successful food freak dinner club :)

i have no excuse, but i forgot to take pictures. and that's a shame, because we had delicious food! so just a textual teaser today:

glutino crackers, almond thins and a variety of cheeses opened the meal
mulled and spiked cider

for the main course: lobster newburg
served with: pumpkin dumplings over sauteed bok choy and oven roasted asparagus

dessert: pear and cranberry crumble with pumpkin ice cream

all homemade, and all delicious! thanks to beth for sending me a link to a new york times blog with gluten free/vegetarian thanksgiving recipes. that's where the pumpkin dumplings came from--though they were served over sauteed radicchio. i couldn't find radicchio or even endive, so went for baby bok choy and it seemed to do the trick. mmm, mmm... they were a hit, as was everything else. we all licked our plates clean and had NOTHING left except lee's pumpkin ice cream. because, well, homemade ice cream makes a lot, and i don't like it and the other folks just weren't the champs they were supposed to be...

anyway, looking forward to many more meals with these folks :)

vermont...finally!

i took lee to vermont for his birthday. it was a month ago today that we took this trip, but now i finally have a computer that works and is hooked up to everything!

i worked on the saturday before lee's birthday. so he had that day to spend on his own. his instructions were to pick me up at work, with a zipcar that i had rented, and he would drive where i told him to go. he did not know where i was going to take him. he eventually figured out that it was vermont--i mean, it's not too difficult to figure out, after all. we stayed in a cheap hotel in montpelier. nothing fancy, but inns in vermont are terrifically expensive! and what with a new condo, i wanted to have a good time without breaking the bank... so we checked in around 7pm and promptly started the festivities. first on the list was a stop on vermonts beer trail: the alchemist pub. Now, this may have been lee's birthday celebration, but i must say that i was ELATED to find out that the alchemist makes its very own gluten free beer! it's called celia pale ale and it was THE BEST gluten free beer i have ever had. possibly the best pale ale i've ever had... too bad they don't sell their beer anywhere but at the pub :( but lee sampled several delicious beers while there and then we had a great dinner. thanks, alchemist!

we then woke up the next morning and headed straight out for the ben & jerry's factory tour in waterbury. it was fun and smelled delicious. this is also where, though it was lee's birthday, they happened to be serving my favorite ice cream flavor as the free sample :) it was mint chocolate chunk. for those of you who know me, you know that i always go to ice cream shops with the intention of trying something new and fun, but each time, as soon as i get up to the counter, i just order the shop's mint chocolate ice cream, whatever it is. how predictable! lee was also able to nab us an additional sample to share :)

anyway, this was vermont, and i'm happy to report that by 1pm, lee and i had sampled the following:

• ice cream at ben & jerry's
• plenty of cheese at the cabot annex store
• chocolates from lake champlain's factory store
• apple cider
• wine and hard cider

nary a vegetable or healthy item to be found. so we drove into stowe and had a wonderful salad at the green goddess cafe :)

then we drove up to burlington. i know there are some die-hard burlington fans out there, but i have to say that i just don't really have to go again. lee and i used to live in boulder, co, and burlington and boulder are so much alike (but not in the ways that we liked boulder--in the ways that we disliked boulder...). in any case, we had a nice stroll around on some festival day. then we went to a creperie called the skinny pancake that makes gluten free buckwheat crepes! both of our dinners were delicious--lee did not have a gluten free or vegetarian/pescatarian variety, so i could not sample--and we were so full that we had no room for dessert. but lee's was a completely local crepe: local handmade sausage, cheese, maple syrup, and some veggies. it looked great.


we rolled ourselves back to our hotel, slept soundly, and drove back to boston the next morning. it was a great trip, though it sounded more like a trip for me than for lee! i had never been to vermont before, and i will go back. but lee thought it was a great trip and also agreed that we should go again sooner rather than later. maybe we'll get in some good snowshoeing this year?


lee's real birthday was the following tuesday, august 10. lee wanted a real new england meal, so i made lobster, steamed mussels, biscuits, maple glazed carrots, and boston cream pie. i am eating a lot more seafood these days (my choices are so limited, and i immensely enjoy what i've been having!), but i'm not a huge lobster fan. lee got most of the lobster to himself and then was able to gorge himself on plenty of mussels too.


