This citrus avocado and shaved fennel salad is just the thing to get you out of a salad slump. It’s simple and colorful and replete with bright acidity. It’s the kick in the pants I need around the end of February, when winter feels interminable and I crave something that feels like sunshine on a …
Sesame oil
It’s March, and it’s about the time of year when I reach the point where I never want to see another winter squash again. I mean, I love them in soups and in grain bowls and kicky salads, but I’ve been subsisting on dark leafy greens and cauliflower and root vegetables and squash, which were …
Can we talk about fish sauce for a minute? It smells terrible, but it tastes delicious—so salty and funky with all of that wonderful umami flavor. When I was a vegetarian (before I slid into pescatarianism and then back to omnivorism), the only exception I made was for fish sauce. I didn’t eat anything made …
It is officially spring. But official spring never feels like the spring that exists in my imagination. The mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful spring with green shoots and sun peaking through rain and warm breezes and new beginnings. Official spring in Chicago is something altogether different. It is one day in a series of false starts. It is …
It turned cold with a vengeance here last week. My heart went out to the hardy trick-or-treaters who braved the wind, rain, snow flurries, and hail last Friday night. It’s been getting dark earlier. In the subsequent days the temperatures have rebounded a bit but it’s been cloudy and overcast. Our new place has windows …
I am an inveterate procrastinator. In school, I was one of the kids who stayed up into the wee hours of the night the day before the project or paper was due, frantically trying to get the thing done. From elementary school onward, it only got worse. In college, I felt pretty good if I …