A spring morning when the haze of buds on the trees greeted us out the window and my daffodils were opening up like Easter eggs. So of course this was the day I would be stuck inside catching up on chores. I took a break later and made devil’s food cake, and then I plucked…

I wandered over to the Tidal Basin after work. Most people know the cherry trees are there; what many do not know is that it smells like the sea. It’s at the point where the Potomac becomes tidal and the salinity of the water increases, and the waves lap at the shore as you look…

Domino’s Pizza. The crust still feels like sand on the bottom and it still tastes like melted cheese, dipped in salt. There are two periods of my life for which I have strong associations with Domino’s. The second period is from when I was working on the college newspaper, and every week, around midnight, we’d…

I still had more strawberries left, so I made a strawberry-walnut quick bread. It takes five minutes to prepare, and your reward is an elegant breakfast or hearty dessert that tastes like a cheese plate filled up with nuts and jam. I had never understood how it is that store-bought banana bread or zucchini bread…

A strawberry foldover pancake: I found a bag of strawberries at the bottom of the freezer. I made the batter using mostly egg whites and a little flour, then poured it into an omelet pan and cooked it on the stove until the sides were set, finishing it in the oven. I folded the completed…

Smoked paprika ketchup, with cloves added. It was made at a farm in Pennsylvania (a lot of the meat and produce I buy comes from a farmer’s market and ultimately from the area around Gettysburg). We were cooking a steak and the dog, who we were watching for a few days, seemed indifferent when I…

I made lamb chops. Since a four-year-old was coming over for dinner, I also made pasta. This led me to conclude I should make a pasta sauce that also goes well on top of lamb, so I sautéed carrots and onions in olive oil, added canned tomato sauce, and used Spanish pimentón dulce to mask…

Butternut squash risotto. This is one of my fall and winter staples, and it’s probably the last time I’ll make it until November. I cook the squash (or whatever the vegetable might be) in the oven until it’s five minutes away from being done. Meantime, I heat up a bowl of chicken broth infused with…

We met people for drinks at Trio/Fox & Hounds on one of the first nights that was good for outdoor seating; the heat lamps were on, but they weren’t really needed. I had not been there in a while (it’s in a section of DC that hasn’t really changed in 15 years) and they at…

The lamb meatballs took forever to cook in the oven and they ended up crunchy on top; they reminded me of spring rolls so it was a good thing I’d decided to put them on top of Vermicelli noodles. My favorite time to cook bún is in the spring when you can throw all kinds…

Smoked salmon from Costco that comes with very addictive packets of dill mustard. I opened some Albariño (white wine from Galicia in northwest Spain) which produced an asparagus taste in the back of my throat. One can probably chalk this up to the poor quality of the cheap wine, yet it ended up being a…

Patê sô. Viet’s mom made them for us: small Vietnamese puff pastries with meat paste inside. Viet insisted on eating them with chopsticks. I don’t speak any French, but according to the Internet, pâté used to mean “pie” and the Vietnamese name comes from “pâté chaud” in French. In modern usage, pâté is no longer…