by Sam Tackeff | Aug 12, 2013 | Books, Fitness, Meal Planning, Random
Meal planning again – I really do look so forward to this process. Usually, the beginning of my weekends are spent curled up with a new cookbook, reading it from cover to cover by Saturday afternoon, meal planning for the week, shopping and prep cooking on Sunday. This weekend I was totally swept up reading Naomi Duguid’s fabulous Burma: Rivers of Flavor – the ultimate armchair vacation cookbook.
On Saturday I set to work making a little list of what was left in my fridge that I wanted to use up: asparagus, baby spinach, ham, cucumbers, two zucchini, coconut milk, feta, bacon, beets, basil succotash, basil oil, brussels sprouts, Anson Mills rice, eggs, carrots, avocado and tomatoes. Of course there are plenty of bits and bobs, sauces, condiments, and probably things in the way back of the fridge that I just haven’t noticed for a while – all fair game too. And then my pantry is stocked for the apocalypse, so I like to build upon the fresh stuff, but sometimes pantry goods get the starring role in the meal.
When I went to the store, I tried to pick up some meat, some fruit for the week, things to round out my lunches, pantry staples I was running out of: sardines, Red Boat fish sauce, an extra avocado. And by store, well, that’s a lie, we all know that I have a problem. “Store” is more like, three or four or five stores. By choice. For pleasure. Sometimes I stop by Trader Joe’s just for the sample first, you know, to clear my mind. Then I’ll head to Russo’s in Watertown to see if they have Chip-In eggs (they didn’t), or interesting peak produce. Then to Whole Foods for Sunday night fish and an olive sample and a little cup of bionically filtered water, and Trader Joe’s again (to see if they have the free range organic chicken thighs that I eat a lot of (they did.) And another sample.
So here’s what I came up with, accounting for a few days that we’ll likely be eating out because of our super late schedule:
:: Grilled Blue Fish, Mashed Potatoes, and Asparagus with Mustard Vinaigrette. I try to do fish every Sunday if I can because I know that I’ll be able to cook it right when I get home, and usually it’s a quick bet after an afternoon of prep cooking.
:: Saucy Spiced Meat & Potato. This one is from the Burma cookbook. It’s sort of like a spiced stew with ground beef (actually, reminds me a lot of sloppy joe mix.) and I’m not quite sure what I’ll pair it with yet – a big mess of sautéed spinach, and likely a simple salad. I think it suggests an okra/shallot stir-fry in the book, which would be nice, but I don’t have okra.
:: B.L.A.T. Salad. Yep, bacon, lettuce, avocado and tomato salad. The feta might go in here too. And beets on the side.
:: Burmese Grilled Chicken. Also from Burma – chicken with an exciting! marinade of ginger, turmeric, garlic, chile, and fish sauce. I’d bathe myself in Red Boat fish sauce… I’ll probably pair this with a quick pickled cucumber salad.
:: Ham & Cheese Omelette. I have leftover ham. And leftover cheddar with hatch chiles (sucker purchase after eating a sample). And eggs that are a little old, but not too old, that I really want to use up. And I like to channel my French side in the summer time. On the side some stewed zucchini, tomato, and garlic, and a side salad. Ooh la la!
:: Coconut Rice Pudding. I have rice, coconut milk, and some delicious Nielsen–Massey Organic Fairtrade Madagascar Bourbon Vanilla Extract that was sent to me to try out for my blog. (Really good timing, P.R. folks – I usually make my own, and I’ve just run out of a large batch that had lasted for months.) I really love Thai mango sticky rice, so I might do some sort of play on that.
And fitness? There’s plenty of that too:
The three miles of walking on weekdays is my usual their and back commute walk. Our evening strolls are walks, although this week we’ve been adding in some running intervals. These aren’t always what I end up doing, but I find that if I schedule out my workouts, I’m more likely to commit to doing them.
