04 May 2012
by scolgin
in Observations
Tags: bicentennial, cooking, food, mayonnaise, octopus, recipes, ribs, Skinny Girls, tongs
I vaguely remember the American Bicentennial. I was a young kid, there were lots of patriotic advertisements on TV and specially minted quarters with a drummer on the back.
I’m pleased to have you here, celebrating the Skinny Girls Bicentennial — our 200th post! (Probably not exactly the right term for a 200th post, but what the heck.) When I first launched Skinny Girls & Mayonnaise a year and a half ago, I got 30 or 40 visitors on a good day, and 8 on a bad day. Now I get 50 on my worst days, and 250 on a good day. I guess that’s growth. More
01 May 2012
by scolgin
in Good Gadget, Bad Gadget
Tags: barbecue, cooking, food, gadgets, grilling, summer, Sur la Table
I have a bad habit of bringing my favorite cooking utensils places, and leaving them there. You may remember the sad saga of my favorite wooden spoon which got left in a ski cabin at Big Bear. Similarly, I left my favorite tongs at a cooking lesson I was giving for my friends’ gourmet girls group. And then I left my next-favorite tongs at the Steve McQueen beach house in Malibu.
A man cannot live long without tongs.
So it was that I was out at Target, shopping for a new pair of tongs amidst the long aisle of mostly useless cooking gadgets. The very same day, I received the first of what will undoubtedly be a “Summer is coming” onslaught of emails from Sur la Table, Williams-Sonoma, Cooks.com and other helpful sources touting this season’s newest and greatest tools and resources for the outdoor cook. More
24 Apr 2012
by scolgin
in Markets & Stores, Observations, Recipes
Tags: food, grits, Indian food, markets, palak paneer, paratha, recipe, red snapper, Santa Monica, Trader Joe's
Sometimes I feel like eating a cuisine I’m not particularly good at, or don’t have the cupboard resources to roll out on a dime. Chinese food is one example — if I ever want to feel inadequate as a cook, I’ll try to make a Chinese dinner. Same with Indian. I can could a reasonably good generic curry, but am lacking the encyclopedic pantry of spices and unusual ingredients to go much further. Fortunately, my cravings for either of these two cuisines is rare, and when need strikes I can usually survive on the occasional take out. I’m mostly satisfied with my repertoire, and will leave the meins and masalas to the experts. Or, I eat Trader Joe’s.
Palak paneer with Malabari paratha from TJ's
I get annoyed when I meet people from the East Coast who ask whether we have Trader Joe’s on the West Coast. More
20 Apr 2012
by scolgin
in Recipes
Tags: California, cooking, food, Golden State, Greece, Greek recipes, Indian chewing gum, Mediterranean, mustard, wild greens
Every spring, our hillsides in California are covered with a misting of glorious, delicate yellow flowers — wild mustard. Perhaps this is where we got our name, The Golden State.
When I was a child, someone introduced me to “Indian chewing gum.” Once summer had baked the leafless mustard plants into chalky white skeletons, you could break open the main stalk and inside was a kind of foamy, chewy dried pith. It had no flavor, but did have a pleasant chewiness, at least for the first few seconds before it became mushy and/or got jammed up in between your teeth where you couldn’t get it out. More
17 Apr 2012
by scolgin
in Observations
Tags: cooking, food, lunch, mayonnaise, nanny, Skinny Girls, Topanga, vegetarians
We have a new nanny. My wife and I say to each other, “Well, she’s better than nothing.” And we mean it — she is, actually, better than nothing.
B-grade nanny lunch
It’s hard to find a good nanny. Our previous nanny, Karina, was with us for seven years. She was the only nanny my two oldest children, Flynn and Willa, ever knew during their early years. Our third child Imogen has, at age 21 months, already had five. More
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