To Thine Own Self, Be Food

Last night, my mom, a friend, and her mom traveled to the local community college for a night of healthy cuisine.  The theme: the Mediterranean.  Oh yeah... In a nutshell, here's the key:  red wine + olive oil + spices + garlic. After finally locating the actual classroom and registering and standing around for a few minutes, we were soon divvied up in half.  First up - a red wine vinaigrette (red wine vinegar, olive oil, garlic, mustard).  All the ingredients were measured out and prepped for us, so we just whisked it all together before tasting it on some salad greens.  Delicious, but a little disillusioning as we saw the student chefs referencing a recipe from EatingWell.com.  We weren't eating some kind of fancy homebrew, but yet, if we wanted to duplicate the dressing, we knew where to get the recipe. Then, it was onto the chicken curry (chicken, oil, rice, chicken broth, coriander, curry, cayenne).  We stood with our saute pans at the stovetop while students ladle

Our family stepped back through the portals of time tonight to...The Middle Ages. Sort of. Spencer has just finished his 12-week study on the medieval time period, and one of his final projects was to plan and help prepare an era-appropriate "feast".  A few days' of research produced recipes for a soup/stew dish called 'pottage' and Caraway Rye bread (courtesy of www.medievalplus.com and  www.allrecipes.com ) A simple repast for a family of peasants. Pottage is a soup that containing mostly vegetables (and whatever other substantial foodstuffs were available.)  Spencer and I chucked twelve cups of water, powdered chicken broth and a bag of dried split peas in with chopped carrots, onion, celery, and potatoes (the last two weren't on the recipe, but they were shriveling in my crisper, so...into the pot they went).  The pottage then boiled down for a hour and a half before I took out (and added back in) six cups for puree, for thickness.  In the end, he

I am actually embarrassed to write this, because I am terrible at writing book reviews.  I don't take any notes as I read (and I should), and so really, by the time I finish the book (and depending on how long it took), I'm not giving a very, good accurate review. So now that I've destroyed my credibility, watch me go! A month or so ago, I was listening to an NPR program called "The Splendid Table", and the fascinating topic of discussion was 'Green Soup'.  Naturally, I was impelled to look the soup recipe up online, and found it to be very complicated.  But what caught my interest right next to the recipe was an interview with Tom Mueller, the author of the book "Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil". It's a book.  A book about food.  Well, you know me, I'm in.  So I bought it for my Kindle. Olives and olive oil are old.  We all know that.  They've been around since ancient Greek times. 

Okay, so I just finished reading this book: And now, I want to visit this place in Southern California: The Olive Press Perhaps tomorrow I'll elaborate.

It's one of my goals to know a recipe so inside and out that I could do it without ever referring to the stained index card I'd scribbled the directions on.  Alas, there is nothing I make so frequently that I *could* prepare it without a recipe.  Until now. I've gotten into a bit of a groove now with the new semester and new schedule.  Tuesday and Thursday are my days off, and thus, they are my bread-baking days.  Remember that I'd begun my sourdough starter in August, and thus, I've been in the habit since August (six months!).  For many of those months, I was using a recipe out of a book I'd borrowed from the library.  Can't say I really cared for it, but I hadn't found anything better... until I came across the Rustic Sourdough bread recipe at the King Arthur Flour website (www.kingarthurflour.com).  And yes, indeed, I'd struck gold.  And you can find that recipe here . And yes, just last week, I reached recipe memorization.  I've made