On the way to the Hazon Food Conference in December, I struck up an acquaintance with a writer and columnist from D.C.  We were put together with a third woman who you will soon learn about by fate and a need to carpool, and the rest is D.C. networking history…or perhaps a testament to the bonding power of food.

The three of us talked, ate noshes from Sticky Fingers or our own kitchens, and indulged in my favorite activity of discussing  esoteric food stuff. Natasha writes a monthly column for Washington Jewish Week known as “Capital Schmoozing,” and our discussion–along with the rest of the food conference–made it into her December column. It only just occurred to me to post that column here (so deep is my modesty, I would like to think, that it took the writer pointing out that I could put it on YaD to make me realize this).

So check it out!

When you don’t have a coffee maker or just don’t feel like firing one up in the morning, you can make what my dad called cowboy coffee. You shovel a few tablespoons of coffee grounds into a pot, add water, and boil. The method implies that cowboys want their joe and will have it no matter what–even if they have to start a fire that they can’t stick around to enjoy and they have to wrestle bits of brown grit between their teeth for the rest of the day.

I’m also taken to understand that cowboys like a bunch of eggs for breakfast and some good, wholesome milk to wash it all down.

Given these three loves of cowboys–coffee, eggs, and milk–I have my suspicions that it was a Cuban Holstein herder who first invented coffee flan. I’ve written about this stuff before, but I made it again recently and a friend asked for me to post the recipe. I checked and sure enough I had posted it a little while back. But now that I’m older and smarter, I made a few modifications. I also added a prettier picture. Check it out, and let me know if you get the urge to tell the dogies to git.

“It was like one of the best rooms in the finest museum except there was a big fireplace and it was warm and comfortable and they gave you good things to eat and natural distilled liquors made from purple plums, yellow plums or wild raspberries…. The paintings and the cakes and the eau-de-vie were truly wonderful.”

This is Earnest Hemingway on snacking and boozing with Gertrude Stein and her “friend” in A Moveable Feast. I’m enjoying the book quite a lot but I was wondering: when he’s hanging out with a soon-to-be-legendary writer and eating and drinking delectable things in Paris in the 1920s, must he add that it all was “truly wonderful”? Don’t rub it in, Tatie.