There are those who call me....

....Master...

Because I done GRADUATED to day!

I celebrated with a couple Levain Bakery Cookies IMMEDIATELY following the fab ceremony at the Beacon Theater. YUM YUM



Said cookies - said gooey and gigantic cookies - were quite quickly chased (as quickly as the C train ever is) by a glass of Billecart- Salmon 2000 at the Bubble Lounge. Don't mind if I do!



Cheers!

You can call me Miranda Rake, Food Studies MA.

OR as David and I decided upon over our SCRUMPTIOUS celebration dinner < PAUSE FOR PICTURES >

drool



drool



drool



drool



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at Locanda Verde I will also accept the following :

Miranda Rake, NFSPH* MA, NYU, NYC, U.S.A, P.E.**, SSMW***, U.****


Basically I'm the coolest ever and I am a lot like what you might think of as a Princess of the world now so that's neat and you should definitely think of me that way.



* NFSPH : Nutrition, Food Studies, Public Health
** PE : Planet Earth
***SSMW : solar system milky way
**** U : Universe

Final Finals

I should be writing my final finals - specifically an 8-pager that is due in less than 24 hours. However, if I can't crank out a meesley 8-pager in under 2 hours at this point, what on earth have I gotten out of graduate school really?

Which brings me here, to a rather philosophical place at the end of my time in school - possibly for ever and certainly for the foreseeable time being. Over these past few months I have found myself questioning (especially in the wee small hours) if Food Studies was my proper path, stretching to remember what brought me here in the first place, scrambling for a reassuring remembrance of my love of food. That one elusive thought that would make the vortex of debt into which I slip less like a spinning, tightening, opaquely doom-filled vortex and more like a big hammock of accomplishment, piled high with those fluffy pink clouds that Care Bears live on.

The fluffy pink pile of clouds to fall into came to me in the form of this book :



"Far Flung and Well Fed" is a collection of the food writing of the irreplaceable R.W. Apple, whose writing I found uniquely engrossing before I even realized exactly who he was. I stumbled into his work as a teenager, as a weekly browser of the New York Times Dining section. Over time, I came to know his name merely because when a piece would particularly strike me as special somehow the way that great writing does, it would invariably be his name in the byline.

I have missed the presence of his writing more than I realized. When I happened into this book on Amazon at the beginning of April, I ordered it on a whim - such a whim that it's arrival a week later took me by surprise. I shoved it in my purse for some rebellious non-school reading without a thought and went on my merry way. Later that day as I rode home in the dreary sleepiness of a 6pm subway car, I stood reading the introduction - R.W. Apple's reflections on a life of good food and great times - and my eyes welled up. Whatever assurance I was seeking I somehow found in the beauty of his words, a beauty that I can't bring myself to describe here because I could never do him justice. Buy the book, steal it, check it out, borrow it from me but GIVE IT BACK - do what you have to do, just read it. Your vortex will thank you.

Happy Easter!

Coffee, pink bubbly, Herbie Nichols pandora, and friends to dye eggs with! Is there a nicer way to spend a drizzly Saturday?













Happy Happy Easter!

life of late

I turned in the first draft of what essentially is my Masters Thesis last Wednesday, so Thursday the 7th I took myself to Soho to shop and play! It was a lovely mellow day, and the shopping was successful - so many flowery dresses! Peckish, around 4, I decided to stop by Dean & Deluca and pretend I was really really rich and actually buy something there. My wee feast could not have been more dreamy.





Nor could the view. I just stood and snacked and soaked it all in.



We were supposed to go to "Catch Me if you Can" on Broadway that night - I had gotten cheapo tickets through NYU and we were going to have a night on the town together. I just basked in my lovely view and dreamt about where the night would take us.

And then everything changed. From dreamy dreamerific...

To this. A 4:30 am snack eaten after being kicked out of the rehabilitation floor where David and his appendix waited for surgery. Visiting Hours!?!?!?!?! Is this not 2011?? We had been at the ER since 5:30 pm, and he finally got a room at 3:30am. David wouldn't be having surgery until 4pm the next day (ack! can you believe that??) and wouldn't be coming home until Monday night, the 11th. OOF. It was awful, more so for David of course, but it took a toll on us both. Every night at 9pm, I was (rather forcefully and by security people) asked to leave. I (who has a bit of a problem with obeying authority figures who I don't completely love / respect) would just go wait in the lobby. The security officer down there was friendly enough, and it felt good to know that I was just an elevator ride away from the David. I ate from vending machines, guided by excellent advice from a friend to pay absolutely no attention to healthfulness. I ate a bag of Ruffles too (45 cents! apparently and not surprisingly their vending machines are from 1964) but it was long gone by the time I thought to take a picture.



salads from the cafeteria sustained me too, sort of. I scarfed these over the course of the days - when David napped mostly. Sad-looking though they were, he was living on orange Kozy-Shack 'jello' and chick'n broth from little packets so I didn't want to tantalize him by eating actual textured foods before his very eyes.



