From our Food Goddess, TaMara:
I don’t know about you, but my last few weeks have been full of activities and work. Add to that an unexpected snow storm that created havoc on the roads today and I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed and short on time. So tonight’s menu is about simplicity and freshness. The snow and cold makes me long for fresh fruits and vegetables (and seed catalogs). I know good quality can be hard to come by this time of year, but I am tired of soups and stews, so I’ll do the freshest I can with the ingredients available. Nothing exciting about this pasta dish, except it is quick, easy and fresh. Substituting good quality canned diced tomatoes (maybe even roasted tomatoes) will work if you can’t find any decent fresh tomatoes. I can usually find local greenhouse tomatoes at the indoor farmer’s market, along with fresh dried pastas, so I try to get there when I can. For the salad, I look for anything that sounds like it might be a good addition: snow peas, jicama, grapes, peppers, even sliced apples, to add to several types of greens. A friend introduced me to Greek yogurt recently and I really, really like it. It’s smooth, creamy and works well as a dessert. I know blueberries and raspberries can be iffy when fresh this time of year (re: bland), not to mention expensive. I like frozen, organic blueberries that are small and taste almost like wild blueberries. Frozen raspberries are almost always better than any out of season fresh raspberry. I thaw them and serve with the yogurt and that works really well. So with all that, I’ve done my best to bring some fresh ideas to a cold winter’s weekend.
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On the board tonight:
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1. Tomato-Parmesan Linguine
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2. Tossed Salad w/Lemon Thyme Vinaigrette
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3. Steamed Asparagus Spears
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4. Blueberries & Raspberries w/vanilla yogurt
Recipes and shopping list at the link.
(AnneLaurie adds: I’ve been a fan of reduced-fat Greek yogurt as a substitute for sour cream for years now, and I’m glad to see it appearing in local supermarkets other than Trader Joe’s. Although I tend to use it for stuff like ‘mix in a scoop of herbs, then toss it with hot freshly-drained pasta for a lazy meal.’ The kind of dishes where the back-of-the-box recipes recommends ‘onion dip’. )
BruceFromOhio
Craving fresh is fun if you couple it with a good dose of seasonal affective disorder. Tomatoes, asparagus, thyme, Summer is a memory I’m really looking forward to remembering tasting again.
Thanks, TaMara!
gbear
Well, this isn’t about food, but it does say ‘open thread’ so I’m bringing this to the table:
Don’t ANY of these guys know how to keep a low profile?
Nellcote
I love it when those tiny asparagus spears show up in the market. It means Spring is just around the corner. Plus this time of year we’re still getting dungeness crab fresh off the boats. Yay!
Alex
Just wondering, is the uncertainty about what the Republicans are going to do with the budget and health care reform causing the recession?
Art
Parkersburg, WV tea baggers are attempting a recall of the mayor and 5 city council members for their support of a user fee implemented to avoid a deficit in the city budget.
Tea Party moving ahead on recall
I almost feel sorry for these people that live in a constant state of outrage.
BruceFromOhio
@Alex:
There, fixt yer question fer ya. No charge.
ETA. Yes, as a matter of fact, it is.
TaMara (BHF)
First, Anne you have a Trader Joe’s?? Jealous.
I’m thinking of making apple turnovers with phyllo dough. Anyone have any experience with this they would like to share before I head into an unknown territory? kthnx.
TaMara (BHF)
And 25 days until spring training. also. too.
Mike Kay
Okay. this is an open thread, so here goes.
Lieberman was on Morning blow today crying about being forced from office.
He then insisted that he was right to champion the invasion of Iraq because they had WMDs. At which point Huffington yelled at him for the obvious lie. To which he retorted, “you don’t know what you’re talking about, sweetheart”.
And if this wasn’t funny enough, Scarbourgh proceeds to says Lieberman only wanted to go to war to defend “a certain country” (sayin it haltingly). I mean, gah, why are people afraid to say Israel?
It’s not Anti-Semitic to say that, after all, the vast majority of Jewish Americans opposed the invasion of Iraq and oppose AIPAC’s self defeating policies.
gbear
@gbear: Can I introduce a new abbreviation: FYSU for ‘Fuck You Site Upgrade’. I wanted to edit my comment but couldn’t scroll down to the bottom of the comment.
