March 22, 2011
I love sweet potatoes. Maybe it comes from growing up in New England, where sweet potato and squash dishes of all kinds are peppered throughout my childhood and my memories. I’ll eat them mashed and baked into a sweet casserole, just roasted plain in the oven, made into chips, fries; pretty much any way you can serve them, I’m fairly sure I will enjoy them. I know sweet potato isn’t a squash, but I often place it in the same category as squashes when it comes to flavors – the warm almost sweetness that caramelizes ever so slightly upon cooking lends it to working so well in many dishes where squash would normally be the star.
January 11, 2011
My mother taught me to make French onion soup. Now that I have seen the light, I’m sorry Mom but you got it all wrong. Your onions don’t caramelize for four hours. It’s your recipe’s one fatal flaw. I love your soup and making it the way you taught me, really I do. But now I know better, and next time I come home I’ll make this for you, and you’ll understand 
I was greeted with onion soup as the beginning of our four-course of dinner on our first night in Spiez (canton Bern), Switzerland after our Christmas holiday in Venezia, Italia. After four days straight of rain, two of which included flooding, it was nice to dry off a bit and warm up with a fresh onion soup.
