The Lead Paint Cookbook

Links I Liked, 1-15 to 1-21/12

2012-01-22T20:56:00.001-05:00

Ugliest. Shoes. Ever. (The Gloss)

Savory cornmeal and chive waffles with eggs and salsa (Joy the Baker)

Savory apple samosas (Honest Cooking)

This week in abominable novelty vodkas: NutLiquor. (Food Junk)

Jezebel on how to defeat winter itch. My skin is making me crazy right about now, mostly my legs.

Mental Floss answers the question that has literally been bothering me since elementary school: when did Americans lose their British accent?

Momofuku is now selling mix versions of their popular baked goods. I like the idea of trying some of them from scratch, though. I've made the compost cookies and they're not really difficult. The cereal milk sounds like a lot of fun to make. (Epicurious)

Why are Manic Pixie Dream Girls getting dumber? Because they totally are. (The Gloss).

How to salvage moldy cheese. (Consumerist)

The Kitchn has a guide to cleaning your kitchen in only 20 minutes a day for 30 days. Which seems unnecessarily complicated. I like to clean as I cook and do the big stuff every other week or so or as needed.

Thank you, America's Test Kitchen, for making me TOTALLY WANT TO TRY TO MAKE A WEDDING CAKE.

Fresh Air did an interview this week with Nicholas Money, who studies fungus. He shared some interesting facts about mushrooms. (NPR)

Quick Cookbook Reviews

2012-01-19T17:57:00.000-05:00

Another trip to the library, another batch of books to review!

1. Martha's Entertaining: A Year of Celebrations

Oof, this book is gigantic (coffee table variety, although really why would you want an oversized issue of Martha Stewart Living on your coffee table?) and pretty much includes content pieced together from old issues of Martha Stewart Living. If you're planning a party, shower, or other event you'd be just as well off referring to regular cookbooks and the web. Plus it's super-expensive. Pass unless you are a pure Martha devotee. I'm sure you are out there, somewhere.

2. Rotis: Roasts for Every Day of the Week

I picked this up in a bookstore in Troy, NY this fall and paged through it -- roasting is a cooking method I have yet to master, and since the weather had just cooled, I was starting to get in the mood for heartier fare. I just got around to borrowing it from the library. For a single-subject cookbook, this one is actually very nice. It's well-designed, includes separate chapters (in a day-by-day format) on different types of meat: beef, chicken, seafood, even game -- and has excellent step-by-step instructions on roasting methodology, like how to properly tie a chicken and how to determine how well-done your beef is. I would actually buy this one. Wishlisted.

3. Make the Bread, Buy the Butter: What You Should and Shouldn't Cook From Scratch

"DIY cooking" books are pretty popular these days -- and since that phrase is pretty redundant, what I mean is, books that are about making absolutely everything and anything from scratch. You know: jams, breads, smoked meats, etc. This is another one of those, but its approach is pretty sensible. It focuses on whether it is better to make various staples (and some extravagences too) at home or buy them -- weighing things like ingredient cost, time expenditure, and skill level needed.

It actually is a very well-rounded book, with pros and cons of DIY listed for each item, as well as spin-off recipes that take things up a notch. Although the conclusion of the book is that you can make almost everything at home, there is some practical advice and simple recipes and instruction. I learned from this one! Hot dog buns are actually better and cheaper when you make them at home. Butter is much cheaper when you just buy it at the store instead of making it from cream at home. I did that once by accident. Anyway, I liked that it was straight-forward about the economics of time and, well, money, but what I liked more is that it did not discourage the reader from trying out DIY. I'd also buy this one, so it's on my wishlist.

4. I Love Meatballs!

I mean, really, how can you pass up a little cookbook with that title? It's just so emphatic! Yes! I love meatballs! I guess meatballs are positioning themselves to become trendy, and this book gives you a zillion recipes for different varieties, most which are actually very simple to make. I actually put a hold on this one before the holidays because I figured I could stand to do some kind of meatball-y appetizer for entertaining. It didn't come in time for the holiday, so instead I stuck to cocktail wieners, which were received just as well, because yay meat on toothpicks! This book is kitschy, but I'm really trying to limit my cookbook purchases to ones I'd actually use, so I'm passing. I would recommend borrowing this one if you're interested in, well, learning more about meatballs, but aren't willing to commit. Unless you REALLY LOVE MEATBALLS. Then you should probably buy this book post haste.

Dumb Comments on Paula Deen Recipes

2012-01-17T21:05:00.001-05:00

I am watching, with some interest, the Paula-Deen-Has-Diabetes story unfold. Mostly because, dude, she was diagnosed four years ago and has only gone public now that she's got a drug endorsement deal. The whole thing reeks of a lot of things that are wrong with America these days.

The Atlantic rattled off a list of Paula Deen recipes that Paula Deen can no longer enjoy as a diabetic, which inspired me to read some of her recipes on my lunch break today. Nothing will kill the appetite faster than thinking about a lot of grease and copious amounts of sugar, let me tell you. It's not really Deen's recipes that are most horrifying or hilarious, though, it's the Food Network reader comments. I'm sure Food Network commentors are the same no matter which show's recipes they are reviewing, but here is a selection of some of my favorite Paula Deen comments:

Épater la bourgeisoisie: "GOOD FOOD IS NOT TRASHY FOOD! SO STOP BEING SO BOURGEISOIS!" - Paula's Fried Butter Balls.

Too bad devine is not really a word unless you are removing some vines, I guess, something that you will probably never do in preparing or eating nastay donut bread pudding: "The rum sauce made it really devine." Krispy Kreme Bread Pudding.

Take it from the Italians: "I was raised in an Italian home and this is an absolute abomination!" -- Deep-Fried Lasagna

Most of the other commentors said the sugar was unnecessary since ice cream is already full of sugar. WHAT PLANET ARE YOU FROM: "I made this vanilla milkshake, but used powdered sugar instead of granulated sugar and it came out AMAZING!" -- Vanilla Milkshake

Yep: "This looks like turd on a stick. So when I say that sh** looks awful I really mean it." -- Deep-Fried Stuffing on a Stick

Maybe someday you can have Type II Diabetes too, kid. Just keep eating gross things!: "I am only 11 and I thank you because i need to start practicing if i want to become like you!" -- The Lady's Brunch Burger

Today in #firstworldproblems: this person is complaining about the clean-up associated with making homemade whipped cream. PUT THE MIXER BOWL IN THE DISHWASHER, and ... scene. you're done, no need to feel jealous of a celebrity chef for having a clean-up crew: "ok, I whipped up the cream cheese and powdered sugar. I had to scrap out my kitchenaid bowl, wash it, cool it ant then whip the cream. I am so tired of "chefs" who put out recipes that pretend that we all have someone to clean up after us. Paula, make your recipes in the real world. I don't want to wash several bowls, but you have people that do that for you, right? I would love to flit out of the kitchen after I cook, like you. However, I am a real cook and have to clean up after myself. This recipe can be modified to reduce the cleanup with no loss of flavor. " -- Fruit Tray with Fruit Dip

Yep, that fruit is super-healthy stuffed in a cream cheese layer between two pieces of batter-dipped white bread: "Great way to get a picky eater to eat her fruit!!!" -- Strawberry-Cream Cheese Stuffed French Toast

Links I Liked, 1-08 to 1-14-12

2012-01-15T16:39:00.002-05:00

This week, I scheduled a day off from work for March 23, which is the day Hunger Games debuts in theaters. Yep, I'm one of those. Eagerly awaiting the launch of CapitolCouture.pn. Password is #lookyourbest (include the hashtag).

I may feel real bad about my living situation right now, having discovered on Friday night that the house on the other side of me has now been stripped of copper, but at least I'm not these shoes, amirite? (The Gloss)

Lentil burgers with tzatziki (Honest Cooking)

Check out my friend Arabella's latest collection of portraits, Ephemeral Antidotes. I love the biographies she creates for each subject. Vita and Mary are my favorites.

Oh boy there's a cookbook conference coming up in February in New York! I wonder how I would get along with other cookbook collectors.

What to do if you barf at Per Se (The Awl)

What does it say about me that I think cookies & cream bark sounds totally delicious? Probably it says that I've been dieting and am craving empty calories! (CRAFT)

These sparkly unicorn poop cookies are intriguing for a whole lotta other reasons. (CRAFT)

What a surprise! Paula Deen has diabetes! Even more surprising: she's already got a deal to do ads for diabetes meds! Welcome to America! (Bon Appetit)

John Lennon was a crazy cat lady! Just like me! (Mental Floss)

Northwest Edible Life has a handy flowchart to help you determine whether to try a DIY project yourself, or hire a pro. I'm fairly certain that almost always the path will lead to "hire someone" for me. I'm that inept.

Did anyone read A.G. Sulzberger's fairly condescending article in the New York Times this week? His premise is that it sucks to be a vegetarian in the midwest (in his case, Kansas City). He argued his premise based on his visits to barbecue restaurants and steak joints. Well, duh, those are not vegetarian friendly places on principle. There's been some pushback on his article, including this pretty level response from The Atlantic. While I acknowledge that there is probably some difference in the quality of vegetarian life between a small city in the midwest and a large east coast city, the tone of Sulzberger's article was so typical New York Times "flyover country" coverage I had a hard time feeling much sympathy for him at all. Especially when commentors on this article and KC-based food bloggers alike refute a lot of his points. No, you don't have to apologize for serving steak at a steakhouse!

January 2012 Birchbox Haul

2012-01-12T21:16:00.001-05:00

Here is my January Birchbox.

This month's theme is "clarity," as in New Year's resolutions, blah blah blah. My box contained:

Archipelago Pomegranate Body Soap
Clark's Botanicals Smoothing Marine Cream
Juicy Couture perfume
stila Smudge Stick Waterproof Eye Liner in Blue Ribbon
Larabar Mini Bar - Carrot Cake flavor

and a bonus Birchbox refrigerator magnet

The soap is very strong-smelling and it's a hotel-sized bar. I actually really don't like using scented soaps or body washes in the shower, but it'll travel well.

The Clark's cream is a moisturizer. I am always on the lookout for a good moisturizer but this one retails at $115 a jar full-size. So while it might be fabulous, I'm not going to buy it. Also I don't care for the way it smells.

I hate the Juicy Couture perfume. HATE. It smells exactly the way you'd think something made by Juicy would smell. Tacky.

The jury is out on the eyeliner. I was excited to get this product (they did either Zoya nail polishes from the Feel collection or the eyeliner in boxes this month) but eyeliner is really pushing my makeup comfort zone. I've only just started wearing it regularly. Dark blue is...different and I'm not sure how it'll work with my coloring.

The Larabar is a Larabar, a good quick snack.

To sign up for Birchbox, go here! (Note: if you sign up via that link, I get referral points. Full disclosure and all).

Links I Liked 1-01 to 1-07-12

2012-01-09T12:06:00.000-05:00

Crockpot Parmesan garlic chicken with orzo (How Sweet it Is).

Spinach feta blood orange salad (Joy the Baker).

Slow cooker Thai chicken noodle soup (CRAFT).

Lots of nice craft ideas from Kelly of Let's Die Friends guesting on everyone's favorite blog, Little Big. I love the fake flowers. They would be nice for a wedding reception.

Design Blahg links to some photography tips for non-photographers, which is actually a very nice read for someone like me who has shit lighting in her kitchen and only really takes pictures with an iPhone.

Pepsi got sued by a guy who claimed he found a dead mouse in a can of Mountain Dew, so Pepsi got all defensive and was like "AW SHIT no way you found a dead mouse in that can of Mountain Dew because Mountain Dew turns mice to jelly" and then proved it. So I guess points to Pepsi? I don't know how to feel really. (Consumerist)

Imagine Barbie as a hoarder. (The Hairpin)

The headline says it all: The Original Keyboard Cat Will Play Its Way Into Your Nightmares. (Jezebel)

Soup, Stews and Copper Thieves

2012-01-08T18:18:00.003-05:00

I finally broke my new Dutch oven in the other night with a 30 minute bean soup from Serious Eats. The night I decided to make soup was a gym night, and I was speeding toward the rec center when a friend texted me to say she'd driven down my street and the vacant house next to mine (there are two, but this is the one that is truly vacant and abandoned, not bank-owned and on the market) had cop cars out front and the front door wide open. Oh great, I thought, and I changed course to speed home.

Turns out the house had been hit by copper thieves -- there has been a rash of thefts in the neighborhood over the past few weeks. The thieves typically hit vacant houses or houses on the market so the cop I talked to said they were checking all the for-sale or known vacants on the block just to be sure. Since this one is just abandoned the thieves had to have been watching it since there are no clear signs no one lives there -- it's not boarded up or anything. It went through foreclosure a few years ago but then the bank dropped the process. It's still in the owner's name on the auditor's website, but she skipped out two years ago in the dark of night, leaving a literal pile of rotting garbage in the backyard for someone else to deal with.

That is what home ownership has ended up feeling like to me: a pile of garbage left behind for someone else (me!) to deal with.

All of this comes on the heels of finding out that the ex I bought the house with just got married to, and is expecting a baby with, the woman he dumped me for. My feelings toward owning a home, and the one I own in particular, swing wide and dip high and low, but I feel just about as angry and frustrated with the whole situation as I ever have. I feel trapped.

Anyway, the soup. Having a recipe to focus on was actually very calming and the soup turned out to be both easy to prepare and delicious to eat. I substituted Swiss chard for the kale in the recipe. I ate the leftovers for lunch for the rest of the week.

Tonight I'm making this Rustic Winter Stew. I'm thinking about adding carrots in for round 2 of cooking but haven't decided yet.

Resolutions!

2012-01-01T23:23:00.001-05:00

I know I said I don't believe in resolutions, and I really don't, but besides the obvious getting-my-finances-in-order and getting-my-ass-back-in-shape goals that are always there, lingering, here are some things I have planned for 2012.

1. Learn my cuts of meat. A stew I want to make calls for pork shoulder. I had no idea what that was exactly. So I just spent two hours reading about cuts of meat. Pork is on decent sale right now because all the Eastern Europeans eat their pork & sauerkraut on New Year's. In my family it was always corned beef and cabbage.

2. Organize books and CDs, and digitize the music. It looks like Hoarders up in here.

3. Entertain more. I'm good at it, and while I find it stressful on a number of levels, I enjoy it. I'm already plotting a Derby party. Derby falls on May 5 this year so we might also have to get some sombrero action going on.

4. Eat more fruits and veggies. I would be a bigger fan of salad for lunch everyday if I actually liked lettuce. I think that is a big problem for me.

5. Try out new recipes and enjoy cooking at home more. Well duh, this is a constant process.

6. Play my DRUM KIT:

2011 in Review

2011-12-31T11:00:00.000-05:00

1. What did you do in 2011 that you’d never done before?
I got headhunted and changed jobs. I have changed jobs before, but I was at my last employer for 10 years and this was my first lateral move anywhere. So far, it seems to have been a good decision.

I saw Patti Smith perform live for free. Umph.

I made bagels. Remember that time I made the bagels?

2. Did you keep your New Year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

The My 25 was my only real resolution and as I mentioned in my revisionist blog post the other day, I'm going to pretend it was not a goal for just 2011.

I'm bad at resolutions. They don't mean much on New Year's, really. You either resolve to make a change or you don't and it doesn't really matter what time of year it is.

That said, I want to keep at it with my running, play around with investments a bit more, renovate either my kitchen or bathroom, get a new roof, and entertain more at home. I already have mental plans for a Derby party in May.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

One of my cousins welcomed her third child in October.

4. Did anyone close to you die?

No, although a couple of friends lost parents. Which is not easy.

5. What countries (or new places) did you visit?

I didn't get out of the country this year, although I need to remember to renew my passport soon because there is talk of a trip to Quebec with Hen's family sometime this coming summer. I visited Philadelphia, upstate New York (Saratoga is lovely) and Lake Geneva, Wisconsin this year. And spent some time in Chicago, too, although that is not really much of a new place anymore.

6. What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011?

Clarity, ample quiet time, and a real vision for backyard landscaping.

7. What date from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

September 6 was the day I started my new gig, so that'll always stand out.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

The new job, and finding an interview suit off the rack that worked. Do you know I'd never bought a suit before? Welcome to adulthood, Cookbook.

Getting the word out about the Cleveland Review.

Not severely injuring myself in any way. BONUS POINTS.

Taking care of a few household projects that needed to be taken care of and not panicking about them!

Investing some money.

9. What was your biggest failure?

I think I did a pretty poor job of handling a few things related to my dad's estate this year. It's not that I've flushed money down the drain -- I've been very careful about that -- I just think I could have done a better job of handling some things that have gone down.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

No! See above. No broken body parts for me! I did have a burst blood vessel in one of my eyes for a couple of weeks at one point but that's it. And of course this holiday season has brought me two colds, but that has been the extent of my health issues this year.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

I bought boring things this year. I love my new furnace, it's totally energy efficient compared to the old mid-70s Sears model that came with the house (which operated at 70% efficiency, yikes). I got my first gas bill with the new furnace running almost at full capacity and it's half what it was last year at this time. HALF. Gonna hug that furnace.

On a more shallow level, I found boots that fit my giant calves, so that was a fun extravagance.

And just for fun, I bought a felted faux fox shrug:

I haven't found occasion to wear it yet. Maybe for New Year's. I kind of want to wear it to work but I don't quite want to be that weird girl who wears the fake fox around the office. Yet.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?

I can't think of any one person in particular because I know a lot of pretty decent people, so probably yours did in some way if you are reading this and know me in real life, which you probably do.

I mean, I guess I could say Hen because he really has turned out to be a good boyfriend but that's mushy and no one wants to hear about it.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

Not that I was wrapped up in the scandal or anything, but the Anthroholic affair left me with a sour taste. People, it's just a store.

There were a couple of stinkers on a personal level, too, but then again there are always.

14. Where did most of your money go?

House stuff, again and always for the rest of my life.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

Cookie Party. And a number of the weddings I attended this year. I like pulling together shower gifts.

16. What song will always remind you of 2011?

Wild Flag's "Romance:"

Or "Crossed Wires" by Superchunk.

I hate to say it but Das Racist gets a nod too. Guilty pleasure of the year, except I'm pretty sure this song is not from 2011. Well, neither is the Superchunk song.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:

i. happier or sadder? I think I'm happier, although more tired.

ii. thinner or fatter? About the same.

iii. richer or poorer? Richer, I guess?

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?

Exercise, housecleaning, saving money by cooking at home, entertaining.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?

Complaining, OH WAIT THAT IS MY MEDIUM.

20. How did you spend Christmas?

With Hen's family, minus his sister, who couldn't get home for the holiday. It was nice, even though by Sunday night I was pretty well in the throes of yet another cold. We hung out on Christmas Eve, went to watch Hen's mom sing in the church choir, opened presents on Christmas morning and did some more hanging out. I missed out on a trip to Columbus the day after Christmas -- I was just too sick to make the drive -- and spent the last day of my holiday sleeping, then watching Toddlers & Tiaras on Netflix.

I got an iPad and a Le Creuset Dutch oven, so it was pretty much the best Christmas ever in terms of presents.

21. Did you fall in love in 2011?

I fall in love every day I see these faces!

22. How many one-night stands?

None. I know, bring a book. I'm okay with that.

23. What was your favorite TV program?

I don't watch teevee with any regularity, still, so I'm clueless about what the kids are watching these days. I decided I did not like True Blood after all because it is just about sexy vampires and I do not care for that. If I had cable I would just watch Pop Up Video, that Dr. Drew show, and Beavis and Butthead all the time. I know because that is what I watch when I am at the gym.

