We all need a few dishes that are trying to live up to every bit as much as we are. Here are my secrets for escaping the gimmick of fast and easy cooking, but still enjoying your time in the kitchen.

Inspired by June restaurant in Portland, Oregon, I set out to make a batch of crème fraîche panna cotta. If you, like me, would eat a bowl of crème fraîche all by itself if given the chance, then this recipe is for you. It’s a perfect foil to unadorned crème fraîche gluttony.

Setting the table is, to me, one of the most tedious of dinner duties. Yet, it is one of the most important. Setting the table is not—I repeat, NOT—an afterthought, even though I seem intent on treating it like one.

I’m quite sure that when Malcolm Gladwell wrote Outliers: The Story of Success he didn’t have salad dressing in mind. When he was examining the factors that determine high levels of success, he probably didn’t think about the legions that emulsify fat into liquid to dress tender greens. But the fact is that he introduced [...]

Family life is messy. Everything about it is messy. The clothes all over the floor. The spills. The early-morning unmade beds. The viruses that knock us out, one by one, for weeks on end. The arguments that escalate fast and go on too long. The coffee that still needs to be made while my two-year-old [...]

Read about the Ladies Home Butchery class I took with the Portland Meat Collective.

This is entirely too much sun for October. Don’t get me wrong, it’s gorgeous. It’s just that so many people are cheery and walking around in an annoying state of optimism. I was supposed to be pining here, folks. When Gregg was slated to go shoot a movie in Maryland this fall, when we decided [...]