First, some gratitude: Thanks to everyone who sent their good thoughts about Bryan’s grandma. The whole family was comforted by your kind words and warm wishes.

You also helped get me nominated for one of Saveur’s annual Best Food Blog Awards. For the second year in a row (amazing!) I am nominated for best cooking blog. I don’t normally go in for competitions like this—they just aren’t my thing. Everyone wants bloggers to enter competitions so that we send our readers to their website and they make money (sorry! I am getting old and cynical). Saveur very smartly subverts this (sort of) by getting the editors involved. The nominations are not just a popularity contest, the editors hand-selected the finalists. It is why I enjoy these awards and really value being nominated. I already feel like I won. All sorts of sites are finalists, both small and large. It is another instance of Saveur taking food, bloggers and writing more seriously than their peers. I love them for it. And yes, in the end we will encourage our readers to visit their site so they can make money—but at least they worked for it! I hope you will check out all of the blogs that have been nominated and vote for the ones you like best. read more+++

Growing up, my family often celebrated special occasions at Chicagoland supper clubs. These were restaurants that had red leather (vinyl?) booths and white table cloths. They seemed a lot fancier than they were. On holidays they were filled with middle-class families dressed up (to whatever degree people still dressed up) and on their best behavior. I loved having dinner at these places. The menu consisted of classics like prime rib or chicken piccata (wedding food) and always came with your choice of soup or salad and potato (go for the double-baked) along with a wonderful basket of dinner rolls. Dessert was always cheesecake or rainbow sherbet. I still love restaurants like these, though they seem more difficult to find nowadays. read more+++

Enamelware Bake Set by Falcon
I’ll be honest, I got these because they are pretty. Function followed form. But they work well, so we all win-win. Oven, stove top, and dishwasher safe, the chips they develop with age just add to their charm.

Black Label Preserves from Rare Bird Jam
My friends Elizabeth and Kaitlyn over at Rare Bird have launched a series of limited edition jams. Kumquat, Tarragon & Honey was up first and it exceeded even my high expectations. This is a seriously good jam. I regret buying only one jar. read more+++

It has been a rough few weeks around here. Bryan’s grandmother, Emma (aka: Nanny) was ill and then died this past weekend. She was an amazing woman who I feel so lucky to have known. It is a huge loss for Bryan’s family and for everyone who knew and loved  Emma.

I last saw her back in October when she and her husband, Doug (aka: Papa), came from Montreal to Chicago for our wedding. We had worried they wouldn’t be up to the trip, they don’t travel much anymore, but to our delight they made it to Chicago. It was their first visit. They toured around a bit. They hiked the three flights of stairs up to our apartment to see where we live. They ate Chicago-style pizza with us and our friends. But most importantly, they were with us at our wedding.

You see, Emma and Doug had been married for 64 years. 64 years. I can’t really fathom that time, or Doug’s loss. At our wedding I thought how lucky I would be to get that time with Bryan. 64 years. They were our guests of honor. They ate and danced and got along famously with our friends. It was perfect. read more+++

Last summer, while Bryan and I were in Massachusetts, we had one of the best meals of our lives at Oleana, Ana Sortun’s Eastern-Mediterranean inspired restaurant. it was as close to perfect as I have experienced. The restaurant was recommended to me by several readers who sold me when they pointed out that the kitchen is almost entirely female staffed.

On a perfect summer night we sat in the beautiful garden and enjoyed some crazy delicious food. It is a bit of a happy blur, but I remember it feeling like a perfect evening: grilled peaches, lamb, haloumi, a chickpea terrine, plenty of wine. I love Chicago, and wouldn’t trade our restaurants for any other, but I admit that I am jealous of Cambridge for having Oleana. We don’t have anything like it here and I desperately wish we did.

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This recipe is not for everyone. It is definitely not a classic flavor profile, but it is lovely.

It is the second recipe I have tried from a spread on coffee house baked goods in this month’s Bon Appétit. The other recipe was the Parmesan shortbread, which I didn’t care about. They weren’t bad, I just didn’t know when I would want to eat them (certainly not with coffee!). But I want to eat this cake all of the time. The sesame flavor is so dark and deep that the first bite is a little shocking. Your palate quickly adjusts and then you enjoy the contrast between the sesame and the pears. The cake is completely gorgeous and grey and sweet.

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You can blame the Super Bowl for this recipe.

I’m not as into football as you might have thought, but I love the food traditionally served at Super Bowl parties. I used Super Bowl Sunday as an excuse to make potato skins. read more+++

A couple of weekends ago I set out to recreate the famous Butterscotch Budino from Pizzeria Mozza. The real deal is delicious and I have wanted to try it at home ever since I first saw the recipe published online. When the Mozza Cookbook came into my life, I knew this recipe was my destiny.

Unfortunately, the quantity of cornstarch in the published recipe is incorrect. As I was measuring the cornstarch, I knew it seemed wrong, but decided to carry on and trust the book. Long story short, I ended up with some puddings that tasted like cornstarch. They were inedible. read more+++

This unusually warm winter has us eating differently than we normally do at this time of year. I am still interested in cold salads and ice cream, where normally all I want are soups and heartier fare. It is hard to complain when a normal winter in Chicago brings sub-zero temperatures and a lot of pain and suffering. But still, Chicagoans are all walking about confused by our….good fortune? Weather effects our eating in ways I hadn’t considered and so today, in late February, I bring you a cold beet salad. read more+++

Remember how much I love Kim Boyce? Last weekend I fell in love, all over again, with Good to the Grain . It was prompted by an article I read about Kim’s new Portland bakery, Bakeshop. Lamenting the fact that I couldn’t go visit the bakery right then, I pulled Good to the Grain off of the shelf. As usual, I wanted to make everything in the book.

I decided to try the apple and graham coffee cake, but realized I was out of graham flour. Quelle Horreur! I wrote to Kim for help (the perks of being a food writer?). She offered some good suggestions, but I stopped myself before trying any of them. I could tell that she wanted me to make the cake with graham flour. And with good reason! The recipes in her book are so perfectly formulated that you want to make each one exactly as intended to see what Kim had in mind.

I decided to make the hazelnut muffins.

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