Saturday, September 19, 2009

Antidote to Craptaculousness

So I'm having this colossally shitty week, certainly the worst this year, in fact I can't remember having a period of time with this many craptacular days in a row in quite a while. In any case, I usually remedy weeks like these by making a parody of it to whoever will listen and then making myself something delicious and comforting.

I'll spare you the gritty details but suffice to say that shuttling back and forth between various offices at City Hall, all manned by surly people who could, quite frankly, use a makeover and perhaps another cup of coffee, is not fun. Did you follow that run-on sentence? Me neither, sorry. Anyway, there was the mess at City Hall, some medical issues and being reminded that anyone I'm attracted to likely has a criminal record and/or borderline personality disorder. I'm not being dramatic, I swear it's statistically significant with a strong confidence level. I mean, I haven't run the regression analysis and I didn't do the p-test and I'm sure this sentence is only relevant or humorous to you if you've slugged through a semester of Quantitative Methods for Public Administration so I digress. Oh, and then someone hit my car and left me a nice big hole in my bumper and blithely sailed on with their day without nary a word or an apology note.

I've been surprisingly unperturbed about things though, which is of slight concern to me. I didn't even cry once and I am usually queen of the Water Works. Wait, I take it back, those snarky bitches at City Hall make me cry every time. Well, whatever, I felt like some comfort food so I splurged on an organic chicken, roasted it with some Yukon Golds, rosemary, lemon and leeks. It was just what I needed. Give it a try.



Thursday, September 10, 2009

I've Been So Bad

I was really rolling with the blog thing for a while and there is SO much to tell you but, as I said, I've been a very bad blogger and since I can't possibly catch up on all that now, I'll just pop in for a brief bite.

I'm obsessed with dates and golden raisins and anchovies right now. The golden raisins in Chile, ooooh, I know what you're thinking but you probably have never had a golden raisin from Chile. The ones I have from Guercio's are a faint substitute but I throw them in everything, from oatmeal to red sauce, which reminds me that I made this sauce from tomatoes and zucchini, onions and garlic of course, then added copious amounts of basil and mint, some anchovies, capers and the raisins. It sort of reminds me of St. Joseph's Day pasta con sarde, but fresher. Or pasta puttannesca I suppose.

That leads me into anchovies, which are delicious with pasta of course. Also, the other day, I grilled some baby bok choy, laid an anchovy down each one and poured some homemade caesar dressing over it. This was inspired by Greg's famous grilled caesar salad that I adore. It was spot-on with the bok choy, the crevices between each tender little leaf a perfect receptacle for holding little pools of lemony-salty-briny delight.

Dates. I am buying these fantastic dates from Guercio's; they're big and dense and moist, not like those nasty, dry, ashy-looking ones you get sometimes. I just eat them plain or, like the raisins, in my oatmeal OR stuffed with goat cheese that has been jazzed up with walnuts, mint and lemon zest. I made these treats last summer and loved them and now I'm kicking myself for wasting whole year without them.

You may think I've been cooking a lot but this is really all I can handle lately. Stuffing goat cheese into dates. Boiling pasta and making quick-cook tomato sauces. Add to that my other dishes in heavy rotation including....Peanut butter toast. Massive amounts of green beans from the garden sauteed with onions. Really, I'll just eat a whole pound of beans for dinner sometimes. Tomato-basil salads. Fried eggs. I'm not feeling terribly motivated to cook these days. However, I am looking forward to moving back to New Orleans and having all kinds of fresh seafood and other goodies to mix up my current, funky, rutted eating repertoire. That's right, I said it, going back to New Orleans! More updates to follow!