Archive for April, 2013

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TND – Cooking the Book, or Not

April 25, 2013

barley & leeks

In my experience, Celebrity/Name Chef cookbooks tend to come in three varieties.

The first is what I call the ‘It’s more about the lifestyle than the recipes’ variety. Much as I love Ina Garten, this is where I put most of her cook books. I basically want to be Ina Garten – I want her house, her garden, and especially her pantry – but I find her cook books are more about an aesthetic than they are about new and/or interesting recipes. I don’t know that anyone needs another recipe for butternut squash soup, or for chicken salad, or strawberry shortcake. The genius in her books is providing inspirational aspirational pretty pretty pictures of food and friends. I’d also class Nigella Lawson (who I also love) in this phylum of the cookbook world. Read the rest of this entry ?

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TND – True Confession

April 10, 2013

unbaked bread

True confession?  I don’t really like most frosting.  People always look first horrified, and then deeply pitying when I say this.

What I have kind of always wanted to do is a blind taste test of all variations on buttercream frosting to see which one, if any, I like, so that I’ll know for future reference.  I suspect I’ve had all the variations on buttercream at some point in time or another, but without knowing which one I was eating at any given time I have no way to know if there’s one I find (more) acceptable. Read the rest of this entry ?

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TND – Not! Mardi Gras

April 10, 2013

Last Monday Google announced the beta release of GoogleNose*. I wish that it was live so that I could have shared with y’all how good my kitchen smelled last week. I kept walking back into the kitchen on Monday night to stand over the pot of simmering beans and just inhale deeply (okay, also to warm my hands up in front of the gas flame, because this is the winter that will not end, and it was cold). Read the rest of this entry ?

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