Ham Sandwich Indicted!

What you are seeing above, my friends, is a quince turnover that I made this weekend. Quince! How exciting! I've never used/bought/tried a quince before! For the unitiated, a whole quince is pictured below: They're a strange little fruit that's described as a cross between a pear and an apple. This might be true, with the exception that they are hard as rocks and must be cooked down before you can do anything with them. Taste wise, they're a little more tart than a pear or an apple--really delicious and really interesting. I was able to enjoy this quince thanks to Jaime at Wayward Seed Farm . When I picked up my share this past weekend, we got to talking about the end of the season (sob!) and what to expect for our last week. One thing led to another and she offered me one of the quince (quinces?) that she had recieved from a friend. (Thanks again, Jaime!!!) After taking the quince home and contemplating it for a few days, I decided what I would do--one quince isn'...

A good therapist can run you about $100 an hour, while a bag of chocolate chips, some flour, sugar, butter, and eggs will cost about $7, and at the end of 60 minutes you'll have delicious chocolate chip cookies... ...If that's not a reason to get in the kitchen when you're stressed/angry/depressed/frustrated, I don't know what is. I remember that I first started baking as a means to relaxation while I was in grad school. Mixing together cookies and brownies was a good way to take a break from paper writing, allow some thoughts to distill and sort themselves out, and, when everything was out of the oven, a little sugar boost was very helpful in pushing through those last few hours of a late night. In law school, baking kept me sane--anchoring me to a former (better?) self that wasn't obsessed with tort cases, legal writing, and journal notes. There's something comforting in the process of mixing disparate ingredients into a cohesive, delicious dough--you may n...