A Bowl of What?

One Bowl is a collection of ramblings, mostly by me (Hazel) and sometimes by Rosalind. I am a baker and Rosalind is my daughter. And together we bake; we cook; we live. And we blog about it.

As most food blogs go, its purpose is to chronicle some food related scheme. In our case, I am trying to keep a journal of Rosalind's progress as she finds her way around the kitchen as well as maintain a log of recipes/techniques for future reference. But it is so difficult to stay on task. To be honest, Rosalind is naturally fastidious that baking with her doesn't give me much material to write about. I suppose I can mention how perfectly she levels a cup of flour when measuring or how she scrapes the sides of the bowl like nobody's business when mixing. But that can get old fast. Sabotage for the sake of enlivening a blogpost is probably not a good idea. Worst of all, I find it impossible to strictly write about baking techniques or how delightfully scrumptious something is without sounding like a textbook or a Williams-Sonoma food catalog.

So the more I've blogged, the more I've tended to interject snippets of our personal lives. I've talked about Rosalind's dream of being accepted to Hogwarts, her love of any printed material and her absentmindedness.  As I've gotten more comfortable, I've started jabbering on about feeling stuck in a rut in my chosen profession and posting pictures of the desserts I've created for work. Inevitably, this have led to my rattling on about life in a restaurant kitchen. Here and there, I've mentioned other family members. Once or twice, I've invoked my childhood past. In the end, digressions have became the rule.

Food and life are so intertwined that it's quite a task to mention one without the other. For the sake of full disclosure, this site contains many of our daily trifles. We have recipes but we also have a lot of talk that may not interest you. I just thought I should warn you about it. If Google led you here on your search for Snickers Cheesecake, please don't feel obligated to read about a cat who laps cooking oil like a bowl of milk. Don't hesitate to scroll all the way down for the recipe. You are very welcome to it.

And if you decide to stick around and cook with us, we welcome you to our kitchen. Just know that Rosalind has a huge repository of Knock Knock jokes that she loves to share.

---Hazel

No one who cooks, cooks alone. Even at her most solitary, a cook in the kitchen is surrounded by generations of cooks past, the advice and menus of cooks present, the wisdom of cookbook writers.
--Laurie Colwin