Catching Up

Thanksgiving Table

Whew. I’m finally done with the semester, and back from my very important job interview, and for the first time in months am looking at a weekend with no obligations. It’s wonderful. It’s snowing like crazy here in Boston, and I’m cozy in the house, and finally, yes finally, I have time to write a little update here, for all of you, my faithful readers.

It has been so long since I’ve had time to cook a proper meal, and I have all these pictures from Thanksgiving and the days immediately following, but honestly, I hardly even remember what all this stuff is. It’s a shame. I hosted Thanksgiving for the first time this year, and I have to say I’m really quite proud of all the lovely food I managed to cook. It was a small gathering, just Mr X. and the housemate Christa and me. And of course I cooked enough food to feed two or three times that number of people, and had leftovers for days and days. I cooked my first turkey, and am amazed that, though I can’t properly roast a chicken to save my life, the turkey turned out wonderfully.
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One Local Summer

Just a short note today: I just read about the One Local Summer challenge, and I think this sounds great! One meal a week (at least) cooked with 100% local ingredients (ok, they do make exceptions for oil, spices, and salt and pepper). I think I’m ready to sign up. The Farmer’s Market should be starting back up here in Boston soon (at least, I hope so!), and I have been thinking for a long time about trying to find local sources for dairy and meat.

If anyone knows about local food production in the Boston area, please share!

No food, but some other stuff

Yikes, I have, once again, broken my once-a-week posting rule in the flurry and bustle of finals. I’ve been eating pasta and Boboli with leftovers and nothing impressive enough for the blog. (Well, there was that pork tenderloin Mr. X made last weekend, but I was too tired to take pictures and write about it.

Sadly, I’m not even sure when I’m going to be able to get back to you all with actual foodstuffs. The next two weeks are going to be mad busy: finishing the MySQL/PHP database project, doing a bunch of LC and Dewey classification, finishing up a presentation on our new OPAC for user instruction, and, you know, trying to figure out what the crap I’m going to do this summer. Actually, there are some good developments potentially maybe in the works, but all that stuff belongs on the other blog, and you guys don’t care about the library stuff. You care about the food, so I’ll get right to it.

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The way a carne asada is meant to be

Alright, it might not look that appealing to you, but when I saw this picture I was instantly filled with longing for home, and for carne asada burritos the way they’re meant to be eaten. Leave out that stinkin’ rice. Lettuce? Bah, that’s for rabbits. A truly delicious carne asada burrito has nothing but meat, guac, and salsa. And I am so, so homesick for delicious, San Diego-style Mexican food.

Bad blogger, bad, bad blogger

I don’t know where the rest of December went, or the first week of January, at that. I was in San Diego, blissfully enjoying 60 degree weather and brunches on the back patio, and somehow, in the midst of all the delicious holiday food and friends and family and, did I mention, 60 degree weather, I didn’t sit down to share any of it with you, my probably-no-longer-so-faithful readers. I mean, I even brought my digital camera apparatus with me and everything, but not once did I get around to uploading pictures and writing out a simple recipe. I have failed at this whole blogging thing, it seems.

But now it is a New Year and I’m re-invigorated and yes, I do have lots to share. There was a lot of baking around the holidays, of course, including some new favorites and some old favorites and a not that great chocolate chip cookie recipe, which, well, I guess I won’t share. And tonight…tonight I’m making pot roast. One of my not-a-New-Years-resolution things I’m going to try to do this year is re-committing to my previous posting regularity, and sharing something here at least once a week.

Come back later today and there will be food.  I promise.

The Atlantic, Some Lobsters, and Beer in a Can

The beach at Chatham

I finally visited the Cape for the first time, after over four years of living in Massachusetts. I grew up on the Pacific and always considered myself an ocean lover, a beach goer, someone who had to live near large bodies of salt water. And yes, Boston is technically near a large body of salt water, but it sure doesn’t feel like it. I so rarely see the Atlantic, and when I do it’s usually in some half-assed way: I’m looking at a bay or harbor or some crap. This weekend was the first time I found myself looking at the unhampered, unimpeded Atlantic Ocean. And I got to tell ya something: It was a little disappointing.

Don’t get me wrong. I really enjoyed my weekend in Chatham. It was glorious to spend an entire day at the beach, to experience truly perfect summer weather (no humidity!), to actually get a suntan and wear a bathing suit. And best of all: I had my first real lobster experience. Lobster ravioli from Trader Joe’s just doesn’t count. No, this weekend we bought live lobsters and threw them into a vat of boiling water and then pulled their innards out of their shells to devour. Yes, yes we did. And I loved it.

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8 Random Things

There has been no food this week. No time for cooking. We’ve been subsisting off toast and brie and white wine over here as Crystal frantically packed her entire life in preparation for a move to Spain that, well, hasn’t quite happened yet. Talk about being in limbo–she’s just waiting for the Spanish Consulate to approve her visa. She had to cancel her Thursday afternoon flight and there is still a vast amount of uncertainty about when she will be able to move. This week has been busy and overwhelming and not a little emotionally exhausting, so frankly, I haven’t been anywhere near an unprepared food product.