24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?

No,but I am sure I am annoyed by a number of people I was not annoyed with this time last year.

25. What was the best book you read?

I loved the Hunger Games trilogy, and I am someone who swore she would not ever love a YA book. Sarah turned me on to Veronica Roth's Divergent series. I downloaded the first book onto my iPad just to try it out -- the series and the Kindle app on the iPad. Loving both.

I didn't buy as many cookbooks this year as I have in years past, and instead previewed a lot from the library. I don't see myself growing my collection tremendously either. Highlight titles that I actually purchased included the Cook's Country cookbook, Sugarbaby, America's Test Kitchen Slow Cooker Revolution, Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams at Home, and Super Natural Every Day.

26. What was your greatest musical (re)discovery?

I really liked playing around on Spotify. It's a good way to discover new stuff, and I am still debating paying for a subscription so I can stream songs places other than my computer.

I got back into Bad Religion. I haven't listened to any of their stuff for a while.

I liked the Wild Flag album a lot although I have to say I am still a Corin girl over a Carrie girl, with Janet trumping all. I really like Mary Timony's stuff on the album more than Carrie's because Mary sings the way I feel. Bored and angry and annoyed with it all but too bored to really try.

PJ Harvey's album was also a favorite, along with the Throwing Muses Anthology.

27. What did you want and get?

I got my first piece of Le Creuset. I got a new job which is fabulous.

I got an iPad. Love the iPad.

28. What did you want and not get?

I would have liked a clear picture of what I really want to do with myself, but I think I don't get that every year. I would have liked to have taken a nice long vacation with Hen but our vacation schedules didn't really work out that way this year. Maybe in 2012!

29. What was your favorite film of this year?

I saw a few at the Film Festival again -- although I have to say none really stood out as awesome.

I didn't see too many "regular" movies, but I liked the Muppets. Cave of Forgotten Dreams was interesting but mostly for the endless Werner Herzog jokes Christine and I got out of it.

30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

I turned 33 in Chicago, as I happened to be there to watch BFF graduate from art school. We had brunch at Earwax in Wicker Park.

Then I got to ride on the Megabus for 7 hours back to Cleveland, hooray!

I took the day after my birthday off and celebrated by doing yard work, then going out for Turkish food and Jeni's ice cream with Hen in a tornado.

31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

More quiet time.

32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2011?

Camoflauging trouble spots.

33. What kept you sane?

My friends. Running on a treadmill. Snarking on people, places and things in private. Cocktail hours/bitch sessions. Writing.

34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

I dunno, I don't really get into celebrities.

35. What political issue stirred you the most?

I've gotten pretty worked up about how much I hate Republicans and how much of a clusterfuck the next election's going to be. I guess I sort of feel that way every year, though.

36. Who did you miss?

My dad, and many friends who are scattered near and far.

37. Who was the best new person you met?

Some of my new coworkers are pretty great. It hasn't been a 100 percent flawless adjustment but having lunch buddies etc. has definitely helped.

38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2011:

Job interviews aren't really that scary, you just have to convince them you're level-headed and smart.

What to Do When You Eff Up A Holiday Dessert

2011-12-29T21:20:00.000-05:00

1. Start with a clear vision. Perhaps this Swiss Cake Roll recipe caught your eye like it did mine.

2. Assemble ingredients, with a special focus on booze, for the whipped cream filling:

3. Bake the cake. Start it off at 7 pm on Christmas Eve Eve.

4. Follow directions to a t. Unroll cake and watch as this happens:

Oops.

Oh shit.

5. Cuss.

6. Evaluate. At this point, the groceries are closed for the night (well, not the 24 hour Giant Eagle, but that is kind of a drive for the way you're feeling). You could try to turn the fucked up cake into a trifle-y sort of thing, which could be interesting given you've never made trifle before and have only a vague idea of what it entails based on having been served one 13 years ago when you were an exchange student in Cambridge. You could also get up early in the morning (CHRISTMAS EVE ARRRRGH) and go to the grocery to buy a replacement cake.

7. Go with what you know! All trifle entails is layers and you've already got cake and whipped cream. And Cointreau.

8. Remember that you have Bird's Custard in your pantry for some god-unknown reason, and recall that Bird's is what English people use for trifle! Prepare the custard!

Also text your friend Sarah, whose boyfriend is Irish, and ask whether it's supposed to be pink in the can, orange when mixed in the milk paste. It's not, according to the Irish! Oh well!

9. Decide that the trifle needs some fruit, so hastily cut up some oranges and clementines and caramelize them.

10. Let the oranges cool a bit, then assemble everything in a Corningware dish.

Doesn't that look foul you guys!

11. God only knows what it tastes like, so run out to Heinen's the next morning, cursing to yourself under your breath all the while because JESUS CHRIST could people be any more rude?, and buy a small Christmas torte cake and a pint of Jeni's just in case. JUST IN CASE.

12. Go home and taste the trifle. Oh, it is actually really good! Like, really good!

13. Surprise, you have $20 worth of alternate desserts to take along with you to your boyfriend's house for Christmas! You will have no idea what will become of that torte.

Oh Boy It's Christmas Week

2011-12-21T07:03:00.001-05:00

I pretty much failed at My 25 but since this is my blog and I make the rules I'm just going to pretend it's a set of lifetime goals, so possibly next year I can finish up. Or in 2013. You never know what will happen. I'll still be cooking and trying new things, rest assured.

This time of year is hard, you guys. I really get seasonal-affective-y. And good god, snow. Snow is not so bad when you don't have to go anyplace and can remain stationary, but we got our first snowstorm of the season on Saturday and I almost died three times trying to get to Lakewood. That's an exaggeration but boy was it a nasty drive.

Anthropologie had silk half-slips on sale for $14, and I have been wanting some slips. The price was so right that I scooped a couple of those up. Speaking of Anthro, Kerry shared with me this cautionary story from Claire Zulkey of WBEZ about sweater shopping gone awry. It's true, nothing at that store fits and is always totally awkward, although it always looks great on their mannequins. Funny, that.

I'm in a baking mood, so last night I made sugar cookie dough and started the dough for chocolate crinkles. I'll bake both tonight. I also felt like playing with sugar, so I made the cinnamon brittle recipe from this book. It was very simple, just sugar, butter, water, corn syrup, salt, baking soda and cinnamon:

It is really delicious, but needs more cinnamon and possibly more rounded edges.

Thursday is the Festivus party on my floor at work. I'm trying to decide what to do for it. I kind of want to make my lazy spinach-artichoke dip but need to find out if I can bring a Crock-Pot to work. If not I'm thinking a cheese ball or some kind of cold dip and crackers, like this shrimp dip.

Thursday's also my last day at work before the holiday. I'm planning on wrapping presents and heading to the West Side Market and Penzey's for a couple of last-minute things early in the day on Friday, then baking a Swiss cake roll for after Christmas dinner. I might decide to get fancy and make meringue mushrooms, who knows!

Saturday will be a bunch of kicking around, I suspect. Some friends in Oberlin are having a brunch party and I want to introduce them to Hen, so I'm hoping we'll drive out for that. Hen's mom has to sing at church in the evening so we are planning on taking his parents out for an early dinner.

On Sunday we'll open presents and there will be wine and probably, god willing, another cheese board. Hen's sister isn't going to make it home until after the holiday, so it won't be as much of an extravaganza, but I am taking it to mean that we'll have two Christmases. Right?

December 2011 Birchbox Haul

2011-12-16T22:32:00.000-05:00

I *finally* got my Birchbox -- it took forever and ever to ship this month, for some reason.

Here's what I got:

Jouer Moisturizing Lip Gloss

This is the lip gloss every Birchbox member got this month. They really hyped this particular product as OMG LIP GLOSS before the boxes even went out, so this was the first product I opened and tried out after opening the box. I never would have chosen this shade personally, and it looks a little weird on me. The texture is also not my favorite -- it's very sticky. A couple months ago, with my first box, I got a Kissable Couture lip gloss sample that I was kind of meh on at first, but once I started using it at my desk at work I decided I really liked it. I'd buy that one over the Jouer for sure.

Showstoppers® Designer Fashion Tape in Black

I feel absolutely MEH about this product because I don't wear sleeveless things and pretty much never show cleavage because I don't have any. I do have a v-neck flannel dress that I wear to work that lays a little weird because, well, my boobs are not the same size, so on one side a bit of the dress' lining sticks out. Fashion tape might be a solution but really? It's not that big a problem for me and I wouldn't buy this.

Harvey Prince Yogini - 50 ml

Hooray, perfume! This one calls itself the "scent of liberation." Okay! Actually I sniffed a bit and it totally reminded me of some scent from childhood, although I can't place it at all. Maybe some doll with scented hair? Preteen perfume? I can't recall, but it definitely took me back. Anyway, it's not a bad scent but it's also not really my taste. It's too sharp and acidic.

Befine Gentle Cleanser

Hooray, facial cleanser! I haven't tried it yet, but I am on a quest to find the best stuff to wash my face with...

EBOOST Orange Natural Energy Booster

Another product I'm kind of meh about -- it's just a tiny envelope of drink powder. It would be nice if it actually provided an energy boost, though. I always tank around 3:30 or 4.

L'Oreal Professionnel Mythic Oil

Sure I'll try some hair oil, why not. I've been using an argan oil treatment for a while now, and it definitely gives my hair a boost. I really like the product I currently use, so I'll save this little guy for travel.

Overall, I had mixed feelings about this haul. Some good stuff, but nothing that really knocked my socks off. To be fair, I haven't tried half the stuff from the box, but it's kind of hard to get excited about fashion tape and drink mix! Maybe I will fall in love with the cleanser.

Pre-Christmas Kitchen Ambitions

2011-12-13T20:46:00.000-05:00

I have a little bit of shopping left to do, and I'd really like to say I'll knock that out over the weekend. I have four days of work next week. I don't want to spend all of my Friday off in the kitchen, but I have a few kitchen projects and baking missions on my mind. The problem is, I'm not totally sure what we're doing for Christmas yet. There was talk of driving to NYC to be with Hen's sister. There's talk of staying here. Whatever gets decided will determine what I'm able to crank out in the kitchen.

I really want to bake more cookies, although I can't say I really want to eat any. Cookie Party got me in a real mood! Today at work, I learned that one of the secretaries on my floor organizes a cookie donation for a community center on the west side every year. They have an afternoon with Santa for the kids who go to the center, and last year they sent the kids home with 100 boxes of cookies. So she needs people to bake those cookies. I'll probably just do a basic batch of sugar cookies but that ought to satisfy my urge. For a few days, at least.

I listened to a Splendid Table podcast the other day at the gym, and the guy Lynne was interviewing was talking about making your very own yeast bread starter, even when you do not live in San Francisco and thus do not have magical air that is conducive to making awesome sourdough starters. All it takes is flour and water and the natural yeasts and bacteria present in your house. My house has plenty of both of those things! Oh, and also cat fur. The mad scientist in me wants to try this real bad. I certainly wouldn't have starter in time for Christmas, but maybe for New Year's.

If we end up staying in town for the holiday, I want to make cinnamon rolls for Christmas morning. I suppose I could also do that for a New York Christmas morning, but the logistics would be different. Hen's dad always insists on the Pillsbury kind, but homemade would be better! I have a good America's Test Kitchen recipe stashed somewhere...

Real gingerbread has been on my mind, too, so I'm bookmarking recipes for that. And on a ginger note, I want to try making some homemade ginger liqueur.

Chocolate cake roll sounds good too.

And I'm on an omelet kick. I made one for dinner tonight and of course it fell apart, so now I'm set on avenging its honor.

Sassy Maple-Sweet Potato Sandies, by Pete

2011-12-12T20:25:00.001-05:00

Another popular cookie from Cookie Party was the Sweet Potato Bacon Sandy, by my friend Pete Woodward. He won the Best Cookie by a Man category with this one! Because everyone loves bacon! I will let Pete tell you a little about his amazing cookie creation.

Here is a link to the original recipe. I found it using this amazing tool called "the googler" or something like that.

I've got a maple/sweet potato/bacon casserole that I came up with last year that I really like to eat, so I thought it would be cool to see if I could replicate something similar in cookie form. I did a search to see if anyone had blazed that trail for me, and I found this recipe, which provided a pretty solid starting point.

Sassy Maple-Sweet Potato Sandies (Recipe by Sugar Plum Blog- Modified by Peter Woodward)

1 cup finely chopped pecans
1 cup sweetened flaked coconut

(Note from Pete: Nuts rarely, and coconut NEVER belong in cookies. This is a science fact. These are in the original recipe and should be forgotten about.)

6 or so slices of thick sliced bacon

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour

3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt

3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

(Pete: I didn't have ground ginger on hand, so I used 1 teaspoon of Pumpkin Pie Spice and 1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon, the result was super-delicious.)
3/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup pure maple syrup
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups finely grated North Carolina sweet potato - Though usually treated as interchangeable I would definitely opt for sweet potatoes over yams, they're sweeter. Personally, I don't give a crap where they come from, uh, I mean, make sure you buy them seasonally at your local farmer's market.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

~~Place pecans and coconut on a large cookie sheet. Bake 6-7 minutes or until lightly toasted and fragrant.~~

Fu… I mean, Forget this too.

Dice the bacon slices and fry over a medium heat until mostly crispy. Try not to overcook or burn them as that might be overpowering in the finished result. Drain, and set aside on paper towels to cool.

In a medium mixing bowl, sift together flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and pumpkin pie spice. In a large mixing bowl, using a mixer on medium speed, beat together butter, brown sugar and sugar until creamy - about 1-2 minutes; beat in maple syrup, egg and vanilla until combined. Reduce mixer speed to low and gradually beat in flour mixture until just combined. Using a wooden spoon, stir in bacon, and sweet potato until combined. Chill dough in refrigerator for 45 minutes, or until well chilled and firm.

Roll heaping tablespoons of dough into balls, and place on greased cookie sheets, about an inch apart. Flatten balls slightly using palms of hands. Bake 13-15 minutes or until golden brown. Transfer cookies to wire racks to cool.

Makes 30 cookies.

The Face Sander

2011-12-10T22:38:00.001-05:00

So I usually buy myself a Christmas gift every year. It became habit a long time ago post-college, when I was single and my dad, who hated shopping and had no idea how to buy presents for a 20-something woman, would just cut me a check at Christmastime. I like it when other people give me presents still, but it's kind of a fun tradition for me. I usually just get myself something off my Amazon wishlists or pick out some sweaters or something practical and necessary.

This year, I gifted myself the Clarisonic Mia, which uses a brush on a pulsating head to gently scrub your pores free of dirt. It's gotten rave reviews and seems like a pretty solid investment for someone who sort of obsesses over her gross blackhead-y pores like I do.

I actually have been saving up for this thing for a while. I'd been considering one since last spring or so, but found it hard to justify buying a face washing implement that costs over $100. I mean, it is not a necessity, it's purely for vanity and probably only gets rave reviews because of the placebo effect women experience when they put something pastel and vibrating on their faces in the shower.

With that in mind, for the past few months I've been squirrelling away my Discover Cashback points. One of the rewards, once you've reached $85 worth of points, is a $100 Sephora gift card. You see? As luck would have it, I went over that amount when my statement closed this past Tuesday, and I also got a $15 off coupon in the mail from Sephora over the weekend. Score!

So I more or less got the Mia for free, save for tax.

Here is my new face sander:

I had to charge it overnight (it arrived via UPS on Friday) so I didn't get to use it until I showered this morning. I think I'll need to use it routinely with a consistent cleanser for a week or two to get a better impression of it, but it wasn't half bad. My skin felt pretty soft afterward, although I will say on first use the bristles kind of stung. Not in a totally bad way, as weird as that sounds, but just like "hey you are using pulsating bristles on a body part you usually don't use pulsating bristles on."

I'm a sucker for a good cleanser, so I splurged on small bottles of Philosophy's Purity and Fresh's Soy Face Cleanser. The Clarisonic cleanser came with the Mia, and the Murad cleanser was a bonus sample.

So far I've only tried the Clarisonic cleanser, which seems fine. I'm most curious about the Fresh cleanser because of course it's the most expensive so probably I will love it.

Lavender Meringues and Life Skills With Puppets

2011-12-05T19:19:00.001-05:00

One of the best and most unusual cookie recipes presented at Cookie Party were my friend Spoosan's Lavender Meringues. They were eensy little puffs of strong lavender flavor. But in a good way. Lavender can sometimes taste old lady-ish, right? But these cookies were delightful.

Several people at the party were interested in getting the recipe, so Spoosan graciously shared it with me. Give it a shot yourself!

Lavender Meringues

2 egg whites
2/3 cup sugar
some culinary lavender (Note: I'm so sorry I don't have a more precise measurement. I just tossed some in, and then my mother-in-law tossed more in. It was probably close to 2, maybe 3 tbsp?)
about 1/2 tsp of vanilla

Put the sugar and the lavender in a food processor and process until the lavender is completely broken down and integrated into the sugar.

Add sugar, egg whites, and vanilla into a bowl and beat with an electric mixer until the mixture is holds stiff peaks, ideally. My never got quite this stiff, and I ended up just beating it to soft peak stage. I spent about 7 minutes beating it with the mixer.

Pour the mixture into a piping bag with a small tip and pipe the meringue onto parchment paper. Bake in a 270 degree oven for about 20 minutes. The finished meringues should be completely dry on the inside, so you may have to try one to make sure it's not gooey on the inside. I left one batch in for about 30 minutes and the other for 20, so check 'em at twenty min. and go from there.

Sadly, I don't have a picture of the meringues but I do have a YouTube video of a T-Rex puppet providing romantic advice, courtesy of Spoosan. I mean, a YouTube video of Terry the T-Rex giving life skills advice:

Veni Vidi Cookie Party 2011

2011-12-04T18:15:00.001-05:00

This was early in the evening. Eventually pretty much every surface in my kitchen and dining rooms were filled with cookies. Of course, I took only three or four pictures all night long.

I spent most of Sunday on the couch recovering from Cookie Party, which turned out to be another successful one for the books. I'm glad I restarted this tradition. I feel like it gets better every year.

I am really sad it's over, even though by the end, at 2 a.m. when Hen and I were I spent literally weeks getting ready for it, and it's over now, just like that! But that means I can start planning for Cookie Party 2012!

I had about 45 people in my house over the course of six hours or so. My cats hid under the spare bed once their preferred maximum of ten people was met within twenty minutes of the party being "on."

I'm always impressed by the stuff people come up with, and the range of skills my friends have. One friend whose husband is Dutch made Speculaas. My friend Kate made spicy brownies. There were lavender meringues! And several varities of savory cookies, which was a nice treat. Another couple fucked up Pillsbury sugar cookies and brought a bottle of wine instead. It happens.

The crowd favorites were my friend Pete's bacon-sweet potato sandies and a group effort bacon-frosted cookie. So apparently people still love bacon. It's a winner!

I made bourbon balls, per usual, and mocha meringues (for the gluten-free crowd -- there was actually a surprising array of gluten-free cookies from different people this year) and Martha Stewart's Chocolate-Caramel Sandwiches:

These cookies taught me that I am very good at making caramel. Not to toot my own horn or anything, but I have at least one skill.

