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, [...]
This blog post is an apology, and an attempt to explain that I really can cook a main dish. I am so sorry that I only ever post about salads, sides and baked goods. You must think I have a really, really strange diet. Although the assumption is not entirely untrue, I must tell you [...]
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 like to push my desserts to the edge of imperfection, cookies especially. A dough that has been taken to its richest point is typically on the verge of crumbling, fragile and delicious with the weight of so much butter and sugar. These latticed cookies are a mighty fine example of what can happen when [...]
I am well aware that most people don’t make ginger snaps in 90 degree weather. But then, most people don’t have my recipe. And until recently, I didn’t know a darn thing about ginger snaps. I whole heartedly admit. Those I’ve made before have been paltry precursors to what I have since discovered: the ne [...]
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, [...]
