The Cluttered Pantry

It’s sure is winter all of the sudden!  I’m not complaining…I actually prefer the cold.  Even though our house was built in 1893, it’s actually way better built than any home I’ve lived in before.  Multiple courses of brick and limestone protect us from the elements, fabulous cherub and decorative scroll work radiators chug away [...]

I’m not sure if it’s the cold weather, the fast approaching holiday seasons or just the fact that we’ve been eating waayyyyy to many carbs this past few weeks, but I found myself walking through the produce shop and filling my cart to the top with such an assortment of vegetables that the check out [...]

The very soul of this blog is shaped by my pantry and it’s contents, some great, some funny and some borderline OCD. When you add in that my pantry stocking, for this past year, has been so heavily  focused on feeding/growing the Wee Kahunas, who started out so small and off the growth charts that we [...]

Making fresh pasta is one of those simple life things that, for me, gets lost in the pace of actual life. It doesn’t really take much effort to make, but since you have to plan ahead , the last minute grabbing of a bag of dried pasta out of the pantry is so much [...]

This not having a summer thing, then jumping straight into depths of cold and misty air as a pretend fall before the real Chicago winter hits is bumming me out.  I actually like cold weather more than hot, but this is just…well, it’s just craptastic.  My only weapon against the doldrums that this kind of [...]

Before our trips to Russia last year, my only interaction with Borscht was from a glass jar in the refrigerator of my parents and grandparents homes…filled with sort of gelatinous muck that was made by those same people that make that holiday wine that tastes like sweetened grape juice. And for that matter, beets were [...]

There are some recipes that I’ve had for so long that I just don’t know where the base of them came from.  If I knew where I got started with this one I would happily give credit where it is due, but alas my Smart Kahuna title is fast becoming more ironic than apt,  as [...]

This morning while Zhanna was at pre-school I tossed Elena (well, not actually tossed) into the car and we drove up to the far north side of Chicago to go check out a teachers supply shop that I had been reading about. We’ve only been home from our 21 hour road trip extravaganza of [...]

I’m not a master gardener, actually to be clear, I’m not saying I’m a master of really anything.  I try, and to my great joy and surprise, on many occasions the fates align and the seeds I plant at the beginning of the season spout and grow and actually get harvested before the squirrels and [...]

The last time I can recall winning something I was 6 or 7 years old and my father answered the phone and was told “your son Bobby has won a baseball in the Baskind Robbins drawing” ummm, I’m a girl. You know, Bobbi with an “i”, but truth be told the baseball was a [...]

I know this may be hard to believe, but unlike his 3 year old sister, Jordan does not talk about butterflies every day, and at 6′ 3″ he is most definitely not tiny.
As a recent culinary school graduate he can put my cooking to shame, but he still leaves the baking mostly to me.
So I [...]

Sharing a birthday with a sibling when you aren’t twins is a funny thing. Jordan turning 20, and Elena turning 3, on the same day, makes for a party with mini caterpillar cupcakes for the birthday girl, and mini custom recipe cheesecakes (see part two of this post) for the birthday boy.
This is Elena’s [...]

Ok, I know…I keep posting about adding calories to food for the Wee Kahunas and then following up with a post about yoga or something to help me make up for the fact that I have no willpower. But, seriously, I really like to bake and I really really like to eat what I bake. [...]

Everyone needs an outlet for the kinds of stress that family and small business and home-running brings.  For me it’s a small garden that, here in Chicago, I get a few months of great pleasure and relaxation from, and cooking.
Cooking works on so many levels.  It feeds (sorry for the pun) my need to keep [...]