For many people, the food they remember most fondly is the food their mothers cooked. Without saying anything mean about my mother or the way she cooked when my brother and I were growing up, let’s just say that I can’t really share in this sentiment. My husband, on the other hand, falls comfortably into the no-one-cooks-like-Mom category.
I have heard before that the secret to being a good cook is to get the very best ingredients that you can and then try not to screw them up. That’s what was going through my head as we browsed through the Sunset Valley Farmers Market this past weekend.
I have said before that I’m not much of a dessert person, and that’s largely true. However, the one dessert sure to catch me off guard and inspire a craving for sweetness is cookies. I love them. As a kid, I even got to be Cookie Monster one year for Halloween. My particular weakness is for chocolate chip cookies, and I was thrilled to find a post about that very thing over at the Orangette blog that had been adapted from a recipe in the NY Times (that had been adapted from a recipe by Jacques Torres). These were some interesting cookies.
Mirabelle, a self-described “eclectic American bistro”, is an Austin restaurant that fits in perfectly with the city’s casual-gourmet food personality. It offers up a variety of inventive menu items that pay homage to no particular ethnicity or cuisine, but instead present a range of tastes and sensibilities to suit a creative kitchen and a wide swath of the dining public. In breaks from cooking at home and dieting respectively, we found ourselves there yesterday evening with some friends of ours. (I feel it’s only fair to mention that the deal was sweetened by the generous coupons we were able to use.)
There are a hand-full of foods that make us breath in deeply and think ‘ah summertime’. For me, one of those is corn, and my favorite method of consumption is lightly buttered corn-on-the-cob. Unfortunately, after recently indulging in some hot ears of white corn on the cob, my beloved explained to me that he really wasn’t fond of the mess and hassle of eating corn that way. In an effort to maintain marital bliss but still get what I wanted in the end, I decided to go to the other extreme and make a pureed corn soup instead.
I’m not sure mixing a drink counts as cooking (and boy am I not much of a bartender, <ahem> mixologist), but here goes nothin’. Some time ago, a couple of friends vacationed in Portugal and brought us back a bottle of the favorite local liqueur - ginjinha. Ginjinha is made by fermenting ginja berries (which are similar to cherries) in brandy, and the accepted method of consumption, we are told, is straight-up. The flavor is sweet and dark - no cloying syrupy taste here. While I have thoroughly enjoyed the occasional glass of ginjinha, I decided I should look into other potential uses.
I (sadly) don’t tend to venture too far from home for my dining out experiences. This is unfortunate because some of the more interesting venues and certainly food can be found away from the super-suburban cocoon in which my husband and I have unwittingly wound ourselves. Yesterday, I met a friend for lunch at Blue Dahlia Bistro.
Ceviche (or seviche) is a mix of citrus juice, vegetables, seasonings and raw seafood that is allowed to marinate sufficiently long for the seafood to effectively “cook” in the acidic mixture. Naturally, without heat, it doesn’t really cook so extremely fresh and reliable seafood is a must for this dish.
Is your idea of ‘making popcorn’ taking the little plastic-wrapped, tri-fold bag out of the cabinet and chucking it into the microwave for a few minutes? Or is popcorn to you the butter-soaked mess you pay five dollars for at the movie theatre (to go along with your four dollar soda)? Well, it doesn’t have to be.
12 July 2008 – This was our last partial day in Hawaii, so we were intending to make it count. Sean and I woke up again very early to drive out to Diamond Head and climb to the top. It’s one of those things that’s considered a must-do while in Oahu, and we hadn’t managed to make it out there yet. So, we left the hotel and drove the short distance out to the park, arriving just a bit past 6am, when it was scheduled to open. There was no one at the gate to take our money (which at this point in our visit to Hawaii, we had come to almost expect), and we were on a tight schedule, so we worked our way in to the parking lot anyway. We were not alone. Apparently the Asian tourists are also early risers, and there was a tour bus full of them pulling into the parking lot behind us.