WE’VE DONE A LITTLE TRAVELING OVER THE HOLIDAYS AFTER ALL. A day trip to Milwaukee to see our daughter there and eat delicious takeout from The Vanguard. The Chef-driven bar and restaurant offers “an elevated approach to Milwaukee’s Beer and Brat tradition,” with house-made sausages that range from familiar to adventurous. All with the city’s signature friendliness and lack of attitude. Continue reading “Eating our way through the holidays”
WE WON’T BE TRAVELING FOR CHRISTMAS, and our kids won’t be coming here. Instead, we’ll be hunkering down. Still. Again. Waiting out the current surge and learning another letter of the Greek alphabet. We know we’re luckier than many others. Everyone is healthy and employed. Our weekly family Zoom dinners and daily phone calls and FaceTime are helping us stay close, feel together. Continue reading “Home for the holidays”
Sweet white miso adds delicious umami, sunflower and pumpkin seeds a nice crunch, to this not-to-sweet spin on banana bread. Recipe below.
WE LOVE BANANA BREAD. Blue Kitchen already has three different banana bread recipes, and to be honest, I was surprised that there were only three. Now there are four. Continue reading “A classic dessert bread gets a nutty, umami twist: Miso Banana Bread”
This hearty pot roast made with capers, onions, garlic and anchovies, Grillades à L’Arlésienne, comes from the South of France. Here, it gets an Instant Pot makeover. Recipe below.
OUR HANKERINGS FOR THIS DELICIOUS ROAST always come at the most inopportune times. As in when we don’t have two and a half hours for it to roast after we’ve done the simple prep work. So it was time for an Instant Pot makeover. Continue reading “Now Instant Pot-ready: Layered Pot Roast with Anchovies, Capers and Garlic”
Blueberries and sour cream are the basis of this modestly sweet cake a dessert, a breakfast treat, a mid-day pick-me-up. Recipe below.
WE ARE STILL BEING VERY CAUTIOUS THESE DAYS. We are not flying. We are not going into our offices. We are only going into shops and the library and other public places when they are relatively empty. We aren’t going to bars at all, which is so sad. But we are still seeing people, with great care, as we wait out what looks to be a multi-year pandemic. Meaning we still want to have some treats on hand, just in case. Thus this simple bundt cake. Continue reading “A not-too-sweet anytime treat: Blueberry Sour Cream Cake”
THE DAY BEFORE THANKSGIVING is not the time to post a new recipe. You either already know what you’re preparing or someone is cooking for you. Either way, we don’t need to give you a reason to run out shopping for more ingredients. We spotted this window the other night, wandering around downtown Chicago with our older daughter, who was in town for a brief visit. While it looks like a mysterious popup restaurant, it is actually part of a now vacant Walgreens. But it does describe how we’ll be celebrating the holiday and the weekend with our younger daughter and her boyfriend, and Marion’s sister. Even if it’s not the usual big, boisterous tableful of everyone at once, we’re thankful to be able to get together with family in batches.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. We hope food + drinks with those you love is part of your plan too.
Beef stew meat, Portuguese chouriço, bell peppers, paprika and potatoes drive the comforting flavor of this hearty stew. Recipe below.
PORTUGAL POPPED UP ON OUR CULINARY RADAR innocently enough. Not finding anything new we wanted to watch on TV one night, we settled into something old. We had already binge-watched Somebody Feed Phil about a year ago, and Netflix offered it up to us again. The first episode they served up was Lisbon, Portugal. Continue reading “Authenticish maybe, genuinely delicious: Portuguese-style Beef Stew”
BLUE KITCHEN TURNED 15 LAST WEEKEND. Yep, we first posted on November 6, 2006. Not sure what the traditional gift for the 15th anniversary is, but we’re giving ourselves the week off. We’ll be back next week with a new recipe (we’re pretty sure). Oh, and the New Perfection above? It’s the kerosene cook stove on the Logsdon Sand and Gravel Co. towboat we saw at the National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium in Dubuque, Iowa, a few weeks ago. The stern wheeler towboat was built in 1940. The stove is probably the same vintage—they were made from 1907 up to the 1950s. Who knows how many meals it must have cooked for the crew that took this boat up and down the Mississippi.
Seeing stuff like this is just one of the things that keeps us interested in food—making it, eating it, thinking and talking about it. And writing about it here, even after 15 years. See you next week.
Chicken thighs are started on the stovetop, then finished in the oven with potatoes and green beans. Recipe below.
WE HAVE NOW COOKED THIS MEAL three times in less than a month. Not trying to tweak the recipe as we sometimes do here, but simply because we wanted to eat it again. Of course, being one-pan easy to make didn’t hurt its chances of being put on repeat. Continue reading “A one-pan meal you’ll put on repeat: Roasted Chicken, Potatoes and Green Beans”
These boiled potatoes are a traditional favorite in Central New York. Recipe below.
THREE SIMPLE INGREDIENTS: POTATOES, SALT, BUTTER. Four if you get fancy and add parsley. Syracuse salt potatoes are one of those beloved regional dishes, so much so that the grocery stores around Syracuse sell kits—essentially bags of potatoes with a bag of salt inside. Having made these delicious potatoes a couple of times now (without a kit), they’re going to become a favorite in the region of our house. Continue reading “Salt-crusted outside, creamy inside: Syracuse Salt Potatoes”