November 18, 2011
What is your favorite word? Liminal
What is your least favorite word? Prejudice
What turns you on? Generosity of spirit
What turns you off? Pettiness
What sound or noise do you love? The sound of a cat purring
What sound or noise do you hate? The sound of my smoke detector going off every time I cook
What is your favorite curse word? Oh for f**k’s sake
What profession other than your own would you like to attempt? Professional Organizer
What profession would you not like to do? Commercial fisherman
If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates? “Yes, Shakespeare wrote the damn plays (I wish everyone would stop asking that); Stonehenge was built by ____________, I can show you a time lapse on how they did it; JFK was killed by ________ . . . . ” Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in *Petra | Tagged Side Dish, Vegetables | Leave a Comment »
November 9, 2011
I’m suffering from an attack of mental dyspepsia brought on by the stream of holiday baking catalogs arriving on my doorstep, the fact that Macys has already put up their Christmas tree, and that stores segued directly from Halloween to Christmas candy without even a pause for post-Halloween candy sales. Read the rest of this entry »
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November 4, 2011
The boys over at The Bitten Word have helpfully indexed the 250 Thanksgiving recipes that debuted in this month’s cooking magazines. For the record, that is an insane number of new recipes for a holiday in which generally speaking nobody wants anything but what they always have – because, as we all know, everyone else’s Thanksgiving is wrong and ours is the only right one. For example, my cousin’s husband’s family doesn’t do gravy. She called to tell us this the first holiday she spent with them, and I think our collective appalled gasp could be heard across state lines. She ended up marrying him, so clearly his family’s bizarre stance on gravy wasn’t a deal breaker, but I’m pretty sure that she spent some quality time impressing on him the importance of gravy. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in *Petra | Tagged Chicken, Meat and Seafood, squash | Leave a Comment »
October 20, 2011
Fair warning, I am about to horrify everyone of Italian descent and anyone born south of the Mason Dixon line (except my mother who doesn’t like grits and therefore doesn’t care).
Polenta and grits are the same thing.
I know, I know, I’ve just committed some kind of heresy, but that doesn’t make me wrong. Don’t believe me? Let’s analyze this. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in *Petra | Tagged Meat and Seafood, pork, Side Dish, Starch, Vegetables | 3 Comments »
October 12, 2011
Apparently my new default for Dinner is ‘dither’. I spent a day and several IM conversations dithering about whether one time the lasagna recipe would be enough to feed 8 people. This is partly because while the recipe itself divides into halves or thirds or quarters fairly neatly, you end up with strange amounts of raw ingredients leftover (like 3 oz of ricotta), and a strange assortment of pans on the table (one large pan, one really small pan). I eventually decided that one time the recipe was enough to feed 8 people if I stretched the meal with both the requested salad and green beans (originally it had been an either or) and added a plate of tomatoes. Then on Tuesday afternoon at the farmer’s market I dithered about whether I really needed/wanted the tomatoes since Dinner had been reduced to six people and the lasagna would be a gracious plenty all on its own. Eventually I voted against the tomatoes but not before standing there with my hand hovering indecisively over the tomatoes for several minutes. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in *Petra | Tagged Birthday, Dessert | 2 Comments »
October 5, 2011
Some books should come with warning labels. I don’t mean the kind of warnings that land books on the Banned Books list. I mean warnings like ‘Do not read this book unless you have time to make cinnamon rolls this weekend’. Or, ‘Map the route to your nearest Moroccan restaurant before starting this book.’
I’m not talking about the obvious books either. Anyone who didn’t know that “Like Water for Chocolate” was going to leave them hungry was clearly not paying attention to the cover copy. I’m talking about books like the one I just finished. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in *Petra | Tagged Chicken, Meat and Seafood, Side Dish, Starch, Vegetarian | 2 Comments »
September 30, 2011
There are any number of food related bandwagons which I have not just jumped on to, but have walked in the parade, cheered on the sidelines and made large posters with sparkly puffy paint to promote (well, figuratively anyway).
I’m on board with the local food movement. I was a proponent of the slow food movement before it had a name. I’m kind of an adherent of the organic food movement – by which I mean, I’ll do it when it’s easy, convenient and not wildly more expensive than the alternative. I spend quite enough of my budget on food as it is, I don’t need to look for ways to spend more. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in *Petra | Tagged bread, Side Dish, soup, Starch | 1 Comment »
September 21, 2011
Last week I was critical and complaining about trends in food TV. Friday afternoon devolved in a series of small annoyances which cumulatively were enough to make me wish I kept a bottle of scotch in my desk drawer the way that everyone in the 1950’s seems to have (or so television would suggest). I spent the first half of this week playing phone tag with a restaurant manager so that I could complain about mediocre service we’d had on Sunday afternoon. In the light of all that negativity, I feel the need to redress the balance with a burst of positive thoughts. One of the podcasts I listen to ends every show with a segment called “What’s Making You Happy This Week”, so in that spirit here’s a list of what’s making me happy this week. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in *Petra | Tagged Birthday, Dessert, Meat and Seafood, Side Dish, Starch | Leave a Comment »
September 15, 2011
I sometimes feel like I have more than my fair share of pet peeves. I have at least four that are just related to the printer/photocopier at work, and I have two completely separate and lengthy lists of pet peeves for traffic depending on whether I’m the pedestrian or the driver – I do try not to do the things as a driver that make me nuts as a pedestrian, although I’m not entirely sure I can say that the opposite is true.
I also have a whole series of pet peeves about cooking shows. I’ve talked before about how they exist in this vacuum where nobody has food dislikes or food allergies, more than once in fact. These are two not new exactly, but recently reinforced pet peeves courtesy of a series of Saturdays that have filled my DVR with cooking shows. Read the rest of this entry »
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