Posts Tagged ‘Vegetables’
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 »
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 3, 2011
There are some weeks when my menu planning falls into place like the perfect game of tetris. Then there are weeks when I leave my menu plan open in the background on my computer all day long, all week and keep clicking back to it in spare moments to swap things in and out and leave blanks and email everyone I know (okay, my mother and Jes) asking them for help figuring out what’s missing. This week was a lot more like the latter than the former. At this point, I’ve made and eaten Dinner and I’m still not entirely happy with the juxtaposition of all the dishes. 90% of it was there, but the green beans felt off somehow, like they didn’t quite fit into the rest of the meal. Read the rest of this entry ?
Posted in *Petra | Tagged Chicken, fruit, Side Dish, Vegetables | 3 Comments »
June 15, 2011
I firmly believe that sandwiches are the world’s perfect food. You can eat them for any meal of the day. They can be sweet or savory. They can be hand held or served on a plate and require a knife and fork to eat. They can embody the spirit of any culture and cuisine. Plus, by definition they contain a tasty starch. There is no bad in this equation.
The British understand the appeal of sandwiches (and bacon) on such a deep emotional level that students at Leeds University got funding to research and derive a scientific formula for making the perfect bacon buttie. How much do you wish you could have been a part of that research team? Read the rest of this entry ?
Posted in *Petra, Uncategorized | Tagged Chicken, fruit, sandwiches, Side Dish, Vegetables | 7 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 »
May 24, 2011
It’s possible that my spice collection has gotten a little out of control. Between them the sweet spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, etc.) and the savory spices (cumin, thyme, paprika, and about 40 more) take up nearly an entire shelf in my pantry. It’s gotten to the point where the only spices I don’t have are the ones I don’t know about yet. And actually, as of about 3pm on Sunday afternoon that’s not even really true anymore because I now have a bag of dried fenugreek leaves and while I theoretically know of a lot of things to do with them I’m still a little unclear as to what they are exactly, or what flavor they’re imparting to a dish. Read the rest of this entry ?
Posted in *Petra, Uncategorized | Tagged Chicken, Side Dish, Vegetables | 2 Comments »
May 11, 2011
I name dropped epicurious the other day at work and was met by an extremely blank stare and had to mentally rewind the conversation and remind myself that not everyone stalks the new content on epicurious. Anyway, I moseyed on over to epicurious on Monday to see what was new and was greeted by a whole spiel on weddings – wedding showers, wedding menus, wedding registries, etc. I clicked on the bit about the wedding registry because I have friends who are getting married in a few weeks and earlier this year they asked around at Dinner for kitchen registry recommendations – what we considered essential kitchen equipment, what kitchen equipment we coveted, and useful vs. useless kitchen gadgets. Read the rest of this entry ?
Posted in *Petra | Tagged Side Dish, Vegetables | 1 Comment »
February 18, 2011
Other people have these moments too right? Those moments when you crash headlong into the wall that divides your expectations of the world from other people’s expectations of the world? And you’re baffled, because how could other people do this thing differently? I’m not talking about the little things you learn when you live with someone – like they tend to leave cupboard doors open, or will return empty bowls to the fridge – which granted are equally baffling, but you learn to live with them. I’m talking about times when you realize that not everyone’s mother considered knowing how to iron a shirt, or sew on buttons, or rewire a light socket essential life skills to be learned before departing the ancestral home. Because, how can you not know how to iron a shirt? Read the rest of this entry ?
Posted in *Petra, Uncategorized | Tagged Chicken, Side Dish, Starch, Vegetables | 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 »
Monday Night Dinner 