I'll be the first person in the world to tell everyone that it's tough to be a Philly sports fan, since these teams will break your heart every day of the year.
But, not today!
Between the Eagles running up the score from the first quarter, DMac playing like he should (without his knee brace), all I can say is, "Oh, yeah!"
56-21...E-A-G-L-E-S!!
Oh, and the Phils'...lost. Oh, well.
Bring on the ice! The Flyers' start their season on October 4 when they play the Calgary Flames.
Hey, you gotta believe!
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Pullin' The Cord On That Thang!
Somewhere along the way, in our continuously plugged-in, over-scheduled, busy lives, I think we’re all forgetting about what’s really important.
So, here’s my idea…I’d really like for all of us to take a day off and be truly “unplugged”.
No computers, cell phones, emails, text messages, laptops, Blackberrys, iPhones, iPods, voice mail or any other electronic gadgets that we depend upon these days.
Nothing, nada.
Spend the time with your family, kids and friends. Create something amazing with them and make them remember you.
Spend the day reading the book you’ve always wanted to dive into.
Create your own 'fridge art with finger paint, fold origami frogs, find out what birds are in your backyard and put on some Coltrane.
Volunteer for a cause that you believe in, take a hike, make a pot of tea, learn how to knit, plant spring bulbs…do whatever it is that makes you happy.
And, guess what you’ll get back?
The best vacation day you’ve ever had.
Oh, and all of those emails and voice mails...those can wait until tomorrow.
So, here’s my idea…I’d really like for all of us to take a day off and be truly “unplugged”.
No computers, cell phones, emails, text messages, laptops, Blackberrys, iPhones, iPods, voice mail or any other electronic gadgets that we depend upon these days.
Nothing, nada.
Spend the time with your family, kids and friends. Create something amazing with them and make them remember you.
Spend the day reading the book you’ve always wanted to dive into.
Create your own 'fridge art with finger paint, fold origami frogs, find out what birds are in your backyard and put on some Coltrane.
Volunteer for a cause that you believe in, take a hike, make a pot of tea, learn how to knit, plant spring bulbs…do whatever it is that makes you happy.
And, guess what you’ll get back?
The best vacation day you’ve ever had.
Oh, and all of those emails and voice mails...those can wait until tomorrow.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
If today’s weather reminds me of the new autumn season (and, not a moment too soon) the incredible heat and humidity of Saturday just made me want to scream.
“Enough already!”
As a cook, I have a new credo; if it’s over 90°, I won’t cook. Will not cook, won’t cook, don’t want to.
I will not bake, will not deep fry (despite that unctuous recipe for deep-fried oysters that I found in the NY Times), refuse to sauté, forget all about roasting vegetables and, oh, you can’t grill anything if you don’t have a grill to begin with.
The original plan was to hit the Haddonfield's farmer’s market for a few tomatoes for an uncooked tomato sauce. You know, you just chop them up (take our the cores first!), add some onion, some garlic, a bit of olive oil, salt and pepper, fresh basil and whatever other fresh herbs you have on hand. Toss it with some hot pasta, add some grated cheese or fresh mozzarella.
Add a nice loaf of crusty bread, a salad along with a nicely chilled rose, and, hey! Dinner’s done, and that was the plan.
Ever get really, really seduced by something that you don’t really want or need? I can tell you right now, this happens all of the time to us foodies, and I fell for these guys, and hard.
Little baby heirloom tomatoes, sweet as sugar, red and gold and green and orange with red striping on the inside. 10 pounds for 20 dollars. I’d clearly gone to “cook’s heaven” since all I could think about was making the simplest marinara sauce I could think of with these beauties and freezing it for the winter.
“Cooking Rule Number One:” If you have excellent ingredients to work with, don’t play with them too much.
So, Paul and I went into the kitchen, and we cooked! We now have 2 ½ quarts of summer goodness in our freezer, and here’s my very loose, somewhat undocumented recipe for the marinara that will just knock you out.
3 Tbsp. Of olive oil
2 good-sized onions, peeled and roughly chopped.
4 good-sized cloves of garlic, peeled and smashed
4 quarts (or, 16 cups) of dead ripe tomatoes , stemmed, cored and quartered (no need to peel, since they’ll be pureed anyway)
Fresh herbs: two good healthy handfuls of fresh basil, flat-leaf parsley and oregano
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 – Heat a big (and I mean a good non-stick 6 quart pot) over medium heat for a few. Add the olive oil, and let it get warm or until you can smell it.
2 – Add the onions, cook over a low heat, stirring, until they become golden and slightly soft (about 10 minutes). Raise the heat a touch and then add the garlic.
3 – Tip in the tomatoes, give it all a good stir. Raise the heat up until it starts to bubble, then turn it down to the lowest heat possible to keep it all moving. Cook very, very slowly for, oh, 20 minutes, and don’t forget to stir. Don’t add any additional liquid; the fresh tomatoes will give up their own soon enough.
