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All ’choked up

Baby artichokes inspire a fervor almost unrivaled by other springtime produce. Sure, ramps have their devotees and noses are wrinkling in bathrooms across the nation right now over love of asparagus, but cooks go pretty nuts for baby artichokes, too. If you’re not so impassioned, it might be hard to imagine what causes such devotion, apart from the general cuteness of miniaturization. Me? I like ‘em for the purest reason of all: laziness. They’re about a squazillion times easier to deal with than their full-grown brethren.

To wit: prep time for 10 baby artichokes, including rubbing the cut sides with lemon juice, was somewhere in the neighborhood of five minutes. Try trimming that many full-grown artichokes in the same amount of time. OK, maybe you’re a champion artichoke-trimmer for all I know, but I’d still be in the kitchen, weeping and cursing my bright idea for a meal.

Unfortunately, the weekend weather didn’t cooperate enough to allow me to grill these, […]

Macaroons

Gil tends to half-ass his way through Passover every year (since I showed up) and I’m more than happy to indulge that half-assery, as it makes things So Much Easier for me in the kitchen. He avoids the major grains, but still indulges in beans and spices and continues to be all honey badger about pork and shellfish. Yes!

Because I’m already gluten-free, I’ve taken this grain-free opportunity to go more fully Primal this week, using the 80/20 principle (if you’re doing the Primal thing 80% of the time, don’t worry so much about the other 20%). These macaroons were my entire 20% for the day and I wish I’d made more.

Despite lacking the baking gene, I resolved to make macaroons after eating one of those canned abominations so prevalent this time of year. It turned out to be quite easy, surprisingly enough, thanks to Martha.

The recipe didn’t include chocolate, but c’mon. How could I […]

Second-child syndrome

It was Otis’s birthday last week and I completely let it go by without mentioning it here. So…happy belated birthday, Otie!

greyhound

Yes, that’s a band-aid on his ear. He tangled with a thorn bush on an afternoon walk last week and, to hear Gil tell it, the whole thing looked like a horror show with blood everywhere, even on Rufus. At least one tiny bandage took care of everything.

greyhound

“No, really, I’ll be fine…SIGH.”

greyhound

If you haven’t heard, April is Adopt a Greyhound month. I’m clearly biased, but I think they’re just incredible animals; I don’t think we’ll ever not have one cockroached at the foot of our bed. If you think you might like to rescue a former racer (and are in NJ), I highly recommend Greyhound Friends of New Jersey — they’ve been a wonderful resource.

Triple-Garlic Pizza

Or, the whole of the pie is greater than the sum of its alliums.

gluten-free white pizza with garlic

We visited the last monthly winter market this weekend to find the very first sign of Spring — wild garlic — at Nina’s booth. She’s my go-to source for fresh eggs and local honey, but she always has some lagniappe I appreciate — last year it was callaloo and micro greens and last month, freshly smoked jalapenos. But as soon as I saw this month’s wild garlic offering, I knew it was destined for spring’s perfect pizza. You can keep your ramps; I’ll stick to locally-grown wild garlic for $1 a bunch! (Sadly, we don’t have any growing in our yard or it’d be even cheaper.)

Locally-grown — a beautiful sign of Spring

Since I’m pathologically incapable of making anything the same way twice, I subbed in a gluten-free crust and added layers of flavor with garlic oil and garlic confit. Frankly, I wouldn’t know where to draw the “too much garlic” line, but […]

Pucker Up

I’ve been behind the curve on many things in my life: growing hips, getting married, watching The Wire…just to name a few. Knowing this, it shouldn’t be much of a surprise (at least to me) that I’m only now discovering Meyer lemons, but it sort of is. Oh, it’s not that I haven’t tried to use them for the past couple of years; it’s that they were awfully elusive/sold out whenever I thought to look. But our local Whole Foods has had a good supply these past few weeks, so I’ve more than made up for lost time.

(For anyone else who suffers from the same predicament as me, you can find a good Meyer lemon disquisition here.)

It’s pretty easy to plan an entire meal around the Meyer lemon if you try just a little, so I dug around and found a simple, elegant pasta recipe at The Amateur Gourmet and put my own spin on it with smoked fish straight from my brand new Camerons Stovetop Smoker. (Thanks again […]

Napistry

The boys stayed with friends while we were away last week, and I don’t think they’ve forgiven us yet. They’ve been sulky and disinterested since Gil picked them up Friday afternoon, but at least they’re sleeping well and will deign to accept treats from our backstabbing hands.

Food post coming once this Dayquil fog lifts, but for now here are pictures of Rufus and Otis doing what they do best.

greyhound

greyhound

more pictures after the jump

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