Overall, I didn't feel as well-rested going into Cookie Party 2011 as I did last year. I kept angling for an afternoon nap and a trip to the gym but those things didn't happen. I just kept finding too many things to do. Which was fine -- my house was almost spotless by the time the party started, there was more than enough food and drink, and an organized party plan. I had tags for the cookie trays, signage, and (kind of) a system for greeting people.

I found a new party drink of choice: prosecco, pear vodka, and St. Germain. Delicious. Try it.

My friend Beki made two delicious cheese balls: a proscuitto and parmesan one, and a variation of Amy Sedaris' Lil' Smoky cheese ball. I'm thinking of making a cheese ball competition a standard for next year. Although truth be told, I don't think there would be room for it.

We gave out actual awards this year, with voting for crowd favorite and everything. I printed out "ribbons" from the Internet and assembled a prize committee consisting of me, my friend Spoosan and Sarah. I chose Spoosan and Sarah because they have both won ribbons at the county fair for their cookie recipes; Sarah, as you may recall, won a blue ribbon for her oatmeal cookies this summer. However, Sarah has been courageously battling bronchitis and had to skip the party, so we named an award in her honor at the last minute:

Which did not get handed out because we failed to realize there were oatmeal cookies present and accounted for, oops. The important thing to remember here is that Sarah has an award named in her honor and you (probably) don't, so there.

I bought my veggie trays (and a small cheese tray) from Appetite again this year, and will continue to do it. It's not cheap but beats buying and chopping up veggies and cheese anyday. More time to futz with punch or bean dip or whatever other last-minute crisis arises.

November. Done.

2011-11-30T20:14:00.001-05:00

Woo-hoo I survived NaNoBloPoMo or whatever we call it.

Tonight was step two of bourbon ball making, which meant adding the boozy pecan meal to butter and confectioner's sugar. FOUR STICKS of butter and TWO POUNDS of sugar. Serious business, folks.

My balls are in the freezer, firming up. Tomorrow night I'll dip 'em in chocolate.

I also half-assedly made some mocha meringue cookies. The concept started off as fortune cookies, but then I decided the fortune cookies were too much work. The meringues were not hard. Meringue is fucking awesome to make. I love beating egg whites. The piping part is what kills me -- they're all uneven and strange, but at least I'll have a little something for my two or three gluten-free guests to take home with them.

My real cookie challenge will get baked up tomorrow night, unless dipping the bourbon balls makes me off myself.

Commence Holiday Treat-Making

2011-11-29T20:37:00.001-05:00

Bourbon ball making is an intensive process. First you have to make pecan-bourbon mash, which is just ground up pecan meal saturated with LOTS of bourbon. That sits overnight. Then you mix the pecan meal with some vanilla and powdered sugar and roll it up into balls and freeze the balls (heh) overnight. Then you dip them in chocolate. Then they are ready to serve and eat!

Step one came tonight as I made my pecan mash. There's not much to it besides grinding pecans in your food processor, measuring out 14 tablespoons of Makers, and mixing them together. You finish by spreading the stuff out in a shallow pan, covering it with plastic wrap, and letting it sit overnight.

The mash smells really good at this point -- all that bourbon -- but it does not taste very good, so do not try to eat it.

Party Planning Mode Commence!

2011-11-28T09:30:00.000-05:00

Cookie Party is on Saturday! Come one, come all!

So I guess I've officially been in party planning mode since before Thanksgiving, and meant to get more in the mood over the weekend. But mostly I found myself driven to distraction by such things as the Muppet movie and sitting on my couch drinking good New York cider watching White Dog and other early 80s atrocities on Netflix.

I had fully intended to clean my house much more than I have but really, I don't know what more I can do at this point. The kitchen is going to get trashed this week as I bake cookies, make bourbon balls, and prepare snacks for the party. Might as well deep clean on Friday night or Saturday before people come over.

I have one more day of Thanksgiving vacation today, and besides a dentist appointment, the only things I can think of that really need to be accomplished are liquor shopping (very crucial) and maybe a quick vacuum/dusting combo downstairs.

Last year I got my shit together right on time and had some leisure time on Saturday to take a nap before the party. Naps are crucial.

Here's my timeline for this week, because you care! Right?

Monday: booze; laundry; cleaning. I kind of want to do a Crate & Barrel run and hit Trader Joe's and Penzey's, but that depends on my energy level.

Tuesday (after work): prep bourbon ball filling. This can stay in the freezer for a few days until it's time to coat 'em in chocolate.

Wednesday (after work): cookies, batch 1.

Thursday (after work): cookies, batch 2.

Friday (another vacation day): shop for last-minute ingredients. Prep pimento cheese and white bean dip. Finish the bourbon balls. Chill beverages. Pre-assemble things. Clear counterspace for mass quantities of cookies. Clean.

Saturday (day of the party): Last-minute cleaning, assembly of stuff. Make crock-pot dip. Get ice. Pick up catered items. Dress cats up festively!

I'm outsourcing music playlist creation to my good friend Hen.

Links I Liked This Week

2011-11-27T15:29:00.001-05:00

If you make one thing out of your Thanksgiving leftovers this year, I want it to be this: the Hot Brown. OH YES. I want one so badly now that I'm thinking of driving cross town to Hen's parents' house to snatch some leftover turkey out of their fridge. Best thing ever. I've never had one from the Brown Hotel, but my mom used to do them with the Thanksgiving leftovers and even the homemade housewife version is pretty out of this world amazeballs. (Serious Eats)

Salted caramel six-layer cake from The Bitten Word. Yes, I know, again with the salted caramel! But holy crap that looks good.

DIY infused liqueurs. Good for holiday gift giving! (CRAFT)

NPR tackles the delicate subject of your dirty oven. Mine is a lost cause, I think.

A field guide to your office nemesis. Yup. (The Awl)

Hey word nerds: learn about the origin of the word "pie!" This was actually very interesting. I like thinking about the food my crazy Northern European ancestors would have eaten. (NPR)

Epicurious presents an admittedly unscientific guide to hangover cures.

Weird Thanksgiving: an open letter to America about being thankful, but not being a glutton...from Richard Simmons. (Huffington Post)

My Internet pal Little Big has a nice guide to drying and saving herbs.

Don't drink the Kool-Aid: what is it about the drink mix that makes it so popular for mixing/hiding drugs? DoubleX investigates.

Someone from Huffington Post Canada tested whether vodka-soaked tampons actually work, then wrote about it. Oh teenagers! (Eater)

Apparently mini-donut, mini-cupcake, mini-cake-pop and mini-whatever-else cookers are on trend this year! Do not want! Seriously! Cake pops are not hard to make on their own! And they are just about ready to jump the shark anyway! (Consumerist)

Thanksgiving 2011 Food in Lurid Pictures

2011-11-26T12:30:00.000-05:00

This is the Salted Caramel Cheesecake Pie I made and would not shut up about for days. It is a winner, folks. Make it. Do it now.

The fun thing about cooking with the Hen's mom is that she likes to try out new things, and this cranberry sauce was something new. She also picked the recipe specifically because you finish the cooked berries with orange liqueur. I brought over a bottle of Thatcher's blood orange liqueur. It was good.

We started nibbling around 10:30 in the morning. Actually there was breakfast before the nibbles, but the nibbles lasted all day pretty much. We had smoked salmon, manchego, some kind of delicious Cowgirl Creamery cheese, and two kinds of crackers. The dark brown ones were made of figs and something else. We also had oysters and shrimp. #notkosher

You guys I made perfect gravy! I am a Roux Master!

Peanut Butter Banana Bread

2011-11-25T17:03:00.000-05:00

I woke up the day before Thanksgiving pretty ravenous, and I had two overripe bananas:

...and the time to bake, so I decided on banana bread.

Do you know how hard it is to find a decent basic banana bread recipe in, well, most of the cookbooks I have in my collection, at least? Hard. I found a recipe for chocolate banana bread in a Dorie Greenspan book, but didn't feel like chocolate. Eventually my old Joy of Cooking worked out for me. Thank you mid-century food.

I added peanut butter instead of shortening because it sounded good to me, and I have a lot of PB to use up. It made for a slightly drier consistency to the bread, which is not a deal-breaker since I tend to slather it with butter anyway.

Peanut Butter Banana Bread (adapted from The Joy of Cooking)

1 cup mashed bananas (approximately 2-3 overripe ones)
1 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
2 1/4 t double acting baking powder
1/3 cup peanut butter
2/3 cup sugar
3/4 t grated lemon rind
2 eggs

Basically the JOC recipe tells you to mix the dry ingredients then beat the wet ingredients and combine, but this is quick bread, and it is very forgiving. Dump everything in a bowl, mix it up, place in a greased loaf pan and bake for about an hour (or until brown and firm) in a 350 degree oven.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2011-11-24T10:20:00.000-05:00

I'm going to work myself into a food and wine-based coma today. I hope you are planning something similar and are surrounded by people you love.

This year I am thankful for Joy the Baker's Salted Caramel Cheesecake Pie recipe because that is the dessert I made for Thanksgiving at Hen's parents. It is pretty much the best thing ever.

Happy, happy!

Sewing Project

2011-11-23T09:10:00.001-05:00

OK, so my back door has the following curtain, which was in place when I bought the house a few years ago:

It has never been washed or cared for because I am a dirty, awful slob and I live in filth and squalor, the end.

Because this curtain is so ugly, I'm thinking of sewing myself a new one, because come on, that can't be a hard thing to sew, even without a machine, right? Eventually I want to do curtains for all my kitchen windows but this would be a nice practice step.

So, what do you think? What do you even call this kind of curtain? It's not a cafe curtain. Can I do a no-sew (or hand-sewn) version of this? Any fabric tips?

I should probably own a sewing machine. Calling it.

The Holiday's Begun

2011-11-22T20:34:00.001-05:00

I left work at 5 tonight. Thanksgiving is here and I'm off work for 6 days. We started it off with wine and Chinese food. Tomorrow I'll bake and stay the night at Hen's parents' house, and Thursday will bring cinnamon rolls and mimosas for breakfast and a whole lot of cooking. This is short and I'm literally phoning this in.

Butternut Squash Mac and Cheese

2011-11-21T20:08:00.001-05:00

I don't remember where I adapted this recipe from, but I've been making it for a long time (well, at least once a season since 2007 or so) and it's pretty good. I typed the recipe up for someone way back and actually saved it, so a modified step-by-step version is included here.

I doubled the recipe for a pre-Thanksgiving potlach at Audrey's house on Sunday. Which meant two pounds of shredded Cheddar:

Yup.

That actually resulted in two casserole-sized portions of mac and cheese, so guess who's bringing something extra to Real Thanksgiving!

This is the pre-finished version, before the baking. Just imagine it a little browner on top.

BUTTERNUT SQUASH MAC 'N' CHEESE

Hands-on time: 30 minutes
Time to table: 2-1/2 hours
Makes about 4 cups, easy to double or triple

Ingredients:

1 two-pound butternut squash

1 cup elbow macaroni, prepared according to package directions

1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 small onion, finely chopped
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon white pepper
1 tablespoon flour
1 cup milk (the recipe calls for whole milk; I used skim and it was fine)
16 ounces cheddar cheese or any good melting cheese, shredded

Start by roasting your squash. Preheat oven to 400F. Cut squash in half, lengthwise and rub cut side with olive oil. Place cut-side down on a baking sheet and roast for 60 - 75 minutes or until completely cooked and soft. Scoop out flesh while still warm from the oven (it'll take it about half an hour to cool down enough to touch) and break apart with a spoon.

Timing-wise, finish the squash roughly the same time the pasta and the sauce is cooked so that it's still warm.

NOTE: For a 'less squashy' and more 'mac 'n cheese' version, use half the roasted squash in this dish, reserving the other half for something else. You can use up to 16 ounces of macaroni, too, just depends on how pasta-y you want the dish to be.

Prepare macaroni. Let drain well. Timing-wise, finish the pasta and the sauce about the same time.

While the noodles are boiling, make your sauce. In a saucepan, melt the butter on medium heat til shimmery. Stir in the chopped onion, then the nutmeg and white pepper, and cook til onions soften. Stir in the flour and mix well. A tablespoon or two at a time, add the milk, incorporating each portion well before adding another. (If you add it all at once, or without working in each time, there's risk of ending up with a lumpy sauce.) Stirring often, let the sauce come almost to the boiling point. It will thicken slightly. Add the cheese and let it melt, adjusting temperature so that the sauce won't boil. It's not a disaster if it does, since it's going into the casserole, but it'll look curdled.

Combine sauce, noodles, and squash in a large bowl. Break the squash apart, mashing it really, with a wooden spoon. Stir in the hot, drained pasta and combine well, distributing the squash evenly throughout. Stir in the sauce and combine well. Transfer to a greased baking dish. If you like, sprinkle the top with pimento or paprika. If making ahead, let cool to room temperature, cover and refrigerate.

Return dish to room temperature (if making ahead). Bake at 350F for 30 minutes til hot and bubbly throughout. To add color to the top, place under the broiler for 2 - 3 minutes, watching carefully so not to burn. When covered with foil, holds its temperature for a good 30 minutes.

Notes:

The person who wrote this recipe initially was on crack because there is no way, unless you are working in a team, to get the macaroni, squash, and sauce to one hundred percent jive on time. You will end up making your sauce get real big in the pot, burning your hands on the squash, and making the macaroni fall apart in the water. You'll feel like crying, but there will be no one around to hear you cry, except for your cats. Or, if you are petless, no one.

For the squash, remember to scoop out the seeds and stringy shit before you roast it. This can be easily accomplished with a spoon or an ice cream scoop. No one wants to eat that. Also the squash will be REALLY FUCKING HOT when it comes out of the oven, so even though the skin will come off easily, it will be difficult to maneuver. Use a knife and a fork to hold the squash in place as you scoop out its delicious innards.

You can use black pepper instead of white pepper. I know this because when I originally made this recipe, I didn't have any white pepper, so I used black pepper and it turned out fine. Since then I've grown up and have acquired an assortment of exotic spices and seasonings, including a jar of white pepper.

I added sliced mushrooms to the sauce once or twice, which adds a little consistency and mushroom-y flavor. You can add whatever else you like. Bacon, maybe?

Links I Liked This Week

2011-11-20T11:13:00.001-05:00

The New York Times' food section ran a Thanksgiving Help Line this week. Relevant questions, useful answers. Recommended.

The Kitchn asks: what was your first cookbook? Mine was the Peanuts Cookbook. I have two copies of it. We were reunited in adulthood.

Here's a handy, tongue-in-cheek "What should I bring to Thanksgiving dinner" flowchart from CHOW.

So Brookyln's I Hate Perfume is like Demeter for hipsters in the new century. Don't you want to smell like roast beef? (NPR)

Haven't you always wondered what one of the guys from Das Racist eats. HAVEN'T YOU. (Bon Appetit)

BA also lists the 7 best culinary bookstores in America. I've only been to Bonnie Slotnick! I smell travel ambitions for 2012. I have friends in NYC and San Francisco, and soon will have friends in New Orleans and Charleston...

For the life of me, I can't find my copy of the New Yorker's food issue so I guess either the mailman or some vagrants stole it. Huffington Post has a summary.

Jezebel has some bra-washing tips! God, by hand, and after only two wears? I'm failing. I am trying to remember the last time I ever hand-washed anything.

I'm usually prety much all about Trader Joe's candies and confections but this year's holiday specialty, Merry Mingle looks like a doctor's specimen. (Candy Blog)

Hip Girl's Guide to Homemaking has a tutorial on making apple scrap vinegar. Totally going to try this since I have some old CSA apples turning fast.

On Good, Unexpected Outcomes

2011-11-19T14:19:00.001-05:00

Saturday is usually errand day, and this week, one of my errands was to start shopping for Cookie Party supplies. When I'm preparing for grand-scale baking, I like to stock up on flour and the rest of the staple items at Marc's, because it's cheap. It's not gourmet but guess what you won't be able to tell the difference between the $1.99 bag of Pillsbury flour I bought and whatever Whole Foods is selling.

But as I prepared for my day, I realized that it's the Saturday before Thanksgiving and since Marc's is packed with crazies anyway, that meant the shopping experience would be twofold bad. I hate grocery shopping anyway, but shopping at Marc's is usually a little traumatic.

If you're not a Northeast Ohioan, Marc's is our local discount grocery store chain. I can't really think of anything like it anywhere else, but it's you standard grocery store circa 1980. Narrow aisles, kind of grimy. But cheap. And most locations have a special section of "closeouts" which range from seasonal items to weird slightly irregular bras to stuff from Williams-Sonoma four years ago. I bought one of my two punch bowls here for like $10. They sell carpeting. You are likely to find bottles of acetone stacked next to the frozen goods. The cashiers type in actual numbers from the actual price tags on the stuff you're buying, and they only take cash or check. Oh, or Discover! Because it's the 21st century for real!

Also it is full of old people.

This scene from American Splendor pretty much sums up every trip to Marc's, ever:

Marc's stresses me out on a good day.

Anyway, the Marc's stores near me are pretty cruddy, so I thought about tactics. I could go to the one that is further away and reward myself with a trip to Ulta afterward, because that's in the same shopping plaza. I headed that way, but ultimately decided meh, I don't really feel like fighting crowds at Ulta either, so I circled back to the closer one, which actually is probably the most crowded, rabbit warren-esque Marc's of all.

I braced myself for the worst, telling myself that I needed a handful of items and it would take fifteen minutes, tops, but it wasn't that bad. Really. I told the cashier I was surprised they weren't that busy and she rolled her eyes and said "Everyone came in at 9 this morning." Which was when I originally had planned on going to Marc's! But I was foiled by the temptation of sleeping in and getting bagels with Hen!

I bought 5 12-packs of Coke products, because they were on sale, and because hey I probably need some soda on hand for the party. The deal with the sale is you get $2 off your order plus they are already cheap. But the cashier and I were talking about bad holiday spirit and how horrible people can be this time of year, and she forgot to give me my money. I did not understand totally what was going on, so I followed her to customer service. Which proves that if something nefarious ever happens in America and someone tells me to line up I will, and that will suck for me. So she ferreted me off to customer service, where I was handed two dollar bills! Just for buying diet sugar fizzy water! AMERICA.

Then I went to my regular grocery store and found everything I wanted except superfine sugar, the end.

Sorry Cats

2011-11-18T15:00:00.000-05:00

OK Jo Ann Fabrics, you can call that get-up "wine bottle decor," but I really don't see why it can't be used as a cat costume. The only elements it is really missing are a string to hold the Santa hat on the cat's head, and maybe a fake beard. Both of those things can be easily improvised. Plus, who decorates wine bottles? I can think of no one. Who dresses their cats up in ridiculous costumes? I just ran out of fingers and toes.

I Have Boots

2011-11-17T21:59:00.001-05:00

OMG you guys.

So I bought a pair of boots! Ones that fit my massive calves!

Thanks to a tip from Kerry, I found a pair of Naturalizers I liked. These:

Buying shoes online is always a risky proposition, but after a lot of hemming and hawing I ordered them. Kerry had sent me a discount code, and I found another one online (plus free shipping). Naturalizer is one of those retailers that allows you to combine discounts, so I ended up paying less than $110 for these things! I consider that a deal!

I didn't snap any pictures tonight, as the lighting in my house is poor and they *are* dark boots, but they fit magically. I want to wear them to work tomorrow! I want to wear them everywhere, not just stomping around the house and scaring my cats!

OK wait I got one picture:

Ha ha, "wide shaft."

Maybe I mentioned previously that I found fleece-lined leggings at TJ Maxx. I tried those on with the boots and I'm pretty much hooked, I think. So soft. So warm.

