tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-70093082007-11-18T16:58:51.631-05:00MissGinsuBlogger431125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7009308.post-52480568393617726642007-11-18T13:32:00.000-05:002007-11-18T14:50:04.784-05:00

Is comfort food necessarily bound up in the place in which we spend our developmental years? I have some quibble with that notion. The comfort food of my people is supposed to be monochrome and starchy: bread, potatoes, beef and butter served alongside a tall glass of milk or a cup of dark coffee. I sprouted in the Upper Midwest of these United States, and that's how we rock it up there. Yet,

MissGinsutag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7009308.post-22531552045628001722007-11-09T17:01:00.000-05:002007-11-09T17:09:57.048-05:00

"The time will come when this luscious golden tomato, rich in nutrition, a delight to the eye, a joy to the palate whether fried, baked, broiled or even eaten raw will form the foundation of a great garden industry." - Col. Robert Johnson

MissGinsutag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7009308.post-50106520859656582692007-11-08T20:19:00.000-05:002007-11-08T23:21:11.502-05:00

Like a lot of American kids my age, I grew up with an imposter. Fool that I was, I loved it with an unreserved passion. To my great shame, I still distinctly remember turning down countless opportunities for actual food in favor of plastic pouches of pasty-white ramen noodles. Oh, how strange it now seems. I was held in a spell, rapt in blind adoration of a bunch of airy white bricks that

MissGinsutag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7009308.post-45014042878914595792007-11-02T18:29:00.000-04:002007-11-02T17:25:15.597-04:00

Much as I love Halloween, I think the Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) is far cooler. A couple of hundred years ago, Halloween held a solid position in the autumn calendar as a religious event. These days, I'd bet a lot of people don't even realize that the "Eve of All Hallows" is supposed to be followed by All Saints' Day on November 1st and All Souls' Day on the 2nd. Similarly, the Day

MissGinsutag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7009308.post-34751507311649972007-10-30T19:01:00.000-04:002007-10-30T19:04:12.714-04:00

Long ago, of my coworkers earned the nickname, "Scary Cakes." I wasn't around at the time, but I gather it was hoisted upon him after he recommended that every conceivable occasion deserved a new line of themed cupcakes. Cupcakes were produced for Hanukkah, Christmas, New Year's, Mother's Day, Football Season, Groundhog Day, National Tortilla Chip Day... you get the picture. It was scary. Last

MissGinsutag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7009308.post-24005602781010525322007-10-28T15:01:00.000-04:002007-10-29T19:01:27.486-04:00

After months of thinking, tinkering, plotting, planning and fussing about, I'm proud to present the new & improved MissGinsu.com. (With boundless thanks to J for patiently debugging my buggy code and The Roomie for her advice on cuteness.) It's still not perfect ("Dammit, Jim! I'm a cook, not a programmer!), but I hope that once you have look around, you'll agree it's a heck of a lot better.

MissGinsutag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7009308.post-13257247672245949382007-10-26T18:34:00.000-04:002007-10-26T13:52:16.590-04:00

A postcard sent by a peasant from the Vendée to his fiancée "You're so fresh and lovely the only thing I can compare you to is fields of young cabbages before the caterpillars have got to them." from Graham Robb's The Discovery of France

MissGinsutag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7009308.post-499551365828442692007-10-20T17:18:00.000-04:002007-11-13T23:20:09.119-05:00

It all started simply enough. Most consuming passions do. I had too many ripe bananas. Normally, a quickie banana bread would solve the banana issue. But even a banana-loving person can only eat so much banana bread. So I started freezing ripe banana halves and using them for breakfast. I'd just toss a frozen banana half in my blender with a cup or so of orange juice. Voila! Cool, refreshing

MissGinsutag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7009308.post-1120103238987426832007-10-12T17:46:00.000-04:002007-10-12T14:51:00.273-04:00

"Some figs are called Chian from a place, taking the name from a city in Syria. I think the African fig is so-called from that province. The anxious Cato brought its fruit into the Senate when he was seeking a third Punic War and badgering the senators, especially those who did not think it at all the stuff of Roman virtue that Carthage be destroyed. As soon as he said, 'How long do you think

MissGinsutag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7009308.post-83481165902453855752007-10-09T20:07:00.000-04:002007-10-09T20:33:44.988-04:00

I mentioned a while back that I was heading up a weekly office bake sale to raise funds for SOS (Share Our Strength). Not surprisingly, summertime makes for some tough recruiting. From an operations standpoint, I can't really think of a worse time to run a bake sale. It's hot. It's humid. People are on vacation. People are seeing themselves in swimwear and reconsidering the wisdom of noshing

MissGinsutag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7009308.post-84284645499356616452007-08-24T21:04:00.000-04:002007-08-24T21:16:29.255-04:00

"For the first time I know what it is to eat. I have gained four pounds. I get frantically hungry, and the food I eat gives me a lingering pleasure. I never ate before in this deep carnal way ... I want to bite into life and to be torn by it." — Anaïs Nin (1903-1977), from Henry & June Craving more luscious food quotes? Browse more here.

