Bon Appegeek

Clipping fingernails is risky. You can’t just trim them willy nilly like I did yesterday without considering the consequences. Today I bought three pounds of fresh peas in the pod from the farmer’s market and had to shell them with blunt thumbnails. I admit it—I wasn’t thinking. Three years ago if you told me that [...]

Last year, Cook’s Illustrated offered a free subscription to volunteers willing to check their local grocery stores for the availability of specific foods. This was a fantastic idea. I’m a fan of CI and have subscribed to their web site for several years, but my biggest complaint has always been the strong East coast slant. [...]

When I was a child, the old Willy Wonka movie fueled fantasies about candy teacups, lickable walls, and chocolate waterfalls. That movie probably helped thousands of dentists buy Rolexes. Good for them. My obsession with sweets faded, but the sight of big candy, cool candy, and lots of candy still reminds me of the days [...]

I’ve been kicking myself for not participating in The Heart of the Matter event. This blog may not show it much (I guarantee more buttercream photos before the year is out), but I generally eat a healthy diet to maintain my weight loss and keep high blood pressure in check. When you have a father [...]

1. Recall vague memory of your high school biology teacher noting that this widespread weed is edible somehow. 2. Flip through your copy of Edible Wild Plants by Lee Allen Peterson. Frown. 3. Flip through your copy of Edible Wild Plants by Lee Allen Peterson again. And again. And again. Frown some more. 4. Go [...]

I’m sorry that I’ve been neglecting the blog. Several planned posts flew out the window when my brother recently announced that he will marry this fall, wants us to help commemorate his new life with a wonderful woman with whom he’ll have children and grow old, yadda yadda. The point is that the couple has [...]

A friend in the market for a new computer e-mailed to inquire about technical specifications on SATA hard drives and new types of RAM. I did some research and sent her my findings along with this fact: “According to Wikipedia, SATA is ‘a traditional dish from the Malaysian state of Terengganu, consisting of spiced fish [...]

Like many people trying to lose weight, I went through a dudstitution phase. This is a tragic period when you do things like take a perfectly innocent recipe for chocolate poundcake and replace the butter with applesauce, the chocolate with pureed prunes, the sugar with Splenda, the sour cream with nonfat yogurt, the white flour [...]

It’s spring! What better way to commemorate a season of daffodils and violets than with baby pictures?¹ My cousin’s daughter (who is my first cousin once removed, but I’ll refer to her as my niece consistent with Korean genealogy²) recently celebrated her first birthday. Koreans use first birthdays as an excuse to party, eat, and [...]

After the worst Midwestern winter I’ve seen since the 1970s when I was only a wee oblivious non-cooking tot, spring has finally come. Many people like to put flowers in bottom-heavy glass vases to celebrate. Like so. I prefer rolling pins. They don’t need water, they never wilt, and when was the last time flowers [...]

A friend sent me a Supergeek apron for my birthday. I simply cannot imagine why. It’s like she doesn’t know me at all. Today’s thoroughly ungeeky post is about my measuring spoon problem collection. My first set of measuring spoons were made of weak, easily melted plastic held together by an equally weak plastic ring. [...]

Life is a list, not a box of chocolates. You never know which item you’ll cross off last. Despite that, I love lists. That might be why I love cooking so much. New dishes means reading over lists of ingredients, making shopping lists, and adding to the list of recipes to make next. I maintain [...]

I have a friend who loves to watch movies and exhorts me to watch them too, adding lots of helpful advice such as, “Make sure that when you see the handkerchief you realize it’s a symbol for the war ’cause I didn’t know that and was confused when the carnie ate the turducken, and at [...]

A large Buddha sat serenely in the clearance section of a local home decorating store. A distant echoing voice seemed to shout, Zen for your home, marked down from $499.95 to only $99.95! The path to spiritual enlightenment has never been more affordable! Get it while supplies last! Buddha didn’t even blink. I suppose I [...]

You know you store too much stuff under the sink when your faucet suddenly squirts hot water around the seams and you frantically fall to your knees to pull out bottles of soy sauce, fish sauce, rice bran oil, olive oil, roasted sesame oil, perilla oil, chili oil, black truffle oil, black sesame oil, honey, [...]