The Pig and I

I wouldn't normally label something as complex as a Yule log as "kid food," but this was done by request, and with the kid. The Pig has been really, really into the Great British Baking Show , and consequently found out there's a food version of the Yule log. In celebration of Yule this year, she asked if we could make one together. Since I sometimes don't think things through, and other times think I can do anything, I said yes. Not only did I say yes, I promised we'd do it on Yule itself. Dumb, dumb, dumb. But also smart, because wow she learned a lot about herself, the world, interpersonal dynamics, history, modernity, tenacity, and the import of keeping one's word. She also found out that I was right that reading legitimately is the most powerful skill one can develop. I learned that I can, in fact, draw something decent if I have no choice, and also that it turns out I can pipe chocolate attractively. I generally reserve the doing of fine detail de...

I realized the other day that it's been a very long time since my last post. My life has changed in a lot of ways, one of which is that I've returned to foraging. Since my interests currently lie primarily in foraged foods and ales, my focus will be on that for the foreseeable future. One favorite foraged food for us is black nightshade . Although commonly perceived as poisonous, this is a food plant if you're treating it properly. The leaves can be cooked and eaten (young ones raw as well), but the primary value to my 5 year old, Piggy, is the berries. Filled with seeds and sugary sweet, they're a lovely treat. I recently dug up some S. americanum plants and transplanted to our container garden, but most of the berries I cooked today came from a plant nearly as tall as me that I noticed while foraging for dock seeds. That bush was huge . And also weighed down with ripe fruits, so I took a lot of fruit. I left about 1/4 of the fruit for the birds, focusing only on fr...

Ross actually reminded me, quite by mistake, that this post needed to be made. When we first got together, he had never (other than rolls for holidays, I believe, though anyone who knows about this should feel free to correct me if I'm mistaken) had home-made bread. Or maybe he'd tasted it but not so routinely that he remembered home-made bread as a thing separate from grocery store bread. As y'all know, I am not really an advocate of buying bread and have done so just a couple times in recent (last couple years) memory. And so when he wanted bread I would make a loaf. This started turning into a loaf a day, which is kind of a lot (in a good way!), and it occurred to me that if I taught him how to make bread, I wouldn't have to make it anymore. Now, that sounds a little bit like I don't like making bread, which is absolutely not the case. I love making bread. I just don't always have time to make a loaf every day. Mostly I can't commit to being home long e...

This is one of my most clearly defined, early food memories. I was about five or six years old, and we had gone to dinner at some fancy-type restaurant for a business dinner with my father's colleagues. I sat next to a man who, by my memory, was not that much larger than me. He was short, I remember, and quite round. He had dark hair and a sort of reddish complexion, and eyes I never saw. I don't remember his name, though I do remember talking to him quite a bit. I do remember, however, that he was blind, and that he was very willing to answer all my questions about being blind. Until it came time to start thinking about dinner, which he was very much interested in. He told me he was planning to order, for his first course, the escargots. I didn't know what they were, and so I asked. I remember how severely my nose wrinkled up when he told me they were snails, and moreover, that snails are quite delicious. I didn't believe him for a moment, and so I quizzed him at len...