brown sugar – Orangette

100% birthday-worthy

Molly — Mon, 06 Nov 2017 05:28:33 +0000

In mid-September, I got out my digital camera for the first time in a geologic age. I’d tried a new-to-me recipe, and it turned out so well that I wanted immediately to rush to Ye Olde Ancient Blog and write it up. So I took the pictures. And then I spent approximately six weeks sitting around on them, perhaps confusing them with an egg and myself with a laying hen. Now here we are! Aged like a fine egg, as the saying goes. You might have heard of this recipe. It deserves to be heard of. David Lebovitz wrote about it back in 2015, and Shauna Sever in 2016, and who knows who else. Now’s my turn, because somehow I…

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November 6

Molly — Fri, 06 Nov 2015 23:22:00 +0000

This one goes out to my friend Natalie. One night early last month, she and hers were over for dinner, and I made an applesauce cake with caramel glaze for dessert. As they left, she asked about the recipe, and she’s been patiently waiting for me to post it ever since. In the intervening weeks, our kitchen faucet sprung a leak – a leak that must have actually sprung a month or two before that, because by the time we noticed it, it had thoroughly saturated all the wooden surfaces below and around it, making them buckle and curl like waves on an ocean, a special ocean that smells like rot. We called Natalie and Michael, because they are handy…

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A small revolution

Molly — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 22:15:00 +0000

You good, good people. Before I say another word, I want to thank you for your many comments, your e-mails, and the incredibly kind card – a real, three-dimensional paper card – that one of you sent to me at Delancey. Your kindness blew me away. I thought for a long time before deciding to write that last post, and I want to thank you for making me feel not only safe in deciding to do it, but very, very glad. I remember my doctor saying to me, one day in mid-December, that I would not only recover, but that someday soon, I might even have a hard time remembering exactly what postpartum depression felt like. Though he’s been my…

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I stand by my assessment

Molly — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 20:57:00 +0000

I know. The universe does not need another recipe for a banana baked something. And yet. It’s a rainy Friday afternoon, and I have a couple of hours(!) home alone(!) to do whatever(!) I want(!), which is mostly to eat Häagen-Dazs coffee ice cream and stare at the wall. Brandon and June are out on the town, having a lunch date at a friend’s new restaurant. I hope June is polite and doesn’t spit up at the table or get totally milk-drunk and harass the server – or that, if she does, she at least tips well. Baby jokes! It’s come to this! God, I am so, so sorry. I’ve been wanting to tell you about this recipe for several…

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The best part of the job

Molly — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 21:49:00 +0000

I am supposed to be writing a manuscript, not baking rye crumble bars. No more rye crumble bars no more rye crumble bars no more rye crumble bars no more rye crumble bars no more rye crumble bars. When I found out that I was pregnant, I asked my publisher to extend my deadline, which was supposed to be March 1. I wasn’t sure how ill I would feel, but I’d heard plenty of pregnant lady horror stories, and I thought it was best to plan for the worst. Happily, I wasn’t very ill, but I was very unproductive. I was very, very tired. One morning, when the alarm was going off and I showed no signs of movement, Brandon…

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I am here to tell you

Molly — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 07:30:00 +0000

First things first: thank you for the well wishes! That cold was a real heavyweight champion, the type that takes you down so hard that, for five or six days, your eyelids never make it above half-mast. I’m so glad that’s behind me. Though I did sneeze twice as I was typing that last sentence. A couple of years ago, not long after we opened Delancey, back in the days when I was still cooking there every night and trying to write on the side and living on pizza and cookie dough and adrenaline and contemplating a third career as a mass murderer, my friend Brian came to Seattle. I guess I should specify that we weren’t really friends yet;…

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To poach a pear

Molly — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 05:36:00 +0000

My mother is usually the one who makes poached pears. I have a photo of her in an old family album, holding a platter of them. By the length of her hair, I’m guessing that the year was 1982. My father must have snapped the picture as they were leaving for a holiday party. That was the kind of thing he liked to do. She’s standing in the wood-paneled den of the house we lived in until I was 13, wearing what appears to be a sand-colored fur jacket. She must have curled her hair with hot rollers, because it sits on her shoulders in soft loops, and where she’s pinned it back above her left ear, you can see…

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Out on this limb

Molly — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 08:10:00 +0000

I was planning to start this post with something about food, because that’s the way these things usually work. But I can’t seem to start much of anything, because this is sitting next to my chair. This is Alice. As of last Friday, she has turned our family of three into a family of four. She is nine months old and weighs about 35 pounds, and though we have no idea what breed she is, we’re guessing some kind of pointer mixed with something else. Possibly a Muppet. Our friend Sam named her Peter Falk, which we changed to Mrs. Peter Falk before eventually settling on Alice, which was the name of Peter Falk’s first wife (though we changed the…

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No frosting, no ceremony

Molly — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 00:04:00 +0000

We left our window open last night, and when I woke up today, there was rain on the sill! I am wearing a scarf that I made! Let the hoarding of plums commence! What I thought about saying next was, “The citrus is coming! The citrus is coming!” (In the privacy of my own head, I spout this kind of garbage the way Old Faithful does boiling water.) I decided against it, but during the thirty seconds when I was considering and then reconsidering, I remembered a walk I took with the dog a few weeks ago. A little boy down the street was having a birthday party, and from the skull-and-crossbones flags tied to the laurel hedge along the…

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It still surprises me

Molly — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 23:45:00 +0000

So. I think it would be fair to say that your comments on my last post made me very, very happy. It feels much less lonely in here, and I have you to thank for that. More than anything, I just love that we can talk about this kind of stuff. When I first started writing here, more than seven(!) years ago now, I had no idea where this weird blog thing of mine would go. It still surprises me. I’m glad you’re here, and I’m glad I am, too. It also surprises me how many totally so-so recipes I tried last week. Absolutely nothing worth telling you about. So-so chicken, so-so apricots, so-so beans. And then, while I was…

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