The Flow

There’s something to be said for mindfulness, I’m sure. Of course, I say I am sure, but I am about as sure as an arachnophobe averting their eyes from someone’s prized pet tarantula and saying, “I’m sure it’s a lovely, friendly pet. You must really enjoy its company.”

Dream of True Reconciliation

I dreamed, woke up, and wrote this down. It seemed worth remembering.

Porcupine Meatballs "Yorsheki"

A dish from Sergey's childhood. My mother in law taught us how to make them at home. We haven't practiced enough to be confident, but we have it down for when we're ready to try.

Sweet Bread

Every now and then I get an overwhelming craving for bread. Nice, sweet, fluffy, devourable bread. This is the first recipe I came across, and it works well. Freezes nicely too, but always slice it up first!

Super Garlic Marinara

For a long time I bought my marinara sauces. At a certain point I started wondering how hard it was to make my own. While I'm not ready to grow my own tomatoes, I found it's not that hard to start with a can of crushed tomatoes and go from there.

Steamed Pork Buns "Nikuman"

Sergey and I have been on a Japanese cooking kick. This is one of our recent favorites. Because neither of us has what you'd call a sensitive palate, we tripled the shiitake mushrooms and swapped greens out for green onions.

Spicy Rice & Beans

"I do not like beans," I said to my husband. "Beans are mushy and overcooked and disgusting and... oh, you mean you can adjust soak time on beans so they're a little al dente? And you can pick different beans? Well why didn't you say so in the first place..."

Shrimp Boil & Sauce

Our neighbor served us a fantastic shrimp boil one evening, and we begged for the recipe. Here is how we make it at our house.

Shortbread Cookies

Sergey loves crispy cookies. In search of ways to get homemade cookies like that, he found a cookie press that made tiny cookies with lots of ridges. Success! Tiny little crunches of joy.

Salmon Spread

One of many recipes we begged our neighbor for. She is a quintessential Hostess and comes out with delightful cookery and spreads like this.

Roasted Potatoes

One day, Sergey and I were ravenously hungry and--surprising nobody--we went in search of a recipe that could use more garlic. And this time, we opted, not for more mushroom, but for a more flavorful oil. Pop quiz, what made old-style McDonald's fries the best?

Bread Knots

I was absolutely craving bread. But not fluffy bread, I wanted a nice dense bread to sink my teeth into. I stumbled across this recipe on Tumblr and it was perfect. And then I used this recipe to process election anxieties. I made well over a hundred in that time.

Pickling

One day I was up on a hypomanic swing. And I decided, among other things, that I wanted to pickle my own sandwich toppings. So I went on YouTube and here's the result.

Nib Nommers and Cacao Craze Cookies

Snopes' disproved Neiman Marcus costs-a-fortune cookies offered a killer recipe, urban legend or no. It also churns out a metric crapton of cookies in one go, so it became my go-to recipe when I needed party cookies, or office cookies. Heavily modified over the years, of course...

Mushroom Meatballs

One of our oldest recipes, Sergey distilled down what makes a good meatball and... DECIDED THERE WAS NOT ENOUGH GARLIC AND MUSHROOM. Of course. Sensible man, that.