Bread

There is nothing more divine to me than a warm and fresh tortilla. When I am in San Antonio, it is one of the things I look forward to most – stepping foot in a Las Palapas or Casa Rio and being served with a tortilla warmer full of steamy, perfectly pillowy flat breads to go with my carne guisada, migas, or fajitas.

That I spent years buying in-store tortillas for home use kind of depresses me, now that I know how easy they are to make. You don’t need much: flour, lard, salt, water, and a food processor or your own two hands.

The call to arms went out from @Scharffenberger via Twitter: @SeriousEats had just posted a homemade bagel recipe to their website, SeriousEats.com. Who would be willing to try making chocolate chunk bagels using Scharffen Berger\’s baking chunks?

My hand (and @ reply) went up faster than you can say gourmet chocolate. I was first introduced to Scharffen Berger at BlogHer Food in October of last year. Before that, I wasn\’t aware it existed. My life has improved markedly since that sunny day in San Francisco, if you hadn\’t guessed. Good chocolate can certainly be attributed to some of that. Scharffen Berger chocolate is beautiful, perfect, pure. It\’s my favorite chocolate to bake with, and its quality is worth every stinkin\’ penny.

I cannot claim to know Julie Potter, but I sure do know her Pumpkin Bread (although I am an authority on how lovely she is via email, since I wrote to ask her if I could post her recipe and got the most beautiful of replies – thanks again, Julie!). I think we all have …

Who doesn’t love a pumpkin empanada? Or an empanada of any kind, for that matter? Call it what you will: pasty, pocket, pie, or kolache, pastry enclosed pockets of food have been around probably almost as long as bread has. There’s not a single cuisine I can think of that doesn’t have some riff on …

My sister and niece arrived for their first visit to our new house last Tuesday. If you’ve ever met my sister and shared a meal with her, one thing becomes clear very quickly: the girl has an otherworldly relationship with chocolate. Once, we went to P.F. Chang’s for dinner. She thought the food was alright, …

Club sandwiches were a favorite growing up. There used to be this pub.. or, the closest thing to a pub you can find in San Antonio, called Chelsea Street Pub. They tried desperately hard to be very British. One of the coolest things about the place though, was that they had live music on Friday …