To make it up to you, oh faithful readers, I’ll play a little game. My old coworker, who writes excellent and entertaining bits over at Must Be Motherhood, passed along this meme: Share eight random things about yourself. Well ok.

8. I own a pair of shoes I’ve never, ever worn but can’t bring myself to throw away. They are beautiful but so uncomfortable that even slipping them on for a second hurts. Walking around in them is unimaginable. They’ve been in my closet now for seven years. I don’t  know why I still have them.

7. I love photographs of my hands. When I was young and dreamed of being a photographer I took a whole series of photographs of my hands. I find them strangely compelling.

6. I’ve probably only read about 60 percent of the 500+ books I own. And I keep books I didn’t even really like that much. I always claim it’s because they might be useful for a paper someday.  (And, like my former coworker, I can’t stop reading a book once I’ve started, even if I don’t like it. It does feel morally wrong!)

5. I am usually starving when I wake up in the morning, now matter how late I ate the night before. And I mean starving. Stomach shouting in protest, near-nausea, weak, and inevitably grumpy starving. That is about the only time of day I am ever that hungry.

4. I am much more of a traditionalist than I ever thought I’d be.

3. My family (all 57 million members of the extended version included) mean the world to me. The hardest thing about living in Boston is being far away from them. I sometimes have a hard time understanding people who aren’t close to their families.

2. I never thought I was a gym person, and in fact almost never exercised when I was younger. Now, if I don’t go four or five times a week I feel antsy and unwell. I have no idea how this happened.

1. I have a hard time admitting that I want to move back to California. I didn’t want to be that girl, but I just miss it too much.

Well, that was fun. And in turn? I’m passing it along to the few people I know who read this blog on a regular basis: Lisa, Brilynn, Mr. X, and Miss Crystal (now that you have a blog of your own, it’s time you joined in the fun and games).

I promise I’ll start cooking again this week, once the house is cleaned and there’s time for a grocery store trip again. Once I’ve slept.

Snag a good deal!

The Slow Foods USA online auction is going on through next Tuesday, June 26, and almost everything is currently going for far less than it’s worth. They’re offering all kinds of things from baskets of artisanal foods to dinners at restaurants like Gramercy Tavern to stays in Italy and Napa. Either they’re not getting much traffic or…or…they must not be getting much traffic, because bids are currently pretty damn low. So go check it out–you can support an awesome organization and possibly get yourself a stay on a vineyard for $100.

And another thing! Tortillas…

I could kick myself for forgetting my camera the afternoon my aunt Maggie and I walked down to Sombrero’s to get the only burrito I ate during my San Diego adventure. How I managed to get out of there with only one burrito in my belly I will never know, but I did realize one major thing that is wrong with all these Boston taquerias. It’s not just that they put rice in their burritos. It’s not the lettuce (although I have major issues with that), or the lack of tortilla steaming. It’s the dang tortillas themselves!

Burritos in San Diego come wrapped in the most perfect Platonic ideal of tortillas I’ve ever seen. They are so floury your hands are coated in a thin powder of fine white flour dust when you’re done. They are super soft and almost buttery, but they still have some bite, some heft to them. They are a dream. A dream, I tell you! I’m not sure how it’s done, really. My homemade tortillas don’t even come close. Sometimes I suspect there’s a little abuelita in the back of every taqueria, making those things by hand. But I doubt it. However, they make me want a little abuelita in my kitchen, making them for me, because they are unparalleled in their wonderfulness. Sigh.

My Sombrero’s burrito? Even though Sombrero’s isn’t really the best of the best, and I would have preferred El Indio, or Roberto’s, or Alberto’s, or any one of the ‘bertos’, that carne asada still far surpassed anything I’ve had outside the city limits. I could weep for its memory.

(Another weird aside: We never called them taquerias in San Diego when I was growing up. I never even heard that word until I moved to Santa Cruz. I don’t remember what we called them, except maybe taco stands.)

Because Who Doesn’t Like Talking About Themselves

Lisa over at La Mia Cucina, one of my daily reads, posted a fun and highly informative interview on Monday, and then asked her readers to join in the fun. Anyone interested could declare themselves, and she would send five questions to them in exchange for them doing the same for others. Passing on the chain of sharing, so to speak. I loved reading about how Lisa wanted to be an ichthyologist when she was younger (really? Sharks?) and since I love answering random questions, and thought it would be a fun way to get to know some of my other readers (if you exist…) I had to sign myself up.

Lisa promptly sent me five questions this morning. And here for your voyeuristic and entertainment edification, my answers:

Continue reading Because Who Doesn’t Like Talking About Themselves