My favorite way to make coffee is cold brew, but I do enjoy cappuccino. Since moving in with my betrothed, I have grown accustomed to having her DeLonghi Magnifica (ESAM3300) espresso machine at hand. Continue reading
Category: food
My caffeine daily driver is cold-pressed Peet’s Ethiopian Fancy. It takes 10-24 hours to brew. Things have been so crazy busy in my life, though, that I have a problem. Often, in my sleep-deprived haze, I forget when I put up the last pot. Was that this morning? Or yesterday?
We’ve been fans of Trader Joe’s Brownie Truffle Baking Mix for a few years now. When he was quite a bit younger, I once handed Matthew a plate of brownies and he remarked “you just can’t beat a good brownie.” No, no you can’t.
I have been so busy with pandemic-related tasks that I barely saw Easter approaching and, when I did, I discovered that getting Easter swag was going to be a challenge.
Now, mind, Matthew and Joshua are teenagers and particularly mature ones at that. They don’t think that a bunny comes around and hides eggs in the yard or poops out little foil-covered confections. As for myself, I’m not a fan of cheap milk chocolate in quantity. If I am going to take on the calorie load of some chocolate, I’ll opt for quality over quantity. So our tradition has become that the children wake up to a tasteful basket, usually from a fabulous local chocolatier, usually with one large chocolate bunny and a small, tasteful assortment of miniature chocolate bunnies and eggs of exquisite quality. Continue reading
The garden is growing, and I was able to harvest almost enough basil to make a batch of pesto. Even though I had to add some commercial leaves, it still tasted better (in my mind?) than when everything comes from the store.
Yum.
I don’t want to get into a discussion about the “right” way to brew coffee. People have different tastes, and I’m okay with that. I even like the occasional cup of cheap powdered instant. It’s not coffee, more like Caltech pizza, but I find the taste intriguing. Did I mention occasionally?
Can you wait 12 hours for a cup of coffee? This is currently my favorite brew for daily consumption.
The garden is in that sweet spot: everything is young and growing fast, but the tomato worms and other would-be diners haven’t discovered it.
There isn’t enough basil for pesto yet, and the tomatoes are still small, but there’s mint enough to garnish our couscous and basil enough for soup and there’s lots of promise.
Here is how I make pesto:
Ingredients:
- 120g (about 4 oz) fresh basil leaves
- 3-4 cloves garlic
- 70ml (about 1/4 c) pine nuts
- 50gm freshly grated parmesan
- 160ml (about 3/4 c) extra virgin olive oil
This morning, I made my 1,440th (approximately) school lunch. For years, school lunches were one of the biggest stress points in my life. Sounds silly, I know, but I had to make them early in the morning, I really wanted Joshua and Matthew to find them interesting, I’m picky about food, and it takes a lot of planning to have everything ready every day.
I woke up this morning, thought about the lunches, and realized that after ten years and 1,440 lunches it no longer made me anxious.
Today I planted tomatoes in my garden. They join the mint and basil already planted. The basil is struggling, though, and not helped by the broken sprinkler I found and fixed today.
California’s recent drought killed off the mint and raspberries that have been here for years. It’s good to be able to re-plant.
