In various aspects of life, I have experts that I trust implicitly. Ialways look at the Wirecutter first for product reviews. I didn’t miss Obama’s summer reading list. And in cooking, I just do whatever Kenji says. Mostly. I appreciate that Kenji believe that taste is subjective and that you should always experiment, but more […]
I think most of my almond cookie consumption as a child was from Chinese buffets. After a plate or two of regular food, I would take a break, then go for a mix of canned fruit, surprisingly solid jello, and a few almond cookies. And a bowl of soft serve ice cream with too many […]
I love buying loose bananas. I’m not picky about how ripe or bruised my bananas are, so I’m happy to pay just a half or quarter of the price. The extra bananas go into my freezer, which make great smoothies and banana bread. For many years, banana bread was my go-to baked good. It’s easy […]
Among the everything that changes when having a baby, I have discovered whole new areas of retail just under my nose. A few months ago, I learned there was a Carters two doors down from the game store I went to every other week. I had driven and walked by it time and time again […]
Throughout this year of baking cookies, Julie has been happily sampling and rating all of the cookies. It’s tough to do exact head-to-head comparisons, but we have come up with tiers to give us some sense of which we like more. So far, I have observed a few trends. First, chocolate chip cookies are all […]
I used to think that if cooking was like art, baking was like science. In cooking, there’s some creativity and flair to standing over a pot or pan and figuring out how to make the best dish. In baking, it’s better to follow the recipe with precision of measurements to get exactly the desired results. […]
Despite all of the changes in social media and content creation over the past 15 years, I still follow a few blogs by RSS. I started on Google Reader in high school following mostly tech and gaming news, but when I started cooking on my own, I added in a few baking blogs as well. […]
I love watching cooking shows. Many cooking shows instruct the viewers on how to make an easy breezy dinner for four in twenty minutes or a eye popping dessert for your next potluck. But to be honest, rarely do viewers actually make the recipes. We all know it’s way more difficult than it looks, and […]
The world is filled with great, varied ethnic cuisines: a Mediterranean salad instantly conjures a different set of ingredients and flavors from an Asian salad. A Hungarian stew is completely unlike an Indian stew. However, regional or ethnic naming has also been picked up in marketing and recipe making as a shorthand for minor variations […]
When we used the KonMari method to throw away everything that didn’t spark joy, we had a tough time deciding on our cookbooks. The obvious test for whether we liked a cookbook is how frequently we use it, but that wasn’t enough. Some had sentimental value. Others made for great aspirational cooking but were somewhat […]