Category: Fail

March 30, 2017

I saw this link in a friend’s feed recently (30-second read, tops—go!) and went on a bit of a tear in the comments. Idiocracy‘s immortal Gentleman’s Latte (a latte and a hand job) was the first thing I thought of, obviously, and since that movie turned out to be a documentary and “hand salad” is the most abjectly moronic non-political phrase I’ve seen in some time—does nobody at the magazine know what “toss your salad” means?—it positively cries out for promotional slogans fit for America 2.0: The Dumbening.

August 31, 2011

The power is back on after three days, which is most welcome, and there are plenty more houses all over the area who still have a while to wait; I drove around some yesterday and it’s a huge mess, with trees hanging off of lines on street after street. I had to drive under several just to get to the pottery. It’s hard to find a bridge or culvert that wasn’t overtopped with rushing water; there’s dirt and gravel across the roads in many places and brown mud four feet high in the bushes in others. Our little taste of the storm’s power was this, which happened at about 7:00 Sunday morning:

December 4, 2010

This post is sort of a response to El‘s comment on the last one. If you’re not familiar with her blog, and you garden, you should be. She’s got an impressive four-season setup in a harsher climate than here, and is self-sufficient in most things. It was a tough summer in the garden; the heat came so early and was so punishing that lots of things got stunted and my timing was thrown off. Among…

May 31, 2010

I finally ordered some nigari (magnesium chloride) for making tofu. I had bought organic soybeans–both white and black–a while ago, but it took an age for me to get the order in. Once it arrived, though, the intervening time spent waiting helped spur me to quick action. I soaked some of the white beans overnight and re-read the tofu recipe I wanted to try from the Shunju cookbook. (Shunju is one of Tokyo’s finest restaurants,…

April 13, 2010

Today was sort of stressful. I actually had a pretty sharp idea for dinner, and was excited to make it. But by the time I was in the kitchen trying to get it going, I was tired, and grouchy, and the kid was making an unholy mess with flour and water and a bunch of other things, and I messed up my idea, which was yam and nettle dumplings stuffed with braised pork. What we…

April 5, 2010

Sometimes everything is in place for a wonderful meal to happen, and yet it does not happen. I defrosted some local, grass-fed ribeyes and assembled the supporting cast. Leftover pressure-cooked beef stew with sweet potatoes from last week (the meat had just about all been eaten, so it was mostly a silky, beefy orange goop) was already halfway to being a nice purée, so I finished the job, adding a bit of pork stock to…

January 17, 2010

This post can be filed under “reasons why it’s not always a good idea to try something fancy right before a dinner party.” I had this idea a while ago, and the a semi-promptu gathering last Sunday gave me an excuse to try it out. Not very well, as it turned out, but whaddayagonnado. Next time I’ll get it right. Originally it was just going to be parsnip gnocchi, but then I noticed the variety…

January 4, 2010

We had a pretty subdued New Year’s Eve here at home. It was frigid outside, and gray; today is in fact the first time the sun has come out this year. We got some lamb chops as an indulgent treat, and I did what I could to make them interesting for dinner. Honestly, though, I could have used more time; the extra steps that make a meal special usually require me to knock off working…

December 7, 2009

We went to Boston for the weekend, and managed to cram a ton of socializing into a very narrow window of time. We managed to invite ourselves over to a couple of different houses for dinner, making for a much more enjoyable time since Milo is good for about 20 minutes in a restaurant before he starts to get bored. Friday Andrew made us celery root salad with preserved lemon persillade followed by polenta with…

September 21, 2009

Milo’s birthday party was Saturday, and I kept it simple: grilled chicken legs and farfalle tossed with homemade pesto, feta, and cherry tomatoes. And cake. A vanilla cake with raspberry filling and chocolate frosting that had a bulldozer on it. Which I did not make. I don’t do cakes. If you search very hard, you might find a blog or two out there that touch occasionally on desserts, but this ain’t one of them. I…