Flavors 518

It took me a long to get to a place where I have a balanced relationship with food. I previously wrote about the pressures on brides to lose weight . I also wrote about thinspiration on Pinterest . I've read quotes by the singer Adele where she says she has seen where obsessions with weight go, and she doesn't want to do that to herself mentally. So I'm against that - I'm against obsession, diet pills, girls I knew who would lick Doritos and throw them away on the side of the couch so their boyfriends would think they were actually eating chips. I'm in favor of vegetables and making some effort to get some form of exercise. Of course you want to feel good about yourself and fit in your clothes, but other than that I think worrying too much about weight can ruin your life pretty easily. If you won't even eat butter on Christmas or let your kids put white flour in a Father's Day cake, I don't think you are living life to the fullest. Life is too short fo...

Back when I first moved in with my husband I baked him a cake. I went to the store to buy some baking powder, and the woman behind me didn't approve of the brand I was buying. I said my boyfriend was teaching me how to cook, and that I had actually never made a cake before. She said it should have been the other way around - that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. Well, the opposite was true, and I didn't eat much of anything before I met him ( well, this ). This weekend, while doing some Valentine's Day baking I finally got to the end of that can of baking powder (if you want to lecture me about it not being fresh after 3 years, well go ahead). I got to thinking about food in our relationship. We met in a dine r where I'd pressure him to order milkshakes, and he'd try to talk me into eating some of his fries.  I baked him a quiche . There was no air conditioning and there was a hot and sticky black leather futon. We spent a lot of time a...

I took yesterday off of work months in advance to attend an author signing and cooking demonstration by Amanda Hesser for the Food52 cookbook. We woke up super early, drove to Poughkeepsie, took the Metro-North, took a cab from Grand Central, and made it to Sur La Table on 57th street just in time - just in time, that is, for their staff to tell us it was postponed because the store hasn't finished installing their kitchen yet. So unfortunate. What a let down! So we just killed some time hanging around Columbus Circle and then met our friend at Prune Restaurant for lunch at 1st and 1st. Scott had the sweetbreads with capers and bacon. I had the burger on an English muffin with Cabot cheddar cheese, and our friend had the skate with a lemon caper sauce. Hers also came with a potato slaw with some sesame sort of dressing with it. It was all amazing. A side view of the burger: We also had desserts: churros and a poached pear with brandy and creme fraiche. ...

So this picture above was taken in January 2009 about two weeks before my grandmother died. It is better than the one that was taken one minute before, but it is totally not in focus. The nurse was far from a good photographer. What a tragedy it is when photographs of moments in your life that will never be repeated are all blurry! We have a great one on our honeymoon that has this same problem. Very tragic. Anyways, so we visited her in Kalamazoo, MI at a nursing home. I was living in NYC working at the Morgan at the time. My grandmother was very concerned as to whether it was a paid job or just an unpaid internship. I was very concerned about getting her pecan pie recipe. She said "Everyone knows how to make that", and wouldn't give it to me but kept asking me how much I got paid. I never got the recipe, and then I married someone who is allergic to nuts. So no pecan pie for me. But this morning I was buying an espresso at the coffee shop in town ( because K cups ...

When I was a single girl I was hopeless in a culinary sense . I never seemed to have ever taken a picture of the kitchen I had when I lived in Astoria, Queens (probably because it was that terrible), but I did take some pictures of other parts of the apartment.To give a sense of what I was working with: There were lots of books. Is that a Planet of the Apes poster taped to the wall? Yes, I think it is. Martha Stewart would not approve. I had a crazy, crazy bookcase I made when I was 21. Is that me glued on next to Virginia Woolf and George Washington? Yes. (I don't have an explanation). I literally used scarves and blankets as curtains and wall decorations. Like this "curtain" that hung up there for 3 years: (For comparison sake - see also me wearing the "curtain" in Scotland just after we ate at the cafe where J.K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter- proves it was so not a curtain:) And this "tapestry" (I'm really not trying to be...

