Moving on

When I break away from the food as the primary topic of this blog, which I do from time to time (see below), it usually presents two dilemmas: 1) recognizing appropriate occasions for doing so and 2) figuring out how to transition back to focusing on food. I mean, one day I’m musing on the fragile and transitory nature of life, and a few days later I’m burbling on about, say, baked potatoes with no reference to what went before? Kind of jarring and not very credible, no?

Memento mori

It’s so easy to lose perspective, to stop focusing on what’s really important in life, and get distracted into letting minor irritants affect my mood and upset my whole day. I’ve been doing too much of that lately: swatting at work annoyances for both DP and me buzzing around like mosquitoes; anticipating the transition from the school schedule to the summer-activity schedule (and the logistics of managing it with a single car); drudging through the constant march to keep the house functioning smoothly and maybe achieve something that makes living in it a little nicer.

Browned butter

I’ve been on a chocolate chip cookie quest for a while now. Not for the “perfect” or the “best” or the “ultimate” chocolate chip cookie, because how do you quantify any of those things? People want different things from life, and they want different things from chocolate chip cookies. No, I’ve been on a quest for my own personal chocolate chip cookie nirvana. I figured that, when I found it, I’d share it, on the assumption that some other people might feel the same way about it.

Fizzy drinks

It’s been almost exactly ten months since I kicked my Pepsi habit. It’s going well: I haven’t cut myself off totally, but I don’t really keep it in the house anymore and I order it less and less when I go out to eat. The less I drink it, the sweeter it tastes and the less I like it.

As I’ve gotten some distance from my fixation, I’ve learned that what I really crave from Pepsi is the fizz. So I’ve been focusing on ways of getting that without an unwanted heaping dose of HFCS thrown in. (Since I’ve never had much of a sweet tooth, I don’t miss the sugary part, and now that I’ve isolated the carbonation I’ve discovered that by itself it is not sweet at all, which makes me like it even more.)

Roast chicken

I'm pretty sure that by this point, every food blogger and her cousin has posted a recipe for roasting a whole chicken. The roast chicken is iconic. It has at least one cookbook named after it. It sparked a prolonged online debate between two food-writing giants.

I come not to diss the roast chicken: I love it too. But (dare I say it? Please don’t shun me, Mr. Ruhlman) it is not always practical for a weeknight dinner at my house. It takes a fair bit of time to cook; even a small one is a lot of meat for two adults and a child (especially when only one of us likes dark meat); and, at least around here, it creates expectations. Gravy. Mashed potatoes. Biscuits?