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...

I'm on it!....and yes, it's true, what all the other bloggers, foodies, and Columbus insiders say--it's an awesome ride. Why aren't you on board yet? Last night, DF and I hit up two of the most popular trucks on the West side....Los Potosinos and Los Gauchos. Los Potosinos is in the parking lot of a tiny strip mall, on Lincoln Park Ct., just off of Georgesville Rd. and Broad St. (For maps and more details of many of Columbus' fine taco establishments, check out Taco Trucks Columbus .) At Los Potosinos , we shared an order of the pollo al carbon , juicy, grilled chicken that was deliciously seasoned and accompanied by tortillas, refried beans, rice, lettuce, tomatoes, avocados, and two amazing sauces--a salsa verde with a mild, but noticeable zing, and a thick, creamy, orange-tinted, and super spicy (but also delicious) habanero sauce. Actually, the habanero sauce was so tasty, and we only needed the slightest bit of it, that we took the rest of the container home fo...

My fruit CSA from Wayward Seed Farm has been just prolific over the past few weeks--pears, apples, plums, and melons have been piling up on my dining room table. To cope, I dug out two of my favorite recipes and refitted them for use with my current bounty. First, a plum tart that I modified from a New York Times pear tart recipe: Upside Down Plum Tart 1/4 cup honey 5-6 plums, peeled, quartered lengthwise and cored 1 cup sugar 1 teaspoon cinnamon 1 teaspoon allspice 2 large eggs 1 tablespoon vanilla extract 1 cup all-purpose flour 1/4 teaspoon salt 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted and cooled 1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a 9-inch ovenproof skillet (not nonstick), simmer honey until it begins to reduce, caramelize and darken in color, 6 to 10 minutes. Don't let it burn! 2. Arrange plums, close together and cut-side down, in a circular pattern in skillet. 3. Meanwhile, in a large bowl, whisk together sugar and spices. Whisk in eggs and vanilla. Fold in flour and salt...

A couple weeks ago, I came across an article by Elie Mystal , the editor of abovethelaw.com , offering some alternative ideas on how to cope with the crushing student loan debt that I (and many of my cohorts) are dealing with right now. Today, Elie was on a clip from FoxNews , making a case for changing the interest rate to 0% for government students loans. The UK just recently made a decision to do this, and Elie argues that it was a good one. By releasing some of the pressure on college/post-college graduates, you're enabling them to help increase the consumer spending needed to jump start the economy. On the front end, knowing that your debt isn't going to include excessive interest will (ideally) motivate more students to consider bettering themselves through higher education. In regards to law school grads, lower loan debt could mean more grads would be willing to take jobs in the public sector--I know from personal experience that some really great public defenders and pr...

One of the random talents of the Ham Sandwich family is salsa making. My mom's mom made jars and jars of salsa every summer with the tomatoes and peppers my grandpa would grow in their backyard garden. Salsa making talent reappeared in my brother, who not only made salsa, but hot sauce as well , AND made a viable company selling spicy condiments to folks that are apparently referred to as "chiliheads." This weekend, I dug deep into my genetic code and tried my hand at making and canning my own salsa...boiling water bath and all. Surprisingly, it was not that hard, and was rather satisfying. The only investment I had to make was a box of mason jars and the canning kit with a funnel, jar and lid grabber, and spatula. (Wal-Mart is good for some things...) I'd already inherited grandma's canning kettle, and the garden supplied me with just about all the ingredients. The most time consuming part of all this is the prep: blanching, peeling and seeding the tomatoes, r...

The rabid jungle expanse that I refer to as le jardin , continues it's inevitable domination of my tiny backyard. The black krim, old German, and marglobe tomato plants have been staked up to the very top edge of the fence, and are planning their escape down the backside and out into the alley. I'm guessing its only a matter of time before I go out there one morning, and having failed to show up for work, my coworkers find me tangled in a viney web with a tomato stuffed in my mouth... In other news, my tomatillo plant finally produced some fruit--tiny, yellow tomatillos that I assumed would be green until I took a second look at the tag in the pot: " Dr. Wyche's Yellow ." Oh. So they're NOT supposed to be green. Due to poor planning/failure to do appropriate research, I planted the tomatillo in too small a pot, which resulted in an explosions of flowers through early August, but culminated in only about 20 or so slightly-smaller-than-a-ping-pong-ball siz...