Category: Food
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Culinary Notes
This is the weird time of the culinary year. This coming week I'm going to be canning summer tomatoes . . . and making a pudding for Christmas. New England's late growing season means you get all the summer produce right about the time it starts getting too chilly to sit outside and enjoy it.…
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France Excursion 2023 Part Four: Up and Away!
On Friday the 23rd we got up very very early, about 4:30 a.m., and bundled into the car for a drive up the Cher river to the little town of Francueil where we sat outside a deserted winery in the pre-dawn darkness. A few other cars pulled up nearby, and then the caravan of white…
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France Excursion 2023 Part Three: Chambord, Ezia, and Magic
We got moving early on the 22nd. I got the car out of the underground garage, and we set out eastward on the Autoroute heading for Blois. From there we followed smaller roads to the great palace of Chambord. This was Francis I's personal dream house, and he poured treasure into the project — and…
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Christmas and Hanukkah Dinner!
One last food post about our magnificent December 25 dinner, and then I'll get back to serious talk about space aliens. This year, since Christmas and the final night of Hanukkah happened on the same day, we decided to do a really big holiday dinner. Both of our kids would be home, and we invited…
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The Trip to Iceland, Day 6
My experience of travel to various places has taught me that one should always include a "slack day" in one's travel plans. There are a number of good reasons for having a day with few or no activities planned: you can re-visit someplace you really enjoyed, you can switch around if something is closed or…
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The Trip to Iceland, Day 4
After a breakfast in our room (scones and coffeemaker coffee) we crossed Austurvollur Square to the Settlement Museum, a branch of the Reykjavik City Museum. The museum occupies the basement of a building (a hotel, I think) and consists of the in-situ archaeological site of a Viking longhouse from the first settlement of the Reykjavik…
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The Trip to Iceland, Day 1 (second part)
The ferry ride to Heimaey took about 20 minutes and was the quietest boat ride I've ever taken. We later discovered that the good ship Herjolfur is electric-powered, with a big recharging plug on the dock at Heimaey. It makes sense for a short-haul ship in a country with plentiful geothermal power and no local…
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Happy Tricolor Day!
Today is Italian Tricolor Day. To celebrate, I prepared homemade pasta with red and green pesto: Italy and Mexico are fortunate countries, in that their national colors match their cuisine. Making an Italian dish patriotic-looking is pig-easy. Just use some tomato sauce, some greenery, and some mozzarella. In other words, make some generic Italian food.…
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Kitchen Report: Pudding!
This Christmas, we had a traditional English Christmas Pudding for dessert after our dinner. What's a Christmas Pudding? It's . . . well, it's a lot more akin to a fruitcake than anything most Americans would describe as "pudding." I'll try to generate some suspense in this 'blog post by not revealing how it tasted…
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Christmas Menu
Menu for this year's Christmas dinner: Oyster Patties Cremant de Bourgogne Cold Poached Salmon Onion Soup Sourdough Rolls Roast Goose Chateau Les Grands Sillons 2010 Chestnut Rice Roasted Brussels Sprouts Salad Christmas Pudding Apple Pie Ice Cream Overall it was quite delicious. The pudding will rate its own post soon. The…
The Cambias Digression 