Tag Archive for 'food'

buttermilk

Published
by
Dory
on February 7, 2010
in food
. 5 Comments

woman with buttermilk

I have a new favourite: the Smitten Kitchen’s Broccoli Slaw. It’s a salad of broccoli and cranberries and almonds and red onions, with a dressing made out of buttermilk. As a devoted mayonnaise avoider I love the idea of slaw that is mayo-free. I’ve used the dressing on other things too, most recently quinoa salad (made while Zach was making chicken salad–we used all the same additional ingredients: celery, apples, pecans, cranberries, but diverged in our paths when it came to dressing. He opted for mayo and I balked and grabbed the buttermilk).

But buttermilk comes in one-litre containers and I don’t really need that much. So I’ve been making other things with buttermilk, including Lemon Poppyseed cake (taken from the Smitten Kitchen again, her lemon cake but with poppyseeds added–why would you ever make lemon cake WITHOUT poppyseeds?), and this morning, buttermilk pancakes from the joy of cooking.

——

So while we’re talking about food, I want to highlight just how fascinated I am with Fed Up With School Lunch, the blog of an elementary school teacher who is eating the school lunches everyday. It’s very simple, usually a photo and a short reaction, and the constant reassurance that this is not some big political statement from someone’s who’s been doing food and nutrition campaigning for a long time. It’s a simple project–the blog’s description is “Eating school lunch just like the kids every day in 2010″–and the author is very clear that she’s no expert in nutrition. The’s a naive aspect to this that makes the project have a lot of impact.

——

Also, on monday I’m taking a cooking class at the Brooklyn Kitchen Labs! It’s the chinese takeout class, taught by Cathy Erway who writes Not Eating Out in New York, and I’m very excited about it.

new york and food

Published
by
Dory
on November 27, 2009
in The World, drawing, food and grad school
. 0 Comments

All of my work these days, for my final papers and such, is about New York and Food. So I sit in piles of photocopied printed and stapled articles and reports and draft legislation about food and agriculture and farm-to-cafeteria initiatives and maps of food deserts and on and on.

It is wonderful. It makes me happy to read these things.

The American Journal of Public Health Research and the Journal of Planning Research and Education do not have pretty pictures though.


But this week there is new Maira Kalman in the New York Times! And it is about thanksgiving and food and bounty and cities. It is lovely, twee & smart at the same time.

USD-YAY!

Published
by
Dory
on November 4, 2009
in food
. 0 Comments

The USDA has really wonderful old images on Flickr! Look how excited I am about the USDA! Here are two canning-related ones that I think are super.

canning lady

deposit seed co

I found these through the Know Your Farmer Know Your Food website, which is the most beautifully designed government thing on the web.

Also, I finally got around to buying a canning pot and tools–from Amazon of all places. (I still think it’s a bookstore, and I still I think I don’t shop there). Next year, I guess, unless y’all like pickled brussels sprouts.

the North Brooklyn Blogger’s Banquet

Published
by
Dory
on August 17, 2009
in brooklyn, food, friends and up to something
. 12 Comments

I sometimes think that it’s silly that I live in New York because I don’t really care about all the stuff that goes on. A really good day for me is about bike rides, coffee, and making and eating food with good people. It’s not even that I’m content to miss some world-famous DJ spinning in some club–I don’t even know that it’s happening and I’ve never heard of the dude.

It’s a good thing that I live here though, because there are lots of good people who want to make food and hang out and dance around the kitchen and debate the merits of zucchini versus summersquash while shelling peas and drinking bottles of Brooklyn Lager.

I appreciate it when these nights are informal and spontaneous, but a little while ago a group of very wonderful North Brooklyn friends and I started plotting and planning about something a little more structured. This group of friends includes photobloggers (Jake, Tanveer, and Joe), comicbloggers (Kenan), breadbloggers (Liz), food+bakingbloggers (Cate), and all-sorts-of-everything-bloggers (me and Emily)–so the logical conclusion was an over-blogged dinner party: The North Brooklyn Blogger’s Banqut (NB3)!

an annotated picture of salad

(photo courtesy of Tanveer Badal, annotations courtesy of me)

Inspired by Mark Bittman’s recent article about salads, I put together the watermelon-tomato-basil-goat feta salad pictured above. I picked up most of the ingredients on saturday at the Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket and the Park Slope Food Coop, and got the watermelon from Nam’s* on Sunday on my way up to Greenpoint (to Liz & Joe’s) for the event.

