Posts Tagged ‘soup’
August 6, 2013
Apparently we’ve just grown the first hamburger in a lab. And by this I mean, it’s the first hamburger that is technically meat, but has nothing to do with an actual animal. PETA must be plotzing.
It was shaped and fried up (with the addition of lots of butter – which, to me, somewhat defeats the purpose of a lab grown hamburger patty – because surely part of the reason to do this is to get away from the ethical concerns of animal husbandry and while dairy cows aren’t slaughtered for hamburgers, I don’t think their living conditions are any better than the average meat cow, so unless the butter was also lab grown I don’t think you’ve achieved independence from the commercial meat industry) earlier this week in London. Read the rest of this entry ?
Posted in *Petra | Tagged Birthday, Dessert, Salad, Side Dish, soup, Starch | 4 Comments »
January 18, 2013
Is it possible to be nostalgic for something you’ve never had before? Or have a sense memory of a dish you’ve never eaten?
It will probably surprise no one to learn that I did not grow up in a Spaghetti-O’s kind of house. Ditto on microwave dinners, sugary cereal, delivery pizza, Doritos, or pop tarts. Some of these childhood staples I did sample at friend’s houses with greater or lesser degrees of enjoyment – microwave dinners never did much for me, but I always looked forward to sleeping over at the houses of friends whose mother’s stocked sugary cereals. One way or another, however, I never had Spaghetti-Os in my childhood. This lacunae in my epicurean education did not stop me from experiencing a peculiar form of constructed nostalgia for the TV version of an American childhood I never had, nor particularly ever wanted, when I came across a recipe for homemade Spaghetti-Os. As I read the recipe I could taste the tender meatballs floating in the rich tomato-y soup, and giggled in anticipation of the pleasure of slurping alphabet shaped pasta from my spoon. I still can’t speak to the pleasures of canned Spaghetti-Os, but I can say with authority that the homemade version is exceedingly tasty. Read the rest of this entry ?
Posted in *Petra | Tagged Chicken, recipe-repeats, soup | 1 Comment »
October 10, 2012
This week’s dinner is brought to you by a fit of industrious fridge clearing, and by a subtle and very precise craving. Plus, I know what’s for Dinner next week, and trust me when I say a week’s worth of abstemiousness in advance is a good idea.
The Fall fridge clearing is, I suspect, an urge born of the fact that it’s much easier to accomplish than getting out my winter clothes (plus, does not require me to admit that we’re approaching winter – never mind that we caved on Monday to Mother Nature and turned on the heat*). Also, it makes me feel virtuous and thrifty. Read the rest of this entry ?
Posted in *Petra | Tagged bread, recipe-repeats, soup | Leave a Comment »
March 28, 2012
My not particularly secret vice (?) passion (?) weakness (?) is soup. I eat soup almost every day for lunch, and if I didn’t strictly edit myself we’d eat it probably twice a week for dinner as well. As it is, I’d guess that we eat some form of soup for dinner about every 10 days. Read the rest of this entry ?
Posted in *Petra | Tagged bread, Chicken, soup | 1 Comment »
February 29, 2012
My office runs a Super Bowl pool every year, and every year I get asked multiple times if I want to participate. I get tired of finding clever non-offensive ways to say no (in my office an unexplained ‘no’ is not an acceptable answer). Most years I don’t even know who’s playing – although this year I did because it’s impossible to live in Boston and not know that the Patriots have made it to the Superbowl. This year my standard response was that I didn’t care about the Super Bowl, but if someone wanted to handicap the Oscars I’d be in like Flynn. Nobody too me up on my suggestion. Read the rest of this entry ?
Posted in *Petra | Tagged Meat and Seafood, pork, Salad, Side Dish, soup, Starch, Vegetables | 6 Comments »
January 26, 2012
In the mid 1980’s we lived in Hong Kong for 18 months during which period we somehow managed to have enough time to visit Malaysia, the Philippines, Japan, China, Macau and Singapore. On the apparently rare occasions that we were at home, we used to meet my father at noon every Saturday and go have Dim Sum. We’d meet my father at his office, and then cross through a public garden which on a Saturday was full of brides in bright red wedding dresses having their wedding pictures taken (possibly Statue Square?), to the Dim Sum restaurant at the top of the neighboring office tower. Read the rest of this entry ?
Posted in *Petra | Tagged Chicken, Meat and Seafood, pork, soup, Vegetables, Vegetarian | 1 Comment »
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 »
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 »
June 8, 2011
That high pitched noise of glee you heard around 1pm on Monday? That was me. Specifically that was me stopping by my first farmer’s market of the season and discovering barquettes of ruby red strawberries just waiting to be bought, taken home and sliced up for salad. Read the rest of this entry ?
Posted in *Petra | Tagged soup, Vegetables, Vegetarian | 4 Comments »
March 30, 2011
Old stove went out on schedule, and more surprisingly new stove was delivered and hooked up on schedule. I’m still forming my opinion of the new stove. On the plus side, it heats up and stays hot even after you put something in to cook (which is what our old oven wasn’t doing that precipitated the call to our Landlady and the acquisition of a new stove). The desserty bread thing I baked on Monday night did not burn on the bottom, which was another failing of our old oven, although the rest test will be cupcakes which always always burned in our old oven no matter how you tried to fiddle the temperature and baking time. Read the rest of this entry ?
Posted in *Petra | Tagged Dessert, soup | 1 Comment »
Monday Night Dinner 