Cooking lessons

Cooking lessons

A friend came to my house for lunch a few weeks ago. She had just celebrated a birthday, so cake for dessert seemed in order. The recipe I chose looked terrific: a single layer of lemon sponge soaked in a sticky lemon glaze. Lots of fresh lemons would sacrifice...

Identity crisis

I love food. For most of my life, creating it has been part of my identity. As an adolescent, I baked. When, as a newly minted adult, I called myself a good cook, my dad countered and said I was a good baker–he didn’t really know whether I could cook. So I...

What’s cookin’

I love cookbooks. I like to page through them, reading the recipes, mentally putting them together to figure out if something will work. I like the background stories that some of them include, and I imagine what it must have been like the first time that steaming...

The key ingredient

I don’t watch much TV, but occasionally I’ll flip to the Food Network to gratify my inner foodie. My kids watch along with me (they’re kids; they’ll watch anything), and the three of us particularly enjoy a show called Chopped. The show...