cheap reflexology
photo via scaredykat
lobsters on sale!
a Scandinavian-themed dinner party
Chinese New Year (year of the tiger!)
a retro-friendly weekend getaway
and what’s got you excited in this cold, dark month of february?
Because I have spent this week utterly unimpressed by food, drifting from toast to salad to sandwich with little passion and even less desire, it’s hard to imagine that it was only last week when I swooned over a pork chop. The entire experience of this dinner was worthy of a French Friday: I went to the fancy market and bought thick pork chops wrapped in butcher paper from a man in a paper hat. I selected a slim baguette with a crisp shell and airy insides. I visited the wine store and explained what we were eating — in great detail — and was paired with a truly heavenly accompaniment. I came home, turned on some blues, and set about making a dinner that was ready mere moments later.
In my experience, there aren’t a lot of recipes like this — ones that tap into your best vision of yourself, that are elegant, special, and ready in a flash, that make your dining companion think you have some unmatchably magic touch when you come into contact with a cast iron skillet and tongs. Perhaps I should spend less of my time making chili and more of my time seeking out food that elevates not just dinner itself, but (not to sound heavy handed) the way I feel about my life. Because there I was, on an ordinary day, making it all look so easy (and truly, it was), sitting down to the sort of supper that would be ideal if you learned Jacques Pepin were coming over in 20 minutes, or if you just feel that you deserve a fine chop, a simple sauce, and a cold glass of wine. And here I am, a week later, without a twinge of gastronomic interest in my stomach or fingers, still feeling great about that dinner.
More pork chop recipes:
Continue reading “French Friday: Pork Chops with Mustard and Cornichons” »
I have realized in the past several months that so much about the economy of cooking at home is about volume and frequency. With a constantly rotating list of ingredients in the household (leftover parsley from one recipe, leftover ginger from another), you have at hand a greater array to work with (and to experiment with) than if you are always buying ingredients for one or two recipes a week. Unfortunately, it seems to me one would have to eat a lot of chickens to have the means to make stock for all the recipes that call for it. That’s why I’m not a purist when it comes to stock. If a recipe calls for a cup or less, I use Better Than Bouillon, but if I’m making a stew or soup, I”ll use up the homemade stock I have frozen in 4-cup portions.
Growing up it seems like there was always a chicken carcass simmering away (the Silver method below) in a tall stockpot on the Russian fireplace. And as children often do, I kept making stock just the way my mama taught me until I learned how to cut up a chicken. Turns out, making stock from the leftover backbone (Gold) makes a super flavorful broth and is now my favorite method. I’ve never made stock from whole chickens (Platinum), though I hear it is irrefutably the best. Each household just has to find the method that’s just right for them. But undoubtedly, the best tip I ever got about the process beyond the chicken itself came directly from all of you: keep a stock bag in the freezer and stuff it with papery onion skins, carrot nobs and peels, and odds and ends of vegetable scraps. Since I can’t compost in my little apartment, this achieves that prairie girl desire to have zero-waste.
Do you make stock with one of these methods below, or some other way? Do tell!
I had it all planned out perfectly — Lisa was coming over for a cocktail and I knew the pepper jelly she gave me at Christmas would go magically with some of Martha’s famed cheese coins. It would be one of those rare moments when all the elements come together and you have a brief turn as an exceedingly gracious hostess, shining the spotlight not only on your delicious nibbles and refreshment, but on your guest’s contribution that makes it complete. That was the idea anyway.
What happened in reality was that the so-called cheddar coins were more like…crumbly lattice wafers. The flavor was wonderful, but what good is it if you have to scrape up bits off the cookie sheet and serve them off a spatula? Not the elegant Mad Men cocktail hour I was hoping for.
Have you ever had a recipe utterly and totally fail? This hasn’t happened to me in awhile, and the devastation was crushing, not only for the occasion at hand (I was two steps away from cracking open a can of salted peanuts), but for the sheer waste. Two sticks of butter and a cup of New York sharp cheddar cheese, come to nothing. I followed the direction precisely, so what gives?
The drinks, though — the drinks did their bit. Since my friend Laureen mixed up an old-fashioned at our book club reading of 50’s novel, The Best of Everything, this has been my cocktail of choice. It’s strong and appropriately boozey (it’s Don Draper’s drink of choice, after all), but ever-so-slightly sweet. And it would have been really perfect with some spicy, cheesy nibbles. But, so it goes…
Continue reading “Happy Hour at Home: Old-Fashioneds…And The Appetizer That Wasn’t” »
I know Twitter isn’t a completely useless media development because it brought me to Tea. Known more formally as Tara Austen Weaver, Tea & Cookies’s namesake is warm and utterly real. If you can sense a kind, salt-of-the-earth nature in 140 characters, you know it’s the real deal. And today is a huge day for Tea. Her book, The Butcher and the Vegetarian, just hit the shelves. It seemed like a more than fitting time for a celebratory chat.