Crafts in Real Life: Magazine Ball Garland

2011-11-16T20:10:00.001-05:00

I got very excited by the magazine ball garland that was posted on CRAFT via Princess Lasertron (seriously love that name) a week or so ago. Hey! I like making things! Hey! I've got a lot of magazines I don't read! I could do this! After all, the only tools it requires are twine, some scissors, a circle template, and magazines!

Oh yeah, and a sewing machine.

I don't have one of those. I've thought about it over the years -- I'd love to make my own curtains -- but I've never gotten around to it.

Reading the instructions for the project, it seemed like I could easily hand-sew the garland, as it's really just a straight chain. Might not be as precise, but that is part of the hand-crafted charm. Right?

Anyway, I sat down tonight with some candy-striped crafting twine (yeah, that's a glass of wine in the top right corner):

And a tapestry needle:

I traced circles with a coaster onto several pages of a Real Simple:

For the first run, I traced and cut out six circles. Midway through cutting I started to question why this was considered an exciting craft idea. Cutting out circles is pretty redundant, in a way that things like knitting or needlepoint aren't. I mean, maybe it's fun for kids?

I made it through six circles, folded them in half, and started to stitch along the seam.

This was the hard part -- I should have pre-marked the stitch locations or possibly used a sharper needle, because forcing that tapestry needle through six pieces of magazine paper? Hard. Also, I am not a great sewer, which is sad, because my grandmother the seamstress taught me how to sew when I was a kid. I've just lost it. Or perhaps I never had it in the first place.

My first seam was pretty crooked, but tight and acceptable.

However, when the ball was fanned out, it didn't look terrific:

So I tried another ball, this time with twelve circles.

This was obviously a lot harder to stitch due to the thickness of the fold, so my stitches were even worse on the second ball:

However, it looked marginally better in finished form:

Will I finish this craft project? I guess it depends on how much energy and patience I can gather to cut a thousand circles out of magazines, and how much stitching I can do by hand without going insane. That translates to: probably not. I think it's an cool idea but it would just be a lot easier with a sewing machine and a lot of free time. Also, end result is not as fancypants as it seemed on the Internet.

Charlotte thinks the magazine balls are pretty awesome, for swatting purposes:

Pretentious Foodie Brown Bag Lunch Reviews #1: Leftover Salad

2011-11-15T20:52:00.001-05:00

Leftover Salad

canned ~~tuna~~ albacore in water ("Star-Kist" variety)
blue cheese crumbles (brand unknown!)
locally-grown hydroponic red leaf lettuce (from the farmer's market!)
canned chickpeas (s~~tore brand~~ Heinens)
English cucumber slices
Trader Joe's Fat-Free Balsamic Dressing

This salad, made with local hydroponic lettuce, is completely uninspired. It wasn't much better last night, when it was fresh, but it has taken on whole new dimensions of unholy after a night in the fridge. Soggy, slimy, fishy.

The t~~una fish~~ albacore "tastes off," as if it was canned! Oh wait, it is! But at least it's Star-Kist, and not a store brand, like the chickpeas.

The sharp bite of blue cheese crumbles adds a bit of a sparkle to the bowl, but not enough to redeem the mealy texture of the canned chickpeas.

I can't finish it. At least I know it will make me poop in a few hours.

Culling My Cookbook Collection

2011-11-14T19:55:00.001-05:00

So I've amassed a pretty big collection of cookbooks, most of which I use, though none as frequently as I'd like. I realized a few weeks ago I've reached critical mass and it's time to pare the collection down. There's just a lot in there I will never, ever use, and is of no real value, sentimental or otherwise. I'm tired of the clutter.

I managed to clear off about two shelves worth. Which doesn't seem like a lot, but I had a collection of well over 150. I sent my friends Spoosan and Mandy home with their pick the other day, and I'm sending batches of books to Kerry and Carrie.

I still have a stack of over 20 to get rid of, and they range from the mundane:

Soup: Comfort Food

Williams-Sonoma Essentials: Oils

...to the weird (remember when I did Weird Cookbook Wednesdays? Maybe someday, again):

Ted & Shemane Nugent's Kill it & Grill It: A Guide to Preparing and Cooking Wild Game and Fish

The Harley Biker's Cookbook: Big Bits for Hungry Bikers

There are even some perfectly nice ones, like Cat Cora's Cooking from the Hip and The Breakaway Cook, ones that are in great condition and all, but I will never, ever use them, so why not give them away?

It actually feels good to get rid of things!

Links I Liked This Week

2011-11-13T19:30:00.001-05:00

Build your cat a perch! My cats have a storebought one; they use it sometimes. Many years ago, my father built a contraption for our cat called the catatorium, which was basically a little perch that sat in the window and extended outward. It was screened in. Our cat loved it, but it was probably not one hundred percent structurally kosher. (Craft)

Leite's Culinaria presents pumpkin lasagne. Because you are totally not sick of hearing about pumpkin yet.

How to stop wasting so much money on food, from the Consumerist. A good reminder, but I think the key is really buying only what you'll eat. Also, stop buying so many freaking condiments. That last one was specific to me.

Sloane Crosley's essay on Thanksgiving from Bon Appetit: A Meal Worth Stealing.

Magazine ball garlands. Totally doing this. (Craft)

There's a Hunger Games nail polish collection coming out. And the colors are all pretty great! HUNGER GAMES. (All Lacquered Up)

Take a look at this gross pork roast molded into the shape of a pig! I want it. (Consumerist)

Salted caramel cheesecake pie. I might bring this to Thanksgiving. (Joy the Baker)

Drinking the bottom shelf: premixed shooters. Because you are that lazy and also, yep, gross. (Serious Eats)

November 2011 Birchbox Haul

2011-11-12T11:16:00.001-05:00

My November Birchbox FINALLY came!

This month's theme is "Getting Gifty," I guess presuming you might consider giving some of these items as a holiday gift.

My box included:

Atelier Cologne's Vanille Insensee Cologne Absolue
Borghese Fango Active Mud
LaRocca Skincare Champagne & Shimmer Super Creme
Zoya Nail Polish in Izzy

The special bonus was two paper coasters from Two Paper Dolls.

I also got a bonus for referring Sarah to Birchbox -- a BaubleBar Black Wood Pop Bracelet:

Overall, I'm pretty satisfied with this haul. Primarily because it has perfume and nail polish samples, both of which I'm a fan!

I'm not a huge fan of vanilla scents normally, but this one is muskier than it is that sickly-fake vanilla fragrance you find so many places. However much I may like it once I actually wear it does not matter, as a 200 ml bottle is $170.

The Zoya polish is part of the Holiday 2011 collection -- I guess different people got different colors. I'm cool with the raspberry pink Izzy, as I don't really have a color like it in my small collection.

I'm pretty meh about the coasters and the shimmer creme. The coasters are cute and all but you guys I'm kind of over letterpress everything. Not totally sure what I'll do with them, besides, uh, use them as coasters.

The shimmer creme has a nice fragrance and does leave your skin a little shimmery, "ready to set off your favorite party dress," according to the card that came with the box. I'll keep that in mind, Birchbox.

Jury is out on the mud mask. I am excited about pretty much anything I can smear on my face that promises to suck dirt out of my pores. Still, a 7 oz. bottle is $33.50. Probably won't be a purchase in the full-size version, unless it makes my skin look super-awesome.

And the bracelet was a nice little surprise! Very cool to be rewarded for referring another sample-obsessed friend.

The best candidate for a purchase from this box is the Zoya set, I think, even though I'm not totally wild about all the colors. It might be a nice Christmas gift, though, for a couple of people on my list.

Mostly, I have to say I really like the way they package things:

It makes it feel very special!

Look What the Mailman Brought...

2011-11-11T12:08:00.000-05:00

..instead of my freakin' Birchbox, which arrived at the post office in Cleveland Wednesday but now is apparently sitting on a mail truck taunting me. No mail today!

Look, it is a sleeve of takeout containers. And some ribbon. Do you know what these things are for?

They are for Cookie Party 2011! So that people will actually leave my house with cookies this year, instead of leaving me 80 pounds behind, all of which I will eat.

I ordered these from Nashville Wraps per my pal Carl of Rogue Bakery's suggestion. They are pretty perfect for the task at hand, and there are 50 of them, so I will be encouraging people to take home multiple boxes.

I'm going to jazz them up a bit. The ribbon is a start.

It's Snowing Tonight

2011-11-10T21:24:00.001-05:00

First snow of the season! Just little flakes.

Because this development gives me the SADs, here is a picture of Fatty Catty in her new Christmas collar.

Miss Charlotte Cookbook, Executive Assistant to Santa N. Claus. Someone's really happy with me!

I Listen to Lo-Fi at the Gym

2011-11-09T19:47:00.001-05:00

I am really liking Spotify. I used it at the gym the other night and was able to listen to a mix of Bad Religion, the Breeders and Magnapop through my whole workout. And it helped me rediscover the following gem by Eleventh Dream Day:

Eleventh Dream Day - Makin' Like a Rug from Paula Froehle on Vimeo.

I taped that song off the radio in like 1995. I could never really determine what album it came from, nor the title of the song. Of course, that is partly because I am lazy, because it turns out that the song is the first track on the band's 1993 album El Moodio. I have two of their older albums on cassette but never bothered to dig deeper! Reunited and it feels so good!

Also I discovered that when I am doing cardio I actually really like to listen to Kim Deal and Lou Barlow. I don't really know what it says about me that I do my best working out to music that is for all intents and purposes music to get stoned to, but there you go.

Anyway, I like Spotify so much I'm considering paying for a premium subscription, simply because I find synching iTunes tracks from the computer to the iPhone clunky (although I haven't tried it yet with iCloud, which I just enabled over the weekend). And I'm a pretty fickle music listener. I'll fill the iPod up with a bunch of stuff and then realize I actually want to listen to something else. I have the Pandora app on my phone, which is sort of okay for on-the-spot music decisions and mixes, but I find Pandora a little draconic to use. Sure, I can pull up the Lady Gaga (don't hate or judge) station during a run, but that station is peppered with a bunch of other stuff besides the 2 Lady Gaga songs I like. Stuff that I find abhorrent. I usually find myself skipping track after track until Pandora yells at me and tells me I can skip no more.

Also, I'm sorry, Pandora, but when I ask you for Kansas' Carry On My Wayward Son (again, don't hate or judge) I do not mean the LIVE version. I mean the REGULAR version!

$10 a month is less than an album a month. I'm tempted but still unsure.

All I know is that I found Tiger Trap on Spotify, and boy how would 15 year old me have wanted to find a cache of Tiger Trap songs after reading about the band in Sassy! Because even 20 years later, most of my musical taste is derived from the album reviews in Sassy magazine.

Awkward Turtle

2011-11-08T20:39:00.002-05:00

Yeah.

I had one of those moments at the gym tonight. I walked into the locker room to change into my sweatpants, and caught full sight of someone's breasts. That is not totally unusual or unheard of in a gym locker room -- when my old roommate and I used to swim laps at the Catholic women's college near our house we often encountered elderly nuns who Were. Not. Shy. At. All. about roaming around the locker room butt-naked, letting it all hang out. Once I saw a lady who had a little tail! I will swear that I saw that until the day I die!

But this time was different. This person happened to be someone I know professionally. Not a co-worker, but someone I see with some regularity in a professional capacity. Fully clothed, of course!

She scurried to cover up and I avoided eye contact as I passed, so for the most part, we managed to pretend it did not happen. We didn't even exchange pleasantries. Still, we both totally know it happened. AWKWARD TURTLE.

Here are my rules for changing in the locker room:

1. Find a crevice that is not in the middle aisle where everyone walks to get through the locker room!

2. Face the opposite direction of oncoming traffic when removing your bra and other underthings!

3. Move quickly! You never know who might be lurking!

Logic:

1. No one, but no one, needs to see my exposed flesh! NO ONE.

2. It makes other people super-uncomfortable to see my exposed flesh. I know this because it makes me super-uncomfortable to see other people's exposed flesh! And I am really not a prude.

In this person's defense, she was alone in the locker room when I walked in, but still, preventative measures, lady!

Meat Inventory!

2011-11-07T18:40:00.000-05:00

I cleaned my freezer out this weekend. Much-needed and long overdue! Here's a round-up of all the meat I found:

3 chicken brats
1 pack breakfast patties (special-made for my CSA; they're 50-50 sausage and bacon)
1.5 lb ground beef
Over 3 lb pork chops
3/4 lb ground Italian sausage
1 lb each ground veal and ground pork
1 ahi tuna steak
4 Italian sausage links
2 links Thai sausage (from Mr. Brisket)
Various chicken parts
1 whole roasting chicken
1 pound chicken breasts

So most of this is meat I got over the course of the summer from my CSA. Clearly, I don't cook a lot of meat. And because I have such a stock of meat I don't think I'm going to be shopping for it anytime soon. It's going to take me forever to use those pork chops. They're probably my least favorite cut of meat.

I used up the ground veal and pork last night -- I made chili, and also some meatballs. That's a start, and like two weeks worth of meat dishes for me!

Links I Liked, 10/30 - 11/05/11

2011-11-06T19:26:00.000-05:00

Eff you, bacon: The Awl's title says it all -- Tiresome Trend Makes Christmas Even More Irksome.

Secrets to great macaroni and cheese. (Devour the Blog)

Did you know that IKEA product names actually mean things? (Flavorwire)

This article from the Atlantic's food blog left me craving brisket.

These Kate Spade airquote mittens are cutesy, but you know, I'll bet I could learn to knit the same thing for far cheaper. (Swiss Miss)

The Kitchn offers a roundup of ten thousand candy corn recipes.

Butchering a squirrel, via Bon Appetit. Not safe for you if you are freaked out by dead squirrel guts.

DIY Saturday

2011-11-05T15:16:00.001-04:00

The past couple of Saturdays have been devoted to small DIY projects around the house. This is a system that works for me; otherwise I'd never get anything done. Last Saturday I spent a few hours cleaning out and rearranging my garage. This has been on the to-do list for a while because, frankly, it was a total disaster area, but I got inspired to actually do something about the mess because I hired a plow guy to do my driveway this winter, which means I can't be as lazy about leaving my car out in the drive overnight. And Hen's car makes two, and I do not want the plow guy to hate me!

The garage cleaning generated several bags of trash and a heap of cardboard leftover from my hobo ex's "permaculture" "gardening" "experiments." It felt good to get tidy and make room for two cars.

This weekend I decided on a few projects: buying and programming new garage door opener remotes (I used to have two, but left one in my old car when I totaled it, oops); replacing the globe and broken pull-chain on the ceiling fan in my kitchen; painting my bathroom; cleaning out my freezer and fridge; and cleaning the oven.

Also laundry and general cleaning, per usual.

So far I've done a hardware store run (Dunn Hardware in Richmond Heights -- they are my favorite, although I wish they were not so far away from my house), programmed the garage door remotes, cleaned the freezer (stay tuned for a meat inventory!), and fixed the ceiling fan:

Ta-da!!!

I don't have any pictures of the ceiling fan repair, but here is the finished product. I actually really hate that fucking ceiling fan. It's so ugly! But I'm holding out on totally replacing it, as I've decided next year is kitchen renovation year and I expect the lighting situation to change in the kitchen anyway.

A [Boozy] Pre-Christmas Miracle

2011-11-04T17:37:00.000-04:00

Hey guys the Ohio Department of Liquor Control has a searchable database that includes liquor agencies throughout the state as well as prices for all your favorite hard spirits! Just in time for the holidays!

What did I learn from my forays into searching the database?

Liquor is more expensive in Cuyahoga County than in any other county in the state! Boo! Why can't anything be easy here, ever?

The closest liquor agency to my house sells Domane de Canton, which is good because I have been considering buying some!

Thatcher's Organic Liqueurs are not in the database, at least not locatable by any of the criteria I tried. Sad, because I think my original source for their cucumber liqueur no longer sells it. Tolerable because I found their blood orange liqueur on my recent trip to upstate NY.

Gross vodka flavors: almost anything by 3 Olives, frosting, banana, "gummy."

Hat tip to WKYC for the link.

Library Book Round-Up

2011-11-03T21:13:00.000-04:00

It feels weird since it's Thursday and I am not presenting you with a Fresh Fork haul. Sigh!

I have a haul of another kind to present to you, though -- a heap of books I've signed out of the library over the past few weeks. I decided to be proactive about my Amazon wishlists and borrow stuff from the library before deciding whether the books were worth adding to my collection. What a novel idea! Here are my thoughts on a few.

1. The Indian Slow Cooker: 50 Healthy, Easy, Authentic Recipes.

Yes, I am still kind of obsessed with my slow cooker. Indian cooking perplexes me in general, minus the basic curry. This book doesn't really dumb it down that much, although there is a nice recipe for slow cooker aloo gobi (potatoes + caulflower) that I have marked to try. Also some chickpea and eggplant dishes. It'll stay on the wishlist.

2. Martha Stewart's New Pies & Tarts.

I'm a sucker for Martha Stewart's recipes. I'm not a huge pie fan, but there are a lot of recipes for galettes, hand pies, tarts, and other baked confections that I find pretty appealing. Even some savory stuff, like Spinach-Feta Turnovers and a Swiss Chard and Goat Cheese Galette. It's a nice book with great pictures of each recipe, but Martha's recipes are pretty easy to find online. Not a necessary addition to my collection.

3. The Splendid Table's How to Eat Weekends.

The Splendid Table is one of my favorite public radio shows. I'm behooved by the fact that the Cleveland NPR affiliate does not carry it, although Kent State's affiliate does, opposite Rick Steves on the Cleveland station, so score. I love listening to Lynne Rossetto Kasper talk. She just seems so "mom" to me, which is funny because I recently learned that she attended my undergrad for a year and was unceremoniously kicked out for some reason. Apparently she had a wild, rebellious streak in her younger days! Very "mom" I guess.

Anyway, while I love the radio show I always find Splendid Table's cookbooks a little disappointing -- not because they lack in content but rather because I think they focus too much on design, and they categorize recipes a little differently than often seems logical to me. Still, there are some nice pasta dishes and salads in this one. This would be a nice gift.

4. Jam It, Pickle It, Cure It.

There's just something about preservation that scares me. I don't feel like I'll ever be clean or sanitary enough to make jam, for instance. Apart from my own kitchen phobias, this is a nice book; it includes recipes not only for jams and preserves, but also for things like Arnold Palmer Pops (frozen); Limoncello; homemade Ricotta, and various smoked meats. It's a good survey of the possibilities that lie in your kitchen, beyond making dinner and baking cupcakes. This would be a nice gift.

5. The Happy Baker: A Girl's Guide to Emotional Baking.

Some okay recipes, but Heather Waley did it much better, and more delightfully tongue-in-cheek, in Eat Your Feelings. Not a necessary addition to my collection.

6. Recipe for Murder: Frightfully Good Food Inspired by Fiction.

This was probably the most surprisingly good one of the bunch, but it's filled with interesting art, literary quotes, and recipes based on the villains and malfeasance associated with those works of literature. For example, there are possets from Lady MacBeth, koliva from Medea, and of course, Hannibal Lecter's Express Sweetbreads. Also Steinbeck, Dostoyevsky, Zola and Dumas. The author and illustrator are French so it's pretty smart, and also pretty campy. I don't know that I would necessarily cook any of the recipes included in this book, but it's just so pretty and unusual I'd love to add it to my collection. It's staying on the wishlist.

