I made a batch of meatballs the other day which were delicious, but interestingly enough, also stretched just under two pounds of meat into at least four meals if not six. I’m looking at a lot of cookbooks right now for BookSlut, and this recipe is very loosely adapted from the one in the A16 cookbook. I used buffalo because it’s readily available here, and because this story in the New York Times (and this one about how Costco actually tests for E. Coli) only amped up my deep suspicion of all ground beef, even when I know the butchers…
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So I was driving down to the cabin last night when I realized that all those grey things in the field next to the East River Road weren’t deer, they were Sandhill Cranes! There were scores of them — I’m notoriously bad at that sort of estimation, but there were well over a hundred birds in a harvested wheat field, grazing. I’d heard that they do this, but I’d never seen it, so of course I came to a screeching halt to watch for a few minutes. Apparently they gang up before migrating, they’ll fly around, calling to the other…
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My new Cookbook Slut column is up at Bookslut: So the recession hit home here at Cookbook Slut in late July when I was relieved of the corporate job I’ve held for the past ten years. While it wasn’t a job I loved, it was a job that came with a very sturdy paycheck, and when the last severance check arrived this month, I went into something of a panic. There it was. All the Money I Am Ever Going To Have. And so I did what I always do when confronted with financial instability …. (click here to read…
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Wow. This was a surprise to me somehow — Gourmet Magazine is closing. My first job out of college was repackaging Gourmet Magazine content into the first few volumes of Best of Gourmet and Gourmet’s Best Desserts (we also did other titles for Conde Nast). I’ll never forget going through the bound volumes of Gourmet Magazines — my task was to xerox every dessert recipe that had ever appeared, cut it out, and tape it onto a sheet of paper. These were the old days, when we did things on paper, and when type came back from teh typesetter and…
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I haven’t written about politics in a while, but this health reform debate is making me froth at the mouth. I’ve called Baucus’s office so many times that I think I’m on the “crazy lady” list. First off, the idea that we’re going to have a public mandate with no public option is insane. Why on earth should we give huge subsidies of public money to the insurance companies who have done nothing but openly rip us all off for decades? A public mandate with no public option to keep them in check is simple collusion. Thanks Max. I guess…
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Hi folks — the heat finally broke and since my sweetheart has been longing for a Lasagne! for a while, and since yesterday I had a big pot of brand spanking new tomato sauce on the stove, I took a flyer at it. This lovely lasagne was brought to you not by any of the many authentic Italian cookbooks I have on my shelf, not by Mario or Marcella or even Patricia Wells (Trattoria), or even by my beloved Dom DeLuise (Eat This .. It’ll Make You Feel Better). No, this gorgeous, gooey, wavy lasagne that is all brown on…
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Ugh. So Saturday afternoon I thawed out some of last year’s antelope, marinated it, and made some skewers with a few onions out of the garden (for Chuck) and with onions and tomatoes and zucchini for me. Three in the morning and my sweetheart is not well. I’m a little rumbly in the tummy, but he is Not A Well Man. It was very very sad. And a long night. Morning strikes and he is still Sick Like Dog. He sits in the living room watching football and ignoring a cup of black tea while I go out back and…
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There’s a knife-sharpener guy who has been sitting out by the side of the road near the grocery store for a couple of months now. Every time I drive past Mountain Man Knife Sharpening, I think I should take my knives to him, and yesterday, when I saw he was in his truck, I turned around, went home, and got my horribly dull knives. Patrick used to sharpen my knives for me, and even though I’ve got a stone, and the oil, I never got around to it. So they’ve gotten progressively more useless. Well, for three bucks a piece,…
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Well that was lovely — Monday was my official “last day” at Cisco (the severance was odd — 2 months as an employee but not working, then a big parting gift payment that is coming in the mail). Anyhow, so there it was, my official last day and I got pinged on Facebook in the morning — two of my favorite Cisco people were visiting Yellowstone, and wanted to know if I’d have dinner with them. So I drove down to Gardiner and had dinner with Joy, who was my manager for about six weeks my first year, and Patty…
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We’re in that little window of time in which we have ripe tomatoes here in Montana. It takes a long time to grow a tomato. I started these from seed in the basement in March. So far, the most productive have been the Mountain Princess, Jaunne Flamme, Prairie Fire, and Perestroika. The nights are getting cool enough that I probably need to go put the plastic over them. Our usual first frost comes in around the 17th of September most years, but for the last couple of weeks we’ve had sunny, warm, dry dry dry weather. Because someone in this…