Foto Friday: Linguine Alfredo recipe, for Piett. 15 January 2010 11:08 pm
Posted by Tracy in : Holland,Netherlands,cheese,convenience,cooking,eating,eugene,family,hot mess,pasta,photos,pictures,random,recipes,restaurants,vegetarian,work , View CommentsSo I’m back from Holland and recovering from the trip, but still pretty freaking tired and nowhere near done uploading and organizing all the pictures I took. Today’s photo post was going to be all about flying fancy-style, but like I said, I haven’t quite got those pictures processed. Instead, I’m going to blog my dinner, which happens to relate back to my trip in more than just the “so tired, can’t get stuff organized” way. You see, on Tuesday night my brother Piett and I made a huge pasta dinner for my parents, my Oma, my aunt Ingrid, uncle Dako, their daughters Stéphanie and Claudia, and Stéphanie’s boyfriend Raymond (to be perfectly fair, Claud made her own food but I was still happy to have something that almost everyone could agree to eat). We cooked 1 1/2 kilos of spaghetti and three different sauces for people to mix and match to their own tastes: tomato-meat, tomato-vegetable sauce, and creamy pesto. Piett was an awesome sous-chef, and somewhere in the chatting over cooking we got to the topic of Alfredo sauce. My basic point was that it’s super-easy, and Piett said he’d like me to show him how to make it some time. While this post is not the video podcast recipe he suggested, it’s a step in that direction.
Linguine Alfredo: it’s what was for my dinner tonight.
Foto Friday: the last time I ate tuna. 30 October 2009 3:32 pm
Posted by Tracy in : Holland,Marion Nestle,Netherlands,books,consumerism,eating,environment,fish,food safety,food snobbery,health,not even vegetarian,photos,pictures,restaurants,sustainability,tuna , View CommentsIt has been exactly four months since I last ate tuna. I believe this may be some kind of personal record; at the very least, it is the longest I can remember going without tuna since I cared to keep track of such things. Let me explain.
I love tuna; I think it’s incredibly delicious. Unfortunately, since because of that deliciousness it’s effectively an endangered fricken species, I try not to eat it too often, on account of how I’ll be a very cranky old lady indeed if large ocean fish are extinct in the next 40 to 50 years and I’m trying to do my part to reduce demand and all that. (Because I eat it so rarely, I’m not freaking out about the whole methylmercury problem, but it is horrific and I am eternally grateful to Marion Nestle’s What to Eat for the revelation that it’s not bioaccumulative.) Anyway.
I’ve been reading a bunch about tuna farming this week — real tuna farming, not “catch baby tuna in the wild and raise them in captivity” tuna ranching, but actual farming, baby fish hatched in captivity and everything, and my personal jury is still out, to put it mildly. I wanted to come to some kind of conclusion about this latest development in time to add it to this post, but it will have to wait for another time. In the meantime, I will continue my tuna-free streak. Luckily, the last time I ate tuna was so fantastic that it’s given me an even better motivation not to crack open the canned stuff — simply put, it’s going to be very hard to find another tuna meal this good. Behold:
I’m guessing that’s a good quarter kilo of fish, at least.
Foto Friday: Oma’s 80th birthday 24 July 2009 8:33 am
Posted by Tracy in : Holland,Netherlands,cooking,eating,events,family,pictures,potatoes,salad,travel , View CommentsAccording to my mother, the original plan for Oma’s 80th birthday was to keep things simple. Sure, we rescheduled a bit, since December 29 is a terrible time for family gatherings for reasons at least equal in number to the strong personalities involved in such a gathering, and June decreased the likelihood of lousy Dutch winter weather cramming us all indoors together. The date decided, Mom proposed a family meal at a nice restaurant, only then… well, neither she nor my aunt Ingrid are willing to take or give any blame about this development, but next thing anybody knew, a small family get-together had turned into Oma inviting everyone she knows and loves for drinks and munchies in Ingrid’s back yard. What can I say? My Oma loves being in the middle of a crowd, especially a crowd of family and friends, and celebrating someone turning an age with a zero in it kind of means doing whatever they want. (Have I mentioned that I turn 30 in August? But that I don’t know what I want?) Oma wanted a party, and a party she got. (more…)
Tuesday tasting: bike trip beers, part one 14 July 2009 3:17 pm
Posted by Tracy in : Holland,Netherlands,food snobbery,geekery,local food,reviews,taste test,travel , View CommentsI learned a new appreciation for lagers on this bike trip in Holland, which is that hoo lady do they ever go down deliciously on a hot, sweaty summer day. In particular, I have never enjoyed a Heineken as much as I did with our rijsttafel dinner in Hoek van Holland — but honestly, my judgment was probably completely ruined that night by all the babi pangang spek. NOM NOM NOM. Anyway. It turns out I’m way too long-winded to write just one post about all the beers I tasted during Bike Trip! Holland! 2009! so I will break things up into shorter posts, organized in chronological order. Our first stop is
Erik de Noorman, Huisbrouwerij Klein Duimpje
Monkey Monday: Michael Jackson edition 13 July 2009 9:09 am
Posted by Tracy in : Holland,cheese,eating,events,fangirl,monkeys,news,random,travel,video,weird , View CommentsI was eating popcorn when I finally and unexpectedly got emotional about Michael Jackson’s death. Not yucky microwave stuff, but real popcorn, homemade in a pan on the stove, with salt and pepper and nutritional yeast. That’s what makes this a food story. I’m posting it this Monkey Monday because it’s not going to get any more timely, and because it’s pretty freaking random (also, y’know, Bubbles). Anyway. Here goes.
When I got home from Holland last Thursday, (more…)