For day after day, this was my view as I frantically scarfed that $7 hospital salad



And now David's home, on the road to health, and even up for a little stroll around the hood. He's moving slow, but that's ok. It gave us time to notice a new little pizza spot down the street that we would have missed racing by at our usual pace. We sat down, and got a delicious, basil heaped grandma slice



to nibble on in the soft warmth of evening, watching the sun set over park slope. and life is ours again!

L.E.N.T.

Ack! Just realized we're having a major food-related overhaul here at good old apartment #1D and I haven't blathered to you about it yet. No more!

Around here in kitten heaven*, aka the batcave, aka we don't actually call our apartment any of those things, we've decided to face Lent with gusto this year! We've sworn off meat AND dairy this year, and frankly I'm oddly into it. It's not only a fun and exciting challenge (Can we do it?!) I'm also ALREADY feeling healthier, and we're just 5 days in.

Yes, it's a major change. Yes, I love cheese. No, I don't miss it yet. And here's why. I filled our house (well, over the course of about 4 trips to the grocery store, which is probably the only downside so far) with all kinds of things that we CAN eat and then we go to town on delicious fare as we see fit.

Here's what our fridge is looking like these days :



Although initially I was going to stay away from them, I pretty quickly said screw it and bought some useful (and really shockingly not gross) milk/dairy alternatives, seen here :



(coconut for me, soy for the D)



Maybe the reason I'm having such fun with this is that it's forced me to mix it up, foodwise, in quite a few ways. I had to think outside our usual recipe rut, outside my usual snacking ruts and we've had to rethink where we go out for food AND what we order. It's like playing with your food - MIND playing with it! Totally fun.

I made this granola- the famous Nigella Lawson/David Lebowitz one which I'm pretty sure I told you about before :



And this vegan split pea soup - thick and really filling it totally hits the spot. I know it looks like barf, but I am including a picture anyway. I don't know why.



And - I'm really proud of this because David's bonkers for it - vegan egg salad. I just sort of made it up - a crumbled up loaf of firm tofu, a bunch of vegannaise, some tofutti sour cream and a bunch of mustard and celery. It makes a CRAZY good sandwich, and I actually think it's cheaper than regular egg salad. Uglier, too!



Otherwise, we're keeping lots of nuts and salad stuff around for quick fixes, as well as spaghetti with red sauce, and I'm pretty excited because I've got all the stuff to make THIS, hopefully some night this week. I've got a major sour tooth, so this is one of my favorite snacks, and since I'm foregoing lots of other treats, I sprung for the fancy brand :



Mmmm fermentation!

I feel like we're doing a little moral/physical/mental spring cleaning and it's pretty great. I enjoy feeling really haughty and telling the kittens that I'm not eating any of their little animal friends these days.. to which David says they don't care and would probably eat me if they thought they could get away with it and I should stop talking to our cats. He's probably on to something there, but I feel pretty great so I'm not going to dwell on it.

OH! and here's something else that eases the pain of life without cheese. I highly recommend it for Lent, or any time you choose.



*see Miranda refrain from kitten picture posting. see previous post and about a million others for heart-melting kitten shots.

How I beat the winter blues.

#1 I throw parties!

Oscar night!



A delicious close up of the star of the night - cream cheese pinwheels. Mix together 2 packs of cream cheese, 1 packet of ranch powder, 2 tBlsps each jalapenos and pimentos, and a can of black olives. Spread that tasty salty, cheesy thing in tortillas. Roll. Slice. Consume.



Girls night!



We like to eat. Savvy ladies that we are, our spread includes many nods to health, like papaya, grapes, celery, carrots, homemade hummus, pickles!



We're also only human. We like our mashed up avocado/kettle chips/Lay's/baguette/lavender honey scented goat cheese (YUM) as much as the next gaggle.




#2 If all those parties don't do it, I recommend the double strength Kitten Cure! It never fails.

Oh Oregon, my Oregon

Here's the thing. I will always love Oregon; vibrant green, year-round trees! The rocky blue-grey tumultuousness of my beloved coastline. Portland and all of its funky, obsessive, delicious quirks. The sweet, cozy, Shakespearian hippy-ville known as Ashland. Salem, that lovable dump.

