Month: October 2008

October 31, 2008

The show is not up, but the hard part (painting the wall piece, building the frames for and framing the drawings) is done. I don’t love hanging shows on the day of the opening, but that is often the way it works out happening. I missed out on the big town Halloween event, but it was worth it, and I ended up making dinner too- two whole days earlier than I thought would be possible.…

October 30, 2008

The chuckwagon is off the rails until after the show opens, so for your further edifitainment I offer another little dollop of the funny… …and another entreaty to give all you can to deliver unto President Obama a place to stand, and a congress that will be a lever long enough to move the world.

October 28, 2008

One week to go… if you haven’t donated yet, or recently, remember that besides Obama there are many downticket races across the country where the margins will be tight and the results will make the difference between mere defeat and an abject, total humiliation and repudiation of the policies, politics, and abuses of the last 8 years. This site has excellent information about these races. Let’s leave the Republican party broke, discredited, and evermore the…

October 26, 2008

I’ve been keeping it pretty clean lately, taking a break from red meat, alcohol and other things as required by my occasional shamanic tune-ups. Some of the limitations- especially on soy and all fermented things- make cooking interesting food a challenge. The key has been to go the small-plates route, and let variety compensate for the quieter flavors. And I LOVE multi-course meals. Love them. First up, the finally-ready duck prosciutto, with perfectly ripe local…

October 24, 2008

I just picked these up today, though they got fired last week. I had a hard time deciding how to glaze them; there’s a big tension between my desire to play with colors and patterns and my desire to have simple dishes that allow the food to shine. This batch is sort of an attempt to split the difference. Some I love, some not so much, but they all inspire me to keep pushing ahead…

October 23, 2008
October 22, 2008

I went to buy some fish, since I had scallops on the brain, but they had some good ahi, so I got both. The challenge then became how to turn four scallops and a smallish tuna steak into enough dinner for all three of us. I had intended to tea-smoke the scallops in the wok, but when I was ripping out the frost-ravaged basil stalks in the garden, I realized how aromatic they still were…

October 21, 2008

After the decadence of the steak frites, we were in the mood for something cleaner. I had a bunch of ideas swirling around, so I got to work and let them take shape around the ingredients at hand. To begin, I wanted to make a simple broth to warm us up at the end of a raw fall day. So I simmered some soba-cha, dried shiitake, and toasted walnuts in water for about an hour.…

October 20, 2008

We went to Vermont for one night, which wasn’t enough, but will have to do for the time being. Driving up we got to experience the steepening gradient from still-luminescent foliage in our area to the more austere landscape that latitude and altitude combine to bestow upon the Green Mountains at this time of year. The bases of most mountains still had some color, but it faded up to the browns, greys, and dark greens…

October 17, 2008

Lousy with leftovers, and more than annoyed that I couldn’t take a walk this afternoon- it was another perfect fall day, with an impossible cerulean sky making all the crimson, yellow, and vermillion leaves pop like mad- I cobbled together a two-course fake Indian meal that ended up better than I expected and used up most of the various remnants in the fridge. Besides soup, which is clearly the best leftover vehicle there is, I’m…