This is obviously my favorite holiday: the whole point is friends and family gathered around a table groaning under the weight of too much delicious. I love cooking for a big table full of folks, so this is just great! We trade off hosting with a group of friends, and this year, we are the home, so I get to do the main courses.

Had some friends over for a Saturday dinner a couple weeks back. That means I had the day to cook, so I went a little bit overboard. Based on who was coming over, we decided on a Turkish feast for this dinner. Hence, afiyet olsun -- enjoy your meal in Turkish. I did the prep and cooking in stages all through the day -- since I stared early, there was no rush, and I could have a nice relaxing day even as I made all this stuff.

Brexit has caused almost twice as much damage to the UK economy than estimated by official forecasts, according to new paper from a group of experts including a senior Bank of England economist.

Rome: A Culinary History, Cookbook, and Field Guide to the Flavors that Built a City Katie Parla. Parla Publishing, 2025. ISBN 979-8-9869976-5-0. Confession: I am a major fanboy. Nonetheless, here is an unbiased and honest review of the new book: Go. Buy. It. Now. Katie Parla has been in Rome, doing food tours and getting master degrees and eating all the food.

Cold nights call out for a stew. So we had Guinness stew with Irish soda bread. Nostalgic for me -- so many cold fall nights as a kid, something like this would be a welcome, warming, and fun dinner. The stew is pretty simple -- beef, potatoes, carrots, onions, and peas braised in a rich blend of beef broth and Guinness.

I have gone underground these past few weeks. Have no fear, I am still cooking and thinking way more than is healthy about food.... But the furlough has affected me -- it dislocated my planning for everything, and threw me way off my game. I am slowly restoring some sense of stability as we watch our hapless Congress fail to do its basic job -- bless their hearts. So I expect to revisit some fun cooking of the past few weeks, and tossing some recipes to you, too.

YouTube video by Reagan Library

Oh my. Sometimes a recipe just looks too good and you just have to make it. We saw cardamom buns on some TV show a few years back, and the NY Times had a recipe. I have made them every few months since. I am not a super confident baker, but even I find these pretty straightforward, although you do have to give yourself a morning to allow for the rise times and all.

Last night we wanted a fun, easy dinner. I thought of a thing we hadn't had in years -- fajitas, like I cooked them when I was first playing around with Mexican (ish) food. If you grew up in the 1970's in South Carolina, like I did, you didn't get much chance to have real Mexican cooking. A staple of dinnertime in my family, like a lot of '70's families, was ground beef tacos seasoned with Old El Paso taco mix, hard shells, iceberg lettuce and shredded cheddar cheese.

So, last week’s French toast and sausage was a big success. I decided to go double or nothing this week: chicken pot pie. I more or less follow the New Basics approach, although I no longer actually use a recipe. I start by cooking cut-up potatoes in a pot of cold water – put them all in together and let the water come up to a hard simmer, at which point the potatoes are done.

Just saw the first episode. Watch it! Tony is delightful, warm, friendly and the man loves bread. He meets a bunch of interesting and quite charming people around New York City and eats bread with them. Makes some too. Each of the guests is charming and tells us great stories through bread. I have found my people. The show is on CNN, Sundays I think ( we almost never watch actual TV, we stream everything).

Wednesday nights this semester are long-- the spouse teaches a late seminar, so he doesn't get home til nine PM. So that's when we have dinner. We used to eat pretty late, when we first moved to Washington -- long work days, then trudging home to make dinner meant we'd sit down to eat after 8. I make most of the food we eat from scratch, so it can take a while.