Nobody got very sick, but it was dicey for a minute. And it was very cold this weekend, so soup was in order. I picked up a good chicken, and very unusually decided to make soup from the whole raw bird. Normally I like to roast them and make stock from the carcass later on, but for maximum medicinal impact I thought that doing it this way was the right call. And the soup was…
Year: 2009
So this isn’t about the excellent shellfish-kielbasa stew in Vermont. I’ll get to it later, though I don’t actually have a picture of it. Maybe some fall foliage instead for atmosphere. This is about a wife coming down with something, and the lack of anything easy to prepare in the house. A quick trip later, we were the happy owners of some lovely short ribs. And since we have a pressure cooker, shreddy, falling-off-the-bone-ness was…
We went to Vermont last weekend, and there was some good eatin’- most interesting was a shellfish stew with local kielbasa that I’ll describe in the next post. This afternoon I got busy trying to turn the last of the season’s tomatoes- bought at the farmers’ market yesterday because ours are done, and now dead from frost- into a couple of kinds of salsa to compensate for the complete lack of home-canned tomato sauce this…
Yesterday was the weekly market, so I went over to poke around- grabbing a couple of huge nappa cabbage for the next batch of kimchi, since ours got either eaten by slugs or are too small- and to pick up some fish. Gerard actually took the week off, but did bring John and me some lovely sardines because John is famous and I am, well, special. So I ran home and put some dinner together.…
I’ve been lax about blogging, obviously, but not about cooking; I just can’t find time to do any writing. I even busted out a pretty nice 6-course dinner for a couple of friends up from the city last Friday, but the only picture I took was a repeat of the gravlax with corn-avocado ice cream and pickle sauce. Other courses were grilled chicken-miso soup, a sort of frisée aux lardons- curly endive tossed with a…
As inevitable as dawn, the beginning of a new month means another comestible-themed missive from yours truly.
Yesterday we had a super-simple dinner of zucchini soup (our friend gave us some of her squash, since ours perished) and penne tossed with local Roquefort-inoculated blue. I’ve been demolishing our entryway, since it’s a way to make the place much nicer for very little money; so far I’ve spent under $100, since it’s mostly been demo and then a bit of framing and drywall to clean it up. Tomorrow begins the mudding, and then…
Today, being a day of atonement- and more saliently, a day in which Milo’s school is closed- begged for some time-devouring activities to chew up the portion of the day in which I was the sole parent in charge. Copious swinging helped, as did some garden-checking (the rutabagas and black radishes are actually swelling a tiny bit! At this rate they’ll be big and fat by Christmas, except for the whole not-growing-in-winter thing, so they…
I was in Vermont on Friday going through the cellar and giving at least half of it to someone from an auction house. On the plus side, it’s one of the few assets we own that has actually- and significantly- appreciated in value, so it’s going to make us some much-needed cash. On the minus side, I parted with some special bottles of Bordeaux, some of which I’ve had for 15 years. Back during the…
After a week of epic frustration, it’s been pure luxury to have a day off, reveling in the clarity, aroma, and Proustian recall of early fall. I dug a good variety of the annual herbs, potting and soaking them well in advance of their imminent repair to the dining room where they’ll sit basking in the waning sun shining through the big windows. The only hitch is that the radiator under the windows dries them…