Soon after I graduated from pastry school, I got a job at the wonderful 11th Avenue Inn on Capitol Hill in Seattle. This oatmeal was my star contribution to the breakfast lineup, and it’s still my favorite thing to make for breakfast, whether entertaining guests or cooking for myself.

Crystallized ginger gives this steel-cut oatmeal the glitz to be the star of any breakfast table, while the spices and creamy texture keep it grounded in the world of comfort food.

This yogurt is wonderful over fruit–mangoes, yes, but just about any other fruit as well–and particularly good over steel-cut oatmeal.

Here is a stripped-down recipe for the cherries based on the more detailed instructions and observations in these entries: Chocolate-Covered Cherries, Part One and Part Two.

A great meringue for frosting and filling cakes and cupcakes, among many other uses.

New favorite omelet: saute whole basil and baby spinach leaves in butter or olive oil before adding the eggs. Fill with cottage cheese, top with marinara sauce. I’m calling it the “Lasagna Omelet” because my mom always made lasagna with cottage cheese when I was a kid, and this brings back all [...]

Coastal Kitchen, a Seattle restaurant that changes half its menu every few months to celebrate a different world cuisine, is now offering the hilarious “language tapes” they play in their bathrooms for free on their website, either as MP3 downloads or audio streams. I’m listening to the one for Greece now, which is fortunate [...]

Taste bud torture: the smell of brownies permeating the house for at least an hour before they’re fully baked and ready to cut.

 
Michael at Herbivoracious posted a write up of the dinner he put on at Cafe Flora this past Tuesday evening, which Baker Bee and I were lucky enough to attend.
The menu was based on Spanish flavors with a modern twist, and included things like savory churros with morel “hot chocolate” (pictured below, as well as [...]

Miracle fruit is a little red berry from Africa, originally eaten by the local populace to make their food taste better, but now also a staple in the diets of urban foodies and inquisitive geeks elsewhere in the world. The berry itself doesn’t taste like much–or so I’ve heard, as I’ve never had a fresh one–but the results are, well, miraculous, thanks to a chemical in the berry called–get this–”miraculin”. When scientists start calling things miracles, you know you’re dealing with something truly special.