Today I conclude my recipe testing. At least the recipe testing for my book. It has been a long windy journey, full of twists and turns. Full of pretty, tasty things… Full of ugly, horrid things… Full of strange happenings… Full of outright kitchen drama… Nevertheless, I have survived, with only a shard of glass in my foot as a battle wound, and the near fatal loss of a pork loin. And I […]
Grandma Frances Pellegrini invited me and my brother Gordon over for dinner recently. On the menu was chickpea and tomato soup among other things… She has a very special soup terrine that looks very lovely with soup in it. It dresses up even the simplest of soups. I have a feeling it has been in this house since her mother (my great-grandmother) lived here… but I’m not sure… I think […]
I can’t really tell you where they came from. All I’ll say is that I may or may not have smuggled them from Provence. I may or may not have loved them so much in the restaurant garden that I worked in, that I may or may not have dried the seeds on the windowsil of my rundown house and tucked them into my suitcase and brought them back to the […]
I want to share with you the strange things that are coming out of my garden. This carrot for example, which looks like a chicken: Or this scale-tipping carrot…a 1.125 pounder. There was a 1.5 pounder even, but I ate it. I turned it into carrot soup. I never think of carrot soup except in the moment that I’m eating it. And in that moment I ask myself why I don’t think […]
Another milestone this week at Tulipwood! The gals are starting to lay eggs! Can you believe it? It feels like just a few months ago that I was posting pictures of these tiny little things, and they are now laying eggs? Well, at least one of them is…. and they are very tiny. Look at them compared to one of Lucy’s eggs: They are called pullet eggs, and are the first eggs that young hens lay… […]
The coolest thing I’ve seen in recent months… … is a father teaching his daughter how to properly clean a bird for dinner. Wanting her to understand what it is to be a meat eater and how to be a fair and honest meat eater at that. Hunting is not about male bonding in the woods anymore… it’s about understanding how to participate in nature, how to hunt for food, take only […]
Do you like my pumpkin? It was designed by a talented artist named T. Kristian Russell. In fact, it looks a lot like one of his recent works, don’t you think? Or this one… It’s the first pumpkin I’ve seen with a legitimate nose. I think it looks like Picasso… a very snazzy pumpkin. Once I pulled out all of the wet orange goo from the insides, I roasted the […]
These are some very fine treats. The kind of thing that leaves a lasting impression. The kind of thing that becomes seared into your mind the moment your teeth chomp down on that first bite and the sweet, salt, and tang begin to crawl along your taste buds. That is why they are called Devils on Horseback I suppose… they gallop along your tongue, too good to be good. I […]
In preparation for my book… I’ve been testing out quite a lot of recipes. These I like to call “Bananas Foster Cupcakes,” because they celebrate cream and rum and cake in three lavish bites. (There’s cream inside!) I’ve discovered that to get a truly unbiased opinion on a recipe, it is best to set it in the kitchen of an anonymous office where people whisk in to grab a diet Mountain […]
Loretta has been through a thing or two. Even though she doesn’t live with the other chickens, she has stories to tell. After she was beaten up a few times by Buster, she had to start living closer to people, so that we could keep an eye on her and so the Rhode Island reds wouldn’t beat her up on the playground. But as a result, she gets to see […]