Once again to the lake--or, in this case, the stove.

Forgive me readers, for I have sinned. It has been more than a year since my last post. But I'm back, in an attempt to simultaneously regain some cooking mojo and use my Internet addiction to better ends than frequent Facebook status updates and checking the weather far too often. Now that I have no television channels and a nicely renovated kitchen, it seems like a good time to bring back the blog. Needless to say, I still have an overwhelming workload, but we won't talk about that here. After all, the blog is called "The Book I'm Not Reading" for a very good reason--although at this point, I suppose I could change its title to "The Book I'm Not Writing"....

Anyway, lengthy preamble aside, here's what I made myself for lunch:



It tasted better than it looks, you'll be happy to hear. The kale was not black (as the photo suggests), and indeed, could have used a few more minutes on the stove. But I was hungry and impatient, and do have several tasks to complete before I head to the session tonight.

What it is: Bittman's kale and garlic recipe from How to Cook Everything--the caper option. I changed the quantities a bit because I didn't want to generate leftovers, and used rice wine vinegar instead of red or white wine vinegar, since I am only slowly setting myself up with household staples, and this was not a planned dish. Eggs on top are for protein, of course, but they were a nice addition, and the flavors of the capers and hint of vinegar elevated them to a much nicer creature than your typical boring boiled egg.

Living with Miss Diss

You know, when you're writing a dissertation, blogging suddenly becomes a really distasteful thing to do--or at least, to me it does, because if I'm writing all day, writing more is about the last thing I want to do.

But here I am. Guilt, perhaps? Whatever.

But to maintain the illusion that this is (among other things) a cooking blog, right now I'm thinking about a spectacularly delicious thing I made New Year's Day. I don't have pictures--it was too good not to gobble up--but you can picture it: a stacked brunch dish that consisted of leftover latkes (which, I was told by someone who knows the difference, were very authentic-tasting), a layer of arugula sauteed with a shallot and given a splash of lemon juice, and an over-easy egg on top. It was divine. I'm not the first person to have thought of such a thing, but maybe you haven't yet thought of it....

New Link

I've been the worst blogger ever recently--even Kerr has posted since I have--but that doesn't mean that cooking, eating, and dissertation writing haven't continued on apace. But really, where does the time go?

Anyway, a friend just sent me a link for an entertaining food blog, Thursday Night Smackdown, which I'm plugging here because the author's play-by-plays of "Top Chef" episodes have made me laugh out loud.

Ok, bye for now.

Fingers Crossed

So just what kind of a paragraph is THIS?!?

“And there must be something about San Francisco and he,” she continued, drawing laughter and cheers from the crowd. “Because it’s like I heard on Fox News today, it’s like a truth serum, where when he’s there he seems to be more candid. Remember it was there that he talking about, there you go, the bitter clingers. The cling-ons, all of us, I guess, hanging on to religion and guns.”

That's Sarah Palin, quoted on www.nytimes.com.

I would just like to say that in addition to any number of other things I'm voting for or against, I am most certainly voting against terrible grammar, usage, and composition in statements like this. In part because it is insidious, and affects my own writing, as this post demonstrates!

Great Composers All Around Us

...and we didn't even know it! I just ran across this in the Grove Dictionary of Music:

It takes a great composer to create a fine set of variations, because this does not demand pure invention so much as the ability to see the underlying possibilities of a single idea. Lesser composers can construct their music by the use of more material, which provides the opportunity for contrast. Nevertheless, a continuous succession of new ideas will not prove satisfying, so repetition of some sort is necessary.

By that definition, that means that any number of us who play Irish trad are great composers. Go us!

Saturday Afternoon Procrastination Roundup

So, does anyone else out there wonder why Hillary Clinton is "Hillary," but Sarah Palin is "Palin"? It's starting to sound like Goldilocks' dilemma: one is too "intimidating" (read: competent, per Judith Warner's "The Mirrored Ceiling" in the NYT the other day) and the other one needs not to sound quite as hockey mom-ish....

But back to food....

I just ate a simple but wonderful concoction that I'm a little embarrassed to post about, because it's such a no-brainer. But it was good. Quinoa, a handful of arugula chopped, some basil leaves chopped, half a tomato, and a glug of Newman's Italian dressing (yeah, I'm lazy. But it's humid and I'm technically hard at work under a couple of looming deadlines).

And last night, I made a frittata. It was good, but what made it noteworthy was that except for the eggs, the main ingredients all came from leftovers I brought home from the department party the other night. Spot the grad student!

Food on its Way to Becoming Food

The Livestock Marketing Association now has sound files of the winners of its annual World Livestock Auctioneer Championship online here. Hot damn!

(Thanks to Ben for sending me the link!)