After a rocky start – I was not emotionally prepared for the snow in early October – Massachusetts is gracing us with a lovely Fall. The trees are crimson and gold. The weather is crisp, but not freezing. The skies are clear blue and cloudless. The markets are filled with autumn vegetables – piles of chard and beets, baskets full of every kind of apple you can imagine, and small mountains of pumpkin and squash. Read the rest of this entry »
I come from a family that firmly believes that you should try everything at least once, and that when in Rome you should eat like the Romans, or like the Istanbulians or the Athenians or the Toledans or the Singaporeans or the Siamese, depending on where you happen to be at the time. I’m absolutely on board with those theories right up until the food in front of me is raw, because I know it makes me a bad foodie but I really can’t get past the uncooked thing when it comes to raw meat/fish. Read the rest of this entry »
You ever have days where everything is just a little bit off? Nothing specifically goes epically wrong, it’s just that the T is a little bit slower than usual which means you get to work just a little bit later than usual, and normally this isn’t a big deal but this morning you really needed to be at work exactly on time or perhaps even a little early instead of a little late. Other drivers on the road are just a little bit stupider. Things which are normally just make you roll your eyes are suddenly intensely annoying, like your coworker’s cell phone which serenades the office with Coldplay every 10 minutes, or the person in front of you at Starbucks who wants the venti, half-caf, sugar free vanilla soy latte, no whip at exactly 130 degrees. Read the rest of this entry »
In a move that apparently surprised absolutely everyone, Conde Nast announced last week that it would be shutting down Gourmet magazine while its sister magazine, Bon Appetit, would survive. I’m not quite sure how I feel about that.
Gourmet was the original food magazine. Founded in 1941 it was the ‘it’ magazine for the foodie crowd long before the term foodie came into existence. It was the magazine that presented gourmet food to the American audience and epitomized the concept of haute cuisine in America. It was also the magazine that presumed that its readers all lived somewhere that they could get fresh apricots in February, and find obscure ethnic ingredients in their local grocery store, which is to say New York or California. It was the magazine where every recipe involved at least one ingredient I’ve never heard of, or would have to special order from the internet. Read the rest of this entry »
This past Saturday was the 435th anniversary of the Siege of Leiden which is otherwise known in my house as the long historical story with no good food at the end (as opposed to the Escalade which is a long historical story which ends in chocolate and marzipan).
For those of you who may be a little fuzzy on your 16th C Dutch history, the Siege of Leiden was part of the 80 Years War during which the Dutch successfully overthrew their Spanish feudal lords and set themselves up as an independent nation. The impetus for the war was mostly about taxation, with side excursions into the growing popularity of Anabaptism in the low countries which the Spanish (justifiably) saw as a threat to the Catholic faith.
In the year of our Lord 1574 the Duke of Alba laid siege to the town of Leiden which was a hot bed of radicalism and revolution. Read the rest of this entry »
When I was in college I did a Junior Year Abroad in Edinburgh and ended up hanging out with a wide variety of other displaced US students (and a couple of Germans and a Welshman, but no actual Scots). One of them was a Philosophy Masters student named Zubin. He had a look that he would occasionally level at you that said – what planet are you from, and could you possibly return there posthaste. It was an eloquent look and we promptly named it after him. After graduation and upon joining the unwashed ranks of the working world I came to a greater and greater appreciation for utility of this particular gaze, because people are weird. Read the rest of this entry »
My mother stopped baking about the same time I entered high school, and didn’t start again until well after I’d graduated from college. According to my father when they were first married (or, as my father would rather you say, when at first they were married – because when they were first married implies that they were second married at some later point in time) my mother made pie all the time. I don’t remember this ever being true, but I’ll take his word for it. Read the rest of this entry »
No Dinner this week.
I spent the weekend playing Eurotrash because it was my parents 40th wedding anniversary and I flew to Amsterdam for a long weekend to surprise my mother (my father was not surprised since he organized it all).
While I was very grateful last night to not be having Dinner (having arrived back on my side of the Atlantic on Tuesday night and gone to work on Wednesday morning), it has thrown my sense of time off completely. Dinner is such an integral part of my week that not having Dinner is just plain confusing.
Last week Reading Rainbow broadcast its last show and ended an era. Long before I knew who Lieutenant Geordi was, or realized that his nifty visor was really just a spray-painted banana clip, I knew who Levar Burton was because he read to me on a regular basis. Reading Rainbow was not actually one of my favorite PBS shows – I liked 1-2-3 Contact or Mr. Rogers better – but like every other adult of my generation I can sing the opening lyrics of Reading Rainbow and I was horrified when I saw the news. Read the rest of this entry »
Bryn Mawr’s alumnae list serve is a weird and wonderful place full of women who can switch from talking about the current health care debate to the exact attributes of ancient Greek deities to what to do with a pot that comes with a pasta insert without blinking an eye. When the conversation about pasta inserts vs. steamers crossed over with the recent discussion about the merits of core curriculums it garnered the comment, “Obviously Mothership didn’t require a class in Pots and Pans.” This is very true. That’s entirely too practical a class for Bryn Mawr. Read the rest of this entry »