Dressing Myself for Winter

2011-11-02T20:37:00.000-04:00

This year I'm actually evaluating my wardrobe going into a season, which never happens typically, despite all my best intentions. I did a couple of rounds of pre-season shopping -- fall shopping, really--and picked up a few things I needed: a couple of new dresses for work, some plain long-sleeved t-shirts for layering, a black turtleneck sweater (that's a staple for me). I don't need a new coat this year, although I'm tempted to buy a puffer coat to replace the one I bought at Marshalls a few years back that now has a busted zipper and is a bit too small anymore. I did get a good full-length wool coat last year, which worked reasonably well through the harsh 2010-2011 winter season.

All that said, these are the things I require for winter:

Wool tights. I have a few pairs -- in particular, Hues, which are fantastic. They last freakin' forever, even though they are kind of pricey. Worth it, though. You can usually find good deals on these, or similar brands, at TJ Maxx or Marshall's. A couple weekends ago I got very excited to find fleece-lined tights at TJ Maxx. When I got home I realized they are actually fleece-lined leggings. Which is fine, just different. Anyway, I tend to wear skirts and dresses to work through the cold season, so I need something warm on my legs.

Snow boots. I'm really waffling on whether I need to buy new boots this year, having just bought a new, rather hardcore pair in fall 2009. Snow boots are kind of a must in Cleveland in the winter, especially if you do any shoveling yourself or have to walk any measurable distance for your commute. The ones I have are kind of clunky, and are starting to leak, which is crazy. They've only gone through two seasons with me! I had a pair of Sportos that I bought at the shoe store that used to be in the Galleria that lasted me at least five seasons, and they were cheapos. (Let me lament the loss of those boots as well as the loss of retail from the Galleria).

Still, since I walk a lot on my commute I feel I should have a pair of proper snow boots. The old ones I guess I can save for snow shoveling and such (although I did hire a plow guy for the driveway this year, I'm pretty sure I'm still gonna be doing my sidewalk).

Just boots. I get the appeal. My problem is I have big calves. Huge, muscular calves. So I have to look for the wide-calf version, which are not always so easy to come by in the stores. I'm tempted to try Zappo's since their return policy is apparently great; it just seems like such a hassle when I could even more simply wander into a normal brick and mortar shoe store if not for these damn calves.

A twinset. Because apparently I have delusions of being Jackie O. I actually already have a couple, I just need a new one.

Good khakis. I am kind of really ambivalent about khakis but they are good for Casual Friday at the office. I bought a pair of wide-legged numbers from Anthropologie on sale a few weeks ago. They're okay but they are WAY long, like in order for them not to scrape the pavement I'd need to wear some serious heels. And I'm 5'8", which is pretty tall for regular pants.

New bras. My underwear is completely utilitarian; I like the 2-on-a-hanger plain jane numbers from Victoria's Secret Pink. I hate myself for buying something from the Pink line but what can you do?

A slip. It's time, really.

Flannel pajama pants. My sleepwear choices are as I have a couple of favorite pairs of pjs but sadly, they've seen better days.

Watched Pots

2011-11-01T21:20:00.003-04:00

So lauralynne posted yesterday about NaMoBloPo and it seems like a good idea. I did it last year, after all. And after a few months of really sporadic postings from me, you're surely itching for a daily barrage of complaints, right?

I am going to kick off the month by telling you about how it is almost 9 pm and I am still waiting for dinner, because I had the bright idea of baking fresh bread and making butternut squash soup tonight. The last time I made this soup and bread combo was in October 2010. Too long! It's now a mid-fall supper. This wouldn't be such a big deal had I gotten home at a more reasonable hour, but anymore I work late, and I had to stop at the grocery to buy chicken stock and carrots for the soup on the way home.

So I didn't really start cooking until 7 or so, which is fine when you're making something easy. But butternut squash soup involves chopping a number of vegetables. Including a hard-assed butternut squash. And fresh bread -- you have to give it time to rise. On the bright side, you do have multiple opportunities to PUNCH the dough. So that's something to be thankful for!

Here's my soup, finally all blended up.

It's not perfect straight out of the pot, although adding in a little plain yogurt and shaving a bit of cheddar over top helps. If only I had some bread RIGHT NOW to slather in butter and dip in it...

This seriously is making me rethink my bread-baking strategy, as I've been somewhat married to Bernard Clayton's basic white loaf. It turns out well, and since I'm most likely to be moved to bake bread on a weekend day, it's usually a non-issue, since it is a very easy recipe. However, sometimes I get ridiculous cravings. I have the Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes A Day book but haven't really ever cracked it open. Perhaps it's time to experiment.

Fresh Fork Market Haul, Week 22

2011-10-27T22:10:00.003-04:00

1 pack of berkshire pork chops, center cut and boneless. Approx 1 to 1.25 lbs

1 quart farmstead yogurt

8 oz aged cheddar cheese

1 head napa cabbage

1 quarter peck jonagold apples

1 bag of mixed salad/braising greens

2 count butternut squash

This was the last week of Fresh Fork for the season. I ultimately decided not to go with the winter CSA; couldn't justify the cost based on the stuff that seems to be included, much of which I would probably not eat. Which is fine -- I've got quite a bit in my freezer from the summer season (especially meat. I'm almost inclined to go with a veggies-only package next year although the meat is very good). And the farmer's market at Shaker Square is year-round, even though it's more sparse in the winter. You do what you can, though, right?

Some final thoughts:

Overall, I was really impressed with the quality and variety of food in this CSA. I felt like it was well worth the $25 per week cost. I felt encouraged, especially at first, to try to use up every bit I could, particularly the fresh stuff. I got more lax about that as the summer progressed and wasted more produce than I would like to admit. Definitely something to improve upon next season. I mean, in general. I'm lazy!

I appreciated the weekly newsletter that accompanied each haul. Especially the recipes -- it was nice to have inspiration for certain ingredient or to see how different items would work together.

A couple of times there were "theme" weeks: a pizza pack, a breakfast pack. I liked that although for me, these theme weeks hit right at points when I'd just bought bulk oats (breakfast) or stocked up on cheap Alesci's dough for pizza. Fortunately these are things that keep well, it just felt like bad timing on my part, is all.

I liked getting dairy and eggs but sometimes felt a bit overwhelmed by how much of that stuff I got. I don't go through milk very quickly and getting a half-gallon every other week was just too much for me. Same with eggs -- it takes me forever to go through a dozen, particularly in the summer when I'm not doing a lot of baking.

As for this week, I'm excited to finally have butternut squash. And the cheese! The cheddar cheese! I'm starting to get a little burned out on apples, though. And while I'm usually not a huge fan of pork chops, the ones in this week's package are lovely -- thick and meaty.

Fresh Fork Market Haul, Week 21

2011-10-23T19:53:00.001-04:00

1 dz pasture raised chicken eggs

1 lb breakfast patties

3 lbs yukon gold potatoes

1.5 lb bag untoasted organic oats

1 bunch beets with tops

1 lb fingerling potatoes

3 lbs turnips

Quarter peck Melrose Apples

The breakfast patties are a combination of sausage and bacon, but they are roughly the size of hamburger patties.

I've never cooked turnips! Haven't totally decided what to do with them yet.

Things I am Considering Making Today

2011-10-16T17:21:00.000-04:00

...If I can get off my ass and away from the teevee. Season One of The Walking Dead is on Netflix streaming. It's pretty mediocre, but I'm still kinda enjoying it.

For dinner tonight, I'm thinking about Heidi Swanson's Rustic Cabbage Soup. I want to start doing a soup a week since the colder weather's starting to settle in.

With the rest of the cabbage, since there is an amazing amount in the head I got this week: cabbage rolls and cabbage and noodles. Not today, but later in the week for sure.

This apple pear crisp from Eating the Beats is also appealing. I still have a buttload of apples and a couple of pears leftover from the CSA a couple of weeks ago. I like the idea of combining their forces. I don't have any whipping cream or vanilla ice cream in the fridge, though. Not that either of those things are necessary, they just make a crisp so much better.

I checked out a copy of The Indian Slow Cooker from the library; I'm thinking about the recipe for aloo gobi, since I have lots of potatoes and a nice-sized cauliflower in the fridge.

Now it is Time for the Obligatory Apple Post!

2011-10-15T14:45:00.000-04:00

It's fall in Northeast Ohio, and that means everyone must go apple picking then blog about it.

I have gone apple picking with my friend Spoosan (and assorted others) every year for the past five or six years. We've done different orchards, gone at different times (once we waited long into the season and got beat to the apples by the first frost and countless school groups; we ended up picking Concord grapes instead, which is not too terrible).

This year we headed out on a gloomy, awful Saturday. Originally, we'd planned to head out to a pumpkin festival with our friend Mandy, but some misinterpreted info led me to believe the pumpkin festival had been cancelled due to the weather (it hadn't been). We decided to be brave and drove out to Chesterland, to Patterson's Fruit Farm and later Eddy's Fruit Farm. They're right down the street from one another. Convenience!

Anyway, since it was so dreadfully awful outside, neither place was very crowded. We recoiled in horror at Johnny Appleseed at Patterson's:

I like that he presumes you would want to touch him! Sorry Johnny! You are too creepy! No worries!

The parking lot at Eddy's houses some interesting abandoned playground fixtures. Hello, sad turtle.

We went picking at Eddy's, which was delightful because we were literally the only people out and about. Which is both comforting and terrifying if you really think about it. Being alone in an apple orchard half an hour from closing time is like the perfect setup for a horror film.

We wandered and picked. Fortunately we haven't had a frost yet, and since it was the first weekend in October, not too many field trips had been taken to the orchard, so we basically had our run of the place. We stumbled upon a few rows of this:

My iPhone only kind of captures the beauty of those apples. The colors were just spectacular. "It's like being in that Christina Rosseti poem, 'Goblin Market,'" Spoosan remarked. Yep.

So with part of my haul, I decided to make slow-cooker applesauce, with a recipe from America's Test Kitchen's Slow Cooker Revolution. Applesauce is fairly easy on its own, but in a Crock-Pot it is even easier.

I didn't use all of the apples, maybe 8 or 9, all different kinds. The ATC recipe calls for sugar, but I didn't add any. The apples were so sweet already, and the cider I got from my CSA last week was super-sweet. I like my apples and apple-related products on the tart side. I figured if the applesauce needed to taste sweeter later, that's what table sugar is for.

I'm not big on unnecessary-seeming kitchen gadgets, but I highly recommend the apple corer. Makes things a lot easier.

Apples in:

Apples out:

Applesauce (adapted from here)

Ingredients:

3 lbs. apples (6-9), peeled, cored and cut into 1.5 inch chunks.

1 cup apple cider (more as needed)

2 T sugar (more as needed; I omitted this)

Pinch of salt

I added a dash of cinnamon and a dash of ginger.

Method:

Cut up your apples. Combine all the ingredients in the slow cooker. Cover and cook until apples are very soft and beginning to disintegrate -- about 4 hours on low.

Mash apples with potato masher. Season with sugar (or additional spices) to taste; consistency can be adjusted with extra apple cider.

Sauce will keep up to a week in a sealed container.

Fresh Fork Market Haul, Week 20

2011-10-13T20:21:00.002-04:00

1 lb ground veal

1 lb ground pork

1 pint grape tomatoes

1 large head of cabbage

1 bunch collard greens

1 head cauliflower

2 ct bell peppers

2 ct eggplant

So the veal, which is marked as "hamburger," is humanely raised. Per this week's email:

"I knew that a Fresh Fork veal product would have to be completely different, so I met with one of my grass grazed dairy farmers in Sugarcreek. Eli Schlabaugh belongs to a small co-op of grass grazed, organic dairy farmers known as Holmes County Heritage Grass Farms. They have their own brand of 100% grass grazed swiss cheese. I asked Eli what he did with the bull calves (just to state the obvious, bull calves are male and can't be milked for anything usable in cheese production). He said he sold them off at auction to traditional veal producers. I then asked Eli to keep a few and raise them for me.

He did. Our experiment, in my opinion, was a success. Eli bottle feeds the calves each day with their mother's fresh milk. The goal is to give the calve enough milk that he doesn't desire much else. The milk-only diet is what makes veal so pink and mild flavored. These calves also eat some grass for they are free-range on organic pastures at his farm. This makes the meat a little darker than traditional veal due to a higher iron content."

So, hm, veal you don't have to feel as badly about?

The cabbage is huge, so I'm wavering between doing cabbage rolls and stuffed peppers. Heck, I could probably do both. And I think cabbage rolls are on my My 25 list, so there ya go.

I'm happy to see eggplant again. And grape tomatoes!

So far I've felt sort of let down by the squash options. When I did City Fresh last year, I got lots of butternut and even some pie pumpkins toward the end. So far with Fresh Fork it's been acorns. Which are fine but I really like butternuts and pumpkins. So I might pay the farmer's market a visit this weekend to supplement. I have pumpkin roll on the brain, and butternut soup.

October 2011 Birchbox Haul

2011-10-12T11:08:00.000-04:00

So I decided to give Birchbox a whirl, mostly after having seen Mel and others sing its praises. If you are unfamiliar, it's a subscription service through which you received a box of 4-5 health and beauty samples each month, purportedly based on a profile you fill out (eye color, skin type, lifestyle, etc.). I like samples of things I might not otherwise buy, I like getting mail, and $10 is chump change. So I figured why not just do it.

My first box arrived yesterday, after shipping out last week and getting delayed a day by the fake Columbus Day holiday. Grr mail! Here's the haul:

My haul included AHAVA Mineral Foot Cream (generous travel-sized bottle); colorescience pro sunforgettable Mineral Powder Sun Protection SPF 30 (mineral sunscreen, whoopee!); Emo Laszlo TranspHuse Night Serum (this shiz costs $190 retail. For an ounce. No matter how good it is, I highly doubt I will be purchasing the full-sized version); Kissable Couture lip gloss; and the bonus was a small tin of Tea Forte Minteas. Which are tasty.

This little tube is worth more than I am on the black market (approximately $19, if you were wondering):

Overall, since I have no personal frame of reference for the monthly boxes, I'm pretty pleased. The packaging is nice, and even though I know there are 17 or so "set" boxes that get sent out to subscribers it still feels "personalized" to some extent.

There's really nothing in the box this month I would not use. Even the $190 serum -- sure I'm not buying it but I'll slather it on my face one night! Probably the same for the powder. I'm curious about mineral powders but probably will not shell out $50 for it even if I like it, I'll just look for a cheaper equivalent. I'm a sucker for good lotions, especially with dry skin season forthcoming; I'm also a sucker for a good lip gloss. And the mints will go nicely in my bag for not-so-fresh-breath moments.

I've read lots of complaints about Birchbox from users, as well as the raves that led me to give it a shot-- that the products get repetitive, that the boxes aren't as great as they used to be. There's really nothing in this box I know I *must* have, but that's the beauty of samples. I don't consider that a bust. I'll give it a few more months to decide whether it's something I want to keep up, but for now, I think it's fun to be surprised, and whenever I decide to slather myself with that miracle serum I'll go to bed feeling fancy but knowing I didn't get myself $190 in the hole!

Fresh Fork Market Haul Week 19

2011-10-06T21:00:00.000-04:00

1 half gallon apple cider

1/2 lb leaf spinach

1 bunch swiss chard

1 bunch leeks

1 head broccoli

4 oz piece brie

1 head kohlrabi

2 ct winter squash

Quarter peck pears (approx 4-5 depending on size)

Look at the pears!

So the brie and the pears are going together, perhaps in something dessert-ish. And good grief that's a lot of leafy greens to contend with!

The squash I got were acorns. I really need to get my paws on some butternuts.

I AM RE-EMERGING FROM THE VOID

2011-10-05T21:15:00.001-04:00

So life has been going on. I've either been too busy, too tired, or too lacking Internet access to blog. You'll have that, I guess. Some highlights of the past few weeks:

Hen and I celebrated our 1 year anniversary. He brought me dyed daisies from Heinen's and a pint of Jeni's ice cream, both of which were just perfect and sweet, according to Fatty Catty:

I have been on a bajillion conference calls at work, which has kept me busy and learning things, but a girl still has cravings:

I went to a party at a hair salon. Drinks in the shampoo sink:

I'm buying a new furnace. My current furnace is older than I am and dreadfully inefficient.

I'm trying to decide whether to do Fresh Fork's winter CSA, which runs biweekly from November through May. The haul each period is lighter, but relative equal value to the summer packages. It's $675 up front, though. Works out to about $45 every two weeks, which is just a little less than what 2 straight weeks of summer CSA costs me. It would involve more supplementation on my part.

Here is an example of one of the bags from last season:

1 head Jumbo White‐stem bok choy
- 1 head cheddar cauliflower
- 2 ct huba‐hubba squash
- 1 buttercup squash
- 1 red cabbage
- 1 dozen eggs
- 1 half gallon milk
- Quarter‐peck empire apples
- 1 sweet potato cheesecake
- Pork Combo: choose one -- Boston Butt 3 pks pork chops and 1 lb Italian Sausage 2 baby‐back ribs and 1 lb Italian sausage1 pack spare ribs and 1 lb
Italian Sausage 2 Tenderloins 4 pork hocks, 1 lb Italian sausage, and 1 lb bacon

The meat itself sounds like a good deal. And things like eggs and milk -- I don't go through those quickly. But, I don't know, there's the potential for so much waste. I'm going to have to mull on it some more.

Fresh Fork Market Haul, Week 18

2011-10-01T22:17:00.000-04:00

mit katze!

1 lb ground Italian sausage

1 large pizza dough shell, rolled in a ball and frozen

1 bag of heirloom corn chips

1 16 oz jar of Blaze Gourmet salsa

Approx 1.5 lb onions (about 2 medium candy onions)

Approx 2 lbs tomatoes for making sauce

2-3 hot banana peppers

1 pkg. mozzarella cheese

This week was the pizza package, which I guess is a popular set-up for Fresh Fork. I'm not sure where the pizza dough comes from, although the Lucy's dough I've bought from FF in the past is way good. I found it funny that this week was the pizza package, as I stopped in at Alesci's on Mayfield last Saturday to buy some of their awesome dough (3 packages for a dollar!). This dough is seasoned, though, so it looks promising. More homemade pizza this week! Which is great because I love pizza.

I will try to make sauce myself, although I have had some pretty dismal results in the past with homemade sauce. The CSA newsletter included a pretty easy recipe, so I'll go with that and see what happens.

I bought two add-ons this week: a jar each of roasted red peppers and roasted cherry tomatoes:

These are both supposed to be very good on pizza, so we'll try 'em out.

I can't believe there's only about a month left in the CSA season. It's gone fast! We got an email this week about Winter CSA signups. I'm considering it; it's $45 for a package every two weeks from November through May.

Fresh Fork Market Haul, Week 17

2011-09-22T21:25:00.002-04:00

1 whole pasture raised chicken

3 lbs sweet potatoes

1 bulb hardneck garlic

2 lbs concord grapes

6 ears sweet corn

1 lb green beans

1 sleeve leaf lettuce

This week's package seems way small, although the chicken is always good to have -- it'll make several meals next week -- and the grapes are super-nice. And check out how big this sweet potato is:

It was nice to get some garlic, too.

I'm hoping for more apples and butternut squash in the near future. I'm sort of over sweet corn.

Any ideas for the grapes? I know grape pie is a thing, but meh.

Hot Fruit!

