Hi. I’m Isabel, I cook and scribble. I make a lot of food and do a lot of writing, and Bread & Courage is what I have to show for it. It started as a simple food blog called TASTE but evolved into something more—a place where I express my love of food, community and the environment. Thanks for spending some time here—and be in touch!
We’ve taken to roasting a chicken on Sundays. It may not seem like the most practical thing to heat up a tiny kitchen when external temperatures exceed 100 degrees on most days, but there’s nothing like the taste of freshly roasted chicken—especially when it gets an encore as tarragon chicken salad or as the base [...]
Today, I got a taste of the end of summer: no more Texas blueberries at the grocery store. They stopped showing up at the farmers’ market a while back, but even the farmers in cooler stretches of the state have ended their season as well. I’ve stockpiled a few frozen pints, and can honestly say [...]
This summer, I’m all about peeling and eating… I hardly bother to cook my corn, it’s so heavenly all by itself. If there’s someone else around I keep my raw cob gnawing under wraps, surreptitiously leaving one ear behind as I boil the others. I can tell mine apart because it is a little paler, [...]
My melon vine went crazy this spring. Or maybe I’m mad, to project a state of mind on a plant. But there must be one. How else could plants send their tendrils and curlicues out into the firmament to find makeshift trellises? It took my melon vine a matter of days to reach and climb [...]
Peaches remind me of a fancy cocktail made with whipped egg whites and served in a paper-thin antique glass with a long, skinny stem and flecks of fast melting ice. The kind of drink I suck back in seconds, afraid it will change irreversibly in my grip. For me, peaches are just as fleeting, perhaps [...]
I recently saw a mendicant at the corner of US 59 and Chimney Rock Road, beneath the highly trafficked underpass where the homeless often rest and beg. He was begging. Fortunately, I was prepared, half a bag of unwanted tortilla chips waiting in my passenger’s seat, crisp yellow and ready for the jowls of the [...]
Christopher and I like to cook on Fridays: cozy up to the stove, cool ourselves down with a few glasses of wine, and then dance in the middle of the living room when all’s said and done. It’s a pretty great way to date—and it shaves a lot of time off primping, waiting for tables, [...]
Someone once asked if I’d seen Goop, that insidious ‘newsletter’ put out by Gwyneth Paltrow. I had not. Now, I get a little note in my inbox every Thursday telling me about all sorts of crazy things I can either: MAKE GO GET DO BE or SEE. All of which regularly return to the theme [...]
There are few things that make me full after a few tastes, but hummus is one of them. It’s so filling, I can only eat it at lunch, with most of a day’s digestion ahead. I’m no good at a bite or two, you should know: when I say “tastes,” I mean generous spoonfuls. Mystery [...]
It’s not tomato season yet, although they’re coming up soon… here in Houston at least. I eyeball my little, green fruits every time I come home, weighing them in my mind’s eye, wondering when I’ll have to put up chicken wire to keep the eager squirrels from running off with my loot, as they always [...]
