raspberry buttermilk cake

As you may have guessed, I have a serious soft spot for everyday cakes.* I call them Dinner Party Cakes. Or Potluck Cakes. Or I Heard You Were Coming and So I Baked You a Cake, cakes. Or If You Bake a Cake, The People Will Come cakes, as a fresh-from-the-oven cake has a way of drawing friends around your coffee table on an otherwise blah Monday night. Home baked goods are magical like that.

Recipe

asparagus, goat cheese and lemon pasta

[Note: This recipe got fresh photos in 2019 and I’m glad it did.]

A couple weeks ago, I had a fantastic warm asparagus salad at a nearby restaurant, one I immediately swore I’d make at home. It had segments of white and green asparagus tossed with goat cheese and a tarragon and lemony mint vinaigrette and it was piled on a bed of red endive, my favorite. It was stunning. It was delicious. Alas, this is not it. How rude I am, right?

Recipe

almond raspberry layer cake

My mother turned sixty-five last month, a number that’s just impossible for me to get my head around because she’s my mom, and grandmothers are 65, not moms. Oh wait. I think I just got it.

Recipe

broccoli slaw

I have been craving broccoli something fierce lately. Yes, broccoli as in helloooo, need iron much? Because I am apparently that predictable of a pregnant woman. Not that this bothers me, I’m actually relieved to be craving something, anything but grapes for five minutes. Why I can’t be a normal pregnant woman, mainlining ice cream sundaes and pickles and peanut butter simultaneously, I don’t know, but if grapes and broccoli must be my (terrifically boring) torch to bear, so be it.

Recipe

rhubarb cobbler

I am ashamed to admit that I have been quietly bigoted against cobblers for as long as I can remember, the dessert that is, not those dudes that save my shoes from NYC sidewalks. And like so many other baseless biases, my issues were not hinged on actually trying one, but an assumption that there could be nothing good about them. I mean, biscuits and fruit? Biscuits? Why on earth would anyone want to bake a fruit dessert with biscuits on top when they could have thick crumbles, granola-like crisps and don’t even get me started on buckles, clafoutis, grunts, slumps, pandowdys and brown bettys, drool. Biscuits are for salty butter and barbecue and fried chicken, thank you very much.

Recipe

endive and celery salad with fennel vinaigrette

I know you all think I must be immune to this, but I go through phases of Down With Cooking all of the time. Sometimes, I’m just extra tired. Sometimes, the food outside the apartment is way more tempting, as it has been since we’ve moved into a new neighborhood full of intriguing sandwiches, hummus joints and more new flavors than I could pack into a year. Other times, I lack inspiration, or worse, an appetite as I did through that needling first trimester. I have cold cereal for breakfast, peanut butter and jelly for lunch. I fib my way through it on this site, plugging in recipes I have backlogged and sticking to simple things like snacks of pickled grapes in hopes that if I do not force it, it will come naturally back to me. I fear cooking becoming a chore, though I know even this worry is a luxury exclusive to people who share blocks with six eateries.

Recipe

cinnamon raisin bagels

There are a whole lot of foods that I’m not sure are even worth the trouble of making at home, though I suspect this list varies by what you have accessible in your neighborhood. I feel fairly certain I won’t be making any falafel sandwiches in our new kitchen, especially now that I’ve discovered our proximity to the $2.50 perfection at Mamouns. I’m not even sure I’ll ever make pirogi again, after finding my fluffy, light pirogi nirvana this weekend at the Ukranian National Home. And in general, I’ve never seen a whole lot of purpose in making bagels from scratch in New York City — save a one-time baking frenzy — and certainly not when we lived less than two blocks from our bagel ideal, Murrays. (I’m a little lost for a decent bagel in the East Village — anyone? I think we’ve been spoiled.)

Recipe

ranch rugelach

We just can’t stop with the buns in the ovens over here, people.

Recipe

black bread

It is ridiculous to think that on a site where I have shared twenty-nine bread recipes that I have yet to tell you about my favorite bread. Way to hold out Deb, right? I mean what were the other breads, just teasers? Well, yes.

Recipe

big crumbs + small pretzels in oklahoma

Well that was fun! Alex and I arrived at the ranch Friday afternoon after a shockingly non-grueling travel experience (save the 10-minute pat down I received at La Guardia because of this newfangled thing called underwire. Really!) and at least an hour and a half in the car of me going “ooh horsies!” “and cows!” “neeeigh! mooo!” “ooh dirt roads!” and Alex mumbling something like “my god this is going to be a long drive.”