TracyFood

Monkey Monday: latest ever edition. 24 December 2007 6:15 am

Posted by Tracy in : work, pictures, monkeys, potatoes, Morning Glory, school, eating, books, meta, cooking , trackback

Holy cats, readers. A week ago today at this time I was almost done pulling an all-nighter to get my NYU application submitted at 11:30 that Monday morning. Then I took a nap, and when I woke up I tried to write something monkeyish only to get distracted, a pattern that repeated every day last week. It was almost as if I’d spent a lot of writing energy on some major project and needed to rest that part of my brain, (she wrote, feeling slightly ridiculous for having hedged that statement AT ALL). Anyway. I figure there’s a good chance no one will read this on account of it being Christmas Eve, and now that I’m writing at all again I’m thinking my three-posts-a-week vacation plan is still a pretty good one, and all that adds up to a nice, low-preseasing myself back into the daily blog grind thing, which suits me fine. Read on for a teeny recap of the past week and some guesses about what I’ll be writing about for the next few days. Or don’t, but either way have a fantastic end of the year.

My Week in Sort-of Brief

So. Last Sunday I got home from Morning Glory, had a delicious dinner, and went to work finishing my NYU application, which I finally submitted at 11:30 the next morning. So. The big bad graduate school application, it is done. Go me! I did not know how important it was to me until I thought for sure I could not make the deadline, so I am very proud of myself for getting it all done in time after all (no thanks to the freaking post office sending my big overnight express envelope via Jersey City… gah). Coming up later this week: the recipe I sent in with my application as a sample of my Sundance stuff, that being the original reason behind this blogsite project and exploring my capacity for geeking out about food.

But I digress. Before I get any more off track, I would like to say that I am eternally grateful to Ben and Minette of Morning Glory, who made it possible for me to stay up all night last Sunday finishing my NYU application, which I submitted Monday morning. Ben took my kitchen shift and Minette came in to take his dish shift, and they are both my heroes. While I could have had the whole mess submitted before 10:30 AM, somehow things didn’t really come together until that last hour of sleep deprivation (go figure). Also I would not have been able to take a nap afterwards, and so who knows how much coffee would have been required to get me through that day’s shift, let alone how hard I would have crashed Monday night. As it was I sort of crashed about an hour too soon during Tuesday’s shift, but we all got through it okay, even when we ran out of oranges so I didn’t have quite enough juice for my black bean soup. Mmm, black bean soup with mango.

But I digress again. I closed on Tuesday, opened on Wednesday, then went home and finally watched Ratatouille like I’d promised myself as a reward for getting the app done. Then Peter and I had a surprise phone call and opportunity to be social for the second night that week (the first being I’m Not There on Monday night, and I’m still a little amazed I managed to stay awake, but I digress). I worked again on Thursday afternoon because that’s how I roll, and then I finally had two days off in a row before kicking back into shift coverage mode yesterday (Sunday). All told, I really didn’t do much last week besides work and recover from the big bad application of doom. Whee.

My week in reading

I read a lot!

Offline

Once again, I am monopolizing my friendly local public library’s copy of the latest edition of Madhur Jaffrey’s Indian Cooking. It is still fantastic, and rapidly crushing whatever objections I may have ever had to recipes accompanied by such huge, glossy photography. Also I am working on Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert, and The Potato: How the Humble Spud Rescued the Western World by Larry Zuckerman. The latter makes me want to try the recipe for potage Parmentier from last March-April’s Cook’s Illustrated, which in turn reminds me that something might be weird with my subscription to that fine magazine: the January-February 2008 issue arrived on Friday, followed by a second copy the November-December 2007 issue on Saturday, the first having arrived on schedule two months ago. Weird. But I’ll give them a call and sort it out, perhaps after the holidays. Also I will call NYU and sing the blues about my transcripts and stuff being sent via Jersey City (seriously, what the crap! I could’ve sent it faster by regular mail, and much cheaper besides. Dang.)

Online

I more or less entirely missed my chance to have anything to do with Menu for Hope 2007, but I’ll be ready next year. In the meantime, I caught a truly fantastic episode of King of the Hill (that link goes to Culinate’s review, but if you want to get right to the episode, go to the FOX King of the Hill site and scroll down the episode list to the one called “Raise the Steaks”). Yeah, it’s heavy-handed in places, but when Mike Judge makes fun of hippies, it’s freakin’ funny, and way cheaper than therapy for my time at Sundance, so I expect to be quoting this cartoon for years to come.

Have I mentioned that I’m working Christmas Eve, Boxing Day, New Year’s Eve, and New Year’s Day? It makes me link to Tasting Menu’s How a Cook Spends Thanksgiving (their blog is all kinds of worth checking out, by the way, if only for the pieces on the down and dirty work of restaurant kitchens, from breaking down at night, deep cleaning — though Dana’s comments on setting limits and expectations are pure gold, too).

My week in cooking and eating (the not at work kind)

Monday night after my nap and before the movie, I cooked a big ridiculous celebratory dinner from Madhur Jaffrey’s Indian Cooking, a book I praised earlier. Here is a picture of the meal:

That’s spinach and potatoes, mushroom pullao, and lamb with turnips, and it was all very yummy indeed. On Wednesday afternoon I made a second round of Nepali-style dal, which later proved a good accompaniment to the leftover spinach potatoes and mushrooom pullao. Yum again, and yay for I think finding the right mixture of dried lentil-type things!

On Saturday, the night after the winter solstice, Peter and I celebrated life and light with lasagna, blueberry cobbler made with berries frozen this past summer, and of course homemade ice cream because yum. Fun fact: you can totally make lasagna in a 4×9-inch loaf pan, and it makes four very reasonable servings, instead of the OMG SO VERY MUCH FOOD that results from making lasagna in a 9×13-inch or even a 7×9-inch baking pan. Sweet!

Also at some point we had my vaguely remembered interpretation of Jack Bishop’s Soft Tacos with Garlicky Greens and refried beans, and I’m looking forward to eating the leftovers sometime soon.

Coming up

In food, I’m hoping to try Heidi’s Thai-spiced pumpkin soup, albeit with butternut and sweet dumpling squash, because that’s what I happen to have around. Yay for using up leftover coconut milk and my somewhat ridiculous abundance of curry paste! (The big jar cost less than the little one, and I am a sucker for unit price, okay?)

In reading, I really have to hurry up with Eat, Pray, Love because it’s due back to the library on Boxing Day.

In writing, I already mentioned my plan to post my recipe for Curried Pea Soup, pictured below:

but I’m also thinking it’s about time I got back on my Nepal flashback posts (and, to be fair, I did get a few more pictures posted to Flickr last week). And now I’ve gone on for much longer than I ever expected to, and I’ve got to dash off to work. If you’ve managed to read this far, thank you. I’ll try to keep the rest of this year’s posts short and sweet.