THEN: we shucked corn and shelled favabeans and snapped photos and danced around eachother in the kitchen and stirred and baked and put things in the oven and we used all the knives and bowls and cutting boards and we rearranged things in the fridge and took things out of the oven and we stirred and took more photos and peered in the the neighbours backyard and got caught in a rainstorm and drank rose and played with some puppies and made a mess and cleaned it up.

prepping in Liz and Joe's kitchen
Photo by Joe

And then we ate dinner.

And now we’re talking about doing it again before the end of the summer. The same principles will probably apply: no spectators. Well, no spectators at the event, only afterward. Read everyone’s takes on the evening!

watch out, tanveer!

*I don’t love Nam’s like the dude who writes I Love Franklin Avenue loves Nam’s–it’s too pricey and the produce isn’t particularly awesome or plentiful–but I’m glad that it’s there.

New House News

Published
by
Dory
on July 26, 2009
in The World
. 0 Comments

Kalin Reads the New House News

(That there is Kalin Reading the New House News)

So it happened! I moved into the new place–a wonderful apartment with a big kitchen, high ceilings, wood floors, a fire escape and windows that don’t overlook the highway, a reasonable amount of stairs from the ground–and a whole new neighbourhood (and it’s requisite neighbourhood blog).

Huge thanks to the fine friends who helped me pack, move, clean, disassemble and reassemble my furniture: Caitlin Dourmashkin, Adam Esrig, Avi Fox-Rosen, Emily Frye, Rachel Gurstein, Leah Koenig, Ben Murane, David H Rosen, Ari Shapiro, Abby Weiner, Joe Wielgosz, and Sarah Zarrow.

As a present to the new house, I bought a set of the New York Postcards from Yellow Owl – they haven’t arrived yet, but they’ve already got a spot on the wall by the door waiting for ‘em.

Thing is, less than a week after moving in, I took a tumble down the stairs and f’d up my left ankle something good, so I spent 5 days housebound&bedridden, imagining what walls get what things once I can freely move about the apartment (and the world).

I’m getting there, though! Yesterday I wandered the neighbourhood, hitting up the oh-so-cute Franklin Flea (5 vendors!) where I bought some pinapple pepper salsa from a very earnest young man, walked through the About Time kid’s skate day, and towards the Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket (which is so huge and overwhelming compared to McCarren park, but I’m sure I’ll get used to it), and a picnic in Prospect Park.

When I got home I totally overcompensated for not being able to do projects the past week (other than knitting while watching Battlestar Galactica)–I set some pickles to ferment, made bread, and put some suntea out on the fire escape to brew.

I will stop typing now before I get all earnest and gushy about how lovely the world is when you’re allowed out of your house on a sunny day. Instead, here are some photographs of my trip to America for the 4th of July (from Vancouver to Bellingham/Anacortes, I know that I live in America but such voyages are still exciting).

gastrophonic stimulation

Published
by
Dory
on November 28, 2008
in Craft and food
. 3 Comments

I’ve been telling all of you about this, but coming up soon–December 9th–is Gastrophonic Stimulation, an evening of music and food at the Bowery Poetry Club.
gastrophonic stimulation, music and food, holidays, december, winter, party
(click photo to embiggen)

I’m making latkes, so is Shira Kline, Leah Koenig and Avigail Hurvitz-Prinz are making Eggnog, Avi Fox-Rosen and a large assortment of wonderful individuals will be playing music. It will be an evening of serious sensory overload. It will be awesome.

Tuesday December 9th
10 pm
Bowery Poetry Club
$12
(here’s the facebook link if you’re into such things)

I’m making a new apron for the event, using this pattern from the Purl Bee, and this Heather Ross fabric:
yellow, with octopi

Just so you can visualize what this is sort of going to look like, here’s a snap of me making waffles at Thanksgiving last night:
dory makes waffles

something I’ve been meaning to tell you

Published
by
Dory
on September 1, 2008
in camp and up to something
. 0 Comments

1. So after we made peanut butter, we made jam:
pyramid of jam
2. And then we all made bread;
3. And then we all made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
4. We made some cheese:

And Danny got all excited and wanted to make cheese all the time.

5. Jon crossed the road with a sign:

6. Graeme came to visit; he caught a chicken and brought it home:

7. Then Graeme and I went to the Museum of Glass in Corning NY:

8. I moved to New York! I live on the Fth floor:

Peanut Butter Jelly Time

Published
by
Dory
on July 12, 2008
in camp and food
. 2 Comments

I wrote a blurb about what we’ve been doing with the kids in the kitchen for the camp newsletter–that’s what this is. The peanut butter has been fabulous and each jar is slightly different. I have them lined up in a gradient from darkest to lightest. Our pyramid of jars of homemade jam is growing too. It’s funny to me that I’ve never made jam before, and now I make it every day. That’s the point though, this learning-by-doing and teaching-by doing.

