ChiaraM's Profile

These potatoes from Simply Recipes cater to pretty much all of the standard dietary restrictions (dairy, gluten, vegan) and they are so very very tasty. They're my potluck standby: http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/spanish_roasted_potatoes_with_tomato_sauce/

Fried food. Crispy and hot and warm and full of fat.

I'm a student and I mostly cook for just myself as well. The first CI skillet I got (salvaged from someone's trash!!! nothing a good scrubbing with steel wool and run through the oven a couple times couldn't cure), is a 10'. It's great for home fries, grilled cheese, etc. for one person. I picked up a 15' at an antique shop this summer for $12 and it's great for doing big batches of pasta, or sloppy joes, which I like to have lots of for leftovers. I've been quite lucky with salvaged cast iron, and I would suggest that you might buy your first one new in the 8-10' range, and then keep a lookout for more sizes at thrift and antique shops. I'm on the hunt for a few baby 6' ones at the moment as well as a reasonably priced dutch oven.

In Italy, it's actually supposed to be rude to mop your plate (fare la scarpette), because it's supposed to mean that you didn't get enough to eat if you're still hungry enough to clean your plate.

I'm a mopper, but I know that my Italian prof told us to be careful about that when we were in Italy a few years ago.

Oh, and another thing I've done with them is roast them in a vegetable medley. Cut the beets up into big chunks along with potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, parsnips, onions, garlic (most root veg works great) and roast until tender with some olive oil and salt and pepper. So tasty.

Mark Bitman has a very similar recipe in "How to Cook Everything" and it's one of my favourite ways to eat chicken.

I've been working hard to make my own bread for the past little while. Last week, I hadn't made any bread so I caved and got some from the store, and even some of my worst attempts at homemade bread are better than the store stuff. I was surprised at the difference. So, it's back to homemade for me.

Marisa over at Food in Jars recently did a round up of jars used on vacation, there's a picture of mason jars all lined up with cutlery in them. Check it out: here.

I made a trap a few years ago. Take a 2L pop bottle, cut off the top half around where the top of the label goes, fill the bottom with apple cider vinegar and a few drops of dishsoap (the dishsoap breaks the surface tension so when they land on the liquid they fall in. Take the top piece of the top bottle, remove the lid and tape it upside down where you cut it out. The sides are slippery so the flies fall in, but they're too clumsy to find their way out. It works disgustingly well.

Last year for Christmas we made Nigella's Christmas salad (recipe here but instead of the chicory and radicchio, we substituted green lettuce and maybe some of the radicchio. It was delicious, the pomegranate seeds make it suitably festive and the dressing was great.

Also, I second burrda2000 about the massaged kale salad. Use massaged kale instead of lettuce in most salads, I find it goes really well with dried cranberries, sunflower seeds, goat cheese and a simple vinaigrette dressing. But it would be nice with pomegranate seeds and the dressing from Nigella's salad too!

Salads are definitely the way to go, though. I always welcome a tasty one after a huge meal.