morsels & sauces

We have been trying to eat a little healthier, despite some of the most recent (and some upcoming) posts on this blog which would suggest I am living a life of lavender booze , hot toddies , and corn muffins . With that in mind, it was delightful then to make this simple recipe for grilled shrimp. Mark Bittman , the engaging food writer for The New York Times , penned the lovely cookbook from which this recipe comes back in 2005 and the husband gifted this to me in 2010 for Christmas (the same year I gave him a different Mark Bittman cookbook as well). However, it turns out I have posted from the book here only once , despite the fact that I do turn to this cookbook often for generally quick and generally healthy world cuisine. Indeed, Bittman's mantra is that food (its cooking, its systems) has the power to affect our personal as well as global health, and we would be best served to be thoughtful, healthy, and sustainable both on the farm and in the home. ...

We spent the few days after Christmas in Inglenook, California (just north of Fort Bragg), at a little cottage tucked away down Beal Lane.  At the end of the lane, you can take a small path behind some Cyprus trees to emerge upon the most wonderful of sand dunes.  Rising up hugely, like hills, sometimes higher than houses, the dunes have that particular windswept cleanliness, the sides curdled then smooth.  For a ten-minute walk across the dunes, you are rewarded with the croak of frogs from a nearby river and the roar of the ocean you know is somewhere on the other side of the dunes, but you cannot see it.  A feast of sound and sand. I walked there one evening with my father-in-law; we talked of ways to make one's life filled with more love and beauty, and I thought a lot about a dear friend of mine who is struggling right now with some major health issues.  She has been on my mind a good deal, and she is good and she is strong and she is d...

Beware, this is an entry wherein I will discuss Russian short stories, communication, baseball, and cucumbers. It has been that kind of week. It's beginning to feel like fall around here. That means hot days, cool nights, fog in the morning over the hills, playoff baseball, huge spiders in the doorway. I love fall. I love the feeling of the everyday in the midst of big change.  Recently, I have been working to make relevant to 17- to 18-year olds a certain 19th-century Russian short story about an older man falling in love for the first time in his life (I am looking at you, Chekhov ). I read this story, "Lady with the Little Dog," when I myself was 21, and I remember not liking it much. I found it too quiet. I didn't understand how important what was not being said. Or what was being said between Gurov and Anna but not being told to us by the narrator. I love that throughout the story, Anna and then Gurov have tried to communicate to others and...

Adapted from Cookbook #7:  Wok & Stir Fry: Fabulous Fast Food with Asian Flavors (2003) Recipe:  Stir-fried Rice Noodles with Chicken and Shrimp I bought this cookbook because we own a wok.  We don't need a wok.  And yet, there it is, taunting us.  So I acquired this cookbook in an attempt to toss together some fast recipes. It was bound to happen.  This one was a dud.  While this faux- (pho?) Phat Thai (Pad Thai) is a fine weeknight meal, it pales in comparison to real Phat Thai, and so this meal is just plain sad.  True Phat Thai has tamarind sauce and more sugar and lime juice, but this one was bland, boring, tame.  So if you feel inspired to make this, double, nay triple (okay, maybe not triple), all the yummy sauces because that's what makes good Phat Thai.   That wonderful blend of salty, sweet and sour. Apparently Phat Thai was originally brought to Thailand from Vietnam, became a cheap staple for th...