Bon Appegeek

Greetings from Chicago!
I spent last night sorting masking tape from Scotch tape from double-sided tape, and that’s when I knew that I was finally settled in my new home. You’ve hit a rhythm when you’ve shifted from the stage when you accidentally extinguish the pilot light in your gas stove and panic because you [...]

Oh! Yes. Hi. It’s been a while hasn’t it? So how have you been? … Mm hmm. … Mm hmm. … Oh really? And you had to have Him/Her/It removed from your home/office/kidney? Well I’m glad you’re coping. I feel a little bad [...]

My mother was a country girl who grew up on a small farm in the southwestern region of South Korea near Mokpo. My grandfather repaired bicycles and raised white sweet potatoes on the rich red soil. My mother and her friends often collected the abundant eggs scattered all over the fields from the [...]

As I see it, the problem with nature is that it’s natural. It’s hot, humid, and contains insects. For instance, there’s this shiny black bug that looks like a cross between a spider and a housefly. It twitches, skitters in circles, and jumps on you for fun, but only when you’re on [...]

You’ve probably read about the cookies by now. Perhaps you have questions.
Should I?
Yes.
When?
Now.
How many?
As many as possible. You know how many Cookie Monster might bake? Like, double that.
Eaten with what?
Are you a commie? Everybody knows that you eat chocolate chip cookies with ice-cold milk. Cow is traditional, but yak, goat, [...]

JOB SEARCH. These are two of the most miserable words in the English language. They make your stomach ooky and keep you from posting to your food blog as much as you used to. Before I started my job search, life was more idyllic, and the two most miserable words in the [...]

My very first post two years ago featured mulberries. I had hoped to make Jeffrey Steingarten’s mulberry granita recipe last year to celebrate my first blogiversary, but a freak late spring frost scared all the budding mulberries off. This year the berries were a good two weeks late for my second blogiversary. [...]

Today is Bon Appegeek’s second anniversary. I’m marking the day with a long post that has taken more than two years to write. There’s a recipe at the end. I promise.
After several years of on-again off-again reading, I finally started volume 4 of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time (À la [...]

I’ve met people who eat chocolate every day, survive on chocolate when depressed, and smoke chocolate after sex. You know those people. Perhaps you are one. Well, not me, I’m stronger than that. Chocolate can’t take me on its own—it takes two to take me down. Caramel plus chocolate works. [...]

This post started as a serious essay on the cult of health among Asians, Koreans especially. After some research, I decided it would be better as an essay on endangered plants like wild ginseng that have been harvested to near extinction by overzealous Asians obsessed with the supposed health benefits. People like my [...]

Let’s say you’re a woman who never wears hats. One day you spot an outrageously stylish hat, the kind of hat Hollywood startlets from the forties wore when they put their handprints in that sidewalk wherever it is where they do the handprint thing while flashbulbs popped and adoring fans cried at how fabulous [...]

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “Why is there a picture of a cat on a food blog on St. Patrick’s Day? Moreover (if you’re the type of person who uses the word ‘moreover,’ which I’m not, except just now), why does the picture include an oxalis plant which [...]

A mini-van pulled into my driveway. This could mean only one thing. I pried my butt out of my chair and flew down the hallway with the grace of a gazelle bounding across rice fields in the Orient. Are there gazelles in the Orient? It doesn’t matter. My body [...]

Back in November I wrote a post about the final week of the local farmer’s market: about the gift of free broccoli from my favorite stand, the last green beans of the season, the hand-lettered cardboard sign that said “SUPER TENDER.” You would have kissed your rutabagas and wiped away tears after reading that [...]

Actually just deer antlers, not reindeer antlers. I thought reindeer antlers sounded more, oh, Christmas-y. At least until we get to the part where we eat them.
Several years ago I bookmarked a Gourmet recipe for Drommar, or Swedish Dream Cookies, because it called for coconut, which I love, and ammonium carbonate, which piqued [...]