Butter, Please.

There is nothing better than an omelet for a late dinner.

Protein + whatever vegetables around = reliable + delicious.

This evening I took my chances with a nutcracker and some dungeness crab. A couple legs and part of a back (?) I think.

I tried to cook the egg in some of the leftover butter with lemon, but I don't think that was quite as good an idea as I first thought. I kept it simple for the filling: crab, spinach, green onions.


Halfway through the omelet, I got the best idea ever. Top this thing with the butter and lemon.

Mmmmm. I know what I'm making for breakfast.

Dinner For Two

My sister and I had a lovely little Valentine's candle-lit dinner together, as our sweethearts are currently long distance. We had ravioli with garlic, walnuts, and goat cheese over a bed of wilted spinach.

Wilted is really the only way to have spinach. The trick is to throw it in the pan for just a moment, give it a quick stir, and pour it onto the plate, letting the ravioli or whatever do the rest of the wilting.


Goat cheese is one of my absolute favorites. Its creamy tangyness brings this dish up a notch or two. If you want to use walnuts as a dressing like this, make sure to cook them - in lots of butter.



Ground salt and fresh cracked pepper and voila! Quick, beautiful, and tasty with a helping of iron. All you need is a glass of wine and a French film.

A Night at the Opera

I've been thinking about macarons recently. Everyone seems to be talking about them. When I looked up the recipe, however, I got too overwhelmed and decided to make a 6 layer cake with a three page recipe instead. Why? I don't know.

Here's a picture from the beginning of this expedition. This is the part where I fold the 6 egg whites in with the 6 whole eggs and over two cups of powdered sugar.


This recipe requires over a dozen eggs and about 3 and a half sticks of butter. I am not kidding. I am not exaggerating. Oh, plus whipping cream.


This took me many hours. One trip to the store included, due to my poor planning. I don't think people usually make opera cake on a whim. I also had to redo the coffee syrup because I accidentally added it to the buttercream frosting. It was an easy mistake to make -- both require coffee. And that's my excuse. The results, however, are fabulous.



This is a serious cake at 20 servings. I followed advice on the recipe (thank you, Lynne Rossetto Kasper!) and cut it into pretty blocks to freeze. Drop by my house soon and I'll make espresso and share cake with you.

Oh, I made quite a mess.

Make-shift Asian

My supply of rice noodles is rapidly depleting. This evening, I made faux-pad thai. I probably should be ashamed of using peanut butter and soy sauce as my main flavors, but college is college and this is the Midwest. I glanced at a couple recipes for pad thai before attempting to concoct my own dish. I didn't have even most of the ingredients for any of the recipes, but it turned out alright.

I am wincing as I write this:
I brown some ground beef with pepper flakes and garlic powder while I cook the noodles. When the noodles are just right but not overdone, I put them in the pan with the beef. [Note to self: add more oil next time -- I had a few too many noodles turn into insta-crust]
Here goes the peanut butter! [Only half a teaspoon or so, so it doesn't taste like a peanut butter sandwich gone awry.]
I add an egg and stir gently.
A couple dashes of soy sauce and a bit of white vinegar finish my main dish.
I top with bean sprouts, chopped peanuts, basil, and green onions. I would not attempt this without the green onions.

I long for fresh vegetables at school. The vegetable of the year last year was kale, cheap and green at $0.79 a bunch. It was perfect. Since I have a kitchen available this year, I intend to do more cooking. This means I will need to have more fresh ingredients on hand, so I search out the longest lasting, most versatile, and cheapest vegetables. I splurged with my purchase of bean sprouts: expensive, very short life, and best in Asian food. A bottle of lime juice would probably serve me well. Green onions, onions, carrots, and whatever kind of greens were on sale made the cut.

My Thai inspired dinner was a reminder to me of why I love my favorite Thai Restaurant so much.

No Imagination

The Midwest has no ethnic food. I am convinced. Fortunately, my mother is an excellent woman and mailed me delicious sweet chili sauce. [This delightful sauce has, in the past, made claims to be ideal with "chicken, pork, shirmp," etc. Shirmp? Shirmp. For the record, and aside from the sketchy label, this stuff has no preservatives and is delicious.] On my trip out here, I packed rice noodles instead of another pair of shoes. I can't get a ride to the store for fresh tomatoes, mint, cucumber, lime or lettuce, but my friend is willing to sacrifice a basil plant for our dinner.

Digging through the communal spice cupboard, I season the chicken with salt, pepper, lemon peel, and accidentally too much garlic powder. A few hours prior, I sliced some onion to create a fresh pickle - sugar dissolved in hot water, white vinegar, salt + whatever vegetables look tasty [only a lone onion is available in my case].

Noodles, sweet chili sauce, chicken, topped with fresh basil and my lightly pickled onions. 100% better than Saga.

Something Green

Today, we missed the farmers market. Again. I've had enough college food for a while and am ready to eat something intensely green.

Currently, I live in a crumbling Michigan town. Yesterday, I decided to walk downtown and gather flowers from empty lots and sidewalk cracks. Peering through the windows of abandoned retail and restaurant spaces, I feel sad. The architecture is beautiful, the brick intereriors and exposed beams are exquisite, but there is no one to turn these places into businesses for more than about two seconds. And there is no one to dine.

Still, it is good to dream. So I dream.

A Different Life

I no longer have a garden.

I no longer have a kitchen.


I have a shelf full of crackers, a shared mini-fridge, and no possibility of salad rolls in the near future. Welcome to college, Abbie Maynard!

It's going to be fun seeing what I can do with a hot pot in my room and a microwave down the hall.