Monday: 3 mile walk + 6 mile slow run
Tuesday: 3 mile walk + evening stroll
Wednesday: 3 mile walk, CrossFit Olympic Lifting Class
Thursday: 3 mile walk
Friday: 3 mile walk+ evening stroll
Saturday: CrossFit (or day off)
Sunday: CrossFit Class + Open Platform
What’s on your plate this week? Also, for those of you who have Burma, have you cooked from it? I have lots of notes, but I’m not sure what to tackle next…
by Sam Tackeff | Jun 11, 2013 | Blogging, Books, Photography, Restaurants
All of a sudden we had a flash of heatwave out east, and summer is officially here. This weekend was my college reunion, and I made my way out to Wellesley to participate in the best way I know possible: as Class Dinner Chair. Instead of formal catering, Saturday’s dinner was Redbones barbecue – plates of brisket, ribs, grilled vegetables and their creamy mac and cheese – and Sunday we had some very good sandwiches from the Linden Store. My dear friend Caroline flew out from Houston, and we had a grand time having ladies lunch, touring the arboretum, the greenhouses, and taking kayaks on lake Waban. I managed to escape Wellesley Books with only three new purchases in tow: ‘The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry‘, by Rachel Joyce, ‘Beautiful Ruins‘ by Jess Walter – both good summer reading. And for good measure, ‘Wreck this Journal‘ – a journal with some aggressive prompts. I have a Kindle which I use almost daily, but nothing beats a good paperback in the summertime.
A few weeks ago I signed up for Pathfinder, a five week journaling course led by Karen Walrond of Chookooloonks, a vibrant and delightful human being. I was having trouble writing – expressing myself freely and creatively, and this seemed like a good moment to seize the opportunity to learn something new. Last month, after a year of dreaming, I finally got a new lens for my camera, so I no longer am limited to macro food shots. Another great thing about this course is that it’s inspiring me to actually shoot. (Including all the photos in this post.)
I’ve been spending a lot of time outside lately. I have a half hour meandering walk to work in the morning, and back in the evening. I’ve taken to walking on the waterfront, which is always a little bit longer, but always cheers me up. Maybe it has to do with growing up on the ocean, but whenever I’m tired, anxious, or sad, walking next to all the blue and the boats will always put me in a good place. In addition to my walks, I’ve been running. I started with the Runner’s World Summer Running Streak – a mile every day from Memorial Day to July 4th – fully expecting to have given up by now, but I’m still going strong.
There has also been food! This week we also took out the grill for the season, and I ceremoniously cooked up some hot dogs, and Copper River Sockeye salmon for the occasion. We typically have our date night on Friday night at the Cottage in Wellesley. it first became a thing with the brownie sundae and the lamb burger with paprika aioli (seriously, it’s all about the paprika aioli), and then remained a thing as they are one of the most accommodating restaurants for both Gluten-free and food allergy folks in the area when I was super strict for my gym challenge. Nobody looked at me twice when I’d order the Chicken Cobb minus the blue cheese, and sub lamb burger for chicken. It was a miracle I tell you.
Last week we ventured further out to Somerville to try our luck at Posto. A change of venue! I ordered a cocktail, which, since I’ve become an accidental tee-totaler over the past few years, might be surprising (I can count the number of adult beverages I’ve had this year on my two hands) – I needed to make an exception for this glorious beverage: the Italia 75 (with Campari, Prosecco, and fresh grapefruit juice). It was well worth it.
For our meal, we shared a Caesar salad with white anchovies, which was perfectly dressed. Also, anyone who serves me white anchovies immediately wins a prize. The marinated little fish are vastly superior to their salty shriveled cousins most often topping a Caesar. And then we made a point to get the rosemary sea salt bread, which they bake to order in their large pizza oven.
For our meal, Devon got the rigatoni bolognese, and I got the mussels with fennel, pernod, and butter. The last time I actually ordered mussels in a restaurant was in Napa at The Girl and the Fig three years ago. Three years ago! I remember this well because they were delicious then, and I spent half the meal berating myself for not ordering (or cooking) mussels more often. And yes, I ended up doing that again during this meal. Not only were they absurdly good – a little smoky from the fire, plump and juicy and reminiscent of the sea – but I would bathe myself in the sauce if I was any less proper a lady. Lesson learned, I’ll have to get them again soon.
Over the next couple of days, I’ll be writing up my summer to do list. It’ll involve a good deal of books, barbecue, frolicking in the sunshine, and time at the sea. I’ll be in my kitchen – I’m meaning to try the Banana Ketchup from the new Adobo Road Cookbook. I’ve been curled up lately with Dinner, A Love Story and Canal House Cooks Everyday, Nigel Slater’s Kitchen Diaries II, and Yotam Ottolenghi’s Jerusalem, to name a few. I hope to travel to a few good restaurants – Farmstead in Providence is at the top of my list right now. I have some home improvements (a.k.a. more bookshelves) in mind, which will require a trip or two to IKEA. And strawberries. I’ll be eating plenty of those.
by Sam Tackeff | Apr 10, 2013 | Books
I was listening to NPR last week in the car on the way to the gym – that’s when I do the bulk of my NPR listening – and the oddest piece was on ‘This American Life‘ about people who get a tingle feeling in their brain from listening to whispering and other noises. This tingle has a name – it’s called “Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response” or ASMR for short. And apparently some folks with ASMR get so addicted to the tingle that they spend a lot of time actively seeking out videos that activate said tingling. Which, curiously, has led to the proliferation of whispered “haul videos” where bloggers (vloggers?) go over a haul of things which they just purchased, except in a whispered voice.
