I’m not going to ask where the time went. That’s what everyone says, halfway through summer, after the fireworks and before back-to-school, when we’re finally settled into the heat and humidity, when our arms are bronzed and our long-daylight days have begun to seem commonplace, when we’re looking at the calendar and saying, July 20? July 20! More than halfway through 2010? I am just getting used to it not being 2009! and we think of all the things we still want to do and we think of all the people we want to do them with, and our hearts start to race a little bit. OK, hang on.

How about instead of rushing ahead we just stop, right here and now, and take a look at this day, this July 20, this Tuesday we have and will never get again, and appreciate what’s brought us here?

I’ll start. With chocolate babka.

... Continue reading and here we are, with babka at FoodLovesWriting.com!

© Shannalee T'Koy at Food Loves Writing, 2008-2010. | Permalink | 23 comments |

What happened to the full feed? In RSS form, Food Loves Writing posts have been changed to excerpts, unforunately, because of hackers stealing our content, can you believe it?!?! Partial feeds make it harder for them, but, in return, you have to make one teeny-tiny little click to finish the post. Will you do that for us? We hope so.

This bread came to me unassumingly, unexpectedly, on the back of a bag of flour—the very same bag of flour I gleaned through that crazy Sunday at Whole Foods you may remember. I wasn’t looking for a bread recipe; I wasn’t even really in the mood to bake but, maybe because of what we’d been through together, maybe because I am too impressionable, as soon as I saw this bag’s recipe, despite every bad loaf of bread I’ve made over the last few months, I started gathering ingredients.

It was like this bread found me.

It seems that in this life, there are things we pursue: people we want to be our friends, jobs we apply to have, opportunities we dream of and work for. Then there are things that pursue us or, sometimes, things that fall right into our laps, without our looking for them, without our knowing we could have wanted them at all. In my experience? These are some of the best things.

... Continue reading it found me at FoodLovesWriting.com!

© Shannalee T'Koy at Food Loves Writing, 2008-2010. | Permalink | 16 comments |

What happened to the full feed? In RSS form, Food Loves Writing posts have been changed to excerpts, unforunately, because of hackers stealing our content, can you believe it?!?! Partial feeds make it harder for them, but, in return, you have to make one teeny-tiny little click to finish the post. Will you do that for us? We hope so.

Brace yourself: this is kind of a bad story. Well, it starts off bad and then it gets good but then, it turns bad again. I’m going to tell it anyway because (a) it’s honest and (b) it involves bread (and don’t you think all stories that involve bread should be told? I do).

So. I’ll start by saying, there was a week back in early January, a dark week, when I must have tried at least four different bread recipes. Four different recipes. And thing was, whether I used bread flour or regular flour, made rolls or loaves—heck, even when I used a bread maker, which requires you to, I kid you not, dump things inside and press GO—the results were the same: failure.

Big, fat failure.

Thankfully, that awful week culminated in a near success or, if you had talked to me the night I made them, SWEET! VICTORY! by way of no-knead baguettes, not to mention a vacation away from here, both of which helped me to forget about bread for a while.

But, as is often the case with things you distract yourself from, eventually bread came back to mind. (Cue good part of story!) Two months seemed like a long enough separation, it was time to try again and, by serendipity maybe, my old friend Jennifer, who’s known me since preschool (or longer?), posted her favorite bread recipe on Facebook.

... Continue reading little victories at FoodLovesWriting.com!

© Shannalee T'Koy at Food Loves Writing, 2008-2010. | Permalink | 33 comments |

What happened to the full feed? In RSS form, Food Loves Writing posts have been changed to excerpts, unforunately, because of hackers stealing our content, can you believe it?!?! Partial feeds make it harder for them, but, in return, you have to make one teeny-tiny little click to finish the post. Will you do that for us? We hope so.

The first time I used a waffle iron, I was a freshman in college. The dorm dining hall at my school had a designated table with an iron and a bowl of batter with a ladle in it, and one night when the tacos or chicken surprise on the menu didn’t particularly appeal to me, I walked over to it and, using that adult independence I had newly acquired, made myself buttermilk breakfast for dinner.

In the years between then and now, I’ve eaten homemade waffles in my friend Sue’s kitchen at a different college in a different state, telling her what a good mom she’d make someday as she handed me a plate (by the way, turns out I was right); I’ve had blueberry waffles and pecan waffles and waffles covered with berries and whipped cream and chocolate syrup; in October, my brother and I split a waffle at Sola that was topped with goat cheese and strawberry-rhubarb compote; but it wasn’t until recently that I had the kind of waffle I bring you today, one that defied any preconceptions or previous taste experiences, which works to combine what we know as the waffle with something else entirely, the moist, dense sweetness of a banana bread.

... Continue reading Banana Bread + Waffles at FoodLovesWriting.com!

© Shannalee T'Koy at Food Loves Writing, 2008-2010. | Permalink | 33 comments |

What happened to the full feed? In RSS form, Food Loves Writing posts have been changed to excerpts, unforunately, because of hackers stealing our content, can you believe it?!?! Partial feeds make it harder for them, but, in return, you have to make one teeny-tiny little click to finish the post. Will you do that for us? We hope so.