Accompaniments

Make-ahead Dinner Rolls

November 12, 2015 Leave a Comment

A while back, I decided to try my hand at making our sandwich bread.

I checked out books from the library and poured over recipes online. I bought yeast and vital wheat gluten and refreshed my stash of bread flour, which I typically use only for cookie making.

Then I set to work, making popular, tried-and-true recipes with the idea that we could slash our grocery budget and enjoy freshly-baked, whole grain bread several times a week.

Well, it didn’t really work.

The bread was OK, but no more than OK. It was never fresh and ready quite when we needed it, so we were always eating bread that was at least day old. And even the recipes designed for busy cooks seemed a little fiddly or required somewhat obscure ingredients. In the end, the return on investment just wasn’t there.

After a few weeks, I ran out of steam and went back to good old Pepperidge Farms.

Maybe making sandwich bread just isn’t my thing.

But these dinner rolls! They are amazing….

Watermelon Rind Pickles

September 8, 2015 Leave a Comment

I know summer is winding up, but you should really go get yourself one last watermelon, if only for the rind.

I did not grow up eating watermelon rind pickles, but a yellowed newspaper clipping lodged among my great-aunt Marnie’s recipes spurred me to give them a try.

Watermelon rind pickles are the ultimate in thrifty — made from the part of the melon that is usually discarded anyway.

This summer, we’ve been giving our watermelon rinds to the chickens for a cool and refreshing treat on super hot days, so they really weren’t going to waste, but I decided to set aside some rind for pickling purposes too and I’m so glad that I did….

Tomato Chutney

August 21, 2015 Leave a Comment

When we decided to move (much, much) closer to my parents, I expected the free babysitting to be a big perk and it definitely is.

But a little more than a year later, I’ve learned there are other benefits too, like being the lucky beneficiary of 15+ pounds of tomatoes my mom picked up on whim from a roadside stand.

Fifteen pounds is a lot of tomatoes, even for someone like me, who considers the archetypal tomato sandwich one of summer’s greatest pleasures and whose toddler pounds cherry tomatoes like candy….

Tofu Banh Mi with Quick-Pickled Carrots and Onion

July 24, 2015 Leave a Comment

When we lived in San Antonio, my absolute favorite restaurant meal was a tofu banh mi ordered at the walk-up window of a small kitchen that had been fashioned from a repurposed shipping container and dubbed “The Luxury.”

Paired with near perfect French fries or a mouselike chocolate pudding (or sometimes both), this meal was a spectacular tangle of salty, crispy, spicy and sweet….