Calamity Shazaam in the Kitchen

I am trying really hard to not eat at Anh Hong every night. But honestly, left to my own devices I sort of eat like a scavenger. Tonight I made dip. For dinner. Really just another way of eating another sleeve of Saltines for dinner without feeling completely lame. What kind of dip you ask? Feta & Roasted Pepper Dip. I just whizzed together some fat-free feta cheese, some roasted peppers, a little garlic, a splash of olive oil, salt, and pepper. Not too terrible. But I am still sort of peckish. Like for a roast turkey dinner.

As some of you might know, or not, I won a raffle on FoodBuzz a while back. I put the free fundage aside and out of my mind, figuring I would use it to buy some fancypants new kitchen gadget , or something edible that I normally would never buy with my limited grocery money. However the other day I got really mad at the Taliban . No, like SUPER pissed. You don't even know. I can't even talk about it right now. But the plus side is that I figured out what to do with the fun money! I put half of it into a Kiva account. Let me explain how this all ties together: 1. I read about Kiva over on 101 Cookbooks and it stuck in my head. 2. I won bucks on Food Buzz . Yay! 3. I read about Malalai Kakar being assassinated by the Taliban on Sunday. Boo! 4. I joined Kiva to spite the Taliban. Yay female empowerment! And lots of the loan requests are for women going into some aspect of the food business. Yep - the way to my heart is definitely through my stomach. I contributed only half th...

Pretty much this has been a carbohydrate loving weekend. Last night I had a sleepover at my friend Moet's house and I have to give her, her Hubbster, and the kidlets a big shout out because I had SUPER time chilling out with them. Moet and I were meant to run a 5k today but decided against it on account of the rain. Moet made me lamb ragout with bucatini and it was sooooo good. She topped it with a little ricotta and some damp sea salt and quite frankly I was in heaven. Plus we washed it all down with beer from a jug . And let me just say that the Berkshire Brewing Company bottles a mighty fine ale in a growler. We polished that bad boy right off. And then she made me French toast for breakfast. Which she dipped in crushed Bordeaux cookies. Drooooool. So tonight when I came home I was a little disappointed to have to cook for myself to be honest. I had a couple of tomatoes and a few peppers and well that was about it. I roasted the peppers for use later in the week, but as for the...

So as some of you know, my current job (which I 97% LOVE) pays me in peanuts and good will. Which means that occasionally I have to pick up a little extra work here and there to make all the ends tie together so that life doesn't fall apart completely. Lately I have been doing a little freelance accounting. For those of you who really, really , know me - you can stop laughing right.... about..... now. I might SUCK at algebra and geometry and calculus, but I am very good at accounting. In fact, I enjoy it. I finding soothing in someways. And it helps me to make a little extra money to pay for some of the finer things in life, like nice jeans and margaritas. So my apologies at not updating Calamity Shazaam as much as I ought to. When I am in the flurry of data entry my foodie-ness dwindles to eating Saltines and drinking gallons of Irish tea with milk & sugar. Next week. I promise!

Tonight I made Peach Somethingorother. It was supposed to be like a kind of peach butter, however I didn't really use a recipe and I think I added a little more sugar than I ought. And then that extra sugar burnt a little, so now it's Peach Burnt Sugar Somethingorother Why am I home on a Saturday night making Peach Burnt Sugar Somethingorother? Well because I have fricking roaring PMS and I am not suited to going out just now. Not only do I have Category 4 PMS, but I have nothing to eat in the house AND I never got around to go food shopping today. Well, I didn't really forget, I was more afraid to go. Afraid that I would erupt in a roiling ugly mess of hormones and tears and melted chocolate and pho all over some poor unsuspecting sod. Sometimes I am like the Incredible Hulk of PMS. It's..... incredible really. Oh, yeah, anyway, back to the Peach Burnt Sugar Somethingorother. My dad brought me some peaches from Gove Farm out in Leominster and I choppped them, cooked th...

The Verrill Farm Farm Stand burned down to the ground today. I am completely heartbroken for the entire Verrill Farm family & staff.

Ok, ok I realize that I am a little phobsessed right about now, but seriously, you can't underestimate the healing powers of a steaming hot bowl of chicken pho. The "allergies" that I am currently battling are almost gone thanks to Claritin and Vietnamese chicken broth . So far this week I have had chicken broth based soup from Anh Hong three nights. And I firmly believe it is why the "allergies" haven't gotten so much worse. I highly recommend the wonton soup at Anh Hong. And their chicken pho is delicious too. And I will order both at the same time because even though it totally seems weird to have soup twice in a meal, they are both so crackalicious, you basically stop caring after the second slurpful. Wonton soup from Anh Hong - the dark golden bits on top is fried garlic. YUM!!!

