Dinner was cancelled last night due to me being sick earlier in the week, and while feeling better on Wednesday I was still decidedly unenthusiastic about food.
Archive for the ‘*Petra’ Category
WND – Consoling myself with starch
October 2, 2008
I’ve been feeling disenchanted with the Food Network lately. It seems like every time I turn it on there’s a food travel documentary or the secret history of something or other airing. Admittedly I find the fact that carbonation is the secret ingredient in slurpees fascinating, but it’s not really what I’m flipping to the Food Network to watch. They have a roster of new shows and they all feel like they’re trying too hard. None of the new hosts really look at ease behind the camera, and none of them are endearing enough that I want to watch them anyway. This is a problem since they’re also not cooking any food that I’m interested in watching them make*. Read the rest of this entry ?
WND – Birthday Season 2008 – Part II
September 24, 2008
There are two schools of thought when it comes to soup. There are the people who think that soup is the perfect food, and is an end in and of itself. And, there are the people who think soup is lovely, but get to the bottom of the bowl and want to know where the rest of dinner is.
I grew up in a family that belongs to the first school of thought. Except for the unfortunate black bean soup my mother made when I was in high school that was promptly dubbed river sludge soup, I’ve pretty much never met a soup I didn’t like. My mother admittedly did not think it was the best soup she’d ever had, but didn’t think it was quite as bad as my father and I made it out to be.
WND – Hubris & Recipe Testing
September 11, 2008
The general rule of thumb is that you should never attempt to cook something new for company. I disregard this rule with a flagrancy that borders on hubris. I figure I have my next kitchen disaster coming to me.
Dinner occupies a liminal space between company and family. I cook more elaborately for Dinner than I do for just us at home. But, everyone at Dinner has done our dishes, and they all know where to find the tea things, so they’re not exactly company either.
WND – Knife Dropping & Other Kitchen Skills
September 4, 2008
I have to ask, have you ever dropped a knife while you were cooking in such a way that you were worried it was going to slice your feet? Inquiring minds want to know.
I ask because the advertising for “Cook With Your Kids” Week on the Food Network has started and the degree of caution with which the Food Network approaches the idea of kids and kitchens always strikes me as a little extreme. I understand that they have lawyers breathing down their necks about liability and the FDA and who knows what else, which is why everyone on the Food Network washes their hands obsessively. But surely there must be a happy medium between caution and wrapping everyone in cotton wool?
WND – Rambling & Housewifery
August 28, 2008
Unless I’m planning on doing something really interesting on Sunday, Saturday is my day off. I don’t cook (usually). I don’t run errands. I don’t think about menu plans, or go to the grocery store. I might go shopping, but not that kind of shopping.
Sunday, on the other hand, is my day for being a good little housewife. I make a menu plan. I go to the grocery store, and clear out the fridge of old leftovers and milk that’s gone bad. I take the trash out and try to figure out if this is a recycling week or not (usually solved by looking up the street to check whether my neighbors have put theirs out, since they apparently actually kept the schedule that the town sends out every year). I do laundry and change my sheets. I’m so very very boring. Read the rest of this entry ?
WND – Are You Paranoid Enough?
August 21, 2008
After many years of cooking for groups of people I have to say I agree with the sentiment: It’s not whether you’re paranoid, it’s whether you’re paranoid enough.
I have a running list in my head of everything that everyone who comes to Dinner regularly is allergic to, and what they’ll eat but rather wouldn’t, and what they’ll carefully pick out of any given dish. I also have a running list of substitutions, additions, subtractions and the point at which I don’t care if they pick it out of a dish and leave it on the side of the plate. On the other hand, if you haven’t been to Dinner in more than six months, I’ve probably forgotten what your food quirks are and will require reminding.
Case in point, when a friend and her boy came up to visit last month I sent about five emails checking to make sure that they ate meat/eggs/dairy products. The final response was more or less an exasperated, “Yes. Do your worst woman.” Read the rest of this entry ?
WND – Taking the Easy Way Out
August 14, 2008
We were up in Vermont this past weekend for the annual antique car show. It was unexpectedly gorgeous in Stowe – we’d been threatened with a weekend of rain and gloom and instead got clear blue skies and sunshine. However, the drive up and the drive back were both nightmares of bad traffic and inexplicable traffic jams and I was exhausted by the time we got home on Sunday night.
WND – Paean to Summer Vegetables
August 7, 2008
The hard part about Dinner isn’t making Dinner, or figuring out how to time everything so that it’s ready at the same time. That’s just a question of practice. The hard part about Dinner is coming up with something to make every week. There comes a time in every week, usually sometime between Friday afternoon when I’m willing the work day to end and Sunday morning when I’m making a grocery shopping list, when I say plaintively, “I don’t know what I’m going to make for Dinner this week.”
WND – The Beauty of Chaos
July 31, 2008
Everyone has a scrap recipe book. It’s that thing that holds the accumulation of recipes torn out of cooking magazines, and scribbled on scraps of paper, and printed out from websites. It’s usually a binder or a box that’s stuffed to overflowing with no discernible method to its madness. It’s full of recipes you make all the time, and recipes you’ve never thought about again after you stuck them in there. It’s a combination of recipes that you got from friends, and ones that you insisted your mother give you, and ones you just thought sounded interesting when you read about them and tore them out even though you know you’ll never ever make them.
Monday Night Dinner 