Archive for March, 2009

h1

WND – Grocery Shopping

March 27, 2009

sage-leaves

I’ve come to the realization that while I’m perfectly capable of planning a week’s worth of menus, I can only do it if I’m not planning something else first. Case in point, this weekend my roommate and I went down to Connecticut to a baby shower for which we’d been asked to make some food. I duly went up to Wilson Farms on Saturday to pick up chickpeas and tahini (hummus), cream cheese and mushrooms (mushroom dip) and assorted fresh veggies (including purple cauliflower, about which I was disproportionately excited). I remembered to pick up extra mushrooms for the Pasta with Pumpkin Sauce I’d decided we were going to have for Dinner, and to buy spinach for the baked eggs I was planning on serving for dinner on Monday. However, I forgot eggs, milk, apples, pears, sage and just about everything else I needed, and this would explain why I’ve been at a grocery store three times and counting this week. Read the rest of this entry ?

Advertisement

Posted in *Petra | 1 Comment »

h1

WND – The Day After St. Patrick’s Day Dinner

March 19, 2009

cheese-platter1

Oscar Wilde said, “Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.”  As with many things Oscar Wilde, this is both witty and true.  In my next life I aspire to being a professional aphorist.

Nothing will teach you to do, or not do, something quite as effectively as doing it and realizing half way through exactly how bad an idea it was.  That being said, there are a lot of stupid things I’ve done in the kitchen that I’d have been willing to take on faith as bad ideas rather than having to experience them for myself.  Out of idle curiosity I polled Dinner to find out what things they wish someone had told them not to do before they found out the hard way.  For a group of people with (collectively) an alarming amount of education, we did all seem to be a little short on common sense.  Mind you, this does add further proof to my theory that there is an inverse relationship between the quantity of higher education you have achieved and the amount of common sense you demonstrate.

Read the rest of this entry ?

Posted in *Petra | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment »

h1

WND – Is It Spring Yet?

March 12, 2009

garlic-rosemary

At least half the time I find the wives of the presidential candidates more interesting than the actual candidates. I thought that Theresa Heinz Kerry and Elizabeth Dole were much more dynamic personalities than John Kerry or Bob Dole, which possibly has something to do with why neither of them won an election. While I don’t think that Michelle Obama is more interesting than her husband, I do think she’s at least as interesting as the President. Given the amount of media attention on her, I don’t think I’m the only person who feels this way. And just to say, if I had biceps that looked like hers I would wear sleeveless dresses too, even in March.

Read the rest of this entry ?

Posted in *Petra, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments »

h1

WND – If I was stranded on a desert island . . .

March 5, 2009

cut-squash3

In a shocking turn of events I found myself watching the Food Network this weekend and ended up watching one of the new shows, “Ask Aida” while I ate my breakfast*.  The premise of the show is that Aida, who is the Food Editor for Chow.com, prepares a relatively simple meal while answering questions emailed in from viewers.  This is not a new concept, Sara Moulton did it way back when the Food Network first started, only she did it with the added terror of live calls from viewers and the possibility that they would ask a question she had no idea how to answer.  Most of the time I find that people email in with questions they could have found the answer to if they’d spent five minutes with google, but this time someone emailed in to ask what ten staples she recommended everyone keep in their pantry. Read the rest of this entry ?

Posted in *Petra | Tagged , , | 2 Comments »