The Public Kitchen
A blog about food, farmer's markets and Los Angeles, by Kelsey McConnell.
Soup is straightforward in theory. It's complexity lies in the execution... in how you build flavors and the first flavor layer can come from a mirepoix. Unlike "soup," "mirepoix" is fun to say and it's the colors of the Irish flag, which makes me like it even more.
Boy oh boy oh boy. I did some seriously excellent eating this Christmas.
They taste good and they look cute. In fact, they taste so good and look so cute, I kind of want them all for myself. But, as my grandmother always said, "the best gift is the one you're tempted to keep."
Maybe I am a bit of a hippie, a bit of a foodie and a bit of a yuppie. But in a lot of ways, I'm still just that kid hungry to taste what this city has to offer.
You think you really know a person and then, one December day, you find out they have never had a peanut butter cookie.
I want to share how important the market is to me. And I'm just one person, one story. The LA Times says 10,000 people a week go to the Hollywood Farmers Market. That is 10,000 stories. 10,000 people with their own market memories.
It occurred to me that you could eat turkey and mashed potatoes and gravy with a group of people you weren't born into and celebrate friends just like you celebrate family. And so, Friend Thanksgiving was born.
There was one last page I had dog-eared, Fall Fruit Focaccia. Not only do I like alliteration, I also like focaccia and I still had apples from my apple picking trip.
I cut across several lanes of traffic to pull into a grocery store when the drizzle falling on my windshield reminded me about the existence of hot chocolate.
This is no time to get sick. Therefore: commence Operation Wellness. Operation Wellness is my 3-pronged approached to avoiding illness: garlic, broth, booze.
I just stood there dumbly wondering how I could get a lid out of a bottom cabinet to cut off oxygen to the fire without setting anything else on fire. Did I mention my pot of potatoes was also boiling over at this point? It was. And the smoke detector started to blare, because apparently yanking it out of the wall didn't turn it off.
We once took a stroll through the Ferry Building while I was visiting him in San Francisco. Every time I turned around he was chewing something different, culminating with a giant baguette he had tucked under his arm, but within biting distance.
Have you ever thought about oatmeal? Like really thought about oatmeal? No?! How odd.
With my dead bread finally on cooling racks, I wanted a change of scene and went for a walk through the closest neighborhood-y looking neighborhood. Seeing carved pumpkins on stoops and tiny dinosaurs roaming the streets reminded me of my own childhood trick-or-treating.
For a good chunk of my childhood, a few days before Thanksgiving, I got the call: it was time. Time to make Cranberry Applesauce
Sky Meadow Farm's website promises that "you will experience a very Relaxed and Calm feeling, as if you were set back to a date in time when time was of no importance." They delivered.
A very skinny woman got a large latte with half soy milk and half low fat milk, 1 shot of regular espresso, 1.5 shots of decaf espresso, two Equal and a tablespoon of whipped cream on the top. She would take a sip and say, "this is the best thing about my day." I believed her.
I enjoy capitalizing on the flavors of fall and what says "fall" more than pumpkin? Sadly, pumpkin and I broke up last year. Happily, we've reconciled.
I can't get over how much it tasted like a cake donut. It was ice cream, but it tasted like a donut!
I'm no meteorologist, but I think the weather has been weird. And when the going gets weird, the weird get cupcakes.
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