I wanted to add that this legislator wasn’t just stopped for having a loaded gun in his car. He’d just been tracked by the Planned Parenthood security guard walking around the clinic with the loaded gun under his jacket. That’s why the cops were called in the first place. His excuse of looking for his ‘girlfriend’ sounds even worse when you know he was packing heat.
mclaren
Wow! This looks like a really great recipe. Can’t wait to try it out…
Kristine
Lisa Murkowski is expressing opinions again. She said that she will vote for repeal of ACA if it comes to a vote, but:
More here at Think Progress.
I confess surprise that she is persisting in being an indy voice. Not sure how long it will last, but it’s a nice change of pace.
Southern Beale
For dinner tonight I smoked bacon-wrapped chicken thighs and served them with green beans sauteed in garlic and butter, served with a delightful pinot noir and for dessert I baked some home-made brownies (scratch, no box mix) which we had with a late harvest Zin.
It was alright.
beltane
@Art: I feel sorry for the rest of us who have to suffer on account of these constipated nuts and their desire to cripple all levels of government. If they want to shriek and writhe around like they just sat on a bottle of habanero sauce, they should go do it in an undisclosed location far away from human society.
lamh32
btw, for anyone who cares, Piers Morgan is interviewing Ricky Gervais tonight.
Southern Beale
Found this amusing in regards to the 2012 GOP presidential field, which appears to be a 3-way tie among Huckabee, Palin and Romney:
Ouch.
beltane
@TaMara (BHF): I recommend grating the apples and draining out the liquid. Nothing worse than soggy filo dough.
jharp
“Greek yogurt”
What is Greek yogurt? And can you use whatever organisms are in it to make another batch and will it still be Greek yogurt?
And if this is a stupid question please ignore.
I am well aware that I have no idea what I am asking about. It’s just that I was going to make some yogurt and was wondering.
TaMara (BHF)
@jharp: Not a stupid question. I was actually wondering the same thing, what makes Greek yogurt different? Lfern and her husband make homemade yogurt all the time, I’ll ask them and see if I can’t get an answer to that for you.
stuckinred
Uh, they have this thing called THE INTERNET where you can find out stuff like:
Chris
Okra….that is what summer tastes like for me. Sautee’d to a crisp (burnt even) is the way i love em. I know I know..its wrong. I’ve found that the frozen ones available in any (southern) grocery store are indistinguishable from fresh. Maybe better..
Anne Laurie
@jharp: Greek yogurt is what my yogurt-making friends back in the 1980s called yogurt cheese, i.e., yogurt that’s had some of the moisture removed. For those of us too
lazytime-pressed to strain our own yogurt, it’s VERY nice to be able to buy it by the carton, but I don’t believe the culture or preparation is any different from ‘regular’ hand-made yogurt.Warren Terra
If anyone is peeved by the ridiculous self-parodies that are New York Times lifestyle pieces, there’s a quite funny spoof article at The Awl that attempts to work in as many of their key points as possible, titled The Most Emailed ‘New York Times’ Article Ever (via Yglesias).
First paragraph:
TaMara (BHF)
@Southern Beale: Yum.
@beltane: Most of the recipes I’ve been looking at recommend cooking the apples and sugar down to a syrupy mix. Do you think that will still leave me with soggy phyllo?
I have to admit, I’ve never cooked with it before, so this is all new for me. But I saw a recipe for a phyllo apple pie and thought: yum and turnovers.
Kate
TaMara,
Do I remember correctly that you are in the Denver area? I have recently moved to Ft Collins and had to drive through that storm from Denver yesterday.. yikes. scared, can’t talk.
General Stuck
I eat fairly healthy these days, at least compared with my misspent youth consuming mostly whisky and cheeseburgers and an occasional three veggy pizza. But it is so easy to backslide without even realizing it. I still eat mostly seafood with occasion turkey or chicken for meat, lots of veggies, some fruit. But the other day a brainfart hit, that I was also now eating several jumbo size milky ways a day, and jumping off the potato chip wagon with both feets. Potato chips that can own my soul in no time flat, followed shorty by obligatory Pepsi colas to wash them down. And the spiral accelerates.
So back to basics for me, cutting the junk out, for no other reason than being borderline, and I do mean borderline diabetic, hanging by a thread. And with a lifelong disdain of needles. Raw peanuts and green iced tea for exotic drinks, and tossing that motherfucking potato chip monkey off my back. that is all.
Ija
@Mike Kay:
I hope Huffington decked him.
Southern Beale
@TaMara (BHF):
It was just OK. I’m still not wowed by the stovetop smoker for chicken. Skin comes out rubbery, even if I finish it under the broiler. Other meats come out OK though.
