Category Archives: DIY

Easy Perfect All-Butter Pie Crust

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Is it too presumptuous to call this the “perfect” pie crust?  Especially since I’m not a baker who’s tried a great many of them?  It’s perfect for me, anyway, because it’s so easy, so sweet-salt-buttery-flaky, and because it uses all butter instead of shortening.  And although it’s a fairly standard recipe, I found it via Martha Stewart many years ago, and everything she does is perfect, right?

How do you make your pie crusts?  If you have a different perfect method, I definitely want to know.Yesterday, July 5, marked Seattle’s traditional first day of summer, and it arrived right on schedule.  (Apparently the “meteorological cognoscenti” pin the date as July 12, but this year it was indeed July 5.  Note also in that article that it is expected to last through August 15.  Yay?)  My sister and I celebrated by taking the girls to Molly Moons for ice cream, then swinging in the park, then to the local wading pool.

We were on summer slow time, little kid time, and walking a little less than a mile and a half took us more than an hour, even with the incentive of ice cream cones moving us along.  Look, bumblebees!  Leaves with holes!  A leaf in the shape of a magic (better still, say it like my just-now-four-year-old: “magict”) key!  The girls squatted on the sidewalk to peer into cracks, point, and consult.  You cannot rush past any of those things.  We did not rush past any of them.

Here’s where you want to rush in the summertime: in the kitchen.  And so now that it’s summer, to return to my original point, you’ll be needing an easy pie crust.  This is mine.  I make it using a food processor.  If you don’t have a food processor, I recommend following this method where you grate frozen butter directly into your flour mixture.  (I have never, ever understood the directions for using two knives to make a pie crust.)  If it gets too warm/soft/sticky at any point, just pop the dough in the fridge for a few minutes before continuing.  Easy peasy. Continue reading Easy Perfect All-Butter Pie Crust (click for recipe)

Crispy Chocolate-Granola Haystacks

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Road tripping ain’t what it used to be, friends.

Gone are our lazy days of puttering down the coast, of long lunches with spectacular views, of starting and stopping and pitching camp where and when we like.

We’re all business now.  It’s I-5 all the way from Seattle to Northern California, aggressive packing of PB&J fixings so we don’t need long lunches, and hardly noticing the view because of the song and dance I’m doing in the back seat to entertain the girls.

That’s right, we packed the whole family into the minivan (which I like to call the “Man Van” now, both to distance myself from it and to convey to J how sexy it is for him to take the kids to swimming lessons).  And we drove all afternoon and night, and much of the next day, and lived to tell the tale.

Here are some of the things that we did in the car to entertain three children aged 1, 3, and 5: made a list of things to do, read books, sang songs, colored, napped, watched a video, ate snacks, played peek-a-boo, and let the baby pull out an entire package of floss.

Here is something we did not do in the car: eat these chocolately granola treats.  We meant to, we really did.  Hannah said they were road food and I’m inclined to agree, but once I made them we had to taste one and then, wow, another, and they were so crispy and chocolately and then it was the next day and J was asking me to please take a photo of the things already so he could keep eating them and just like that…gone, as fast as the miles roll by when you’re having a good time out there on the road.

Continue reading Crispy Chocolate-Granola Haystacks (click for recipe)

Homemade Maple-Roasted Almond Butter

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A new cookbook is such a good treat.  Whether it’s on loan from the library or all mine from my great local bookstore, I always love to curl up on the couch or in bed with a new cookbook.  And I just got a good one.

I’m telling you about it because you might think that the Food in Jars cookbook, by Marisa McClellan of the delightful Food in Jars blog, is only for us fringe types who are into canning.  Not so!  First of all, this is truly small-batch stuff, with most of the recipes yielding a manageable 2 or 3 pints of jam or pickles.  No need to can those–give one to the neighbors and put the other(s) in your fridge; they’ll be gone in no time.  Second, there are also plenty of recipes that have nothing to do with canning: think of them instead as recipes for foods that you could put in jars, if the urge struck, but it would be mostly for decorative purposes.  Granolas.  Nut butters.  Pancake mixes.  Infused salts.  This recipe falls into that latter category.

