h o m e * e c o n o m i c s

(S H O P, C O O K, E A T; R E P E A T)

new year, new shoes

Tx_ny_shoes
My sister and I each got a new pair of shoes while I was back in Houston for Christmas. You'd never guess which girl lives in New York and which in Houston...or maybe you would, if you'd seen all the girlies running around New York in their cowboy boots and miniskirts.

I have had my old cowboy boots for fifteen (fifteen!) years. They began life as my mother's, but I appropriated them pretty quickly. A few dozen too many tromps through the rain and snow have pretty much worn them out; thank goodness for these new ones, which feel practically like they have orthotics in them compared to the others.

This is my sister enjoying Thanksgiving dinner in 2004:
Hungry_becca_thanksgiving_20041

This is the Hot Damn! schnapps she spent this Christmas urging me to take shots of (for the record, I think I caved at 5pm on Christmas day, and it wasn't the worst thing that ever happened to me):
Hot_damn

And this is the nut she left out for Santa on Christmas Eve:
Note_for_santa
We did some nice cooking, but I was just kind of enjoying being home, so you'll have to take my word for it.

02 January 2006 in junk drawer | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

loud was the voice of the lonely goatherd

This morning Slate linked to a Los Angeles times piece about the growing demand for goat in the United States. The first time I was served goat was at a college dining hall, and I thought, "you've got to be kidding me." But ever since I saw how popular goat was in little Caribbean take-out joints in the Bronx, I've been meaning to figure out where to buy it so I can try my hand at goat stew. Developing...

21 November 2005 in junk drawer | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

the carnivore question

When Fast Food Nation came out a few years ago, I deliberately kept away from it because I didn’t want to spoil McDonald’s for myself. I wasn’t eating there all the time or anything, but it was something I did every now and then, maybe once a month, as—can’t believe I’m writing this—a treat, on a tired or lazy or self-indulgent day. The book got so much publicity, though, that the facts I had tried to avoid set up camp in my head. One day I found I couldn’t eat fast food any more, certainly not the burgers. Then I came to know other things I hadn’t wanted to know about the way meat gets to us and how it’s treated before it’s meat. As my interest in cooking grew and I devoted more thought to what I was eating, shrinkwrapped supermarket meat looked less and less appealing, finally bottoming out at unacceptable. Things only got worse. A piece in Harper’s revealed an environmentally pernicious aspect of meat production I had never considered: the amount of fossil fuel it takes to raise a steak from calf to plate. And it turned out the salmon I had been enjoying was pumped full of dye and that the techniques used to farm it were polluting the waters and the wild fish stock. It got to the point where the only animal products welcome in my house were precious, carefully selected, not at all shy about proclaiming their virtues; and even those eggs and cutlets, I wondered, were they telling the truth? Was I asking enough questions and shopping at the right places?

Recently I began to wonder whether this had gone too far: maybe I should stop being such a pretentious spendthrift and buy supermarket chuck for stew and supermarket chicken for stir fry. What am I proving to the food industrial complex by spending too much of my own money on wild fish? In the nick of time, this piece in The Believer reminded me that cheap and plentiful meat is not a right and that I should not regard it as such, if only to curb my own greediness. If it’s too expensive to eat responsibly raised meat all the time (and it is), then meat should grace your table less frequently (if you need it at all, which I’m afraid I do). This kind of worry is a luxury, I know, but one of the nice things about the Believer piece is that it makes clear some of the reasons why the meat issue can be so emotionally and personally fraught. I am curious to know whether others agree or I am just neurasthenic!

09 November 2005 in junk drawer | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

feliz cumpleanos

Gonzago_before_2THIS, as some of you will recall, is Gonzago, who recently helped me celebrate my boss's birthday with lunch at my house for a select few colleagues.  He stayed over for the weekend, and at his suggestion, we made gazpacho from the Dean & Deluca cookbook. Did you know that gazpacho traditionally has bread in it? I did not. It was not spectacular, but it was easy enough, and refreshing. Next time I'll try the gazpacho in Simple to Spectacular, which does not include the traditional bread and lost out to D&D for that reason only.

