When I was in 7th grade, my parents signed a form giving permission for me to participate in a raffle put on by my science class. The prize? Tiny baby chicks from our egg-incubation study. I am sure my folks were skeptical. Chickens? We lived in suburban Santa Cruz. People didn’t have chickens in our…
I wrote last week about the farmer’s market, and about how I am trying to be more responsible about using the produce I bring home before it goes bad. I am happy to announce that we have made some very good changes to our kitchen paradigm, and have significantly reduced our produce waste. I…
I love kitchen gadgets. LoveloveloveloveLOVE. The weirder and more obscure, the better. I have cabinets full of ricers, garlic slicers, mallets, weird whisks with funny bits for extra fluffy foams. I love my hand-crank pasta machine. I want an extruder. My stand mixer? We have an understanding that makes room for the boyfriend, but otherwise…
It’s definitely fall here (after all of what, like 17 days of summer? What gives, San Francisco?) and the pears on the tree in the backyard are filling out beautifully and starting to ripen. Yesterday as I was out feeding the ducks and tending to the garden, I noticed a few pears starting to fall…
Or, I ought to say, “A-Cornbread”. This isn’t a yeast-leavened bread and is not suitable for sandwiches or toast. It is very similar to a basic cornbread recipe which begins as a batter, bakes up in the oven, and is served in crumbly squares fresh out of the pan. Yup, just like regular old cornbread….
There was a time when the Californian diet was dependent on acorns. Some native groups consumed acorns as up to 50% of their daily caloric intake. Besides being plentiful and rather easy to harvest, acorns are *delicious*. So why do people look at me like I’m a maniac when I tell them that I am…
Yesterday when I was getting off work, I had NO IDEA what I was going to blog about today. NO IDEA. I was getting worried, and had decided to go to the little corner market by my house after work to see if anything inspired me. …turns out I didn’t get that far. There is…
It is not hard to get your hands on day-old pastries. What’s hard, sometimes, ARE the pastries. But here’s your chance to make them ol’ croissants shine like new! Croissant bread pudding! There’s really not much to it. Which is good, what with how busy I’ve been this week. Fortunately, there’s always room (er, I…
I’m a morning person. Always have been, since I was a little girl. Once the sun was up, so was I – tearing around the house like a maniac (or a herd of elephants, as my parents liked to describe it), and impatiently awaiting… …well, SOMETHING. I was sure something was about to happen. And…
I love desserts. I always have. I love making desserts. Big batches of cookies, galettes, biscotti…you name it. Usually I’m even pretty good at making a big batch of sweets and then feeding them to OTHER people. Big pans of brownies? No problem: take ’em to the office, or send them off with the boyfriend…
Dog Island Farm is a small urban farm in the San Francisco Bay Area.