That said, I was dealt a bit of disappointment this past weekend. Like the fancy jet-setter I'd like to be, I flew home for the weekend this past Saturday to attend a Food Justice conference being hosted at the University of Oregon of all places! Since in was a)close to home and b) something I could potentially be reimbursed for I thought I may as well attend. Mom and I decided we'd go down to Eugene together just for the night and make a little mother/daughter trip of it!

Now, my mom is terrific, as shown here :



and she and I had an absolutely fabulous little mini-break. We began, as is tradition now, with drinks at Gilt on the way home from the PDX airport. A necessary thing that must always happen immediately upon arrival or else. A Gilt Manhattan (not sure exactly what makes it Gilt-y but she was happy) for her, Bombay Dry martini for me. Up with olives and maybe some French fries wouldn't be a terrible thought either. This all means that I've arrived in Portland and re-entry can commence, that's all, the end, welcome home and thank you very much.It was a lovely start. Home by 1am to fall into bed and snuggle a bit with the kitty - all in all, I was happy to be home, as usual.

Up at the crack of 7am the next morning, with a quick stop for coffee at the Clearing Cafe for coffee and seriously the dream dreamiest scone I've EVER. TASTED. IN. MY. 26. YEARS. ON. PLANET. EARTH. Lemon currant. It was layery-flakishness, with tart little hint of lemon and the occasional subtle little currant. This scone taught me the meaning of the word tender. OOooof I give up. There are no words. You know how 99% of scones are just a disappointment, but you order them anyway because you think "maybe this one will be good" but it just never is. Well this one was better than good and it made me believe in scone-dom once again. I've asked for the recipe and if I get it, I'll pass it along I swear. Unless they say I can only have it if I keep it secret in which case you're on your own.

Moving on. I do go to school you know, I can't just sit around and blog about scones all day. Sheesh.

So Eugene. Well, the trees were blooming, which was a real treat and saving grace. See below.



The conference, quite honestly was largely a disappointment. There were many smart, accomplished, impressive people there on the panels. Unfortunately, there were also sort of vapid-seeming and air-head-ish types who were on the same panels with those smart, intelligent types. The audience was heavy with Eugene hippies and undergraduates who have recently decided it would be cool to go work on a farm and try to not use plastic for a year and think that it'd be pretty radical to drink their water out of mason jars wrapped in socks. These people also thought it would be cool to ask long-winded questions of these incredibly smart panelists and by questions I mean babble on for way too long about some silly little personal-agenda-type issue and then ask a half-assed, simple-minded question that was clearly actually an afterthought and excuse to enjoy the sound of their own voice.

Alright, tirade over. I appreciate you bearing with me. The big news is that because there were so many airheads and hippies, Darra Goldstien- founder and editor of Gastronomica, and keynote speaker at this conference - was not surrounded by people all the time because most of the people there didn't really know/care about the academic discipline of Food Studies so I was able to introduce myself and (sort of, in my dreams) make friends with her. We had a lovely conversation and somewhere 21 year old Miranda is worshiping at my feet. My interaction with this amazing, fascinating, accomplished, inspiring lady seriously made the whole trip worthwhile - if you've never picked up a copy of the journal, do it asap! The readership is actually only 35% academics, so it's really approachable. It's like a really really smart food glossy - the dear departed Gourmet on steroids.

Sunday night, mom and I enjoyed an absolutely lovely dinner at Marche - recommended to me by my friend Mike who works at Podnah's (Portland's finest dining establishment) and who did well by us! Marche was perhaps not the most cutting edge of places, but I enjoyed every last bite, and so did mom. We left full but not too full, very satisfied and happy! We ate...

Beet salad!



Tempura-fried, giantic salt cod fritters! (my second favorite of all time! second only to Toro Bravo's unbeatable mountain of fritterliciousness)



steak frites!



and 4 cheese and black truffle pizza!



Oh, and cocktails of course. Martin Miller martini for me, negroni for mom. We're classic girls, none of this prohibition revival junk for us.



Monday night, after a long day of hippy-dippy panel discussions, a lovely dinner at Dad's with Margaret (who cooked the lovely feast), Grandma Ruth, Marina and Dad of course. Spanish rice, with lobster tails!!!!!! Chorizo, chicken, squishy, clumpy savory rice, heaven.



Grandma Ruth's precious Christmas Peanut Butter Balls. These things are coveted each Christmas by all members of the Rake clan, and Grandma brought her last few to share with us for dessert. A true occasion!!



Chocolate peanut butter utopia, thank you Grandma!



Actually it was a pretty great visit, now that I think about it. The conference was just an excuse for me to go about all the real business of my life - my dear dear dear family.

In light of that, I'll leave you with the coziest feeling in the world - the view from the car as mom drives, OPB on the radio, chugging along towards home, the sun just beginning to set, a delicious dinner at Dad's awaiting me at the end of the journey.