Category Archives: Recipes

Cranberry Sauce: A recipe for disaster

Posted on by under Blog, Recipes

Thanksgiving 2013I come from a family of mostly competent cooks. If you ignore the ones not tall enough to reach the counter and the ones who spent more time perfecting the craft of eating growing up, my family’s cooking skills basically span the whole length of the spectrum from “Spontaneous experimental enthusiast” (just dump ALL THE GOOD THINGS into a pot/onto a grill) to “Stubbornly traditional” (if you’re not using a meat thermometer you are WRONG).

I was a member of the eating-skills focus group in our home.

I thrived in college. I’m a comfort food monster and I’m really good at settling for plastic that has been labeled as food by faceless corporations around the country. God bless those sodium-packing princes of capitalism. Cheese puffs saved my life in 2011.

Different story. The one I’m trying to tell right now involves me actually stepping into a kitchen to help with our expat-Thanksgiving.

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Soul Food: A Parody

Posted on by under Blog, Recipes

I spend an absurd amount of time looking at recipe blogs. I’m not sure if it’s because it makes me feel vicariously like a perfect little homemaker or because reading the voices of no-nonsense women working in the kitchen feels a lot like getting a huge hug from an ‘Aunt Jemima’ figure. The soul needs what it needs.

Anyway, because my cooking skills are nuclear (we’re talking Three Mile Island), and because I recently just spent a week on a single baking project, I decided to do a recipe blog parody.

Enjoy, my friends. Let your heart drink it up.

Vatican Bread

Last week a woman at school gave me a jar of dough in a plastic baggy with a recipe attached. After awkwardly transporting the jar home in my purse (if I had a dime for every time I got on a bus with something completely random in my bag…), I read the brief message on the recipe. This bread takes a week to make and must be given to a friend who has not made the bread before. Already, it feels like a cult initiation, but I never say ‘no’ to baking.

Monday: 250 g of sugar – do not mix

I was so excited about getting the dough I nearly forgot the first step Monday night. Do not forget the first step. The dough in the jar is only a starter and the yeast needs to start eating the sugar right away!

Life in Zbraslav 20135

In case you’re wondering what the grams to cups conversion is, I have no idea. In fact, I faked it for the whole week and the bread turned out just fine. I like to think of measurements more as guidelines.

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