Today we are hosting our very first Thanksgiving in our new place. I’m not a traditionalist when it comes to this meal. Turkey never impresses me and since I am now in charge— I declared it a turkey-free Thanksgiving! Although this declaration was met with resistance (mostly from Bryan) I am confident that I will be able to convince everyone that we can still give thanks without killing a turkey (instead we will kill a cow). We’ll still have a really lovely meal, just minus the bird. I’ll tell you a little more about the feast once I have cooked it, but for now I wanted to share these delicious little cheese straws that will accompany cocktails and wine at the start of the meal. read more+++

Truth be told, I don’t care so much about pumpkins. I love them when they are hollowed-out and carved into jack-o-lanterns but I don’t need them in my ravioli, bread, or pies. I get excited about the first bite but I am usually bored by the second.  I generally pass up recipes for pumpkin bread, but this recipe was in my new cookbook obsession, The Craft of Baking by Karen DeMasco. Bryan loves pumpkin bread and so I thought I would give it a try. read more+++

I’ve been overloaded with sweets this week. The kind of overload that normally occurs later in the year with the arrival of the holidays. All of the sugar has me wanting fresh greens whenever I can get them— I need to balance out this crazy diet of mine somehow. I was getting a little bored of my standard vinaigrette and thought I would start mixing it up a little with some variations on the classic.

read more+++

You probably guessed this was coming, but I am once again obsessing over cranberries. This time in the form of sorbet. Last year I created a sorbet based on my favorite Thanksgiving cranberry sauce recipe and this year I found a recipe that combines tart cranberries with smooth vanilla into one delicious frozen treat. read more+++

I love this time of year. I know that it portends some seriously bad weather ahead, but for now I don’t care. I like putting on a scarf and walking around our beautiful new neighborhood amazed by the colors that a tree can produce. I am also pretty enamored with the foods available at the market right now: baskets of apples, and squash and especially concord grapes.

read more+++

….Timmy’s back! At long last we are in our new place! There is still much to do but we are settling in and are very much in love with our new home. Once we are a little more settled (when every surface isn’t covered in bubble wrap and boxes) I will show you around the new place. But before we get to that, lets rewind a little. I never got to write about our time in New York and more importantly I never told you about a certain porridge recipe I love. read more+++

Well, this is it. The week I have been both eagerly anticipating and dreading. We are closing on our new place and moving in this weekend. Currently, all of our kitchen is packed in boxes and Bryan resorted to drinking tea out of a measuring cup yesterday morning. Moving really is such a drag. No matter how well you prepare, or how excited you are for your new place—it just kind of blows. BUT! Soon it will be over and Lottie + Doof will return to its regular programming. I have some amazing guest posts that I am very excited to share and a pile of autumn recipes that I am looking forward to tackling. Before I say goodbye from this kitchen, I wanted to share a recipe for Gâteau Breton that is delicious.

read more+++

Strange things are occupying my mind lately. For a couple of weeks at the start of September I was obsessing over wall sconces. Our new place is in a beautiful early 20th century building but somewhere along the way some seriously ugly wall sconces were installed. I was on the lookout for a suitable replacement, and I gotta say- the options are slim. Well, the options are actually vast, but I wasn’t finding anything even close to what I was looking for. Then, one day I stumbled across the work of Yael Erel and Avner Ben Natan at Lightexture and fell in love.
read more+++

read more+++

No time for dinner means we have to get creative with what we eat. We still want delicious food, but it needs to be ready in about 15 minutes. A while back I saw a recipe for baked feta, and although I lost the recipe- I remembered the idea. Who could forget feta? read more+++