Alice’s sweet and spicy beef noodles
Tonight’s dinner, sweet and spicy beef noodles, came to us courtesy of my old friend and former roommate Alice. Alice describes this dish as “Chinese spaghetti with meat sauce,” an apt metaphor. You almost feel like you should break out the parmesan cheese and start grating—until you taste the sauce, which is about as far … Read more
Putting on my dinner rally cap
I came from behind to score a victory on dinner last night: Mark Bittman’s Chicken Provencale.* I was nearly defeated by giant olives that were impossible to pit because they didn’t really fit in the pitter contraption I got from my dad. Then I realized that I forgot to ask the butcher to split the … Read more
Oops.
I made a vat of chili for dinner tonight, and we already had three large containers of chili in the freezer from the last time I made it. If the apocalypse comes next week, we’ll be all set.
Vacation alla Vodka
I’m off from work this week, and it was supposed to be a big cooking week. I got off to a great start—chicken pot pie, two kinds of cookies, the big snowed in meal, pasta alla norma—and then I got sick on Monday night. The kind of sick where I ate mostly applesauce on Tuesday. … Read more
Snowed in!
A big storm is headed our way, so we rolled out of bed and went grocery shopping first thing this morning and were home with a full fridge by 9:00 am. The snow didn’t start in earnest until this afternoon, but as it approached, I asked myself, “What would Martha Stewart do?” Martha would roast … Read more
What I did with the tomato sauce
Yesterday I talked about deputizing Jay to make a vat of tomato sauce while I was at work. Now I’m going to talk about what I did with the sauce. I am not going to talk about how Jay confessed to adding “a pinch” of sugar to the sauce, because I’m trying to forget that … Read more
Beyond Basic Tomato Sauce
I just emailed Jay my recipe for super basic tomato sauce so he can prepare it while I’m at work today (I should note here that this is about the only benefit of the overnight job site coverage he’s been doing this week). This is a blank-slate kinda tomato sauce. I use it as a … Read more
“I realize that when I met you at the turkey curry buffet, I was unforgivably rude, and wearing a reindeer jumper.”
In the past week, I’ve made recipes on either side of a New York Times clipping from last November. The Dining & Wine section of the Times is really more about eating out (“dining”) than it is about cooking, much to my chagrin, but I need to remind myself that they do publish good recipes—buried … Read more
The Burgers of My/Your/Our People
Old habits die hard. Old food habits die harder. Last night I made Grandma Burgers, a delicacy of my childhood that are so called because my grandmother makes them (and to differentiate them from regular burgers served on a bun). I could just as easily call them Belarussian Burgers, because my former roommate Hanna, who … Read more
Dinner Experiment: Sausage, White Bean, and Kale Stew, Jay-Style
When I lived alone, I used to eat a lot of dinners that involved a vegetable and not much else. They were quick and healthy, but not exactly the kind of food you’d serve to someone else, especially if kale was involved–because as my brother’s girlfriend once pointed out after going to someone’s house for … Read more
