So I'm leaving for Germany in about 10 hours. Needless to say, I'm not packed yet. As a matter of fact, I'm sitting on my bed eating an avocado half that has a bit of soy sauce in the middle, because I was thinking about blogging and I remembered bazu once wrote about something like this on her blog... So much better than packing.
Anyway, I'll see you all in a week or so. Aufwiedersehen!
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
When I was on vacation....
...I:
1) Took pictures of flowers
2) Made jalapeno poppers
3) Actually finished a craft project
These were all good things.
1) Took pictures of flowers
2) Made jalapeno poppers
3) Actually finished a craft project
These were all good things.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Water for Thought
The numbers, from Time Magazine:
1.1 billion - people around the world that the U.N. estimates lack safe drinking water, a number that could reach 5 billion by 2025
8.25 billion - gallons of bottled water (31 billion L) Americans drank in 2006, a 9.5% increase from the year before.
$10.8 billion - amount spent on bottled water last year — all for something you can get virtually for free
4,000 - tons of CO2 generated each year — the equivalent of the emissions of 700 cars — by importing bottled water from Fiji, France and Italy, America's largest suppliers
Less than 25% - percent of water bottles recycled, leaving 2 billion pounds (900 million kg) a year to clog landfills.
If American tap water were unsafe, I could understand why people would want to drink bottled water. But the infuriating and depressing thing is that all of this waste is unecessary-- American tap water is safe. New York City water is among the cleanest in the world.
Is it really too hard for us to take 20 seconds to fill up a bottle with tap water before we leave for work in the morning?
Also, how hard is it to throw your plastic bottles into a recycling bin?
1.1 billion - people around the world that the U.N. estimates lack safe drinking water, a number that could reach 5 billion by 2025
8.25 billion - gallons of bottled water (31 billion L) Americans drank in 2006, a 9.5% increase from the year before.
$10.8 billion - amount spent on bottled water last year — all for something you can get virtually for free
4,000 - tons of CO2 generated each year — the equivalent of the emissions of 700 cars — by importing bottled water from Fiji, France and Italy, America's largest suppliers
Less than 25% - percent of water bottles recycled, leaving 2 billion pounds (900 million kg) a year to clog landfills.
If American tap water were unsafe, I could understand why people would want to drink bottled water. But the infuriating and depressing thing is that all of this waste is unecessary-- American tap water is safe. New York City water is among the cleanest in the world.
Is it really too hard for us to take 20 seconds to fill up a bottle with tap water before we leave for work in the morning?
Also, how hard is it to throw your plastic bottles into a recycling bin?
Monday, August 20, 2007
Suppers
A few days ago, on August 16th, I turned 20. I can't believe I'm not a teenager any more!
I was given a copy of a cookbook I've been wanting for a long time,
Sunday Suppers at Lucques: Seasonal Recipes from Market to Table (Suzanne Goin), as a birthday present. I recomend it highly! It's diveded into seasons, and there are about 8 menus (salad, first course, main, desert) for each season. Most of the first and main courses use meat, but lots of them could be made to be meatless fairly easily. But I'd have totally bought the book for the salad recipes alone-- they all sound so delicious, flavorful, and unusual. And the book has some of the best food photography I've seen anywhere.
Anyway, I ended up making a meal inspired by the book: arugula salad with summer fruit, cannelli bean puree with carmelizes peppers, onions, and charmoula, gnocchi with fresh corn, sage, and mushrooms (didn't get a picture of this), and a plum-nectarine galette for dessert. I'm visiting some relatives in California, so I had to adjust my cooking to their tastes, but it all turned out quite well. The salad was really, really good-- probably my favorite dish, and the only one I followed directly the book. Hmm.
I'll try to get the recipes up in the next few days...
I was given a copy of a cookbook I've been wanting for a long time,
Sunday Suppers at Lucques: Seasonal Recipes from Market to Table (Suzanne Goin), as a birthday present. I recomend it highly! It's diveded into seasons, and there are about 8 menus (salad, first course, main, desert) for each season. Most of the first and main courses use meat, but lots of them could be made to be meatless fairly easily. But I'd have totally bought the book for the salad recipes alone-- they all sound so delicious, flavorful, and unusual. And the book has some of the best food photography I've seen anywhere.
Anyway, I ended up making a meal inspired by the book: arugula salad with summer fruit, cannelli bean puree with carmelizes peppers, onions, and charmoula, gnocchi with fresh corn, sage, and mushrooms (didn't get a picture of this), and a plum-nectarine galette for dessert. I'm visiting some relatives in California, so I had to adjust my cooking to their tastes, but it all turned out quite well. The salad was really, really good-- probably my favorite dish, and the only one I followed directly the book. Hmm.
