365 Days of Food

Fried oysters. I don’t know why but I never remember what they taste like and the first bite is always a surprise. We were at the Irish pub in the afternoon with a gathering of men who weren’t invited to a nearby baby shower. I guess you could call it a bachelor outing except I…

Flounder with chili sauce at Nava Thai. Our friends were moving away (very sad) and so we celebrated their new chapter in life with plum wine and gin and several platters of Thai food. Chicken with egg noodles and gravy, or whatever they mean by gravy in Thailand. (Photo: Rabbit Ears Pass, Colorado, 2012.)  …

Thinly sliced chicken breasts, baked with onions and lemon sauce. This is one of the dishes Viet likes to make a lot and I was grateful to have it, since for most of the day I’d eaten nothing but garden veggie straws from Costco. As best I can tell, these are little more than pellets of…

Turkey tacos with sriracha. Paired with Martini & Rossi sparkling wine: rose-colored with a taste of peaches. It had been five days since the snowstorm and I felt like a turkey taco. (Photo: Mexico City, 2007.) >> January 28 << January 26

French toast. I didn’t have any eggs so it was really just milk toast, and I should probably call it Swedish, but that isn’t the main point I want to make here. My point is that I have no idea where to find maple syrup around here that’s as good as it is in Minnesota…

In the aftermath of the snowstorm, walking to the Irish pub required overcoming a series of obstacles, or I’ll call them levels. Passing the first level meant figuring out how to walk up our street, which was buried in snow and doesn’t have sidewalks. We opted for the detour up a hill to the main…

Hamburgers with kimchi. We got the kimchi from Seoul Food and unlike grocery store kimchi, it gives you cucumbers that taste fresh even though they’re pickled. (Photo: Rocklands “Global Warming” tamarind chipotle hot sauce.) >> January 25 << January 23  

When we moved to our neighborhood a few years ago, one of the first local businesses I walked into was a cake decorating store. “Wow,” I remember saying out loud, “So interesting that you have an entire store about cake decorating!” They pressed me to buy some of their products (like sprinkles, Valentine’s Day heart…

Tuscan roast pork, with a rosemary and garlic mixture stuffed inside. I tried to follow the Cook’s Illustrated instructions and “double butterfly” the pork loin, and then I gave up partway through when my skills with a knife clearly weren’t up to the task. There may be a part of me that’s an artist but…

We decided to get takeout so we would have enough food saved at home for the upcoming snowstorm, or at least that’s what seemed like a good idea at the time. I was waiting in line at Seoul Food, the Korean restaurant in our neighborhood gas station, and I picked up a copy of a…

Crema catalana. It’s one of Catalonia’s signature desserts and made an appearance in a 14th-century cookbook, the Llibre de Sent Soví. Similar to crème brûlée, it’s made using milk instead of cream and flavored with cinnamon and orange or lemon peel, and you stir the custard on the stove rather than baking ramekins in a…

Corn bread. I made the “Southern” version, which according to Joy of Cooking means you bake it in a cast-iron skillet and use only cornmeal and no flour. I had inadvertently left a lot of olive oil in the skillet and it changed the texture of the bottom third of the loaf, which ended up…