It seemed fitting to write another weather post because February is showing signs of despair and melancholy.
Instead of a weather forecast, I thought I’d do a 7-day recast so that you can reassure me that I’m not, in fact, losing my mind. February is to blame. He’s been playing games and torturing us with his mood swings. When you can’t figure out whether to step outside in a down-filled jacket or in shorts, you know there’s a problem.
Sunday: Snow
Monday: Sun
Tuesday: Snow
Lauren showed me a pen right before Valentine’s day. “Look mom, it says ‘Buckeyes’”.
Once I got past my initial panic that she was turning into a college basketball fan, I asked her where she’d gotten the pen. Apparently it was a gift from school. Some caring soul had brought Buckeyes into the classroom, and while her classmates snacked on treats, she and the two other nut-free kids sat in a corner and played with their new pens.
Fortunately she wasn’t traumatized, but she seemed to be genuinely curious about these mystery cookies that she’ll never be able to sample.
“Girl, I’ll make you a nut free Buckeye” I said as I started to dig around online for a similar recipe without peanut butter.
The problem is that she’s also allergic to Sunbutter, the sunflower seed butter that most recipes use as a substitute.
I was just about to call it a day, when I came across a recipe from The Spatularette that used Biscoff spread, a cookie-based butter, in place of the peanut butter.
I hadn’t heard of cookie butter until recently. But all of a sudden it was an in product, causing near-stampedes at Trader Joe’s over the holidays.
With this country’s fixation on all things cookie dough, I’d jumped to the erroneous conclusion that it was some kind of peanut butter studded with cookie dough. Sounds horrible and gag-inducing, but I wouldn’t put it past some people. If you need further proof, I give you the cookie dough martini.
So I’d turned a blind eye to cookie butter. I hadn’t given it a second thought until confronted with the Buckeye challenge.
Mikey’s back. I’m sure you’re relieved. She/He/She was digging into the yellow wax beans like it was her final supper. But the star of the show was Lauren who held up her end of the conversation, asking all kinds of questions about our latest vegetable. Too bad she didn’t like them in the end…
ME: We’ve got a mystery food!
LAUREN: (sings “Let it go” from Frozen)
ME: What are these?
LAUREN: Brussels sprout thingies?
ME: Nope, they’re not Brussels Sprouts.
LAUREN: French Fries.
ME: They’re not that either. They look a bit like them though don’t they.
LAUREN: Uh, baby potato.
ME: OK, you get one, and you get one.
LAUREN: String beans!
ME: Yeah, how did you know? That was awesome that you knew that because they don’t look like string beans with their color. Was it the smell? What tipped you off?
LAUREN: Well I was like “Oh, there’s this, I know a string bean has that.”
ME: And there’s a long seam along the side right?
LAUREN: Right…so that must be a string bean.
ME: That was good deductive reasoning. So did you try it?
LAUREN: I did.
ME: So does it taste like a regular bean?
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Looks like we have another storm coming in this morning, the skies are cloudy, snow is falling, and this, just after what happened with Winter Storm Pax last week.
We went from this on Wednesday morning….
To this on Thursday morning….
I woke up early on Thursday, and as with any snowstorm, was eager to get outside and walk Jackson through the snow. Must be my Canadian roots, I love the snow.
We walked over to the dog run in Madison Square Park, in the shadow of the Flatiron building. It was dark and cold, but at the same time peaceful.
My dad sent me a recipe the other day titled “The best chili ever”.
Sensationalist links aren’t usually my thing. But chili, now you’re speaking my language; anything food-related is immediately worthy of attention. Especially chili, which I consider to be a distinct sub-category in my recipe arsenal. I’ve done the time, I’ve studied it like a fine art, I’ve Dutch ovened it, Crock potted it, made it with black beans and pinto, ground beef and cubed chuck. I even made a pretty killer vegan version earlier this year.
But the one thing I’d never tried….Texas chili.
I’ve always thought that bean-free chili would taste a little bit like meat sauce. But when I clicked the link, I was surprised and excited to see that it was a recipe from Tim Love. Tim’s not a household name, but a few years ago he did a stint on Top Chef Masters and I was impressed by his big and bold Texas style.
Given that I don’t spend much time in Texas, I figured that his chili is the closest I’ll come to Tim Love and his cooking.
In true-to-form fashion, I felt compelled to source the exact ingredients called for in the recipe. Lone Star beer? Check. Guajillo and chipotle chilies, check and check. Normally I campaign against laborious, painstaking steps like toasting and grinding my own chilies, but when you’re going for something authentic, cutting corners isn’t an option.
Out came the electric spice grinder from the far left corner of my uppermost cabinet, behind the dishtowels and the citrus juicer. The last time I used my grinder, Y2K was our country’s most pressing issue, and American Pie was #1 at the box office. It still smelled faintly of old spices.
