Broad Swath

I'm ready to say goodbye to apples for a while by this time of year.  This is often my farewell recipe.  It's kind of a "goodbye winter, hello spring" dessert. Apple-Rhubarb Crisp Ingredients Topping 3/4 cups all purpose flour (or GF flour mix) 3/4 cup packed brown sugar 3/4 cup rolled oats 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves 6 tablespoons butter; room temperature 1/2 cup chopped walnuts, some portion finely chopped is good Filling 2 large or 3 medium size apples, cored, peeled, and cut into 1/2-inch pieces. Granny Smith will do.  Just about any baking apple should be fine. 3 cups rhubarb cut into 1/2-inch pieces 3 tablespoons sugar 2 teaspoons all purpose flour (or GF flour mix, or better yet tapioca flour) 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract Vanilla ice cream   Method Get your apples and rhubarb prepped, then preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Topping  Mix the first five ingredients in a medium bowl.  ...

Thanks to Martha's sister Liz and her husband Rich we own a copy of Pot on the Fire , by John and Matt Lewis Thorne.  There's lots to like about this book of food essays and recipes.   It's chapters cover the disarmingly simple ("Perfect Rice," and "Quintessential Toast") to the more complex ("Sticks-to-the-Pot").  Moreover, it is a book that has shown me how to be enthusiastic and rigorous about cooking without being pretentious.  It has helped me answer, "Where am I in this whole food/cooking thing?" I probably have a rotating list of things I call my "favorite lunches," but I think this is the first one I consciously named that.  I don't think the authors intended this to be a lunch recipe, but if you have 20 to 30 minutes to prepare it, and access to a kitchen, it makes a great one.  With simplifications by me: Variation: white rice, dandelion greens, feta, walnuts. Rice with Spinach, Goat Cheese and Walnut...

      I love my dad to death, something I need to be careful about because he turns 93 today.  I don't tell him that I love him often enough.  He's getting a kick out of this blog, and I'm getting a kick out of him getting a kick out of this blog.       Dad really loved his wife Marilyn.  They had one of those storybook romances that seem to have been more common among our Greatest Generation than the ones that followed.  WWII interrupted Dad's college years, he served in the Navy, and when he returned there was Marilyn in chemistry class almost like she was waiting for him.   They married, started a family, he built a career in agricultural journalism and advertising, she made a home, they raised their kids together, and they loved each other completely every day until Mom died about two years ago.       Dad loved Mom so much that birthdays, anniversaries, and holid...

     Go to Costa Rica for the wildlife, or maybe the beaches.  Don't go for the food, or the culture, or the shopping. Go so that you can stand in one place and within the span of about thirty minutes see three species of monkey, scarlet macaws, parrots, lizards, and a woolly opossum. I can't promise that you will have that experience, but we did. Photo by Martha O'Brien      A little over a year ago my family started planning a spring break trip. We don't usually make a big deal out of it but this time we considered Mexico - we hadn't traveled there before, it was likely our last spring break with our daughter Lily, and both our kids were studying Spanish.  We then realized that Martha's sister Liz and her husband Rich were thinking about traveling to that part of the planet in the same time frame and we started collaborating.  We ended up enthusiastically bound for the Osa peninsula of Costa Rica. Monkey scat on the...

Someday we'll all be able to look back at this and laugh. I'm going to start tomorrow. I'm sorry...  Did I say laugh? I meant cry.

     I'm guessing most serious home cooks have made attempts at making foods that are cheap and readily available at the grocery store just to see if the homemade version is worth the effort.  I have.  My list of experiments includes pasta (not worth it), yogurt (worth it), canned tomatoes (not), bread (absolutely), crackers (nope), sauerkraut (yes, and don't even think of buying the stuff in little green cans).  Maybe I'm a really bad pasta maker.  My latest addition to this list is corn tortillas and the verdict is... two thumbs up.      Decades ago, when Martha and I lived in St. Louis, we went to a Mexican restaurant that made their own tortillas - maybe it's still there.  While you waited for your table you could watch a woman press the dough into thin circles and flip them onto a rotating griddle. They arrived at your table steaming in a special container. They served those instead of chips! As I think about it now ...