cedargr0's Profile

My mom just had (long-planned, minor, but tiring) surgery and we had 13 people coming for dinner so I took more charge of the meal than I have in years. She'd made apple sauce, butternut squash puree and the giblet part of the dressing in advance, and the guests brought the pies, cranberry relish and potatoes so it wasn't too hard.

The stuffing was great, if I do say so, and so were all the sides except the green bean casserole, which I think it's time to replace next year.

The turkey I roasted on Wednesday, carved in blessed, messy privacy, and loaded into two baking pans half full of stock to be reheated on Thursday. This is traditional at my house and I highly recommend it.

What I do not recommend is buying a rolled Butterball turkey breast to supplement your smallish whole turkey and roasting the two in the same pan. The sad rolled thing tasted like cold cuts and had pounds of salt plus MSG in the brine...which I only discovered when I realized that all the pan juices I used to make the gravy tasted "fake." I don't think anyone noticed as much as I did, but I added mass amounts of herbs and spices (ancho chili anyone?) to try to hide the salt flavors.

Stay away from the bread bowl and the intensely dull Faneuil Hall!

Brookline is worth a visit for grocery shopping alone (there are some good restaurants there too). Bazaar International Gourmet in Coolidge Corner is seriously awesome - it's a Russian/Eastern European grocery/deli with feta from 7 different countries, more cured meat and smoked fish than I've ever seen anywhere else ever, and a mushroom pate that will change your culinary life.

Also in Coolidge Corner:
Kupel's Bakery, which has the best bagels in town and great rugelach
Mike's Deli for really great pastrami and corned beef
Cafe Fixe has first class espresso (if you can brave the owner, who is the caffeinated version of Seinfeld's Soup Nazi)
Thursday farmer's market, which includes a booth from the Clear Flour Bakery mentioned by the previous poster, and a turkey van with frozen turkey pot pies to die for.

Thanks Alexis! I've been avoiding raw kale, but I'll have to try this.

For savory dishes - things that use bits of meat as a flavoring (yum!) but don't require buying much of it - I do the whole free-range-grass-fed kinda thing and large hunks of meat go over my grocery budget fast.

For baked goods - things that don't require a mixer, which I don't have space for in my kitchen.

For techniques I go straight for one-pot, one bowl recipes, even if they have lots of ingredients or cooking time - see tiny kitchen explanation above. And I seem to have a deep aversion to any recipe that requires wrapping/stuffing something in something else. I need to get over this, because I love cabbage rolls and manicotti and sushi, and I know I can do it, but it always seems like a bridge too far... which seems odd since I do harder stuff like make bread and can tomatoes.

I'm going to try this, although I hope that using frozen spinach doesn't ruin it.

I discovered za'atar in a Nigella cookbook years ago, but only this year did I realize two things: I only REALLY love the versions with lots of sumac in them - Penzey's is the best. Also, popcorn with olive oil and za'atar is my new favorite healthy thing.

Now, however, I'm going to make a sriracha and parmesan batch of popcorn very soon.

If you put a bundt cake back into it's pan after cooling, cover it firmly with foil and bring along your glaze in a mason jar you could do pretty well.

I loved Blueprint and was really sad when it died, and then Domino, which was almost as good, went too. I get House Beautiful, and I like it, but its a poor third to the other two.

I wish I could justify the price of the international magazines. My old library used to get Style at Home and I loved it.

For years really wanted some but was worried about buying and storing a one-use item. I finally picked up a set of four in an after Christmas sale. I quickly found, like many others on here, that they are perfect for any dish that involves sauce poured over a starch - curry, stir-fry, stew with noodles or mashed potato, pasta - plus being great salad plates. Since this describes 70% of my diet, mine are in constant use.

I ate almost everything as a child, but I hated icky slimy eggplant. Then I fell in love with baba ganoush, and only after devouring a plateful did I realize what it was made of.

I love eggplant now, although most of my efforts at cooking it myself are...okay at best. But at Indian/Thai/Italian/Middle Eastern restaurants I order it with a focus that borders on obsession.