Eggs and broccoli with cheddar cheese. I’ve made a list of common food items that I’d like to keep on hand so I can pull out a cookbook and follow some of the more elaborate recipes; among them are several types of cheese. This means I’ll want to keep a supply of cheddar, blue, and…

Spanish rice with pork ribs and pork meatballs. It’s a casserole dish that’s fit for a hunting lodge, suffused with the aroma of pork and not much else, and producing a ton of food. I used arborio rice, not knowing where to find the rice they use in paella. Brown about 8 pork spareribs on…

A.G. Kitchen in Silver Spring has a Cuban menu or at least menu items with Cuban and South American names, and their food is better than the background music from the 90s outdoor festival circuit would suggest. We had brunch there with friends and tried the French toast with pineapple and anise syrup, and an…

My fortune at the neighborhood Chinese restaurant said that “you look pretty,” which I appreciate, though with a little effort they might have written it in the future tense. We ordered a flounder cooked in soy sauce (sizzling, according to the menu), and a general tso’s chicken that was perfectly sweet. (Photo: Robot Santa, Washington,…

Peanut butter cookies. The kind I really wanted to make was chocolate, but a recipe was surprisingly difficult to find, and most of my cookbooks limit their repertoire of cookies to the basics in their impatience to get on to bars, cakes, and candy. However, we had just enough peanut butter left in the jar,…

Meatloaf. I’ve never tried to make it myself, but the version of the Joy of Cooking recipe I prepared was instantly familiar from childhood. I don’t know why it’s rarely served in restaurants and is generally considered uncool; perhaps it’s because making a loaf out of meat instead of bread makes it sound like a…

A couple of prepackaged soups, first a tomato soup and then chicken noodle. In order to feel useful I made cornbread, using buttermilk that had been on the shelf too long and had separated, and the bread ended up quite dry. (Photo: The Potomac, location unidentified.) >> December 1 << November 29

I caught Viet’s cold and he made me hot water with lemon, and we ate a bowl of rice with pot stickers. The neighborhood finally looks like winter and leaves have collected behind the azalea bush. (Photo: Shenandoah National Park, Virginia.) >> November 30 << November 28

On the way to work I stopped at the Salvadorean bakery near our house where I’ve always complained a bit that the bread is not as fresh as it could be, but a row of kekitos in the window is enough to make me hungry for breakfast. We had frozen pizza for Viet’s birthday, since…

To start the day we went to Panera Bread and ordered their personalized ham and cheese soufflés, and to end the day we had duck and pork sausages that I bought at a respectable wine and cheese shop in Arlington, along with some red sauce that I made with spaghetti. (Photo: Mural, West Philadelphia.) >>…

Breakfast was at a little coffee shop in Northampton where I ordered a pecan sticky bun out of the nostalgia I already felt for the pie, before we bumped our way through traffic to D.C. and stopped at Burger King at a rest station on the way back, and I tried a Whopper, forgetting how…

In our Thanksgiving dinner rolls you could really taste the herbs, and those of us who were more ambitious about preparing leftovers used the rolls to make a sandwich out of everything we could find: Turkey or squash along with a green salad and cranberry relish, and maybe some brussels sprouts. It was a day…