The highlight of my walk into work each morning is the front window of Wuollet Bakery. There's a lineup of two or three seasonally-decorated cakes that changes a couple times a week: school buses...
Christmas is a holiday that comes wrapped in layers upon layers of tradition. There are the classic movies watched again and again: It's a Wonderful Life, White Christmas, Miracle on 34th Street...
Oatmeal has been in heavy rotation at Tangled Up In Food HQ as of late. I've been making a big pot of steel cut oats on the weekends and portioning it into little containers to be reheated throughout...
Uncharacteristically, I made New Year's resolutions for 2015. I usually don't bother, because I try to make positive changes in my life as they occur to me; statistically, this is unlikely to happen exactly on January 1. But for 2015, there were a few things that I'd been meaning to do for years but never got around to, between work, blogging, and eating Marshmallow Mateys straight from the bag.
I am hosting Thanksgiving dinner for the first time ever this Thursday, and I am calm and collected. This is somewhat remarkable because I am a garden-variety neurotic, pacing through life from one stressor to the next. Parallel parking makes me anxious, as does talking to strangers on the phone, buying a washing machine, and Twitter. I get stressed out when I have too much to do but also when I'm bored.
Like chocolate zucchini bread, pumpkin bread is a baked good that I love more than I really should. The typical recipe calls for two cups of sugar and a cup of oil, which is fine if you are a paragon...
I am terrible at rolling out pie dough. No matter what I do, it inevitably resembles an irregular land mass of jagged edges and jutting peninsulas. "No one's pie crust is perfect," my mom reassured me...
Until last week, I had never bought an actual block of Parmesan. This is mostly because we go through a ridiculous amount of grated Parmesan cheese for a family of two--Mike views the stuff as the...
In exchange for registering for the 2015 International Food Blogger Conference (IFBC) at the discounted blogger rate, I agreed to write three posts about the conference. Additionally, Stonyfield...
The joke about Minnesota is that we have four seasons: June, July, August, and winter. Like all oft-repeated jokes, it's funny because of its half-truth. We do have picture-book falls, with piles of...
In exchange for registering for the 2015 International Food Blogger Conference (IFBC) at the discounted blogger rate, I agreed to write three posts about the conference. Additionally, Oil & Vinegar...
Last month, I spent a whirlwind weekend in Seattle for the 2015 International Food Blogger Conference (IFBC). In addition to nibbling on samples and attending sessions on social media and freelance...
My weekends have always been busy, with laundry and grocery shopping and baking bread and going for long walks around Lake Harriet. But there's a difference between pleasantly productive and a hectic...
Last week, I traveled to Seattle for the 2015 International Food Blogger Conference. Seattle is an amazing food city, but sadly one can only eat so much in 48 hours. Luckily, the conference included two receptions featuring food samples from various local restaurants and producers. These were my favorite nibbles
If you believe the marketing hype, the summer/fall seasonal switch flipped last week in the moment between Labor Day and September 8th. One day, we were wearing flip flops and slurping ice cream; the next, everyone was wrapped up in woolen scarves and sipping lattes. While I have nothing against fall per se, it’s something I need to ease into, a season I’m not entirely sure about until I get to know it a little better.
Since Labor Day fell on September 7 this year, it seems like we cheated our way into a few extra days of summer--a little more ice cream, some more scorching days, an extra trip to the State Fair...
No matter how accomplished I become as a baker, despite my victories with from-scratch versions of biscuits, pretzel rolls, pie, and cake, Mike will always be most impressed with my homemade cookies...
The Minnesota State Fair: an annual celebration of the state's agriculture, industry, creative endeavors, educational institutions, and deep-fried food on a stick. Here's my annual round up of my 2015...
Every Saturday morning, I sit down at the kitchen table with a notepad, a pen, and a glass of ice water. Then, with a weighty and strategic approach typically reserved for chess and army invasions, I proceed to plan our meals for the week. I aspire to make my meal plan into a masterwork of logistical intricacy that takes into account produce seasonality, recipe preparation times, my planned workout schedule, Mike's fluctuating demand for leftovers, our current food preferences, and ingredient inventories.
Minnesota's most famous liquid is its water: the northeastern part of the state borders the largest freshwater lake in the world, and we have more shoreline than California and Hawaii combined. "Land...
