Have you ever read “Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant”? It’s a collection of stories in which food writers divulge their secrets of what they eat when they’re alone (and some of it’s not foie gras, that’s for sure). Each story is poetic, telling of loneliness and comfort, whether eating eggplants for months or ingurgitating ingredients that should never have been paired (think egg noodles with cottage cheese).

I have my own version of the latter. It’s my Favorite Things sandwich. The beauty of a Favorite Things sandwich is that a person can have more than one. Mine changes with whatever’s available in my apartment: Sometimes it’s peanut butter, almonds, bananas and chocolate chips on Wonderbread; once it was turkey breast, ground beef, cream cheese and bacon bits on toasted and buttered sourdough. A Favorite Things sandwich can be made of anything you want, even leftovers. The only condition is that it has to be comprised of your favorites. It also has to be eaten alone, or if you must, in the company of someone whom you trust. I wouldn’t eat a Favorite Things sandwich in front of just anybody.

Normally, each blog post begins with a food photo. This post is an exception, simply because I fear that my honesty may appall some of you. Sometimes, Favorite Things sandwiches can’t be pretty, no matter how hard you try. And while this isn’t as bad as some of the Favorite Things sandwiches I’ve had in the past, I still hesitate. The choice is yours, you may click on the link below for a visual and recipe for my latest Favorite Things sandwich. Or you can pretend I said nothing at all.

(more…)

If ever there was a particular herb or scent to describe my mother, it’s ginger. It’s her go-to remedy for almost all ailments headaches, flu, whatever you got. When I was a kid, with even the slightest sniffle, she was in the kitchen tossing bits of the nubby little root into a stock pot full of water.

When the pot had boiled, her voice bellowed through the walls into the bedroom we shared, through the sheets and used Kleenex I had burrowed under. It was one word, both used as an announcement and a stern command. “Steam!!”

I shuffled from my bed into the kitchen, where my mother stood exactly as I had pictured she would be: Upright, one hand on her hip and the other hand pointing downward at the ginger pot on the floor, in front of the wooden stool my grandfather had made.

I handed her a wad of Kleenex as I positioned myself on the stool, crouched uncomfortably over the pot that was between my knees. My mom hurled a blanket over my head and the pot, sealing me into a little heat pod. Scalding steam rose from the water, stinging my face. I cried out in discomfort.

“You have to do it,” she said, as I whimpered from under the blanket. She firmly believed that the ginger would cure the sniffles. So I sat, breathing in deeply the spicy-sweet aroma, at the same time trying to keep my knees from touching the sides of the pot. After I emerged from the blanket I was a defeated, sweaty mess. But the sniffles? Gone. I was usually back to normal the following day.

We did this ritual every time I got sick – even well into my teens, when I much preferred self-medication to ancient herbal remedies that had been passed down the family tree.

It’s been years since I’ve posed over a pot of boiling ginger, that is, until I made this recipe for ginger crème brulee. (Click on “Read the rest of this entry” for more)

(more…)