Category Archives: Food

What’s the strangest item you’ve brought home from a restaurant?

For me, I think it might be the quail bones I brought home on Saturday. I also brought home one tiny chicken leg bone, but between it being both small and chicken, it hardly counts.

This is a habit I think Jonathan Bloom of Wasted Food would at least somewhat approve of, but I’m not sure. Don’t think I won’t ask him, though!

I bring home bones. I don’t own dogs, and even if I did I wouldn’t give them most bones from restaurants. But I bring home bones anyway.

Though I cited Bloom and Wasted Food as deeper influences a week ago on my state of mind, I’ve been bringing bones home from restaurants since last December. And frugality, not waste, was really the motivation.… Continue reading →

While I am focused on other things

I wanted to share with you a photo I took about two weeks ago. It’s what $35 worth of peaches looks like in my world.

My freezers are full of peaches and blueberries. Yet, I am contemplating more peaches. Up to and including another crate of them, which is how many the above is. It’s probably a bad plan, but I’m very tempted.… Continue reading →

[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 →

[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 →

Experimenting in the kitchen

How to Cook Everything, Revised Edition by Mark Bittman

I’ll write this up fully later, but I just wanted to share a couple of photos with you. I’ve been in the kitchen more than my silence might indicate, but mostly doing simply things like hummus. Today’s my first experiment in awhile.

Well, I call it an experiment, but like the cautious cook I usually am, I took Marc Bittman’s recipe for “Braised Oxtail with Garlic and White Wine” and messed with it as I cooked. For one thing, I used beef neck instead of oxtail. It looks just as (if not more) tasty than the oxtails I’ve had, but was astoundingly cheaper. If this works out, I may never go back to oxtail.

His recipe also calls for 4 ounces of bacon. I didn’t remember that before I started quick thawing the beef neck.… Continue reading →