Are you a recipe slave? Do you shiver in fear if you forgot to set a timer for your cookies? Do you get the heebie-jeebies from the measurement-less phrase “salt to taste”? As the hours in my days slide by lately, with a 9-month-old on my hip and a 3-year-old at my feet, I find […]
Sharon Kebschull Barrett
Posted inGuides
Throw a Winning Wingding
It’s 7 o’clock. The doorbell’s ringing. Do you know where your dinner party is? We all know hostesses who throw dinner parties every week without breaking a fingernail, but most of us break into a sweat at the mere thought. Fancy dinner parties may be part of my future, but they haven’t happened yet (although […]
Posted inFood & Drink
The Machine Age
Need a scary story for your next campout? Try this: Once upon a time, a mercifully long time ago, kitchens were horrifyingly empty. Their counters held knives, bowls, and spoons, but where were the mixers, toasters, food processors, microwaves, coffee machines? Oh, my child, it was a sad, desolate time. Today, though, there are still […]
Posted inFood & Drink
The Kitchen as Safe Haven
The Kitchen as Safe HavenAs a former reporter and editor, I am a news junkie. So when my husband gave me the day-after-Christmas gift of time for a long bath, I grabbed all the papers from the past few days and headed for a soak. But I quickly regretted my choice of reading material. In […]
Posted inFood & Drink
A Salad That Tastes Like a Real Meal
It’s New Year’s, so it must be time for resolutions … except that I never like setting myself up for failure. So I rarely bother with resolutions; instead, I carry on a long, one-sided conversation with God about what I’ll need his help with yet again. I do, though, have a few changes in mind […]
Posted inFood & Drink
A moment stolen from the Atkins diet
Do you Atkins? If you’re even vaguely trendy, you’ve probably been counting carbs at every meal lately, and eating bowls of plain whipped cream for dessert. New York restaurants now offer those bowls without blinking. But because God provided me with double the skeptic gene, I was naturally disbelieving when I first learned the details […]
Posted inFood & Drink
The Non-Party Dinner
No one will ever mistake me for Martha Stewart or her wannabes. I ought to know how to be one, because being a food writer means keeping up with food and lifestyle magazines. But I’ve learned to stick to the food and restaurant stories. When I get to the “entertaining” ones, I just get depressed. […]
Posted inFood & Drink
Eat it raw? No, thanks.
How’s your bio-terrain feeling today? Could it use some structured water? Oh, how I wish those questions were completely a joke. Unfortunately, they’re straight from the world of Roxanne Klein, hailed by food writers as the new goddess of the uncooked. Is this really what the food world has come to? Apparently, we’re so desperate […]
Posted inFood & Drink
Is it Peanut Butter or Thai pasta?
I miss me. Ever since my life was divided into two halves, B.B. and A.B., I miss my B.B. self. B.B.–Before Baxter–I was a happening cook. I am hip in almost no other ways, but my cooking kept up with (and sometimes preceded, in ways of which I was inordinately proud) the latest food trends. […]
Posted inGuides
DIY McDonald’s
Oh, yuck. If you’re a foodie, how can you have any other initial reaction to Fast Food Nation? Sure, you might be outraged, or appalled, or you might become an instant activist. You’re probably not stunned, though. By now you’ve learned to heed all the warnings about cooking your food till it is truly, totally, […]