Recipe: Russian Dressing 29 September 2009 10:51 am
Posted by Tracy in : books,cooking,recipes,salad,seasonality , 1 comment so farIt’s fall, gentle readers. I am reluctant to admit it after such a weird summer, much of it cold and wet. But the sun barely shone into my food sociology class at 5 PM yesterday, and not just because it was overcast. The days are now shorter than the nights in this hemisphere, and that’s that. Still, I’ve been craving salad, perhaps because I haven’t eaten it much the past season what with the weird weather and salad-meister Peter being across the country. So last week I made this dressing, since although salad is one of my summer foods I wanted something a little richer and autumnal than my standard vinaigrette. I worked from a recipe in my beloved Moosewood New Classics, kinda like Tracy Granola is based on New Classics, only perhaps even more so — for both recipes, I open the cookbook to the original recipe’s page, then change almost every ingredient’s measurement to my personal tastes. All of which is to say, please, tweak my version to your heart’s content. For more food for thought about how cookbooks are written and how that may not have much relation to how they’re used, check out Rachel Laudan’s recent-ish post about Julia Child, Elizabeth David, and other visions of French food. I liked it very much. And now, on with the recipe. (more…)
Gastro-culinary highlights of the long weekend. 23 September 2009 3:33 pm
Posted by Tracy in : breakfast,consumerism,cookies,dessert,eating,events,fish,food snobbery,not even vegetarian,nyc,restaurants,seasonality,summer,sundance,travel,vegetarian , 2 commentsFor the purposes of this post, the long weekend ended about fifteen minutes ago, because I’m a big slacker. Peter and I got up unholy early on Friday morning for a visit to the not-yet-frozen north, by which I mean his parents’ cabin on Osgood Pond, which is in Paul Smiths, NY, outside Saranac Lake, not far past Lake Placid — and if you haven’t heard of any of those places, that’s okay: the whole point of this expedition was to hang out with friends on a nice mini-vacation in the middle of nowhere.
In my opinion, we succeeded mightily. There was paddling — both canoe and Adirondack guide boat — and relaxing in front of a wood-burning stove, both with and without games. Also there was tasty food. (more…)
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 , 4 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.
Follow-up to the last post: photos and more. 26 August 2009 8:47 am
Posted by Tracy in : oregon,pictures,random,seasonality,summer , 2 commentsIf you made it through all nigh-1500 words of yesterday’s post, thank you and congratulations. (Everybody else, go ahead and just scroll through to the end to see what I’m writing about today.) Remember that dinner I mentioned in the last paragraph? Okay, I mentioned a lot of meals there, but only one of them made it into pictures:
“…the cherry tomatoes lasted until Sunday’s light supper of raw veggies, cheese, and crackers.”
Aren’t those tomatoes gorgeous? Their color (more…)
Saying goodbye to Eugene. 25 August 2009 7:08 am
Posted by Tracy in : cooking,CSA,eating,eggs,eugene,events,fangirl,friends,fun,garden,good news,local food,meat,Morning Glory,news,not even vegetarian,nyc,oregon,seasonality,summer,writing , 2 commentsI wrote this piece for an assignment on personal essays and memoir in my food writing class last fall, and it isn’t exactly true anymore — I have had a few more last Saturdays in Eugene since the one described here. It’s still emotionally true, perhaps more so than ever now, and it’s appropriate, since Peter is saying goodbye to Eugene this morning and coming home to New York City, at last, with his shield, not on it. Congratulations, love. See you soon.
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My last Saturday in Eugene, Oregon was pretty well perfect, thanks to a chance encounter with some carrot greens. I spotted them in the totebags of a pedestrian on the bike path south of the Lane County fairgrounds. She was on her way home from Saturday Market; Peter and I were riding our tandem to coffee after a morning of blueberry picking with Kevin and Laurel. It was August second, and thanks to those greens, I remembered it was our last chance to go to Saturday Market before our move. So after coffee, pastries, and a stumper of a New York Times crossword puzzle, we said goodbye to Kevin and Laurel. They rode south, and Peter and I went north, to our last Saturday Market for a long time. (more…)
