Calamity Shazaam in the Kitchen

Today drained the energy totally out of me. I know what I am doing at work, just that some days I have to do everything all at once, oh and it all should have been done five minutes ago.  Five on the clock could not come soon enough. I trudged my sorry self home, until the end when I accidentally bashed my foot off the curb and hopped the last few feet, fueled by pain and f-bombs.  I was just too tired to make dinner and contemplated going right to bed with a cup of tea. Which is a terrible idea in reality, unless you have a sad-faced stomach and then a cup of tea is the best idea. As a compromise I made a dinner that required the same level of effort as making a cup of tea.  As you can see from the photo above, it was just potatoes and an egg. Big whoop. A couple of chopped up potatoes, roasted them with a bit of olive oil in a 375 oven until soft on the inside and crispy brown on the out. Then I poached an egg, which is about the easiest way to cook a quick egg.

I like to have my family over on Sunday for lunch. It motivates me to clean my house and to cook for pleasure. Like I mentioned before, I usually get home and just want to park myself on the couch to read Scandinavian murder mysteries and eat popcorn seasoned with Old Bay, garlic powder, salt, pepper, and smoked paprika. If it's been a particularly tough day, I will treat myself to a Miller High Life in a pony bottle. Ahhh life.... Anyway, for lunch today I made "lasagna". The reason I put this in quotes is because there is a world of difference between the lasagna that shows up on a plate in Italy and what you will get in America. According to La Maman all the lasagna here is crap. Sorry, le crap. Noodles, greasy meat, too much cheese, and drowning in tomato sauce - too heavy and fatty for her European sensibilities. And while she and I will just never see eye to eye on the merits of Lucky Charms and of diet sodas, we are in complete agreement here.  Per

The recent spell of gorgeous summery weather has put me in the mood for salad. Not leafy salad because I cannot make a leafy salad to save my life, but more along the lines of a shredded root veg tossed with a vinaigrette kind of thing. A simple vinaigrette dressing is perfect for shredded fresh carrots and dried cranberries. I make mine with a finely minced clove of garlic which I mix with a spoonful of grain mustard, a large pinch of salt, a few grinds of pepper, and some white wine vinegar. Then I whisk in some olive oil until it looks like, well, vinaigrette. I have no clue about the proportions because I grew up watching my Maman make this and I am just copying her. I will say that you want to put in more oil than vinegar and you can leave out the garlic if your guests have tender digestions. Or add in more garlic if it's just you. This dressing works well with chopped roasted beets, and with leafy salads (if you know how to make them). Made with carrots from Farmers

I use the Farmers To You service. It's a first world luxury that I am lucky to be able to afford. The reason I use this service is because I can pick and choose what I want to get rather than getting a box of pre-selected items. I went that route before and ended up with more salad greens than a normal person can eat in a week. But every now and then I get a little ambitious and order ingredients for fabulous recipes that I am going to simply whip up during the week. Bah hahahahah! Never make plans for the week on the weekend. When I get home on a weeknight chances are high that I just want something RIGHT NOW. Already cooked. Which is why I should never order buttermilk. I am not going to make buttermilk pancakes or blueberry buttermilk bundt cake during the week. I am going to eat popcorn or pasta while I pin sh*t to Pinterest just like every other normal person. However I do order it and then can never use it up in time. Until I remembered that you can freeze buttermil

The old Super 88 at South Bay has been replaced by Kam Man. Which basically means I still have somewhere to go and giggle like a school girl over things like this: These are the two least raunchy "supplements" available. Please note that the first ingredient in Stud Sex Power is "strong back". Which is the first thing I'd look for quite frankly. If none of those work, maybe try this tea.  It's a bietary fupplement*. *Probably not FDA approved though. 

I was the most awful kind of American child. My mother is from the South of France so growing up she was all about olive oil, garlic, and eating natural foods instead of processed foods. This was the direct opposite of how I wanted to eat. I wanted Oreos in my lunch, not an apple; I wanted American cheese and baloney sandwiches on soft white bread; I wanted snack sized packs of Doritos and Fritos; in short, I wanted to be just like everyone else in the lunch room at a time when conformity was key to acceptance. Which I just never was able to achieve, but not because of my lunches. But that is a whole other blog post, or something... Summer would roll around and my grandparents would come over from France for three months. Three months of everything made from scratch, catered to our desires and preferences, with no trying to conform to anyone else.  My Meme would ask us every morning what we wanted for breakfast - perhaps un coup de fruit ou peut-etre des crepes? Meme loved my sis

Three sizes of Marmite Little Marmite Middling Marmite Freakhog GINORMO Marmite. I like Marmite on buttered toast with a cup of tea. And Kam Man sells a couple of sizes, in case you need some.

Working for a cookbook publisher means that every now and then we get mysterious packages of food. Almost always this is a good thing, especially since we also publish books on birthing babies and so far no one has mailed us a baby. This is how I discovered delicious cherries from the Northwest (a 10lb bag no less), awesome red velvet cake from Daisy Cakes , stollen from Zingerman's that I could not resist, and most recently Palmetto Cheese . Sounds gross, right? Well it does if, like me, you think it is some kind of vegan cheese made from a palmetto plant. But no, this stuff is not that, not at all. It's a kind of cheese paste that comes in a plastic tub, a kind of melange of shredded cheese, mayo, and spices. The one I nearly ate entirely on my own was the Palmetto Cheese with Bacon. This stuff is the perfect blend of all the sh*t that makes a person fat: it's savory and unctuous, delicious cold or hot and melted over leftover rice.... Turns out that piment

I am totally bored of writing about food. But I absolutely still love eating it. Lately I've been pretty good about sticking to eating what I get from the weekly Farmers to You delivery.  Mind you there is not a great deal of variety right now, seeing as how it's technically still winter, but I quite honestly feel a million times better eating the same veg over and over instead of a variety of crap.  I eat a lot of roasted veg at night. Not only does firing up the stove heat up the house just enough to last the night, but eating plain cooked veg (beets, carrots, onions) makes me feel less blergy.  (Before you think I am all holier-than-thou on the "eat more veggies" wagon, please note that I do have an inner child that is totally pissed right now since I promised to only eat Lucky Charms and coffee ice cream as an adult... oh well.) One item that I am now totally addicted to is the Mad River Grain bread from the Red Hen Bakery . When I dream of a chewy,