Spring onions and asparagus stir-fried with chicken marinated in soy sauce, which makes it pleasantly sour. (Photo: Basil plants, May.) >> May 13 << May 11

Tacos. There’s a District Taco down the street from my new office, which probably makes it my fate that I’ll be eating there at least once a week. It used to be a food truck and now it’s a local taco empire, and since there was very little Mexican food in D.C. until recently (most…

Asparagus with lime juice and cold salmon. Viet made toasted baguette slices to carry the food, putting them in the oven only for a couple of minutes and cooking them on the oven rack, not in a pan. In this way they end up crisp as if they’re almost ready to become crackers, unlike the…

Butterhead lettuce alongside salmon prepared at Costco with pesto and dill sauce, on toasted slices of sourdough bread. You can add wasabi sauce (made with horseradish, modified food starch, and sucrose fatty acid esters) from a tube that’s the shape of a small shampoo bottle. (Photo: Sweet pepper, May.) >> May 10 << May 8

Butterhead lettuce with red wine vinaigrette. That was all I needed for dinner after we celebrated Mother’s Day lunch at Outback Steakhouse. It only took walking into that restaurant to put me in the mood for the juices of a hamburger patty mingled with the vegetable sweetness of ketchup. Viet’s mom pulled several cuttings of…

Breakfast tacos. The rain stopped, briefly, and the wisteria blossoms are out. I looked over the garden and most, though not all, of the sprouting lettuce leaves had been spared the ravages of two weeks of storms which shifted mulch from one side of the garden to cover the fragile seeds. The beans are also…

Arepas. At Nellie’s, which for a long time has been a favorite of ours as a low-key gay sports bar, but which recently seems to have turned into more of a girl’s night out destination and general late-night funhouse on weekends, you wouldn’t think they’d put a lot of thought into the food, but they…

Deviled eggs with olive oil. I tried a new way to boil eggs from The Good Egg, an egg-only cookbook by Marie Simmons: Bring them nearly to a boil, but not quite, then take them off the stove, cover the pan, and leave for about 11-12 minutes to cook to a firm yolk. The rain…

Neighborhood takeout at Seoul Food: Yellow rice with cashews and a heavy red sauce thick with heat. But the rice wasn’t all: there was coleslaw, and separately purple cabbage; and on the side, some slider-sized bean croquettes. It was an appropriate Korean casserole for when we haven’t seen the sun for a week and a…

Asparagus in a salad of almonds, garlic, hard-boiled egg, pimentón, and lemon juice. I put the almonds in a small saucepan with some oil, letting them roast in their own juices as it were. The recipe said to add yogurt, which I didn’t have, but this might have balanced out the acidity and given me…

Tofu curry with asparagus and mustard seeds. It rained so much the storm pounded against the house and you could hear water overflowing from the lawn. (Photo: Los Angeles Cloud Forest, Costa Rica.) >> May 3 << May 1

Potatoes with chorizo. You cook everything in boiling water and let the potatoes absorb the spices from cured chorizo and a dash of pimentón. It didn’t work too well and the chorizo tasted like a garnish separate from the rest of the meal. But if you do make it, caramelize the onions first; with the…