Sometime this year

August and September:

Apricots poached with riesling and vanilla bean (from Molly). A snowstorm is purportedly on the way tomorrow. Apricots seem like such a distant memory now.

Sometime last year

I had a couple of weeks where I was really on a roll with dinner, and I remembered to pull out the Bronica to document these rare events. But all the dust accumulating in the apartment thwarted my efforts to scan the negatives myself, so the developed rolls just sat. And sat. And sat. Until! Last week, on a very good tip from Brian, I found a guy who could fix my problem. (In this town, there is always a guy who can fix your problem.) (Thanks, Brian!)

Chowder head

I took the heap of shells leftover from making the delicious pan-barbecued shrimp from The Essential New York Times Cookbook and made shrimp stock.

Liquid summer

The summer just after we graduated college (11 years ago!), J, A, and I lived together in a dorm room. I was staging at a fancy French restaurant, working garde manger, and scooping ice cream and banging out espresso drinks and preparing to move to NYC for my Saveur internship. At home we were eating Kozy Shack rice pudding by the truckload. I had just discovered gazpacho and couldn’t stop making it. This might be the first time I’ve made it since, and I’m not sure why it’s taken so long because I still love the stuff.

Seaward

This recipe is a welcome addition to the repertoire.

The Swiss know what they’re doing

When Carl first wrote about muesli around these parts almost exactly two years ago, I frankly wasn’t particularly eager to make some myself.

Date night (and day and afternoon and morning and any time)

Every time I’m in San Francisco, I make a point of stopping by the Ferry Building farmers’ market, and I usually end up bringing something back. But this was the first time that, months after a visit, I actually requested that Joyce pick something up for me and mail it. (Thanks, Joyce!)

Nights and weekends

These last few months work has kept us both busy, often late into the evening. We like to make and eat dinner together, though, which means that we don’t usually sit down at the table until 9 or 10pm. But we’ve gotten better at meal planning and coordinating and relying less on delivery and takeout and prepared items.

Sometimes that means having sauteed mustard and turnip greens with a fried egg and duck liver pâté on toast.

A second time

The first time I tried to make red wine vinegar, I used the very large (2 gallon, I think) crock you see in the background, and the exposed surface area was just too great: most of the alcohol evaporated before the mother could really get going, and instead of fermentation, I had a seriously bad case of mold. My only recourse was to throw the whole thing out. I kept the crock, obviously.

Small fry

As part of the Try New Things Project, I’ve been buying and cooking more little fish.