Author: Ed Hart

Categories
Learn Music

A Listening Pilgrimage Through Lent

From Ashes to Light

This Lent, I decided to create a musical companion for the season: a curated week-by-week collection of classical and sacred works to focus on from Ash Wednesday through Easter. I should say upfront that I’m not a classical music scholar by any stretch, although I am lifelong listener and appreciator of it, and I know what’s moved me over the years.

What I’ve put together here is partly a listening journey and partly a self-education mini-course for my own learning. I started with pieces I already know and love, and then filled in the gaps with help from Wikipedia, ChatGPT, Claude, Google, and a few other resources along the way. What’s emerged is a curated musical journey that I hope will deepen my, and perhaps your, experience of this season.

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Categories
Gardening

Gardening Preparation for Spring

It’s mid-February and I’ve started planning out this season’s seeding and planting schedule, this time with a little help from ChatGPT.

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Categories
Eat

Rotisserie Chicken Tortilla Soup

Ran across this recipe in Food & Wine. This version leans into deep, smoky flavor from chipotle chiles in adobo, softened onions and garlic, and a long simmer in rich chicken stock. Using a Costco rotisserie chicken keeps it approachable (and affordable!) for a weeknight, and the toppings turn it into something special at the table.

Best of all, this tortilla soup gets even better after a day in the fridge, making it ideal for meal prep, casual entertaining, or freezing for later. Make a pot on Sunday and enjoy comfort all week long.

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Categories
Drink Eat

Homemade Hibiscus Syrup

This is basically a simple syrup steeped with dried hibiscus flowers. You can find dried hibiscus (often labeled “Flor de Jamaica”) in Hispanic grocery stores. It can also be found in health food stores or in the tea aisle.

Homemade Hibiscus Syrup

Print Recipe
Ingredients Method

Ingredients
  

  • 1 cup water
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 2 tablespoons dried hibiscus

Method
 

  1. Bring water and hibiscus to simmer 5–10 minutes
  2. Strain
  3. Add ¾–1 cup sugar
  4. Stir until dissolved
Categories
Eat

Creole Collard Greens

Creole Greens

This is a dish built on patience and transformation. Raw collards are tough, grassy, almost defiant. But given heat, fat, acid, and a little sweetness – and most importantly, time – they soften into something generous and soulful. The leaves surrender. The pot liquor deepens. What begins sharp and bitter becomes rounded, savory, and deeply comforting.

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Categories
Eat

Bread Pudding

If you’re ever in the neighborhood of Commander’s Palace in the Garden District, you can almost follow your nose to the front door by the aroma of bread pudding which wafts across the neighborhood. I always picture a looney tunes character, closing their eyes, nose to the air, flapping their hands and floating along the scent trail to the source. I always think of that when I make this recipe and my kitchen smells of cinnamon, nutmeg and vanilla.

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Categories
Eat

Ideal 7oz Gas Grill Burger

There’s a moment in grilling where complexity becomes noise. Where the instinct to add, tweak, or improve actually moves you farther from what you’re trying to make. A great hamburger lives on the other side of that moment.

This recipe isn’t about novelty. It’s about proportion, heat, and timing. It’s about letting beef taste like beef, fire do its work, and restraint carry the rest. After years of trial, error, and unnecessary cleverness, this is the version that keeps proving itself: the Ideal 7oz Gas Grill Burger.

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Categories
Eat

Pan-Fried or Deep Fried Falafel (Canned Chickpea Shortcut)

Traditional falafel relies on dried chickpeas soaked overnight, ground raw, and fried hot and fast. When time doesn’t allow for soaking, canned chickpeas can still deliver satisfying falafel if the recipe is adjusted for their higher moisture and softer structure.

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Categories
Eat

Sheet Pan Chicken Al Pastor

There’s something deeply satisfying about bringing a dish like al pastor into your own kitchen, especially when you can recreate its bold, layered flavor without needing a vertical spit or your own taco truck. This sheet pan chicken al pastor is built for exactly that: big, vibrant flavor with a process that actually fits into real life. It’s equally at home tucked into tacos, wrapped into burritos, or piled into a bowl.

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Categories
Eat

Lemon-Tarragon Shrimp Scampi with Orzo

This recipe came from the April 2025 issue of Food and Wine, a particularly good issue for fast weeknight meals. We’ve made this one so many times now!

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