I'll try to get the recipes up in the next few days...
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Directions
This is my last night in NYC for a year. Although I'm (mostly) sure I'll have a positive time in Germany, right now I'm rather overwhelmed with preparations to leave: packing, leaving my three jobs in the same week, and saying good bye to friends-- several of whom I'm not sure when (or if) I'll see again.
I'm not actually going to Germany until the 30th, but I have to move out of my apartment by Sunday, so I'm going to be staying in NJ with some friends until then. It's lovely of them to host me-- but I will be living with other people so I'm not sure how often I'll be cooking or updating the blog.
I've also been thinking of the direction this blog is going to take when I'm in Germany. Obviously I'll still be blogging primarily about food, but I'm sure that I'll want to write about life in Germany. I'd like to change the name (but not the link) of my blog to something more suitable, but I'm not sure if that would be too confusing. I know I've already done this once before-- why can't I ever make up my mind? But I don't want to start another blog, as I'm pretty attached to this one.
I hope this post wasn't overly self-indulgent. I'll blog about food next time, promise!
The Last Supper (in NYC, that is): a pizza topped with things I didn't want to go to waste, most notably some carmelized onions and a portabella mushroom.
That reminds me, I can't believe how much food I have left! It felt like I never had anything, but actually I have a lot of food that's probably going to be going to waste.
I'm not actually going to Germany until the 30th, but I have to move out of my apartment by Sunday, so I'm going to be staying in NJ with some friends until then. It's lovely of them to host me-- but I will be living with other people so I'm not sure how often I'll be cooking or updating the blog.
I've also been thinking of the direction this blog is going to take when I'm in Germany. Obviously I'll still be blogging primarily about food, but I'm sure that I'll want to write about life in Germany. I'd like to change the name (but not the link) of my blog to something more suitable, but I'm not sure if that would be too confusing. I know I've already done this once before-- why can't I ever make up my mind? But I don't want to start another blog, as I'm pretty attached to this one.
I hope this post wasn't overly self-indulgent. I'll blog about food next time, promise!
The Last Supper (in NYC, that is): a pizza topped with things I didn't want to go to waste, most notably some carmelized onions and a portabella mushroom.
That reminds me, I can't believe how much food I have left! It felt like I never had anything, but actually I have a lot of food that's probably going to be going to waste.
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
New Books
In an uncharactaristically spendthift fit (more on that later), I've gone and ordered a bunch of books I've been wanting for a long time. Perhaps this was not the cleverest thing I could have done, as I'll be moving to Germany for a year in just a few weeks and books are quite heavy, but I'm worried about finding enough English reading materials (I love reading-- right now I'm working on Thomas Sowell's The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation As a Basis for Social Policy which is really thought-provoking) and I figure these books should keep me going for a while.
The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter (Peter Singer)
Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Post-Contemporary Interventions) (Frederic Jameson)
Development as Freedom (Amartya Sen)
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman)
World Poverty and Human Rights: Cosmopolitan Responsibilities and Reforms (Thomas Pogge)
The Glass Palace: A Novel (Amitav Ghosh)
and The Septembers of Shiraz (Dalia Sofer)
Actually I can't say I've been wanting that last one for a long time, as I just read about it in last week's NY Times literary supplement. But it sounded interesting and I can read it on the airplane.
I'm not going to say how much I just spent -- but suffice it to say I've gotten free shipping.
Now I feel bad for ordering from amazon , but that's another story. (Normally I buy from used book sellers, but I'm pressed for time because of the move-- is that a good excuse?)
The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter (Peter Singer)
Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Post-Contemporary Interventions) (Frederic Jameson)
Development as Freedom (Amartya Sen)
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman)
World Poverty and Human Rights: Cosmopolitan Responsibilities and Reforms (Thomas Pogge)
The Glass Palace: A Novel (Amitav Ghosh)
and The Septembers of Shiraz (Dalia Sofer)
Actually I can't say I've been wanting that last one for a long time, as I just read about it in last week's NY Times literary supplement. But it sounded interesting and I can read it on the airplane.
I'm not going to say how much I just spent -- but suffice it to say I've gotten free shipping.
Now I feel bad for ordering from amazon , but that's another story. (Normally I buy from used book sellers, but I'm pressed for time because of the move-- is that a good excuse?)
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