Author Archive
May 4, 2012
Talk about the elephant in the room. There are no two ways around it: I’ve been in a bit of a slump lately. My top five rationalizations/ excuses/reasons follow, accompanied by—fair warning—a healthy dose of whining and self-pity. Read on at your own risk.
1. I’m broke.
I recently moved, as you may recall, and as a result, my living expenses have nearly doubled. I’m working fewer hours at a lower rate than I have in the past couple of years, even though I’m juggling multiple gigs—and one of my (former) primary clients is declining to pay me without some major teeth-pulling. All of that means that I’m eating out a lot less than I have been—my splurges these days are crappy Chinese takeout and the $5 lunch special (below) from the Jamaican place on my corner—and I’m cooking a lot more pantry-based, clean-out-the-fridge style meals.
How often can one write about bean soup, or dal, or various grain-based salads? And how often does anyone else want to read about these things? There’s a limit, right?
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Tags:Friday Five, writer's block
Posted in Friday Five, Under The Table | 6 Comments »
April 2, 2012
The Subject: A-B-C grilled cheese, from Buttermilk Channel.
In Buttermilk Channel‘s world, A is for apple, B is for bacon, and C is for cheddar, an alphabet I wholeheartedly condone. Nonetheless, the rest of the brunch menu—the warm lamb and romaine salad‘s combination of fried capers, roasted cauliflower, and anchovy dressing is my damsel-in-distress begging for rescue; the fried pork and waffle, a deep-fried chop from a mysteriously gargantuan species of pig, paired with a cheddar-laced waffle, speaks for itself—had always proved too much to resist.But this time around, still full from a weekend of decadent dining, I was finally in the mood for something a touch lighter.
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Tags:Brooklyn, Buttermilk Channel, grilled cheese, sandwiches
Posted in In The Neighborhood, New York City, Sandwich Spotlight, Table Service | 1 Comment »
March 19, 2012
Hey, remember our ramen obsession? Rest assured that it’s still going strong. Fear of sounding like a broken record has kept me from reporting on every bowl of noodles I eat, but this one deserves a mention.
Though Ippudo is still my hands-down favorite, 15-month-old Totto is just a couple of blocks from the office and ideal for a quick, indulgent lunch. Buyer beware, though: Much like Ippudo, Totto has its own rabid following—go solo, during off-peak hours, for the least frustrating experience. After a ten-minute wait on a recent (very cold) afternoon, I snagged a seat at the counter and watched the staff torch slices of pork belly and stir steaming vats of broth until my soup arrived.
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Tags:Midtown, NYC, ramen, restaurants
Posted in In The Neighborhood, New York City, Table Service | Leave a Comment »
March 14, 2012
I just had one single, solitary taste of one of the best things I ate in Atlanta, but the thought of that bite haunts me.
This, friends, is Cap’n Crunch french toast, with peanut-butter sauce AND maple syrup. If you ever find yourself at Radial Café and this is one of the specials, do yourself a favor and order it. Future You will appreciate it.
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Tags:Atlanta, breakfast, brunch, Radial Café
Posted in Atlanta, Destination: Appetite, Table Service, The Fifty | 1 Comment »
February 23, 2012
Last Sunday, before I went for my first run in months, I pulled a few cookbooks off of my shelves, determined to finally make good on those damn New Year’s resolutions.
Though I’d acquired Andrew Carmellini’s Urban Italian during my last visit to Portland two years ago (!), I’d barely glanced at it since that first desultory perusal. That day, though, as I flipped through the pages, this rigatoni Pugliese practically demanded to be realized, and from that point on, it was game over.
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Tags:Andrew Carmellini, cookbooks, home cooking, pasta, resolutions
Posted in Bargain Bin, Home Cooking | 1 Comment »
February 9, 2012
When I started coming up with a list of topics for my Freelance Diet series, I never imagined that lobster would qualify for inclusion: That crustacean hasn’t screamed “budget cuisine” since the days when it was known as poverty food and only deemed suitable for prisoners and indentured servants.
To say things have changed would be an understatement, but fortunately for the modern-day lobster-lover, deals are still there if you know where to look—or even if you don’t. It’s not just $29 rolls (or even $14 rolls, for that matter) in this town.
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Tags:Chinatown, deals, lobster, NYC
Posted in Bargain Bin, In The Neighborhood, New York City, Table Service, The Freelance Diet | Leave a Comment »
January 26, 2012
As soon as I publicly announced my New Year’s blogolutions, it was only a matter of time before I just as publicly failed to execute any of them. If you had your money on week one in the When Does Maya Follow Through pool, you wouldn’t have been throwing it away—I do like to procrastinate.
I’d say it’s better late than never, but even this first installment in my cookbook chronicles is kind of a cheat—I made this dish in 2011.
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Tags:chicken, Jacques Pepin, latkes, Settlement Cook Book
Posted in Home Cooking | 2 Comments »
January 4, 2012
I can’t say I’m sad to see the back of 2011. It was a year of upheaval and major life change—for the most part, the events of the past twelve months are not ones I hope to have repeated anytime soon. There were positives, too, of course, but my personal drama (and, to be honest, my tendency to wallow in the negative) obscured much of that: The bust-up of a nine-year relationship isn’t easy, no matter how you cut it. It was tough to think straight through the fallout, let alone write through it. Jill picked up the slack admirably, but our little blog here still suffered for my lack of focus.
But a new year, a new start, and all that nonsense.
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Tags:cookbooks, resolutions
Posted in Under The Table | 3 Comments »
