retro food, and finished knitting!

funny article about the park slope coop–reflects some of the reasons a and i dropped out so soon…

so far this week has been full of retro style dinners.  last night was beef stroganoff, which actually i love.  i remember my parents making it when i was little (before all the warnings about eating red meat) and there’s something about the silky sauce combined with egg noodles that tastes very comforting.  we had haricots verts from the greenmarket and they were very very tasty.  you’d think they’d just taste like skinny green beans, but there’s something else there, i think…  i realize that in the picture the beef looks a bit gross, but it wasn’t gross in person.  it was quite lovely in person, in fact…

tonight we had something i’ve never made before, but was designed to use up the leftover egg noodles.  swedish meatballs!  while i was reviewing the ingredient list as i was stuck on the r train coming home (why was it moving so slowly?) i kept thinking about the swedish chef on the muppets.  remember him?  he was my favorite.  well, maybe it was a tie with beeker.  i loved how he never said anything intelligible, just “borka borka borka” as he tossed ingredients around.  the character always freaked me out too.  i could never figure out why until i was older and realized that the hands were human hands.  those hands, tossing around ingredients and gesticulating wildly were human hands, but the rest of him was all puppet.  and it was freaky.  swedish meatballs are pretty good, but the sauce tasted a lot like the sauce for beef stroganoff (just more broth and less creme fraiche).

i’m ready for some progressive food soon.  maybe italian or asian.  tomorrow night there will be no cooking though.  meeting a friend at kitchenbar.  there’s very little information about the place so hopefully it will be good.  the chef pedigree makes me think it should be.

in knitting news i finally finished the half dome.  it’s the half dome for the chrome dome!  really, it’s the half dome for the fuzzy dome, but that doesn’t carry the same cache…  i didn’t swatch or anything (i’m too much of a slacker for that sort of thing), and since i used different yarn than the pattern called for it’s a bit big.  but i think it looks cool on.  very rawker, right?  the clapotis is progressing nicely.  i’ve finally reached the interesting part where i begin to drop stitches.  i anxiously knit each pattern repeat just to get to the drop stitches row.  i think i need to order more yarn…