Christmas means a lot of things to a lot of people, but in my house, where Alex and another couple of roommates are singers, Christmas means gigs, and lots of them.  (I guess people just want extra music in their lives around Christmas.  Go figure!)  It’s a fantastic time, but because of all the gigs, I frequently have to fend for myself at dinner.  Fortunately, I enjoy a little bit of solitary time, and cooking for one definitely has its charms. For instance, I have lately been craving salad.  Yes, salad.  Not exactly your most craveable food, but maybe it’s…

A couple of weeks ago, as my roommates and I gathered together to trim our tree and turn our apartment into a veritable winter wonderland, I stumbled upon the box of Christmas paraphernalia that I always seem to forget about: my collection of Christmas mugs.  I know the fact that I forget about them doesn’t make a particularly strong case for this, but I’m pretty sure that Christmas mugs are my favorite part of the Christmas season, or close to it.  And that’s always been the case.  Even when I was in elementary school, and the days before Christmas just…

Before we get started, I’d just like to take a moment to remind everyone that, as I said last time, I have tons of photos for blog posts in the works due to recent bouts of baking.  I am not– I repeat, not– stuffing my face with Nutella scones a mere four days after Thanksgiving. That said, with Thanksgiving in the rearview mirror, it’s time for Christmas baking!!  It’s the perfect season to crank out ridiculous amounts of cookies, cakes, and muffins, and you don’t even have to worry about putting on weight, because you’re practically expected to give all your…

So I turn my back for two seconds, and suddenly it’s Thanksgiving. Here’s a (not-so) little-known fact: food retail is absolutely NUTS during the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving.  I don’t even know how many wedges of Stilton and Brie I must have sold in the last two days alone, and the fatigue I feel must be nothing next to that of the butchers who have been slinging turkeys since Monday morning.  Let’s all take a moment to be thankful for the people who make Thanksgiving dinner possible, all the way from the farm to the fork (pardon the phrase)….

Every once in a while, I like to mix it up and share a cooking adventure that didn’t turn out as planned.  I have a weird dream of turning “Notes on Sugar’s Big Fat Failure” into a recurring segment, but to be honest, this cake wasn’t bad enough to qualify as a big fat failure– or a failure at all, come to think of it.  This cake was delicious, and every bite was eaten.  It just happened that the process of making the cake was no picnic, and the final result was (obviously) not all that photogenic. I’m convinced that…

I want to be sure to choose my words carefully here, so as not to sound complaining or ungrateful, but this has been the most unrestful October I have ever experienced.  For some reason, I always hold a very romantic idea of what Autumn in general, and October specifically, should be like.  That idea involves lots of solitary quiet time, walking through the woods and crunching through fallen leaves, curling up on the couch with a cup of hot tea, and that sort of thing.  It’s a nice idea, but the reality is much more messy.  This October, there have…

Does anyone else remember Danish Wedding Cookies, the Keebler confections that came in a bright pink box?  They were crumbly little cookies, about an inch and a half in diameter, covered with powdered sugar and studded with little chocolate chips.  We didn’t have them very often in my house– probably because one taste was enough to send us (or at least me) into a tooth-rotting, bellyache-inducing eating frenzy.  But lately, these cookies have been on the brain, and evidently, the subconscious.  After checking the cookie aisle of every nearby grocery store without finding the pink box, these cookies worked their…

Where should I begin with this recipe?  I could tell you about how easy it is to prepare: boil pasta, roast veggies, top with cheese, and eat.  I could tell you about how flexible the recipe is: a quick dig through your crisper drawer will probably produce enough different veggies to pull it off, and while I’m partial to the particular feta that I’ll rave about momentarily, you could still substitute a number of other cheeses.  I could mention that this is an ideal dinner to make when you’re dining alone.  I could also tell you what a lovely dinner…

I know, I know.  Muffins again.  I just made muffins two posts ago, and here we go again.  And it’s not even an original recipe, or an adaptation of a recipe.  I lifted it straight from Joy the Baker. But let me just tell you, these are the most incredible blueberry muffins in the world.  And that’s no exaggeration.  I’ve made these muffins at every opportunity since I first discovered the recipe, and they’ve been a hit every single time– almost everyone dubs these the best blueberry muffins they’ve ever had.  I’d like to say this is because I’m such…

I don’t want to count my chickens before they hatch, but I’m pretty sure I’ve officially survived another Boston summer.  It’s a little too early to say for sure– we could still have a couple of muggy days ahead– but for several days now, the air has been crisp and the breeze has been cool, and I’ve been wearing jackets out of necessity, not just for fashion.  Looks like fall is just around the corner. It seems kind of strange to brag about surviving the summer in Boston, but listen, I’ll take winter over summer any day, because while our…

What a whirlwind few weeks!  In the very silly, very awesome movie Rat Race, a character says, “Good things take time.  Great things happen all at once.”  This may or may not be true in all cases, but the latest great thing to happen to me definitely happened in a hurry. It’s been a while since we talked about jobs, right?  Well, today I’m happy to talk about them once again, because a little over two weeks ago, I fell into a  job that I had never even thought to want.  But now that I have it, it makes perfect…

I am a big, big fan of podcasts.  Is that weird?  It feels like such an early-2000s thing to say.  But it’s true– I really love podcasts.  When you live in a city and rely on public transportation, portable music and headphones are an absolute must.  Otherwise, you’ll be forced to hear all the loud, frequently crazy conversations happening around you.  One of my friends swears she recently witnessed a man on the orange line having an argument with a bell pepper.  It sounds funny, but at the end of a long day at work, I promise, you just don’t…

Well, friends, this is a momentous occasion, indeed: Notes on Sugar’s very first cocktail post.  I haven’t exactly beaten around the bush about my affection for bourbon-based drinks; if you’ll recall, my very first post involved a big, fat bottle of Woodford Reserve and a Manhattan that had very little to do with the actual recipe.  But a whole post about a drink?  This feels odd.  Odd in a good way. And, it should be noted, this is also probably the first post that has the potential to inspire a healthy dose of sophomoric giggling.  I wouldn’t even bring this…

One of the electives that I took in grad school was a food history class, which functioned not so much like a class, but rather like a really intense book club.  When the professor handed out the syllabus on the first day, the reading list included not only a new book for each weekly meeting, but another long list of books that we were instructed to divvy up among ourselves and read independently.  The longest book we were all required to read was Vestal Fire, by Stephen Pyne, which weighed in at an astounding 680 pages (I’ll let you take…

For the past few weeks, I have been obsessed with Project Runway.  And I mean obsessed with a capital O.  We’re only on episode four of the current season, but so far, those few episodes have done nothing but whet my appetite for more.  Fortunately, in addition to its many other charms, the Boston Public Library has multiple copies of almost all the previous seasons on DVD, so when I found myself home alone one evening last week, I was able to sit down with a glass of wine and hours and hours of runway footage.  Just perfect. In general,…