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…
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Indian Summer has arrived — it was 17 degrees on Saturday morning and 75 by afternoon. Our first hard frost which, surprisingly, everything left in the garden survived quite well. There’s chard out there still, and a lot of endives and chicories, and even a few random lettuces that sprouted from seed I dropped. Oh, and arugula. I cut the arugula way back in August, after it bolted during the record-setting heat we had in July, and it’s grown back quite nicely. I spent the weekend planting the last of the bulbs. My friend Nina called while I was in…
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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…
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So, the MH took me out antelope hunting this morning. I’d sort of hoped he’d kill the antelope for me, but for one thing that’s illegal, and for another thing, he wasn’t letting me off the hook that easily. He told me he’d help me, and that if I wanted to eat antelope, I should learn to kill one. He’s right, of course, but I was really nervous that I wouldn’t be able to do it. We got out there and had a good sight line and he helped me set up the shot, and believe it or not, I…
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The NY Times health blog ran a little piece the other day that’s getting a lot of press in the foodie blog-o-sphere: Five Easy Ways to Go Organic. As one concerned mama points out over at the Cleaner Plate Club, this post has them talking and talking and talking … there were nearly 300 comments last time I checked, who knows what’s happened since then? Over at Serious Eats, they were only up to 12 comments last I looked, but all in all, the conversations in all these places quickly gets so contentious and complicated that it undermines the point…
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Hello to any of you who came in via yesterday’s piece in the Livingston Enterprise — and please know, it’s not a “pig stomach” I cured in my basement, but a regular-old pork belly. I might be odd, but I’m not that odd!