Posts Tagged ‘Chicken’

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WND – Revenge of the Florets

November 12, 2009

apricots + cinnamon

Variety is the spice of life, and a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.  These are both useful and true statements, and yet, when I go out for Thai food I always order the Pad Thai, and if I’m out to dinner and there’s duck or lamb on the menu that’s what I’ll be having – in the event that both duck and lamb are on offer I’ll order the one that comes with a fruit sauce.  Given a choice of desserts I’ll always pick the crème brulee, and in an ice cream parlor four times out of five I’ll get the mint chocolate chip ice cream. Read the rest of this entry ?

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WND – Mastering the Art of French Cooking, sort of

August 28, 2009

pomegranate

I have a confession to make.  I don’t own a copy of “Mastering the Art of French Cooking”.  Neither does my mother.  In fact, outside of a movie I’m not sure I’ve ever actually even seen a copy of “Mastering the Art of French Cooking”.  Does this make me a bad person?

My roommate and I took ourselves off to see Julie and Julia one stiflingly hot Sunday a couple of weeks ago.  I’ve read both the books that it was based on – “Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously” and Julia Child’s memoir, “My Life in France” (completed/edited by Alex Prud’homme) – and enjoyed both of them.  In the movie the story of Julie in modern New York cooking her way through “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” is an interesting framing device, but the dual romances between Julia and Paul Child and between Julia and food steal the show.  This is partly because it’s a more unusual and therefore more interesting story, and partly because it’s Meryl Streep and it’s hard to outshine Meryl Streep. Read the rest of this entry ?

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WND – Is It Spring Yet?

March 12, 2009

garlic-rosemary

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 – Oscars 2009

February 25, 2009

This 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.

kool-icles1

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WND – Making it up as I go along

February 19, 2009

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An infinite number of lists exist detailing what the absolutely essential pieces of cooking equipment are.  When it comes right down to it I think the only things you absolutely have to have are a frying pan, a pot, a cutting board and a knife.  However, for those of us who aren’t living like minimalists there are a number of other things that feel essential.

I feel the need for at least two large pots, one smaller pot, two frying pans, a pie plate, an uncounted number of small sharp knives made by Victorinox, a large chef’s knife, a zester and at least 5 bowls in a range of sizes.  Pretty much everything else in my kitchen is a nice bonus, but I could live without it*. Read the rest of this entry ?

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WND – Arroz con Pollo or the Benefits of Speaking in Tongues

November 20, 2008

debris

My roommate and I were down in Miami this past weekend, and I love Boston, I really do, but there’s something to be said for standing on the beach at midnight drinking mojitos in mid-November.  Frankly there’s something to be said for drinking mojitos at midnight no matter what the setting, but the beach was a nice touch.  While I was there it occurred to me, as it does periodically, that high school Spanish might have been more useful to my life than German (although German does have the dubious merit of making Latin seem easier by comparison).
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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.

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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 ?

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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.”

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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.

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