When my friend Debbi told me she was busy making gooseberry jam one evening, I had a vivid image of goose-shaped berries dangling on a vine. Although I still haven’t seen the actual plant, I have been enjoying the cape gooseberries from the farmers market. I learned about their health benefits, such as possibly helping […]
cheesecake
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Frankie’s Develops a Sweet Tooth
Since shelter in place, Frankie Baker has scaled back. Where once a trio sliced and slung bagels in the Redwood Acres bakery, there’s only Frankie’s NY Bagels’ namesake, baking and selling online orders for pick-up on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Now those orders include a shifting lineup of desserts. Painstaking Italian rainbow cookies ($2.50), the first […]
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Nuna’s Frozen Cheesecake
My maternal grandmother ‘Nuna,’ otherwise known as Elinor Walker Flinn, was born in the Tennessee mountains but lived her adult life in Columbia, South Carolina. An upright, dignified woman, she embodied a word we don’t use much anymore: lady. She was married to Pappy, my colorful grandfather, a binge drinker with a wooden leg — […]
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What’s Good: County Fair Edition
First, a shoutout to the folks who amble to the fairgrounds toting bottles of water, sandwiches and baggies of carrot sticks. Bless your forethought and discipline. Say kind things about the rest of us, whom you’ll surely outlive, when we’re gone. Along with your excellent cholesterol counts, by forgoing the indulgences of the fair you […]
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Hum Plate Roundup
Red sauce for the blues Pity those whose otherwise broadening travels render them unable to enjoy American immigrant iterations of their ancestral cuisines. I think of my old classmate returning from a semester in Rome, heartbroken from an affair and recoiling from the messy red spaghetti and glass shakers of parmesan cheese and red pepper […]
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Sandwich Craft
After months and years of wishing, manifesting, prayer and vision boards failed to yield a deli within medium-heel walking distance of the Journal offices, I was about to move on to witchcraft. Then Delish on 5th (440 F St.) opened up in Old Town with its case full of cured meats and cheeses, for which […]
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Cookies from the Burrito Place
Amigas Burritos has long had a loyal following, one that’s hanging in with the change of ownership since Jorge Bravo, who worked there some 12 years, bought it two years ago. Regulars come for the burritos but we’re here for dessert. The saucer-sized cookies in plastic wrap by the register are unremarkable looking but they’re grandma-level […]
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A Pie to Take with You
Family traditions are a fine thing, except when they’re inconvenient, outdated, unappreciated, annoying or molded in gelatin. Which is to say one or two family traditions are a fine thing, particularly the edible ones. I’m at that weird point in my mid-30s where, fully launched into the uncharted waters of adulthood, I pilot a strange […]
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Great Divides
There are two factions of polenta lovers: those who want to dip their spoons into a bowl of golden creaminess and those who want to angle a fork through the browned, cheesy edges. Isn’t our nation divided enough? The polenta lasagna ($17) at Brick and Fire (1630 F St.) is a unifying force. True, it’s […]