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Pink Himalayan Salt

You are here: Home / Archives for Pink Himalayan Salt

Condiments! (Respite)

by Tom Levenson|  April 24, 20202:36 pm| 143 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Let's Make Our Own Fun, Pink Himalayan Salt, Safety Zone from You Know Who and You Know What, yes, I know your recipe is always better than mine

So, as a break from the always enjoyable pastime of Grey Lady bashing, how about a little food respite.

One thing that has struck me as we’ve stayed home is that though my spouse and I don’t eat out much relative to the published figures for American households, in normal (sic!) times we do pretty regularly get hits of flavors and culinary styles that we don’t cook at home.

There’s a tapas place near us with outdoor seating in warm weather, and pretty often we’ll go there for a cocktail and just one tapas plate before heading home to cook (old folks mini-dates).  A saffron and dried cod-fritter, perhaps, something we’d just wouldn’t get in our own kitchen.  There’s a great ramen place in walking distance too, along with a new udon shop we like, a good pizzeria, a pretty potent Sichuan place, and so on, plus the fancy spots we save for occasions: my go-to birthday dinner for the last couple of years has been the tasting menu at S.R.V., a really fine Venetian restaurant a couple of miles from us.

Digression: damn, I’m hungry now…

Condiments! (Respite)

Back to it.

Obviously, we aren’t wandering the culinary globe these days, or at least not beyond what we can recreate for ourselves at home. We’re good cooks–my wife was a pro for several years, working in some high end places. We enjoy playing with different culinary traditions–thanks to Fuchsia Dunlop I cook reasonable facsimiles of some of our Chinese favorites; we’ve got a good handle on some South Asian stuff (again, maybe Angl0-Indian-ish, but still, to our liking), and lots of other stuff.

But we’re necessarily narrower, and we have a repertory that, no matter how much we try to push out into new flavor and technique territory, is still necessarily way more constrained than what we’ve grown used to being able to grab. (Hell–there’s a Belgian french fry place down near Quincy Market that my son loves and that makes a damn fine fry. Not getting that at home.

So all that as prelude (TL:DR etc) I’ve found myself eyeballing condiments and spices as the fastest, simplest way to break out of the creeping boredom that can, I’m guessing, hit the best of home cooks when confined to nothing but.

So here’s the challenge for the comment thread. What simple, cheap, easy (any combo of those is good) ways have you all found to put a little spin on your stuff?

For us I’d say the single most important trick has been the use of Sichuan peppercorns, not just, or even primarily in Chinese recipes. They’re cheap, available by mail order and they add a lovely jolt to something as simple as broccoli. We use them either as they come, coarsely crushed, or roasted in an iron skilled for thirty seconds or so. (Whole peppercorns work too). They’re not so much hot as numbing–which is how they’re described when they’re at home, and they offer just a bit of surprise as we eat almost anything.

Other stuff: for a condiment, I love one from my childhood, Pickapeppa Sauce. It can enhance just about any savory.  I have memories from 50 years ago of meatloaf with a glaze of that on top. Damn…

Sorry–wandered into memory for a moment there.

Anyway–here’s a thread to write about the flavors you love, those you miss, and what, if anything, you’re doing to amuse yourself while we dine in isolation…

Over to y’all.

Image: Abraham Bloemaert, The Feast of the Gods at the Wedding of Peleus and Thetis, 1638.

Condiments! (Respite)Post + Comments (143)

Thursday Morning Open Thread: Staunch in Opposition (to Reality)

by Anne Laurie|  April 6, 20176:43 am| 216 Comments

This post is in: Glibertarianism, Assholes, Pink Himalayan Salt

Ok then pic.twitter.com/slDGx5x7op

— E McMorris-Santoro (@EvanMcS) April 5, 2017

McArdle:Dems refusing to repeal ACA, their biggest achievement since Medicare, is "counterproductive obstructionism" https://t.co/TrItcvrCQ2

— Roy Edroso (@edroso) April 5, 2017

For all the chaos of Lord Smallgloves’ mis-administration, some things remain eternal. The sun rises in the east; the tides go in and out; and Megan McArdle is proudly, aggressively stupid on the internet:

… After years of failing at the grown-up business of passing legislation, small wonder the Democrats would like to let the Republicans have a try at being the adults in the room. In politics, saying “no” is a great deal of fun…

At the moment, of course, the empty gesture of blocking Gorsuch is delighting many on the left, who finally feel like their party has grown a spine. If this follows the pattern that evolved on the right, however, that feeling will turn out to be increasingly costly…

Democrats desperately need to become competitive again outside of a handful of urban agglomerations, not just because their rural failures cost them the presidency, but also because of all the other offices they’ve lost at every level of government below the White House. But making themselves more competitive is probably going to require backing away from an immigration position that was skirting dangerously close to “open borders,” and placing less focus on identity politics. If they try to do this, their base will (correctly) perceive themselves losing power and status in the party, and they will be incandescent. Their first priority will be extracting signals of loyalty to themselves, not winning elections … and if the Republican experience is any guide, they may well get what they want.

