home eco-nomics for the rest of us
Chicken Soup! It seems impossible something this easy can be this delicious. In soup-er brief: You drop a whole chicken into water, boil it with vegetables, and you’re done. The only caveat is that the chicken be fresh or thawed. Ingredients for Chicken Soup, Old […]
Our fall days zoom on, shorter and shorter. Here’s a handful (in five installments) of super speedy foods – no recipe necessary, few (and flexible) ingredients required, quick to assemble, quick to clean afterward. That they’re healthy (pretty much) is bonus plus. Then, you can […]
I had some quinoa in the fridge, leftover from a tofu katsu dinner I’d enjoyed a few nights ago. (Man, that was good!) So when I woke up wanting something hot and substantial for breakfast, I thought – why not stir up an individual quinoa […]
Years ago, when I first moved in with Mr. Hollywood, I planted a persimmon tree. Emboldened by the success of Edible Landscaping‘s on-site trees, and seduced by the inimitable flavor of the fruit, which happened to be in season when I visited there, I planted […]
Despite my love of travel – stepping into a place I’ve never seen before, sampling its foods and witnessing a culture with habits and assumptions different from mine, I’m a real home body. Plus, I hate to leave the dog. He’s so daggone cute! and […]
This curried red lentil soup just happened despite my efforts to make more of an effort of it. It’s finally super easy, requires only one cutting board and one pot (out of which you can eat, if you’re that sort. I am.). It’s delicious with […]
One perfect peach, a pint of cream, and a craving after comfort – a pudding is born. If there’s one thing that really gets Mr. Hollywood’s goat around this time of year, it’s that chipper “summer’s almost over” refrain he hears from young parents sending […]
Okra is way too easy to hate, which isn’t fair because there’s so much to love! It says “summertime” almost as ringingly as the tomato sandwich. But it’s okra’s slime that turns people off. I get it. And I’ve been one of those people. Then […]
It took moving to the South for me to appreciate the beauty of a proper tomato sandwich. Not that we didn’t get beautiful, juicy tomatoes of every conceivable variety in Minnesota. It’s just – who would name with pride such a simple thing? A sandwich […]
(to accompany this essay also on Huffington Post): Sometimes a dish of beans and rice is just the thing, the just thing. I live in Charlottesville, plenty famous enough, thank you very much, without the white supremacist rally mid-August that catapulted our town into national news. […]
I wasn’t planning to make this, or any summer squash thing for that matter, but plans seldom affect what I actually end up doing. I’d gone to a small, off-day farmers market up the road from our place to pick up (or so I thought) […]
I started re-watching Dead Poets Society last night. It’s an old movie. So old that when Robin Williams’ character passes the trash bin for his lads to toss in pompous rules about poetry, the bin is (*gasp*) bare naked, nary a liner to be seen. […]
