Okay, I’ll admit it — I think Thanksgiving is the most boring holiday meal of the year. Perhaps it’s the residue of the Turkey Years, when Mom fed us on a couple of turkeys a month because it was a lot of meat for the dollar, or perhaps it’s just because it *is* the most boring meal of the year — but snore snore snore. Turkey. Stuffing. Mashed potatoes. A couple of sides — brussell sprouts or green beans. Cranberry sauce. Pie. It’s inviolable. There are variations, sure — every year the magazines plop into my box full of variations,…
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My friend Robert-the-painter came for dinner last night — like many painters, Robert is also a wonderful cook, and is really invested in local and organic food issues. I made country pork spareribs braised in milk with lots of garlic, thyme, rosemary, sage and a little hot pepper and lemon. Everything except the pork and the lemon was local in that dish — I’m on the list next year for one of my Milk Lady’s pigs, but for now, I’m stuck with what I can get. I also made Clothilde’s yogurt cake with the spiced cherries I put up this…
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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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Things are a little hectic here at LivingSmall today — so why doesn’t everyone go over to Someday Homesteader and read about Kim’s first deer. It’s really affecting and well, since she did it by herself, without a guide like my Mighty Hunter, I’m kind of in awe.
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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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A roundup of interesting stuff: Via Grist — check out this sweet and fabulous video clip from My Name is Earl. Please Respect the Meat There’s a terrific profile of chef John Besh at the New York Times today. And if you want an endless debate over the Next Iron Chef, check out Michael Ruhlman’s blog (I’m rooting for Michael Symon — he just seems like he’s having so much fun and his cooking rocks, but I can completely see Besh doing the Iron Chef scowl and pulling out his inner Marine in Kitchen Stadium). And in Alice Waters/Ameya Preserve…