TaMara (BHF)
@Chris: One of the things about frozen vegetables and fruits most people don’t know is that they are very often picked when ripe instead of before they ripen (in order to survive the trip to the supermarket), so they can be a good alternative when you can’t get fresh, local fruits and vegetables.
Nellcote
@TaMara (BHF):
Get a cheap 4-5 inch wide paint brush to brush on butter, it’ll go much faster. Be sure to cut slits in the top, down to the filling so the sides don’t blow out when baking.
Southern Beale
I use Greek yogurt all the time. Great for making Indian sauces … I use it in salad dressing, too.
Ija
I feel like only talking about trivial and inconsequential things today. So, Anne Hathaway as Catwoman. What do you think? And the Christian Bale-Anne Hathaway pairing? I think it won’t be as bad as the abomination that is Christian Bale-Katie Holmes, but we’ll see. Of course, if you ask me, there is only one person Bale should be paired with.
Southern Beale
@Ija:
Yuck. Something about her bugs me. I think it’s her mouth, out of proportion for the rest of her face or something. Anyway, I think of Hallie Berry as Catwoman and I’m OK with it but Anne Hathaway. Nah.
Nellcote
@TaMara (BHF):
Think of the filling as thick pie filling so be sure to choose appropriate apples.
MagicPanda
Yum. Greek yogurt.
Greek yogurt + olive oil = easy salad dressing.
Greek yogurt + cumin = easy middle eastern sauce for grilled meat.
Nellcote
@TaMara (BHF):
They’re also processed (blanched) quickly so retain a good amount of nutrients.
Martin
@beltane: Yeah, or you can just slice them thin and give them a moment laid out on a paper towel. You usually bake turnovers at 400, so even if there’s a bit of moisture that should be driven off with no problem. If you have a lower temp recipe, I’d experiment with it to use a higher temp – even if you do it 10 minutes at 400 and then reduce.
Ija
@Southern Beale:
I didn’t see that movie. Was it really that bad? It was kicked around so bad by critics.
TaMara (BHF)
@Ija: You know, never really thought much of Christian Bale until I heard him speak in his native dialect (Welsh I do believe) I’ve been smitten ever since.
beltane
@TaMara (BHF): Cooking the apples would also work and it’s what I do with apple pie. I learned about the grated apples from a cookbook of Austro-Hungarian cafe pastries that has yet to fail me. Because there’s nowhere within at least 100 miles of me to buy decent pastry, I’ve had to teach myself a lot of techniques I once would not have thought myself capable of.
Now I am hungry.
Anne Laurie
@TaMara (BHF):
Brag: We have a Trader Joe’s ten minutes away, and in the next stripmall over there’s an H-Mart whose AWESOMESNESS we have barely begun to explore!
(Some the best-looking fresh fruits & veggies we’ve seen in local groceries, many of them so new to me they might’ve been imported from Tatooine. I did recognize the durians, but the supertasting Spousal Unit nixed bringing one home, even as an experiment.)
Ija
@TaMara (BHF):
He should do a movie where speaks in that accent. He’s always doing generic American.
Kristine
@Ija:
Who?
Sorry if you mentioned it elsewhere, but I missed it.
morzer
@Anne Laurie:
Ever tried Market Basket? Our one in Somerville has quite a few interesting things in the fruit and veg line.
TaMara (BHF)
I appreciate all the info on the phyllo dough, I think it will really help me to do this successfully. I’ll let you all know how it turns out.
birthmarker
@Anne Laurie: Just buy the fat free. It’s still great. And no one has EVER accused me of being fat-phobic!
Kristine
@TaMara (BHF): I would love to hear that. I do like Bale, even though he apparently is a difficult person to work with. The end result is usually pretty good.
Ija
@Kristine:
I’ll do the vulgar thing and link to myself.
Warren Terra
@TaMara (BHF):
Welsh isn’t a dialect. It’s a language (a really, really weird language) and it’s also (and separately) a lovely accent in English, but it isn’t a dialect.
In any case, Bale isn’t Welsh by heritage (he’s English) and wasn’t raised in Wales, although he was born there. He was raised abroad and in went to school in England. Still, as he’s a trained English actor I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s learned to do a Welsh accent, among others – American, for instance.
TaMara (BHF)
@Anne Laurie: We have a wonderful store here called Pacific Ocean Market, an Asian market that took over an old Albertson’s grocery retail space. I love it and there are so many interesting things there I’ve never seen before and would have no idea what to do with.
