And surely ye’ll be your pint-stowp, and surely I’ll be mine! And we’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet, for auld lang syne;

Happy New Year, everyone!  For anyone wanting to add last-minute appetizers to their spreads tonight, I highly recommend this lovely NYT article from last December that features 101 simple appetizers ready in 20 minutes or less.  Last year we made no. 38 (marinated mushrooms) and they were divine and delightfully simple.
We have much of our [...]

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Focaccia e dragoncello;

I know I’ve been away from the blog for a while–my mind is very much in job-hunting mode and that, along with the holidays, have zapped me of inspiration.  But tomorrow is New Year’s Eve, and the husband and I are going to celebrate as we usually do–making lots of food, drinking wine, watching movies [...]

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Buon natale!

Happy Christmas, and a happy holidays to all!
Some of my favorite Christmas moments of 2008:

Watching the first season of Weeds with my mother-in-law;
Playing Trivial Pursuit with my brother and sister-in-law and parents, and hearing the latter really enjoy themselves for the first time in a while;
Giggling over how slow the guitarist plays during Christmas Eve [...]

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And since we have no place to go, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow;

Not sure where we picked it up, but neither Michael nor I have been feeling all that great this week…hence the lack of activity.  That said, we’re expecting our first signficant snow since February (the one that derailed me in the wilds of Chicagoland for a weekend), and therefore are expecting to be relatively shut-in [...]

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“Incidentally, who’s this? George Washington?”

I caught the annual airing of A Charlie Brown Christmas tonight, and something hit me anew as I was watching the famous interchange between Lucy and Schroeder as she tells him to play “Jingle Bells”; that is, the fact that his beloved piano’s keys were painted on and in theory did not produce music.  Was [...]

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Elémentaire, mon cher Watson;

From Anthony Bourdain’s Les Halles Cookbook, page 69:
How to Hard-Boil a Freaking Egg:
Put your eggs gently into a small pot filled with cold water.  Bring the water to a rapid boil.  As soon as the water is boiling, shut off the heat and put a lid on top.  After 10 minutes, remove the eggs and [...]

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Top Chef New York: a foodie bridal shower;

Ah, the bridal shower:  a chance for a bride-to-be to gather with her friends and loved ones and open presents and catch up with people you haven’t seen in forever.  Mine was held back in July at my godmother’s gorgeous house, and it was a fun afternoon–albeit on a stinking hot day.  So hot, in [...]

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Carols in the air, music everywhere, yultide by the fireside and joyful memories there;

It’s another grey, rainy day in the Have (but at least it’s not two feet of snow like my Italian friends are now dealing with…again), and therefore does not at all feel Christmasey, but because I want to make sure my Amazon.com boxes end up in Pennsylvania on time, I know I have to get [...]

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Arial is not Helvetica;

Torino, Italy, October 10 2008, 4:10 PM.

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Beneath the vines of California wine;

Until I was flipping through my dad’s Weekend section of the WSJ last weekend, I had no idea of the historical signifcance of today:  it’s the 75th anniversary of Repeal Day, or the day that Prohibition was legally reversed here in the United States.

(source)

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