Welcome, and thanks for visiting Buttered Bread. My name is Claiborne, and I began blogging about two years ago to force myself to put pen to paper, and to create an album of what I’m cooking, thinking, seeing, living. I enjoy sharing recipes and ideas with friends and family, and I also hope one day this might be an amusing artifact for my daughters to discover. Since I use all these recipes in real life, I've recently found myself turning back to my own blog–it has become my online compilation of favorite recipes.
I was raised and schooled in Virginia, then landed in New York about 13 years ago, with stints in Paris and London in between. My work background is in the magazine world and then as a professional cook; I left the former to become the latter, which I did via culinary school, restaurant kitchens, and eventually as a private chef/caterer/instructor. Once my daughters were born I decided we needed to be together more, and so I have been tinkering at the stove and adding more writing projects as they grow. Brooklyn is where we live, and I love our community here: the creative people, the energy, and the terrific food resources that inspire every day. Our friends and neighbors hail from all over the world, and I have learned so much from their varied cooking backgrounds. Since my husband, daughters, and I also crave fresh air and the smell of earth, we spend a fair amount of time up in northwestern Connecticut, where we have a little cottage in the 'holler.
What you’ll find here is pretty eclectic but with an underlying theme: real food that seasons our life experiences. I don’t go in for food “products,” and I buy whole, local, and organic whenever I can–because no matter how clever a dish is, it’s only as good as its ingredients. We take seasonal shares in 5 different CSAs (community supported agriculture), frequent farmers’ markets, and like to know who’s raising the food we eat and how they do it. Everything tastes so much better that way.
Why Buttered Bread? It’s one of my favorite snacks. It's elemental. Softened butter spread over still-warm bread is one of the simplest and most satisfying things you can eat, and it wholly wins you over when the ingredients are top-notch: proof positive you should choose the best raw materials available. Also, reader: you should know I’m not afraid of butter or any other full-bodied foods, as long as they're natural. Although I adore a good, clean vegetable, I also enjoy–and serve up–meatier and sweeter fare in these pages.
When I began, this project was mainly about the writing, but I realized I had to show some appetizing images along with the words, so I’ve been working on that. I shoot with a Canon 7D, using either a 28mm f/1.8 or a 60mm f/2.8 macro lens, mostly in natural light. I’m still learning, so bear with me–the photography part of this has been an unexpectedly delightful and challenging turn.
A few favorite posts (& recipes):
- The Sugarhouse Rules (Maple-vanilla pots de creme)
- For the Love of Almond Butter (Almond butter & jam thumbprint cookies)
- What do Fairies Eat? (Fiddleheads with poached eggs and miso butter)
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