It’s easiest to kick off a diet (or “detox,” as we like to call them now), after a period of gluttonous, wanton indulgence. When you can physically feel the fat and salt and sugar oozing through your veins and out your pores, you are more likely to be able to resist the temptation to stuff [...]
Archive for the ‘cooking’ Category
Orthodox Lent, Pre-Revolutionary Russian Vegan Dishes, and the Uses of Cannabis Oil
Posted in breakfast, cooking, nutrition, Russia, tagged Classic Cooking of Russia, Elena Molokhovets, old Russian cookbook, Russian vegan on February 22, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
Eggplant Rolls with Walnut-Garlic Paste and Their Transcendent Echoes
Posted in cooking, food writing, Georgian food, recipes, try this, tagged badrjiani nigvzit, eggplant pkhali, Georgian eggplant rolls on February 12, 2012 | 1 Comment »
My bedtime reading lately has been a beautifully written book called An Everlasting Meal by Tamar Adler. In it, she describes how to cook intuitively and well using the leftovers and tail ends of one meal to make the next, so ingredients “topple into one another like dominoes.” Conceiving of meals in this way turns [...]
How to Render Lard and What to Do With It
Posted in cooking, try this, Ukraine, tagged lard, rendering on December 23, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
After returning from Ukraine, you’d think I would have had enough lard to last the rest of the year, and indeed, there were a few days not long after I got back when all I craved all day was miso soup and grapefruit. But I had two packages of leaf lard (the creamy pink [...]
Kicking Off Soup Season 2011
Posted in cooking, recipes, try this, tagged bean soup, dried beans, Russian soup on October 10, 2011 | 2 Comments »
After returning from Turkey and wanting to eat nothing but eggplant, peppers, tomatoes, lamb, and garlic-yogurt sauce for several weeks, I have moved into soup mode. This phase hits me every year around this time, as the leaves turn yellow and ochre and I come home with a cold nose after my walk back from [...]
The New Food Pyramid: Where’s the Spark?
Posted in cooking on June 4, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Perhaps the lush infographics I’ve been enjoying lately thanks to GOOD.is have me spoiled, but I was distinctly underwhelmed by “My Plate,” the USDA’s latest attempt at a visual representation of a balanced diet. The graphic, released Thursday, replaces the oft-maligned food pyramid, which was introduced in 1992 as a way to get Americans to [...]
The Tao of Cooking
Posted in cooking, try this, tagged cooking, Pooh, relaxing, taoism on March 11, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
One of my favorite books when I was younger was called The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff. It explained the tenets of Taoism through the actions (and relaxions, as Pooh might put it) of everyone’s favorite pudgy, hunny-loving bear. In his cheerful acceptance of what is, his childlike sense of wonder at the world, [...]
Mussel Lessons with Olga
Posted in cooking, recipes, try this on February 19, 2011 | 4 Comments »
When my friend Olga responded to my tweet about mussels with an offer to teach me how to cook them at home, my eyes widened with excitement–and fear. The idea of feeding anyone mollusks that I had prepared myself filled me with terror. I feared unleashing upon my guests the hordes of gut-wrenching illnesses I imagined these [...]
How Intelligent Web Design Can Lead Us Back to the Kitchen
Posted in cooking, recipes on February 3, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
A friend alerted me to yesterday’s rollout of Foodily, a new social recipe search engine, via a USA Today article describing the site. Reading through it, I was prepared to be underwhelmed. “Foodies can be friends on new Foodily site,” the headline yawned. Just what I need, I thought, another social network to keep up [...]
The Politics of Nutrition
Posted in cooking, food policy, tagged dietary guidelines, food politics, nutrition on January 31, 2011 | 2 Comments »
As a big food policy and public health dork, I’ve been awaiting the release of the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for some time. (Yes, that’s right: 2010.) The government (represented in this case by the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Health and Human Services) revises these every five years to help guide Americans’ food [...]
