thursday night smackdown

Category

dairy

08.22.08

Thursday Night Smackdown: Blintzkrieg! baking, breakfast, cheese, condiments, dairy, fruit, sauces, smackdown, veg/vegan | (34)
How is this dinner, and not dessert? Not that I'm complaining, but come now, Jews. You're pulling my leg, right? Where did I leave off? Oh, right, with an aborted attempt at blintz casserole and my gradual descent into the gaping maw of madness. I'm back to my standard non-psychotic level of insanity, and that can only mean one thing: I can stop throwing dozens of hours of my life away watching Olympic beach volleyball in a drug-induced stupor.* Also, baked cheese. *Although I did like how they played the cock rock in between serves, to make ...
06.18.08

The Big Stomach Wave Makes the Love cheese, dairy, veg | (25)
What does it all mean? Hell if I know. All of today's captions are brought to you by the nutjobs who found TNS via google. This one's for you, Mr. or Ms. "Upside Down Belly Button." Really, what was this person looking for? "The big stomach wave makes the love"? Is it some grody thing that I'm naive for not knowing? If so, I'd like to continue on in my blissful ignorance. A few weeks ago the New York Times Wednesday food section had a feature article on ricotta that included instructions for making it yourself, and I've ...
06.15.08

Ice Cream for a Dead Man dairy, eggs, fruit, sweets | (24)
Passionfruit, to be specific. But dead people don't eat ice cream, so it just means more for me. I just wrote a whole post about this ice cream and my dad, who was my best friend and who passed away in 2005. It was really good, filled with humor, pathos, and brilliant photography. Do you have any idea how hard it is to take pictures of fricking ice cream? I'll tell you: really fucking hard. And then Wordpress ate it. Father's Day is rough enough as it is and I can't bring myself to sit here and re-write it, but I ...
06.09.08

Cheap Ass Monday: Hot as Hell Cucumber Salad cheap ass, chocolate, dairy, fruit, sweets, veg, veg/vegan | (38)
Pretty. Apparently, I don't spend ENOUGH time on the internet, because I'm adding a new feature to TNS: Cheap Ass Monday. My grocery bills have, uh, been nudging ever so slightly upward for the past few months; I have no idea why that might be. No matter the reason, I need to figure out a way to offset some of the more obscene Smackdown costs, and I know lots of us are looking for quick, less expensive meals so we can save our money for blowout trips to the French Laundry. Or, you know, to pay the mortgage or ...
06.07.08

In which people get the animal fats they want and deserve. beer, cheese, dairy, pasta, re-creations, sauces, sweets | (42)
All cow fat, all the time. Let everyone's collective panties be unbunched: tofu doesn't live here any more. I'm not giving up on integrating more vegetarian or vegan meals into my repertoire, but I am giving up on frankenfoods like tofu. It's still not in the same category as truly unearthly "foods" like quorn, but my kitchen doesn't need it. Healthy vegetarian foods are easily assembled using whole, fresh ingredients. That's not what this is about, though. Well, at least the "healthy" part: this is real deal mac and cheese, the kind made with a classic butter-and-flour roux, milk that ...
05.29.08

Thursday Night Smackdown: Now With 100% Less Pork! dairy, legumes, pasta, sauces, smackdown, veg/vegan | (37)
Get ready for a whole lotta beige. I'm having a very love hate relationship with pork right now. On one hand, pork is unbelieveably delicious, and bacon is one of my major food groups. On the other, exposure to 18+ hours of smoking pig has left every one of my pores, hairs, lungs, bath towels, dogs and pieces of upholstered furniture embedded with immense amounts of microscopic pork particulate. Which is not as much fun as it sounds, trust me. The week has been pretty meat-free since Memorial Day to give my kidneys some time to recover from protein ...
04.27.08

Spring Lamb By Way of Italy By Way of My Ass dairy, lamb, pasta, sauces, veg | (28)
My ass is due east of Suck On It, Tunisia. If I'm not cooking directly from a recipe or making one of my standby dishes, I'm trying to riff off someone else's ideas. I can poach a mean egg and I have a decent sense of what goes with what (e.g., bacon goes with everything), but I don't flatter myself that I'm particularly innovative or have some kind of culinary talentg. I have more of an all-around genius than a specific savant-like gift. Every once in a while, though, I make up a dish that seems pretty unique (at least ...
04.22.08

And this quiche did my taxes. baking, dairy, eggs, veg | (23)
Actually, it didn't. This quiche had no fucking initiative. Work is busy this week and Brian is out of town at a conference for work*, and that usually adds up to one thing: cereal for dinner every night. On top of that, part of me doesn't want to move on to a new post because the feedback from the last one was so lovely and it sparked memories for so many of you; I especially appreciated the universal disdain for pink kitchenware. But eventually you have to move on from the schmaltzy shit and make a damn ...
04.05.08

Now that you mention it, we DO have some bananas today. beverages, breakfast, dairy, fruit | (22)
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 ...