PLANET CARDINAL
Scratch-
Batch Fever
A foodie’s comprehensive guide
about what to cook at home.
Downsized out of her job as a book
critic at Entertainment Weekly in 2008,
Jennifer Reese felt the classic impulse
to economize. The grocery bill seemed a
good place to start.
It turned out to be a good place to
reinvent herself. Reese, ’88, who blogs as
the Tipsy Baker, began to explore the economics of home cookery. It came as little
surprise that a freshly spread PBJ beat a
thawed Uncrustable—or that homemade
peanut butter tasted great and cost 80
percent the price of Jif. But then, did she
need to bake the bread and put up the
jelly, too? Liking to cook was one thing;
living in Marin County like a latter-day
Ma Ingalls was another.
Her epicurean experiments have
become Make the Bread, Buy the Butter:
The Tipsy Baker’s Guide to the Best Homemade Foods (Free Press, $24). Other
cookbook authors have examined which
homemade foods are
cost- and time-efficient,
but Reese does so more
comprehensively—
homemade dumpling
wrappers!—and entertainingly —“Don’t slosh
[cooking oil] down the
drain unless you have a
crush on your plumber.” Many cooks have
made their own yogurt or applesauce, but
Reese ventures on into Danish pastry
warm from the oven, advanced charcuterie, and the backyard husbandry of bees,
poultry and goats. More than 150 foodstuffs
are annotated with remarks, a recipe, the
HANDS ON: Reese kneads dough and saves dough.
cost analysis, a determination of the hassle
involved and a clear recommendation on
whether something is best made, or bought,
or either option exercised depending on
the cook’s bandwidth at a given moment.
Some of her recommendations are below. n
Make It Yourself
website
hot dog buns
pancakes
beef jerky
peanut butter
ricotta
chocolate chip cookies
marshmallow creme
Worcestershire sauce
potato chips
Buy It (at store
or restaurant)
baguettes
English muffins
hot dogs
steak tartare
mozzarella
ice cream cones
crystallized ginger
tahini
French fries
Make Sometimes,
Buy Sometimes
rye bread
tortillas
bacon
roasted chicken
burrata
graham crackers
chocolates
horseradish
onion rings
Lawyer Marie-Therese Connolly, ’ 81, who focuses on elder abuse, and evolutionary geneticist
Sarah Otto, ’88, PhD ’92, won MacArthur “genius grants.” . . . Philip Levine, a Stegner
fellow in 1957-1958, has been named poet laureate of the United States. . . . Cassidy Krug,
’07, won national diving titles in the 3-meter springboard and, with partner Kassidy Cook,
the 3-meter synchronized. . . . Quan Phung, ’92, head of television for Stuber Pictures, is
executive producer of the NBC television comedy Whitney. . . . The Smithsonian Institution board of regents
elected France A. Córdova, ’ 69, the president of Purdue University, as its chair.
