TracyFood

Yesterday’s TracyFood was not brought to you… 31 January 2008 7:12 pm

Posted by Tracy in : nepal, America's Test Kitchen, chocolate, pictures, dessert, friends , add a comment

…by the fact that our power was out all morning and then Allison was in town so I went out to play instead. There was Sweet Life pastry goodness:

Chocolate-almond truffle tart, which is to say “pure truffle awesomeness so dense and delicious that I only made it halfway through by sheer force of will, and Peter and I very happily shared the leftovers this afternoon”.

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So. About those cookies. (Hi Cj!) 29 January 2008 7:26 am

Posted by Tracy in : pictures, chocolate, America's Test Kitchen, baking, dessert, friends, vegetarian, cooking , 1 comment so far

This post is dedicated to Cj for her enthusiasm for chocolatey goodness, both vegan and non. My most recent forays into cookieliciousness fall into the latter category: Alton Brown and America’s Test Kitchen both agree that melted butter is the way to chewy cookie goodness, and after the results of my most recent experiments in that field, I am not about to argue.

I used the recipe for chewy chocolate chip cookies in The New Best Recipe, which turns out to be identical to the one in Alton’s “Three Chips for Sister Marsha” episode: there’s an egg to separate, but it’s worth it, oh yes. Then I pondered ATK’s very specific instructions on how to shape the cookies, and decided to try an experiment:

Same batter, different shaping techniques. What difference does it make?

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Monkey Monday: sheer determination edition. 28 January 2008 7:23 am

Posted by Tracy in : health, school, recipes, books , add a comment

Greetings from the far side of an all-nighter, readers! For some reason, sheer determination and staying up all night was just what it took for me to write a five-page critical journal on the first third of the readings for my food and gender anthropology class. The all-important news is: It’s done! Woo! The rest of my news items will be brief, a way of clearing other random detritus from my brain while I decide whether I need to nap and shower before class (yes) and how much (um, that depends…) There will be scatterbrained discussion of my recent non-class readings, and some cookery discoveries, complete with links. (more…)

Foto Friday: Where did this week go? 25 January 2008 5:44 pm

Posted by Tracy in : baking, Morning Glory, pictures, soup, meta, friends, eating, books, cooking , 1 comment so far

Oof, kids. I don’t seem to have a lot of words this week, but I have lots of pictures. First, Peter and I made chocolate chip cookies on Saturday (these pictures are from an earlier batch that really deserves a writeup all its own):

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Foto Friday: introducing Lakshman (a Nepal flashback) 18 January 2008 6:43 pm

Posted by Tracy in : nepal, travel, pictures, hungry planet, eating , 1 comment so far

When I put out my general “who wants a postcard?” call before the Nepal trip, Cj said something awesome like, “I don’t need a postcard, but bring back some good stories.” Here, then, is a little story about Lakshman, one of our amazing kitchen crew.

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This story takes place on October 15, our first real day of trekking, when we set out from the “Rumjatar Hilton” schoolyard and hit the trail through lush green fields of millet: