The Pleasant House blog has had a good one-and-a-half-year run. So what’s new for 2010? Well, it’s a new decade, so I say out with the old and in with the new. I think that the current look of the blog is pretty “first 10 years of the decade,” so I think we’ll give it a new one.
Hopefully, we’ll also be able to give you something tangible from The Pleasant House–you know, something you can put in your hands, or in your belly.
Something that will stay the same is our personal take on cooking and food culture. We hope that you find our range of content enjoyable and fun, and that you see The Pleasant House as much more than just a recipe blog. Here’s a quick-guide, a table of contents if you will, to some of our highlights from this past decade:
Living History: There will always be lessons to be learned from the “old” ways of doing things and from those that do them.
Caribbean Flavors: From grouper rundown to conch stew, tropical flavors will always warm our soul.
Caribbean Christmas
Grouper rundown
Restaurant Tales: I’m not a professional restaurant reviewer, but I know that restaurants have the ability to create special moments. It’s those moments that I like to reflect upon.
Butchering and Wild Game: Butchering your own meat is a dying art. I’m constantly learning new butchering techniques, and cooking and curing methods for wild game and whole animal carcasses.
Offal Cooking: The nasty bits or the off-cuts, these are the organs of the animals that are usually discarded. They can be delicious and healthy. Last summer I worked my way through lamb tongue, heart, kidneys, and liver.
Local, Midwestern Cooking and Ingredients: There is a bounty of natural food to be found in the Midwest, and it should be celebrated with every opportunity.
Home Brewing: Beer, wine, soda.
Food and Politics: Every day I think about the idea that what you choose to put on the plate or on your fork or what you choose not to put on your plate or on your fork is a form of activism.
Foraging: Urban, suburban, rural, or tropical, wherever I am, I’m constantly tuning myself in to what edibles are growing around me and finding ways to utilize them.
Juneberries
“Eat This City” video podcast
Chokeberries
Top 10 Lists: I highlighted 10 significant food experiences every week for seven weeks.
Staging (stah-jing): Chelsea, who proudly earned her baking and pastry certificate from Kendall College, did a a few stages, chronicled in her series “All the World’s a Stage”:
Food and Design: I have a tendency to immerse myself in the things that interest me, and design has become one of those interests. From my home kitchen design to restaurant design to books about cooking and design, food and design can be an exciting combination.
Living and Eating by John Pawson
Spain: Looking Forward While Embracing the Past
Recipes, Techniques, and Cooking Philosophy: There’s not a whole lot of “measure and stir” recipes in The Pleasant House, but I”m sure you will enjoy the ones that are there. I like to talk about some of the conceptual things that I think are helpful when cooking. It’s easy to read a recipe and combine the ingredients, but it can also be fun to think about how emotion and philosophy can play an important part in your recipes:
An Extra Ingredient This Holiday Season: Love
Food and Emotion
On building a dish
Mashed-up and spit-roasted Sunday supper
Raspberries and Creammm
Tamales
Chicago-Style Stuffed Pizza
Food and Culture: Every culture eats. And every culture eats different foods. I like people, and food is a great way to connect with them. If you know a little bit about what other people eat, you could have something to talk about.
Seven Spices in a Garam Masala
Gardening and the “Urban Prairie”: I have a balcony that serves as my little urban garden. I’m constantly testing the limits of the balcony to get the most out of it. I love growing herbs and vegetables, and hope to expand the garden into a decent self-irrigating planter garden this year. I consider the “urban prairie” to be the natural/overgrown areas around the city that often have many attractive varieties of native and invasive plant species.
Good Food: It’s Out There, You Just Need to Know What to Do with It
Foraged Ingredients Tell You How to Cook Them
Urban Prairie: Before and After
Food and Travel: From a New York City restaurant tour to the plains of Kansas to San Francisco, Europe, Mexico, and the Caribbean.
Eater’s Weekend in NYC
Kansas in the Summertime
See you next year!
What a cool list. Thanks for linking your foraging posts. That’s one thing I want to try more of. When I was a kid we did it all the time because of the freedom that goes with being a kid. As an adult, I don’t find I’m that comfortable out foraging because I think everyone’s looking. I think I need to go back to that freedom of being a kid and not caring what was going on around.
Have a Happy & Safe New Year!
Thanks Mr. BrownThumb. I hear you. Your comment reminds me of my last juneberry harvesting excursion. It was at night, I was trying to be stealthy and there were quite a few people outside, around me. On the one hand I kept trying to be sneaky but was laughing at the same time because nobody was paying any attention. The scenario really reminded me of being a kid again–lots of laughter and fun.