When I was a kid I felt overwhelmed by Thanksgiving. It just always seemed like so much food that we'd end up feeling sick at the end of it. When I was in college and learning about people starving all over the world, a holiday just devoted to eating seemed a bit like flaunting our wealth in the faces of the less fortunate of the world. Like many things in life, sometimes it takes being able to do something out of free will instead of obligation for you to appreciate it. I did enjoy the green bean casserole:  (A Midwestern classic: can of green beans, can of cream of mushroom soup mixed together , french fried onions on top, put in the oven for a while.) This blog shows someone attempting the kind of holiday meal I remember as a kid here and here . This post has some great retro Thanksgiving photos (like the one I featured above).  In the past few years I've had different ideas about how to approach it. Our first Thanksgiving we did actually make an enormous am...

We have some freelance photographers at my job who come to shoot the art work who come all the way from Northampton, MA. They bring delicious pastries from Bread Euphoria . It is sort of ridiculous how much the Fruit and Nut scone from this place has over the last two years become a big highlight of my month. Today they brought them (as expected), and I was so excited.... except that my favorite scone seemed now to have the flavor of banana in it. I can't be sure, but that is pretty much the only food I hate. I guess you can't really taste bananas baked into things, but this faint suspicion really took away from the excitement of the scone for me. I HATE bananas to an irrational extent. In kindergarten I ate one and threw up immediately, and since then the mere scent of them can make me completely nauseous. The mushy, sticky texture, the way the smell of them takes over a room - who likes these things?? (Lots of people apparently, also they are apparently high in potassium, ...

Recently I came across something that looks like this: It is Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s Summer from the Denver Art Museum. It made me think of something similar I made in high school:  My dad will tell you I went through many burgundy pencils for that plate, sending him all over town to purchase them. It got me thinking about Saxton Freymann , and made me wonder why people get excited about food in art. I feel like it is just supposed to be fun and whimsical and maybe along the same line as the wedding cakes that look like other things, or in one case the bride herself.  Starting from squeeze bottles for sauces in restaurants and going all the way to sugar sculptures , the importance of the aesthetics of food cannot be ignored. I believe that dishes can look better when different colors are combined, and that of course some presentations are more attractive than others ( the plating at Bouchon was nothing short of beautiful), but I think too much fussiness (especially ...

"I love grocery shopping when I'm home. That's what makes me feel totally normal. I love both the idea of home as in being with my family and friends, and also the idea of exploration. I think those two are probably my great interests. "   -Yo-Yo Ma (C-town, Astoria) We just read the book  A Pigeon and a Boy: A Novel for my book club. The narrator mentions that he thinks he can divide his life into time spent using 4 different grocery stores, and that this division stands out in his head more than times spent in different places or with different people. I think this is an interesting way to look at things. An important theme in the book was loving one's home, since without that feeling homing pigeons cannot complete their missions. I think having a grocery store one loves is an important factor in feeling at home in an area. Here's what it would look like if I divided my life in grocery stores (roughly). When I was in college I frequented a Kroger ...

So I am officially getting sick of the watermelon gazpacho I have been eating for lunch all summer, and my InStyle magazine that came yesterday got me drooling over riding boots and Tippi Hendren wool dresses and tweed suits all over again, so I would say summer is coming to a near close. Sure, you say, not quite sure yet, but I want to feel prepared. I want to appreciate it fully so that one day in the not so distant future when I am fighting my way up a mountain through an awful snowstorm, the first of many, I can remember flawless, dry summer days and remember that those will come again. This summer will be remember as the summer I got married, went on a honeymoon (finally getting to visit California, falling totally in love with the Pacific Northwest), and watched years 1990-1996 of Beverly Hills, 90210. It was also the summer we almost hit a grizzly bear with our car on our ten hour long drive from Napa to Portland, which was for some reason was very memorable to me (maybe beca...

 Our friend read this poem at our wedding ceremony last week. I love it so much. LIII from One Hundred Love Sonnets by Pablo Neruda: "Here are the bread-the wine-the table-the house: a man's needs, and a woman's, and a life's. Peace whirled through and settled in this place: the common fire burned, to make this light. Hail to your two hands, which fly and make their white creations, the singing and the food: salve! the wholesomeness of your busy feet; viva! the ballerina who dances with the broom. Those rugged rivers of water and of threat, torturous pavilions of the foam, incendiary hives and reefs: today they are this respite, your blood in mine, this path, starry and blue as the night, this never-ending simple tenderness." Our wedding was a blast. We've socialized more and eaten out a lot since then. We took some friends and family on a culinary tour of Albany afterward ( Ala Shanghai , lunch at Provence , Forbidden Pleasures appetizer...

