Linguine with lion’s mane mushrooms and ramps. The mushroom manes spread all over the cutting board and looked like tofu when cooked. I poured some pasta water over the finished sauce, making the mushrooms taste like shellfish. There might have been too much salt, but it was probably good. My lettuce sprouted in the garden….

A wedding reception at the Columbia Firehouse in Old Town Alexandria, which looks like a stagecoach inn. My favorite canapés, other than the house drink made with Green Hat gin and a little absinthe, were the pulled pork biscuits, and the sliders that were scrumptiously rare in the center. (Photo: Patton-Fowle House, Alexandria, Virginia.) >>…

It was my last day at the job and my colleagues were kind enough to take me out for lunch at Rasika. Everything you might order there is good. I had a glass of Grüner Veltliner (which has nothing really to do with Indian food, but sometimes I just want to feel like I’m in…

I was lamenting before that there aren’t any coffee places where I live, but this isn’t quite true: I can go to Kefa Cafe in Silver Spring, which is a 20-minute drive. They approached me when I came in and walked me over to the front window, where I was presented with my hat. It…

We purchased a stand-alone freezer. It’s opened up many new possibilities for how we eat and even how we live, which shouldn’t be too surprising; advances in food storage are often associated with major cultural change. Buying in bulk and saving leftovers allows us a lot of choice in what we eat, so tonight I…

Mushroom risotto with ramps. The ramps were priced as the caviar of seasonal produce at $5 for a small bundle, and I bought two of them anyway. I will pay for the symbolic arrival of spring. I started by heating the diced stems in butter, essentially as a garlic substitute, then cooked the risotto, adding…

Cherry muffins. I made them with the same recipe I used for blueberry muffins before, except that I ran out of flour so I substituted cornmeal for part of it. I’ve also made a cherry upside down cake with cornmeal, so I was sure the combination would work. It did, mostly, although the muffins became…

The latest Cook’s Illustrated has a new technique for pan-fried salmon: Brine the fish fillets for 15 minutes, then cook the fish in the fat that’s released from its skin, without adding any oil. It ended up crisp on the edges and perfectly done inside. With lemon slices for garnish and some frozen mixed vegetables,…

We had Honduran food at El Catrachito, the neighborhood restaurant in a retrofitted diner, in a building that’s narrow enough it looks like it used to be a bus. (A Catracho/Catracha refers to a person from Honduras.) I’m not sure what I thought of the food except that it’s like nothing I’ve ever tried before….

The Balvenie “Caribbean Cask” rum. This was a birthday present for Viet last year, and we went out for phở and poured a little rum before we sat down to watch Jessica Jones. This a show I respect and which I have no problem calling excellent on its own terms, not just as a comic…

A croissant. Most croissants throughout America are tasteless and forgettable, and even your reasonably light and airy American croissants don’t resemble what you find in Spain (and, I would presume, France): Croissants that make your fingers sticky as your teeth sink into butter. There’s nothing healthy about them, and that is good. (Photo: Boulder Dushanbe…

There are penny-sized flowers that come up this time of year in the woods near my house; I don’t know their names, but they look like buttercups. In my backyard, which was getting undone with weeds that looked like thistles and purple flowers that weren’t supposed to be there, I finally pulled out the pockets…