Yep. Been passing this sign outside Sebastopol for years and finally couldn’t resist pulling over and taking a picture given its current, shall we say, mood. Plus Bill’s is a really great organic market I didn’t know about with a great little coffee shop. So, win/win. Playing catch-up here after a couple of busy workContinue reading “ESC #39 and #40 plus bonus ESC: Beach Edition”
Category Archives: blackbird
Dinner Party Tips & Tricks
I hosted a dinner party last night and my friends asked me how I pulled it off all by myself. I told them about ESC and said I just kinda had it down to a science after cooking for 6-9 people every other-ish week for the past 2 years…. But it took a little reflectionContinue reading “Dinner Party Tips & Tricks”
Operation Baguette: Harvest Time!
Now to figure out how to thresh it: mortar and pestle? Wrapping it in a tarp and backing over it with my car a couple of times? The trials and tribulations of the urban wheat farmer 😉 I will tell you, though, even cutting my tiny “field” was a decent amount of work. Mad respectContinue reading “Operation Baguette: Harvest Time!”
Update on Operation Baguette
It’s coming along nicely!
ESC #37 and #38 ft. Exploding Xurros!
I mean, it was high time for Experimental Supper Club to have a spectacular failure, amiright? The good news is no one got hurt. The bad news is it took me the better part of a day to wash my kitchen down from ceiling to floor (including the dogs). We had a vaguely Spanish/Portuguese themeContinue reading “ESC #37 and #38 ft. Exploding Xurros!”
Operation Baguette
Last year, I think a bird must have pooped out a wheat berry in the path right *next* to my garden beds (not *in* them for some reason), and against all odds, like a Biblical parable, it sprang up and bore fruit. My mama raised me right enough that I know a head of wheatContinue reading “Operation Baguette”
ESC #36
I ran out of Irish recipes in the old Try file, so for St Patrick’s Day this year, we did a Breton-inspired menu: keeping it in the Celtic family at least…. The Kig Ha Farz was…interesting. I think this recipe from David Lebovitz would have yielded a lighter and fluffier “farz” or buckwheat dumpling. YouContinue reading “ESC #36”
ESC #35
This turned out to be a pretty pioneer-y menu featuring the kinds of things that Western settlers would have have in their cellars this time of year: venison, apples, cabbage, onions, carrots, etc. And it was really one of our best menus in terms of the way it all came together. The bang-to-buck ratio onContinue reading “ESC #35”
ESC #34: Groundhog’s/Valentine’s Day
This started out as a Groundhog’s Day menu with as much chocolate in it as possible from the recipes in my Try file–because my sister has decided that Groundhog’s Day is the chocolate holiday, and who am I to argue with solid logic? But we had to postpone, and it ended up being Valentine’s DayContinue reading “ESC #34: Groundhog’s/Valentine’s Day”
ESC #33: Year of the Snake
I love any excuse to pull out Mr. Dragon: just please don’t tell him he cosplayed as a snake this year (made possible by his lack of any legs)…. We pulled a selection of dim-sum-adjacent recipes from my Try file for a Lunar New Year brunch. I think the youtiao were the biggest hit b/cContinue reading “ESC #33: Year of the Snake”
The Rookery 