all in all, i think he had a great birthday :)

interesting fruit...

i just wanted to share this fruit that i bought at russo's market (a place that is like heaven!) about 2 weeks ago. it's called monstera deliciosa.


i bought it because the tag at the market said it tasted like a combination of banana, pineapple and mango. well, i like all those things! however, it didn't say how long it would take to ripen, or anything like that--just something like "eat when the green tiles come off easily with a fork." what it didn't say is that it is one of 2 natural sources of oxalic acid, which is very poisonous to you, and you should only eat it if it's very ripe. so after a couple of days, lee and i were able to pull off a couple of the tiles and ate some of this weird plant. it immediately made my mouth itch and burn, and the back of my throat swelled a bit. no serious problems, but i looked it up right away and wikipedia told me this vital information. lee also had a reaction, though not as severe as me. i had sores on my tongue for 3 days!

so another site also said to wrap the fruit in plastic wrap to encourage it to ripen faster. i did this and then it was fine. lee and i tried it again a week later with much better results. however, i won't be eating it again. it did in fact taste kind of like banana, pineapple and mango all together, but it was "too much." and the texture was soft like a banana, so it was a little weird. it was very perfumy, which was a turn-off for me. but it was an interesting experience!

randomness

these are some pictures that i've been waiting to get off my camera for a bit. just thought i'd share :)

1. my brand new bedding! it's a beautiful reversible quilt and euro shams from company c in portland, me. i like this so much better than what we had. and then we also got a butter-colored fleece blanket from l.l. bean for chillier nights (and for sid to keep his fur on...).


2. sid got ready for the red sox early this year, deciding that it was actually ok to don his ice cream helmet.


3. and finally, my beet pickled eggs. this was them hanging out in the fridge, doing their thing, getting all pretty and red.


4. and here they are all finished and ready to eat for my lunch :)

food porn

i just couldn't resist putting up some random pictures of food. if you eat gluten free, you will understand why these make me salivate!

first, the burger and beer. mmm... sometimes, you just must have a burger and beer. this is a tuna burger, based off of a recipe of rachel ray's. (misanthropic comment: rachel ray's recipe actually disgusts me because it combines mango chutney, wasabi mustard and shitake mushrooms as toppings and has soy sauce and sesame oil in the burger. umm, could someone tell her that the indian flavor of chutney does not go with those asian flavors? ew...) but anyway, you get the idea. i put scallions, celery and sesame seeds in mine, with pickles and ketchup on top. i've made them lots of ways though. i love these burgers! and this is a gluten free bun from the store--i had to make accommodations for a pre-made bun because i had no fresh baked bread at home and i do not know how to, nor have the time to, make hamburger buns from scratch. note the gluten free beer in the background. I WANT THIS FOOD RIGHT NOW!


and this is a photo of the homemade sushi that my sweet made for me for valentine's day. clockwise, we have tamago (egg), cucumber and burdock root roll, pickled veggies roll and spicy tuna roll.

fun at work

i'm writing an article for our online object of the month collection on fannie farmer. i've been reading the boston cooking-school cook book and chafing dish possibilities, along with plenty of biographical entries on fannie farmer to do this. i wanted to share some real *food for thought*:

Cookery is the art of preparing food for the nourishment of the body.
Prehistoric man may have lived on uncooked foods, but there are no savage races to-day who do not practice cookery in some way, however crude. Progress in civilization has been accompanied by progress in cookery. (p17 of the original facsimile edition of the boston cooking-school cook book, 1896)

Food is anything which nourishes the body. Thirteen elements enter into the composition of the body: oxygen, 62 1/2%; carbon, 21 1/2%; hydrogen, 10%; nitrogen, 3%; calcium, phosphorus, potassium, sulphur, chlorine, sodium, magnesium, iron, and fluorine the remaining 3%. [...] Food is necessary for growth, repair, and energy; therefore the elements composing the body must be found in the food. The thirteen elements named are formed into chemical compounds by the animal and vegetable kingdom to support the highest order of being, man. (p1 of the original facsimile edition of the boston cooking-school cook book, 1896)

I wish more people today thought so highly of food and its preparation!