So after listening to this story, and poking around the internet for more ASMR videos, I realized that I have the tingle. But apparently I just hadn’t noticed it very often – but now that I know what it is, I definitely do, and it’s weird. Whispering will set it off, but so does the whistling of my old metal heaters, and a host of other sounds. I don’t know how I feel about this new realization – I’m just glad I don’t feel obsessed to watch hours of videos every day to activate it.
Where am I going with this? Oh, yes. Haul videos. Okay, so here’s my version of the haul – cookbooks. I’m not going to whisper them to you, but here’s my most recent acquisitions, from a trip to the glorious (and very dangerous) New England Mobile Book Fair. It’s not actually mobile. It’s a bookstore full of new, old, and obscure books housed in a warehouse. They have a massive amount of cookbooks, including a huge selection of remaindered and out of print titles. Usually when I purchase cookbooks these days, it’s older books which are out of print, or UK titles that haven’t come out in the states yet.
{FYI – this is what your photos turn out like if you try to balance on a rolling office chair to take a shot.}
1. Alan Davidson ‘Mediterranean Seafood’. This came out in the early ’70’s, and is a useful compendium of seafood, part encyclopedia, with a handful of recipes. I’m a sucker for the more ‘educational’ title like this one.
2. ‘Kettle Broth to Gooseberry Fool’ – Jenny Baker. I was unfamiliar with Jenny Baker, but enticed by this little book of simple English cooking.
3. ‘Honey & Spice: A Nutritional Guide to Natural Dessert Cookery’ – Lorena Laforest Bass. This one will sit on my shelf next to my worn ‘Laurel’s Kitchen’, and Tassajara cookbooks. Nothing quite like the late 70’s/early 80’s hippy genre – mostly because I find myself actually inspired to cook from these titles. They were on top of the home made Lara Bar before I was even born.
4. ‘Nothing Fancy’ – Diana Kennedy. Diana Kennedy is one of my heroes, and I hadn’t seen this one before. There’s one review on Amazon for this book – “The recipes are unusual and not what I would cook. It is fancy. This book is mis-titled. The title does not tell how the recipes are.” Clearly the reviewer would not enjoy Diana’s most recent ‘Oaxaca al Gusto’ either.
5. ‘Stephanie’s Seasons’ – Stephanie Alexander. I’ve been on the hunt for an inexpensive copy of Stephanie Alexander’s ‘The Cooks Companion” for quite some time now, but this is a nice consolation prize. Similar to my favorite cookbook of all time (Nigel Slater’s Kitchen Diaries), this cookbook is a snapshot of her year in food.
6. ‘Uncommon Fruits & Vegetables’ – Elizabeth Schneider. Another encyclopedic food book that I’m so fond of. I loved recommending this title at Omnivore, and finally came around to getting myself a copy.
7. ‘Cézanne: A Taste of Provence’ – Naudin, Plazy, Saulnier. One of my favorite cookbooks growing up was Monet’s Table, and since then I’ve actively tried to collect books about artists and food. Artists, who operate with a higher level of criticism of the world, tend to be highly opinionated about cuisine.
8. ‘Bought, Borrowed and Stolen’ – Allegra McEvedy. Allegra was one of the founding members of Leon, a healthy restaurant empire in the UK. This cookbook is about her extensive traveling, collecting knives!, recipes, and stories from around the world.
9. ‘Leon: Family & Friends‘ – Kay Plunkett-Hogge. Leon, the aforementioned restaurant in the UK has their newest cookbook out, and it’s just as stellar as the previous three. (Some of my favorite cookbooks!) I’ve already spent a good deal of time flipping through this and using it as inspiration for dinners. Highly recommended!
10. ‘Foods I Love’ – Neil Perry. I love Neil Perry’s style, and this book is full of simple recipes with detailed explanation of technique and variation.
I read cookbooks like novels, and I’ve already made my way through half of these. All great so far! What are your most recent cookbook acquisitions?
by Sam Tackeff | Mar 18, 2013 | Books, Breakfast, Restaurants
After the recent kerfuffle with horsemeat in IKEA meatballs, I thought I’d make an intro to my most recent read by mentioning that it included a lengthy section on a man supposedly selling dumplings made of human flesh. I’d much prefer the former. (The book was Mary Roach’s ‘Stiff’, a look into the history, culture, and oddity of the human cadaver.)
