TracyFood

Monkey Monday: NYC trip, garden update, and more! 19 May 2008 8:58 am

Posted by Tracy in : garden, travel, fangirl, events, pictures, baking, eating, books, Marion Nestle, school, cooking , trackback

First and foremost, readers, if you like my banana bread recipe, I’d really appreciate your giving it (and me) some love over at Not Quite Nigella’s banana bread recipe collection roundup, which got an amazing 79 replies. If you don’t like my banana bread recipe, there might be something over there that’s more your speed — heck, there may be something over there for you even if you don’t usually like banana bread, the responses are that diverse! However, if you never, ever like banana bread, then you should under no circumstances click that last link, because there is nothing there for you. (But seriously, check it out. And vote for me!)

In other news, I had a great time in NYC, even if I totally missed the NYU campus tour because I seem to emerge from the subway robbed of all sense of direction (gah!) As previously mentioned, I got to spend some quality time catching up with some of the awesome people I call my friends and family in that area, and of course those meetings involved delicious food whenever possible. Coming up later this week: photo posts about a few of the meals I cooked for my loved ones in the past week. Also pictures of my favorite lentil salad, which I made (and photographed) right before leaving on this trip, only to get a request for it at my parents’ place in New Jersey. Good thing I’d had a chance to practice it at home after so many months of salad-unfriendly weather!

Speaking of the weather, it turned into summer in Oregon while I was gone! Saturday was so hot I didn’t water the garden until after 8 PM, because I was pretty sure any moisture applied before then would just evaporate and make the poor sad plants wilt even more. Clearly, I should make a picture post about my garden, perhaps with “before” and “after” pictures. And then I’ll be even more inspired to plant and weed and generally revel in the growing goodness! Yay!

That’s four possible future posts outlined right there, so go me! And go me again for finally finishing my copy of Safe Food (you know, the one I got autographed at the Small Farms conference in Corvallis last February and have been reading very slowly ever since because I keep getting distracted?) Now I’m all ready for Marion Nestle’s forthcoming Pet Food Politics: The Chihuahua in the Coal Mine, coming out September 15. Yay! Other book news of the past week or so: I’m making another attempt on In Defense of Food (no idea how long I can go before the Michael Pollan burnout kicks back in) and really, I’m just reading Madhur Jaffrey’s memoir for the recipes, some of which I may scan and print to insert between the pages of my very own shiny new copy of Indian Cooking, yay hurray!

So. That’s as good a place to end for now as any, what with having invented a semblance of an actual plan for what to write this week (how exciting! I hope it works!) Now, don’t forget to vote for me!