The Snozzberries Taste Like Snozzberries! 22 Jun 08

Tiny martini glasses: cute presentation, or painfully twee?*

A few weeks ago, The Kitchn highlighted an old Bon Appetit recipe for wine-marinated grapes. Because while fruit is tasty on its own, it is almost always improved by being soaked in booze.

I was immediately drawn to this recipe - if you can call it that, it’s so simple I don’t know if it rises to the level of “recipe” - because frozen grapes have always been one of my favorite summer snacks. And if I love frozen grapes, and soaking grapes in booze will make them better, then Newton’s 5th Transitive Rule of Snacks dictates that wine-soaked, frozen grapes should be fan-fucking-tastic. Newton’s actual words.

*Even though I took these photos, I’m going to have to go with “twee.”

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Ice Cream for a Dead Man 15 Jun 08

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. It was really good, filled with humor, pathos, and brilliant photography.

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 don’t want to deprive anyone of delicious, delicious ice cream. So recipe after the jump, and my apologies for the lack of real post.

ETA: Okay, okay, here’s a tidbit. So I have my dad’s high school yearbook from 1951, and each graduate’s photo is accompanied by a painfully wholesome description: “Jimmy is sure to be a great asset to the Army,” “Susan always has a ready smile and a helping hand.” My dad’s? “Rudy is a treat for all the ladies.”

Awww, yeah.

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Cheap Ass Monday: Hot as Hell Cucumber Salad 09 Jun 08

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 utility bill (thanks a lot, heat wave).

So Monday will no longer merely be “Monday” but “Cheap Ass Monday,” where we endeavor to make a tasty dinner for two gluttonous adults for $5 or less. Play along at home! The rules are:

• You (me) have to actually MAKE dinner out of actual whole, fresh ingredients. The Wendy’s 99-cent menu does not a Cheap Ass Monday make. I mean, technically it does, but that’s not gonna fly around here.

• Normal pantry items that right-thinking people should have in their homes (salt, sugar, olive oil, etc) do not count toward the $5 limit.

• I am the arbiter of what constitutes a “normal pantry item” and reserve the right to stretch the definition thereof in order to meet my self-imposed dollar limit.

• Some Mondays may be skipped without prior notice if I am feeling lazy.

Cheap Ass Monday kicks off with a refreshing, raw cucumber and peanut salad. Not only is it too hot in New York to even think about entertaining the idea of considering turning on the oven, it is also too hot for humans to effectively digest complex foods. Also, the knobs on the stove may well be too hot from the ambient temperature to touch; I can’t say for sure because I didn’t want to chance it.

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I scream, you scream, we all scream for….pie. 04 Jun 08

Save the fork - there’s pie!

I’ve been seeing pictures of this strawberry pie from the most recent issue of Gourmet all over the place lately, and it calls to me like a siren. The deep ruby filling. The plump berries. The crisp crust. The billowy whipped cream.

PIE.

I finally got around to giving it a go last night, albeit with some alterations. The whole process was quick, easy and painless, leaving me with very little fodder for a post other than pretty pictures of strawberries, not that there’s anything wrong with that. Thus, in the interest of amusement, I present you with the first ever Mad Libs Blog Post. Get out a pen and paper, call your co-workers ’round call your friends ’round during non-work hours only, and write this post! Maybe you’ll get the real answers at the end! Maybe not!

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Smoke-a-Thon 2008: Gusta el sabor Cubano! 28 May 08

I don’t actually speak Spanish. Perhaps you’ve noticed.

Still very tired.
Can I write an entire post
using haiku? Sí.

Behold the raw pork:
Juicy, pink, fatty goodness.
Oh, salmonella trichinosis.

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A Fuzzy Navel, please - baked, not stirred. 18 May 08

When I’m good, I’m good.

Long before I became fully immured in the foodblogosphere, I was addicted to the archives of Sugar High Friday over at The Domestic Goddess - we’re talking over 3 years worth of sugary, buttery, sticky smooth sweet silky goodness from around the world. Have an excess of figs? Check out #35. Love ginger? Try lucky #19. Wanna get fancy-pants about it? Sugar art, #26. Feeling po-mo? “Desserts in shades of white,” #31.* Dead dentists everywhere are creating elaborate underground tunnels from all the rolling they’re doing in their graves.

When I started the Smackdown, I knew that Sugar High Friday was one of the first events I wanted to participate in. Of course, the first two themes following my crash landing into foodblogland would be pies - which I’m not really into, except for the occasional key lime** - and cooking with candy, which. eh. Ergo, I was excited when Tartelette, the host for this round, announced the theme for #43: citrus.

So to mark this personal blogging milestone, I give you: Fuzzy Navel Upside-Down Cake.

*For the record, I reject food that is extremely po-mo; I prefer my meals to be firmly grounded in the mo.

**To clarify: not into making. But very into eating.

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Strawberry Shortcake After Dark 29 Apr 08

Hey you…you like-a the berries?  Come closer, I give you a berry.

I was not in Whole Foods today to buy strawberries, I was there to buy a pork product for this Thursday.  No, I will not specify beyond that; I’ve already said too much and will now have to reach through the internet and kill you.  But as I was walking through the produce section, the berries launched a full-on nasal assault with their sweet fragrance to which I succumbed instantly.  Because strawberries are the shit.

I knew immediately that I wanted to make a quick but grown-up strawberry shortcake: black-pepper buttermilk biscuits, strawberries macerated in balsamic vinegar and honey-sweetened mascarpone.  Can I get a hell yeah?

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Thursday Night Smackdown: Ladies’ Night Poussin 24 Apr 08

Yes, I ate a baby chicken and no, I’m not sorry.

Dinner tonight comes thanks to douche-baggy pretty boy Tyler Florence’s Eat This Book: honey and soy glazed poussin with curried green apples.

I should state for the record that I have no real reason to believe that Tyler Florence is a douchebag. It’s just a feeling I have, but I’m pretty sure he’s That Guy. For example, this recipe comes from a section of the book called “devouring,” which contains a collection of recipes with no discernible theme, other than the fact that they’re all meant to be eaten. Other sections include Consuming, Tasting and Noshing and are equally motley. Why, Tyler? The recipes look pretty good; why don’t you want me to find them?

But his shrimp and grits recipe is the shit and his book was 50% off, so there you go.  I’m such an enabler.

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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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