This book was my workday morning walk companion, an audiobook I downloaded from my library – did you know you can download free audiobooks with your library card? Well you can, and it’s genius. My new commute is a short drive downtown to a parking spot near Devon’s office in Fort Point – our ten minute morning date – followed by a half hour walk to my office in Haymarket.
Usually I’ll stop by Sportello to treat myself to a cup of coffee and two hard boiled eggs for my breakfast. Sportello also has delicious quiche for $3, and each morning they have a daily special to tempt me. On Wednesday they have donuts, Friday they have everything bagels – I broke down and ate one last week, the same day weakness caused me to forgo my black and plain morning brew for a cup of their peppermint mocha, which they made fresh with a massive dollop of homemade dark chocolate ganache. Ganache in my coffee. For breakfast. I felt bad for two seconds.
On this walk I walk over a bridge by the Tea Party Museum (historical, not political), where my ears are violated by the blaring fife and drum music over the PA system. I can choose to walk through downtown, or loop the long way on the waterfront, past the hotels, Quincy Market, and the North End. A few times I’ve had a cup of coffee at Flat Black instead – they have good Americanos (ie: flat blacks…). They also have three locations downtown, which makes it confusing if you are meeting a friend for coffee and don’t specify. They have these fun IKEA lamps too, that I’m always intrigued by, but too lazy to purchase and put together myself.
I love these morning walks because I can start the day with a clear head, and feel a sense of accomplishment before I even start my work.
#3. Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach
Paperback, 304 Pages
Published by W. W. Norton & Company (May 2004)
(Listened to the audiobook.)
So about this book. Cadavers. A lot of snark. Accessible science. There’s something to be said about listening to bizarre science facts before heading into work – you always have something odd to entertain (or concern) your coworkers with.
When I was working in Coolidge Corner, I’d routinely walk an hour to work, listening to each of the archived RadioLab podcasts until I had caught up. Stiff felt at times like a RadioLab piece, although admittedly I wasn’t as smitten – after a while I felt like I had exhausted the topic, and yet at the same time not gone deep enough. That said, I’m looking forward to Roach’s newest book: ‘Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal’.
by Sam Tackeff | Jan 12, 2013 | Books, Books in 2013
Before I discuss a non-food related novel with you, let me just mention how much I absolutely adore Jane Mount’s Ideal Bookshelf Series. Here’s one of my favorites: Ideal Bookshelf 506: Cooking (the link is to where you can purchase your very own copy on 20×200, not an affiliate link!) I own almost every cookbook on this shelf. When I can afford to commit, I’ll be inquiring about a custom one of her work.
• • •
Reading is one of my favorite competitive sports. Every year I make a resolution to read 52 (or more books). Usually the competition is with myself (although admittedly I’d always try to win the reading competitions at my library): I have a finite amount of time on this earth, and there is a seemingly infinite amount of reading I’d like to tackle. I find that it helps to set goals, rather than throw my hands up in defeat.
Curiously, I don’t “count” my reading of cookbooks, and since I read so many like novels, this would put me well above my yearly quota. For each novel or non-fiction book, I like to write a paragraph or two in summary, sometimes about the book, or sometimes about the things that reading it reminds me to think about. I started this practice because I wanted to find a way to pause, record, and acknowledge the book I read, rather than just consume it. Over time it became a form of gratitude for the author – someone spent months, years, or decades of work on this project, and reading aimlessly and moving on seemed thankless, and too abrupt of an ending.
Usually these notes find themselves in my Goodreads account, or a personal blog, or even just written in a moleskin. But since this blog has become so much more than just food, I figure I’ll stick them here until I get bored, or someone convinces me otherwise.
#1.The Woman Who Died a Lot by Jasper Fforde
Hardcover, 384 pages
Published July 12th 2012 by Hodder & Stoughton
(US edition published October 9th 2012 by Viking Adult)
Read on Kindle, review copy provided by NetGalley
This is the seventh book in the Thursday Next series. To my best recollection, I started reading these after finding a copy of the third book ‘The Well of Lost Plots’ in my house, collecting dust. The purchase was an ill-fated attempt by my mother to find something that my brother would enjoy to read. (My brother, who voraciously consumes media in the form of blogs, news articles, and television, is the only member of our nuclear family who doesn’t particularly enjoy the printed word. We’re not sure where he came from.)