I meant  to put it in a jar, I really did,  but unfortunately I halved the recipe.  Served alongside a plate of apple slices, it was gone before the jar question even came into play.  The full recipe is below, and I don’t recommend halving it. Continue reading Homemade Maple-Roasted Almond Butter (click for recipe)

Salted Caramel Ice Cream, No Ice Cream Maker Required

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The truth about how J and I met is kind of boring, so we usually make something up when people ask us.  For a long time we used to say that we’d met in an internet chat room, back when that sounded scandalous, but now everyone meets online and we have to be more creative.  We met underwater off the Great Barrier Reef?  We were seated side by side for jury duty in small claims court?  We both worked at Baskin Robbins in high school?

That last one is true, actually, although the establishments in question were thousands of miles apart.  But it proves an important point: we have a long history with ice cream around here.

So I am well-qualified to tell you that this one is outstanding.  I already sang its praises here, but I feel wrong depriving you of this recipe for Seattle’s iconic ice cream flavor from Molly Moon’s Homemade Ice Cream.  Especially since, get this, you don’t need an ice cream maker to make it. Some magic having to do with the salt and the cream keeps the texture sublime, even if you make it with a pan and fork instead (directions below).  If you do have an ice cream maker, you can save yourself a few minutes of stirring. Either way, this recipe will make your summer better.  And probably the entire rest of your life. Continue reading Salted Caramel Ice Cream (click for recipe)

Soft Rye Pretzels

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Let’s start with this: I’m not at all above feeding my kids a box of mac and cheese, or declaring that it’s leftover night and wishing everyone good luck, or piling us all into the car to go out for ramen.  But I do try to make dinner for my family with some frequency.

Do you know this nice blog called “Dinner: A Love Story“?  I was just introduced to it recently.  It’s all about feeding your family dinner every night and of course they have a new cookbook (who doesn’t these days?), apparently full of recipes and strategies for feeding a family of picky eaters without going crazy.  I should probably get that cookbook.

But in the meantime I thought I’d share a tip of my own.  One of the ways in which I manage to get dinner on the table on a regular basis is by using the term “dinner” fairly loosely.  Some examples: breakfast for dinner?  Sure.  Sandwiches?  If necessary.  Tonight’s dinner?  These pretzels.  The girls gleefully chose their own dips (peanut butter, rhubarb jam, and applesauce), and the grown-ups had theirs with a sweet grainy mustard.  I made a pot of that great turnip soup soup as well, but it was certainly the accompaniment to the pretzels and not the other way around.It’s a little time-consuming to make pretzels (you boil these in a baking-soda bath in addition to letting them rise twice), but it was a fun project to do with the girls and the resulting pretzels were very good.  They have just the right combination of crispy bottom and chewy center, with a little tang that I assumed was from the rye flour, but Kim Boyce tells me is from the baking soda instead.  This recipe is adapted from Boyce’s Good to the Grain cookbook, which I want to cook from front to back after having started with those Rhubarb-Strawberry Cornmeal Tarts recently.

There’s a great-looking recipe for graham crackers, do you think I’ll be able to get away with calling those dinner? Continue reading Soft Rye Pretzels (click for recipe)

How to Cook a Simple Pot of Lentils

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I like how one good thing becomes another. An easy quinoa dish becomes savory little herbed quinoa cakes.  Leftover risotto fills chard rolls.  A pot of black beans leads to chilaquiles and taco salads and all kinds of deliciousness.  What I’m saying is this: make more lentils than you plan to eat in one go.  We’ll be doing something good with the leftovers tomorrow.

This recipe will work for all the lentil varieties I can think of except for red lentils, which tend to cook into a mush rather than holding their shape.  You can eat them alone or with rice, use them in a lentil salad, or serve them as a side dish.  They’re great under or alongside a simple roasted piece of fish (or probably chicken, although I’m no authority on that point).

There are two secret ingredients at play here that make this lentil preparation so delicious: the lentils themselves, which have a sweet, earthy flavor, and salt.  A splash of vinegar at the end doesn’t hurt, either. If you have a carrot and a stalk or celery, great, toss them in.  If not, don’t fret, just go ahead without them.

