Posts Tagged ‘#letslunch’

Updates from Inside the Igloo

Posted in Manna on February 13th, 2015 by Annabelle – 12 Comments

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Greetings from Boston!

As anyone who’s been watching the news in the US probably knows, we’ve been having some weather around here.  Specifically, snow.  Upward of six feet of snow, with more on the way. We’ve broken the 20 day snow record, we’ve broken the 30 and 40 day snow records, all that we have left is the snowiest winter record, and hey, there’s still a month of winter to go.

None of this snow has melted.  It lines every street, every sidewalk, in banks higher than my head.  I cannot express to you how unrelievedly snowy it is here right now.  It’s been challenging to get groceries in for the last three weeks, with the result that when I heard that this month’s Let’s Lunch theme was noodles, my mind took it somewhere other than comfort food.  I don’t even want to contemplate how much starch out of the cabinets I’ve eaten lately!

Instead, I offer you salad, as antidote to winter.  Okay, I know I am not actually going to get scurvy (I know this because of the lifesaving citrus-y sidecar I had at the cocktail hour last night), but the psychological pressure of all this snow is starting to make having something fresh and green seem like an emergency.  Also, I have a new peeler. It came in a set which I bought because they were pretty colors (this is how all my kitchen equipment happens), and it peels vegetables into lovely julienne. Who doesn’t want to play with that?  If you’re in the northeast, try this bright, lemony salad during Sunday’s snowstorm and remind yourself: summer will come again.  Eventually.

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Rosemary Whole-Wheat Shortbread

Posted in Manna on December 12th, 2014 by Annabelle – 2 Comments

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Welcome to the last Let’s Lunch of 2014! This month’s theme is non-traditional traditions. Although my family does have a pretty non-traditional Christmas dinner (Chinese hot pot!), since I’ve posted about that in the past, I thought I’d turn the theme around and post about a traditional non-tradition: something in the spirit of Christmas tradition that I haven’t done in the past.

Growing up in the Midwest, I loved a white Christmas, but the very best Christmases were the ones when my parents would make the 24-hour drive south to Fort Worth so that we could spend the holiday with my grandparents. Most of my favorite Christmas cookies are ones I can remember my grandmother making, and although she’s no longer with us, I still cherish the pages in my cookbook written in her handwriting.

This shortbread is one of her recipes, with an extra Texas twist in honor of my parents’ Austin neighborhood where Christmas happens these days: rosemary. Rosemary grows by the side of the road in their Hill Country neighborhood, in whacking great shrubs that make the little plastic herb packages I get here in the north look like a joke. All you have to do is brush your hand over it to come away sweetly fragranced.  It’s not the Christmas I grew up with, but it’s a tradition I can definitely get behind.

The recipe after the jump!

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