Fforde, a master of literary puns, succeeds again in writing something that makes me laugh the entire way through. The main character, Thursday Next, is an aging ex-special ops detective, forced into semi-retirement as the chief librarian of Swindon. Though not my favorite edition of the series, Thursday is a great female lead, and I always enjoy coming back to her adventures. (I should note that newcomers to the series would be much better off starting at the beginning – I accidentally read the third book in the series first, and backtracked, and you’d be missing a lot if you started out here.)
“Do I have to talk to insane people?” “You’re a librarian now. I’m afraid it’s mandatory.”
Please note the UK cover, left, (via Jasperfforde.com) vs. the American version, right – I’ve yet to find a situation where I don’t prefer the British cover art. The UK version includes a fast car driven by the likeable aging protagonist, an explosion, and an escaping dodo – a generally fun cover. The US version, has a design which I admittedly like the look of, but is heavily stylized, and misses the opportunity to represent the strong female lead of a certain age by replacing her with an attractive young woman. Meh.
by Sam Tackeff | Oct 27, 2012 | Books
Usually my reading pace is a book (or two or three) a week, but I’ve been starting too many lately and putting them down before I can make headway. I picked up nearly a dozen like this, until I finally found myself with food writer Peter Kaminsky‘s Culinary Intelligence: The Art of Eating Healthy (and Really Well) and I felt compelled to read it straight through. It wasn’t until I got half way through that I realized that it might be considered a “diet book”– I hadn’t actually read the subtitle – but this isn’t what I’d call it. I’d shelve it next to my copy of say, Tamar Adler’s An Everlasting Meal, or Deborah Madison and Patrick McFarlin’s What We Eat When We Eat Alone. It’s a book about eating style.
Kaminsky’s sell is “FPC” or “flavor per calorie” emphasizing that when food tastes great – and isn’t made of white flour or sugar, or processed – you will enjoy it more and eat less. He re-iterates simplicity. He suggests varying your meals, and planning. For convenience, he proposes an 11-day week of at-home meals supplemented by lots of vegetables: meat one night, poultry another, fish, pasta, whole-grain risotto, beans made with vegetables, sausage or bacon, salad, an omelet or fritatta, soup, or leftovers (touched-up). These are not groundbreaking ideas, but I found the book to be a nice reminder. I also quite enjoyed the moments of memoir – hobnobbing with Francis Mallmann (with whom he co-wrote Seven Fires), or being served fish by Laurent Gras. (The recipe is in the book.)
I really enjoy reading about how people eat on a regular basis, particularly those who work in the industry in some way. When your life revolves around food, it’s all too easy to talk about the grand meals, rather than the small ones that sustain us. Maybe I just like reading about little habits that justify my own odd ones– such as my bi-weekly sardine fixes.
This morning we both woke up a little bit under the weather. (Devon had it bad, I was just sleep deprived.) So I set about doing what I know works to ward off the sickness:
1. Nutrient dense foods. It helps that this might be one of my favorite foods on the planet: a roasted lamb’s liver with roasted parsnip, topped with a parsley sherry vinaigrette.
2. Tea. When I’m not feeling well, I usually drink plain hot water, or use one tea bag and re-steep it all day long until it’s hot water that tastes a little bit like something. This was one of my special bags of Turkish black tea that I’m very fond of. The brand is called Çaykur, and the tea is labeled “Altın Süzen Poşet Çay” the gold variety of black tea.
3. Stock. Two days ago I made chicken stock after roasting a plump bird. Today, it’s some beef stock with marrow bones. I added in some vinegar, salt, bay leaves and the top of a parsnip for good measure.
In the early evening, I headed to the gym for some non-cardio-based exercise, which always seems more prudent when I’m worried that I’m coming down with something but still want to get a workout in. Unlike my normal routine, I swung by the local Y to check it out during their open house week. The weight room, to my disappointment was crawling with teenage boys. This became much more entertaining when I started warming up with heavier weights than they were working towards. Snicker.
Afterwards, I headed downtown to meet a friend at Trident. Iced tea!
While at Trident, I found myself at the Back Bay Trader Joe’s for the first time ever. It’s a hidden Trader Joe’s down an escalator! I picked up a few necessities (Devon requested orange juice) and headed home.
Yesterday I roasted this chicken with lemon, olive oil, salt, pepper and thyme :
And today I used some of the meat to make my dinner.
I’m a big fan of these pre-cooked beets. They taste much better than canned beets, but provide significant convenience if you are the only beet eater in the house and want to put together a quick meal.
I popped the beets in a bowl and dressed them with cumin, salt, some sherry vinegar and chile powder. Then I tossed in some chopped chicken breast. And topped it all with salsa and guacamole. This makes total sense in my mind, but looking back, it may be one of the odder combinations you’ve seen here.
