That's What Jenni Said

Aside from a business trip to Orlando in late April to attend the 2012 SAS Global Forum, all my travels after Amsterdam in April, May and June of 2012 were to the west coast. I did a quick solo mile run to San Diego in early May – literally an out and back same day trip to earn some cheap frequent flier miles on a mistake fare – and then Jon and I enjoyed a weekend excursion to Portland mid May. It was our first trip to Portland and we both had an amazing time. We got in late Friday night and transferred to the hotel downtown to get a good night’s sleep before we got up Saturday morning and tackled the city. Our first stop was the farmer’s market downtown which is absolutely amazing. Everything is so fresh and delicious (best farmer’s market I’ve experienced outside of San Francisco) and the market is held in a park downtown that is composed of very tall trees. Literally a forest in the middle of downtown Portland, which is awesome. I fell in love with the city as soon as I saw those ...

Last year, over the first weekend in April, Jonathan and I took a little spring escape to Amsterdam. I had already been there once at the end of 2011, but it was Jon’s first real foray into Dutch culture. And what an eye opening experience it was for both of us! Here’s what you need to know about life in Amsterdam: it’s heavily focused on bicycles, sex, and pot. Oh and tulips I suppose. Everyone rides their bicycles in the city and it’s quite dangerous for pedestrians who aren’t carefully watching their surroundings at all times. Carelessly walk onto the bike paths and you’re a goner. Let’s talk about sex – not only is Amsterdam home to the famed red light district (seedy sex shows in the window for your entertainment) but there also seems to be a general obsession with penises. I kid you not. Stroll into any bakery and you’ll find at least one loaf of bread shaped like a penis. Penis bread! And in the chocolate shops…chocolate penises. And in the souvenir shops..porcelain penis peppe...

With two hours on the train daily for my work commute I enjoy a great deal of leisurely reading. Had a bit of drama midweek when I realized I left my Nook (the eBook reader sold by Barnes and Noble) on the train. Crossed my fingers and prayed that someone turned it in to lost and found, but no such luck. Friday rolled around and I can’t be without my books for long, so I forgave my carelessness and ordered myself a Kindle Paperwhite eReader (I was very happy with my Nook but B&N is discontinuing them, acknowledging that Amazon has won the market share war for eReaders). Here’s a summary of what I’ve been reading since last weekend: A Continual Feast by Evelyn Birge Vitz I have owned this cookbook for many years, and rely on it heavily – not so much for the recipes per se (although they are perfectly adequate) but for the liturgical calendar details included in the text. Ms. Vitz has grouped recipes together along the following lines: recipes for days of rejoicing and celebratio...

A couple of summers ago, my husband’s parents came for a visit and we took a weekend road trip through the Outer Banks , stopping at the interesting lighthouses along the way. At one of the lighthouse gift shops I was delighted to find The American Lighthouse Cookbook   by Beck Sue Epstein and Ed Jackson. The cookbook is arranged by geographic region (Northeast Atlantic, Mid-Atlantic, Pacific Northwest, etc) and accompanying the recipes are over 40 detailed entries on different lighthouses and their history as well as beautiful sketch drawings. I’ve been cooking exclusively from this cookbook for the past week and the recipes have been very good – well written, easy to follow, and great tasting. So far my favorite recipes have been: Grilled Pizza with Basil, Tomatoes, and Mozzarella This was the first time we made pizza on the grill and it came out fantastic. I did find that we needed to cook the pizza for longer than the recipe specified, but well worth the wait. I also added...

I picked up One Big Table by Molly O’Neill a couple years ago on sale. This is a big, heavy book resulting from the author’s quest to travel the country and document first hand what Americans are cooking up in their kitchens. It opens with a lovely illustration inside the front cover of the United States and its agricultural products with the products overlaid on a US map to show their origins. These clever and informative old-timey graphics are sprinkled throughout the cookbook and add to its charm, as do the little vignettes on American life and ingredients. Every recipe has its own backstory included, which is useful and entertaining and the patchwork variety of recipes really illustrates the diversity in heritage we celebrate as Americans. As for the recipes themselves, there are a lot of them. More than 600 in fact. I’ve made a handful over the years and haven’t found a dud yet. This month I dusted off my copy of the cookbook (I have 300+ cookbooks in my collection so rotation a...

Like any other practical skill, canning and preserving take practice to build expertise. From my first canning session at the end of spring, I learned that you can’t shortcut recipes unless you know what you are doing and that you MUST make sure to cook down your jam until it reaches the gel stage. If it’s syrupy instead of gel consistency when it goes in the jar, it will be syrupy still when it comes out. To make myself feel better, I like to tell people I didn’t fail in making strawberry jam, I succeeded in making strawberry compote. Still, the lesson was obvious: cook the jams down properly. During my second canning session, or the weekend of 10 thousand peaches as I like to call it, I learned that pressure canning jams for too long (anything greater than 5 minutes) or under too much pressure (anything more than 6 pounds) threatens to break down the natural pectin gel you created with the concentrated cooking. I didn’t figure this out until I was almost finished canning (I had bee...

Khaled Hosseini has done it again. In his latest release, And The Mountains Echoed , he has written a heart wrenching best seller that gives us a window into Afghanistan’s culture and stirs the soul. Years ago I had a terrible nightmare wherein I had declined to marry my husband and we’d gone on to marry other people instead. Soon after the weddings, I realized with agony what a mistake I’d made and felt the full weight of despair as I understood I could never make it right; we could never be together now that we were committed to other people. It was such a deep and profound sense of agony and loss that I woke up from this terrible dream sobbing so loudly and in such a frenzy I literally made myself sick. This – this feeling of irreversible bitter pain and sadness that cannot be undone – this is what Khaled captures so perfectly in his stories. And The Mountains Echoed introduces us to two motherless siblings, Abdullah and Pari, and then subsequently tears them apart and keeps us p...