The Old Fashioned, New Fashioned, Puffy Omelette

What, you may be asking, is a “puffy omelette”? Well, it’s an omelette that’s puffy, you see. Sorry, I couldn’t resist. A puffy omelette is what my Betty Crocker 1950 Picture Cookbook called an omelette where you separate the eggs, beat the whites stiff, and then recombine, and cook, first over the stovetop and then…

Amana Colonies Cottage Cheese

This winter, I did two things with my life: I chased politicians around the Democratic Primaries, and chased the best pie in each state I went to. This is how I ended up in the Amana Colonies, a cluster of towns in Iowa that was founded by a collectivist sect of German Pietists. (The connection…

Baked mushrooms

Everyone has those moments when the virus makes them a little crazy. My mother’s came when I went over to carry her kitty litter into the house. (Don’t worry, I washed my hands thoroughly and kept my distance from her.) As I was leaving, she cried “Wait! Wait!” I returned to the deck, wondering if…

Refrigerator Rolls

Like so many of the rest of you, we are locked in for the duration–or in my case, until I have to drive up to Boston and help my Dad get settled when he’s released from cardiac rehab. (The duration, she said. Why are we all suddenly talking like we’re at war? Oh, right, because…

Poached Eggs on Kinda-Chinese Pork

Something you should understand is that we are preparing to renovate our kitchen. It’s been six years since the makeshift semi-renovation that I chronicled for The Atlantic, and the make shifts are no longer making it. Everything we purchased from Ikea has collapsed into planned obsolescence. Meanwhile, the ancient cabinets, installed with devil-may-care insouciance and…