February 2012
12 posts
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Cooking Dinner: Change the Way You Read Recipes
A few years ago I started noticing a bunch of cooking books and articles exhorting me to stop cooking from recipes. It was no longer enough to cook, you had to cook freely! with improvisation! and not be one of those awfully uncool and un-free people who cook with recipes all the time.
Right, okay. This ended up not helping me cook without recipes, but instead making me feel uncool and repressed...
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Pistachio, Chocolate, and Apricot Cookie Hearts
I’ve typed and deleted and retyped the first line of this post maybe ten times. But no, I am going to own this. These are the best cookies I’ve ever made.
They’re based on this smitten kitchen slice-and-bake cookie recipe, which I made a few months ago, although in different flavors. In retrospect, I wish I had been more careful in writing down the ingredient amounts.
The...
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Ginger Carrots and Imaginary Reader
Somehow over the years that I’ve been doing this tumblr, I have developed an Imaginary Reader to whom I often find myself writing. Imaginary Reader is young person out there in the world, new to cooking, and looks to me for sage advice and recipes and reminiscences upon my youth.*
(It’s okay if you are an actual reader and don’t match my Imaginary Reader. I embrace you.)
That...
chattanoogafoodie asked: What's your favorite type of food?
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Horoscopes
From today’s horoscope:
Someone you care about becomes feisty. Let that person be.
Subject line of email that I received this morning:
I’m still mad that Bon Appetit was promoting going gluten-free in last month’s issue.
Which, obviously, let to a number of emails on the subject of things that irritate us in Bon Appetit, including, but not limited to: Maldon sea salt, the...
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Hot Pepper Jelly
At some point in my canning career, I might have thought of myself as person who preserves the bounty of locally grown foods at the height of their freshness while wearing attractive yet low-key jewelry and a simple apron. Faced with a cabinet of marmalade, dilly beans, cherry bourbon, and now hot pepper jelly*, however, it’s clear that my canning is basically about drinking and snack...
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Love Stinks: Valentine's Day Recommendations
Last year, our group of Portland food bloggers made restaurant recommendations for a Valentine’s Dinner first date in Portland (which, oh my Lord, do NOT go on a first date on Valentine’s Day). I told you all to cook your own damn romantic dinner, more or less. This year, the assignment is dinner advice for the single among us.*
Eating Out
Even though I have spent nearly a third of...
January 2012
30 posts
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Shrimp with Fennel, Dill, and Feta
There are two periods in my life that I think of as critical to my learning to cook. The first was when I was studying abroad in London. I think I have told you about this before, and if not, I’m sure you can just wait a week and I’ll tell you again as if it’s brand-new information.*
The second period in my learning-to-cook-dinner process came when I moved with Dave to Montreal...
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Bon Appetit Poetry: Skillet Hanging
It seems like all of us have a story about a late-night Waffle House run or how we ended up with a vintage cast-iron skillet hanging from our kitchen Peg-Board.
February 2012, p. 10
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Bon Appetit Poetry: Unfortunate Cruise Ship...
Cruise cuisine has come a long way from faux-fancy buffets, making setting sail more appetizing than ever for aspiring cooks and adventurous gourmands.*
February 2012, p. 58
* Every single part of me wishes Bon Appetit had used the word “gourmets” instead of “gourmands” here.
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let's give paula deen a year, y'all →
I’m not a big Paula Deen fan (mostly because my experience with Paula Deen is limited to having listened to an NPR piece maybe three years ago while driving in the car, which does not an informed person make), but CitizenKerry has a really thoughtful piece about Deen’s diabetes announcement that I think is worth reading.
Also, because of Stacey McGill, every time I’m...
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“Cured salted pork crafted as a nasal tampon and packed within the nasal vaults...”
– You know, when I saw the headline, “Cured Salt Pork as Nosebleed Remedy” on America’s Test Kitchen Daily Sifter, I thought it was an article that could be both interesting and personally useful (Dave gets nosebleeds! Maybe the solution is eating more bacon!).
I don’t think I...
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Bon Appetit Poetry: Fried Chicken
I.
No fried chicken should suffer the indignity of a bulky overcoat with padded shoulders.
II.
The crust is where the men and the boys separate.
p. 86 - 87, February 2012
I Give In
The amount of time I have spent in the past three or four days wishing I had cookies and looking for things that would approximate cookies in my house is ridiculous.* Tonight, I make cookies.
* Cream cheese and nutella on a cracker isn’t very balanced, flavor-wise, but cream cheese and a little tiny bit of nutella straight up is pretty good. Two chocolate chips and a bite of a dried apricot...
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I Would Have Included a Photo but I Have Aesthetic...
There are many adorable local shops in Portland. RSVP Discount Beverage is not adorable. On the adorable scale, it lives just south of Route 1 in Saugus and a strip mall parking lot.
Inside, however, they have a really good selection of products (including local beers and hard ciders) and a completely wonderful and adorable saleswoman who has taken my ridiculous questions and given thoughtful...
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A Brief Exploration of Vinegars
Let us talk now about vinegars.
Balsamic vinegar is great.
