homemade pop tarts

I never had a Pop-Tart until college. I realize that for some people this may cause a shocked reaction on par with my husband’s the time I told him I’ve never watched Goonies before (or Jacob’s, upon discovering the internet). Obviously I grew up under a rock, right? Thus, given my proximity to concrete-like materials you’d think I have been better prepared for the texture of the one I purchased from the vending machine in the basement of my freshman dorm (not at 4 a.m. or anything, either, nope, not this angel!). But I was not. It was like particle board, but even particle board has a fresher aroma. It took two hands to break off a piece. I choked down my first bite, then chugged some water, convinced bits were stuck in my throat. Don’t you hate that?

Recipe

avocado salad with carrot-ginger dressing

A few weeks ago, a commenter (hi, Kate!) tipped me off to the Avocado Salad with Carrot-Ginger Dressing in Gwyneth Paltrow’s GOOP newsletter. Yes, that Gwyneth Paltrow, from Duets! She has a newsletter dedicated to “nourishing the inner aspect” which I have to be completely honest, I have no idea what that is and hope that doesn’t mean I don’t have one. I’m also not convinced that I’m full of impurities and toxins, thus I’m not really into cleanses and detoxes she discusses in this newsletter and I’m understandably suspect of borderline-starvation fasts that promise a quick shedding of holiday excess.

Recipe

creamed chard and spring onions

My fridge is a mess. I like to fancy myself a focused shopper; I know what I want to cook, I carefully make lists of the ingredients I don’t have yet and I don’t come home until every item is crossed off.

Recipe

blue cheese scallion drop biscuits

On Monday, I went foraging. Well, urban foraging, that is, at the Greenmarket. I set out to find these mythical local provisions that many of you have assured me now exist in New York City, things like ramps and aspargus and even strawberries and I’m now convinced that someone is playing a mighty joke on me.*

Recipe

lime yogurt cake with blackberry sauce

Seeing as I can’t get enough of those I Don’t Need A Special Occasion To Make Cake Cakes and also those Of Course You Can Stop By At The Last Minute (psst, ’cause I’d already made some cake) Cakes, I am clearly long overdue to make a classic French yogurt cake. I first learned about yogurt cakes nearly five years ago from Clotilde; they’re perfect anytime-of-day cakes (bless the French for understanding the utmost importance of this), not too sweet, fluffy and perfect just from the oven or wrapped in plastic for a day or two, as the corners soften. Most people don’t measure them — the math is based on the volume of your yogurt cups (they use two), to which you add an equal amount of sugar, a double amount of flour, a little less than one of oil, two eggs and some leavener and flavors.

Recipe

first applesauce

And so we started with applesauce. Well, technically my baby’s first “foods” were some impossible-to-resist crinkly paper from the examination table at his pediatrician’s (or whatever I missed in Mama’s First Tiny Mouf Fingersweep) and some diluted, organic, no sugar added prune juice, but we don’t really need to get into the rationale behind that, do we?

Despite having baked more apple pies, tarts, crumbles, grunts, brown bettys, muffins and cakes in the last five years than most people do in their lifetimes, I’d actually never made applesauce before. Needless to say, mastery of applesauce is a great trick to have up your sleeve when you a) have a wee one underfoot and b) live in an area where apples are pretty much the only locally-grown fruit available from October through April. I knew Elise would never steer me wrong, thus I turned to her recipe for guidance, nixing the sugar and lemon juice, as I understand we’re supposed to ease into the citruses further down the road.

Recipe

classic cobb salad

When I am considering recipes I might share with you all, there are a lot of foods that I arbitrarily rule out. Sandwiches? Nope! With rare exception, who needs a recipe for slapping things between two pieces of bread? Fruit salad? Oof! No! Again, unless you’re doing something fancy–fancy to it, I’m pretty sure people can find their own path to chopped fruit in a bowl. So when I got to thinking about making an old-school Cobb salad a couple months ago, I quickly rejected it because given the Cobb salad’s ubiquity on lunch menus everywhere, who doesn’t know how to make it?

Recipe

easy jam tart

From what I read, those of you on the opposite side of the country are reveling in the season’s first artichokes, asparagus and favas. You’re gushing over rhubarb and your new favorite way to cook it. You’re rejoicing over how good in-season strawberries taste when you’ve been deprived of them for the better part of a year.

Please stop.

Recipe

shakshuka

There are a lot of reasons to make shakshuka, an Tunisian dish of eggs poached in a spicy tomato sauce: It sounds like the name of a comic book hero. Or some kind of fierce, long-forgotten martial art. Or perhaps something that said comic book hero would yell as they practiced this elaborate martial art, mid-leap with their fist in the air.

Recipe

new york cheesecake

New Yorkers have a reputation for being pushy and over-the-top — these are things you learn when you leave the city for a weekend, and a ticketing agent at the airport in Tulsa, for example, informs you that you’re so much more polite than she thought a New Yorker would be. We apparently like things bolder and taller and shinier and more intense and while I’m not sure if this really applies to your average straphanger commuting from walk-up to cubicle and back again everyday, I am absolutely certain that it applies to our cheesecakes.