Monthly Archives of July 2014

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Freelance Gazpacho

pen and palate tomatoes market

illustration: tram nguyen

 

The “freelance writing lifestyle” has its ups and downs. It’s been about a year since I quit my full-time reporting job to do the whole freelance thing, and during that period I’ve learned a few things about myself. For one thing, I am disturbingly okay with my limited degree of human interaction. Being at home alone with my cat all day suits me basically fine! I also like being my own boss. No one is going to give me shit if I sleep in or take a 2-hour ice cream break or work from bed while wearing my soft clothes; and because there’s no one to ask me to write cheap-click blog posts in the interest of “generating content” or getting X number of page views, I have no real reason to do so. It’s basically forced me to hold myself to a higher standard, which means that, in the last year, I’ve done mostly work in which I’m actually interested. That alone feels like an enormous luxury.  Read more

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Birthday Babes

pen and palate pizzaToday’s our first birthday, which means Pen & Palate was born less than a week after Prince George, a very impressive feat. We’ll be celebrating by eating pizza and lying in bed (Lucy), and hanging with some very cool babies (Tram), but if you’d like to give us a prezzie you can “follow” us on Tumblr, give us a million dollars, throw us a “kidchella” birthday party, or just continue to click over here and read our stuff when you feel so compelled. Thanks for being a friend!

 

 

Article

Virtuous Kale Braised in Coconut Milk

pen and palate kale web illustration

illustration: tram nguyen

 

This time last year, I was afflicted with the sudden fit of self-improvement mania that arrives like clockwork annually. I made all sorts of lofty, thigh gap-centric goals and ordered a new yoga mat and a workout DVD from Tracy Anderson, Gwyneth Paltrow’s personal trainer.When it showed up in my mailbox a few days later, I was pleased that it had arrived in such a timely fashion. I then stowed it away in some shadowy recess for safe keeping and never touched it again.

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Cherry Picking

pen and palate ice-cream cone

I came to baking because I got married when I was 19 years old. I had never cooked, and I had certainly not baked. I burned down my parents’ kitchen when I was 13 years old, and I was not allowed in there again. When I got married, I was a college student; my husband Michael had his first job. They didn’t have takeout the way they do now, and we didn’t have the money for it anyway. So I learned to cook, but I was very excited about it; it was a whole playing-house thing for me. I cooked some pretty disastrous meals and some not bad ones, working from cookbooks. I tried to bake and I found that I loved it. I loved the process of it. I loved the way you touch ingredients when you’re baking. I loved the magic of it, the fact that you kind of don’t know what you’re going to get. It’s the same ingredients over and over again; butter, flour, sugar, eggs, but you can get so many different things from it. Also, it didn’t hurt that when you put a homemade dessert on the table, everybody was happy.

-Dorie Greenspan talks with Christine Muhlke in the latest issue of Cherry Bombe. I love that she burned the kitchen down and still came back for more, something with which I obviously have some experience. Read more