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WND – In which my cat sadly doesn’t talk

April 30, 2009

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Going to Wilson Farms in the Spring is always a battle between the person I kind of secretly want to be, and my common sense. My common sense says that I (a) don’t have a garden, (b) did not inherit a green thumb from either one of my grandmothers, and that (c) to call my interest in learning how to garden cursory would be exceedingly generous. But, I go up to Wilson Farms to do my weekly grocery shopping and I walk past flats filled with velvety purple pansies, and racks of enticing seed packets, and shelves of aromatic basil plants and I want to be the kind of person who gardens. Personally, I blame my childhood reading habits. Read the rest of this entry ?

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WND – Chicken Soup

April 23, 2009

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I hate being sick.  This is not an earth shattering secret.  Everyone hates being sick.  I’m particularly bitter about this cold since it’s finally nice weather outside, and being sick when it’s sunny and warm always feels like adding insult to injury.   No, my deep dark secret is that I don’t like chicken soup.  I don’t really like any variation on chicken soup either.  I don’t like matzo ball soup.  I don’t like chicken & dumplings.  I feel like such a bad sick person. Read the rest of this entry ?

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WND – Kitchen Fantasies

April 16, 2009

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Some people fantasize about wine, women and song.  Some people fantasize about fast cars and faster men.  Some people fantasize about winning the lottery.  I fantasize about the ideal kitchen.  Well okay, I also fantasize about winning the lottery because really who doesn’t want to win the lottery, quit work and travel a lot?  And with the money, I’d be able to design my fantasy kitchen. Read the rest of this entry ?

Posted in *Petra | 4 Comments »

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WND – The Holy Trinity

April 9, 2009

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This week is the intersection of three major religious holidays in Boston. It’s Passover – the first Seder was last night. Easter is this Sunday. And, Tuesday was the opening game at Fenway. Normally I’d feel a little blasphemous comparing these three events, but I was at an annual company meeting on Tuesday that got cut short so that we could all watch the first pitch at Fenway. The company meeting wasn’t actually scheduled to be the same day as the first game of the season – nobody in Boston would be that foolish – but the game got washed out on Monday night, so they had no choice but to cut the company meeting short. I’m pretty sure the option of just not watching the game was never even considered. The Red Sox, incidentally, won that game 5-3, and then made up for it on Wednesday by losing 7-2. Read the rest of this entry ?

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WND – Bonus Picture Spam

April 6, 2009

Because making stock was possibly the most useful thing I did all weekend.

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Posted in *Petra | 3 Comments »

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WND – Curse of the Liquid Gold

April 2, 2009

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Dinner this week is the result of a series of events, some of which were in fact unfortunate, but most of which were just ordinary.  No fourth cousins three times removed, or even third cousins four times removed attempted to follow me in strange disguises and steal my fortune*, but I did discover something worrying in my freezer.  Or rather, I discovered a worrying lack of something in my freezer.  Read the rest of this entry ?

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WND – Grocery Shopping

March 27, 2009

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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 ?

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

March 19, 2009

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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.

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WND – Is It Spring Yet?

March 12, 2009

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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.

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

March 5, 2009

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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 ?

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