongside some braised chickpeas (though, I must say – as satisfying as those chickpeas sound – in the shadow of the mound, don’t they seem so unnecessary?).

Dr. Atkins will be spinning in his grave, but it seems like a fairly healthy dish to me: veggies, just a little bit of cheese and only a tablespoon of oil per serving. Okay – half of that oil is butter. You could easily substitute some EVOO, if you’re finicky about that sort of thing. Plus, considering how impressive the dish looks, it all comes together fairly quickly – no long roasting necessary.

See, you really can have your cake and eat it, too! (Forgive me.) Get the recipe here.

Serve Yourself cover (Photo Ed Anderson © 2011)

All too often cooking for oneself is treated as little more than a necessary evil. But cooking solo doesn’t need to be a chore. It can be a pleasure and an art. After all, as Joe Yonan, the award-winning food editor for the Washington Post, writes in his new cookbook, Serve Yourself: Nightly Adventures in Cooking for One, “If you don’t feed yourself well, who will?”

The book offers a delicious array of dishes that will have you feeding yourself very well indeed. Yonan knows his subject and from more than personal experience. He’s been writng a column called “Cooking For One” at the Post for several years. His book features sophisticated recipes for chutneys, fruit jams, frittatas, Yucatan slow-roasted pork, a mouthwatering assortment of tacos (with homemade tortillas, and a spicy coconut sorbet.

In addition, there are helpful shopping tips and a guide to stocking and storing ingredients geared for the single chef, but which are useful to pretty much any cook.

I caught up with Yonan by email recently to ask him about the book and the challenges and joys of cooking for oneself. Continue reading →

Photo: Pouregon/Flickr

Do you love Oregon wines?

BostonZest does, especially those of vintner Rollin Soles of Argyle Winery, who was pouring his wines for the tasting at Bauer’s on Newbury Street this past weekend.

Catch BostonZest’s interview with this Willamette Valley winemaker HERE. This is a man who loves what he does.

Photo: stevendepolo/Flickr

As I write this, it is windy and wet outside. And while summer is all too apparently a long way away, it’s still perfect weather for a little homemade ice cream.

At Diary of Locavore you’ll find a recipe for maple ice cream that is about as simple and lovely as it comes. There are just three ingredients: whole milk, cream, and maple syrup.

It’s a basic formula that can be tweaked as per your bliss (infusing the milk with ginger, using a different sweetener, etc.) and, during the rainy days of April, you’ll have plenty of time to perfect your personal favorite flavor in preparation for sunnier days.

“Hello!” began my email. “I’m a reporter with WBUR’s Public Radio Kitchen.” A simple and understandable identity – unlike, I was beginning to suspect, the person I was chatting with.

His name is Joshua Ploeg. He is currently “based in Mexico, abou 20 min. south of Tijuana in Rosarito.” He is the vegan author of In Search of the Lost Taste, a cookbook and adventure zine  printed through Microcosm Publishing.

What’s a zine, you ask? Basically, it’s a small and often handmade magazine – but really, it’s much more than that. Wikipedia traces zines back to revolutionary pamphlets like Thomas Paine’s Common Sense – a lofty beginning, but not an entirely unaccurate one. They are strongly tied to punk movements – in particular, the early 1990s riot grrl scene. Apparently, every small liberal arts campus had a couple of radical girls who would cut-and-paste together earnest articles about rock bands and feminism.

You’d think the internet would have wiped these curious publications out – and you’d probably be right, for the most part. But Microcosm Publishing’s zines have persisted – maybe because its headquarters is in hippie-dippy Portland, or maybe because of 90s nolstagia, or maybe because there’s something really neat about exploring someone else’s small and personal passions.

I’d like to think that this was the reason I requested the zine distributer’s $20 “I Like Food! Food is Good!” superpack – a collection of mostly politically radical books about food. Continue reading →

Photo: aMichiganMom/Flickr

Is anyone else petrified of the pressure cooker? My husband brought a vintage version back from Florida and I’ve been pretty intimidated. All of that undefined whistling, that guess-o-logy of when and how. I’m getting over it–but it’s been slow. Ellen Allard of Gluten Free Diva is one of those food bloggers that’s helping with my process.

In her latest post, she proselytizes about pressure cooking. And I’m listening.

Check out her recipe for pressure cooker quick & easy chicken soup.

Photo: Jen from Beantown Baker

A beautiful thing happened yesterday. I was walking out of work and in front of the building sat a cupcake truck – probably the best sort of food truck a girl like me could see on a Thursday. Or Friday. Or Saturday.

I thought it couldn’t get any better. That is, until I came across Cupcake Week on a lovely baking blog! Jen at Beantown Baker cooked up cupcakes galore with recipes like Margarita and Piña Colada cupcakes. The ones I’m really excited about, though, are the Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cupcakes.

I think Jen read my mind. Cookies + Cupcakes could make anyone happy. If you’ve still a frown after you have a cupcake filled with a scoop of cookie dough finished with brown sugar buttercream…well, hmmm. Your only other hope is to run into a cupcake truck outside of work.