Tell us about Tea & Cookies. What made you decide to do the blog? What are the biggest challenges? What inspires you, your food, and your posts?
Tea & Cookies was a total accident. I was sick, I was bored, I had been reading a lot of food blogs. One day I started one—but I never put my name on it or told my friends. I didn’t plan to keep it up once I was healthy and back at work, but by that time I was hooked and couldn’t stop.
The site has always been about what is inspiring me at that moment. It’s a personal place where I talk about what I love—food, travel, tea, pretty things, amazing people. The name for the blog was an accident as well, but now I think of it as my tea party where I get to chat with lovely people about things that make me happy. It’s a joy.
The hard part is staying motivated and finding the time for it all. I burnt out after finishing the book and had to step away for a little while. I thought about stopping entirely, but the site has brought so much that is wonderful into my life—people who have become dear friends, a wonderful community of other bloggers, amazingly kind and generous readers. I would miss it terribly if I gave it up.
How did your experience blogging affect the process of writing a book? Do you approach the two forms differently, and if so, how?
Writing a blog is like going for a lap swim each morning—a slight effort, but ultimately a nice little workout that leaves you energized. Writing a book is like swimming the Atlantic. There are sharks, there are storms you couldn’t have predicted or prepared for, but there are huge triumphs as well. A regular writing schedule like blogging is good practice for a book, but I’m not sure anything prepares you to lose sight of the shore.
In my case I knew the book was going to look very different from the blog, as it covered material I had never written about. If my blog is about putting forth what I want to write about, the book pulled out things I was scared to write about. It was much harder, though ultimately more rewarding.
photo via stefski
Aimless Love
This morning as I walked along the lakeshore,
I fell in love with a wren
and later in the day with a mouse
the cat had dropped under the dining room table.In the shadows of an autumn evening,
I fell for a seamstress
still at her machine in the tailor’s window,
and later for a bowl of broth,
steam rising like smoke from a naval battle.This is the best kind of love, I thought,
without recompense, without gifts,
or unkind words, without suspicion,
or silence on the telephone.The love of the chestnut,
the jazz cap and one hand on the wheel.No lust, no slam of the door –
the love of the miniature orange tree,
the clean white shirt, the hot evening shower,
the highway that cuts across Florida.No waiting, no huffiness, or rancor –
just a twinge every now and thenfor the wren who had built her nest
on a low branch overhanging the water
and for the dead mouse,
still dressed in its light brown suit.But my heart is always propped up
in a field on its tripod,
ready for the next arrow.After I carried the mouse by the tail
to a pile of leaves in the woods,
I found myself standing at the bathroom sink
gazing down affectionately at the soap,so patient and soluble,
so at home in its pale green soap dish.
I could feel myself falling again
as I felt its turning in my wet hands
and caught the scent of lavender and stone.
image via LIFE
This is the time of year in which homebodies are at their peak. The weather outside is frightful and if you really want to, you can use it as an excuse to get out of just about anything. Snowing? I don’t think I can make it to that event after all. Bitterly cold? I might be coming down with something and wouldn’t want to make it worse. Then you can stay on the couch in your comfy pants, watching dvds and feeling snug as a bug in a rug. And is there a problem with this?
Lately I’ve been thinking of my homebody ways. I live in a really vibrant city, one in which there is a fabric store that deeply delights me, 100-year-old butcher shops run by men in sharp paper hats, and the kind of imaginative home design and clothing boutiques that can inspire great ideas. But I would rather not brave the elements, schlep to the subway, and battle shoppers in SoHo. I would rather, from the comfort of my silk bathrobe, order things online and have them delivered to my door. Is this being a homebody? Or profoundly lazy?
Lately, most people I know have been hunkering down with a big bowl of noodles at least once a week. And rightfully so: the indignities of making our way through the cold and muscling into boots calls for dinner in a bowl, and preferably one that will leave you in a blissed-out carbohydrate haze. Sometimes, though, those of us who do not excel in the ways of moderation end up regretting it afterward. I like to think that if a healthy dose of cruciferous vegetable gets folded in with a wheaty tangle, the same comfort level can still be achieved and the bloated guilt diminished. At least, that’s the idea.
It wasn’t until recently that I began to explore cauliflower’s charms. I’ve always loved it as a crudité, but when it came into my life as a gratin, a soup, and most recently in Sebastian’s off-the-cuff red vegetable curry, I could feel myself falling in love. I doubt that cauliflower will stir the passion nor the vitriol sardines recently did, but that’s okay. Cauliflower is cool — a laid-back, mellow, vegetable that hangs around in the background until you need it to take center stage. It doesn’t need to live in the spotlight, but when it does, it really steals the show. And in a quietly confident way I sort of love.
Continue reading “$5 Dinner: Sweet and Spicy Cauliflower and Penne” »
