September 2011
10 posts
14 tags
shana tova
So, whatever, I am like an eighth Jewish and sometimes my Jewisher friends like to tease me about it. Then I have to prove myself by doing things like eating chopped liver by the pound. I am only bummed that because my oven is broken, I had to buy Zabar’s challah and couldn’t make honey cake from scratch, but I’ll atone for it on Yom Kippur.
Apples & honey, for a sweet new...
19 tags
date night
Saturday night at Sushi of Gari, literally right downstairs from our apartment.
Near plate: sashimi platter. Highlight was the garlic-miso seared swordfish (I think) on the far left. The quality of the fish was pretty unmatched, and I liked that the waitress walked me through everything on my plate (although, clearly, it didn’t stick with me once I was busy eating it all.)
Far plate:...
10 tags
shipyard smashed pumpkin
In further pursuit of my goal to try a large percentage of the pumpkin beers on the market this season, yesterday we split a Shipyard Smashed Pumpkin (Pugsley’s Signature Series.) In contrast to the sweet, almost syrupy pumpkin pie-ishness of Southern Tier’s Pumking, this one hovered in the savory pumpkin category - sort of like eating a spoonful of plain, organic pumpkin out of the...
16 tags
housewarming: brownies & pumpkin blondies
I first made this cake on New Year’s Eve of this year, so I think of it sort of as my good luck charm of two thousand eleven, symbolic of how far I’ve come in my relationship with food this year. It is to 2011 what pumpkin cake was to my 2010 (see top of page 2 in the link): representative of what kind of cook I am, and what I want to feed people when I cook for them. Despite my...
8 tags
non-copyright-infringing froyo with assorted...
I know I’m super late on this, but I’ve discovered a new favorite food blog: whatsgoodattraderjoes.com. I’m telling myself that it’s just entered my awareness because never before have I lived seven blocks from a Trader Joe’s, but it’s suddenly become a significant influence in my purchasing decisions. For example, nonfat plain frozen yogurt was not exactly at...
17 tags
strip steak with peppers & onions in red wine...
Our new kitchen on the upper west side is not perfect. It has perks: the dishwasher, the fantastic stainless steel appliances and black marble counters. It also has cons, the most significant of which is the fact that pretty much whenever you pan-fry anything with the remotest amount of gusto, the smoke alarm in the living room adjacent goes off. And off. And off. No amount of standing on chairs,...
11 tags
whole foods wedding cake
A coworker’s last day in the office before leaving for her wedding, so I picked out this black-and-white cake: a layer chocolate cake and a layer yellow, with chocolate ganache in between and buttercream over the outside and pink icing flowers on top. Way to step it up, Whole Foods. It was beautiful and yummy. And, since she’s having peach crisp at her wedding this weekend, suitably...
8 tags
pumpkin season
It is September. That means a lot of things. Fall (eff you stop calling it autumn) is my favorite season: leaves falling and brown wool sweaters and thick argyle socks and fresh apple cider and composition books and short nails painted burgundy and brick red and grey tights and cat faces carved into jack-o-lanterns and gold necklaces and birthdays of everyone I love. I am a total dork about fall,...
15 tags
labor day breakfast
Yesterday my boyfriend and I went to his grandma’s house down the shore where he grew up, which turns out to be not terribly far from the places down the shore where I spent a lot of time during summers as a kid (the Maps app on my iPad had me playing a well-illustrated version of the “What exit?” game in the backseat). We ate Vic’s pizza with extra garlic, sausage and...
14 tags
vegan spinach dip
I wasn’t planning for this to be the recipe that broke the blogging dry spell, but after tasting the bite of the leftovers this morning I found I’d stumbled upon something. I’ve actually been cooking quite a bit lately, out of necessity and economy, fashioning meals that could’ve come straight out of the Trader Joe’s cookbook and might have been hard to defend in...