Trader Joe’s – I have to pack my suitcase full when I’m in LA and drag it home. That pretty much eliminates any frozen foods.
Mark S.
@Kristine:
You take that back immediately!
So Bats will be taking on Bane and Catwoman. Anyone else? They tend to screw up these superhero movies when they add too many enemies. But I disliked the first two movies (I realize I’m in a real small minority), so what do I care?
Ija
@Mark S.:
Explain yourself, sir. Sacrilege!
JAHILL10
@TaMara (BHF): Thank you for saying this. I am DYING for baseball!
hamletta
I’m pretty sure Bale is from South Africa.
Anybody ever work with MS Access? I’m up for a new job in my department that entails a lot of Access work, and I’ve only ever noodled with it. However, I’ve done a lot of fancy stuff with Filemaker, and I work with Drupal all the time, which entails some mucking about with MySQL.
I was looking at the Missing Manual, and it doesn’t look that hard, just goofy in that inelegant Microsoft way. I don’t think it would take me that long to get a handle on it, but I was wondering what others thought.
Warren Terra
@Mark S.:
I really hated the first movie. I hated it the first time I saw it, when it was called “The Phantom”, and I hated it later when the same damn script was re-shot as “Batman Begins”.
But “The Dark Knight” was fantastic. I have some quibbles (the business with Morgan Freeman’s magic technology was a bit too much), but on the whole I loved it.
hamletta
You really need to get over your childish attachment to vowels.
Ija
@Warren Terra:
Yeah, but I thought that was a bit more believable than a machine that can vaporize all the water in Gotham.
freelancer
@Warren Terra:
Some fucking hearty LOLs in my apartment while reading this paragraph:
Mark S.
@Ija:
Well, here’s a few things:
1. It is almost impossible to tell what the hell is going on in any of the action scenes.
2. The first one spent way too fucking long on Batman’s origin story. Everybody knows it. It’s better known than the Nativity.
3. Even though the Joker’s completely psychotic and kills most of his employees, he has no trouble finding endless recruits, including presumably half of the police force. For some of his schemes, he must have half the fucking city working for him.
4. Bale seemed to have no chemistry with either of the gals who play his DA girlfriend.
5. Speaking of his girlfriend, when I watched the second one I had forgotten that she finds out who Batman is at the end of the first one. She still treat Bruce Wayne like he’s an irresponsible playboy even though she knows he saved her ass on several occasions.
Maybe I’ll come back when I think of some more. I did think they did Scarecrow really well. He was genuinely frightening.
Dee Loralei
@TaMara (BHF): Phyllo is tempermental, keep the bulk of it covered with a lightly moistened paper towel and the plastic it came in while you work with the single sheet. Follow the instructions on the package. Lay it down, brush with the melted butter. And repeat many times. Depending on the size of the turnovers you want to make, you’ll get between 2 and 6 turnovers from each sheet. Remember you need 4 or more sheets per turnovers. Make your apple filling before hand. And cook it down, more filling, less juice. Most phyllo things are folded like the flag, over and over, each time sealing the edges. ( You’ll have to look at a diagram for flag folding, I can’t explain it, but you do need to make sure all the edges are sealed and covered with several layers of dough.) Cook the finished product according to package directions, if the filling is already cooked all you are cooking is the dough. Phyllo is great for this, so is puff pastry.
Ija
@Mark S.:
I agree with 1 for Batman Begins but not The Dark Knight. Heartily agree with 4 and 5. It’s ridiculous all the eye rolling Maggie Gyllenhaal does at Bruce. You know he’s just pretending to be a playboy, why the eye rolling? We just have to agree to disagree on 2 and 3. But I’m right :) (TM ABL)
Mike Kay
Anne Hathaway’s b00bs are too small to play Catwoman.
They shoulda cast Christina Hendricks
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_NGeiVMv1S1k/ScfeeHaOvVI/AAAAAAAAAPg/sXx4M0w4ePk/s400/Christina_Hendricks.jpg
jharp
Thanks all for the response to my yogurt question.
“I don’t believe the culture or preparation is any different from ‘regular’ hand-made yogurt.”
I guess this is mostly what I was wondering and it makes sense that the culture is the same.
BTW. I once had some Swiss yogurt at a gourmet deli in Hong Kong. Dam was it good. It’s been 18 or 19 years ago and I still think of it.
Ailuridae
Food Open thread. Woot!
I am helping a friend with his diet and he has discovered the flavorful wonders of grated onion (he has a problem with the texture of grilled onions).
