Let’s take a moment to discuss space or, rather, my kitchen’s distinct lack of it. My kitchen has one 36-ish inch long section of counter and one 12 inch long section. That’s it. There’s space for one cutting board next to a bowl with maybe space for some (but never all) of your ingredients. There’s space for two people to be actively cooking… but not if you also want to open the fridge. Read the rest of this entry ?
Posts Tagged ‘Vegetables’
MND: Orange October and November
November 16, 2010Pardon that brief interruption in posting. I don’t know if you heard, but the San Francisco Giants won the World Series for the first time in 56 years. And, just for future reference, you can prep for a dinner, attend crazy street celebrations and still finish eating at a semi-reasonable hour.
WND/TND – I see Queen Mab hath been with you
October 28, 2010
We had an almost full house for Dinner this week – only missing one regular member of Dinner who was off chanting to the Lord (otherwise known as rehearsing for a performance of Hildegarde von Bingen’s Ordo Virtutum). I feel as though I have welcomed all my wayward ducklings home, which is such a horrifyingly Lisa Geddes kind of thought that I need to excuse myself for a moment to go scrub my brain with bleach and read something scandalous to try and eradicate any evidence of even the transient passage of such a thought through my mind. All this being true however, it was nice to have a full table again. Clearly we should have moved Dinner months ago. Read the rest of this entry ?
MND: the West Coast Redux
October 19, 2010
Apparently, it only took me three years to get my act together and make this dinner (see the first comment on the linked post). It was worth it. Our brief summer is now fading into memory and while that usually means that it’s time for chili… For the next generation of MND, I decided to start off with my idea of comfort food. Thus the most traditional southern dinner imaginable. Read the rest of this entry ?
WND – Dinner with a side of Schadenfreude
April 29, 2010
I’m having a moment of schadenfreude at the recent backlash I’ve seen at the organic foods/eco movement. Or well, not precisely schadenfreude, but the warm glow that comes with seeing someone get a little of the comeuppance you’ve thought they’ve deserved for several years. Read the rest of this entry ?
WND – And the moral of the story is . . . .
March 18, 2010
I’m not the kind of cook who invents recipes. If I want a specific flavor combination I tend to go in search of a recipe that will provide that for me. I edit recipes on the fly sometimes – more cinnamon, less stock, a little heavier on the paprika – but I don’t do a lot of wholesale inventing. Usually if I think a recipe needs that much help I’ll go find a recipe that I think will actually work as written. However, this week I was well into my recipe before I realized how unworkable it was, and what I ended up making bears so little relationship to the recipe I started with I might as well have started from scratch. Read the rest of this entry ?
WND – Jedi Mind Trick
March 4, 2010
I firmly believe that there should be a vegetable on the table at all meals. I don’t think it count unless it’s a green vegetable – or tomatoes, because tomatoes are totally a vegetable in my book. But, when it comes to eating them I tend to smother them with something else that’s on the plate to mask the taste – the sauce that came with the meat, or a forkful of mashed potatoes. I know I’m supposed to like my vegetables, and I’ve never served a meal that didn’t include a green vegetable (unless I’m cooking on a weekend and have run out of salad, in which case it’s possible that I’ll count tomato sauce as a vegetable). I just wish I liked them more, but honestly just not so much. Read the rest of this entry ?
WND – Mastering the Art of French Cooking, sort of
August 28, 2009
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 ?
WND – Of Shoes and Ships and Ceiling Wax . . .
June 11, 2009
I was idly flipping channels a couple of Sundays ago and ran across Sandra Lee’s new show on the Food Network. It’s called “Sandra’s Money Saving Meals”, and I paused to watch it. It’s indicative of the current financial environment that this kind of show has a place on the Food Network, and given her upbringing Sandra Lee brings a certain amount of authority to the show that I suspect other Food Network Chefs would lack, so I was curious about what it was like.
In the end I was torn between deeply amused and somewhat disturbed by the show. On the one hand, it’s entertaining because Sandra Lee has branded herself on the Food Network with the prescription of 70% store bought/30% homemade. But of course that costs money, so on the budget show she cooks everything from scratch. There isn’t a single instance of store bought sauces or mixes, because it is cheaper to use real ingredients (it also tastes better, but that’s a separate issue). On the other hand, I was concerned by the sheer lack of vegetables being presented. In the five shows, and 33 recipes that have aired so far only three recipes have involved vegetables (five if you decide to count spaghetti sauce as a vegetable, which granted I do all the time but acknowledge isn’t really a vegetable). Read the rest of this entry ?
WND – The Day After St. Patrick’s Day Dinner
March 19, 2009
Oscar Wilde said, “Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.” As with many things Oscar Wilde, this is both witty and true. In my next life I aspire to being a professional aphorist.
Nothing will teach you to do, or not do, something quite as effectively as doing it and realizing half way through exactly how bad an idea it was. That being said, there are a lot of stupid things I’ve done in the kitchen that I’d have been willing to take on faith as bad ideas rather than having to experience them for myself. Out of idle curiosity I polled Dinner to find out what things they wish someone had told them not to do before they found out the hard way. For a group of people with (collectively) an alarming amount of education, we did all seem to be a little short on common sense. Mind you, this does add further proof to my theory that there is an inverse relationship between the quantity of higher education you have achieved and the amount of common sense you demonstrate.
Monday Night Dinner 