St. Patrick’s Day was a big holiday at the White House. The Prime Minister of Ireland often came to Washington for the celebration, and invitations to the reception and entertainment were much sought after by those of Irish-American descent. We always created menus based on traditional Irish food (see menu below), and the entertainers were renowned Irish artists. One year I had arranged for a troupe of dancers to perform, and we carefully established how many songs they would be […]
There’s an open air farmer’s market in Dupont Circle in Washington every Sunday morning, and my husband and I love to walk down there to take photos and load up on the fresh produce glowing in rude good health. After fighting our way through the crowds, we sometimes stop at a small café nearby that serves a fresh veggie farmer’s scramble that is the gustatory equivalent of what we’ve just seen at the market. Packed with almost as many vegetables […]
This recipe was inspired by the need for speed. I’ve been circling around pulled pork recipes for some time, looking for a flavor that could be melded to the rich and succulent taste of a good barbecue. After more than a few failed attempts (I started on this in June), I stumbled on to a recipe that used ginger and molasses as the primary ingredients in the sauce. The problem was that by the time a nice pork shoulder was […]
The taste of a particular food can evoke potent memories, bringing back sounds and smells, and calling up a moment in the past as if we’d never moved on from there. If I walk into a bakery and smell rye bread baking, it’s like being transported to my grandmother’s kitchen, where I used to kneel at the oven window, watching the little rye buns bake and counting the minutes until they were done. She always put coarse salt and caraway […]
I saw a recipe the other day for a flourless chocolate olive oil cake, in the British edition of House and Garden, which happened to coincide with my acquisition of an extra virgin olive oil called Olivastro from Olio2Go. Olivastro was the winner of the “best extra virgin organic olive oil in Italy” a couple of years ago, and it has a really fresh green flavor, a bit grassy with an almond aftertaste. It comes from a family-owned olive grove near […]