It turns out Gonzago's favorite snack is ants on a log. I had forgotten how much I like it, too.
Gonzago likes to travel. Unfortunately, he's also quite a tippler. You should see the scenes he makes.

Gonzago_after

22 September 2005 in junk drawer | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

a proper august

Where have I been? Well, I spent a healthy amount of time lying in this hammock in Italy:

Italy_hammock

and since I got back to New York, I've been going to the Greenmarket every weekend. I have eaten more strawberries this summer than I ever have before!

Famres_market_3_5

Obviously, I am also experimenting with keeping the camera steady while the flash is off. My gas has yet to be turned on, so I am still confined to oven-cooked meals. But I have many things to show and tell, and over the next few days I will.

Bowls

22 August 2005 in junk drawer | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

About

Categories

  • bread (3)
  • breakfast (1)
  • chow bella! (10)
  • dessert (2)
  • good enough to read (2)
  • junk drawer (5)
  • kale (1)
  • kitchen notebook (4)
  • lunchbox (2)
  • pasta (1)
  • pasta/Italian (1)
  • personal (2)
  • poems (1)
  • receipts (1)
  • restaurants (1)
  • salad (1)
  • she eats like a bird (3)
  • smoothies (1)
  • soup (1)
  • sweets and snacks (22)
  • tasting notes (1)
  • weeknight dinner (9)
  • what we ate (8)
See More

Archives

  • September 2012
  • February 2012
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011

More...

kitchen

  • Tribeca Yummy Mummy
  • The Wednesday Chef
  • The New York Times Dining & Wine
  • The Atlantic Food Channel
  • Sunday Suppers
  • Shoestring Gourmande
  • Serious Eats
  • Remedial Eating
  • Orangette
  • Michael Ruhlman
  • Lottie + Doof
  • Homesick Texan
  • Grub Street San Francisco
    Trying to figure out what's up with restaurants here, even if we almost never eat at them.
  • Great Food Houston
  • Gastropoda
  • Food in Jars
  • David Lebovitz
  • Bake and Shake
  • Alexis Stewart
  • 101 Cookbooks

sewing room

  • the purl bee - the purl bee
  • super eggplant
  • Posie Gets Cozy
  • not martha
  • Molly Chicken
  • inchmark
  • heatherross - journal
  • chickpea sewing studio
  • Brooklyn Parrots
  • ann wood
  • Angry Chicken
  • (Inside A Black Apple)

I LIKE TO READ

  • Jeffrey Eugenides: The Marriage Plot
  • Meg Wolitzer: The Ten-Year Nap
  • Jennifer Egan: A Visit from the Goon Squad
  • Charles Dickens: Bleak House
  • Mary Ann Shaffer: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
  • Kathryn Stockett: The Help
  • Hilary Mantel: Wolf Hall: A Novel
  • Sarah Napthali: Buddhism for Mothers of Young Children: Becoming a Mindful Parent
  • Jane Austen: Emma
  • Jane Austen: Sense and Sensibility
  • Jonathan Franzen: Freedom
  • Allegra Goodman: The Cookbook Collector
  • Mary McCarthy: The Group
  • Laura Fraser: All Over the Map
  • Iris Murdoch: The Sea, The Sea
  • Kim Severson: Spoon Fed: How Eight Cooks Saved My Life
  • Junot Díaz: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
  • Marilynne Robinson: Home: A Novel
  • Muriel Barbery: The Elegance of the Hedgehog
  • Dodie Smith: I Capture the Castle
Subscribe to this blog's feed

Photo Albums

  • refrigerator
    Apartment 13 May 05
  • Img_0206
    Apartment 19 and 21 April 05
  • sink
    Apartment 2 June 05
  • inside sink cabinet, from top
    Apartment 20 May 05
  • bathroom floor
    Apartment 25 May 05
  • Img_0008
    Apartment 30 March 05
  • Img_0078
    Apartment 5 April 05
  • front closet--open
    Apartment 6 May 05
  • Img_0107
    Apartment 7 April 05