Last Day

Last day of work tomorrow before I move to China to start teaching English, eating awesome Chinese food every meal, every day, and hopefully staging at a few local restaurants (learning to make la mien tops the to-do list). As always, it feels weird to be parting, probably forever, with a place that I have become part of and has become part of me. So many great friends made, good and bad times had, many things learned, and of course a few new scars (including one big keeper). Whenever I'm in this situation, I always promise myself I won't lose touch with the people I'm leaving behind, but it always seems to happen anyway.

A huge part of my life and my identity, gone after tomorrow.

But sometimes to have a new beginning, you have to start with an ending.

Brussels Sprouts + Mint

At work, we've been roasting brussels sprouts with mint and garlic and using it as the garnish for a sunchoke soup. Brussels sprouts and mint is the kind of surprising combination that tastes obvious.

Beet and Oatmeal Lace Cookies

I had a bunch of beet puree left over from making beet risotto for an early Valentine's Day dinner, so I folded it into the batter for these oatmeal lace cookies. Not as crispy as I wanted.

Lemon Tart

This lemon curd is AMAZING. I first made it for my family's Christmas dinner in...2007? It is light, rich, velvety, super-lemony, balanced. The recipe is Pierre Herme, via Dorie Greenspan.

The recipe

Rethunk

Unsolved Mystery: Wasa Crispbreads

I think Wasa crispbreads are super delicious, but I still don't know how to make them. Totally crisp and dry, sour, leavened.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisp_bread

I must attempt them soon

This Tonight

http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/cumin-spiced-red-lentil-burgers

Nice! Would also be great deep fried.

Expanding Horizons

Buy something unfamiliar every time you go to a grocery store.

Roadkill

http://www.slate.com/id/2283223/

With slideshow!

Twisted Fish

I was fileting rockfish today at work, and came across one specimen whose body bulged out unnaturally behind the gills and then narrowed into a comically skinny tail, giving the fish cartoonish proportions. I figured immediately that the poor guy had had some kind of spinal problem, but its exterior appearance didn't fully depict how twisted the backbone would turn out to be, twisting and contorting in all directions. My first reaction was to anthropomorphize the thing, telling Tameka that other fish had probably made fun of this guy in the high school locker room because of his scoliosis. Then I got to thinking about how the nature of the spinal problem. Whether the defect was genetic or due to some trauma (I can't escape the image of a young little fish slamming into a wall at full speed and collapsing into a snake-like S shape forever), the problem must have arisen early in the fish's life, because its tissue growth was so bizarrely warped. Maybe the little guy's growth was slowed because of his spinal problem, which would mean that he had to survive in his farm much longer than anyone else in his weight class (which is how fish are sold in the business). Or maybe that was ridiculous. Who knows. In any case, thinking about that fish's life reminded me about how little I think about the many animals I butcher every day. It seems that it takes an exceptional animal, which is to say one with some sort of defect, to make me think a little about the lives these creatures lived.