2011-09-20T22:24:00.000-04:00

I've memorized pretty much every episode of Strangers With Candy, so I frequently have Jerri Blank moments. Tonight was one of them, as I watched a skillet of plums and sugar bubble on my stovetop. I'm serving hot fruit!

So I'm not in the mood to bake, really, but I wanted to do something with the lovely batch of plums I got from Fresh Fork last week before they rotted away in my produce drawer, as is sometimes the sad case at my house. I wanted an alternative to pastries or pie, so I turned to the How to Cook Everything app and found a recipe for Sauteed Apples or Other Fruit. Plums is another fruit! I'm in.

This is a very simple recipe designed to make a quick sauce, although Bittman recommends eating it hot or warm. While I found the sugary plums super-delicious right out of the pan, I decided to save them for oatmeal toppings. Which looks pretty boring when I type it out like that, but oatmeal deserves some flair every once in a while, too. Although I really could have used some whipped cream or a carton of good vanilla ice cream to change my mind. If I'd had either in the house I probably would have eaten the whole damn thing of hot fruit in one sitting.

Hot Fruit à la Bittman

1.5 lbs fruit of your choice, chopped
4 T unsalted butter
1/2 cup sugar (I used dark brown)
1/2 t cinnamon

Method:

Melt butter in large deep skillet over medium heat; add fruit, stir, turn the burner to low and cover for 10 minutes.

Uncover and add the sugar and cinnamon. Reduce heat to low and cook for 10 more minutes.

Serve hot! Or wait til later. It's really, really, really good, so you will probably not want to wait til later.

Fun fact: Black Sabbath is my favorite cooking music.

Links I Liked, 9-11 to 9-17-11

2011-09-18T21:05:00.000-04:00

I knew I shouldn't have fallen in love with Sam Sifton's snarky restaurant reviews! He has accepted the Times' National Editor position. Sniff. (Gawker)

Do you hate listening to other people chew? It's called misophonia. It's for real and is probably treatable! (NYT)

101 Cookbooks' Tortilla Salad is lovely but is filled with things I would probably never bother to chop up, because I am lazy.

Don't throw out that Parmesan rind! Unless yours is moldy and suspect, like mine usually is after months in the fridge! (Bon Appetit)

Chick Beer: yes that is a real thing, and no you should never, ever be seen with it in public. (So Good)

Pimento cheese is no longer the South's best-kept secret, but that's okay. We still have Benedictine spread. Chumps. (Serious Eats)

It's soup season, hooray! (The Kitchn)

Unpretentious wine facts from The Hairpin.

Fresh Fork Market Haul, Week 16

2011-09-17T16:34:00.000-04:00

1 pint mixed color cherry tomatoes
1 package chicken sausage (4 links, 1.25 lbs)
1 dz pastured chicken eggs
1 bunch carrots with tops
1 bunch turnip greens
2 ct green bell peppers
2 ct poblano chili peppers
1.5 lbs Stanley plums
1 hd broccoli

The plums are a real highlight because I actually have never had this particular variety of them. They are eensy and I'm thinking I might try something like a galette with them. They are a bit too tart to just eat on their own.

The broccoli is little! Just enough for one person.

And more of that chicken sausage. Since it's cooled down considerably, I'm really thinking about chili again...

Homemade Baba and Pita

2011-09-13T21:25:00.000-04:00

Both of these things are super-easy to make at home, not very hands-on, and work out to be pretty cheap in comparison to their storebought counterparts. And also more delicious. The baba is a good way to use up excess eggplant if you happen to be swimming in it like I have been lately.

I followed this recipe for the baba. I basically tripled the garlic cloves because I really like garlic, but you can adjust according to your tastes. You can also make it spicy by adding peppers, or hot sauce, or whatever.

Tahini might seem really extravagant, and it's true that it is kind of pricey in the regular supermarket, but you can usually find it as a bulk item in specialty markets. I bought the tahini that I had on hand at Gallucci's and even though it was a bit old, it was fine. It separates out if it sits for a while, so I took my immersion blender to it and it was fine.

I used a recipe from Bernard Clayton's New Complete Book of Breads for the pita. The baking process is pretty hands-on, but overall it goes pretty quickly, especially if you have a stand mixer.

Pita (yields 8 6-inch pieces)
adapted from Bernard Clayton's New Complete Book of Breads

Ingredients:

2 1/2 cups of bread flour
2 t salt
1 T sugar
1 pkg dry yeast
2 T olive oil
1 cup hot water

Method:

Measure 1 cup of the flour + the rest of the dry ingredients into your mixing bowl. Add the oil and hot water. Blend at low speed for 30 seconds, then increase to high speed for 3 minutes. Stop the mixer and stir in the remainder of the flour 1/2 cup at a time. You might need a little extra to make the dough a bit less moist. According to the book, the dough "should be a rough, shaggy mass that will clean the sides of the bowl."

Switch to your dough hook attachment and knead for about 6 minutes.

Meanwhile, preheat your oven to 500 degrees. After kneading's done, divide the dough into 8 equal pieces, roll into balls, and cover with a sheet of wax paper for about 20 minutes.

After that time's elapsed, flatted the doughballs with your hands, then roll them out thin with a rolling pin. They need to be rather thin.

To bake, place each flat of dough on a square of aluminum foil and place directly on the rack in the oven. This allows the air to circulate around the dough, and for the dough to puff out appropriately. Bake for about 8 minutes or until sufficiently brown.

Wrap all the pita in one large piece of loose foil to cool.

Serve with something delicious.

For instance, try some baba, which is delicious but looks really gross.

Where's Cookbook?

2011-09-10T20:02:00.000-04:00

I'm sure that is a question that has been KEEPING YOU WIDE AWAKE AT NIGHT.

I haven't really been doing much online, or in the kitchen of late, partially because I just started a new job, and partially because of blogging ennui. I'm not totally sure why I keep doing this.

Also I have been horrible and have cooked very little of note recently. There have been some nice meals out, notably trips to the Greenhouse Tavern and Lolita when Hen's sister was in town.

The new job is a big deal and has really been consuming my life since Tuesday, when I started. I like it a lot so far. The place I am working is in the same industry as the place I used to work, but it is quite different culturally. There is a lot to learn! So I've come home from work every single day this week totally exhausted. It's weird, because it's not like I had to relearn how to sit in an office for 8 hours after a long period of unemployment. Still, going through HR forms and learning how to use Microsoft Word (again) and unpacking my office has taken a lot out of me. And I haven't really started working yet!

Yesterday was the coupe de grace, as it was dead all day until the very end, when I got pulled into a project from our New York office that needed to get done ASAP before Monday. Of course! Right at 4:45. I ended up being at the office until 7:30 because of little things like "OMFG HOW DO YOU USE THE COPY MACHINE HERE" and "YOU ARE ACTUALLY ASKING ME THE WRONG QUESTION."

You'll have that, I guess. Despite outbursts of wackiness, which I think are kind of typical in my industry, the office I'm working in does make a good effort to feed us and treat us like human beings, which is really refreshing and good! One of the lawyers buys donuts and bagels for everyone on Fridays! For over 200 people! The office has a monthly free lunch and a monthly wine & cheese reception! They throw a big party for the staff every January! Very nice. My loyalty can totally be bought with these things.

There is a restaurant in the basement of the building that is run by the hospitality management group that operates Eat 'N Park restaurants, so they use it as a training center for people who eventually work at Eat 'N Park. It is your typical office cafeteria, with a deli station and salad bar and all that. I paid it a visit on Thursday and had a nice conversation with the guy who made my turkey sandwich. BFFs! I will probably end up eating here a lot, even though I kind of vowed to get back into the swing of taking a lunch again. We'll see how that goes.

There's also a newsstand which is quite glorious compared to the newsstand at my old office building. If I have never told the story about my 6-year-long war with the guy who runs that newsstand, please let me tell it to you sometime. The new newsstand sells tons of greeting cards, which will probably one day prove useful, but they also have fountain soda (!) and the widest range of canned sodas I've seen in a downtown office building. Oh boy I love soda! Yesterday I enjoed a can of Coke Zero Vanilla! I have never seen that anyplace else! And the guy working the cash register did not try to cheat me out of a penny like the guy in the old newsstand used to try to do. A+ will do business again!

I'm also closer to civilization in general at the new place, and am hopping distance from all the stuff on E. 4th and along Euclid. My boss took me to the Chocolate Bar for lunch one day. It was surprisingly good and he endeared himself to me by ordering an Arnold Palmer. Who does that? The guy I work for that's who!

Also everyone is friendly and I have a locker in the bathroom. I find that strange, as well as the industrial sized jug of Listermint that is seated on the sinks in each bathroom I've visited in the office. The tampons at the new place cost 10 cents each, which was a definite downer in my book, as I got spoiled in the last building by an unlimited supply of free menstrual products. But keeping my own stuff in my own locker makes it feel special. So I guess the two workplaces are a draw when it comes to that.

Tonight I'm staying in and making caponata and baba ghanoush out of the tons of eggplant I've gotten from Fresh Fork over the past two weeks. Tomorrow I'm having brunch at the Indian restaurant with some friends and heading to the Garlic Festival. I have no idea what to expect from the Garlic Festival, really, but my friend Mandy is super-excited about it. So stay tuned.

Fresh Fork Haul, Week 15

2011-09-08T21:09:00.000-04:00

1 lb pumpkin sage linguini

2 lb log of butter made from grass-grazed, organic milk

2 ct eggplant

2 red peppers

2 ct winter squash

Approx 1.5 lbs heirloom tomatoes

1 lb green beans

Quarter peck Gala apples

1 head leaf lettuce

This week is another good week! I am excited to try the pasta.

The rolled butter is a good inclusion -- it's expensive at the farmer's market or at the grocery. And although it's salted, it was still very exciting to see. I oven-roasted a couple of ears of corn from last week's haul and used some of the butter with those for dinner. Yum.

Also, I am excited to see apples. Galas especially. They are one of my favorite varieties.

And winter squash! I can't believe it's fall.

Fresh Fork Market Haul, Week 14

2011-09-02T09:28:00.000-04:00

6 ears super sweet Miria 301 corn

3 lbs yukon gold potatoes

1 lb grassfed ground beef

2 ct green bell peppers

1 lb wax beans

Approx 1.5 lbs Flaming Fury Lucky 13 and John Boy peaches (freestone peaches)

2 ct cucumbers

2 ct yellow summer squash

8 oz bag of kale

1 pint heirloom cherry tomatoes

I'm doing something with those peaches if it kills me;

OMG hello again, corn.

Links I Liked, 8/21 - 8/27/11

2011-08-29T13:18:00.000-04:00

This cat playing 1984 Madonna is really the only thing that kept me going this week. (Jezebel)

Cast iron pizza from King Arthur's Flour. I can attest this results in one delicious pizza.

Speaking of pizza, and when am I not, here is a trick birthday cake that is actually a pizza in disguise! I like this idea. I think I would rather have pizza than birthday cake any day of the week. Including my birthday. (CRAFT)

New York Magazine on how to cook placenta. IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING. Note: not a pretty sight in the slideshow.

Cookie Monster's early work. (Mental Floss)

Recipes from the Simpsons, tried out in real life. Corn nog! (Jezebel)

The guys at The Bitten Word present their Pad Thai challenge. Which is better, homemade or delivery? I know I made it myself once, and while it was labor-intensive on the back end, I think takeout is probably the way to go. Unless you really, really, really like Pad Thai.

Pesto, six ways. (Devour the Blog)

Thank you to Mamacita for posting about Textbook, the blog that imagines how fictional and historical characters would dress today. (What Would Jane Austen Do?)

White-clad New Yorkers eat a formal outdoor picnic lunch. Yep. (The Atlantic)

Grilled cheese martinis. JUST SAY NO, KIDS. (Jezebel)

In Transition, With Bonus Happy Music

2011-08-26T18:17:00.001-04:00

Stuck in my head since like Tuesday. I can't wait for this album and I can't wait for their show in Cleveland in October:

In a few days I will begin my brief tenure of Funemployment -- I have five days between the Current Job and the New Job. That means five days without health insurance, wheee! What troubles can I get up to? How can I injure myself most effectively! Stay tuned.

Actually, in that time, I plan to do some mega house-and-yard work and maybe get a pedicure, because I have never had a real professional grown-up one, ever, and I am tired of feeling like Bigfoot. And over Labor Day weekend it's wiener dog race time at Oktoberfest!

Other than those things, though, I can't say I have much in mind. It's going to blow my mind to be in between jobs, just as it is going to blow my mind to start something new. I haven't had a new job for ten years (well, I've gone through several positions at the Current Job, due to luck and promotion, but I haven't gone through this "OMG a new place!" stuff for quite some time). I started at Current Job just about two weeks before 9/11. So effectively this job defined my 20s/early 30s, a whole entire decade of my life, which seems like a lot now but probably won't when I'm old and grey. And now I'm moving into something else right along the same schedule, the same time of year, when the air is starting to get crisp and the days are clear and vibrant. In another month it'll turn rainy and grey, just like it did ten years ago. Very freaky, but very good at the same time.

The company announced my departure in the weekly office newsletter today and even though that is "published" around 5 p.m. I still had a few phone calls and drop-ins and emails from people wishing me well. People seem surprised and happy for me, and I guess that's how I feel too. I'm nervous about change -- when I was applying for this job and freaking out about whether it was a good idea or not my wise friend Christine said: "Well it's change and you do not like change. When you are confronted with change it is like giving a cat a bath. SOMEONE'S ARM IS GONNA GET CLAWED UP."

That is me in a nutshell, there.

Fresh Fork Market Haul, Week 13

2011-08-25T22:04:00.000-04:00

1 yellow doll watermelon
2 ct eggplant
1 quart hot Hungarian peppers
1 lb honey
1 ~~cantaloupe~~ demon stench of death melon
1 lb heirloom tomatoes
1 lb slicing tomatoes
2 summer squash
1 quart baby pepper mix, sweet and hot
Quarter peck golden supreme apples

Yeah, so I'm not a fan of cantaloupe, at all. However, someone reminded me that I have eaten prosciutto-wrapped melon before and enjoyed it. So that's a possibility. Otherwise I'm giving that fucker away.

The mixed peppers are super-cute:

The Fake Bed Bath & Beyond: With Bonus Cat Pictures

2011-08-24T23:20:00.000-04:00

For the past week or two Marvel has been filming the new Avengers movie in downtown Cleveland, which is really exciting if you enjoy gawking at fake 'splosions or spying celebrities hanging around the city. Otherwise it is just traffic jams and production assistants yelling at you to get out of the way when you are walking the fuck to your goddamned job that inconveniently happens to be located just down the street from where they are filming the fake apocalypse, so so sorry. Anyway, it is good for the local economy and puts Cleveland on the map and stuff, even though the scenes that are being shot here are set in New York and in fact the streetscapes were made up to look like what flyover country thinks New York looks like (Times Square) instead of what Cleveland actually does look like, which is only slightly less marred than it will appear in the film, starring as New York.

One of the ways they have had to make Cleveland look like New York is to outfit various empty storefronts to look like actual storefronts, you know, the kind with stores in them. We actually do not have a whole lot of street-level retail in downtown Cleveland. I mean besides the pawn shop and the CVS where I buy extra pantyhose and Munchos on my lunch break. I was walking back to my office from a meeting at Playhouse Square after work tonight and I saw this on the corner of E. 9th and Vincent:

I felt a faint glimmer of hope. Oh boy a Bed Bath and Beyond just down the street from my office! I could go shopping for everyone's bridal shower gifts on my lunch break! I could have a chocolate fountain on my desk! And if it broke I could go buy another one practically immediately!

Then I realized that if they were actually putting in new retail downtown, I would have known already, so I chalked this one up to The Avengers. While more actual retail downtown would be mighty nice for an office drone like me, it is really about giving the Avengers what they need. Captain America's day wouldn't be complete without the opportunity to save a Bed Bath and Beyond from destruction at the hands of whatever Captain America's enemy is. It's Skeletor, right?

The other thing that tipped me off was the fact that a police officer more or less stared me down while I took two crummy iPhone pictures of the fake Bed Bath and Beyond. Don't worry, officer, I am not going to post those pictures on my movie spoiler blog! Just on this thing!

Here are some pictures of Maggie representin'. My cat has nothing to do with fake retail, The Avengers, or that chocolate fountain I've been wanting for my desktop, but she sure is frigging cute:

What I Did With My Weekend

2011-08-22T13:02:00.000-04:00

My Friday night was supposed to be Introvert's Night In, which is an awesome way to spend a Friday night when you are an introvert and need to recharge. Hen was at the Browns game and no one had any Friday night plans that involved me, so I looked forward to an evening of Netflix movies, Hershey's chocolate and nail-painting, on my ass on my couch.

However, this week, probably due to Mercury Retrograde, I was plagued by toilet problems. What I thought had fixed the toilet earlier in the week actually did not work so on Friday I had to go to the dreaded Home Depot in Cleveland Heights to buy a new ball-cock assembly*. Which is really not a big deal to replace, an idiot like me can do it, but it took a significant portion of my precious Friday evening. And I ended up having to do another repair on Saturday morning due to a loose, corroded screw that needed to be replaced because water started leaking through it overnight. This repair involved two trips to two different hardware stores and a "friendly" dressing-down from the guy at the Ace for going to Home Depot in the first place.

I hate toilets but I can fix them pretty good now.

The night was redeemed by a nice homemade BLT for dinner, a snarky viewing of No Impact Man with Kerry via Twitter, and a good chunk of chocolate. I got real fed up with No Impact Man after a while and decided to watch The Exorcist, to which I fell asleep. It seemed like a natural transition. I hadn't seen The Exorcist before, but I didn't really find it scary, just disturbing. And it left me worried what if I, too, am possessed. These are the things that keep me up at night.

Saturday was better. There were inflatable dinosaurs, for one thing.

One of Hen's co-workers hosted a work party at his house, poolside, hence the inflatable T-Rex. Afterward, I had enough time to go to Ulta and buy nail polish! Look at my preciouses:

OPI Mermaid's Tears, butter London Rosie Lee, OPI Are We There Yet?

On Sunday I actually sat down and painted my nails and also clawed into a package of Starbucks' Via Iced Caramel Coffee. That would be instant caramel-flavored coffee mix. It is not very good, but I should have expected that from a Starbucks product I guess.

I also shopped online for more nail polish although I did not buy any! I just filled up my cart and when I got bored I walked away from my laptop. That is my favorite kind of shopping.

*Best name for a toilet part EVER.

Links I Liked, 8-14 to 8-20-11

2011-08-21T16:02:00.000-04:00

A Pie for Mikey is a blog project -- a meme? -- that went down last week which I found very touching. Food blogger Jennifer Perillo lost her husband, Mike, very suddenly and as a tribute, a whole bunch of bloggers baked his favorite peanut butter pie in tribute, the recipe to which Perillo shared on her blog. I didn't get wind of this until after the fact, but what a nice way to pay honor to someone. I hope the support of other food bloggers helps make Jennifer's loss just a little bit easier. (Will Write for Food)

My friend Sarah, you might have heard of her, is a prize-winning brownie and oatmeal cookie baker. You can read about her secrets to County Fair success here.

My other pal Jess offers produce storage tips. (Urban Sacred Garden)

Cake batter martinis: another abomination on the rocks! (BA Daily)

How to make cold-brewed coffee, the fussy New England cooking magazine way. (America's Test Kitchen)

That Cookie Monster/Tom Waits mashup you all went apeshit over on the Facebook. (Mental Floss)

Chez Panisse menus! In a book! Drool! (Aesthetic Outburst)

My Mother, the Hamburger U. Professor, from Salon.

