101 more reasons to love The Minimalist

Le sigh... After having spent the last weekish trying to organize my life, I feel good to go just in time for the Thanksgiving holiday! Whee! Food and family and love and gratitude and eating and more food and drinks and then even more food and more eating! Could anything be better?

With this in mind, I give thanks for Mark Bittman's food writing. I love, love, love him and feel that his cooking sensibilities very much speak to my own. (And he just did a short series on PBS about Spain and Spanish cuisine- me encanta! And the girls made fun of me when I said I would eat my way through the country and make a photo journal of all my meals... but that's another story.) I am all for following recipes, but cooking is most fun for me when experimenting and winging it; working at making a delicious dish through trial and error. This is probably why I cook far more often than I bake. The fact that the majority of his recipes, especially those in his Minimalist column, consist rather simply of good ingredients and general instructions for preparation- no measuring, no fussing, no restrictions- is so refreshing. I love his 101 series (I shall have to dig up some of his oldies but goodies sometime soon), and as such, here are 101 Thanksgiving dishes from The Minimalist.

Off to wrap up my workday (oops), get home to cook and bake and generally run up my November gas bill, and then its full speed ahead to a food coma!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

What's A Girl To Do?

Dear diary, I am sorry to have been away so long. I promise to write here more often.

So began many a diary when I was little. Rather than always write in one journal, turn the page, and then continue on, I was always much more prone to write on scraps of paper, in countless separate notebooks, and compile tiny handmade booklets. I still do much the same. And that's alright, my paper and ink will surely continue to exist as controlled chaos. Oh well. For whatever this space is worth, I say again, this time at a keyboard, I promise to write here more often.

On that note, What's a girl to do when she's got a major case of the Mondays, and on top of that, fearing that she doesn't yet know what form this meager site will take despite the manifesto/disclaimer below, doesn't want to write a thing? Start the day/week/blog off with some good tunes, that's what.

This song is part sixties girl group, part haunted house, which just so happens to be right up my alley. And the video is wicked (wicked!) fun. Also worth making note of is that fact that this gal can wear a killer headdress like nobody's business. I give you Bat for Lashes. I am also loving Lala lately. (Natasha Khan channel is a go!) It's providing my days with some beautiful soundtracks and fab new finds. While you know, I spend the day pushing paper.

My bat lightning heart wants to fly away...