Consonants and vowels all together, equally

• New Nigella on my TV! She's seriously my anxiety cure, you don't even know. And she likes rosé, which I do too. (See below.)
  
• Saw Red yesterday noontime at a $6 matinee. It was really fun! Bruce and Karl and Helen and Morgan and Malkovich were all adorbs, as was Brian Cox's old Russian.
  
• Then I went on a very NYC shopping spree around Union Square, picking up some staples at Trader Joe's (they have frozen pork buns now!), bread and jam at the green market, rosé at the wine store, and some spicy beef broth noodle to go at Republic.
  
• The jam deserves its own bullet. I adore the jam from Beth's, which you can also order online. I picked up Raspybarb (raspberry rhubarb) which is the flavor of my favorite pie. I also got some rhubarb chutney (so good on meatloaf) and some garlic rosemary jam (excellent on toast topped with scrambled egg). I ate bread and jam for dinner!
  
• startrekbigbang and rpf_big_bang are posting! So many great stories already!
  
• Yuletide! I'm pondering what fandoms to nominate other than WKRP. Undercovers and Hawaii 5-0 at the very least, and Community as well because that fandom isn't that big. I'm thinking about nominating the Green Hornet movie even though it's not out until next month because hey, Kato fic.
  
• It's fall, and it's properly chilly and breezy and the leaves are falling and when it's not raining the sky is the most gorgeous blue. And the cat has gone back to demanding a permanent position on my lap.

For people who really like food, like me, such a linguistic approach to eating can sound just a little detached. It is noticeable that, in the book, Foer never once describes a vegetarian dish he really enjoys.

“Oh, I’d say I like a meal as much as anybody,” he tells me, mildly, as he browses the menu. “But I find a certain kind of foodiness silly, gluttonous and embarrassing.” He pauses, looking up. “Look, taste is clearly the crudest of our senses: this is scientifically, objectively factual. It is less nuanced. Eyesight is extraordinary – hearing, touch. I find people who devote their whole lives to taste a little strange.” He stresses the last words as if this was a vast understatement.

One of the good things about vegetarianism, says Foer, it that it makes people “care more”. “I’m not sure why,” he says, “but a lot of my behaviour has changed. I’ve all but stopped buying things online. I want to live in a world where there are mom-and-pop stores, where everything isn’t homogenous ... Writing the book made me open my eyes a little bit wider.”

As a fellow resident of Park Slope, I know that ethical consumption can be a pleasurable retail experience – but what about less fortunate neighbourhoods? “Not everyone is going to move at the same pace,” he agrees. “Poor people will not move at the same pace as people with a disposable income. People who live in food deserts, who don’t have the same access, will move at a different pace to people who shop at Whole Foods.”

calloocallay

calloocallay

soupkills

• Marinara sauce, which I froze. It's my own quick recipe, with canned crushed tomatoes, tomato paste, red wine, garlic, crushed red pepper, and the leftover purple basil from last week's tomato salad.
  
• Bolognese sauce, which is a double batch. I froze half and made the other half into this great biscuit-topped bolognese pie that used up the zucchini leftover from the barbeque chicken pizza I made last week. The bolognese also used up more of the carrots I bought last week for thai steak salads.
  
• Lemon-horseradish fish cakes, which is a double batch and instead of parsley I used the cilantro leftover from the mango chicken salad I made last week. I'll put half in the freezer and eat the other half this week with broccoli that I'll drizzle with sherry-shallot vinaigrette that I make.
  
• I put together my kit for my breakfast hash. I cooked sweet potatoes, diced them, then put them into individual servings in tiny snack baggies. I put those baggies plus one baggie holding the chicken-apple sausage links and one holding diced shallot that had been hanging out in my freezer (great tip from calloocallay to dice up the whole bag of shallots when I get them) into one tupperware container so it's all together when I want to make the hash, and the container is right next to the bowl of eggs, so I can just grab one of those to fry over-easy to put on top. It makes it practical to have the hash on a weekday, as it takes just five minutes to fix.
  
• Two meat loaves. The valupak of ground beef is 5 lb, so I used one pound (plus a pound of ground pork) for the bolognese and the remaining 4 lb in two meat loaves that each make 8 servings, so now I'll have 16 slices of meat loaf that I'll freeze in individual baggies and can pull out of the freezer whenever I have veg around but no protein.
  
• A rhubarb crisp that used up some rhubarb that was in the freezer and some crisp topping that was floating around the fridge.
  
• And I'll make some more chex mix at some point.