Blueberry Pudding Cake

Blueberry pudding cake is one of those desserts where you swear the first time you make it that the recipe is wrong. You may look at the pan after you pour in all that boiling water and say to yourself, “There’s no way this is going to work.” I thought exactly the same thing, but it does work. During the long stay in the oven, the boiling water combines with the thick batter, creating a kind of crunchy cake topping that floats on top of the juicy blueberry filling. It’s rustic and homey, almost like a cobbler, and tastes best served warm with some vanilla bean ice cream or gelato. Read more

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Substituting Ingredients: The A to Z Kitchen Reference

The classic question for any home cook is what to substitute for ingredients you don’t have on hand, can’t find, don’t like, or are outside the budget. That tin of baking powder in the pantry is well past the expiration date and probably won’t rise your cake, so what can you use instead if you can’t make a mad dash to the store? What if a recipe calls for a spice, cheese, or sauce you’ve never heard of and can’t find? Read more

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Mango Blueberry Salad with Ginger Vinaigrette

In 2007 we bought two blueberry bushes, the low bush variety that produces small berries like our favorite wild blueberries from Maine. We almost lost them due to flooding both the first and second year, but somehow they managed to survive, though they haven’t produced berries yet. It takes a few years for blueberry bushes to begin producing, and when they do it’s often small amounts at first, but growing as the bush matures. Read more

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Weekend Gardening: Tomato Updates

We planted our tomatoes three weeks ago and so far they are doing very well. The plants all took readily after transplanting and they’ve grown like crazy; in fact half of them are already at the top of their cages.

We set 19 tomato plants and 4 tomatillo plants, then had to add more tomatillos when one of them keeled over. The purple tomatillos are in this bed in the back left corner, and the green tomatillos are outside the frame on the far right of the bed. We have learned that the tomatillo plants need plenty of space, so their cages are a little larger around and substantially taller because they’ve always grown at least 9 feet tall, and we usually end up tying them to the top of the deck rails about 5 feet above their cages.

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Grow Your Own #41 Roundup

After a winter hiatus from hosting Grow Your Own, I am back to work on it. Our family had quite a school year and it looks like things may finally settle down to a more sustainable pace, though I’m not sure it will ever be as relaxed as it was before the boys started school. While managing all the various therapies for their needs this year, I’ve met myself coming and going, a small taste of the busy future teen years, though thankfully that is still a little while away. My friends Nate and Annie (House of Annie) were so helpful and did a beautiful job keeping things going for Grow Your Own, and I can’t thank them enough for all their help. Read more

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Adopting a Blogger

Meet Anne, who writes about her love of food at http://annacotta.wordpress.com. Anne started blogging after her senior year in high school and says she’s “glad it stuck.” She spent a gap semester in Indonesia and fell in love with the food, and is now a college student spending this summer in a restaurant kitchen learning about technique and how restaurants work. In spite of her busy work and school schedule, she still manages to find time for cooking and baking at home. Her gap semester in Indonesia reminds me of how I wish I had done something like that during my college years, and I highly recommend it. Spending time in another country while working on your degree can be one of the best things you’ll ever do, both for your professional career as well as your world view.

Anne and I are partners for Adopt-a-Blogger, a terrific program founded by Kristen at Dine & Dish which pairs experienced food bloggers with newer bloggers. We get to know each other, help each other with blog stuff, answer questions, and share tips. Anna and I have both been busy this spring: she’s had school and work; I’ve had the kids, the garden, blog duty, life in general. We might have gotten off to a slow start, but we are catching up now.

Anne and I decided to introduce each other with a brief interview, so we chose some mutual questions and picked a few of our own. I hope you enjoy meeting Anne and getting to know her through her blog.

My questions for Anne:

You are working in kitchens now. What are your professional aspirations?

Hm. Well, I like working in the kitchen, but I think my real interest is turning out to be in the broader restaurant business. It’s exciting back in the hot kitchen, but I’m more interested in FOOD as a whole rather than just cooking, if that makes any sense. Making the same thing over and over in the kitchen seems like it could easily become more mechanical and job-ish than inspired and exciting. Plus I just love the idea of having my very own restaurant; the thought of finding a space and designing logos and choosing linens and creating my own menu makes me just squirmy with excitement. The food-love isn’t going to die out though, I can say that for sure. I’ll be involved in the strange world of feeding people in some way, whether I stick in the kitchen or venture out into restaurants or make my own jam and sell it on the side of the road in Kentucky.

Eat out or cook in?

Depends what’s in the fridge. Or where I am. If I’m away from home, I feel the need to eat at as many restaurants as humanly possible, doing a bit of a scavenger hunt meal; apps here, entrée there, dessert at that shiny little bistro around the corner.

You wake up in the middle of the night, starving. What do you make?

Depends how lucid I am. Probably a banana with Nutella.

What’s your favorite dish to order at your favorite restaurant?

Any of their ever-changing pasta dishes, or lamb chops.

Breakfast, lunch, or dinner?

Breakfast or dinner, lunch is the awkward middle child.

You have to cook in just one style (Italian, Basque, Thai, etc.) forever. What’s it going to be?

American I suppose, because it’s sort of a big grab bag of everything.

Favorite fruit?

A really good mango. But more often, strawberries.

Anything you’ve eaten traveling that you craved for ages but could never re-create just right?

Soto ayam, this deliciously limey and almost-spicy Indonesian chicken soup.

Street food or Michelin starred restaurant?

How sketchy is the street food? How pretentious is the starred-restaurant?

Any guilty pleasure foods? Mac and cheese from the box? Oreos? Orange Fanta?

I love Coke. I wish I didn’t, but I get insane hankerings for the real-sugar Mexican Coke that comes in a bottle.

Summer favorite? Winter favorite?

Winter: our very dear family friend’s Christmas Day coffeecake, I swear it could heal the world’s problems it’s so amazing. Get all the world leaders around this cake and there shall be peace among men. She delivers them on Christmas Eve, I get almost equally excited for “Camie Cake” as the rest of Christmas.

Summer: Raspberries from my mom’s garden… or caprese salad eaten on a deck… or ribs… or corn succotash…

Top three reasons food bloggers rock.

1. Humor. There are some clever ones.

2. Creativity. Always new stuff getting posted.

3. The fact that bloggers often get little glory but do it anyway because they are rad.

Finally, tell us a few things you enjoy besides food.

I like waffles, puppies, dancing poorly and wildly, being on planes, Google, sunshine, warm laundry, sitting in coffee shops, lemon soy yogurt, people who play harmonica, The New Yorker, and my ma and pa.

You can find my interview responses at Anne’s post Little Orphan Annie.

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