However, I would like to posit that sherry vinegar might be EVEN MORE GREAT. That’s right. I made my basic maple syrup-mustard dressing with sherry vinegar instead of balsamic vinegar and it was fantastic. Whereas balsamic vinegar can easily veer into too sweet, sherry vinegar balanced the strong flavors better. It’s also...
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YOU ARE ALL NATIVE ENGLISH SPEAKERS
I know it has been said before, but I wish I could sit down with everyone involved in The Bachelor and have a short grammar conversation.
I will even let subject and verb agreement go if we could nail down the appropriate uses of the personal pronouns me and I. I’m not going to get into explaining the difference between subjective and objective pronouns, but instead just offer a trick: if...
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Clementine Cake
Who doesn’t need a good daytime cake? Especially one with eggs and clementines. That’s basically breakfast.
This recipe is weird, and I forgot its propensity for being undercooked when I made it. I’m not saying it was raw. It was just…rare? Maybe medium rare? I put it back in the oven the next day (is that terrible?) and it’s now medium.
It’s also really...
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Bon Appetit Poetry: Muddlers
Part of a series in which I translate text from recent issues of Bon Appetit into small, self-important poems.
While the end of a thin rolling pin or the bowl end of a wooden spoon will get the job done, a handmade wooden muddler separates the players from the pretenders.
(October 2011)
“So…you can stand down on the appliance guy.”
– Our dishwasher is maybe broken, but the appliance repair guy that was going to come by today just told Dave that they don’t service Bosch machines.
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Whispers of the Frost Cocktail
I made this drink for an Obscure Holiday Cocktails gathering, and it was absolutely not the disaster I was afraid it might be. It was, in fact, perfectly appropriate: it is obscure, it has a name that is reminiscent of winter and holidays, it includes all the alcohol. But I would argue that it doesn’t need to be reserved just for Christmas-time.
I remember when I first moved to Montreal...
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How's your stovetop? Gross?
Be honest with me here, when you wipe down your stove top (please tell me you wipe down your stove top), do you ever pick up the burner grates and wipe carefully under them? I have moved into too many apartments where that appeared to never have happened.
I leave my clothes on the floor more often than I’d like to admit, and have created piles of old magazines that would threaten small...
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Drinks from My Past: Snakebite Black
I was browsing the recipe section on the Cassis Monna & Filles website (the Quebec creme de cassis company) when I came across a drink called “Snakebite Black.”
I had forgotten about Snakebite Black, but I drank a fair number of them when I was in London in college. I remember enjoying it, but I also remember enjoying vanilla vodka. I am afraid to try it again.
Here’s...
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emer asked: Heyyy Tumblr food friend! I have a birthday coming up, and I want to celebrate by going out to dinner in Portland. I'm not looking to break my (or anyone's) bank, but I would like good food in a place that won't give us funny looks if we're not all dressed the right way, and some place that can manage at least 8 people without seeming overwhelmed... Suggestions?
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Spinach and Cheese Soufflé
It was nearly two years ago that I told you that you should make soufflés (or not, I don’t know your life) and I said they were easy-ish. They are, as compared to how hard conventional wisdom says they are. But they’re not like, pasta with tuna and parsley and lemons and capers easy (in that you cook pasta and then throw a bunch of shit on top).
I’ve complained before about...
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10 Cooking and Food Non-Resolutions
Happy New Year, everyone!
2011 was kind of a rocky year, for me and for a bunch of you. It certainly wasn’t all bad, but the bad parts were pretty bad. We did survive it, though, and the start of 2012 and the new house have me feeling hopeful.
Resolutions never feel particularly genuine to me, but I do like to think about things I’d like to do or am excited about in the coming...
December 2011
15 posts
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Coping With Eating Normal Amounts of Sugar Again
There was a day last week in which I ate one butter cookie approximately every twenty minutes. All day. That kind of sugar consumption is simply not sustainable. Even if I could afford it, there are not enough Pilates classes in the world to excavate a waist out of that diet.
I enjoyed it while it lasted, but it is time to cut back to a normal human number of cookies. Or peppermint bark. Or...
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OH MY GOD YOU GUYS.
I have so much to tell you.
I mean, I don’t, exactly, except that in the last ten days or so, we packed all our belongings, moved, hired a painter who then painted my office, found an arborist and had them come to the house to give advice on trees to remove in the yard, had an electrician come in to fix a bunch of reverse polarity outlets, had Christmas, found out from the neighbors that...
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On Blogging, and Macarons at Pai Men Miyake
Writing a blog can be weird. There are so many things, food-related, that happen in a day, and only some of them easily translate into blog posts. Even by my standards, which are relatively low.* Things that are weird, or FANTASTIC, or TERRIBLE translate well to blog posts. But most of my life is not actually hugely weird, or FANTASTIC, or TERRIBLE. There’s a lot that’s in this middle...
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Things to Keep in Mind When Purchasing Cookbooks →
Hi guys. I forgot the most important thing in my whole review of the Bitters book, which is to buy it from a local bookstore (not sure why? Check out that link above). I have worked in bookstores, and I love bookstores, and I care deeply about having them around. And I also care deeply about having stores that pay taxes around. So.
I called Longfellow Books in Monument Square and they have some...