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Posts from the ‘Life’ Category

Nov 20

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And then I caught it.

The cold, that is. Funny creatures, those illnesses. Completely gone without a trace from one person for days before showing up in the next.  Brett spent the better part of last week nursing something that kept him down, tired and sniffly and dreary.

And then he was fine. Fine enough to go to San Francisco for a meeting on Friday (and fine enough to venture to the Mission to bring back Tartine for me …), fine enough for a fun date night on Friday, fine enough to join me in approximately 19 hours of “BCS National Championship keepaway” (which did not end well and let’s please not talk about it), and fine enough for a 90-minute spinning class Saturday morning.

Not sure if it was the football excitement or the 90 minutes of sweating or the overwhelming perfection of the Tartine morning bun, but somewhere in there I realized I wasn’t feeling quite right. Light-headed. Raw in the throat. Then heavy in the head. The sniffly. Uh oh. I spent the rest of yesterday and all day today swinging between “oughhhhhh I need to lie down” and “hey, I think I’m feeling better!,” all the time wishing my body would just decide so I didn’t have to keep wavering on plans and getting all the way out of the house before realizing I really don’t actually feel that well.

And this is all to say that today’s lunch was actually quite helpful, on a cold, rainy, lethargic day. A hearty bowl of Minnesota wild rice (perhaps no surprise that when sick, I pick the only food item in the house from my home state), mixed with some steamed Chinese broccoli and topped with a poached egg and a hearty squeeze of lemon. Simple, nutritious, warm, filling.

Wild_rice

Wild_rice_bowl

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Oct 1

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2011 Food List catch-up

If you keep track of this blog on a regular basis, you know that for two years now I’ve chosen a list of food-related tasks – challenges to face, recipes to test, and experiences I want to have but would otherwise end up putting off. I like this for two main reasons: 1) it satisfies the intense urge I have to fit every aspect of my life into lists, and 2) it’s teaching me a lot about cooking.

Savory_waffles

Savory_waffles_2

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Aug 29

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See ya later, summer. It’s been swell.

I’m about to say something that’s going to make quite a few people upset. But when you work on a campus, you know what it means when the students come back …

Summer’s pretty much over.

Summer_1

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Aug 24

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Adventures with sushi

At this point, I’m pretty comfortable in the kitchen with most things – give me fruits and veggies, a piece of meat, some dough, and some random spices and herbs and I can produce a pretty good meal, likely complete with cocktail and dessert.  But there are certain cuisines or items that completely elude me or throw me for a loop – like rice, and poached eggs, and a few of the other items on this year’s List. These items require a little preparatory reading, a little experimentation, or perhaps some sort of hands-on training.

Hipcooks

That’s one reason I have “make sushi” on this year’s list – I’m a big sushi fan, but felt like I needed a little direction to get started making it on my own.  With that idea in mind, Brett and I signed up to take a sushi class a couple weeks ago at Hipcooks, where I’ve been assisting (TAing, you might say) with cooking classes for the last three months. The philosophy of Hipcooks is to get more comfortable in the kitchen, trust your intuition, and release your “inner chef” – and that’s exactly what we did for three hours, surrounded by sushi rice, veggies, fresh seafood, and other ingredients.

Sushi_class_1

The teacher talked about the variety of ingredients and where to get them and lead us through a variety of small appetizers – spicy tuna wrapped in cucumber ribbons, inari stuffed with shitake and green onions, sashimi salmon with ponzu and serrano peppers, dynamite sauce, and more – before showing us how to make cut rolls (regular and rice-side out) and providing us with a huge variety of potential ingredients to put in or on top of our rolls.

Sushi_roll

inari

The class was a great overview – straight-forward and covering a variety of sushi items – and helped me understand what was necessary for the process, how to pick good fish, and how to use the sushi rolling mat to make great-looking cut rolls. I feel pretty confident that I could work my way through a selection of seafood, rice, sauces, and other ingredients to put together a good meal, which was exactly the point.

Roll_2

Roll_3

So. Anyone want to come over and make sushi? Let’s do it.

Jul 5

6 Comments

Workshop recap: Can I learn to can? I can. I can can.

I’ve been really interested in learning how to can for a few years now, which is why it’s on this year’s Food List 2011. Canning is definitely a trend amongst foodies, but for good reason. Yes, it’s retro. Yes, it’s back-to-the-farm, which is both trendy and justifiably important in its own right.  But canning is also a great way to preserve large batches of food and to extend the season for fresh, local produce. It’s also particularly handy for making and giving food-based gifts, which has a variety of benefits and implications (including: meaningful hand-crafted gifts, more awesome food for everyone).

Canning

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