Have you heard? 18 May 2010 3:52 pm
Posted by Tracy in : Marion Nestle,geekery,health at every size,hot mess,news,politics,random,weird , View CommentsThe Partnership for a Healthier America (who should maybe think about trading that “healthier” out for “thinner,” seeing as how they talk about fat as if it’s synonymous with bad health, sigh) and Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation (an industry group who at least have the honesty to put the weight obsession right in their name), in collaboration with Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move (about which I’ve already had a word or two on this blog), have brokered a deal wherein food companies promised to reduce the number of calories available per year in the U.S. food supply by 1.5 trillion calories by 2015, starting with a trillion fewer calories per year by 2012. Sounds pretty super-impressive, right? Those are big numbers! (more…)
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.
Off for a (sad) week… 6 January 2010 8:33 pm
Posted by Tracy in : eating,events,family,hot mess,random,travel , View CommentsToday’s post is going to be even more self-indulgent than usual, readers, so please accept my apologies for that in advance. You see, my ridiculous bedhead and I are sad:
Sad.
because my beloved grandfather, my Opa, died this morning after a long battle with a whole host of ailments that I’m going to sum up as “old age” even though nobody officially uses that as a cause of death anymore. I raved about it last night on a blog I hadn’t updated in literally over a year but tonight my emotions are quieter, more relieved/resigned. We all knew this was coming, if not when, and it happened in pretty much the best possible way (the kind that makes me envy the Dutch healthcare system something fierce) but that doesn’t make it not sad, it just makes it not a complete horrific disaster, which isn’t nothing, but it’s cold comfort nonetheless. Anyway, I’m flying out to Holland very soon, and writing this in part to deal with having my mind blown by the Virgin Atlantic Club at Newark Airport (picture of my brother sharing similar shock and awe after the cut). Let’s just say that I’m now more certain than ever that my next credit card will rock some frequent flyer miles, oh yes.
Of course, I must tell you about the food here. (more…)
Monkey Monday: cooking and reading 4 January 2010 3:21 pm
Posted by Tracy in : cooking,hot mess,kitchen mishaps,monkeys,not even vegetarian,pasta,photos,pictures,pizza,random , View CommentsAs always, I am hopelessly behind on about a million things I want to read (at least more than a thousand in Google Reader alone, for instance) but I wanted to share a few fun things I’ve drifted past while going with the “too much information” flow. I will begin and end, however, with stuff I’ve cooked recently, because I am so not even a little bit modest about the awesomeness.
Stuff I’ve cooked recently
Check out this fabulous penne alla vodka we made with duck prosciutto (made by a Columbia Greenmarket vendor whose name I cannot remember). So delicious!
Also, I kinda dig the refracted view of Peter’s plate through the glass there.
A bit more about my birthday baked Alaska. 1 September 2009 8:52 am
Posted by Tracy in : baking,books,cooking,dessert,events,friends,hot mess,pictures,seasonality , View CommentsI kept adding details to the “spectacular birthday dessert” portion of yesterday’s post until I realized there was no way I could cut my remarks down to a paragraph. So the saga continues today.
Peter really wanted me to have a birthday cake this weekend, and I wasn’t very helpful about expressing an opinion on the matter. I’m not the biggest cake fan in general, and well, my birthday’s at the end of August. Growing up in New Jersey, where the end of the summer is a time of high humidity and low appetite, cake wasn’t really appropriate. I had a lot of ice cream cakes — and before you start imagining Carvel mediocrity, I’ll have you know that we got our cakes from a place in town that made their own ice cream from scratch, and it was delicious. One year my birthday cake was half a watermelon with candles in it. Summer in New Jersey, man. It’s not for wimps. Anyway.
This weekend’s weather was actually pretty cool, and Peter was not having any of this ice cream cake business, so we rummaged around in Baking Illustrated until we came up with an awesome compromise: baked Alaska. It’s got cake, it’s got ice cream, it’s got some major adventure cooking… what’s not to love? Check it out:
I only got one cross-section picture because the rapidly-melting middle meant there was even more time pressure to serve and eat the deliciousness.
