Posts Tagged ‘Side Dish’
February 9, 2012
When I was little we lived in a sequence of places that were nowhere particularly near Virginia. This is only relevant because Virginia was where my grandmother lived, and my mother and I used to spend a month visiting with her every summer. I loved the month we spent in Richmond, among other things it has left me with a lifelong appreciation for heat and humidity which pretty much nobody else I know shares. What I didn’t love was the process of getting there, which was long and tedious. I imagine it was even longer and more tedious for my mother who had to play the responsible adult in that scenario as opposed to being the bored 7 – 9 – 12 – 14 year old whose biggest responsibility was trying to sleep on the plane, picking at the food, and not being too much of a pill about traveling for 24 hours straight. Read the rest of this entry ?
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged fruit, Side Dish, Starch | 5 Comments »
December 7, 2011
I got to the week before Thanksgiving and I had menus planned for every week from then through when I leave for Christmas (12/17) and as a consequence I kept thinking it was later in the year than it actually was and panicking about the rapid passage of time. Eventually I realized that it was still November, not the second week of December, and two things I was planning to do fell through which was on the one hand disappointing because they were brunch and a whisky tasting, and on the other hand gave me so much breathing space. Read the rest of this entry ?
Posted in *Petra | Tagged fruit, Side Dish, Starch | 2 Comments »
November 22, 2011
I was not a kid who had to suffer through many cafeteria meals during my school years. I was spoiled and my mother packed me a lunch almost every day well into high school. By and large the only times I ever bought lunch were on the rare occasions that the school cafeteria was serving something I really wanted to eat. In the year I spent at Convent of the Sacred Heart this meant the days that they did Indian Fry Bread for lunch – don’t ask me how that was nutritionally viable, but it came hot from the fryer and covered in powdered sugar and everyone wanted one – and any time they served tater tots. In the year and a half I spent at the Old Greenwich Elementary School this meant the occasional pizza on Friday (why I wanted burnt pizza is an issue to explore some other time), and any time they served tacos. Read the rest of this entry ?
Posted in *Petra, Uncategorized | Tagged Beans, Chicken, Meat and Seafood, Side Dish, Vegetables | 2 Comments »
November 18, 2011
What is your favorite word? Liminal
What is your least favorite word? Prejudice
What turns you on? Generosity of spirit
What turns you off? Pettiness
What sound or noise do you love? The sound of a cat purring
What sound or noise do you hate? The sound of my smoke detector going off every time I cook
What is your favorite curse word? Oh for f**k’s sake
What profession other than your own would you like to attempt? Professional Organizer
What profession would you not like to do? Commercial fisherman
If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates? “Yes, Shakespeare wrote the damn plays (I wish everyone would stop asking that); Stonehenge was built by ____________, I can show you a time lapse on how they did it; JFK was killed by ________ . . . . ” Read the rest of this entry ?
Posted in *Petra | Tagged Side Dish, Vegetables | 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 30, 2011
There are any number of food related bandwagons which I have not just jumped on to, but have walked in the parade, cheered on the sidelines and made large posters with sparkly puffy paint to promote (well, figuratively anyway).
I’m on board with the local food movement. I was a proponent of the slow food movement before it had a name. I’m kind of an adherent of the organic food movement – by which I mean, I’ll do it when it’s easy, convenient and not wildly more expensive than the alternative. I spend quite enough of my budget on food as it is, I don’t need to look for ways to spend more. Read the rest of this entry ?
Posted in *Petra | Tagged bread, Side Dish, soup, Starch | 4 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 »
August 24, 2011
My office and I exist at different ends of the entertainment spectrum. I go to museums for fun, they only go if dragged by an out of town elderly aunt. I go out to dinner in Cambridge (fusion cuisine, small, innovative + cocktails), they go out to dinner in Boston (classic high end and/or neighborhood dive bars). I plan excursions to Newport to tour Gilded Age mansions and have high tea, they go to football games and tailgate. Overlap only ever tends to occur at the nexus points of Harry Potter movies and HBO shows.
When people in my office asked me what I’d done this weekend the response to “I went to the annual Corn and Tomato Festival at Verrill Farm” was met with a long pause and an expression of ‘well, of course you did’. I, however, refuse to apologize for an afternoon spent sitting in the sunshine watching small adorable children being given rides on equally small adorable ponies while sampling 20 kinds of tomatoes, 10 kinds of corn and a tent’s worth of dishes made from seasonal farm produce (the chilled corn-poblano soup was particularly spectacular this year) and listening to a live blue grass band. Read the rest of this entry ?
Posted in *Petra | Tagged Side Dish, soup, Vegetables, Vegetarian | 3 Comments »
August 10, 2011
For reasons that don’t need exploring at this juncture, I’ve been staring at a lot of upscale restaurant and catering menus recently. This is an activity which is mostly completely pointless because the event that I’m perusing them for isn’t happening for another three years at which point some of these restaurants may no longer be around/as good as they are now, and other new exciting restaurants will have opened. These facts have not stopped me in the slightest.
Having now looked at more menus than I can count I’ve realized several things. One, I actually have a better reason than I’m pretentious for liking farm-to-table restaurants. Read the rest of this entry ?
Posted in *Petra | Tagged bread, Salad, Side Dish, Starch | Leave a Comment »
Monday Night Dinner 