Here’s an old-fashioned pleasure: shelling beans.
We grew a hefty crop of lima beans in a our kitchen garden here in the District of Columbia, about a mile from the White House. I let them dry on the vine and finally just the other day got around to removing the beans from the pods.
I reckon [...]
Entries from December 2008
Homegrown Cassoulet
December 31st, 2008 · 4 Comments · Uncategorized
Have Fire, Will Make Raclette
December 28th, 2008 · 8 Comments · Uncategorized
In my youth, I set a personal best at Raclette with 13 servings. That would be 13 swipes of the knife as you see in this picture, 13 times the cheese was set before the fireplace until it became molten. I don’t know what possessed me to perform such a stunt. That was back [...]
Cleaning the Bay: They Lied
December 27th, 2008 · 3 Comments · Uncategorized
An expose in today’s Washington Post tells how federal and state officials for years have failed to gather the political will to save the Chesapeake Bay, instead feeding the public false information about “progress” in the cleanup effort in order to maintain their funding, to the tune of $6 billion so far.
Officials have long known [...]
Tags: chesapeake bay
A Christmas Roast
December 26th, 2008 · 5 Comments · Uncategorized
Nothing says meat better than a beef rib roast. In our family, there’s a tradition of serving one of these beasts for an early dinner on Christmas Day along with Yorkshire pudding and the mandatory mashed potatoes. It doesn’t hurt that one of the sisters-in-law works for a meat distributor in Baltimore. Have you [...]
Building a Chowder
December 23rd, 2008 · 7 Comments · Uncategorized
There is a world of difference between a true chowder and the soupy, flour-thickened stuff you find in the run-of-the-mill seafood restaurant. My own ideal chowder would recreate what I imagine was a simple, one-pot meal constructed by the fisherman while he was out on the cold, cold waters of the Atlantic, waiting to [...]
Sunday in the Nation’s Capitol
December 22nd, 2008 · 3 Comments · Uncategorized
Hard as it may be to imagine, real people do live in what the rest of the country refers to as Washington, D.C., and what we longtime residents more affectionately know as the District of Columbia. One benefit of living in the capitol city is our proximity to all the attractions on the National [...]
Tags: washington dc·winter
Kids Make Gingerbread Cake
December 20th, 2008 · 2 Comments · Uncategorized
The aroma of old-fashioned gingerbread baking in the oven automatically signals the arrival of Christmas. With its strange mix of molasses, cloves, nutmeg and other spices, gingerbread is an anachronism. Yet somehow it has maintained its grip on the holiday tradition.
Personally, I don’t care much for gingerbread cookies or the stuff that gingerbread houses [...]
Creamed Chipped Ham & Collards
December 18th, 2008 · 3 Comments · Uncategorized
This just proves that flavor doesn’t care where it comes from.
In anticipation of boiling some collards, I simmered smoked turkey necks for a long time in a pot of water, then added a ham bone that turned up in the process of catering a client’s buffet.
This mongrel broth was not so much to look [...]
Tags: collards·ham·leftovers·sweet potatoes
We are engaging the concerns of a hungry planet--slowly--right here in our kitchen garden in the District of Columbia, about a mile from the White House.