When I first started cooking I was friends with a woman who did not have very much of an interest in food. She was very skinny, and in the NYC style suppressed her appetite with huge amounts of coffee and cigarettes. I mentioned that I was going home to make dinner one day, and she made a comment like "How oppressive! What is this, 1950?" While planning a wedding, I can't help but think about what it means to be a "wife" in these modern times. All the imagery of a traditional wedding creates a story very different to what our marriage will actually be like. We're grown ups and have been for quite some time. We both have graduate degrees. We both have jobs. In fact, he mostly taught me how to cook. Yes, things are different now than they were in 1950, but my friend's reactionary viewpoint doesn't do anyone any good. The thing about spending all day Sunday cooking something is that you get to eat the leftovers for lunch at work all week. The thing a...

I was reading in Ad Hoc at Home last weekend Thomas Keller's tips for the home cook. He pointed out that being a good cook at home really comes down to knowing how to do a handful of things well: braising, making a pie crust, roasting a chicken, cooking eggs, making a pan sauce, and a few other tasks. He pointed out that many home cooks try a recipe once and move on to the next. But he pointed out that when a person makes a recipe for a second time is when they start to really understand how to make the dish. He recommends starting with these fundamental tasks and branching out from there. I can agree that making the same recipes many times is what allows the cook to actually excel at certain things. I can make some really good chocolate chip cookies. Why? Because Scott loves them and always says "You never make us cookies". So since he encourages me to make the same type of dessert over and over again, I have a good grasp on what makes the process successful. Ice crea...

I was reading in Ad Hoc at Home this weekend about all the ways vinegar can be used. I never really thought of it, but Keller was saying how it is like salt and pepper and can be added to many dishes to lift up the flavors. You can add a bit to give a dish a little punch, but not too much that it tastes predominantly like vinegar. He says that about salt and pepper too, when you can taste them its too much. Keller was also saying that any food you add salt to yourself won't be tasty and so salty that it is a health concern. He says salt in your diet only becomes a concern if you are eating canned and processed foods that have incredibly high amounts. I added some champagne vinegar to my chicken dumplings soup , and I am now having the leftovers for lunch and I really notice how the vinegar brightens and lifts up the flavors.

We went to NYC earlier in the week, and it made me feel very nostalgic. I saw glimpses of a ghost of my former self everywhere: getting first job in a museum; going on first dates with fiancé; losing my wallet, totally freaking out, having museum security guard give me a $20 bill to get home, and random woman mailing it to me from one of the busiest intersections in the world; writing 40 page papers for grad school; going out way too often, and staying out way too late; getting sexually harassed at my waitressing job; exhilarated, scared, and a little alone. I also remembered the first meal I ever cooked when I moved in with Scott. I think I only owned one cookbook at that time which Scott's mother had given me for Christmas the previous year. I made Chicken Tikka with all the condiments. It was the first time I used a food processor, and I remember being surprised how delicious it was to mix yogurt, ginger, garlic, and mint together. Then, I made a cake from the only cookbook ...

In some ways, food and music have a lot in common. Too many harsh notes can overwhelm more delicate notes. Timing matters in both as there can be an initial impression, the central substance, and then finally the lingering aftertaste. Also, food has a way of bringing one back to a moment in time or a circumstance or a whole other period of life the way a song does. It can transport you entirely, and sometimes the memory of a food can inform the experience so much that it is the memory one enjoys as much as the actual eating. When I lived by myself in NYC for years between college and grad school, I went to museums, the opera, plays, read Russian novels and historical biographies that were over a thousand pages. I was a Midwestern suburban girl in a crazy city I didn't belong in, and looking back I don't now who I'd be without that experience. That studio apartment in Queens with barely any furniture (what there was I had gotten for free from the hallway of my building ), ...