Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

Hi, I’m Gardener, and the name obviously points to one of my passions. I live north of San Francisco in the Sonoma wine country and am definitely spoiled with year-round farmers’ markets, fresh fish, local cheese, and great wine, of course! I am married, no children, have one spoiled cat, and I am firmly convinced that 50 is the new 30. I work at home, spend long hours at the computer, and love the occasional (hah) distraction of reading about food and researching recipes.

My first cooking experience was getting a little boy in the neighborhood to eat my mud cookies (very special with the added texture of peat moss). I graduated to real meat loaf in junior high and by high school was throwing dinner parties with the Gourmet Cooking Club (paella!). By the time I went off to college I was reading food magazines and cookbooks, clipping recipes, and insisting on a real dinner every night while my roommate thought anything other than Campbell’s soup and Tab was really just too much to contemplate.

Today, I still insist on a real dinner every night and it’s usually prepared by me, and my husband is happy to clean up except for when I make one of my famous “simple dinners”. He claims they employ the most pans, utensils, etc. but I personally don’t see what he is talking about. I collect vintage cookbooks and have a particular passion for mid-century pamphlets featuring the scariest food imaginable (think “Cocktail Wieners in Aspic”). My own cooking style features lots of fresh herbs and vegetables, liberal use of garlic and olive oil, and, damn the cholesterol, good cheese.

I love to garden and this time of year finds me digging in the dirt and planting, planting, planting. We’re putting in a vegetable garden again this summer and I can’t wait to hit the local garden club plant sales. Basil and tomatoes from my garden and I am one with the universe.

My husband and I are currently attacking our front lawn by removing most of it. Our challenge is replacing it with a deer resistant garden so that sort of limits the fruit and vegetable gardening I can do in the front. I’ve planted herbs the deer won’t eat, like rosemary, lavender, and ornamental sage. But the back yard is fenced so that presents more opportunities for growing edibles. We have citrus, apple, apricot, and persimmon trees. We always have an herb garden. Last summer we grew lettuces, beets, several different varieties of tomatoes, peppers, summer squash, and a volunteer pumpkin vine that grew out of the compost pile. We plan on doing that again. (Well, maybe skip the sprawling volunteer pumpkin, that thing took up a lot of space.) I hope to win the battle of the lemon cucumber with the raccoons. They would not stop digging up that struggling little plant. I took pity on it and consigned it to the compost pile.

This is my first post. I love this site and enjoy reading everyone’s questions and comments. But now it’s time to get out in the garden.

Ramen w/kim chee
Mashed potatoes in a sea of gravy
Fried egg sandwiches
Spaghetti-o's (shut up!)

It could be pot roast, chicken, meatloaf, sauerbraten, pork roast.....but it has to include mashed potatoes with gravy for "makes me feel like Mom is taking care of me" comfort food.

Buttermilk fried chicken
Smothered Pork Chops
Any Cream-based chowder or stew
Potatoes
Collard greens (with a big piece of smoked meat in it to give it flavor.
Texas Toast
PB & J Sandwiches
Scrambled eggs

all the normal stuff but in terms of unusual comfort food

jook - its a rice porridge thingy my grandma makes
rice mixed with soysauce, sesame oil and a fried egg
rice with tomato sauce and melted american cheese

vegetable lo mein (if i'm really desperate, then a whole mess of chinese take-out seems the only appropriate way to go), breakfast burritos with hot salsa, anything involving potatoes and melted cheese...lots of cheese. finish it off with dark chocolate. hm....today was a pretty good day, but that still sounds good for dinner.