Personally, my favorite lentils are the tiny green French Le Puy lentils or the equally-tiny black Beluga lentils.  This recipe works equally well with a run-of-the-mill supermarket brown or green lentil, however.  Whichever kind you choose, just be sure to keep an eye out for tiny rocks or dirt clods as you pour them into a colander, then rinse them well before cooking. Continue reading How to Cook a Simple Pot of Lentils (click for recipe)

Rosemary Candied Pecans

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This will be brief because it’s J’s birthday and I still have presents to wrap.  But the cakes (yes, cakes!) are baked, the birthday granola (by special request) is cooling, and we’re ready to celebrate another sunny day and wonderful year together.

Whatever you’re celebrating this weekend, this is the season for enjoying the sunshine and hanging out with friends, and where there are friends hanging out, there are bound to be snacks.  These pecans are sweet and snappy, with a little something special from the fragrant woodsy rosemary.  (I won’t tell anyone if you hide a few away in your cupboard to throw in a spinach salad with strawberries and goat cheese later this week.  In fact, I’m going to go do that now.)  The recipe below is a happy love child of this one and my favorite olive oil granola. 

Continue reading Rosemary Candied Pecans (click for recipe)

Strawberry Frozen Yogurt

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Our strawberry plants are being tended much more diligently than usual this year.  I had really given up on the strawberries, as they are such slug magnets and I want the sunniest spaces for my tomatoes and zucchini.  But my little girls are not so jaded, and they claimed a huge pot and chose blooming strawberry starts at the plant sale.  They watch them closely and water them daily.  For their efforts, they have been rewarded with some hard little green nubbins that even the slugs still scorn.  June-bearing, my foot.

So I am clearly jumping the gun by buying strawberries so early in the year here in Seattle.  But I have seen the photos of your gardens elsewhere, and I don’t want to wait until it’s too late to get this recipe to you.  Besides, it’s been an ice-cream-making kind of week around here–it’s never the wrong time of year for that.

This recipe is from David Lebovitz’s inspiring book The Perfect Scoop, which makes me want to make so many frozen confections.  This year I’m definitely going to try the parsley ice cream. 

Continue reading Strawberry Frozen Yogurt (click for recipe)

Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies

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You know how I roll: it’s 10 p.m. and crap, I forgot to make the cookies I promised the PTA I’d bring tomorrow for Teacher Appreciation Week or some such made up holiday.  (Not that I don’t appreciate teachers, because I DO.  Bless them.  Thank you, teachers everywhere.  But do I really have to make cookies at 10 p.m.?) (Don’t answer that.)

This has become my go-to chocolate chip cookie recipe.  It’s barely adapted from Smitten Kitchen, a site that I like because I feel confident that Deb cares just as much as I do about food being very, very delicious.  And these cookies fit the bill: they’re classic, chock-full of chocolate, and chewy with a crispy edge.  What more can you ask of a cookie?  Well, I’ll tell you the final way in which they’re perfect: they’re made with melted butter.  If you, like me, never plan ahead to have softened butter waiting on your counter to make cookies, this will mean something to you.  And if it means nothing to you, lucky you, just go ahead and love these cookies for their other charms.

Continue reading Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies (click for recipe)

Roasted Broccoli Pizza with Feta Cheese and Eggs

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It’s been much too long since we’ve had a pizza recipe on this site.  Weeks!  I hope that you’ve been carrying on with your weekly homemade pizza night–do you have one of those?  If not, do you have another special meal that you serve on a regular basis?

Whether homemade pizza is an occasional or regular indulgence for you, here’s a recent favorite of mine.  Roasty-toasty broccoli, creamy-salty feta, perfect saucy egg on top.  You might have to work on the timing to get your egg cooked perfectly to your liking, but in my setup (long-preheated 550 oven, hot pizza stone, thin homemade crust) the egg is still just perfectly runny at the moment that my crust crisps up, after about 5 minutes in the oven.  Now that’s good fast food.

Sunnyside-up pizza not your thing?  Have you noticed that pizza has its whole own category over there on the sidebar menu?  Click it for more pizza inspiration! 

Continue reading Roasted Broccoli Pizza with Feta Cheese and Eggs (click for recipe)