Food
Coffee week: 1
My husband was a tea man. He drank proper tea, from a pot, and although he was a truly and creatively dreadful cook, Noel made a better pot of tea than I did. Coffee, though: that was all me. I have a long history with coffee. When I was putting myself through university, I worked in…
Read MoreTea and the Death of Civilization
I start my day with two (large) cups of camellia sinensis, which has a fraction of the caffeine that coffee does, and allows me to ease into the day rather than hit the ground running. Yes, this is black tea (as opposed to herbal tea, which M. Poirot calls his tisane, or Mma Ramotswe’s bush…
Read MoreAnother weird foodstuff
Long-time followers of my Mutterings will be aware that I like to try weird fruits and veggies. I just came across another one: It’s called Melothria scabra, also known as mouse melon, which is a particularly adorable name. It’s a type of cucumber that looks like a grape-sized watermelon, and in fact tastes a bit…
Read MoreMeeting Mamay
I can’t resist new life forms, particularly when they inhabit fruit and vegetable stands. The other day I wandered into the one in the Stanford shopping center, and spotted a soft, heavy football with a scratchy skin. It wore a nametag: Mamay. Hello, Mamay. Mamay is a Cuban native weighing two or three pounds, which…
Read MoreFiddleheads!
A while ago I was at San Francisco’s Ferry Building on a Saturday morning, when the place just explodes into the Bay Area’s most fantastic farmer’s market. And so I bought…stuff. Berries and Chinese broccoli and hot sauces and things I knew. But the fun part of a market like this is the produce you…
Read MoreMWA cooks
So, this crime writer walks into a kitchen… Or maybe a bar—it depends on what story you’re after, and what you’re hungry (or thirsty) for. Whether it’s drinks to curl your hair or a soup to warm your heart, Kinsey Millhone’s peanut butter & pickle sandwich or Valentine Wilde’s chicken fricassee, or maybe a cup…
Read MoreMary Russell’s Coffee Maker
Coffee plays a large role in the Russell memoirs, and I believe we can now see the kind of pot the Holmes household possesses: Love the Boing Boing channel.
Read MoreThe covered market
One of the chief reasons I always stay within striking distance of Oxford when I come to England for a few weeks is the Covered Market. The Market is a Victorian glass cover over a hive of shops, from carrots to watches, shoes to fresh pasta, coffee to cheese. It’s where I head if I…
Read MoreSummer delights
Oh, I do love this time of year, every morning: Strawberries, pineapple, blueberries, and raspberries. Ahhh.
Read MoreFlowers for Christmas dinner
Jeezie Louisie, I look up from digging myself out from under a pile of papers and computer tasks and find that in nine days we’ll be sitting down to the traditional pumpkin pie breakfast with a heap of wrappings burying the carpet. How the hell did that happen? What happened to the memo cancelling November?…
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