Category Archives: breakfast

Kitchen Hacker: Cowboy Stovetop Buttermilk Biscuits & Sorghum Syrup

I enjoy a kitchen challenge. My favorite variety of challenge is when I don’t have the necessary equipment for what I want to accomplish and I have to make do with what’s on hand. I think problem solving in the kitchen makes us smarter cooks. Recently a special someone and I had a hankering for [...]
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Portuguese Pickled Pork Plus New Class Announcement

Every year, my brother-in-law’s family descends on my sister’s house the morning after Christmas to consume large amounts of pork, poached eggs, and bread fried in pork fat. Even the mostly vegetarians join in for what’s become known as Porkmas. My sister gets up early and arranges the house so as to fit the whole [...]
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Orevnitza—The Serbian Bread we eat at Christmas

This bread is something my mom’s Serbian family made for holidays. Even my mom, pretty much a non-cook, felt duty bound to make it at Christmas time. Strangely, there doesn’t seem to be much information on the Internet about the origins of this bread. I have no idea if it’s still made today in The [...]
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When Pigs Fly: Bacon Tasting

My friend Ellen’s underground restaurant took an interesting turn last week. Instead of dinner, the meal served was brunch and, instead of Ellen being the sole cook and bottle washer, we partnered up on the menu, with the invaluable help of Leila for shopping, prep and clean-up duties. The goal of the brunch was to [...]
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Magic Pumpkins: Pumpkin Pie and Pumpkin Cream Cheese Bread

I bought one of Annabelle’s magic white pumpkins on her recommendation. She said they were the best for pie. I always believe her. Even though I never make pumpkin pie (I always have the Thanksgiving guests bring it so I can concentrate on the savories) I thought I might as well give it a whirl. [...]
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Hunger Challenge Day Two

I wake up ready to go. Day one wasn’t so bad. I’m working at home in the morning and going into the office late. I take that time to make Vietnamese rice porridge. This is a brilliant dish involving a very small amount of white, long grain rice, a lot of chicken broth, a few [...]
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Recalibration Eating

Let’s just say I’m not the “cleansing type.” I like to think of myself as a self-indulgent healthy eater. I don’t deny myself anything I want (though I never want to eat fast food or most processed food) and eat a great variety of mostly very healthy stuff. But after a months-long period of intense [...]
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Scenes from a Photo Shoot

Toast shot Ok, so the book is pretty much done. All that remains is copyediting, galleys, and other little details. Directly on the heels of turning in the manuscript, we went right into shooting the photos. We did it with a crew of 4 plus me over 5 long days right here at the house. [...]
Also posted in Asian, Books, breads and pizzas | 1 Comment

Indonesianish Fried Rice

Between seasonal, from the market, no recipe cooking, recipe development projects, and $1 a meal Hunger Challenge recipes, I’ve been slowly working my way through James Oseland’s wonderful book, Cradle of Flavor. Awhile ago I made one of the many sambals in the book, Javanese Sambal. It consists of dried shrimp paste, lots of shallots, [...]
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Something to Relish

I'm rarely compelled to blog about a product, but here's an exception. I found this at The Pasta Shop in Berkeley just as they were building the new display. They found it at the Unfancy Food Show in Brooklyn. I was smitten by the packaging first and that's about as far as it would have [...]
Also posted in Books, Current Affairs, Film, breads and pizzas, community, entertaining, from the market, pantry staples | Leave a comment
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    The recipes and images on this site belong to Vanessa Barrington. Feel free to link here and if you’d like to use a recipe or image, please ask permission first. Thank you.