Author Archives: Tasha

Where I’ve been and where I’m going.

Reading, writing and thinking about food―and cooking food!—are such a significant part of my life now that it’s hard to believe I’ve only been sharing recipes and food thoughts here at MetaCookbook for eight months. The importance of food and food issues have been a long and slowly simmering topic for me (kind of like an excellent pot of chili), and one of the sources of this interest was “the 2001 Discover article on Gary Nabhan and his quest to eat locally sourced foods to save the planet.”:http://discovermagazine.com/2001/may/feateatlocal

Nabhan’s views, as presented in the article, started the process of challenging how I thought about food and how I eat. I will come right out and say that reading the article didn’t change my food habits right away―but Nabhan’s ideas and experience lodged themselves in my brain.… Continue reading →

No cookbook or recipe today.

I’ve been fighting with an entry all day today. It’s not a recipe entry, and it’s not another one about a cookbook. It’s about food, and a few of the changes in my relationship with food. It’s basically a “thoughts” post.

The problem is that I ramble in that post. A lot. I tend to be a bit of a rambling writer anyway, as I suspect my readers know by now, but this is even larger in scope, so the rambles are all over the place. It’s all connected in my head, but it certainly doesn’t show up connected in the words. So I keep drafting and tweaking and asking for help. Angelique has helped me polish much of my writing in my life, including my M.Sc.… Continue reading →

Outstanding in the Field: A Farm to Table Cookbook by Jim Denevan with Marah Stets

Cover of Outstanding in the Field: A Farm to Table Cookbook by Jim Denevan with Marah Stets

I simply loved the subtitle of this book, when I purchased it. I can’t tell you how much the idea of having some ability to trace my food from “farm to table” appeals to me. Furthermore, since I am interested in the seasonality of food, the thought of having a cookbook that could help me see what sorts of things ripen at the same time really appealed to me.

This cookbook isn’t quite what I imagined, though it’s close. I don’t feel as if the “seasonality” aspects I keep looking for in cookbooks show up here either. A cookbook I’ve discussed in the past and at least one more coming up both were purchased in an attempt to get this information. They do some good, all of them, but somehow I want more.… Continue reading →

[83] White Wine, Onion and Leek Soup

No cookbook link here, because this is out of my “recipe stash”. I can, though, link you to the person who gave it to me, because I got it while I was “taking the six week ‘How to Think Like a Chef’ course in Baltimore”:http://www.fortheloveoffood.com/Adult_Cooking_Classes.php which I have mentioned more than once here.

One of the nice things about this challenge, I can tell, is discovering what recipes I have in the stash. I know this, because I’d completely forgotten I had this recipe. I found it while looking for a completely different recipe that Chef Diane had provided with the class.

You see, leeks are beautiful and Bill and I like them a lot. So while we were at the farmers’ market the other day, we saw a pile of leeks being sold, and decided it would be nice to make a leek soup.… Continue reading →

[82] Fresh Applesauce

Cover of The Healthy Kitchen, by Andrew Weil and Rosie Daley

This is the only recipe from this cookbook I’d ever made before this challenge. I liked it.

I should say, for the record, that I like the photos in this book. There aren’t a lot of them, certainly most recipes do not have a photo associated, but the photos of Weil & Daley cooking and eating, or of random food are just great. There’s a lovely photo of kale in there; I think it’s growing in Weil’s backyard.

I’m saying all of this because, so far, we have disliked or been indifferent to more recipes in this book than we have liked. I occasionally think it’s time to eject the book from the challenge. I don’t think we’re going to yet, but it comes up often.… Continue reading →