MissGinsutag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7009308.post-1075836779862150802007-08-17T18:42:00.000-04:002007-08-17T16:47:21.754-04:00

"the tomato offers its gift of fiery color and cool completeness." — Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) "Ode to Tomatoes"

MissGinsutag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7009308.post-17452637294813688542007-08-10T18:49:00.000-04:002007-08-11T17:23:58.113-04:00

"Better than any argument is to rise at dawn and pick dew-wet red berries in a cup." — Wendell Berry

MissGinsutag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7009308.post-46366788657900051382007-08-08T08:27:00.000-04:002007-08-08T11:42:12.357-04:00

Yes, friends... it's once again Sneak Some Zucchini onto Your Neighbors' Porch Day (or Night — your preference), one of those obscure and frivolous holidays we rootless Americans create out of festive necessity. That said, I think the concept is solid. The zucchini (or courgette, for you Europeans) tends to hit a point of outrageous surplus right about now. Once you've already sautéed, puréed,

MissGinsutag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7009308.post-48006611893326501442007-08-06T18:37:00.000-04:002007-08-06T17:53:32.420-04:00

Down on the Lower East Side, the invasion slipped in quietly. For ages (was it months? years?) there wasn't a peach to be found. Then suddenly, in the space of a few spectacular days, a fleet of luscious peaches rolled in on fuzzy skins. We saw them first in the Tompkin's Square Greenmarket. White Peach Donuts (and Sweet Basil Donuts) overtook the ever-seasonal sandwich board outside The

MissGinsutag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7009308.post-51727721837925015782007-08-03T08:20:00.000-04:002007-08-03T15:37:21.335-04:00

"So life lets you have a sandwich, and pie for your late night dessert. (Pie for the dog, as well.) And then life sends you back to bed, to dreamland, while outside, the starfish drift through the channel, with smiles on their starry faces as they head out to deep water, to the far and boundless sea." From Starfish by Eleanor Lerman

MissGinsutag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7009308.post-65502734550020358972007-08-02T18:35:00.000-04:002007-11-13T23:25:00.279-05:00

I was a lucky little kid. I had parents who read to me and bought me lots of books. Early on, they introduced me to the wonders of the public library and taught me to read, which cracked open the whole world's opportunities. As an adult I still carry around a whole heap of warm, fuzzy nostalgia for the stories of Rudyard Kipling and Theodor Geisel, the weird poetry of Edward Lear and Shel

MissGinsutag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7009308.post-38080684327504863152007-07-27T18:31:00.000-04:002007-07-27T16:51:24.245-04:00

"Gelato in Tavernelle" from thisismolly @flickr "He walked out of the hospital into the sun, into open air for the first time in months, out of the green-lit rooms that lay like glass in his mind. He stood there breathing everything in, the hurry of everyone. First, he thought, I need shoes with rubber on the bottom. I need gelato." — Michael Ondaatje in The English Patient

MissGinsutag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7009308.post-70411122038553995132007-07-13T18:15:00.000-04:002007-07-13T17:21:49.823-04:00

"I will not move my army without onions." - Ulysses S. Grant (1822 -1885)

MissGinsutag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7009308.post-39374350871706029422007-07-06T08:50:00.000-04:002007-07-06T12:01:43.593-04:00

A cool, soothing yogurt-spinach soup basking in my windowsill. "Only the pure of heart can make a good soup." – Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) Hungry for more food quotes? Get 'em here.

MissGinsutag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7009308.post-26845341685552048512007-06-29T08:18:00.000-04:002007-06-29T11:35:48.558-04:00

The nectarine and curious peach Into my hands themselves do reach; Stumbling on melons, as I pass, Ensnared with flowers, I fall on grass — Andrew Marvell (1621-1678) from "Thoughts in a Garden"

MissGinsutag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7009308.post-31430977399899208472007-06-28T18:26:00.000-04:002007-06-28T17:37:38.435-04:00

Russkoe vooruzhenie from the beloved NYPL Digital Gallery To a cook, knives are important. Really important. Cooks talk about their knives the way motorheads brag about their cars, pumping up their knives' past achievements, comparing the relative advantages of German vs. Japanese blades and busting each other's chops over sharpening technique. Water stone? Oil stone? How many strokes across

MissGinsutag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7009308.post-12983378342503080752007-06-26T16:35:00.000-04:002007-06-26T16:51:42.150-04:00

Plates pile up along the meat line at Tabla. More food photos: MissGinsu @ Flickr. The Recipe Rock Star is a cooking tutorial series meant to make you a better home cook. It's essentially kitchen hacking. So far, we've covered one focused minute, mise en place, the importance of quality, the proper tools for the task and small stuff that makes a big impact. These aren't necessarily ordered,

MissGinsutag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7009308.post-16582085867119094822007-06-22T15:43:00.000-04:002007-06-22T16:08:30.989-04:00

"One never knows where the most ambitious eaters among us live, but I am confident we will identify incredible eating talent during the 2007 circuit." — Richard Shea, president of Major League Eating

MissGinsutag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7009308.post-51612185382598042212007-06-15T18:42:00.000-04:002007-06-15T15:51:54.451-04:00

"The trouble with eating Italian food is that five or six days later you're hungry again." — George Miller (1950-2003)

MissGinsu