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Butternut Squashes and Moveable Feasts
The fall took us to a little New England town this year and to the sister of my best beloved, the inimitable Shari Ann. Shari Ann and I share many things, among them a love of rich-warm Mexican colors,...
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Tree Tomatoes
This morning at the grocers, I came upon a curious new fruit. Oblong, red-yellow, with a thin browning stalk and a shriveling calyx that exposed a flower-like orange patch beneath, it looked a bit...
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Political Potatoes
Among the hills, among the pits, A boorish frill-necked birdie sits. It lays eggs—a gift from God. What is it? [Russian Riddle, quoted in Nancy Ries' "Potato Ontology"] Sometime in mid-October 2011,...
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The best oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. Ever.
Is it hubris to call these the best oatmeal cookies ever? I’m taking a page straight out of the books of two women whose blogs I read and whose verve and style I greatly admire: Ree Drummond (aka The...
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Quinoa Soup for the Soul
The mountains nearly stole us away this fall. We had it easy, I’ll admit. Flights that took us just where we needed to be. Placard-bearing agents who met us at airports and hotels. Tickets and...
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Long Live the Weeds! [Indravalli Dosa]
What would the world be, once bereft Of wet and of wilderness? Let them be left, O let them be left, wildness and wet; Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet. –“Inversnaid,” Gerard Manley Hopkins,...
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A Herb-ivore’s love affair
We had no plans. We had only what we had: two blessed zucchinis, an abundance of green peas (which are in season), a half-bagful of cherry tomatoes (from Auroville), a withering yellow pepper...
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A Piquant Parsley dressing for a Whole Roasted Cauliflower
Jump to Recipe Cauliflowers are a meaty sort of vegetable, aren’t they? Amenable to being treated as “steaks” and the like, as is the new trend. But not, I’ve often heard said, easy to like. They’re...
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Rasam Taxonomies & Mysuru Rasam
Jump to Recipe How many types of rasam are there? I’m sometimes asked. Or, rather, with emphasis on the right spot, I’m asked: how many types of rasam are there?! It’s a bewildered question posed just...
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Brahmi Brittle & Indian Parenting
Jump to Recipe What if I were to tell you that a candy can contain a worldview? You’d think me crazy, but I’d stick with that perspective because I have an example, and it’s this candy which I knew as...
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Kalavai Keerai—or, a Guide to Wild Tamil Greens
Once before, I stuck my neck out there and declared there to be a worldview in something as diminutive as the vallarai mittai or brahmi leaf candy. I’m about to do it again and tell you that one of...
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