365 Days of Food

I picked the beets out of my garden because the greens were starting to wilt, but they hadn’t grown to be more than shallot-sized. They were very sweet, and I put them in the corner of a plate with chicken and roasted potatoes. (Photo: Iwo Jima Memorial, Arlington, Virginia.) >> July 5 << July 3

I made cheddar biscuits. In The King Arthur Flour Baker’s Companion, they come right after the recipe for Southern breakfast biscuits, which begins: “If you’re a Southern baker with any basic skills at all, you can skip right past this recipe. In fact, we’d appreciate it if you’d turn the page immediately.” I have none…

We had some people over and I was going to make cucumber sandwiches in honor of Brexit, but I couldn’t find the right kind of tasteless white bread, and I don’t think we’ve arrived at peak cucumber season so the Persians I had tasted mostly like water. Instead, I put cucumbers on cracker-sized slices of…

We were on U Street looking for someplace to eat, and we found a wine bar in one of those high-rise apartments that look like character-free symbols of gentrification. Yet wine bars are no longer a trend, and if you’re looking for them, these are the kinds of places where they shall be found. Plus,…

Steamed broccoli with vinegar and soy sauce. It’s common to hear people around my age say they never know where the time all went and you wake up one morning to realize that months or years have gone by. Everyone seems to agree with this. It’s one of those prewritten remarks you can use at…

Someone brought brownies to the office with oreos in the center and a peanut butter layer on the bottom. This was almost enough to get me through the day, and a lot tastier than the mustard greens I had for dinner, which had a burning, bitter taste. I had to mask them with honey. I…

We had pizza late at work while I tried to keep my eyes away from the TV I end up looking at all day across the hallway from my office. There is too much happening for me to think. (Photo: Istanbul, 2004.) >> June 29 << June 27

Hamburgers with mustard greens and wasabi ketchup. We tried a rosé from western Maryland which gives local wine a good name, but it had a sweet edge to it that would have been better with chicken. (Photo: National War Correspondents Memorial, Gathland State Park, Maryland.) >> June 28 << June 26

I spent part of the afternoon pitting cherries, and like trimming the azaleas, which I also did today, it’s a repetitive annual task yielding pleasant rewards over time. In June, I usually buy cherries in bulk at a farmers market and save them for the fall and winter when I’m in the mood for a…

I couldn’t quite believe it, but despite how many cookbooks I have (don’t even bother to ask), many of them with a Mediterranean bent, I don’t have a good recipe for lamb kabobs. Joy of Cooking suggests marinating them in yogurt, which worked fine except they tended to stick to the grill. We dipped them…

Jaleo, the tapas restaurant, has been around since 1993. When it opened, nobody knew what tapas were and the waiter’s opening remarks about “small plates” were probably informative. There have been plenty of new restaurants in D.C. since then, and Jaleo has filled up with tourists and conference attendees. It is still one of the…

Tacos, which I ate as part of a book club. I’d been reading Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation for the second time in six months, and this time around the world he described felt not quite as threatening and perhaps more awe-inspiring; it’s possible that in the summer I’m more willing to ascribe benign qualities to nature….