Author Archives: Tasha

[126] Simmered Tofu

Cover to Asian Cook by Terry Tan (unknown edition)

Last year, my friend Theresa convinced me to take a wine and food pairing class with her and a couple of her friends. It was a huge amount of fun, and by the end, we were all pretty friendly. We decided we should continue the tradition, and so we now meet about a month to try new foods and wines we think we will go with them. Previously, we hadn’t had any sort of organization, but we’ve recently decided we should have a “theme” for each night.

The most recent hostess decided that we should have Asian food as our theme, partially because it’s a difficult pairing, and partially because she’s Korean and wanted to share shopping and cooking with us. As you can imagine, I figured it was the perfect time to pull out my Asian Cook cookbook and try something.… Continue reading →

What is home food? What is eating out? What is eating in?

This post started out as part of the progress report I gave on Wednesday. However, that post became so long, I decided to splinter this off into it’s own post (because it was guaranteed to be long). I think this turned out to be a good thing, as the last post had a comment from one of my good friends commenting on the apparent number of grey areas in this new self-challenge[1].

She’s not wrong. There are a lot of grey areas, and they do lead to potential loopholes which lead to rationalizations (or potential rationalizations). Part of the reason things were derailed last time was because of these grey areas. I solved them (I thought) which is why I thought I had this “eating in” thing down this time around.… Continue reading →

A progress report

When I announced that I was trying again on my “Eating In Challenge”, I mentioned that I’d had questions about if drinking out was okay, or if I would accept a restaurant meal paid for by someone else, and that I’d come to the conclusion that “no” was the appropriate answer for these things.

So, first a confession. I’ve already gone out to a bar for drinks. I went out with a friend for a few beers after she had dinner at our house. I’m surprisingly comfortable with this. I had said “no” to drinks out because they lead to food out. This very much did not – we had a solid meal at home, then went out for drinks and had only a couple of beers.… Continue reading →

[125] Greek Lemon Soup – Meatless Monday

Cover of The Joy of Cooking (1997 reprint of 1975 edition)

Have I mentioned I’m resolved to try to participate in “Meatless Mondays”? I’m doing it mostly for personal health reasons (I’d also like to lose some weight and such), but also environmental reasons. Finally, it’s a surprisingly large challenge for me. I count anything with a face as “meat” and I aim to be completely meatless one day a week. So this means no fish, no fowl, no mammals in the most obvious form – meat – but also in less obvious forms, such as broth and stock.

I’m not always good at this. It’s been touch and go since I started the challenge. I haven’t managed it every week, but I think I’ve managed more weeks than I haven’t. Of course, since I hadn’t been tracking this in any way until a couple of weeks ago, I can’t actually say.… Continue reading →

Stock and Wasted Food

One of the more interesting panels at Edible Institute this year was all about recent non-fiction food books. Three authors, Barry Estabrook, Terry McMillan and Jonathan Bloom were all there to talk about their experiences.

Estabrook, who wrote Tomatoland (affiliate link) and maintains the blog Politics of the Plate mostly asked questions of McMillan and Bloom, but did put in a few words of his own.

McMillan wrote The American Way of Eating (affiliate link) and does not appear to maintain a blog. ETA, 3 April 2012: It turns out she does, but the way I looked for it didn’t turn it up. Anyway, she blogs here.

Bloom wrote Wasted Food (affiliate link) and maintains a blog of the same name.

I’ve read Tomatoland, and it was fascinating and educational.… Continue reading →