Fresh Fork Market Haul, Week 12

2011-08-18T23:44:00.000-04:00

1 pint blackberries

1 quart yogurt

1 lb nitrate free bacon from Berkshire hogs

Approx 1.5 lbs slicing tomatoes

1 head leaf lettuce

3 lbs new potatoes, red norland variety

1 bunch swiss chard

1 pint heirloom cherry tomatoes

Approx 1.5 lbs peaches

I also purchased some milk.

The weekly Fresh Fork newsletter super-emphasized the bacon, because I guess people have been asking about it all summer. I can live with or without bacon but I am kind of excited for this stuff because guess what. BLTs.

The blackberries are really, really, really good. A bunch of them fell out in my tote bag as I drove home. Those are not pictured above because I ate them out of the bottom of the bag. OH WELL.

Charlotte appreciated the lettuce:

The potatoes look good, too. They are little red things, with tender skin, apparently.

Busy Bees

2011-08-17T11:45:00.000-04:00

It has been nothing but crazy around here lately.

First of all, I have a new job! Well, not yet. I don't start until the beginning of September, but the interview/negotiation process has been all-consuming since maybe the end of July. I'm pretty excited about the new opportunity, though, but adjusting to slight changes in schedule, commute, etc. are bound to make things a bit more hectic at home for the next few weeks. Bear with me, please!

This weekend, Hen and I took a trip to Kentucky to clean some stuff out of my dad's house, so since Sunday afternoon there have been piles of boxes and loose furniture haunting my dining and living rooms. But! I am pleased to report that my mom's china hutch is now being used as a liquor cabinet, I am no longer using a nightstand as a TV/DVD player stand, and soon I will be reorganizing my books and cookbooks, et al. Also I am going to try my hand at refinishing some furniture! Stay tuned for a furniture bonanza post!

I started officially "training" for the 10K I am running in October. I say "training" because the schedule I'm using isn't far off from what I have been doing already. It's just a gradual increase to 6 miles over a few weeks. On a side note, I can't believe October is only 8 weeks away. That seems impossible to me.

Brilliantly, my friend and I have planned another friend's bachelorette/shower the day before the race. Therefore, I will probably be a driver at the event. Which is fine because last night Hen and I went out to the bar to eat dinner and watch the Indians game and I couldn't make it through a pint and a half of beer. I am becoming a lightweight in my old age. Hooray!

After work tonight I have a haircut planned but then I am going to make a real concerted effort to work through some of my produce so it doesn't just rot in my fridge.

I'm thinking I will try a small batch of tomato sauce, oven-roasted corn, a squash bake or gratin (probably the gratin) and possibly a watermelon granita. That's not impossible to handle.

I'm making freakin' ice cream this weekend.

Fresh Fork Market Haul, Week 11

2011-08-11T22:03:00.000-04:00

Such a big haul, it barely fits on my kitchen table!

1 4-oz package goat chevre cheese from Lucky Penny Farm (Somehow I got two)

1 [gigantic] watermelon

6 ears corn

1 pint heirloom cherry tomatoes (these are the tomatoes I've been waiting for. Flavor explosion!)

2 ct zucchini

2 ct yellow summer squash

Approx 1.5 lbs red slicing tomatoes

Quarter-lb basil

2 green bell peppers

1 large black opal eggplant

1 large candy onion

Extras (to make up for vacation two weeks ago):

2 2-count balls of whole wheat pizza dough (From Lucy's Sweet Surrender)

2 lbs. fresh spinach linguini from Ohio City Pasta

This was like the best week ever, so far. That watermelon is so big! I can't decide what to do with it! Maybe a granita in addition to just straight-up eating. One thing I really miss from City Fresh last year are the yellow watermelons. And I believe it's been almost a year since I've had watermelon, period. Can't wait.

The chevre is really smooth and delicious. I'm going to have to work really hard to use up all 8 ounces of it, though. I have a feeling it won't freeze very well due to the texture.

The pizza dough was a really nice bonus:

The way Fresh Fork works, if you go on vacation you're allowed to either double up in a subsequent week or order "extras" that total up to the value of a week's share. So since I missed two weeks ago, I have $25 to play with. I still have a balance, but wanted to try out the pizza dough this time around. And the Ohio City pasta is so easy to cook and so delicious, and it's always good to have some in the freezer.

I really, really like the pizza dough. I was just discussing dough with Sarah the other day, which is kind of what inspired me to order it with my "play money." That and my insatiable desire for pizza. We both like to buy it from Alesci's because it's dirt-cheap there, and pretty decent, too. This whole wheat version from Lucy's was more expensive -- I think it was $3.50 for two balls of dough -- but it's super-tasty. I don't think I've ever seen it at Lucy's stand at the farmer's market so I'll have to ask if they sell it in-store at all. It would be nice to stock up on for pizza nights.

Of course I made pizza for dinner after photographing the haul, which I made a dent in by using half the eggplant, one of the zucchinis, half the onion, one of the green peppers, some of the grape tomatoes from last week, and a Hungarian pepper from last week, too. And the basil. So, so good. This is the best time of the year!

Angel Food Cake, Round II

2011-08-10T11:03:00.001-04:00

I made another attempt at angel food cake, just like I said I would. After all, there was something like a $2 cash prize on the line at the fair!

Instead of the horrid recipe from The Simple Art of Perfect Baking, this time around I went with a more reasonable-sounding recipe, lifted from Baking Illustrated and in turn, Cooker Girl's blog. THANK YOU COOKER GIRL.

I bought a flour sifter at the Target on Saturday morning, and while it did give the flour and sugar a nice texture to work with, it was kind of a bitch getting all the flour out. More or less everything else went well in preparation, and from the very beginning it was obvious that a whole dozen egg whites was actually the way to go. The batter filled my cake pan perfectly and I slid it into the oven.

And it baked well! When I thought it was done, after doing the "press gently so it springs back" test and the "stick a bamboo skewer in that fucker" test, I got it right out of the oven and placed the pan upside down on an empty wine bottle to cool.

I went to crash on the couch, because it was hot, and I was exhausted as I was also baking my oatmeal cookies for the fair and making a no-bake cheesecake for a friend's party.

A few minutes after settling down onto the couch I heard a "plop" from the kitchen. The "plop" could have meant only one of two things:

1. One of the cats had done something to the cake;

2. The cake had fallen on its own accord.

So I hotfooted it into the kitchen and this is what I found:

Yeah, it actually was undercooked. Which says to me that in the future, I need to disregard the instructions that came with my cake pan to bake at an oven temp 25 degrees below what the recipe calls for. My oven tends to cook cooler, and I know that. But I am a big dummy sometimes!

At this point I didn't have enough time or energy to do another cake, and I didn't really want to run out and buy another dozen eggs, so I kissed my dreams of winning a prize in the county fair good-bye. At least in the angel food competition!

Sad trombone.

I did manage to finish a batch of oatmeal cookies. And on Sunday morning I picked Sarah up and we headed out to the Fairgrounds together, where we were greeted by this:

I do not understand where the real Jersey cows are in Cuyahoga County, but whatevs.

Nice udders:

It seemed like there were fewer entries in the culinary arts categories this year than last year, and there were even some empty categories. For example, had my cake not died a horrible death the following category could have been mine:

Really.

Here is the heavy competition in the oatmeal field. I won't be entering this again next year. Unless I happen to win this year:

I'm going to find out how we did today, because Spoosan and I are going to go wild at the fair! I am going to eat so much goddamned carnie food! It's going to be the best day ever!

Links I Liked, 7-31 to 8-06-11

2011-08-07T23:05:00.000-04:00

Summer corn salad from 101 Cookbooks.

The Healthy Breakfast Flowchart. Where is the Cookie Crisp? (The Kitchn)

The Nourished Kitchen tells us how to stock a traditional foods pantry. I would personally skip the demon coconut!

The beehive cake on Devour the Blog is pretty darn impressive.

How to clean your appliances. Yeah, I need to do that. To my oven in particular. Poor oven. (Apartment Therapy)

Everything you ever wanted to know about water and hydration but were afraid to ask. (EatingWell)

Gawker on child foodies! What!

Looking for some beach reading? Here are three interesting accounts of cannibalism in literature! (NPR Books)

Mental Floss uncovers the truth behind General Tso's identity.

Fresh Fork Market Haul, Week 10

2011-08-05T08:30:00.000-04:00

1 lb mild Italian Sausage, ground

8 oz grassfed gouda cheese

1 bunch leeks

1 pint cherry tomatoes

Approx 1 quart hot Hungarian peppers

2 patty pan squash

1.5 lb slicing tomatoes

1 pint blueberries

1.5 lb peaches

I skipped last week's haul because of the Wisconsin trip. This week was quite a manageable amount of food. Fresh Fork warned us in the weekly newsletter that melons are on their way; now I can start bitching about how much I hate cantaloupe again.

That Italian sausage looked pretty good, and Charlotte Two Thumbs agreed:

Gimme, gimme!

For dinner, I whipped together a fast pasta dish with some of the sausage, some of the large tomato, olives, onion from two weeks ago, and garlic. The sausage is a winner. I might use some of it to stuff some of those peppers, 'cause I don't really know what to do with them otherwise. I've also been craving pizza a lot lately so some of it might find its way as a topping, too.

The peaches are gigantic! I'm sorry that their season is almost over.

The grape tomatoes are almost perfect. Another week or two and they'll be extremely delightful.

Angel Food FAIL

2011-08-04T20:30:00.000-04:00

OK, so one or all of several things probably went wrong in making my angel food cake for the fair -- thankfully this was just a trial run. I still have a dozen eggs in the fridge ready to make everything right:

1. I did not beat the egg whites quite long enough (this is tricky because I am a pretty novice egg-white-beater);

2. The recipe I followed (from The Simple Art of Perfect Baking) was janky;

2a. I followed the janky recipe in a janky way;

3. I need to buy a sifter for my dry ingredients, and probably a scale;

4. I should not have made so much noise in my kitchen while the damn cake was baking;

5. The humidity yesterday was like 5000 percent.

It's true that I've had issues with recipes from The Simple Art before. Things that just didn't turn out. And this recipe, compared to some other angel food recipes I studied, was very different. For one thing, it called for a springform pan. I used a traditional tube pan. And it only called for 7-8 eggs. Almost every basic recipe I found called for at least a dozen.

In the end, the cake was okay. It tasted like angel food, but was a lot more dense than angel food typically is. The consistency of most store-bought angel food I've had is pretty chewy. I don't know if that is necessarily always true of a home-baked cake, because I can't recall if I've ever had a real live angel food cake not made from a mix.

I wish I could feel more excited about the angel food cake, because I am trying to fill out the My 25 list with it, and also I am trying to win cash money at the county fair with it. I picked it for the list because hey it's an unusual technique and all, and I'm pretty good with just normal cakes. Something that is basically whipped egg whites is another story.

But here's my thing about angel food cake, really: it smells like egg whites. Do you know what I mean? Eggs just have that...smell...that lingers. It is not an odor really, and it's not the eggs themselves, but they have a very particular something-something that kind of bothers me. Back in the summer of 1988, when we had that really terrible drought, my hometown's water reservoir really depleted and fish started to die in the water, and when it came out of the tap it had this weird smell that is not unlike the lingering smell of egg whites. It always makes me gag a little. So while the cake is delicious and sweet and would be a pretty great example of angel food cake if not for its density, I can't really find myself getting behind it.

Does anyone else know what I'm talking about or am I just crazy? I mean, granted.

Blue Moon Fail, Sort Of

2011-08-02T20:04:00.000-04:00

OK so I did not get any blue moon ice cream in Wisconsin. The weekend was just too jam-packed with wedding and family stuff. I really wish we'd had more time to hang out with Hen's family because the vacation house was awesome. And by that I mean it was air-conditioned!

We got in on Friday and had lunch with Hen's mom, sister and sister's boyfriend, hung out and waited for his Nana and aunt to show up, drank a bunch, and headed out to dinner with the whole gang. Not to brag, but I saved the day by making a reservation with OpenTable, and we ended up at a nice Italian place that coincidentally used to be a Playboy club. I hope they sanitized the carpeting after the Playboy club moved out!

Saturday was the wedding, and while we technically had time to kill between the ceremony and the reception, we had Nana in the car and Hen had to help his dad host cocktails at his uncle's house.

So I didn't get any ice cream then either.

At the pre-reception cocktail hour I stuffed my face with meatballs:

One notable highlight of the wedding reception was the fact that not only was there a wedding cake that the bride and groom cut into per tradition, but there were also individual cake on each table. An edible centerpiece! I love stealing centerpieces at weddings!

It was a very tasty cake, chocolate with a peanut butter mousse, and we ate like half of it, but to my disappointment the waitress took it away when she cleared the table as the dancing started. I never saw the remnants again. We were even encouraged to steal cake from our neighbors, as there were different varieties floating around. Well-played.

We did stop at a cheese shop on the way out of town on Sunday and sampled our little hearts out. I tried to buy some curds and sausage, but the service was kind of rude, so in the end we just grabbed toothpicks of spicy curds and drove off into the sunset.

But!

Monday I took the day off work and my friend Christine tweeted the following:

"Just had this for the first time. It's made from smurf breast milk: http://t.co/yjowSHi"

Yeah, in Cleveland.

And it so happened I was picking Christine up from work so that we could meet the other Cleveland Review editors for cocktails, so I demanded to be let in to her workplace to try the ice cream, which her co-worker had procured from Meijer.

We don't have one of those in Cleveland, which makes it all the more strange.

So I scuttled into the kitchenette at Christine's workplace and was offered a spoonful of Blue Moon:

It was okay. It didn't taste like Superman as I recalled it, but ice cream is ice cream, right? I think it would have been more phenomenal had I been able to eat that spoonful in Wisconsin, not in an office building in Cleveland. I'm sure that's the difference.

WISCONSIN AHOY

2011-07-28T20:59:00.000-04:00

This weekend we are taking a whirlwind trip to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin for Hen's cousin's wedding. His parents are renting a house at the golf course community there at Geneva National, which is also where the fancy pants reception will be taking place. Vacation with the Hens seems like an exercise in decadence. We were reminded to bring beach towels. And Hen was reminded, by his mom, to bring swim trunks. The conversation went something like this:

Hen's Mom: Don't forget to pack your bathing suits in case you want to go in the hot tub!

Hen: I'll just wear my boxers.

Hen's mom: Pack your bathing suit!

Hen's mom is packing a whole case of wine for the family! His 96 year old Nana is staying with us, too! Hen and I will be sharing a trundle bed! Doesn't that sound romantic! I hope no one drowns.

The rest of the family will be there for a whole week, Wednesday to Wednesday, but since Hen recently started a new job and doesn't have any vacation time to spare, we're making the best of it with a long weekend. It will be busy and there will be lots of wedding-related stuff going on.

However.

I am gonna maximize the trip's potential and we will be tracking down Blue Moon ice cream, which I have never had but whose virtues I have heard a lot about.

Yeah, that is basically all I have to say in preparation for this trip. I hope my boyfriend remembers his swim trunks and OH HAI GIMME YOUR MYTHICAL ICE CREAM WISCONSIN.

Now, all I know about Blue Moon is that it is fruit-flavored. And blue. And only really available in the Upper Midwest.

Which brings me to another point: Superman ice cream. I remember Superman ice cream, from my childhood long ago, as being vanilla flavored, but I had a really heated argument many years back with a boyfriend at the time about that factor. He swore up and down that Superman was fruit-flavored. Lemony. Which is how Blue Moon's flavor is described, by the way. This was actually a very sore point for the two of us and we may or may not have gotten pretty close to a shouting match about it. In public.

We polled our friends. Some other Northeast Ohio natives also remembered it being fruity, but there were a couple who agreed with me that Superman was vanilla. And most of my childhood friends remembered the vanilla flavor, too.

I suppose that actually, there could have been any number of strains of Superman ice cream out there. I'm always tempted, on the rare occasion when I'm in a UDF or custard shop for a scoop, to try a taste of the Superman, but I'm afraid it will disappoint me. If it tastes like fruit it won't be the same.

And I hope Blue Moon doesn't disappoint me, either. Seriously, I've heard people rave about it.

I want to know what love is, Wisconsin. Show me.

White Girl Chicken 'N Waffles

2011-07-25T20:58:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I finally roasted one of my CSA chickens. I did it with the Crock-Pot using America's Test Kitchen's "Chicken in a Pot" recipe from their recent Slow Cooker Revolution. It turned out well and was easy-peasy so maybe with the second chicken I'll even blog about it. It just didn't cross my mind yesterday.

Anyway, I roasted the chicken, which left a lot of leftovers. For lunch today, I put a few chunks in with the leftover Spanish rice Hen insisted we have with dinner last night (it was actually good). And I didn't come home from work planning to eat more leftover chicken. In fact, after I got off work I had my mind set on pizza rolls, of all things. Probably because I was discussing pizza rolls with my friend Betsy on Twitter the other day. I worked out and stayed strong and decided to actually cook when I got home.

The first thing that came to mind when I pulled in the driveway was "use leftover chicken." The second thing was "waffle iron." And then I realized I still have lots of CSA cornmeal, so I decided to make a more savory-type waffle and pair it with a little cold sliced chicken. Maple syrup from Fresh Fork would round out the do-gooder-ness of the meal.

I used a very simple recipe for Cornmeal and Oat Waffles from a cookbook I picked up at random a few years ago called Breakfast in Bed. I did not eat the waffles in bed, although I probably could have.

Cornmeal and Oat Waffles (adapted from Breakfast in Bed)

makes 6 waffles

2 eggs
1 3/4 cups buttermilk
1/4 cup butter, melted*
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup stone-ground yellow cornmeal
1/2 cup old-fashioned oats
2 t baking powder

Whisk the wet ingredients together; add the dry ingredients; mix just until smooth. Make waffles per your waffle iron's instructions.

*Note that the recipe does not call for any salt. I used unsalted butter and my waffles were pretty bland, so I'd recommend adding maybe 1/4 t if you do not have any salted butter on hand.

I halved the recipe because it's not like I needed a half dozen waffles looking me in the face.

Dress your waffle as you see fit -- butter, maple syrup, whatever. Place some chicken slices on top and eat.

Yeah, it's a pale imitation of restaurant chicken and waffles, but it works for me because 1. I'm afraid of frying things and b. I may or may not have eaten this on my couch using a J. Crew catalog as a placemat. I'm not very fancy. But don't let that stop you from running wild and free!

Links I Liked, 7-17 to 7-23-11

2011-07-24T12:00:00.000-04:00

The Atlantic profiles Alyson Thomas, who draws cute little butchery drawings and diagrams. Her wiener dog diagram is notable.

Read about how our banana supply is possibly doomed! And it is all our fault for being such creatures of habit! (NPR)

EatingWell has a good story on dehydration, which is particularly relevant in light of the nasty heat wave most of us in the Midwest and East have been experiencing the past few days/weeks. Water intake is real important even when you aren't particularly thirsty, yo.

Aunt Sissy Si's pimento cheese sandwich. Someone on Twitter mentioned the other day that the Greenhouse Tavern has a pimento cheese sandwich. I was not aware of this and would like to try their take on it to see if it can compete with the stuff we got served in my school's cafeteria on chili/chicken soup day (you could choose between pimento cheese or peanut butter and honey!). Good memories. Yum. (Design*Sponge)

Ice cream cake-related rampage at a McDonald's! You don't say! (Gawker)

Apartment Therapy asks: can you fold a fitted sheet? NO I CAN'T!