4 – Tip into a bowl to cool. Now, you have three options here…you could let it cool overnight in the fridge and freeze it in the morning, or you may want to do this…
5 – After it’s cooled, puree it in the food processor, and then freeze, or…
6 – Warm it up again, add the fresh herbs, have some of it for dinner and freeze the rest!
Oh, and just a “cook’s note” here…this is not a thick sauce. If you’d prefer something a bit heartier, just simmer it on low until you’re happy with it!
As for what happened to the rest of those tomatoes? I’ll let you know in a future post. There's some beautiful, gorgeous heirloom green tomato (I think they're called "German Greens" and they're a bit tangy) sauce in the freezer later on this week that I'll have to figure out what to do with! Salsa verde, perhaps?
But, as Otto said in “A Fish Called Wanda”…
“Don’t eat the green ones. They’re not ripe yet.”
“Enough already!”
As a cook, I have a new credo; if it’s over 90°, I won’t cook. Will not cook, won’t cook, don’t want to.
I will not bake, will not deep fry (despite that unctuous recipe for deep-fried oysters that I found in the NY Times), refuse to sauté, forget all about roasting vegetables and, oh, you can’t grill anything if you don’t have a grill to begin with.
The original plan was to hit the Haddonfield's farmer’s market for a few tomatoes for an uncooked tomato sauce. You know, you just chop them up (take our the cores first!), add some onion, some garlic, a bit of olive oil, salt and pepper, fresh basil and whatever other fresh herbs you have on hand. Toss it with some hot pasta, add some grated cheese or fresh mozzarella.
Add a nice loaf of crusty bread, a salad along with a nicely chilled rose, and, hey! Dinner’s done, and that was the plan.
Ever get really, really seduced by something that you don’t really want or need? I can tell you right now, this happens all of the time to us foodies, and I fell for these guys, and hard.
Little baby heirloom tomatoes, sweet as sugar, red and gold and green and orange with red striping on the inside. 10 pounds for 20 dollars. I’d clearly gone to “cook’s heaven” since all I could think about was making the simplest marinara sauce I could think of with these beauties and freezing it for the winter.
“Cooking Rule Number One:” If you have excellent ingredients to work with, don’t play with them too much.
So, Paul and I went into the kitchen, and we cooked! We now have 2 ½ quarts of summer goodness in our freezer, and here’s my very loose, somewhat undocumented recipe for the marinara that will just knock you out.
3 Tbsp. Of olive oil
2 good-sized onions, peeled and roughly chopped.
4 good-sized cloves of garlic, peeled and smashed
4 quarts (or, 16 cups) of dead ripe tomatoes , stemmed, cored and quartered (no need to peel, since they’ll be pureed anyway)
Fresh herbs: two good healthy handfuls of fresh basil, flat-leaf parsley and oregano
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 – Heat a big (and I mean a good non-stick 6 quart pot) over medium heat for a few. Add the olive oil, and let it get warm or until you can smell it.
2 – Add the onions, cook over a low heat, stirring, until they become golden and slightly soft (about 10 minutes). Raise the heat a touch and then add the garlic.
3 – Tip in the tomatoes, give it all a good stir. Raise the heat up until it starts to bubble, then turn it down to the lowest heat possible to keep it all moving. Cook very, very slowly for, oh, 20 minutes, and don’t forget to stir. Don’t add any additional liquid; the fresh tomatoes will give up their own soon enough.
4 – Tip into a bowl to cool. Now, you have three options here…you could let it cool overnight in the fridge and freeze it in the morning, or you may want to do this…
5 – After it’s cooled, puree it in the food processor, and then freeze, or…
6 – Warm it up again, add the fresh herbs, have some of it for dinner and freeze the rest!
Oh, and just a “cook’s note” here…this is not a thick sauce. If you’d prefer something a bit heartier, just simmer it on low until you’re happy with it!
As for what happened to the rest of those tomatoes? I’ll let you know in a future post. There's some beautiful, gorgeous heirloom green tomato (I think they're called "German Greens" and they're a bit tangy) sauce in the freezer later on this week that I'll have to figure out what to do with! Salsa verde, perhaps?
But, as Otto said in “A Fish Called Wanda”…
“Don’t eat the green ones. They’re not ripe yet.”
How to make a pot of coffee:
1 - Fill decanter with water.
2 - Place coffee filter in basket.
3 - Measure coffee into said basket.
4 - Pour water into machine, and let it brew into the decanter.
This method works fine, unless you happen to be, say, me, in which case it goes something like this:
1 - Empty decanter, rinse and repeat.
2 - Stare blankly into space until you realize you are out of coffee filters.
3 - Walk across the construction yard to the contractor’s trailer and borrow some of theirs. Make mental note to stop at Wegman’s in the morning.
4 - Take empty decanter over to water dispenser to fill. Stare blankly into space until you realize the container is, indeed, empty.
5 - Pull the empty container out, flip off (hey!) the valve. Ask the assistant construction manager to open a new one. Put the valve back on.
6 - Take empty decanter over to water dispenser to fill. Press on the blue lever, and stare blankly into space as you realize there’s no water coming out of the spigot.
