Friends, I feel a little ridiculous writing about my trip when it’s now been, oh, two weeks since I got home, but before I return to our regularly-scheduled recipe-related programming, I have to tell you one more thing. It’s just a word, really. A sort of vocabulary lesson, if you will. It’s called a bouchon. When Mom and I first decided to take a trip to France this spring, Paris wasn’t even in the picture. To tell you the truth, it was actually sort of an afterthought. My first priority was Lyon. I’m not sure when or where I got this particular bee in my bonnet, but for a few years, I’ve wanted to go there. Somewhere, sometime, someone had…

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My apologies, guys. I didn’t mean to let a whole week go by before telling you more about my Paris trip. Settling back into home kept me busier than I’d planned. But yes, now, where were we? One day last week, I was exchanging e-mails with a friend who is headed to Paris for the first time this summer. In the midst of our back-and-forth about this bistro and that, he said something that sums up pretty much everything I want to tell you about my trip. “The only reason I travel,” he wrote, “is for an excuse to eat more than usual.” I like that. Not that I need an excuse, you know, but France is certainly a convincing…

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Hi, guys. Thanks for keeping the place so warm and tidy while I was gone. It’s good to come home to you. Three weeks, gone in a blur. It’s hard to know where to start. I remember saying to people sometimes, during the year or so that I lived in Paris, that the city felt like my second home. In retrospect, it seems funny that I should say that, since I hardly even know where my first home is. I guess it should be Oklahoma, technically, since that’s where I was born and raised. But it doesn’t really seem right. Let’s be honest: when you grow up in a place known pretty much exclusively for being shaped like a frying…

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I thought it was over. I really did. After the disappointment of that coconut pie, it would have only been fair. With all the work that thing took – not to mention the woe that came with eating it – I figured I’d more than filled my monthly quota of culinary downers. Unfortunately, I was wrong. It was only the start of what turned out to be a very, very sub-par week. I don’t usually like to air my dirty kitchen laundry around here, but it’s piling up so high and fast that I’ve got nowhere else to put it. It would be comical, if only it weren’t quite so sad. I can hardly even muster the energy to write…

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Oh people. What a time I’ve had. So, remember that fresh coconut pie I mentioned last week? The one I recalled so fondly ten full years after first tasting it? The one that you begged to hear more about? Well, I called my mom, and I got the recipe. Then I bought a coconut. Then, yesterday morning, Brandon and I drained, cracked, chipped, peeled, and grated the thing, a task only marginally easier than breaking into an armored truck. Then, after sufficient rest and recuperation, I made the pie. And it wasn’t very good. Even now, a day later, I still feel sort of sad. I hardly know what to say. In the pie’s defense, I think we grated the…

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I hope you’ll bear with me. I wish I could say otherwise, but the truth is, I’ve still got my head in the pantry closet. There may be tiny flowers popping out of the hedge of the house across the street, but where springtime is concerned, the produce section isn’t quite so forthcoming. I bought a bundle of early-season asparagus a few days ago, but the spears were watery and dull, as though their flavor were still hidden away under the soil, hibernating for winter. I saw spring onions at the market yesterday, but even they were a little wimpy and anemic, picked a week too soon. Thank heavens, I say, for the pantry, my little haven from the seasons.…

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I love winter foods. You know I do. You’ve been listening to me yap about them for a long time now. I’m always trotting out some strange, frost-nipped something: a Brussels sprout here, an old celery root there, an unruly head of escarole that no one else wants. It’s what I do. I’ve got a reputation to keep. But I have to tell you, this winter has rung me out. I’m tired. I’m through. If I have to eat another cabbage, I’m going to fall to my knees and cry. That’s pretty much what I felt like doing at the market on Saturday morning, as I stared out over the sea of winter produce. Pretty though it was – so…

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A while ago, around my nineteenth birthday, I had my tarot cards read by a woman named Marlene. Sadly, I don’t recall the faintest bit of what the cards said. It’s kind of disappointing, to tell you the truth. If I came seeking answers to some juicy question, I’ve long since forgotten what it was. (Not that anything juicy had happened to me yet, but that’s another story.) I’m not even sure how I found Marlene, other than to say that some female members of my family have a weakness for such things, including yours truly. I remember only two real tidbits of my meeting with her, and neither amounts to much. First, there was the squirrel thing. When she…

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I may be the first person in history to say such a thing, but I sort of miss airplane food. I don’t mean those roast beef sandwiches in foil packets, the spongy ones that look like they’ve been sat upon, or the pizza pockets warmed in plastic baggies. I mean real food. I’m talking about the stuff of twenty years ago, back when airfare bought not only a seat but also a tray of somewhat edible food. Back then, eating on the plane was kind of fun. You could file all sorts of requests for elaborate special meals, and some of them were actually pretty good. My parents were fond of the “Cold Seafood” option, which usually came with shrimp…

