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!
A while ago, I though I would have time for salmon gravlax with buckwheat blini. Who was I kidding? I barely have time to butter an English Muffin. It might have been around New Year’s–when I was finishing up a month-long vacation, and when smoked salmon felt ‘seasonal.’ The truth is, sometimes I get seduced […]
I made a lot of things this weekend on a visit to my parents’ house, including some batik eggs. Wax on a convex surface is decidedly unruly, but that is not the story here. This story is of a cake that almost didn’t get made: one I planned to bake and serve on Easter morning, […]
Enough with the vegetables. As excited as the smell of roasting cauliflower makes me, there’s nothing quite as nice as the scent of dough rising—especially when I know each bite will yield a few hunks of chocolate. I had been mulling over some ideas on how to make a more interesting brownie, when last Friday […]
I have a conflicted relationship with Mark Bittman. Not because I’m jealous of anyone who can actually make a solid living cooking and writing about it, no, no no, certainly I would never hold someone in contempt for that. But what I would hold against someone is writing a cookbook called “How to Cook EVERYTHING,” […]
I am predisposed to love September. There’s no better season than the onset of fall, I say, with its cool currents slipping in under the warm air; the sound of geese squeaking in the morning, shuttering in their bulbous bodies before they decide to fly away. And nothing beats wild grapes along the side of […]
Waning blueberries are always my first sign of summer slipping away. I would be sad about it, except that there are so many of my favorite things coming up now, in quantities much larger than I can accommodate… I’m known to overzealously load up on Italian eggplant, heirloom tomatoes, zucchini and basil, so watch out […]
If a peach in the hand is worth ten in the bush, then a few peaches in a Clafoutis are worth the haul of an entire basket. Usually, I’m unable to drive away from a farmer’s market without devouring at least half of the peaches I’ve procured. I arrive at home, appetite spoiled, lips sticky. […]
I’ve just discovered an incredible new kind of egg: the newest kind. I’ve been buying local dozens from a farmer at the Houston Farmer’s Market who gives them to me in boxes that I bring back to him the following week. Nothing is wasted except the freckled shells. Which are sometimes so pretty that I […]
