Posts Tagged ‘Meat and Seafood’
November 4, 2011
The boys over at The Bitten Word have helpfully indexed the 250 Thanksgiving recipes that debuted in this month’s cooking magazines. For the record, that is an insane number of new recipes for a holiday in which generally speaking nobody wants anything but what they always have – because, as we all know, everyone else’s Thanksgiving is wrong and ours is the only right one. For example, my cousin’s husband’s family doesn’t do gravy. She called to tell us this the first holiday she spent with them, and I think our collective appalled gasp could be heard across state lines. She ended up marrying him, so clearly his family’s bizarre stance on gravy wasn’t a deal breaker, but I’m pretty sure that she spent some quality time impressing on him the importance of gravy. Read the rest of this entry ?
Posted in *Petra | Tagged Chicken, Meat and Seafood, squash | 1 Comment »
October 20, 2011
Fair warning, I am about to horrify everyone of Italian descent and anyone born south of the Mason Dixon line (except my mother who doesn’t like grits and therefore doesn’t care).
Polenta and grits are the same thing.
I know, I know, I’ve just committed some kind of heresy, but that doesn’t make me wrong. Don’t believe me? Let’s analyze this. Read the rest of this entry ?
Posted in *Petra | Tagged Meat and Seafood, pork, Side Dish, Starch, Vegetables | 4 Comments »
October 5, 2011
Some books should come with warning labels. I don’t mean the kind of warnings that land books on the Banned Books list. I mean warnings like ‘Do not read this book unless you have time to make cinnamon rolls this weekend’. Or, ‘Map the route to your nearest Moroccan restaurant before starting this book.’
I’m not talking about the obvious books either. Anyone who didn’t know that “Like Water for Chocolate” was going to leave them hungry was clearly not paying attention to the cover copy. I’m talking about books like the one I just finished. Read the rest of this entry ?
Posted in *Petra | Tagged Chicken, Meat and Seafood, Side Dish, Starch, Vegetarian | 5 Comments »
September 21, 2011
Last week I was critical and complaining about trends in food TV. Friday afternoon devolved in a series of small annoyances which cumulatively were enough to make me wish I kept a bottle of scotch in my desk drawer the way that everyone in the 1950’s seems to have (or so television would suggest). I spent the first half of this week playing phone tag with a restaurant manager so that I could complain about mediocre service we’d had on Sunday afternoon. In the light of all that negativity, I feel the need to redress the balance with a burst of positive thoughts. One of the podcasts I listen to ends every show with a segment called “What’s Making You Happy This Week”, so in that spirit here’s a list of what’s making me happy this week. Read the rest of this entry ?
Posted in *Petra | Tagged Birthday, Dessert, Meat and Seafood, Side Dish, Starch | 1 Comment »
June 1, 2011
You know what I loathe? Recipes that call for a ¼ cup of something that only comes in a 16 oz can, or recipes that call for 1 ¼ lb of something that is usually sold in 1 lb increments. Sometimes I just omit the ingredient, or substitute it, or make just under what the recipe calls for to make up for the ¼ lb of whatever it is that I’m missing. A lot of the time I’ll just skip over the recipe and find something else to make. However, sometimes, like tonight, the ¼ cup of coconut milk is important and the recipe is actually worth opening the can and dealing with the remaining coconut milk. This is when you discover that your freezer is your friend. Read the rest of this entry ?
Posted in *Petra | Tagged Chicken, Meat and Seafood | 4 Comments »
March 17, 2011
My parents have become migratory mammals. In the summer they fly (well, actually they take a car ferry, but semantics) north to the Provence, and in the winter they journey south to the sunny climes of Malta, from whence they like to taunt me with emails about how they’re sitting outside on the quai having coffee in the 70 degree sunshine, and by the way how am I enjoying that snow in Boston. Read the rest of this entry ?
Posted in *Petra, Uncategorized | Tagged Chicken, Meat and Seafood | 3 Comments »
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 ?
Posted in *Petra | Tagged Beef, Meat and Seafood, Starch, Vegetables | 3 Comments »
January 13, 2011
The first decade of the 21st century is now officially over (anyone want to take bets on how long it is before VH1 does a Best of the Aughts series?). I feel like this should be more momentous than it actually seems to be, mind you I thought this about Y2K too and that passed by with more of a whimper than a bang. I thought about doing a roundup of how my eating habits have changed in the last decade, but honestly I can barely remember what I had for dinner last Friday much less what I was and wasn’t eating ten years ago. However, I think I can remember back as far as January 2010, so here are the things I discovered, things I’m cautiously optimistic about, and things which I tried and failed to develop an appreciation for in 2010. Read the rest of this entry ?
Posted in *Petra, Uncategorized | Tagged Meat and Seafood, pork, soup | 2 Comments »
November 18, 2010
Generally speaking I can tell how my week is going by how early in the week I make my menu plan, and therefore my grocery shopping list. The earlier in the week the list gets made, the worse the week is. Last week I didn’t get around to making my grocery shopping list until Friday evening because that was the first time I had time to breathe. This week I had my grocery list done by Monday afternoon, but that owes more to the fact that next week is Thanksgiving and I’ve had that menu plan down since early October than it does to the quality of my week thus far. This particular grocery shopping list is typed, itemized, has been double checked and includes a timetable for Thanksgiving. It’s not the most fussy list I’ve ever made, but it’s possibly in the running for the top 10. Read the rest of this entry ?
Posted in *Petra | Tagged Meat and Seafood, Side Dish, Starch | 5 Comments »
Monday Night Dinner 