Will Write for Food has an interesting post on a blogger who found her content appearing on another blogger's site, along with some other weird mirror behavior. What do you guys think about this? The way it's framed, it sounds pretty blatant, and I wouldn't really blame the original blogger for calling the copycat out.

David Sedaris in the Guardian on actual Chinese food. Skeevy, but hilarious.

Fresh Fork Market Haul Week 8

2011-07-21T16:37:00.000-04:00

1 bunch multi-color swiss chard

1 pint maple syrup

1 package boneless pork chops, approximately 1 lb

1 quarter peck Lodi apples (5-6 apples)

Approx 1.5 lbs cling peaches

1 candy onion

1 bunch mustard greens

1 lb beans, either green, purple, dragon tongue, or yellow

2 slicing cucumbers

This was quite a colorful week! Purple onion, all the fantastic colors of the Swiss chard, pretty peaches.

I was kind of hesitant about this week's haul because I am not a huge fan of pork chops. In fact, I pretty much loathed them throughout adolescence and as such have never cooked them. I know: waaaaah. But these are fancy-dancy Berkshire chops, and they are really, really pretty. So I'll give them a shot. Maybe I've grown out of my staunch hatred of pork chops.

The Lodi apples are not straight-up eating apples. The CSA newsletter included a recipe for apple chutney to accompany the chops. So we'll try that, or maybe a simple applesauce.

This week's peaches are a little fatter and nicer than last week's.

I got dragon beans in my share! I have never had these before but they are so cool-looking:

Much prettier in person, I promise.

The maple syrup is great, but the bottle is a bit weird. It's like a plastic honey bottle. It leaked a little in my bag. I go through syrup very slowly and still have most of a bottle of Geauga syrup from last year's CSA in my fridge, so maybe I'll find some use to hurry my way through this stuff. Maybe candy, maybe ice cream? If it ever cools off.

Beating the Heat, Lead Paint Cookbook Style

2011-07-20T21:05:00.000-04:00

Because it is so dreadfully hot all of a sudden -- imagine that, it's the end of July! -- I bought a stack of cotton dresses at Target last night, because I actually have very few of them. I also wandered into the sleepwear section to think about buying a housedress. I actually have been thinking about that for quite a while, because I hate wearing pants when I am at home alone and it's hot, but I also think it is a little weird to wander around my house in my underpants, especially with all the doors and windows open.

So I found something. I affectionately have been calling it a muumuu, but guess what, it is actually a "chemise" if you are to believe Target's website. It looks something like this:

Thanks Target.

It is just about the ugliest thing ever -- I mean that print is hideous up close and personal -- but it only cost $13 and it is perfect for wearing around the house when it's hot and I don't want to think about pants.

The thing is, it was the last one on the rack that was not a small, and it is an extra large, so it is kind of too big. And by "kind of" I mean I am pretty much swimming in it, but whatever, I didn't buy it for a fashion show. It is not meant to be flattering.

I thought, this thing is so ugly! I do not feel attractive in it at all! I thought maybe The Hen would be repelled by it, but oh no he was not.

"Get your paws out from under my muumuu," I said at one point in the night. WORDS THAT SHOULD NEVER BE SPOKEN.

I am pretty confident that he loves me. And I'm sorry if that is gross.

So besides wearing my new muumuu around the house (and out in the yard, too, to water my plants!) I have been feeding myself some warm weather foods. Specifically, foods that do not require me to heat up the stove or the oven, because I want anything but that right at this moment. Cheap Healthy Good posted a nice round-up of 68 healthy no-cook recipes this week, and I'm mulling over some of those. And on Monday I found this recipe for Roast Beef Summer Rolls on Food & Wine's website. I made those tonight:

Verdict: good. The dipping sauce especially. Most of these are going in to the freezer.

I also made a very simple panzanella:

Panzanella is cool because it is very forgiving. I used tomatoes, red onions, yellow squash, bread, capers, red wine vinegar, olive oil, fresh basil, and a little Parmesan cheese. But you can do whatever. Just don't forget bread and tomatoes.

I can now say I'm pretty well-stocked for the rest of this heatwave. I have a vacation day tomorrow and I'm considering doing a slow cooker roast chicken, but I'm not sure if that will happen or not. I do have my ice cream maker attachment in the freezer. Salty caramel might go down this weekend, if it cools down at all.

My 25, #13: Pesto

2011-07-19T21:46:00.000-04:00

Yeah, I'm 33 and I'd never made pesto before. What of it?

Actually, I do feel kind of stupid for never having made it before, because it is one of the easiest things ever. You don't even have to heat anything up! Well, if you are going to serve your pesto over pasta, you have to boil a pot of noodles, but that is it.

There's nothing like fresh basil, and I used my own from my garden. All of it. Because my basil plants were kind of pitiful this year. The recipe I used called for a tight 2-cup pack of basil leaves, but I only gathered enough to pack in 1 cup. Which is actually quite fine for just one person. A little goes a long way.

I also decided to do a walnut-basil pesto instead of the traditional pine nut concoction. I don't care for pine nuts and I didn't feel justified in buying a whole package of them when I would very likely never, ever use them again, because they are gross. I did have chopped walnuts on hand in the pantry, though, and while I'm not totally a walnut fan either, they make at least a little more sense to me than pine nuts do.

I more or less followed this recipe, just halved all the ingredients. And I used my stick blender instead of my little food processor, which was probably not the easy way to do it.

So start off by rinsing your basil leaves. Mine were extra-dirty because of the potting soil and the dirt left behind by whatever stupid wild animal keeps eating my freakin' tomatoes. IF YOU ARE READING THIS YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE, SKUNK.

Chop your walnuts:

Then grate some Parmesan and mince a clove of garlic. Toss everything into the food processor (or into the measuring cup for the stick blender) and mix it all up.

What results is lovely and Hulk green:

Mine was extra-spicy because the 1 clove of garlic I used was gigantic and probably the equivalent of 3 small cloves. But I'm okay with that. It has a lovely flavor.

Cover and keep in the fridge -- when you toss it with pasta, thin it out with a little of the pasta water.

Of Note

2011-07-18T18:28:00.001-04:00

Oh Christ it is hot. This year so far I have been a martyr and have resisted putting in the air conditioning unit just because it is such a royal effing hassle. Although I am just about at the point where I want to break down and make The Hen do it. HEY YOU HAVE STRONG MAN ARMS THERE, LIFT THIS THING. It was so gross last night and promises to continue as such through the rest of the week.

On Saturday, I attended the Veggie U Food & Wine Celebration benefit out in Milan, Ohio. I drove out with Sarah and Bridget and we had a grand old time, especially upon obtaining miniature bottles of sparkling wine complete with straws:

It is a blurry picture because I had already consumed most of the beverage, there.

And also upon discovering how much fun it is to heckle old people who hog the Mister fans! Lots of good food and good people watching. One notable highlight was the moment close to the end of the event, when Bridget was chatting up two chefs and totally got cock-blocked, or whatever the lady version of that would be, by Lee Ann Wong. ZING.

I recently bought the Apartment Therapy book and I am going to follow the Cure to make my house better. In fact, I already have a whole spreadsheet of things I want to do to my own little personal corner of hell. Like sanding floors and buying new rugs and stuff. Oh, and also a new roof. Stay tuned.

My laptop cord broke, as I mentioned in my CSA post on Thursday. This is very frustrating as I am waiting for a replacement to arrive in the mail. I am fairly certain it's coming from Taiwan or someplace far afield.

When I was trying to distract myself from feeling sad about not having access to the Internets via computer (the iPhone is not the same), I started going through my cookbook collection and realized I really ought to be doing more with the cookbooks. They are pretty and special but they contain valuable and relevant information.

I have new running shoes! Run Fatty Run!

I have gone and entered three categories at the fair this year. Instead of going with something that I feel is a shoe-in for me, I kind of threw a dart, so to speak, and entered the Angel Food Cake competition (good since that is on my My 25 list), Oatmeal Cookie (I make a pretty decent version) and Other Yeast Good (the bagels!). I want to see if I can do something I've never done before, make an excellent version of something I've done well many times in the past, and prove to myself that my excellent bagels weren't just a fluke!

I even encouraged Sarah to enter some categories. She decided to go head to head with me in the oatmeal cookie category! I have another friend who is also entering bagels so I am sure to end up being butt-hurt when it is all said and done! We'll see how this goes and how angry the fair judges will make me in 2011.

Links I Liked, 7-10 to 7-16-11

2011-07-17T18:27:00.000-04:00

Not Without Salt's homemade Butterfinger candy looks good. Although perhaps moreso if it wasn't a thousand degrees outside right now...

Iced coffee how-tos seem to be all over the food blogs this summer. Here's one for Japanese-style iced coffee. (Serious Eats)

Will human-based Jello be the wave of the future? (BA Daily)

Gawker ran its Kitchen Nightmares series this week, a compilation of readers' gross stories about their jobs in the food industry. They're worth a look simply because some of them are so hard to believe. Part One is here.

Look it is a picture of Richard Nixon's last meal. As president. It's not as morbid as it sounds. (Mental Floss)

Clean your toilet bowl and kill moths! With lemons! (Apartment Therapy)

I have never had a lobster roll (nor been to New England). This rundown from the Cooking Channel's blog makes me want to pack my bags and leave tomorrow. And eat lobster rolls till I puke.

Northwest Edible Life on what she wishes she'd known before planting a garden. I found myself nodding my head at a lot of these, knowingly.

I wish I could sew. I would make myself a pair of these tap pants. Less because of the risk of someone looking up my skirt, more to prevent thigh chafe. You know what I mean, ladies who have thighs that touch! (Craft)

Fresh Fork Market Haul Week 7

2011-07-14T20:19:00.004-04:00

I don't have a photo this week because my laptop power cord fritzed out and while I'm waiting for a new one to arrive in the mail I'm bare-bones-ing it. I know you wanted to see pictures of my cilantro but you are just gonna have to deal.

2 lb green beans

1 bunch cilantro (last week we substituted green onions, this week it will be cilantro)

2 ct squash

1 whole pasture raised chicken

1 head leaf lettuce

1 pint blueberries

Approx 1.5 lbs cling peaches

Approx 1.5 lbs slicing tomatoes

Apparently this week, the farm from which Fresh Fork gets its chickens experienced a really bad rainstorm which killed a bunch of chickens, so for some packages they had to sub out beef roasts. Pretty sad for the chickens. Apparently they pile up on top of one another to stay dry and the ones on the bottom obviously can't bear the weight of the rest of the birds and they smother to death. I've heard of turkeys doing something similar in rainstorms so I guess it makes sense that chickens do it too. Poor stupid poultry birds.

I got one of the survivors, so I now have 2 frozen chickens on hand. Crockpot chicken ahoy!

They ran out of zucchini, too, which is fine because I'm getting burnt out on it anyway. I have been making zucchini pizza boats lately because I am five.

The peaches are kind of tiny, nothing really to write home about. I'll probably just eat them as hand fruit, but might do something interesting with the blueberries. I ended up eating the batch of cherries from last week watching America's Test Kitchen DVDs with Spoo. It was the right thing to do.

New Makeup Roundup

2011-07-12T21:42:00.000-04:00

Hen gave me a Sephora gift card for my birthday and I've only just gotten around to using it, mostly because I thought I was going to save it for a Clarisonic Mia. Then I realized it will be more cost-effective to use my Discover Cashback bonus to pay for one, so I'm saving up for that.

I like the samples that come with Sephora orders, and I try to always get the perfume samples, because I hoard them. This time I got Kate Walsh's Boyfriend (a wee bit too musky for me), Bvulgari's Mon Jasmine Noir (to which I am indifferent), and Dior's J'Adore, which I have always really loved, probably more than Miss Dior Cherie, which has been a favorite for a few years now.

Here are the three items I actually paid for (with the gift card. You know):

Benefit's Dr. Feelgood. I have chattered at you about this stuff before. I actually really like it a lot so this one is backup for when my current pot runs out. I mean, it's really just a primer but that's all I want on my skin especially in the summer. I'm pale enough that it evens me out and makes my pores look smaller than they actually are. Because for whatever reason I am obsessed with the size of my pores lately.

Kate Spade's Twirl. I sniffed it before and it's Kate Spade, so what else can be said, really. It's a vanity label perfume. I just bought a small rollerball bottle because I wasn't sure how committed I would be to it. I like it, but maybe only as an occasional thing. It's decent, but actually just a little too flowery for my tastes.

Oscar Blandi's Pronto Dry Shampoo. One of my friends brought some dry shampoo on a recent road trip to Rochester and I have lusted after similar product for a while. I hate washing my hair every single day but it gets crappy pretty quickly. This stuff smells like citrus bubblegum and I haven't smeared it in my hair yet, but I am already kind of afraid of it. Stay tuned.

Links I Liked, 7-03 to 7-09-11

2011-07-10T11:20:00.001-04:00

Bittman on food safety in China, and also the U.S. Yikes. (NY Times)

Canned cider taste test! When I lived in Cambridge we bought it in 2-liter bottles! Classy! (Serious Eats)

Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams is donating 85 copies of the new Jeni's cookbook to various libraries throughout Ohio. Round it up to 88 and donate one to a library in each county, or use WorldCat to figure out what systems don't have it! That is my librarian advice for you. (Salty Caramel)

I love American cheese primarily because it is made of plastic or whatever and therefore melts beautifully. A Hamburger Today has a way to make any cheese melt like American.

Have you ever wondered what will happen if you eat one of those packets of silica gel? ME TOO. Slate says nothing, which is really disappointing somehow.

ABOMINATION ALERT: bacon and hot dog turtle hamburgers. I would totally eat that, once. I wish I had a grill. (Craft)

Slow cooker cheesecake: I can't decide whether this is disgusting and horrible or genius. (The Kitchn)

A Cake Bakes in Brooklyn tries cold oven cake.

Fresh Fork Market Haul Week 6

2011-07-07T19:48:00.000-04:00

1 bulb onion, candy variety

green onions (sub. for cilantro (?), which was "advertised" but not in my bag)

1 head German white porcelain garlic

1 lb sugar snap peas

1 zucchini

2 ct squash

Approx 2 lbs sweet cherries

1 pint black raspberries

Approx 1.5 lbs slicing tomatoes

1 lb garlic chive linguini

1 cucumber

...and I bought some milk.


Look I am experimenting with my camera. Check out the Farmer's Market Hauls Flickr feed!

I am once again excited about the cherries and am debating making another cornmeal-cherry baked good to see if I can do it better this round. I kind of want to try something else, though.

I'm also excited by that garlic, because I was literally down to the last couple cloves of the head I had in the kitchen.

And I'm swimming in zucchini and tomatoes, which isn't all that bad, is it?

Random Thoughts for You This Thursday

2011-07-07T01:11:00.000-04:00

I'm tired. In part because I'm just tired but also because this past weekend was action-packed and I'm still catching my breath. We did blitzkreig wedding present shopping, a wedding, family cookout and porch-sitting with friends and I did tons of gardening. It was all fun but geez, I am an introvert and need to give myself some downtime every once in a while. This week has been not much better in terms of allowing me to behave like a hermit.

My backyard is a mess. I fucking hate homeownership. Have I ever mentioned that? Why yes I think I have! What a stupid decision I made three years ago! Do not buy property for love, people!

In happier backyard news, I managed to re-pot my tomato plants and also my basil on July 4. Something cleanly and precisely gnawed off the leaves of my spinach, though! Rabbit, skunk, or tough-looking orange stray cat I've been seeing lately? You decide.

Also, I bought a hatchet (not an ax, as I'd thought -- one of my friends pointed this out to me after I posted a picture on Facebook. What do I know, I just grab at things at the hardware store so I can get out of there as quickly as possible). I needed to break down some fencing the landscapers just left leaning up against my garage two months ago.

This is a hatchet! It's mine!

I thought a hatchet would make the most sense, but then my sensible neighbor peeked her head over the fence while I was chopping away and told me just to use a crowbar, which I already had and which worked almost magically. Now I have a pile of dry-assed treated lumber sitting in my backyard, waiting to be bundled and put on the treelawn for garbage day next week. I predict I will be bribing the Hen to help me carry this shiz to the front yard.

There's a new Anthropologie store in Cleveland, in Westlake, at Cracker Park. I discovered this when Hen and I were doing that last-minute wedding gift blitzkreig on Friday. It was their grand opening. It is a very nice store, but then again every single Anthropologie I have ever been in is nice. I told the saleslady it looked a lot bigger than the other one in Cleveland and she corrected me saying the other one was actually bigger. Yay space planning! Anyway I reiterated to Hen that Anthro is my favorite store but he seemed skeptical when he spotted a sweater he liked and saw the $200 price tag. "I only shop the sales racks," I said. Which is very true.

What kills me about Anthropologie is that every time I go there (and I have been to Anthros in a bunch of different places) the sales racks are full of size 0s and 2s. Hey Anthro clearly you're selling more to those on the upper end of your size spectrum, please stock things accordingly. I would like to be able to shop for less too even though I am a giant!

Jenni Britton Bauer is going to be at Sur La Table in Eton on July 23 signing copies of her book, but my friend Spoo's wedding is that day! I hope the signing is in the morning! That would give me a chance to get my book signed and tell Jenni Britton Bauer that I love her and also enjoy Spoo and Nick's nuptials! If I can't make it myself you should go and report back to me on how awesome it was, and I will in return tell you how many bottles of wine I drank by myself at the wedding. For other book tour locations and dates click on over here.

Finally, I have some opinions on xoJane, which is Jane Pratt's (of Sassy and Jane Magazine fame) new web-based ladychatter adventure. I have been reading it for weeks and I don't think I really care for it. The overly-friendly, "hey gurrrrl we are just like old friends" prattle doesn't work for me anymore because besides Jane Pratt and occasionally Christina Kelly I don't know who the writers are nor do I really care I guess. They seem young and flaky to me. Where are Andrea and Margie! Those were people I could look up to in my youth, when I was the only person buying Sassy from the downtown bookstore in my little hometown. For some reason, the forced rapport with the writers just doesn't translate from what they had with Sassy so many years ago to the web. Maybe I am less in need of likeminded "friends" in the media now than when I was 14.

Also I'm sick of seeing Jane's text messages with Michael Stipe and her editorial staff, and questioning whether she is a good mom or not based on the fact that she lets her kid eat junk food or walk around barefoot. Who cares. I get it, Jane Pratt is not perfect, she is just like me except she is 50 and skinny and lives in New York and is BFFs with Michael Stipe! Let's move on from all that, shall we. She is not an archetype, she is an editor who has been cultivating a cult of personality, of sorts, for over 20 years. She does not feel especially relevant to me anymore.

I had high hopes xoJane would fill some void that Jezebel and the Hairpin weren't currently taking care of in the online ladychatter arena, but actually I think I still prefer the old standbys because at least the writers aren't sloppy and in my face with their presumed familiarity with me. And every article is not about how the writer has her period so it is a bad time for her to try out a new hair gel oh look two-tone highlights! And by the way I was date-raped once! Weren't we all, in the 90s! And sometimes the Jezebel writes about celebrities other than Michael Stipe! I mean I still think Jezebel is rather "newsy" and shares way too much content with Gawker (for obvious reasons, I guess) but at least it knows how to have fun and includes cute animal posts.

Sorry, Jane Pratt.