Things I've Cooked on Holiday

Stir-fried Sweet Potatoes with Browned Butter and Sage (Bittman, NYT)
Chocolate (15) Little Layer Cake (New York Times)
Egg Salad Sandwich (101 Cookbooks, plus capers, April 2007)
Kale and Potato Spanish Tortilla (Gourmet, February 2003)
Spanish-style Shrimp with Garlic (NYT, May 2009)
Two-bean Chili (My own recipe)
Simple Cauliflower (101 Cookbooks, May 2009)
Huevos Rancheros with Spinach (My recipe)
Classic Grilled Cheese and Cream of Tomato Soup (America's Test Kitchen, via Smitten Kitchen, November 2006)

Comments

Privilege of Being

Robert Hass Many are making love. Up above, the angels in the unshaken ether and crystal of human longing are braiding one another's hair, which is strawberry blond and the texture of cold rivers. They glance down from time to time at the awkward ecstasy-- it must look to them like featherless birds splashing in the spring puddle of a bed-- and then one woman, she is about to come, peels back the man's shut eyelids and says, look at me, and he does. Or is it the man tugging the curtain rope in that dark theater? Anyway, they do, they look at each other; two beings with evolved eyes, rapacious, startled, connected at the belly in an unbelievably sweet lubricious glue, stare at each other, and the angels are desolate. They hate it. They shudder pathetically like lithographs of Victorian beggars with perfect features and alabaster skin hawking rags in the lewd alleys of the novel. All of creation is offended by this distress. It is like the keening sound the moon makes sometimes, ...

Constructivist Crap

Reading this post was like deja vu for me! I took a class just like this as an undergrad... (surprise, surprise) in the education department. I made it through that semester by taking solace in two facts: (a) I was also taking The Sociology of Education in the soc department, with a professor who actually taught the material and (b) most of us in my little liberal arts bubble wouldn't end up teachers, thus wouldn't have an opportunity to inflict such pedagogical torture on kids who needed to actually learn stuff. It would appear that Newoldschoolteacher has neither of those to help her out. God save her. The professor in my class repeatedly insisted that we were a "democratic classroom" and that she wasn't any more of an expert on the material than us. WHAT? I paid good money for that course, money that employed her to teach me. I hope that she was more expert on the material than I was! Also, when I "took responsibility for myself" and said that ...

Another one-dish-wonder

During the summer, I love meals that don't require heating up the oven. I also love throwing random things together. And so this dinner was born, and it's quickly become one of my favorite things to eat on a hot summer night. At a dinner party awhile back, my friend Deirdre made this great cucumber "salsa," and while I love to scoop it up on chips or eat it by the spoonful out of the container, we decided that the mixed-veggie goodness of it would be great as a salad. Enter quinoa. I want to love the stuff, since it's so good for you, but I always struggled with it tasting a little too bland. Once I discovered that cooking it in a light broth really jazzes it up, I was hooked. My favorite is Better than Bullion veggie flavor, which comes in a jar rather than as a powder. I use it at about half strength, rather than full. Finally, my mother makes these really delicious chicken tostada salads. The chicken is poached, and then dressed with a red wine vinaigrette...

Socially Distant Cuisine

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