This morning I have a pot of bean soup on the stove. These are pinto beans. We buy them still in their pods at a local grocery store. Tizi is obsessed with them. Whenever we find a basket full of pinto beans, she buys all of them, carrying out a whole shopping bag stuffed with…More
Tag Archives: recipe
Rice and Cabbage
Thank God for mothers-in-law. Or if you prefer, mother-in-laws. Mine was a gem. If it hadn’t been for her we would not have enjoyed cabbage with rice on New Year’s Eve. Or yesterday, when I revisited the dish so I could write up this recipe.More
Yes, Penne all’Arrabbiata, Again
Sometimes you get lucky. I was staying in Rome for a few days, in a hotel near the Colosseum, and happened upon Trattoria Pizzeria da Luzzi. It’s kind of a scruffy place. Young locals eat there. It was a sunny day, so I sat outside. I asked the server, What’s special today? Pennette all’arrabbiata. I…More
Pass the Fennel
When I was a kid, my junk food of choice, purchased at Pat’s Food Center across the street from my house, or at the park store in the Missaukee County trailer park, was Twinkies or Mars Bar or Three Musketeers bar (Pat’s) or wax lips or wax coke bottle with that syrupy pseudo coca cola…More
Chickpea and Swiss Chard Soup
You stumble onto things. It can be a fortunate fall. When I married into an Italian family, I had never eaten a chickpea. If you were raised in the Saginaw Valley, you ate navy beans. End of story. More
Let There Be Beans–shuck em, soak em, cook em
My wife and I are beanophiles, pure and simple. And could there be a food more pure and simple? Time was, I bought navy beans at Kroger, plastic sacks of old dry beans grown who knows where and who knows how long ago. I soaked them, and they woke up from their long sleep, and…More
You Gotta Have Peas–the ragu requires them
No one is neutral on peas. In England for a conference a few decades ago I was taken to dinner by a local guy who ordered something the English like to eat. It came with a side of mushy peas (mushy rhymes with bushy). To the eye the peas looked like they had been cooked…More
Gross Sauce (Get Rid Of Some Stuff)
The bug bites you every now and then. Get rid of some stuff. We have a couple pantries in our house, one in the kitchen, another over by the garage. Stuff we use regularly we keep in the kitchen, naturally. Stuff that’s not on deck gets stored over by the garage. Pepper corns, cans of…More
Quick and Spicy–what a pasta dish
In just thirty minutes, you can make a pasta sauce that will change your life. Sausage and leeks and tomato. Salt and pepper. And if you’re a spicy person, red pepper flakes to hot the sauce up a bit, or a lot. A word about sausage.More
Pork and Prunes–add a little sweetness
They’re up there, in the top of the pantry. Loved only a little, and then only occasionally; otherwise, forgotten. I mean prunes. The ones I found this morning were probably a year old. Dried up, withered and hard, they looked like minor asteroids. I had an idea. More