Posts tagged 'cooking'

• It's almost like making beer - January 31, 2007

  I’ve been going pretty crazy on cooking this past month. For Christmas I got a couple cookbooks and I have been picking things out at random to make. In addition to dinners and sides, I have been trying to get into some baking as well. It’s seemed like this mysterious other half of cooking knowledge, completely different from the typical things I do like making a roast or sauteeing something in garlic. The first thing I baked was banana bread. It was so simple and so good that I felt like an idiot for throwing away perfectly black bananas for all those years. I’ve resolved to never do that again. I also made some chocolate oat bars that would have been almost perfect if I’d had the right dish.

• Making groceries more complicated - October 7, 2006

  I decided it would be a good idea to start shopping for more stuff at local small businesses. This idea came up both from a quality perspective and from a supporting the local economy perspective. As for quality, I have long been unhappy with the state of produce in the northeast. The produce at Shaw’s is especially terrible: the tomatoes and peppers are frequently rotten, the apples are small and crappy, and the other fruit is not very attractive either. I knew it was possible to get better produce around here but it just took me a little while to find a good place. As for supporting the local economy, it just makes sense to give your money to stores that are based nearby and will put money back into the community, rather than shipping it all off to corporate headquarters in Delaware or wherever.

• Food rut - September 27, 2006

  While standing in an aisle at the good grocery store in town, I realized something: I’m in a food rut. It’s always a struggle of the ease and speed of going out versus the satisfaction and price of cooking at home. Going out is lame because it’s always the same crap, and it’s expensive, and I feel like a fool for going out so much when I have the skill to cook. Cooking is lame because I always make the same things, it takes planning, it kills most of the night, and cooking for just yourself isn’t very rewarding. However, it is cheaper and making dinner means leftovers for lunch the rest of the week. And when your only lunch choices are sandwich places, having leftovers is a very good thing.

• Only partially a disaster - July 24, 2005

  I decided it was time for some good southern cooking up here in NH, especially after we spent all last week at work talking about chicken fried chicken. So, I decided the menu would be that, hush puppies (fried cornbread must be the most perfect food ever invented), green beans with chunks of ham in them, and sweet tea. Well, it turned out as only about half of a disaster.