Bless her cold, self-satisfied, shrunken heart.

Apart from rolling our eyes, what’s on the agenda for the day?

Thursday Morning Open Thread: Staunch in Opposition (to Reality)Post + Comments (216)

Open Thread: Maximum McMegan

by Zandar|  February 13, 20157:53 am| 137 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Pink Himalayan Salt, The Math Demands It

I did not think we could achieve this in our lifetime, but here goes:

  • NPR’s Planet Money team,
  • interviewing Megan McArdle,
  • who sounds like a cheerleader on Quaalude,
  • on her failed love life,
  • and her take on the “sunk cost fallacy” and relationships,
  • for Valentine’s Day.

whispering It is glorious.

Open thread.

Open Thread: Maximum McMeganPost + Comments (137)

One Of These Things Is Not Like the Other

by John Cole|  May 21, 20142:15 pm| 112 Comments

This post is in: Bring on the Brawndo!, Our Awesome Meritocracy, Our Failed Media Experiment, Pink Himalayan Salt, Technically True but Collectively Nonsense

[trigger warning: Megan McCardle]

Shorter McMegan: Some job security for your 50k a year job is exactly the same as earning 2 billion dollars in largely untaxed income as a hedge fund manager.

How this moron continues to fail upward is beyond me.

One Of These Things Is Not Like the OtherPost + Comments (112)

Utter and Complete McArdle Pwnage

by Betty Cracker|  January 16, 20149:01 pm| 157 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Politics, Assholes, Pink Himalayan Salt, Technically True but Collectively Nonsense

Via valued commenter Bill E Pilgrim, a clip of Jon Chait delivering the most devastating retort since Woody Allen produced Marshall McLuhan to silence a pompous blowhard in “Annie Hall.”

Burn, baybee. Buurrrrnnnn!

Utter and Complete McArdle PwnagePost + Comments (157)

Shut the internets – We have our winners

by Sarah, Proud and Tall|  January 16, 20147:23 am| 49 Comments

This post is in: Assholes, Clown Shoes, Pink Himalayan Salt

The delightful bspencer at Lawyers, Guns & Money:

image

This is what happens when you have a tiger by the tail, but you made the tiger. And you made it out of poop-flinging piranhas. How do piranhas fling poop? I don’t know. I’m not the one who Dr. Frankenmcardled the piranhatiger. Please quit asking me stupid questions.

What I’m saying is that Megan McArdle gets the commentariat she deserves, the one she created.

… and the wonderful Thers at Whiskey Fire, with a more in depth mcarglebargling:

Megan McArdle —

Yeah, I know, it’s probably pointless, but what the hey.

Megan McArdle delivers herself of a 59,000-word blog post (give or take) wherein she McSplains that while sexism exists, nobody, especially girls, should ever ever ever call anyone a sexist, no matter how sexist their behavior, because that is like shooting them with a gun, a gun that might cause hurt feelings. (Literal guns of course are harmless and everyone should have like nine of them, to go with their artisinal Moroccan fig-basters and stainless steel Syosset heritage goose denipplers.)

Shut the internets – We have our winnersPost + Comments (49)

Open Thread: GOP “Still Evil”, McMegan Still Wrong

by Anne Laurie|  September 25, 20138:43 pm| 124 Comments

This post is in: Excellent Links, Glibertarianism, Open Threads, Republican Venality, Pink Himalayan Salt

Jon Chait at NYMag finds McArgleBargle’s argument indefensible, because “Subsidizing Farmers But Not the Poor Still Evil“:

House Republicans are fighting to impose a $40 billion cut to the food-stamp program while also fighting to lock farm subsidies in place at a higher level than Democrats want. The combination of positions strikes me as indefensible. After all, farmers earn more than the average American, and there’s no rationale for handing government money to somebody just because they own a farm as opposed to a convenience store or a hot-dog stand.

Megan McArdle stands up to say the Republican position is perfectly defensible. McArdle doesn’t like farm subsidies but is even more outraged at disparagement of Republican fiscal priorities, urging, “It seems worth trying to answer the question, rather than merely marinating in our own moral and logical superiority.” The Republicans have a perfectly defensible basis for cutting benefits for poor people but giving them to farmers, she explains — reciprocity:

Here’s one reason Republicans might support farm subsidies, but not food stamps: the sense that you have to do something to get them… They’re not being given money just for breathing.

Actually, that’s not true. The Department of Agriculture does hand out money to people to do nothing. So, yes, they are being given money just for breathing. In fact, breathing is optional — millions of dollars in farm subsidies go to farmers who are dead. This underscores the fact that farm subsidies are a reward for people who own farmland, which they may well have inherited….

Bill “Always Wrong” Kristol better look to his laurels, because McMegan shows real determination to assume his Wingnut Wurlitzer crown for insistent plausibility at a 180-degree angle from the truth.

Open Thread: GOP “Still Evil”, McMegan Still WrongPost + Comments (124)

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