food
Time for Part 2 of my end-of-year, best-of-2016, share-all-the-things lists! This part is more specific-experience focused but hopefully still includes things that you can seek out and take part in or try out yourself (some more easily than others, to be fair).
Read MoreI've been wanting to do this kind of post for quite a while, but I never seemed to get around to it. I've seen other bloggers use this sort of trope and of course it's a central section every week on my favorite podcast, Pop Culture Happy Hour. It just seems like a nice way to talk about some things that have been making my life better lately and that you might be able to enjoy, too.
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NB: The wine and bread didn't actually come from the market I visited today, but they certainly made an excellent complement.
It's the most wonderful time of the year: Spring farmers market season! Don't get me wrong, I love my Winter markets, but now we're coming right up on the time when everything is growing and in bloom and it's just a magical thing. I try to visit at least two markets a week, if not more. My favorite market in the world is the one in Burlington, Vermont. It's huge and it's in the most beautiful state and if you need more reasons to go, it also have more free booze than I've seen at any other market, ever. Pretty much perfect.
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One of the recipes I mentioned as my favorite of 2015 was the Pear-Walnut Upside-Down Cake from the Cook's Illustrated January/February 2016 issue (job perk: I got to try it several times during development and had access to the recipe way before it was on the newsstand). I love pears and the caramelized upside-down element of this particular cake is really gorgeous. Recently, I saw a recipe up on the superstylish lifestyle blog A Cup of Jo for a Pear and Nutella tart that sounded amazing but I'm not a huge fan of puff pastry, so I thought I'd take some of the flavor inspiration from that tart and use them to make a new variation on the upside-down cake recipe. Instead of using walnuts in the cake, I used toasted hazelnuts, and I added dark chocolate to the upside-down topping and a swirl of chocolate-hazelnut spread ("Nutella," although what I had on hand was Justin's Chocolate Hazelnut Butter and as neither of those #brands sponsors this blog, I make no definitive recommendation). The result was a really lovely cake. It's texturally interesting because of the chopped hazelnuts and caramel layer, and it's also extremely flavorful, between the nutty cake, bittersweet chocolate, and syrupy pears. There's also a dark, cozy quality to the overall confection that makes it a good choice for a cold, wintery weekend. Enjoy!
Read MoreFor my first post, I wrote a review of the Cherry Bombe magazine Jubilee that happened last month in New York City. Since I live in Boston, I had to travel to New York for the Jubilee and of course I wasn't going to waste a minute so I made sure I (and my friend Jeanne, whom I coerced into traveling with me) crammed as much as possible into a 36-hour visit. Those adventures are presented here as a tiny little travel guide to just a teensy fraction of the things you can do in the Big City.
Read MoreHi there.
I had been thinking about starting a blog for a while now. I even took a class on it. But I wasn’t sure what I had to say, or even what specifically my blog would be about; I wanted to talk about books, and style, and food, and feminism, and travel, and literary theory…basically a lifestyle blog for hungry, well-dressed nerds (hm..that sounds like a tagline). But that didn’t seem very marketable. Then, this past weekend I attended the Cherry Bombe magazine Jubilee, which was advertised as “a day of celebration and conversation with some of the most inspiring women in the world of food.” Here’s a tiny bit of background on me: I’m a woman. I like celebrating and conversing. And I am both personally and professionally involved in “the world of food”; I love to cook and bake and eat, and I spend my 9-to-5 hours editing cookbooks for America’s Test Kitchen. I also went to graduate school to study women’s writing and feminist theory, so in many ways this conference sounded made for me. I have a subscription to Cherry Bombe and follow their podcast and their social media posts. I think they are doing smart, interesting, and aesthetically pleasing things. I was pretty much all in. What’s not to like, right? I was ready to be challenged and inspired and celebrated. New York City, here I came.
But of course, a mind-blowingly perfect and beautiful experience wouldn’t really make a good opening blog post for my new project. So here’s where the story takes a turn.
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