7 - Grab the top of the dispenser and shake, shake, shake, to dislodge that stupid, little, freaking, #$%# ball at the base of the valve because it’s stuck. Again.
8 - Pour coffee, add sugar and milk to taste.
Place coffee on work table next to you. Pick up cup to sip only to discover a gnat doing the backstroke.
So, how was your day?
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
A Summer Wind...
I love nature, I love the weather, and I especially love this time of year.
Summer’s coming to a close, and I’m glad to see it end. The night breeze is cooler than it’s been in ages, and it’s a pleasure to turn off the air conditioning and open up the windows again to hear the leaves rustling. After falling asleep to the air conditioning’s groan all summer, I don’t believe there’s a better tonic for sleeping than pulling up a light blanket and listening to the crickets making their annual plea for love.
There’s a phrase from “Charlotte’s Web” that comes to my mind when the crickets start chirping. “Goodbye summer, goodbye…how many nights until frost? Goodbye summer, goodbye.”
It’s time for me, the cook, to stop thinking about tomatoes, summer squash and fresh basil, and start thinking about making fresh tomato sauce for the autumn and winter soups that I’ll make in the months to come. It’s also time to make pesto; there’s nothing nicer then fresh pesto on any pasta in oh, January. I’ll post my recipe next week.
It’s also fresh fig time. Paul’s landlord has these huge (and I mean ginormous) fig trees that grow all of the way up to the second story of the house.
It’s become its own little ecosystem over the past couple of weeks. There’s a little family of Northern Flickers in there! Dad (with the yellow striping around his eyes), Mom and the whole family of their teenagers, making an awful racket that sounds wonderful to these ears.
Flickers are part of the woodpecker family, and they are big, lovely birds, local to New Jersey. They’re also seed-eaters, and watching them suck out the fig seeds is an amazing sight. I’ll try to catch some photos this weekend.
Really, it’s all about being aware, being quiet, and enjoying the turn of the seasons.
Summer’s coming to a close, and I’m glad to see it end. The night breeze is cooler than it’s been in ages, and it’s a pleasure to turn off the air conditioning and open up the windows again to hear the leaves rustling. After falling asleep to the air conditioning’s groan all summer, I don’t believe there’s a better tonic for sleeping than pulling up a light blanket and listening to the crickets making their annual plea for love.
There’s a phrase from “Charlotte’s Web” that comes to my mind when the crickets start chirping. “Goodbye summer, goodbye…how many nights until frost? Goodbye summer, goodbye.”
It’s time for me, the cook, to stop thinking about tomatoes, summer squash and fresh basil, and start thinking about making fresh tomato sauce for the autumn and winter soups that I’ll make in the months to come. It’s also time to make pesto; there’s nothing nicer then fresh pesto on any pasta in oh, January. I’ll post my recipe next week.
It’s also fresh fig time. Paul’s landlord has these huge (and I mean ginormous) fig trees that grow all of the way up to the second story of the house.
It’s become its own little ecosystem over the past couple of weeks. There’s a little family of Northern Flickers in there! Dad (with the yellow striping around his eyes), Mom and the whole family of their teenagers, making an awful racket that sounds wonderful to these ears.
Flickers are part of the woodpecker family, and they are big, lovely birds, local to New Jersey. They’re also seed-eaters, and watching them suck out the fig seeds is an amazing sight. I’ll try to catch some photos this weekend.
Really, it’s all about being aware, being quiet, and enjoying the turn of the seasons.
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
Workin' My Way Back To You...
So, let’s see…I’m back, but this blog is under some serious re-construction! I’m just warning all of you. ;)
I’ve consolidated a bunch of entries from my old blogs here on the site. Since we’re all friends here, I plan on archiving the rest of them and I’ll create a link for everyone’s browsing pleasure in the future, but there’s still a ton of work to do, and I’ll spruce it all up as time allows.
I’m pretty sure that I followed the path that most new bloggers do; you start one, send the link around to everyone that you know, and the next thing you know, you’re frantically searching for comments to see if anyone has read your latest post, and you start to post less and less.
This is not good; I’ve started and abandoned two, so I know!
And, why start a new blog with my awful track record?
Because I love to write, cook, craft, share my photos, recipes, new music, and talk about the weather.
It’s all good here…thanks for coming on board!
I’ve consolidated a bunch of entries from my old blogs here on the site. Since we’re all friends here, I plan on archiving the rest of them and I’ll create a link for everyone’s browsing pleasure in the future, but there’s still a ton of work to do, and I’ll spruce it all up as time allows.
I’m pretty sure that I followed the path that most new bloggers do; you start one, send the link around to everyone that you know, and the next thing you know, you’re frantically searching for comments to see if anyone has read your latest post, and you start to post less and less.
This is not good; I’ve started and abandoned two, so I know!
And, why start a new blog with my awful track record?
Because I love to write, cook, craft, share my photos, recipes, new music, and talk about the weather.
It’s all good here…thanks for coming on board!
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