Wisconsin

You know your roommate is from Wisconsin when he gets back from a business trip to his home state and you find bags of cheese curds all over the kitchen counter.

Artisanal birthday desserts, Brooklyn style

Locally made, artisanal desserts at my nephew Ariel's Brooklyn birthday party included cup cakes and a firetruck cake almost too intricate to eat (well, Ari didn't seem to mind carving it up!).

Christmas in August

I'm still not sure why my friends Susie and Andi hosted Christmas dinner in August (something about enjoying the holiday sans "the bother of capitalist appropriation"), or for that matter, why "dinner" commenced at 3 p.m. EST. I am sure that it was the most regal feast I've enjoyed since starting graduate school in D.C., where I've mainly subsisted on canned Goya products from the Panam Latin grocery on 14th Street NW.

There was Susie's pumpkin soup, hot, smooth and gingery, served with croutons and a glass of refreshingly cool, creamy, nutmeg-sprinkled eggnog.


There was pork tenderloin, peppercorned by the good people of Trader Joe's, sliced and served beside peas; mashed russet potatoes with roasted garlic, milk and Italian seasonings; and a robust vegetarian lasagna, constructed of home-roasted red peppers, stewed tomatoes, zucchini, sauteed baby bella mushrooms, spinach and fresh garlic, and basil grown on a windowsill in Columbia Heights.

Sadly, I only had time to pick up a baguette and some frosted cupcakes from the Whole Foods on P Street, indisputably lame contributions. Fortunately, Stephanie, another guest, was more ambitious. She rolled in with quinoa, the hippest grain around, mixed with kale, roasted shallots and halved cherry tomatoes, and seasoned with brown sugar because, she explained, "it's Christmas."




The mashed sweet potatoes side, fortified with eggs and gussied up with vanilla extract, butter, milk and (of course) brown sugar, and covered in chopped pecans, was plenty sweet. But there was dessert, too: gingerbread cookies (one was decapitated, but most wore handsome neckties) and pears, peeled and roasted by another guest, Sara.

Chili sauce

After years of being intimidated by the Sriracha hot chili sauce at Thai restaurants, I recently discovered a bottle in the refrigerator door at the apartment I'm subletting in the Petworth neighborhood in D.C. The producer, Huy Fong Foods, says the sauce "is excellent in soups, sauces, pastas, pizzas, hot dogs, hamburgers, chowmein or on anything else to give it a delicious, spicy taste." I agree. I've started squirting it on nearly everything I eat, except perhaps breakfast cereal and peanut butter sandwiches.

The sauce, made from sun-ripened chilies ground into a paste with garlic, is unarguably hot. But it is also rich in color and even boasts some of the sweetness that left me addicted to Marie Sharp's hot sauce during a trip to Belize a few years ago.

Poor Providence

There's rarely good news out of Providence these days, but this is just ridiculous.

In other news, Keryn Gedan...

A recent publication by Rhode Island ecologist Keryn Gedan has been getting lots of media attention lately. It deserves it. (Disclosure: That Keryn and I share a last name is not coincidental; in fact, there are only two unrelated Gedans that I'm aware of living in the U.S., a judge in Hawaii and a reporter in South Florida.) Here's a sampling:

"Some water-loving plants may be out of a home as temperatures rise," The Boston Globe's The Green Blog, August 4, 2009 (read it here)

"Research in Maine Salt Marshes Raises Concerns About Climate Change," Maine Public Broadcasting Network, July 23, 2009 (listen to it here)

"Study: Salt marshes losing diversity," The Providence Journal, July 19, 2009 (read it here)

Keryn blogs at maritima.

'Back in Larchmont'

The Daily Show has a brilliant send-up of Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner and his struggles to sell his house in my hometown, Larchmont, NY.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
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www.thedailyshow.com
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