TracyFood

Frenetic Friday 14 December 2007 12:27 am

Posted by Tracy in : Morning Glory, cooking, eating, friends, meta, potatoes, school, seasonality, work , trackback

Think good thoughts for me, readers; before the post office closes today I will be mailing a big fat envelope to the food studies program at NYU Steinhardt. Then I will collapse on the couch and watch Ratatouille on DVD (it arrived in the mail on one of the last nights of (C)Han(n)uk(k)a(h), courtesy of my parents, and I’m honestly a little amazed that I haven’t been watching it ever since). Or maybe I will just sleep. Either way, I will definitely do something restful because I start a six-day stretch of shifts at Morning Glory on Saturday: Beth has had plans to be out of town this weekend since before I got back from Nepal, Josh is in Seattle for his father’s funeral, and Gail is getting ready for her annual winter trip to Mexico, which leaves me and Jen to rock like hurricanes in the kitchen all week, oh yes. It’s going to be a busy one, and for me it kicks off almost a month of covering lots and lots of shifts.

So.

In honor of the fact that I’m going to be working a lot in the coming weeks, and to celebrate the fact that many of you, my readers, will be on midwinter holiday-type vacations which I sincerely hope you do not spend at computers bored enough to check this website every day, I will be posting less frequently for the next few weeks. My plan is to try out a regular Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule, with monkey business, whatever, and photos respectively — “whatever” most likely being recipes or Ask TracyFood, since both of those are fun for me to write. But we’ll see how that works.

Meanwhile, here’s a little belated but still fun C(H)an(n)uk(k)a(h) linkage:

Chanukkah, the festival of using oil responsibly on Culiblog by Debra Solomon (worth a click just for the Dutch sign about responsible deepfrying — I actually picked up a pamplet about this public health project on our Zuiderzeeroute adventure, because I am an enormous geek).

Happy Hannukah — Eat Some Latkes For Me at the Post-Punk Kitchen blog by Isa Chandra Moskowitz.

On Friday I had latkes at a party in Olympia with Marcy. They were made from a mix that came in a box, and I got to help flip a few, which made me happy. Also I learned that pretty much any food is fair game for the Jewish Festival of Lights (provided it’s kosher, of course). What does this mean? Next year for (C)Han(n)uk(k)a(h) I am totally going to try making donuts. (Note to self: get a deep fryer before then.) But on Tuesday night I made latkes the newfangled old-fashioned way, with a food processor to grate my potatoes and onions, and a wire mesh strainer to squeeze out veggie juices, and a big cast iron skillet full of oil to fry up the latkes I was too impatient to bake (the oven-frying is a technique described in the Moosewood New Classics recipe “Lovely Low-Fat Latkes,” but it runs a little counter to the whole “celebrate OIL” tradition). Pop quiz, readers: would you prefer a recipe that took more time and made fewer dishes, or one that made more dishes but took less time? What if the latter required you to turn on the oven? What if you did or didn’t have a dishwasher or at least someone to help with the washing up? I’m just curious, that’s all.

And now I am going to force myself to finish one more run-through of my personal statement, and then try to get a little sleep. If I make it to bed before 1 AM, it will be my earliest bedtime all week, because I seem to be doing my best writing at somewhat ridiculous hours these days. Go figure, and once again, wish me luck.

Thanks for reading,
-Tracy