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!
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 [...]
This spring, I worked as an organic gardening teacher at a Houston public school. It was at once inspirational and terrifying, as most new experiences are. My sister, who has been assisting at a summer camp, recently theorized that children grow up by sucking the life out of everything around them. A haunting way to [...]
Last time I made lemon bars I tried a recipe with eggs, which made them puffy and nebulous. It might sound nice—billowing heaps of lemon-sugar filling on a thick shortbread crust—but actually, it was not for me. I prefer my lemon squares flat and chewy, tart and sticky: none of this fluffy stuff. I did [...]
Yesterday I had an abundance of two things: sour cream and requests for lemon squares. And last night, I almost lost both. In a careless butter-wielding maneuver, I nearly over-greased the crust of my bars and ended up with soggy butter crumbs. Fortunately, a miraculous addition of flour saved the occasion. My bars pulled through, [...]
If you have flour, sugar and eggs, you have dough. If you have 2 lemons, you have lemon squares. If you have lemon squares, you have breakfast and dessert, and lots of scurvy-free friends.
I made these squares the night before last between thumb twiddling, while I waited for 6 cups of strawberries to settle into [...]
