Outpost 505

Sunday night’s bolognese was wildly easier and wildly more delicious than I anticipated. Ragù alla bolognese was on my 25 Recipes list in part because I keep hearing about pots of bolognese simmering away at Shana’s house – and part because while I can make a solid marinara, I really should branch out a bit [...]

[Read more →]

I’ll be honest: I’m looking forward to the end of the Kitchen Diaries project.  It’s not that I don’t like posting about our food – I’m just looking forward to telling you about just the good stuff, the recipes and meals I recommend, the things I’m definitely interested in eating again.  Tonight’s dinner is a [...]

[Read more →]

Or: Farfalle with Shrimp and Arugula Sometime in July, I planted arugula.  Shane isn’t particularly a fan – he likes his salad greens a bit milder – but I hoped for a few salads, maybe a batch of pesto or two.  Nothing big.  It was already the middle of the summer, after all, and nothing [...]

[Read more →]

Another really lovely night of food and conversation but no photos! While there were many delightful things to look forward to on this trip, one of the highlights for me was getting to have dinner with two of my college friends, Blaze and Heather.  We were all students at Rockford College, but didn’t meet until [...]

[Read more →]

I brought home another five pounds of tomatoes from the garden on Sunday.  The Romas were set aside for roasting and for last night’s goulash, but the rest went into a small but fantastic batch of pasta sauce: They simmered and sweat away in our big stock pot until the juice rendered out, then I [...]

[Read more →]

The June 2009 issue of Bon Appetit lingered on my dresser, unread, for nearly a year until Maria pointed out the profile of Niagara-on-the-Lake, which led us to a couple of delicious destinations on our recent trip.  Since then, we’ve made at least three dishes from this issue, including last week’s wonderful polenta with a [...]

[Read more →]

I’m not sure what I had in mind tonight. Our planned meals got all switched around this week by my moods and our lack of interest in things that seemed fantastic a few days previously. To some extent, this worked out in our favor tonight, as we had a bit of a lot of things [...]

[Read more →]

Fava beans weren’t on the shopping list on Saturday, but an impulse buy from Tantré Farms turned into stocking up when the helpful market staffer told me that they’d just done the last fava pick of the season.  No more favas?!  But we just found a new favorite pasta dish!  No more favas for another [...]

[Read more →]

For our second go-round with this recipe, I made a few alterations – some improvements, others just alterations.  Last time I drained and used a jar of whole tomatoes from last summer – we’ve since run out of tomatoes and didn’t pick up enough from the market, so I used a can of diced tomatoes [...]

[Read more →]

I bought fava beans at the coop late last week with no real idea of how to use them.  Or what they tasted like.  Or the fact that you have to peel them twice.  All I knew was that I wasn’t going to miss the opportunity to figure out what the heck I could do [...]

[Read more →]