Inspired by this article in the Times of London, I holed up and took a lovely, restorative vacation at home after Christmas. Christmas was lovely — we all had a great time. There was lots of food and wine and by ten that night we had six kids under five doing the Toddler Disco in the middle of the living room floor. Perfect. Look into Alpenglow rentals if you are planning a relaxing vacation. I woke up on the 26th a tiny bit hung over, and decided the tree was coming down. It was a pretty tree and we had…
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The last few months I’ve gotten into a writing rhythm that has really been working for me. I’ve been doing a blog post every day during the week, and weekends have been devoted to my new book. When I decided to get serious about the blog and to write on a regular basis, it was really to bring this little blog back to life. It never occurred to me that the discipline of taking care of the blog would bleed over into my creative work and prove a boon to that, but it has. Because I’ve written something of my…
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While Sushi Nozawa was the culinary highlight not just of my trip to LA, but perhaps of my entire gustatory existence, there was more food fun to be had during my visit to LA. On Wednesday I went over to Brentwood to have dinner with my oldest college friend and his wife and year-old baby. They were hosting a couple, also with a little munchkin, who were visiting from France and they took over the cooking duties. Now my old friend Matt grew up to be kind of a big deal studio executive, and so people bring him really really…
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Thanks everyone for chiming in this week — I think this has been the liveliest discussion yet here at LivingSmall and I’m just thrilled. So often, I feel like the lone crank in the wilderness bleating on about how food in boxes is terrible for you and it tastes bad. My cry of despair: Just cook something! In light of that, I thought some practical links might be an appropriate way to close out the week. Here’s a terrific site all about home cooking: Simply Recipes It looks like the kind of place where you could find a solid recipe…
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In the comments thread for yesterday’s post on frozen dinners, Maryn made a great comment about why the whole “cooking from scratch” concept might seem so overwhelming to people who are just getting started cooking real food: I think it’s really important for people who are starting to cook (or cook more, or more healthfully) to hear that the freezer can be your friend. Learning to integrate real cooking into your life seems so huge, if you’re not used to it – OMG I have to cook every dish from scratch every night for the rest of my life??? –…
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In the comments thread on Monday , the topic of frozen dinners came up. Although I relied heavily on the small-size frozen mac-and-cheese and frozen lasagnes that winter after my brother died, for the most part, the weird gumminess of frozen dinners freaks me out. Yesterday was one of those days — I had a couple of appointments over in Bozeman in the morning and then I just never really caught up. So at six, I found myself staring into the fridge wondering what I was going to eat. I didn’t want leftover lamb and white bean stew, and although…
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Because I work at home, I see a lot of TV with the sound off — Oprah had a family on a week ago or so who had a big pile of kids — sextuplets and twins? something like that. The mom was talking about her schedule and how she copes and she mentioned something about what my friend Nina calls “the witching hour” — that hour before dinner where all the kids seem to lose their minds at once. It took a while this mom-on-Oprah was saying, because she cooks “from scratch.” “You cook from scratch!?” Oprah said, as…
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When we were kids, we had dinner every Monday night with the Smiths. My mother was single and her friend Mrs. Smith’s husband was out of town on Mondays, and so we’d switch off — one week at our house, one week at theirs. It was always Garbage Dinner, meaning that Mom or Mrs. Smith used up whatever was left in the fridge. Garbage dinners were always an adventure — both my Mom and Mrs. Smith were both creative and also a little wacky — I mean, Mrs. Smith was the kind of person who went to Brazil on her…
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Over at Culinate there’s a nice piece by Zanne Miller about making bread with her daughters. What’s interesting is that it was the daughters who instigated the family bread-making, Miller herself admits to thinking that it was going to be too hard, or take too long, or be a pain. It’s a lovely piece about how it’s become part of their family routine. Now that the weather has cooled off I’ve been making bread again — mostly the no-knead, although I need to go look up the some-knead hybrid I cribbed from Nancy Silverton last week (reminds me, I need…
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The MH called yesterday afternoon to see if I wanted to come over and hang out while he butchered for me, my job was to wrap meat. It was fun, we hung out in the garage as he dismembered my antelope and separated it into steaks, loin, stew meat and then everything else went into the burger pile. The cuts don’t really resemble steaks you’d buy in the store — essentially the MH dissembled the antelope muscle by muscle, and carefully removed the silverskin for me. The other nice thing about being there while it was butchered was that he…