http://dianacooks.com Sat, 11 Oct 2008 15:42:39 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en When my husband and I married, our friends Chris and Melanie gave us a waffle iron as a wedding gift. Waffle irons, along with toasters, are often the butt of wedding jokes, but for us, this was a perfect gift. We adore waffles and make them nearly every weekend. At first ... http://dianacooks.com/2008/10/11/weekend-waffles/ I've been shopping at Verrill Farm since I moved up to Boston from Connecticut over ten years ago. I used to work in Concord, so it was easy for me to slip over to their farmstand for corn or tomatoes. It's a little more difficult for me to get over ... http://dianacooks.com/2008/09/26/verrill-farm-will-rise-from-the-ashes/ Ok, ok ... I know this is a food blog, but I'm a food writer by trade, a freelance one at that. And I'm here to ask for your help. (This is what I blogged over at my writing website, The Renegade Writer, today.) I'm not a big reader of essays, ... http://dianacooks.com/2008/09/10/help-a-writer-in-need-lori-hall-steele/ Earlier this summer my husband and I drove into Cambridge on a Saturday afternoon to catch a film. Afterwards, we were vaguely hungry, but not knowing for what, we prowled the neighborhood. We found ourselves in Inman Square at East Coast Grill, where we were told there'd be a half-hour ... http://dianacooks.com/2008/09/08/mango-ice-cream/ This afternoon my mother-in-law and I took a cooking class down here in Houston. Since we don't have such great Mexican or Tex-Mex food in Boston, I'm all about eating as much as I can of it while I'm here. This class focused on Mexican breakfasts, a meal I don't ... http://dianacooks.com/2008/08/18/mexican-breakfasts-in-houston/ My son and I are flying to Houston in a couple days, so I've been trying to empty out the fridge before we go. This weekend I made several quarts of chicken stock with the assorted chicken necks, backs, and gnawed over bones in our freezer. This also got rid ... http://dianacooks.com/2008/08/11/simple-meals/ Lee Gomes at the Wall Street Journal has it right: American cookbook publishers should start listing weights next to ingredients, not just volume measurements. Publishers argue that American cooks typically don't own kitchen scales, so why include these measures? To which I say "Balderdash!" Most serious home cooks do own ... http://dianacooks.com/2008/07/24/we-want-weights-we-want-weights/ I was scanning a sale announcement from Jessica's Biscuit, one of my favorite virtual cookbook haunts, and I zoomed in on this book, Consider the Eel, by Richard Schweid. A cookbook about eels? Indeed. The author discusses the fascinating life of eels (did you know every eel starts out in ... http://dianacooks.com/2008/07/23/consider-the-eel/ When mid-July rolls around, my thoughts turn to a story I clipped from the New York Times back in 2003, specifically a recipe for a blueberry chiffon pie created by the Times' former food section editor, Amanda Hesser. The first time I tasted it, I swooned inside. The marriage of ... http://dianacooks.com/2008/07/18/blueberry-chiffon-pie/ I like to make this curry in the summer. It's not super spicy, although one could make it that way, and the flavors of coconut, fresh curry leaves, and tomatoes simply whisper warm weather to me. I noticed this recipe on the Boston Globe's "Dishing" blog last year. I could tell ... http://dianacooks.com/2008/07/16/curried-black-eyed-peas/