Things have been kind of crazy around here. I’ve been sloooooowly going through all the ceramics and linens and cookware I’ve accumulated over the years for my food photography stuff in order to put together a studio sale with the hopes of lightning the packing load for when we move next year. But my god it has been a positively *exhausting* process. And now, as I’m typing this, I’m sitting in the middle of our living room/my office, surrounded by piles of dishes and vintage flatware and aprons and feeling very scattered. But tomorrow! Tomorrow is the studio sale! So now that the tables are a ..read more

Once the rain starts I tend to get a liiiittle stir crazy. All summer long I’m spending lots and lots of time outside in the garden, and then fall rolls around, the garden gets yellowed and wilty, and I’m coerced by nature into spending more and more time indoors. But I’m a stubborn person, and I’m not suite ready for full-time indoor nesting just yet. We haven’t even had a frost yet for crying out loud! Which is why I very much appreciate the mushroom. Foraging for them deeply satisfies both my “outdoor cat” and treasure hunting tendencies. And on top of getting a beautiful walk in the woods ..read more

Sometimes throughout the year I’ll come across recipes that I want to adapt for particular seasons or ingredients, and this happens to be one of them. I first came across this recipe for Pane Bianco while scrolling through King Arthur Flour’s bread section (as I often do when I’m hungry and in need of carbspiration), and immediately began to drool (always the sign of a must-make recipe!) While the sun dried tomato + basil filling sounded really good, I usually don’t bake much in the summer because it’s too hot and I don’t want to turn the oven on for too long. But once autumn rolls around the ..read more

Well my friends, it’s officially October, which means two things. 1) My daily footwear has switched from a carefree summery sandal to my mud-crusted & weather-worn rubber boots, and 2) it’s time to eat as many apples as humanly possible. Here in our neck of the woods, they’re literally raining down from the giant old apple tree in our backyard. One fell off the tree and hit me in the nose the other day. I suppose I should be grateful it didn’t hit me in the eye, but still. It felt personal. Alas, last month I cut up many of those apples and baked them into this delicious apple sheet cake ..read more

Summer is almost at a close, and that means that the sweet tender blackberry is about to have its swan song for the year. Blackberries are my favorite fruit—when they’re perfectly ripe, nothing can legitimately compare to the complex sweet, floral, tart and deeply comforting flavor they so generously share with us during the fleeting months of summer. Luckily, this blackberry cream pie can be made with fresh *or* frozen blackberries, so if you get a hankerin’ for some summery cream pie in the dead of winter, feel free to use some frozen blackberries to help soothe your craving. On that note ..read more

Well it certainly has been a while since I’ve updated about the homestead’s progress. Two years, in fact! I’d hoped to update each year at the very least, but to be honest, last year was incredibly difficult and it was hard to talk or even think deeply about all the homestead stuff without it triggering a lot of anxiety and depression. But now I’m in a better place emotionally and it’s easier to talk about now that there’s some certainty to it, you know, actually happening. So, I’m going to do my best to get you up to speed on what’s been going on with the homestead the past couple years and ..read more

Our raspberry bushes were in prime form this year. Honestly I’ve never seen this volume of raspberries from the garden before, every part of the bushes was heavy with fruit. We couldn’t eat them all fast enough so I ended up freezing quite a lot of them, which I know my future winter self will be very grateful for. In the meantime, though, these no-bake raspberry cheesecake jars were hands-down the best recipe I made with them this season. It’s one of those perfect summery dessert recipes that A) doesn’t involve turning the oven on, and B) is super easy to throw together. Plus if it’s hot out ..read more

I love a good, thin, baked and layered potato situation. When the edges around the slices get nice and crispy, and the center stays fluffy and soft, it’s just absolute texture perfection. So I put together this little creamy potato fennel bake to get as much of this textural magic as possible in one dish. At its heart, its good simple eatin’. But with all the thinly sliced potatoes on top and the delicious + colorful garnishes, it looks pretty fancy! So, what’s inside? Well, it’s made up of multiple alternating layers of potato, fennel, and a flavor-packed onion and cashew-based cream sauce ..read more

The first appearance of apricots at the market signals the start of that lovely, leisurely slide into stone fruit season, and boy am I glad. After the hard and unforgiving root vegetables of winter and the optimistically crunchy peas of spring, I’m ready for something soft and ripe. Something that gives gently when you bite into it, and generously drips juice down your chin, leaving many a-ruined shirt in its wake. Armed with a Tide pen, this ain’t my first rodeo. As far as stone fruits go, apricots are a bit tangier than most; but as someone who enjoys things with a bit of a bite, apricots a ..read more

This past April I returned to Cognac to host a photography workshop with my friend and fellow photographer, Elise Dumas of The Pineapple Chef. I first met Elise at a workshop I hosted years ago in Spain, and was immediately drawn in by her delightful sense of humor and fiery creative energy, and we’ve remained fast friends ever since. It was actually our second time hosting this workshop together at the beautiful La Cannonerie in the little village of Jonzac—the first time was in 2019, and after all that’s happened between then and now, it felt especially poignant to be able to come back to t ..read more