The day went downhill from here. 12 May 08

NOTE: THE PICS IN THIS POST ARE NOT WHAT THEY’RE SUPPOSED TO BE AND WILL BE FIXED SHORTLY

Brunch price: $17

Some years I pre-gird my loins in preparation for Mothers’ Day; some days it sneaks up on me. Either way, Mothers’ Day sucks the fat one when you’ve got no mom.* Don’t get me wrong - I utterly adore my mother-in-law** and feel incredibly fortunate to have married into a family that I love as much as my own. But Mothers’ Day still has the power to make me pretty cranky, and in more than 4 of the past 8 years I’ve wanted to tell it to suck my metaphorical dick.***

You know what can make the day better? Getting into a four-car pile-up on the way to your in-laws’ because the assholes around you were too busy talking on the phone and/or rubbernecking at another accident that had happened less than 15 minutes prior.****

*In that she passed away, not that I was asexually created from a single gamete.

**Totally seriously.

***Which is fucking HUGE.

****5 minutes after our accident, while we were waiting on the side of the road for EMTs to show up and check me out, ANOTHER asshole caused ANOTHER three-car pile-up on the SAME stretch of road.

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The Best Sunday Morning 04 May 08

Is when you roll over in bed and mumble sleepily, “I want a bagel.”  And then your partner gets up and dressed and walks to the bagel shop (bagelry?  bagelhaus?), leaving you to continue slumbering peacefully all tangled up in the blankets, and returns with your favorite bagel and cream cheese (everything with scallion, if you’re wondering).

And then you win the lottery and the lord smites all your enemies.

But mostly the bagel thing.  What’s your best Sunday morning?

The Pancakes that Cured Cancer 19 Apr 08

And they are available to you for a co-pay of only $3475 per pancake. Toppings are extra.

I know the title of this post may come off as just a tad flip. As someone who lost both parents to cancer (breast and colon) by age 26, who had cancer herself (Hodgkin’s Lymphona) in her teens, and who expects a second helping to hit any day now, I feel entitled to whip out my “Get-Out-of-Being Flippant About Cancer Jail Free” card for this occasion.

Despite the impact that breast cancer has had on my life, I despise the whole “buy this pink crap to cure cancer” bullshit. Buying pink crap doesn’t cure cancer, it puts more money into the pockets of people who manufacture and market pink crap - most of which probably dumps cancer-causing toxins into the environment, thus perpetuating the cycle of teddy bears wearing pink sweaters.* Granted, I don’t think that participating in the LiveSTRONG with a Taste of Yellow Event will cure cancer either, but at least it’s an excuse to eat pancakes.

*If you want a pink blender because you really like pink, buy a pink blender.  But if you want to help women with breast cancer, donate directly to a place like Breast Cancer Action.  Or help an actual woman with breast cancer to get through a chemo session or go grocery shopping or clean her house.  

If you want more on the Pinkwashing of America, I recommend you to Twisty.

Also: If you want to start an argument about this in the comments? Don’t.

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Now that you mention it, we DO have some bananas today. 05 Apr 08

Three bananas, to be exact. Oh, did you need more than that? Tough.

You know you have them: excess bananas, malingering on your kitchen counters and gradually outliving their usefulness. Unless you’re one of those locavore people who only eat food produced within 1.3 miles of your Berkeley home*, which you built by hand from local stone carried block by block from your homemade quarry (it was a fun family weekend project!). You can go back to steaming your fresh-picked asparagus in the sparkling spring water little Timmy just gathered from the stream running behind your renovated eco-friendly but historically-accurate bungalow. Great job smelting those pots and pans!

I kid because I love! I’m pro organic, local foods that have not spent three weeks sitting in a refrigerated tractor trailer, and look forward to the start of the CSA season. But you know what else? I also love a frigging banana.

*If you’re a Costa Rica-based locavore, enjoy those bananas guilt-free!

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weekend breakfast blogging: now 65% more beige! 08 Mar 08

Have you met Lidia, Lidia the tattooed lady?

The leftover sausage and spinach gnocchi filling has been sitting in the fridge since Thursday night, and it hasn’t been waiting patiently. HEY YOU, it’s been yelling. YOU WITH THE COOKIE CRUMBS ON YOUR SHIRT. EAT ME. I assume it will only become more abusive as time goes on, so I had no choice but to use it in some eggs en cocotte this morning. Eggs en cocotte are also called shirred eggs, or, as they are now known around here, “the best fucking eggs in the whole entire world” or “crack in a cup.”

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Channeling Rachael Ray: Savory Bread Pudding with Faux-mesco 18 Feb 08

None of these ingredients is in the Faux-Romesco sauce. Did I just blow your fucking mind?!?

I’ve always been attracted to mixes of sweet and savory, both combinations of the two or flipping recipes around - making sweet versions of things that are usually savory, and vice-versa. Not everything lends itself to this treatment - there have been some attempts whose names shall not be mentioned - but it can be a great way to get yourself out of a cooking rut. One of my all-time favorite flips is savory bread pudding.

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Restaurant Re-creations: The Ugly American 18 Feb 08

We built this sandwich on rock and roll.

Downtown Jersey City used to have a little restaurant called Melt whose specialty was grilled cheese sandwiches;  it may not surprise you that grilled cheese is one of my favorite things.  Unfortunately, it was only around for about a year before it fell victim to urban neighborhood mid-gentrification roulette:  which cutesy niche shop will close next, and which will make it? Stay tuned!

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Oat Odes. 24 Jan 08

Irish steel-cut oats
The breakfast of champions
With maple syrup.

Oats from a packet
With fake apple-cinammon
A food-like product.

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Misshapen Friday Brunch Blogging 18 Jan 08

I’ll take Potent Potables for $600.

A quick and tasty brunch, once again taking advantage of leftovers to make something much fancy-schmancier than I normally would with a couple of eggs.

Although my attempt at making a precious little omelette failed, as you’ll soon see, these flavors did not: Herbed goat cheese and balsamic-glazed caramelized onions with a little leftover spinach thrown in for good measure, all left over from a stuffed chicken breast I made Monday night for dinner. The tiny dutch oven holds our precious store of rendered bacon fat, which, when used in small quantities, adds a luscious fatty smokiness to whatever you’re cooking.

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Saturday Morning Breakfast Blogging 05 Jan 08

We are helpless in the face of cured meat products.

Saturday morning breakfast: scrambled eggs with chorizo and sharp cheddar, topped with leftover poblano vinaigrette from this week’s smackdown. English muffins and tea on the side.

The verdict: manchego might have been better, but this was damn good. Eggs with poblano vinaigrette is the perfect breakfast for the nose-stuffed among us: spicy, but the eggs and cheese moderate the heat of the peppers and punch of the vinegar with their creaminess, especially if you slow cook ‘em (Put the pan on heat so low you doubt it will have any cooking capabilities, and take anywhere from 10-30 minutes to scramble the eggs. Totally worth it, I swear, although best saved for weekend breakfasts).

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