Anyhow, here’s what the parents know.

Update from the Mitbach.
Dory Kornfeld. Rosh Mitbach 2008

Every kid at Na’aleh this session has made peanut butter. Each kvutzah has rotated through the mitbach (kitchen) and as a group shelled and roasted peanuts, salted them slightly, ground them in the food processor, and spooned it into a mason jar.

Most kids like peanut butter, but not very many of them had thought about what the sweet substance is really made of. While taking turns stirring and grinding, we compared the ingredients in the Price Chopper brand peanut butter (some dextrose, some fully hydrogenated soybean oil) with the ingredients in what what we were making (just plain peanuts). We discussed the various reasons that all these things would be added to peanut butter: for taste, consistency, shelf life, to make it cheaper, and came to the collective conclusion that our homemade batches were far superior than the stuff from the grocery store.

Now we’re in the next set of rotations and this time around we’re making jam. As we mash and boil strawberries with lemon juice and sugar, we’ve been talking about local food, eating things in season, the weird world of corn farming subsidies and high-fructose corn syrup, and whether the higher price of organic produce is worth it.

It’s been really exciting to have the chanachim (campers) in the mitbach. We’re making the kitchen a really active and integral part of machaneh this summer, and through the Mitbach Sadna (workshop) I’ve been able to meet every kid and have them meet me, and everyone at machaneh has been able to learn about and get more involved in what goes into their mouths to power them through our busy days at Na’aleh.

Excitement, advenutre

Published
by
Dory
on June 18, 2008
in camp and food
. 3 Comments

Lord knows why, but I wandered into Urban Outfitters today. I spun around in a daze for about 8 minutes, then left, really excited that I’m going to camp on Friday. The next two months will be spent making giant pots of chili, wearing an apron, teaching kids about sourdough, and hanging out in the woods where my phone doesn’t work. Things are gonna be good.

woman on the pie

If you have any suggestions about what I should do with the campers (I’m in charge of food-based education stuff), I’d love to know. Right now my notebooks are full of lists that include growing sprouts, making jam, baking bread, talking about the whole local/organic/etc debate, planting an herb garden, pickling eggs, having a Kraft Dinner vs Real Mac’n'Cheese cook-off, making ritz cracker “apple” pie…

scones

Published
by
Dory
on May 3, 2008
in food
. 0 Comments

So the apple-ginger scones that I made up, in my head and in my kitchen, turned out awesome. I gave up on following the recipe I found in one of my cookbooks about halfway through, because I didn’t have any buttermilk, so I just threw in yogurt and regular milk and some other stuff and they’re really spongy lumpy baked goods.

And then I left the kitchen one big mess because my housemate is away until tuesday and it’s fun to have a few days of solitude and disarray. I will tidy before he returns.

Following Instructions

Published
by
Dory
on May 3, 2008
in food and things
. 5 Comments

I’m looking up scone recipes on the internet this morning, and they all suck. They all say things like “2 cups of bisquick” (bisquick? seriously? if was into using premade stuff I wouldn’t be looking up recipes!) or “spray pan with non-stick cooking spray” (that stuff is scary and gross!). Maybe it’s my own cooking up-bringing, raising myself on vegan cookbooks that all say things like “your choice of sweetener” to accommodate all the folks who don’t eat sugar/honey/agave nectar/whatever, but I want these recipes to say things like “do what you need to do to prevent these from sticking to the pan.”

If these recipes were in cookbooks, there’d be a whole intro section on nonstickage (or on sweeteners, or about substitutions, or whatever), and the recipes can refer you back to the what-cooking-is-all-about pages. But with the dumb internet, recipes are not part of a collection of anything, they’re one-offs. They’re hit singles with no album.

This makes me sort of sad–I feel like all these awesome skills, like the ability to curate or edit or collect or compile are slipping away. We get things totally disjointed and discrete.

I know that there are plenty of people curating all the stuff that’s on the internet–that’s what all those lovely blogs like CRAFT or Swissmiss or Kottke do. And I like them, but sometimes the endlessness of them feels tiresome. ESPECIALLY with the CRAFT blog–if anyone does anything crafty on the internet, it gets reposted there. And just as a link. It’s pointing: “look at this!” “look at that!” and most of it sucks. I know I shouldn’t get all righteous about something that is so clearly a promotional marketing tool for an overpriced magazine ($15 an issue!), but somehow it’s positioned itself at the head of the internet craft world.

Now I’m actually going to go make some scones.