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THURSDAY 12 DECEMBER 2002 link
A special holiday bonus issue of the newsletter went out in the mail today. It's my Christmas (or solstice or Hannukah or Ramadan or Kwanzaa...) present to all the NOBODY'S FOOL subscribers. It doesn't count as part of your regular subscription - it's an extra just 'cause I felt like it.
I will say that this is the perfect time to subscribe, or to buy gift subscription for your friends. And I'm having a sale. Until the end of the year, gift subscriptions are only $26, and so are subscription renewals. who can resist a bargain at this time of year?
And today is my sister Jennifer's birthday. She's on her way to Plouf for dinner tonight - for mussels of course. Happy birthday!
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MONDAY 9 DECEMBER 2002 link
Real estate agents have a little trick to help sell houses. (I'm sure they have more than one...) To make a house smell warm and comforting, they set a pan of water to simmer on the stove, and put a few cinnamon sticks and a little vanilla in the water. After a few minutes, the whole house smells like your Grandma just made a batch of cookies.
We don't have a tree yet, but I wanted to make the house smell Christmas-y, so I tried the real estate agents' trick. A couple of cinnamon sticks, some whole cloves and allspice berries, and some dried tangerine peel. The house does smell delicious, but it has had the unexpected effect of making me constantly crave dessert.
Dried tangerine peel is a wonderful thing to have around, by the way. If you have some of those tangerines that have very thin skins, you should dry the peels. That particular kind of tangerine is ridiculously hard to peel - as opposed to mandarins - but the nice thing is that the peels are so thin that they have very little pith (the white part that doesn't taste very good).
Try to remove the peel in the largest pieces that you can. Stick the pieces into a shallow pie plate, or something similar, and leave it somewhere dry and warm. (I put mine on the shelf above the stove.) When they thoroughly dried, you can store them in a lidded jar or a ziploc bag.
Try adding a piece to beef stew (or braised oxtails, Monika!), or braised lamb shanks, or your favorite tomato sauce. Yum!
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MONDAY 2 DECEMBER 2002 link
I had a coconut for lunch today, the young kind that you eat by cutting a hole in the top, drinking the liquid with a straw, and eating the soft flesh with a spoon. It was the first time I've tried it - I don't know how I managed to travel to Thailand without ever having a young coconut.
It was delicious - the juice is slightly sweet, with a nutty (rather than fruity) flavor. The flesh is soft, almost custard-like, and has a very mild coconut flavor. It says on the menu, "in season," so I guess the season is right now. Le Regal, a Vietnamese restaurant in Berkeley - stop by if you live in the area.
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