food

Eating without a Kitchen

Okay, people. We’ve been down a kitchen now for almost a week, and I’ve discovered that cold cereal, while generally awesome for me, doesn’t quite cut it for the family day after day. Especially when it’s getting colder out, and people want actual hot meals. But Denisa has also discovered that cooking without a kitchen is . . . difficult to say the least. Right now, she’s got a set up with a hot plate on a card table. There’s not much in the way of prep surfaces, and perhaps the biggest problem is trying to clean everything in a

Adventures in Juicing

Several years ago, my brother-in-law was out and about exploring our property and came across a huge concord grape vine off in the jungle behind our house. It’s spread across a number of other trees and bushes, and ever since we discovered we had it, we’ve been tinkering around trying to figure out how best to use it. The grapes are delicious, but they have seeds. We thought we could use them for smoothies, but that hasn’t proven popular. (The seeds end up making things too bitter.) We made some simple canned juice from them (put grapes and sugar and

Hurray for Second Chances: Return of the Bundt Cake

Last Sunday, Daniela and I made another foray into co-baking, and it ended with a pretty spectacular fail. (I should have taken a picture of it, in hindsight. Just imagine a half-baked bundt cake plopped upside down into another pan, and then baked again. It was bad.) I’d say it left a bad taste in our mouth, but that would be a lie, since we ate it the rest of the week, and it tasted incredible. This week, Daniela wanted to give it another go. Not with a new recipe. With the same one we’d messed up the week before.

Adventures in Bundt Baking

Sunday, Daniela and I decided we wanted to make a cake for our Fourth of July dinner later that day. After debating the merits and proper “Americanness” of various cake and frosting combinations, we settled on a bundt cake (because we hadn’t made one before) that would be chocolate with a peanut butter filling. How hard could it be? (Note: When you’re setting out to try something new in baking, the phrase “how hard could it be?” should usually tip you off that it will, in fact, be much harder than you think. Because “how hard could it be?” doesn’t

My Orange Juice Approved List

Call me a purist, but when it comes to orange juice, there are only a few ways that I think you should consume it. In fact, it would be easy to assume a post like this doesn’t even need to be written. But then I come across people who are using orange juice in decidedly unapproved ways, and I just can’t remain silent. It is my obligation–no, my duty–to speak out. Case in point: Saturday, I came into the kitchen to see one of my children eating granola. Nothing wrong there. Good old fashioned crunchy goodness, right? Except they were