Happy Belated New Year!  read more »

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Who remembers that jump rope ditty? "First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes momma with the baby carriage." So too goes the nutritional lexicon for plant-based foods, where first comes fruit, then come vegetables. But think, who ever talks about 'vegetables and fruits'? It's always 'fruits and vegetables', 'fruits and veggies'. But if we want to improve our health through our diets, vegetables must come first. So first off --

As promised in print, here are the notes on the restaurants from my fried chicken search not prominently mentioned in either the article or my list of favorites. (I'm leaving out Ajisen, Massey's, Nate's Seafood, Plus One Chicken and...Bill Addisonhttp://www.dallasnews.com/blogs/overthetop/emailbloggers.htm?contact=Bill

Welcome everyone to the Tuesday, May 27 th , 2008 edition of Tuesdays With Dorie , the Internet baking club that is tastily baking their way through the delicious cookbook by Dorie Greenspan, "Baking, from my home to yours." Each week one member gets to choose one of the recipes and they, along with the rest of us, bake it together and reveal our results all on the same day. Tuesday! Reveal day!  read more »

The First Stage: Shock The original plan was to take Craig to see the play "Speech & Debate," which he's been eager to see, and then to dinner at Soto--a Japanese place in the West Village, praised as the...Adam Roberts

This month’s Daring Bakers challenge was hosted by Kelly of Sass and Veracity and Ben from What’s Cooking . This is one of the first challenges where I really know each of these bloggers and so I couldn’t wait to see what they would come up with to challenge us this time. I should have guessed from this pairing that we would end of with a pastry! Ben is a master at making Puff Pastry and Kelly is always coming up with great ideas of how to make the DB challenges reflect her culinary style. Therefore, it just made sense when I saw the challenge would be a Danish. On the outset, I must admit that I wasn’t too excited about the challenge, as I generally don’t like Danish. It is always so sweet and the dough is generally plasticy, wet and gummy from the filling sinking into it. But as I have come to learn with these challenges, the things we sometimes buy, often do not reflect what the original homemade variety would taste like. Once I saw that cardamom was involved in the dough recipe they had picked out for us, I began to feel slightly more relieved, as I have a huge love for this spice. Then when I read further that we could experiment with the filling I felt even better!  read more »

Last month my mother and I were talking about what babies eat and when during their first year, and she asked me if I was planning to make my own baby food. "Of course I am planning to," I said, but I understand that things get a little crazy when you're dealing with a baby." My dreams of beautiful little jars of farmer's market vegetables lovingly pureed by mama will, I'm sure, soon be abandoned when mama is not getting the generous amount of sleep to which she is accustomed. The difficulties of the third trimester, pain of labor, and complications of breastfeeding are all described in excruciating detail in pregnancy books, but the infants overwhelming needs are just vaguely, ominously mentioned. I believe its true because everyone says so, but I still dont quite understand how a tiny baby can take up so much time that you have trouble sneaking in a shower. I guess well find out soon enough. In the meantime, Im treasuring my last months of complete self-determination just as much as Im looking forward to meeting our baby, who I have come to think of as a pleasant and clever but demanding little creature. A fast walker, I zip past the Bugaboo-wielding moms and nannies in the park. I go to yoga on Saturday afternoon or coffee Sunday morning without having to negotiate with Andrew. Shopping is a snap, not a major expedition. And I cook whatever I want, even if I know its going to consume an entire afternoon or move dinnertime back to coincide with the Daily Show. I probably do that kind of marathon cooking only once a month or so, but I love getting lost in the process. Since Im fairly certain this luxury will not be mine to enjoy for long, Im trying to enjoy it now. Sunday was my thirty-first birthday.  read more »

Happy Yule Everyone!  read more »