I’m not much of a meat eater so I figured i would ask here: if he mixes grated onion in with his lean (95/5 or 96/4) red meat will the onion cook through enough to not be raw by the time the meat is medium? I am horrible with cooking science but it seems like a yes to me ….
Mark S.
@Ailuridae:
I would think so. Onions cook pretty fast, especially if they’re thin like that.
suzanne
@Anne Laurie: We have Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, Fresh & Easy (a.k.a. Like Your Mom), AJ’s (a gourmet market), Sprouts (a hippie place), LeeLee’s (Asian), not to mention the whole array of regular grocery chains, all within a 5-mile radius.
But the Italian deli/market is about 20 minutes away. Sad.
Ailuridae
@Mark S.:
Thats what I was thinking. I know the quick sauce that Americas test kitchen did had grated onions sauteed in butter for 4-5 minutes and they became almost sugary (it is a delicious recipe using canned crushed tomatoes) – there has to me enough heat to cook them through on a grill or even a foreman i would think. I think that cooking first and then assembling the burgers would both be messy and risk overcooking them.
With any luck he’ll just try it a burger at a time and figure it out from there.
mclaren
Apropos of nothing in particular, here’s a recipe for mojo picon sauce, which a friend recommended to me. Allegedly it goes well with everything. I’m going to whip some up and give it a try.
Anyone tried mojo picon sauce?
Comrade Mary
Clean up in aisle one, please. The impeachment thread above this one is suffering from the single hyphen / end of days problem.
EDIT: mclaren, that sauce looks awesome. WANT.
Oh, and I just drain any yogurt I find on sale for a nice, thick faux-Greek yogurt. Add a little cardamom and you don’t even need sugar (although I was surprised to find that the 2% organic Astro I bought this week was a little sweeter than the generic 3% Astro I bought at the same time.)
Ija
Hey look, Ross Douthat turning a post on the death of Sargent Shriver into a post all about – what else – ABORTION.
Fuck you, Ross. Seriously, fuck you and your chunky Bobo ass. Everything is about abortion to you, isn’t it. Shriver’s was a life worth living because he opposes abortion.
It is a great sadness to me that the front pagers here don’t pay as much attention to Douthat’s brand of idiocy as they do to McMegan and Bobo. Bobo and McMegan are despicable in their own ways, but they lack that special brand of puritanism and sanctimony that makes Douthat so special. I mean, hey, who else would decry the high rate of abortion by poor white women because now they can’t serve as baby factories for rich white couples who have to settle for gasp! foreign or tanned babies. Bobo wouldn’t dare, and I think McMegan would have some reservations as she thinks about her own uterus. But no, chunky Bobo goes on confidently, lecturing women about their uteruses, and most people in the blogosphere think he is just dandy, the reasonable conservative.
Amir_Khalid
@Anne Laurie: Durians in America? They must cost a bomb and a half with the airfreight. And they look more like weapons than fruit, with their hard skins consisting of wicked-sharp half-inch thorns in military olive-green. Oh, and that smell …
Used to love’em myself until I was 10; durian season that year, I overindulged and got sick. (Yes, that can happen.)
asiangrrlMN
@gbear: Gaaaaaaaaaaah! The idiocy, it burns! Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!
::Stomps off to find the brain bleach::
Yutsano
@mclaren: It looks like a version of romesco, but much more garlicky. I may give that a whirl just to see what the end result is. Though they really should specify an amount of salt to use, one could end up overseasoning without trying.
@asiangrrlMN: Someone needs a date with a rusty farm implement. Just sayin’.
Oh and bucatini with sausage and spinach for dinner. And I cracked open the white rioja. Serious nom.
Tattoosydney
@TaMara (BHF):
And some things deteriorate so quickly that frozen goods are often better than “fresh”. Peas, for example, lose so much sugar so quickly that frozen peas are usually in better condition and have better flavor than fresh ones that are two or three days old by the time they hit the shelves.
Tattoosydney
@Amir_Khalid:
Yum. Last time we were in Singapore we had durian “ice cream” which was just frozen durian. it was delicious, but the smell stops me being a real fan.
I am, however, a particular devotee of the jackfruit. In Bangkok I bought about two kilos of cleaned fruit and ate it all in about a day and got myself in much the same condition. Urp.
Yutsano
@Tattoosydney: This. In fact the vast majority of chefs will opt for fresh vegetables whenever possible…except for peas. The fresh season for peas is very short, they are easy to mishandle, and then you’re required to shuck them. There are levels of Hell I’d rather experience than ever shuck peas again.
