Day late and a dollar short, apologies. I was distracted yesterday by stories from Jes of people drowning in yachting accidents in 1922, being told I couldn’t use the word idiosyncratic in a write up because nobody would know what it meant, and the new developments in the Amy Bishop case which gets weirder by the day. Read the rest of this entry ?
A couple of years ago I signed up to do recipe testing for America’s Test Kitchen, and then when they started up their offshoot Cook’s County – although, honestly I can’t really tell the difference between the two of them, except Cook’s County seems to involve more gingham? – I signed up to do recipe testing for them too. Because, why not? Read the rest of this entry ?
A couple of weeks ago I was tired and cranky and in a rush, and then I started cooking and threw knifes into the mix which is a terrible combination. Sometimes if I’m tired and cranky the routine of cooking will calm me down and bring me back to someone who’s fit to be around other people, but if I’m in a rush it just makes being tired and cranky that much worse. Upshot was, I wasn’t paying much attention and I was chopping onions in a hurry and brought my big chef’s knife down hard against my knuckles. Now, normally this would result in a lot of blood and band aids and would make washing the dishes painful and annoying for the next 10 days or so. But, that’s not at all what happened because my knife hasn’t be sharpened since I got it as a birthday present about three years ago. On the upside, my knuckles remained intact. On the downside, my knife wasn’t sharp enough to break skin.
Fortunately my local fabric store is a collection point for knife and scissor sharpening. So on my now weekly trip to the fabric store – don’t ask, I’m finishing one enormous quilt and starting another smaller quilt and I’ve been at the fabric store every weekend for the last month and it’s entirely possible that they know me by name now – I took along my sewing scissors which were also nicely dull and my large kitchen knife. Read the rest of this entry ?
The Food Network has a new show on called “The Worst Cooks in America”. I had hopes for it, mostly because the promo of the two professional chefs staring in horrified bemusement at the man who’d boiled a whole chicken was entertaining. The premise of the show is that they’ve found 12 of the worst cooks in America – as nominated by their friends and families – and in a couple of months they’ll turn at least two of them into cooks who can fool professional food critics into thinking they’re eating a meal prepared by one of the host chefs and not by one of the (presumably now formerly) worst cooks in America.
The promos for the show were really entertaining in a shadenfreude reality TV kind of way – seriously, who boils a whole chicken? Read the rest of this entry ?
For the past week Boston has been not only deluged with icy snow, but also with librarians. Or, put another way, ALA has been in town which means both that I’ve gotten to tag along to dessert parties at the Children’s Museum and meet M.T. Anderson, but also that we have friends in town some of whom are staying for Dinner. And, when I say staying for Dinner I mean she’s been planning on coming to Dinner for the better part of 18 months because apparently we’re fabulous, or notorious, I’m not entirely sure which. I voiced this opinion to her and was firmly told to stop being blasé about Dinner. Read the rest of this entry ?
I’ll admit that occasionally my concept of what everyone knows bears no relationship to the reality of what is actually common knowledge. I wrote my college thesis on medieval female mystics so obscure that even my father, who is the king of obscure historical European personages hadn’t heard of them. Actually, I was really proud that I’d come up with people so esoteric even my father looked at me blankly, but that’s just a family thing. And, while I think everyone should know what the Conference at Yalta was and who attended*, I have been forced to concede that apparently this isn’t actually common knowledge. Unless, or course, you’ve been who’ve been forced to listen to me explain why Yalta was important about once a year for the last 10 years – which is to say, anyone who plays Trivial Pursuit with us on New Years. Read the rest of this entry ?
I believe in the power of a pair of 3 ½” heels, not just because I’m short, but because they make awesome clicking noises when you walk across marble floors and that is the universal sound of being a grown-up (well for women anyway).
I believe that foie gras is one of the best things you can eat, and that the santon we saw on the market was of a duck being fattened up with an eye to a nice foie gras at Christmas, not a beloved pet being hand fed, no matter what the woman behind the counter said. I know I speak English, but that doesn’t actually make me an idiot. Read the rest of this entry ?
I caught my roommate’s plague, and for my sins I’m at work because I’m leaving for Christmas through the New Year on Monday and my boss is entertainingly panicked at the idea that I might call in sick one day this week – he keeps sending me home early and telling me not to come in until 9am, which is sweet and I’ll take it, but not quite as good as being able to stay home and sleep all day. On the other hand the list of things that I need to get done between now and when I leave just keeps getting longer, and every time I cross one thing off I end up adding three more things in its place. I can’t help thinking that this is not how a list is supposed to work. Read the rest of this entry ?
This is the part where I admit that I’m the most boring person in the entire world. I get excited about kitchen equipment. I’m like a bad parody of a 1950s housewife. My parents asked what I wanted for Christmas/birthday and all I could really come up with was gloves (because I lost one of mine at the end of last winter – and why is is that you only ever lose one glove and never the pair?) and a Dutch oven. Read the rest of this entry ?
I didn’t complain (much) about the appearance of the Christmas candy on the day after Halloween. I held my peace when the Christmas lights went up in Harvard Square in the middle of November. I refrained from anything more opprobrious than rolling my eyes at the delivery of Christmas trees to Wilson Farms the weekend before Thanksgiving. I gritted my teeth when the Christmas carols on store music systems started well before November drew to a close. However, since last Sunday was the first Sunday in Advent and I actually went to an Advent concert I should probably stop grousing, even if it’s only to myself, and start thinking seriously about Christmas. Read the rest of this entry ?
Monday Night Dinner 