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The other day it occurred to me that I’ve hardly said a peep about the book. Seeing as I spend every day in its (nascent) company, it seems like a funny oversight. It hasn’t been intentional, I swear. We’re just slowly feeling our way, this little book and I. Sometimes I feel so absorbed in it, tweaking recipes and jotting down stories, that it’s hard to know where to start. To tell you the truth, it was a little disorienting at first to be at home at midday, without the reassuring constraints of a time sheet or colleagues. But it would be awfully rich to mope, I soon realized, about any situation that allows me to stay in my bathrobe…

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Many years ago, long before I was old enough to care about such things, my mother told me that she didn’t like escarole. It didn’t mean much at the time. I didn’t even know what esca­whatever was, nor, for that matter, why anyone would have an opinion about it. It was one of those wisps of information that blow through a childhood like tumbleweeds – quiet, aimless, a part of the background – those errant bits that, though we hardly know why, we sometimes hold onto. Like, say, the fact that my uncle Chris took his eggs with Tabasco sauce. Or the story of that horse who bit my uncle Jerry, and whom my uncle Jerry bit right back. That’s…

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Before I begin, I have to assure you that it’s not really as bad as it may seem. I’m not a curmudgeon, I swear. I’m not one of those bitter types who while away February by spitting on the displays of pink-and-red heart garlands in the grocery store. (Although, come to think of it, now that I’ve written that sentence, if I were a curmudgeon, I’d know exactly what to do.) It’s just that Valentine’s Day doesn’t really excite me. It’s not like Thanksgiving or Christmas, those holidays that come with catchy tunes to hum under your breath, the holidays that invite all sorts of baking and splurging and beautiful, endless buffet tables. Valentine’s Day feels a little stilted, that’s…

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February always feels to me like a funny limbo period. Winter has gone sort of tired and stale, but still, short sleeves are a little way away. Over most of the northern globe, it’s nippy, damp, and grim. February is the shortest month, the Valentine’s month, the scant sum of four weeks of frost and fog and those funky, crumbly candy hearts. It isn’t much to speak of, quite honestly, except for all the soup. The way I see it, February is the soupiest month. The giddy hubbub of holiday cooking is behind us, and summer barbeques feel like pure fantasy. So here in the middle, in Limbo Land, it’s high time for soup. All I want these days is…

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I have this funny thing about recipes. When I find one that I like – for, oh, let’s say, lentil soup – I have a hard time trying others in the same genre. I will, of course, but in most cases, I would be just as happy to rest on my laurels and sit there, sipping that same lentil soup, until the end of time. This is not good behavior, I know, for someone who supposedly cares about cooking. I’m supposed to be some sort of happy mad scientist, a real free spirit, some sort of kitchen sprite with a spoon and a stand mixer and a relentless sense of curiosity. Sometimes I am. But most of the time, I’m…

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One day a few weeks ago, entirely without prompting, Brandon packed me a lunch for work. Just like that. I opened the fridge, and there it was: a Tupperware containing one of his trademark concoctions, soba noodles with a peanut-citrus sauce, with my name on it. “Oh yeah,” he said nonchalantly, “I thought you might like some for your lunch tomorrow.” With no explanation, just like that, he packed my lunch. I may be crazy, but it made me feel a little faint. I guess the conventional way to woo a woman would involve roses, or chocolates in a frilly box, or fancy dinners set to a soundtrack of Marvin Gaye. But personally, I think “make her a brown-bag lunch”…

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You guys are to be commended. It takes a very kind, optimistic crowd to greet the homely old celery root with open arms, and by gosh, you did. You’re clearly well schooled in the old saying, “You can’t judge a celery root by its cover.” You’re great. So after all that good will and pale green soup, you deserve some dessert, don’t you think? I hope you won’t mind if it’s kind of, um, homely. You’re probably used to that by now. Back in October, I took a weekend trip to Portland, Oregon, for work. I meant to tell you about it then, but I was knee-deep in my book proposal, and it was pretty much all I could do…

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For many people, the contents of my grocery basket could be kind of scary. The other day at the market, for instance, I felt as though I owed the cashier an apology when I sent a bulb of fennel, three celery roots, some kale, and a bag of endive down her conveyor belt. The poor lady hardly knew what to make of them. She sniffed a little, nudged them onto the scale, and looked at me pleadingly. It was a rough moment for both of us. I don’t know. Sometimes I think I should start an orphanage for unloved vegetables. My fridge is already halfway there, and anyway, I seem to be destined for it. It just makes me so…

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Gooood-ness! You guys are just too much. I’m honored and humbled and totally, totally awed by your kindness. I’m going to try for a book deal every week, if it means you’ll continue to say such lovely things. Thank you, thank you. I just can’t say it enough. Onward we go, friends, and upward.

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Friends, you have been very, very good to me. For the past couple of years, you’ve been stopping by to see me on a regular basis, and you’ve said some pretty nice things about the contents of my kitchen and my dinner plate. Last spring, when Brandon asked me to marry him, you gave a whoop and a cheer that kept me giddy for at least a week, easy. And when, a few months ago, I started posting a little less frequently, you didn’t let slip the slightest complaint: you just kept on coming, and cheering, and saying nice things. I owe you one – that’s for sure. It’s been busy back here, behind the scenes – or the computer…

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