The Crabby Cook - by Jessica Harper

Wolverine Salad

If your Salad Hands are making you feel like Wolverine (to read the back story on that peculiar thought, click here) I suggest you stoke that fantasy and make a salad in his honor. And if you really believe, who knows, maybe Hugh Jackman will show up for dinner. (Sigh.)

¼ cup fresh lemon juice
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
1 chicken breast, skinless and boneless, halved Read More

I and others like me who are honing our cooking avoidance skills seldom (okay, never) bake bread. Why bother when there’s a market nearby that sells fresh baguettes every day?

Who kneads it? Not I. Way too much trouble.

Okay, so maybe I would get Michelle Obama arms if I were willing to knead bread dough. That, I have to say, is a strong motivator. But apparently not strong enough: you don’t see me rushing to the market to buy yeast. Read More

This time of year the marketplace is flooded with images of cute animals—lamby-kins and chickies and duckies and bunnies. We home cooks are expected to come up with an Easter menu that includes a slaughtered, roasted version of one of those little cute-niks, but it’s hard to get your mind around it. Just try going through checkout at Ralph’s with a leg of lamb in your cart while there’s a stuffed, fleecy-white relative of that leg’s former owner staring down at you from atop the cash register.

Ham is less guilt-inducing because the piggy is not regularly featured in the crush of Easter creature-cuteness. Plus it’s called ham, not piggy, so you can mentally disassociate it from the darling, pink animal whose butt it once was. Read More

I heard recently that the secret to perfect chocolate chip cookies is to allow the dough to rest for 36 hours before you bake.

This is swell in theory, but in reality it’s quite impossible. For crabby cooks, making anything in advance is challenging; we usually cook on an as-needed-right-now basis.

There’s also the fact that I make C.C.C.’s when I’m in emergency mode, when I need them immediately, not in three days. I need them when the kids are having friends over, and you don’t get three days notice on such occasions. You’re lucky if you get three minutes. The house fills, quite suddenly, with hungry teenagers and in a rush of good will, you agree to make them cookies. Before you have time to say, “What was I thinking?” you’ve got out the flour and the butter. A half an hour later, you’ve got happy teens and a great-smelling house. Read More

I’ve been hearing a lot of chatter about rice lately.

For one thing, there will be no rice-throwing in Alaska: Bristol and Levi  have called off the wedding. If you are a Palin-watcher you know Bristol had the baby in December, and they named him Tripp. Wasn’t there another Palin named Tripp? Or was it Trent? Or Topo? Whatever; Palinism is so 2008.

In other rice-related news, it’s been established that if you drop your cell phone in the toilet, you can place it in a jar of rice and it will come chirping back to life. Apparently the rice wicks away the offending toilet moisture. It’s the same science that applies when you put rice in your salt shaker to keep the salt from getting clumpy. (I have never been organized enough to actually do this; I live with clumpy salt.) Read More

Just when you thought Haagen-Dazs couldn’t be better (unless you are like my friend Rena who actually thinks it could be better), they’ve come up with, not just a new fabulous flavor but a whole new fabulous line, called “Five,” because the ice cream in question has only five ingredients.  There are no stabilizers and whatever other junky stuff ice cream usually has, just five things: skim milk, cream, sugar, eggs, and a flavoring.

I bought the ginger-flavored one. I actually don’t even like ginger that much, but it sounded exotic; I could pretend I was vacationing in Thailand which would improve my mood. Also I knew nobody else in my family would eat anything gingery so I would have it all to myself. Read More