The Fluff Festival comes to Union Square on Saturday the 27th from 4 - 7pm. Are you so excited? I know I sure am.

I love this sign up on Blue Hill Ave: Has anyone been to this restaurant? I don't know how long it's been closed, but apparently it was home of the Boston Bean Pie. I think that the closest thing that would come to Bean Pie on Blue Hill Ave would be a bean pie from Sister Nadine's . Or make your own . I think I might.

So today has been a massively sh*teous cluster-f of a day. Mercury is in retrograde. A fun romance turned out to have been a complete sham. A bad situation at work finally blew up. Hey, and it's only Tuesday! Well, I don't want to complain because you know what, my life is about 98% wonderful. And made even better because today my Mom brought me dinner. How awesome is that? Pretty terrific I tell you! She knew I was having a dreadful day and so she went and bought me a take away dinner from Flour Bakery - pulled chicken & chorizo, fruit salad, and an oatmeal raisin cookie. So all things considered, things are looking better already. Except for the Mercury in retrograde part. That is going to suck until mid-October.

In particular I want to move to Martha's Vineyard. I want to move to a little cottage with no neighbors and make beach plum jelly. I want to walk across fields in rubber boots and comb the beach for pretty pebbles and bits of shells in a grey mist and drink a glass of beer and eat a boiled lobster. If I sound a little melancholic, well, it's because Mercury is in retrograde. And also because a recent romantic entanglement blew up in my face, and then today I had a dreadful dust up at work that literally made me feel ill. Oh and also I think I am catching the Evil Twin's cold. Well anyway, here are a few photos of my favorite things:

As you may know by now, or not, my all time favorite food writer is Laurie Colwin. I discovered her back in 2001 via Nigella Lawson's How to Be a Domestic Goddess. While none of the Domestic Goddess recipes quite worked for me, it was the Black Cake that caught my eye. Since I didn't trust Nigella's recipes, I sought out Laurie's original recipe, and well, the rest is history. I think that I am going to cook my way through the rest of her recipes. I started with Lemons and Limes from More Home Cooking ( page 22 in my version ). I agree with her philosophy that a lemon can fix just about anything. After the Christmas holidays I detox with big doses of hot lemonade and I can't imagine ever having to give them up. So for the Lemon and Lime chapter I made Marmalemonade - a name I made up to describe how it tastes, which is a lot like lemonade. Truly this is a preserve that is worth the effort. Colwin-Made-Me-Do-It Marmalemonade 10 Lemons - well scrubbed 4 cups of wate...

I made lemon marmalade today, really it is more a marmalemonade. Please don't ask why. But at least I won't have scurvy this winter. Nor will any of my friends. I will update this post with the recipe later, but for now, a photo:

I wanted a pork chop at Anh Hong and got pork pieces instead, so I've been kind of sulking ever since. TrietTriet and I went yesterday for bubble tea & breakfast in Dorchester and I FINALLY got my pork chop. Yay. And yes, I had bubble tea and a pork chop for breakfast ! Hooray for foreign cultural contributions! Bubble T - Zone is on Dorchester Ave. It's small and really noisy when the blenders are running. But they offer free Wi-Fi AND they are cheap. $3 for a bubble tea. On the left is the papaya and on the right is the green tea. Both were sweet and tasty. And of course have cute little seal tops. Then we went down the road to Sunrise for the grilled pork chop. It comes with a side of clear soup which I dunked a little of the rice into. Slurpalicious! The chicken dish on the right is just stir-fried chicken with veg. Bland and apparently an excellent breakfast option. I really promise that I will stop with the Vietnamese food posts. Eventually.

This post is waaaaay overdue. But if you know me, you know that for some reason the last bits of August are the bits when I run around like Chicken Little going "the end of summer is coming! the end of summer is coming!" and try to pack in all the summery things I'd been meaning to do for the past three months into about two weeks. . I forget completely that I have a blog, and anyway I get awful writers block from all the margaritas that I try to consume outside before everything frosts over. ANYWAY. So I think it was last week, or maybe the week before, but Pam of Cave Cibum , my friend Mademoiselle Bibliothecaire and me went to Anh Hong in Fields Corner. I have unofficially been trying to expand my Vietnamese horizons past tofu spring rolls and chicken pho. It's kind of hard though. I love pho. I really love it. I love it so much that sometimes I dream about it. Great big steaming bowls of broth with shreds of chicken and cilantro and basil and noodles and sprouts ...