The Crabby Cook - by Jessica Harper

The trouble with going to the farmers’ market is that everything looks so gorgeous I buy enough to feed everyone in my zip code. Then I go home and realize that I actually have to do something with all this bounty, as in, cook it, at which point I have been known to utter a mild curse. Read More

Because of its color, it took years for me to get my kids to eat pasta with pesto sauce. Pasta was one of their favorite foods, but only if it came in white. The girls even found red sauce undesirable for a long time, but green was completely out of the question. It was way too suggestive of the odious world of vegetables. Read More

My daughter Nora is tweeting from Florence, with pics of her wine tasting in Tuscany, eating local pastries, partaking of her Italian mom’s home made jam and sampling pasta in local restaurants. This is giving me a bad case of Eater’s Envy. My most recent brush with Italian cuisine was in a restaurant in Sherman Oaks called La Dolce Vita or something whose menu featured “Spaghetti a la Bb Hope.” Read More

I am in Cape Cod today, on vacation with my husband’s extended family. Yesterday it was my turn to make dinner, and I envisioned a gorgeous piece of broiled bluefish. I made the fatal mistake of sharing this vision with my in-laws. Read More

Anne, my sister-in-law, was having a ladies’ potluck dinner for her sister-in-law. Well, actually it’s her soon-to-be sister-in-law, who is marrying Anne’s brother, who also happens to be my friend Amy’s brother-in-law. I know, don’t even try to figure that out. Read More

Sometimes I like to go to the farmers market and buy something I haven’t cooked with before, that I can’t even identify, whose origins are unknown to me. I’ll go home, Google it, get familiar with its ancestry and quirks, and figure out a recipe for it. Read More

My older daughter is a college senior, living in an off-campus apartment with two guys. I just went to Providence to help her get installed and, while I was already happy that she was rooming with Ned and Adam, I am even happier now. Not only are they kind, gorgeous, and tidy, but Adam can cook. (That’s him in the pic, displaying his baking skills.) Read More

I went to the farmers’ market the other day and went basil crazy. I bought so much basil, the smell of it lingered in my car for two days (which was preferable to the smell of wet dog that usually dominates).

I often overbuy at the market, seduced by abundance. Then I go home and realize that I have set myself up for a lot of cooking, and irritation kicks in. But with the basil, this simply did not happen. I think it’s the way basil smells. It’s aromatherapy for crabby cooks; the perfume makes you actually willing to prepare food. Read More

I’m blown away by the NYTimes story about the woman who has written down everything she’s made for dinner for the last fourteen years.I can’t help but imagine what my own dinner journal would look like, had I undertaken such a project. Read More

We ate it. Everybody, even the picky people in my family (i.e. everyone) loved it, which makes it a Miracle Food. After all the days of prepping (click for details of Day 1, Day 2 or Day 3), this was an excellent result.  My friend Jeffery had told me that if the lasagna verde at L.A.’s Angelini Osteria is the Gelsey Kirkland of lasagna, his is the “’57 Buick, or at least the Ethel Merman.” Okay, so not lighter than air, but it satisfies. Read More