Reason For Not Eating Out #13: 1 Year of Not Eating Out, 114 Recipes, and only 6 Regrets

One is the loneliest number that you'll ever do. I've been waiting weeks to share this milestone with you: My first birthday in the blogosphere. The real one-year anniversary for this blog flew by sometime in early September while the redesign was still in the works, so the party had to wait. So now it's time to break out the big balloons and silly string, let the honking toys a-herald one successful year of not eating out. Oh, and check out my new look.

Braised Beef Braciole with Sundried Tomatoes & Basil and Roasted Potatoes & Okra

Braciole, or roulade? Such different-sounding words for such similar spirals of meat and filling. The former, I've just learned, is merely an Italian American variety of the latter French creation. Because the ingredients I've chosen for this one's filling are more typically Italian than French, though, I'll go with naming it a braciole.

Not Getting “-alon” Anymore

In this month's Harper's Magazine, Mark Schapiro explores the tremendous oversight of 62,000 chemicals in manufactured consumer goods that the U.S. has never tested for safety. His research finds in the blood of a 19-year-old Italian woman, "brominated flame retardants, which are potential liver, thyroid, and neurological toxins that are used to coat many electronics; the pesticides DDT and lindane... perfluorinated chemicals, known carcinogens that are used as stain- and water-repellents on clothing, furniture, and nonstick cookware; and artificial musk aromas... that scientists claim can reduce the body's ability to expel other toxins."

More Reason to Veg Out at Culinate

a fuzz-free steamed fuzzy melon stuffed with turkey appetizer -- works well with zucchini, too A few months ago, I posted a recipe for a Thai-inspired stir-fry of shrimp 'n okra and received among other comments, this one, from Matt: "Where can I actually get thai basil? When I go to Chinatown, I usually don’t find anything remotely resembling basil. As a matter of fact, I hardly recognize most greens when I’m shopping in Chinatown" This blogging platform doesn't seem to allow me to reproduce it, but Matt's original comment was followed by a sad-sack, little yellow frowning face. This international symbol of distress became the ultimate kicker in my next decision: To do something about this. (I think it must have set off some alarm nestled deeply in my conflicted half-Asian, half-American psyche.)

Sundried Tomato-Braised Green Beans

This side is: a) 100% vegetables b) 100% hearty c) oddly Christmasy-looking d) all of the above If you guessed "d," then you hate these kinds of questions because you always know whoever's posing it is trying to get you to say that. And I don't blame you. But you've got to try these green beans to believe how true it is.

Hoeing Down in Rhode Island

Ah, the smell of musty haystacks and wood smoke. The crisp bite of tree-ripened apples. The taste of sweet corn slicked with pure butter. There's nothing like celebrating the end of a fruitful harvest like an all-evening barbecue at a sustainable farm with your local farmers. Oh wait, I've never been to one before. It's funny how comforting pasttimes can forge their way into one's memory.

Bloody Mary Salsa

As you can see, I'm drinking to the end of summer. Stirred (not shaken) up as a last-minute idea for the Salsa Takedown at Mo Pitkins, this salsa is my sloppy toast to another warm season of farm-fresh fruits and vegetables, many of which I feel much closer to in the wake of their departure for the fall.

Another One Bites the Dirt

excerpted from "My Empire of Dirt," this week's cover story in New York Magazine: "Inspired by the coop design in Nick Park's animated film Chicken Run, I was using the table saw to mill eight-inch plywood into strips to make footholds for the entrance ramp when the blade of the saw tagged my right pinkie, destroying the second knuckle." Okay... we've all had our shares of blunders in the kitchen, no doubt, and of seemingly ingenious crafty ideas that have gone awry. But reading this story by Manny Howard made me want to bang my head against the subway pole with nearly every sentence. How many wrongs does it take to supercede any possible right you might be doing for the world? Howard could hold a world record for surpassing that number, whatever it may be.

Goes Together Like… Corn and Tomatoes

So many times after posting a recipe, I come up with a slightly weird sister of that night's recipe for dinner the next night. It absorbs its leftovers, remaining scraps of ingredients from the original and whatever's left over from something else. Last night's tart? Onion, roast carrot, broccoli and tomato. As most single cooks out there know, you commit yourself to the ingredients you buy for at least three or four meals, up to a week more commonly. Hence, this week I made more dishes with corn and tomatoes than I'd care to mention but they all were very fresh and flavorful -- thanks to the seasonal veggies.

Fresh Tomato Tart

Damn. I knew I should have bought more tomatoes from that roadside produce stand in upstate New York. Having good tomatoes these days is something akin to having a house in the Hamptons, or the hottest new technology from Apple. Newer and better species keep cropping up, the heirlooms perhaps being the Amagansett abodes or Macbook Pros of the pack, and rarely will you ever break their superior, hand-painted looking skins when no one else is looking. Or at least, I won't. I don't know about you, but when it comes to something as basic as a vegetable I've eaten thousands of times and in thousands of forms, it's hard to sell me at $4 a pound. (I could get pomegranates for that -- exciting!) But that's not to say that I don't understand the value of extremely delectable varieties and specimen of the tomahto with a short "a."

Eating (and Drinking) Out Around Seneca Lake, NY

grapes at Lamoreaux Landing vineyard, on the northeast side of the lake Ah, vacation. A little respite from the heat, the smog, the whiny, cosmopolitan attitude that had been pressure-cooking in me all summer long. Though it was only two days in total and a whopping five hours drive from New York City, this weekend I escaped for a holiday up north. And it was just in the nick of time, too. A change of pace on Labor Day weekend is simply the only thing one can do to rid the mind of the reality that this is the weekend that changes everything: No more summer Fridays, no more wearing sandals, white or seersucker, no more "it's summer" shrugs and excuses. No more shrugging, period.