The word ‘oatmeal’ technically just refers to dried oats — be they steel-cut, rolled or quick — or a porridge made thereof. Long habit and family tradition, though, conjure up a whole dish for me: oats cooked soft, mixed with raisins and milk and generously sprinkled with brown sugar — you know you’ve got enough when […]

A specter is haunting Minneapolis: the specter of per-half-pound cheese pricing. There you are, innocently perusing the fancy cheeses, thinking to yourself, “Alas! These cheeses entice me so, but I could never afford them!” But then you pick one up and glance furtively at the unit price, and lo! $10! The kids might have to […]

The best thing about your father-in-law building a wood-burning oven in his backyard is the amazing pizza you can bake: its pillowy crust dotted with pinpoints of char, the right balance of chewy, soft and crisp.  The worst thing about baking in a wood-fired oven? All the other pizzas you’ve ever made seem horrible in […]

Just a few weeks ago it seemed like the farmers markets would never open, and now here we are already two weekends into the season at the Midtown Farmers Market. And what a season we are having! May farmers market shopping in Minnesota in any normal year is an affair for the die-hards, an exercise […]

Is it still not farmers market season yet? It feels like it’s been warm enough for a month now — with the occasional frost thrown in for variety — but our market still won’t be open for weeks. To help manage the market jones — or, I guess, to make it much worse — Martha […]

I didn’t set out to veganize Cook’s Illustrated’s ‘Sichuan Stir-Fried Pork in Garlic Sauce’ — it just sort of happened. It’s not that I have anything against vegans, and if you are vegan and ever come to our house for dinner I would enjoy the challenge of preparing a strictly plant-based meal. Personally though, I’ve […]

The most striking feature of Wood Lake Nature Center in Richfield is the wetland that sits at its center. Even in winter — if you want to call this winter — when the pond is iced over and almost everything is dead, it brings a certain thrill of being an explorer or a pirate to […]

If there is one meal that summarizes most of the eating Martha and I did in Sweden, it would have to be the one we ate at Rolf’s Kök (pronounced “shook”), just north of central Stockholm. No fancy restaurant, Rolf’s was one of many restaurants downtown focusing on husmanskost, everyday Swedish cooking. Husmanskost restaurants generally […]

It’s no secret to regular readers of this blog, or regular readers from the summer of 2009 at least, that I get pretty excited about going to the farmers market, especially Minneapolis’s Midtown Farmers Market. When asparagus, tomatoes, or sweet corn show up on vendors’ tables that excitement is easy enough to understand, but I’m […]