No escape!

Reposted from Gizmodo:


Just something to think about...

I'm sure I'll have more thoughts on this as my food justice class wraps up next week.

Baking Up Gratitude

Last night was Pumpkin Potluck. Never mind that no pumpkins were actually carved, we all met and the food was good and the company was even better.

We ate:
Roast chicken
Sweet potato and apple casserole
Salad
Salad (my b on delegating veggies)
Bread
Pumpkin Whoopie Pies (omg)
Brandy-Spiced Cider/Mulled Wine

Despite the heat in the kitchen, the weather was lovely enough that we could open the door and let the delicious, rain-soaked air drift in and not catch pneumonia. Today it's about 70* out and I just don't even know what to do with myself because I feel like it's summer, part 3, and just seeing sun this late in October is fan-effing-tastic.

Side note, isn't the sun amazing? My friend Micah wrote this a while back:

"Sometimes I like to step back and think about how amazing some things are. Right now: the sun.

Think about it. It's a giant ball of burning gas that not only provides light to things directly in its path, but even the inside of buildings with solid walls and in the shadow of trees and cliffs and mountains. It warms whichever side of the earth is facing it so much during the day that the place is still livable at night when facing away. It somehow provides us with vitamin D. It is basically the way plants breathe. Storms on its surface can completely fuck us. It turns water into vapor. And the damn thing is so hot that, even from millions of miles away, it can burn our skin.

That's fucking amazing."

Okay, back to food.

Yesterday before potluck I also cooked up a batch of bolognese, because I could, completely without a recipe. We'll see how it tastes tonight. The trick in my family is to make a pot of it and then just let it sit in the fridge for one day to fully absorb all of the wonderfulness. This is extremely difficult in that the sauce usually cooks all day and the house smells fab and then we sit down to have dinner, eagerly anticipating and then... we have porkchops. Or nachos. Or... ramen soup.

As another aside, an image search for bolognese pulls up...
For realz?

I also made a pumpkin cheesecake for my lawyer friend. I hope it turns out well. It was so easy I actually hope to make another tonight for my own personal consumption. Hooray for Food and Wine magazine, as well as The Staudt family (my lovely babysitting charges) for providing me with an excellent springform pan.

And since this post is sufficiently long enough, I will return later this week with tales of cheesecake and whoopie pies. (You may know them elsewhere as moon pies.)

Happy eating,

a

An Un-Monday Post

I meant to post yesterday but it was a little more hectic than my average Monday. I got to work late after proceedings in the morning, and then there was some sort of summit/conference/mabob thing and that didn't get out until 3, and then I volunteered at 6, so really, no time to update you, my trusty friend. Seeing as no one reads and comments anyway, it wasn't a total wash.

Sunday night, M joined me for a dinner of pork chops. I've attempted to make pork chops before and they have always turned out pretty dry and uninspired. I was worried these would befall a similar fate. Thankfully, Dinner: A Love Story came through in the clutch again :) These pork chops were tender, juicy, and although I've never been a big fan of mustard, actually tasted delicious. I even substituted red wine vinegar for apple cider vinegar and cranberry juice for apple cider, but it still turned out pretty darn good. Substituting is still something that scares me because I'm not entirely confident my substitutions will contain that one ingredient that I think will be fine and then actually ruin the taste. Despite my fears, all was well.

On the side, we had steamed broccoli and mashed potatoes (too creamy because of too much milk, my Achilles' Heel, always) and a salad. All in all, very good meal, easy to make, and didn't take all night, which is always a perk. (As much as I love Julie/Julia, eating dinner at 10 pm does not appeal to me.) Thanks, Dinner: A Love Story! We love you!

Tonight's goal: take the remaining pork chop and make a nice stir fry with it and the remaining half of spaghetti squash... too ambitious? We shall see...

PS:
I know this blog is severely lacking in pictures but we're working on it... hopefully we'll get it all sorted out for next week's pumpkin potluck.

Monday again

I think the best I can hope for is updating once a week. Until I start cooking more regularly. Last week I made some good ones... a night of Spaghetti Squash, not that exciting but delicious poor man's garlic bread on the side.

Thursday I made a recipe from Dinner, A Love Story, a site that M sent me, and I've fallen in love with it. The writing style is engaging and she just seems more like a real person than any of the other writers and her meals are much more realistic for impatient, hungry, resource starved me. The recipe I made was Lemony Chicken and Greenbeans (found here) which I did not make the morning before but rather that night, and it was good, if a bit too lemony, even though I only used one lemon instead of two... but it was still really good and so were the potatoes. I'm a sucker for potatoes and their multiple forms. Mmm.

Friday, my roommate took a page from Smitten Kitchen and made one of the most delicious and tantalizing lasagnas I have ever eaten. I know it's stupid but being the carnivore that I am, I have a hard time taking lasagna seriously if it doesn't have meat in it. This was so creamy and delicious, I didn't even care, and surprisingly, despite it's heft, I didn't want to bust out the fat pants after I had a slice. Paired with a salad and a nice vinaigrette, it was incredibly satisfying.

Tonight I'm venturing to DMK with a few friends from a past life to catch up and get my burger on. No matter how many food justice classes I take I'm still going to be enamored by (grass-fed) beef...

until we eat again,
a

Just another manic Monday

So this blog is really, really sad. I think we post about once a month. Obviously our contributions to the world of cooking and baking are not earth-shattering, BAM-inspiring, or food-network-type genius, but darnit, I'm going to update this blog more regularly. I like writing on the internet, even if nobody reads it, because I like food and I like writing, and that's all there is to it.

After a weekend of hardcore partying (truthfully, it was just a string of late nights due to poor movie time decisions and ...babysitting) I woke up quite late on Sunday morning/early afternoon. I walked for a while and toyed with the idea of going out to breakfast but eventually was won over by a place I walked by with a vegan friend of mine a few weeks ago, Chicago's Dog House. (Why we did not go in together should be self-explanatory via the menu.) Lured in by the tantalizing idea of bratwurst (I'm a sucker for meat! this is difficult because I'm taking a food justice class and it just makes me want to go all out vegetarian but to give up hamburgers and bacon and sausage just seems like too much for me right now), I ended up going for a Wild Boar Dog, with melted brie and raspberry sauce, topped with sauteed mushrooms. I went all out and ordered a side of "frips" which are basicaly just pieces of potato curled through an apple peeler corer slicer and fried up (sweet potato frips... mmm) and the side turned out to be an entire basket, which I also devoured in short order.

Since my phone is a piece and I don't carry my camera with me at all times, you'll just have to believe me that this was a phenomenal lunch and completely hit the spot at 2 pm on a Sunday when I should have been eating an omelette or something a little more appropriate. Whatever.

Later that evening I went to potluck at M's and we had delicious chili, cornbread, broccoli slaw, and brownies with Reese's in the middle. It was wonderful. I'm hoping to start eating at home more because it's just ridiculous how little I cook when it's just me, and then I wonder why I feel like crud all the time. Plus, despite what Hollywood tells you, kids, real grownups do NOT go out to eat 24/7.

Tonight I'm hoping to make half a spaghetti squash and maybe some garlic cheese bread or something. It's sunny and the sky is quite blue but it's also a bit colder than I would like, so to tuck in with that sounds like my idea of a nice evening. Ah, not having a television really is quite eye-opening sometimes. Amish country feels closer every day.


talk soon,
a