There are some kitchen projects that are completely easy and unintimidating, like quick pancakes or no-cook pesto.  There are some that can be a bit more labor-intensive, but still fun and calming, like yeasted bread.  And then there are some that scare the pants off me.  This is one of the scary kind. I’ve wanted to learn how to make cheese for years, since my kitchenless dorm days, at least.  But somehow, I’ve never gotten around to it until now.  And by “I’ve never gotten around to it,” I mean, “I’ve been dodging the task.”  For a while, my excuse…

I remember the very first time I made cookies by myself.  I don’t remember exactly how old I was, but it was during a break from school, and I was home alone, so I was obviously at that golden age where I no longer required child care but was still too young to get a job.  I had a hankering for cookies, but we didn’t keep a lot of store-bought sweets around the house, and I didn’t have a driver’s license, so I had no choice but to make my own.  I wasn’t about to use my mom’s electric mixer,…

This week is off to a refreshingly slow start, thanks to a day off for the Boston Marathon on Monday–apparently that’s kind of a big deal–and an inexplicably short shift at work today.  This has given me a rare chance to consider ways I’d like to spend my spare time, other than sleeping.  I’ve decided that I want to institute office hours, like professors have.  Never mind that none of my jobs at the moment require any kind of desk time whatsoever, except for blogging.  (It doesn’t have to be profitable to be my job, right?  I can put this…

I’ve been down in the dumps a bit lately.  Not sick, not lovelorn, not even depressed, exactly… but just a little blah.  This is for a number of very legitimate reasons, but none that I’m going to discuss here, because I insist on making this blog a place for uplifting things rather than downers and rants.  And furthermore, since I think we can all agree that using food as a means of solving our problems leans pretty strongly toward the bad end of the idea spectrum, I’m not even going to write about food today, if I can help it. …

If the saying “you are what you eat” is to be believed, I think I can safely say that, in addition to coffee, spinach pesto, and Chipotle burritos, my body is composed largely of popcorn.  I’m not even kidding– I eat popcorn on a near-daily basis, a habit which has its roots in my childhood, when my mom, brother and I shared a bowl of popcorn every single solitary day after school, usually while watching the Animaniacs (so. incredibly. hyper). Of course, all the popcorn I ate as a kid came out of a bag in the microwave, or on rare…