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!
It’s not really fair for me to have to write about shrimp and chorizo stew right now. I’ve just bent backwards, twisted my innards in a hundred directions, fallen forward, lifted halfway and generally wrung out my body and all of its angles. And why does all of this movement make a soup so unfair? [...]
Last weekend, we feasted in the snow. We were drawn to warm foods—spicy shrimp and chorizo soup, a cheesy crostata and maple gingerbread. It was a real winter meal, save for the cherry tomatoes, which begged to be picked up with their winking green stems and shiny red orbs. They looked like tiny Christmas bulbs.
Before [...]
Have you been to Big Sur? If so, you know there are few words to describe its blue-gold beauty. I will say this: walk as much as you can, love the person you are with, and don’t miss the meatball pizza at Big Sur Bakery–a very cozy place for dinner. Go there in the morning, [...]
As I mentioned recently, there’s little I like more than to cook away a Sunday. I’m particularly happy for my Sabbath kitchen this time of year, when starchy root vegetables take center stage: roasted sweet potatoes, butternut squash, carrots and delicate fingerlings really make my heart sing. We don’t get a lot of it around [...]
No matter what, I cook on a Sunday. Nothing makes me happier than being by the oven for most of the day, putting up food for the week ahead. There’s something really nurturing about taking care of myself this way: with a little foresight I can have satisfying, comforting food no matter what disasters might [...]
So not everybody is crazy about eggplant. That baffles me, but I understand it—especially coming from people who don’t often prepare their own, and are victims of slimy, spongy, bitter mush. Nobody wants to eat slippery vegetables with gritty seeds and acrid hides.
But eggplants can also be the best of what a vegetable can be—crispy [...]
Where I come from, the weather is pretty cool and the seasons are rarely vague. The transition from spring to summer to autumn to winter and back again is tidy, without a lot of fuzziness in between—except for those May days still plagued by freezing rain or the all-too fleeting Indian summer afternoons that sometimes [...]
The time has come, the gardener said, to talk of many things… of shoes and ships and ceiling wax, of eggplants and kings. Ok, so, eggplant may not be the most poetic of vegetables, but really, they are fit for kings.
There’s nothing an eggplant couldn’t do, I think, spongy wonder that it is. You slice [...]
If you love the idea of savory summer vegetables steaming in a deep bowl, the scent of herbs and spices rising to your nostrils, you’ve likely tried your hand at ratatouille. But, for as many delicious summer stews you’ve enjoyed, you’ve probably also faced many a limp blob of hot, mushy mass inappropriately called ratatouille.
Perhaps [...]
Another advancement in scurvy prevention took place in my home this week, with the creation of not one, but two key lime pies. The first was made and served as a welcome gift to my friends Billy and Katherine, who have joined the Lonestar crew from Manhattan–and just at the right time! Welcome to [...]
