A Salad Grows in Brooklyn

9th Jul 2008

garden01

It was the most fantastic feeling in the world--especially for someone who has no idea how to grow food, like me. A bunch of seeds Elin and I planted months ago in a nearby community garden--tomatoes, kale, peppers, cucumbers, snap peas, beets, radishes, onions, lettuce, and corn--had been growing into large green bushy things that we hoped weren't weeds. Were they healthy and sated with water...

Really Ugly Green Beans Changed My Life

12th Jul 2007

green beans 7

Before beginning even the most basic of recipes, I usually consult a few dozen cookbooks and online sources to make sure I’m not missing some essential technique I’d skipped the previous dozen or so times I made the meal.  It's a compulsory action, one that drives other people nuts, and very often myself.  But I just want to make absolutely positively sure that I'm doing something that r...

Skirt Steak with Haughty Green Beans

30th Oct 2006

skirt steak 13

I had no idea.  Abby and I are staring at this picture of skirt steak with string beans with mouths agape, salivating over the chance to make this fine meal , when we notice that nowhere in the ingredients are those beans listed.  We double check, and then wonder what it was exactly that we were looking at.  All they they had was something called haricot verts.  "I'm not sure what that...