Hobbies
Leisure activities and interests, including gardening, cooking and collecting
Five Ways to Eat Lima Beans
Lima beans used to remind me of a line in a Josh Ritter song: "I'm trying hard to love you / You don't make it easy, babe."You know what I mean, right? That wan, wrinkled skin; that wet-sawdust texture; that hospital-cafeteria smell...those are the lima beans I recall picking out of the "frozen mix...
September 30, 2010 |
By Amanda Bensen
Food in the Raw at the U.S. Botanic Garden
After almost three years of working right down the street, I finally made time to explore the U.S. Botanic Garden on a recent lunch break. I expected mostly flowers, but found a food nerd's Eden: So many of my favorite edibles, in their purest forms! So many tidbits of culinary history and science!...
September 29, 2010 |
By Amanda Bensen
Eating Irish Moss
Today's post is by Smithsonian staff writer Abigail Tucker.On my recent trip to Ireland—where I discovered "real" Irish soda bread—I expected to encounter potatoes aplenty, and I wasn’t disappointed.Traditional champ (or mashed) potatoes and chips (fries) were offered alongside more cosmopolitan sp...
September 28, 2010 |
By Amanda Bensen
Classic Irish Soda Bread
Smithsonian magazine staff writer Abigail Tucker wrote today's post.Great-grandmother O’Neill and I met only once, when I was one and she was 100, but her Irish soda bread remains a staple of family celebrations. A tiny woman who spoke with a lilting brogue, she never left Brooklyn to go visiting w...
September 21, 2010 |
By Amanda Bensen
A Cookbook for Geeks Brings the Scientific Method to the Kitchen
Geeks have come up in the world since the 1980s, when John Hughes movies depicted them as scrawny outcasts with headgear braces and excessive knowledge of things called "floppy disks." In the dot-com boom of the 1990s, the computer-savvy became millionaires, considered heroes instead of neo maxi zo...
September 16, 2010 |
By Lisa Bramen
Five Challenges We Wanted to See on Top Chef, D.C.
Today's guest writer is Brian Wolly, the magazine's Associate Web Editor.Last night’s penultimate episode of Top Chef: DC saw the "cheftestants" leave Washington, D.C. for Singapore, where the winner of the elimination-style cooking competition will be decided. Back when Bravo announced that D.C. w...
September 09, 2010 |
By Brian Wolly
Five Ways to Eat Ground Cherries
What tastes like a cherry tomato injected with mango and pineapple juice, and looks like an orange pearl encased in a miniature paper lantern?No, I'm not just trying to cram as many fruit references into one sentence as possible. It's a real plant: Physalis pruinosa, aka the "ground cherry."I'd nev...
September 02, 2010 |
By Amanda Bensen
Five Ways to Eat Okra
Okra's a strange little vegetable, the kind of thing you might not guess was edible if no one told you. Its prickly skin can sting your fingers, and slicing into it reveals little more than seeds and slime. I admit, if okra hadn't been included in our CSA share these past few weeks, I would probabl...
August 26, 2010 |
By Amanda Bensen
Farmers Market Finds: Purple Long Beans
Walking past a farmers market on my lunch break last week, I did a doubletake at what looked like a basket of baby snakes for sale.Getting closer, I was relieved to see that the tangle of dark and sinuous shapes was in fact a lone quart of unusually long beans. I picked one up and held it up to the...
August 10, 2010 |
By Amanda Bensen
A Summer Reading List for Food Lovers
It's a sticky August afternoon, and the family members are facing their third day of vacation in a tiny beach town. The thrill of splashing in the surf and crafting sand castles has faded, replaced by streaks of sunburn around the edges of swimsuits and sandal straps. ("I told you to put lotion eve...
August 05, 2010 |
By Amanda Bensen
Shelling Out For Soft-Shell Crabs
This blog has inspired me to try several types of seafood I've never had before, like sardines, lionfish and jellyfish. I cracked open my first crabs last summer, and my first whole lobster earlier this year (although that one deserves a mulligan, since apparently most lobsters aren't full of black...
August 03, 2010 |
By Amanda Bensen
Five Ways to Eat Tomatillos
Somehow, I lived for 30 years without tomatillos, but there's no going back now. While I was on my way back from South Africa last weekend, my husband was on his own to select the vegetables for our CSA share (some programs pick for you, but ours lets us choose at the farmstand). When I returned, h...
July 22, 2010 |
By Amanda Bensen
A South African Barbecue
I spent last week in and around Cape Town, South Africa, traveling with my mom to attend my brother's wedding. All we knew ahead of time about South African cuisine was that they love a good cookout, and sure enough, our first meal there turned out to be a braai (Afrikaans for "roasted meat," thoug...
July 20, 2010 |
By Amanda Bensen
Clam Chowder: Thick or Thin?
I spent a glorious 4th of July weekend on Martha's Vineyard, where I set a personal record for the amount of fresh seafood eaten in four days. This being our honeymoon, my husband and I splurged on a couple of very nice dinners. But my favorite meal was probably the lunch we had on our second day: ...
July 13, 2010 |
By Lisa Bramen
A Brief History of Popsicles
Are you as hot as we are? Temperatures are hitting the triple digits in D.C. this week, which makes me want to say something clever about third digits and obscenities, but my brain has melted past the point of cleverness and seems to be functioning as little more than a nerve center for "Me Want Ic...
July 07, 2010 |
By Amanda Bensen
Grilling for the 4th? Try the Wixárika Way
What would the Smithsonian Folklife Festival be without food? Yesterday, Amanda extolled the virtues of the lassi sold by the Indian food vendors at the festival. But tasty treats on sale at the Mall aren’t the only culinary curio that will be leaving us after Monday: the festival also features dai...
July 02, 2010 |
By admin
Inviting Writing: The Perils of Picnicking
Last week, I asked you to send in your stories about memorable picnics. You know, I thought this would be our most popular Inviting Writing theme yet, but so far the response has been underwhelming. Are you all on summer vacation out there? Harumph. I mean...we hope you're enjoying the beach!Speaki...
June 28, 2010 |
By Amanda Bensen
The Best and Worst Picnic Foods
I’ve had picnics in the fall, spring, and even, like Amanda, in the dead of winter. (In college, my friends and I tried to make “blizzard s'mores” outside on a charcoal grill. It wasn't our finest moment.) But I've always associated my best picnics with that carefree, summer feeling: a shining sun,...
June 25, 2010 |
By Erica R. Hendry
Inviting Writing: The Power of a Picnic
And now, the moment you've all been waiting for...the next Inviting Writing theme! In celebration of summer, we're focusing on a simple pleasure that we hope everyone has experienced at least once: Picnics.The rules are simple: Tell us a true story that somehow relates to that theme (and food, of c...
June 21, 2010 |
By Amanda Bensen
Fun Foods for Father's Day
As you're probably aware, Father's Day is this Sunday in the United States. Wondering what you can cook up to make the day special? Here are a few fun ideas:1. A truly tasteful tie. People blog about the strangest things. A few months ago, I came across someone who just likes putting weird things i...
June 18, 2010 |
By Amanda Bensen
