Posted in Food and..., tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, cooking, food, learning stuff on July 12, 2025| Leave a Comment »
Today, a quick visit to Sicily to make tomato paste by hand. I had no idea it was this concentrated!
How to Make Tomato Paste in Sicily | The Kid Should See This
It’s easy. Take a ridiculously large amount of perfectly ripe Sicilian tomatoes. Cut them up. Leave them in the sun for 4 days to reduce down to about one tenth of their original volume. Put them in a jar and save it for a gloomy February day.
Here’s the video:
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Posted in Food and..., tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2023, cooking, food, free on August 25, 2023| Leave a Comment »
I have not tested this cookbook, but it looks fun and it’s free and the illustrations are excellent and there are copious speculative fiction references, and I dig the vibe.
The title is funny but I submit that it is too reductive. One doesn’t need to be a sad bastard to enjoy quick, easy cooking. I’ve also spent a non-zero part of my life eating versions of many of these recipes, and know them for the lifesavers that they can be.
Are you newly parted from the parental homestead? Newly parenting? Only have half an hour before you have to log on for a Warcraft raid? Are you just really, really freaking tired?
This may be the cookbook for you.
The Sad Bastard Cookbook: Food you can make so you don’t die
By Rachel A. Rosen and Zilla Novikov
Illustrated by Marten Norr
This cookbook is all the recipes you already make, when you’ve worked a 16-hour day, when you can’t stop crying and you don’t know why, when the eldritch abomination you woke at the bottom of the ocean won’t go back to sleep. And hopefully, this cookbook gives you some new meal ideas. Even Sad Bastards have to eat.
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Posted in Food and..., Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2023, cooking, reference tools on May 1, 2023| Leave a Comment »
You Can Find Over 10,000 Vintage Cookbooks Online
Need to know how to cook cod, prepare a sauce, remove a stain, freshen breath, or dye eyebrows? This book you covered!
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Posted in Food and..., tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2023, cooking, lessons on January 6, 2023| Leave a Comment »
Apropos of nothing: how to make béchamel, one of the classic French mother sauces.
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Posted in Food and..., Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2022, cooking, creativity, inspiration, Thoughts, Writers, writing on November 14, 2022| Leave a Comment »
Need a bite of encouragement? Ever wonder how gyoza are made, or how an architect might make it into the Michelin guide for his dumplings? All this and more, including dough “as tender as an earlobe” await your edification and enjoyment!
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Posted in Food and..., tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2022, #notestoself, cooking, Thoughts on February 19, 2022| Leave a Comment »
Note to self: Do not bake sweet potato fries, then put the half-sheet pan on top of Mr Man’s high-powered toaster oven and forget about it.
Today’s fun fact: “When oils or fats are heated in cast iron at a high enough temperature, they change from a wet liquid into a slick, hardened surface through a process called polymerization. This reaction creates a layer of seasoning that is molecularly bonded” to the pan.
Good for seasoning cast iron, bad for baking pans and the person who has to chisel scrape scrub off that bonded oil.
Go ahead, ask me how I know.
The fries were really good though.
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Posted in Holidays, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2021, cooking, family, home, Marcus Samuelsson, Thoughts on December 24, 2021| Leave a Comment »
Today is the first time I will be making Swedish meatballs for Christmas Eve. I’ve helped my father, many times, but have never made them in my own house.
The recipe we grew up with was my grandmother’s. Every year we would pull out the little wooden recipe card box and find a three by five index card in her handwriting, with my father’s annotations at the edges. You could tell which one it was by all the lingonberry stains.
I loved that it was a family recipe, and that every time we made it I remembered Christmas as a kid at my grandparents’ house in Chicago.
I will admit that I didn’t exactly love the recipe. A decade or so ago we all admitted that maybe, just maybe, the meatballs weren’t all they could be (sorry, Grandma!), and tried an alternative. Here’s what I had to say about that:
… a few years ago we made the shift from Grandma Johnson’s handwritten recipes (so homey!) for dishes like Swedish meatballs and limpa and roast pork to the spectacular versions of same in Marcus Samuelsson’s Aquavit. Yes, an Ethiopian-born immigrant throws down on traditional Swedish food and wins big. See what I mean? The food still says home, only better:)
— The Universal Language? | J.R. Johnson
So this year we’re doing the new old family recipe. It won’t be the traditional Christmas Eve smorgasbord with family, but it will feel like the holidays.
Mr Man and I have already made the quick-pickled cucumbers and are letting them steep (half the sugar though, and no apologies!). As soon as the juice is at full flavor it will be time to make the meatballs.
Until then we’ll kick back, listen to classic Christmas music and make the most of this Christmas Eve.
God jul everyone!
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Posted in Food and..., tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2021, #MaybebitoffmorethanIcouldchew, cooking, home on December 22, 2021| Leave a Comment »
Today’s numbers: 18, 6, 4, 2.
I made cream of mushroom soup, fresh bread, plus pears poached with lemon, cinnamon and cardamom. And that was pretty much my day:)
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* That was a lot of mushrooms.
Posted in Food and..., tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2021, cooking, elves, home, inspiration, yay on September 18, 2021| Leave a Comment »
One of our neighbors has a decades-old grape vine that is both enthusiastic and agile, and it has branched out to surround our shared yards, three fences, and at least two trees. It is also a prolific producer of grapes. Wildlife like them, but sometimes too much. Last year we were a hit with wasps, which I could have done without.
This year, hot off the pick-your-own fruit farm, I decided to try a bit of juicing.
Grapes + Instant Pot == juice, and it’s dark purple and dang tasty.
I should have used a higher grape-to-water ratio, but didn’t want to waste the fruit if the recipe was a dud. The juice is just about sweet enough to drink straight and tastes of minerals and a fall afternoon. I suspect these grapes would make fantastic wine.
Have I discovered one of the long-lost vines behind the prized vintages of the Elven Court in Exile?
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Posted in Food and..., tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2021, cake, cooking, family, memories, recipes, Thoughts on September 3, 2021| 1 Comment »
I’m looking for a good German plum cake recipe. There are (of course) many versions available online, but the problem with that is you never quite know what you’re getting, and I only have the one batch of plums.
There’s also an added complication. I am looking for a plum cake recipe because I made one as a teenager, and it was astoundingly good. Flavorful pastry base, creamy plum filling, and delightful streusel crumble on top. Now, that remembered experience is the standard to which I hold all future plum cakes.
Was it actually as good as it is in my mind? Maybe not, but I think so:) My mother also remembers the cake. It was her favorite type of German dessert, from when she lived in that country once upon a time. She brought home a classic German cookbook, source of the original plum cake recipe.
I hold out hope that she still has the cookbook, and can find that recipe, but until then, I am on the hunt for the kuchen of my dreams.
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J.R. Johnson 
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