Tattoosydney
@Yutsano:
Hello there. How you?
Tattoosydney
@Yutsano:
Noting for the record that frozen corn is an abomination.
Yutsano
@Tattoosydney: Better than canned corn however. But that’s like comparing toxic sewage to radioactive while you’re house hunting.
@Tattoosydney: Other than idiots screaming into the phone trying to deafen me all pissed off? I’m not too terrible. I get my head examined next week. Literally. Never had my brain zapped before.
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano:
@Tattoosydney: Oh, so you guys are hanging out down here. Gotcha. Hiya. ‘Sup?
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: Yeah kinda sorta. Tomorrow is the first morning in awhile I don’t have to get up early before work so I plan on late shifting for awhile yet. Plus FH #1 & I are fooding. It seems to be a common theme with us. Although the bastage can bake.
Tattoosydney
@Yutsano:
@asiangrrlMN:
I’m well. Gardening today (stinking hot), made watermelon sorbet, editing stories – a pretty damn good day.
I don’t recall hearing about this. What’s wrong with your head?
Yutsano
@Tattoosydney: It’s actually a check of my sinuses. My primary doc is trying to see if there’s a cause for me losing my voice twice in less than a year that’s beyond horrible luck. If so then the next step is to let an ENT take a look and see if anything needs to be moved around. He did say the odds were I was just cursed, but as that’s never happened before I’d rather be safe than risk it happening again.
asiangrrlMN
@Tattoosydney: Sounds like a lovely day. I’m making hash of a blog post. I don’t think I’ll finish it tonight. That’s about the only cooking I do (making hash. Get it?).
@Yutsano: Yes. Better safe than sorry. You need your noggin.
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: @Tattoosydney: So…cereal or no cereal? I already had a huge bowl of pasta earlier.
Anne Laurie
@Ija:
To be fair, several of us did belabour Doubthat for that particularly vile column. Repeatedly, even.
Problem is, I do this job for the love of it, and reading Chunky BoBo is far, far above that pay grade! DougJ has often said that he gets a perverse satisfaction out of blog-thumping OG BoBo and McAddled, and Cole sometimes seems to read Andrew Sullivan in the same spirit, but Douthat is such a waste of skin and column inches that I just can’t bring myself to read him on a regular basis.
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano: Cereal. I’m about to have black bean and chipolte hummus and a spelt tortilla. Mmmmmmm, hummus.
Anne Laurie
@Amir_Khalid:
Six dollars a pound, and they looked weighty — not to mention, as you say, rather threatening! If they’d been less expensive or more user-friendly, I’d have tried to be more persuasive about bringing one home. Maybe next year, when they’re in season again, I’ll be braver…
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: Yup. Small bowl though. Just a little something sweet that’s still semi-good for me.
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano: Nom nom nom. I also haz Valencia oranges.
@Anne Laurie: Word. Even the shorter often leaves me ill.
asiangrrlMN
Damn. I need to go to bed. Night, all!
Amir_Khalid
@Anne Laurie: If you buy a durian whole, opening it is also a fun exercise: first you have to bury the tip of a machete — not a regular knife — well into the (very hard) skin, which you then pry apart while avoiding those nasty thorns. People who handle durians have to wear heavy work gloves.
Tattoosydney
@Yutsano:
Cereal. Preferably crunchy nut cornflakes.
Ija
@Anne Laurie:
TM that, quick.
You’re right, I can’t really blame people for ignoring Chunky Bobo, he’s just a waste of the paper his words are printed on. And I do appreciate your efforts to bring his asshattery to light. But that’s another thing I notice, it’s usually the female liberal bloggers who are up in arms about the latest Douthat’s atrocity. The male liberal bloggers either are (1) boycotting him en masse, (2) don’t feel like they should comment because most of the horrible articles Douthat writes are about women, or (3) don’t actually find anything worth objecting to in those columns. I would like to believe that the answer is either (1) or (2). But after that recent brilliant display of NOT GETTING IT on race by some so-called liberals (especially the ones claiming to be more liberal than us neolibs corporate tools here), I’m not so sure anymore.
karen marie
I’m happy that I can buy Greek yogurt in the grocery store now, but I used to “make it” myself by draining regular plain yogurt in a double coffee filter for a couple hours.
I love it with pancakes, waffles and French toast to cut the sweet of the maple syrup.
It also makes a great dip — just add chopped onions and/or herbs and spices. Whee!