End of Birthday Season 2012 – Dinner, November 27th
Pumpkin Chili
Creamed Corn Cornbread
Salad
Goat Cheesecake with Pistachio Crust Read the rest of this entry ?
Posts Tagged ‘Beef’
TND – End of Birthday Season 2012 (recipes)
January 9, 2013TND – Best of 2011?
December 8, 2011
This is the time of year when everyone comes out with their “Best of Lists” and either my reading material has changed in the past year (entirely possible) or cooking/food has become a much bigger deal (also possible) because I’ve seen more “Best of 2011 Cookbook” lists in the past few weeks than I think I saw in the previous decade.
A random, and completely unscientific, sampling of lists (epicurious, Bon Appetit, NPR, the NYT, the Boston Globe, Serious Eats, The Kitchn, David Lebovitz, Kirkus, and The Huffington Post) reveals the following moments of agreement and endorsement. And, in a rare moment of being insync with the zeitgeist I have not only read two of the three books, I wholeheartedly second their endorsement. Read the rest of this entry ?
TND – You Keep Using That Word
February 10, 2011
Apparently the new It thing in the food world is the ‘flexatarian diet’. I’ve read articles about it, and definitions of it, and I’ve heard its praises sung from the rafters. But here’s the thing, I honestly can’t figure out what it is.
According to the most recent edition of Bon Appetit a flexitarian diet is:
“A flexitarian diet focuses mostly on plant-based foods but includes meat, poultry, and fish in small amounts. Flexitarianism is the perfect diet for people who know they need to eat more veggies but don’t want to give up meat completely. And the health benefits are impressive: Plant-based diets have been shown to be high in vitamins, fiber, and nutrients. Add a little meat now and then, and flexitarians also get all the protein (and flavor) of animal products.” Read the rest of this entry ?
WND – And the moral of the story is . . . .
March 18, 2010
I’m not the kind of cook who invents recipes. If I want a specific flavor combination I tend to go in search of a recipe that will provide that for me. I edit recipes on the fly sometimes – more cinnamon, less stock, a little heavier on the paprika – but I don’t do a lot of wholesale inventing. Usually if I think a recipe needs that much help I’ll go find a recipe that I think will actually work as written. However, this week I was well into my recipe before I realized how unworkable it was, and what I ended up making bears so little relationship to the recipe I started with I might as well have started from scratch. Read the rest of this entry ?
WND – Weight Lifting
December 10, 2009
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 ?
WND – Ad Majorem Gloria Orangae
October 8, 2009
This past Saturday was the 435th anniversary of the Siege of Leiden which is otherwise known in my house as the long historical story with no good food at the end (as opposed to the Escalade which is a long historical story which ends in chocolate and marzipan).
For those of you who may be a little fuzzy on your 16th C Dutch history, the Siege of Leiden was part of the 80 Years War during which the Dutch successfully overthrew their Spanish feudal lords and set themselves up as an independent nation. The impetus for the war was mostly about taxation, with side excursions into the growing popularity of Anabaptism in the low countries which the Spanish (justifiably) saw as a threat to the Catholic faith.
In the year of our Lord 1574 the Duke of Alba laid siege to the town of Leiden which was a hot bed of radicalism and revolution. Read the rest of this entry ?
WND – Oscars 2009
February 25, 2009This all started a couple of years ago when I was watching the first season of “Feasting on Asphalt”. In the course of their voyage across the United States Alton Brown and his crew ate a wide and weird variety of things, including koolicles at one stop somewhere in the deep deep South. Koolicles are dill pickles that have been removed from their brine and then marinated in Kool-Aid for several weeks to give them a nice unnatural fluorescent glow and a sweet sour flavor.
WND – Tale of a Weekend
February 5, 2009
Step 1: Stop by the grocery store on Saturday to pick up some rock salt (to try and get rid of that ½ inch of ice that’s on your driveway – the collective sympathy in Boston for London’s 4-6 inches of snow is somewhat limited), and some milk.
Step 2: Wonder why the grocery store is packed to the gills at 2pm on a Saturday.
Step 3: Realize half way home that you remember reading something about the Vice President throwing a Super Bowl party. Realize they must have been talking about this weekend (my boss refuses to believe that I’m this oblivious, but he’s wrong). Spend the rest of the drive home trying to remember who’s playing.
Step 4: Forget that the Super Bowl is this weekend. Read the rest of this entry ?
WND – Oscars!
February 26, 2008
A couple of years ago a friend and I were out to dinner and ended up discussing how much we both love to cook, and how that always makes people ask us if we’ve considered doing it professionally. At which point we both recoil with varying degrees of horror depending on how recently we’ve spent eight hours in the kitchen doing nothing but cook.
About twice a year I spend all weekend in the kitchen making the kind of things that if I was married to the French Ambassador I would make all the time to serve at luncheons, but since I’m not, I don’t. This is another way of saying that the Oscars were this Sunday and the Oscars are a big deal in my house.
WND – Birthday Stew
October 11, 2007This is the end of the Fall Birthday Season. The weather cooperated and we had a cold gloomy day on Wednesday which went nicely with the beef stew and bread pudding that was requested for dinner.
Beef Carbonnade
Mashed Potatoes
Broccoli
Pumpkin Bread Pudding with Caramel Sauce
There’s a story from when I was a wee young thing in which I was given a homework assignment to come up with three sentences using contractions. Allegedly, I returned to school the next day with the following three sentences:
I don’t eat broccoli.
I won’t eat broccoli.
I can’t eat broccoli.
Monday Night Dinner 