Comfort Food
Aug. 12th, 2007 10:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
plonqSince this was ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
atara's weekend to work while I stayed home, she tasked me to do something using some of the potatoes and onions we bought at the farmers' market last weekend. I bandied about a few ideas before it occurred to me that potato and onion soup sounded like just the thing we both needed. Through the power of Google, I managed to find a recipe that looked pretty good.
I know that I linked the recipe above, but here is an executive overview: cut up a bunch of peeled potatoes, quarter and separate a couple of onions and toss the lot with olive oil. Cut the top off a head of garlic (fortunately we bought fresh garlic last weekend too) and put a pat of butter on the flattened top. Shove the whole lot into a 400F oven to roast for awhile. Remove the garlic and let the rest roast some more. The onions will be slightly charred and crispy around the edges by that point.
Whip up the lot in a food processor with a bit of vegetable stock (or chicken stock in our case) and dump it into a large pot. Brown some flower and butter in another pot, add some cream and cook it until it thickens. Stir everything together in the larger pot and heat it to serving temperature. Enjoy, and be comforted. When I processed the potatoes and onions I left enough chunks to give the soup a bit of body.
I needed something like this after the day I had on Friday. The highlights included learning that a family member was critically ill (first I'd heard that they were ill at all) and not expected to last the night. In an unrelated incident, later in the day I got to drop everything in a panic and rush somebody to the hospital emergency ward. I don't like emergency wards at the best of times, and spending five hours there was not a fun experience. The blood-covered old lady in the wheel chair with a dent in the back of her head was a little disturbing. I guess it must not have been life-threatening though, because they left her sitting in a wheelchair for close to three hours.
On the plus side I only had to put in a half day on Friday. On the down side I had to work for a few hours on Saturday to finish up what I had left incomplete in my panicky departure. On the plus side again the person who I took to the hospital was given a clean bill and released.
Well, enough about Friday. I am striking that day from my memory and will speak of it no more.
I picked up Year Zero earlier this week. Like Reznor's previous release, I was a bit ambivalent on my first listen through the disc, but to be fair I was trying to listen via my computer at work, and I was having to cope with innumerable interruptions. I have given it a couple more listens through since I got it home, and I have decided that I like it a fair bit.
In his previous release, Trent had obviously given thought to the broader commercial market; e.g., The Hand That Feeds is definitely a radio-friendly track. In Year Zero, the message supersedes the music, and the latter becomes just a vehicle for the first. Survivalism and Capital G have both received some airplay on the local alternative station, but none of the tracks on this disc fall into what I could consider mainstream.
Reznor is not industrial, nor has he ever claimed to be, but his music often gets lumped into that category. Whether the people applying that label knew something, or whether Trent finally decided, "If you want industrial, then I'll give you industrial", this album is full of the jarring dissonance inherent to that genre. This is Downward Spiral, minus the anthems, if it was recorded in a garage. Apparently he's in a writing mood these days, and he wrote this album while he was touring in 2005. Rumour has it we may get another album of new material (that's right, not remixes, but new stuff) sometime in 2008. I am looking forward to it.
I give this album 3 1/2 Silver Plonqies out of 4.
atara's weekend to work while I stayed home, she tasked me to do something using some of the potatoes and onions we bought at the farmers' market last weekend. I bandied about a few ideas before it occurred to me that potato and onion soup sounded like just the thing we both needed. Through the power of Google, I managed to find a recipe that looked pretty good.I know that I linked the recipe above, but here is an executive overview: cut up a bunch of peeled potatoes, quarter and separate a couple of onions and toss the lot with olive oil. Cut the top off a head of garlic (fortunately we bought fresh garlic last weekend too) and put a pat of butter on the flattened top. Shove the whole lot into a 400F oven to roast for awhile. Remove the garlic and let the rest roast some more. The onions will be slightly charred and crispy around the edges by that point.
Whip up the lot in a food processor with a bit of vegetable stock (or chicken stock in our case) and dump it into a large pot. Brown some flower and butter in another pot, add some cream and cook it until it thickens. Stir everything together in the larger pot and heat it to serving temperature. Enjoy, and be comforted. When I processed the potatoes and onions I left enough chunks to give the soup a bit of body.
I needed something like this after the day I had on Friday. The highlights included learning that a family member was critically ill (first I'd heard that they were ill at all) and not expected to last the night. In an unrelated incident, later in the day I got to drop everything in a panic and rush somebody to the hospital emergency ward. I don't like emergency wards at the best of times, and spending five hours there was not a fun experience. The blood-covered old lady in the wheel chair with a dent in the back of her head was a little disturbing. I guess it must not have been life-threatening though, because they left her sitting in a wheelchair for close to three hours.
On the plus side I only had to put in a half day on Friday. On the down side I had to work for a few hours on Saturday to finish up what I had left incomplete in my panicky departure. On the plus side again the person who I took to the hospital was given a clean bill and released.
Well, enough about Friday. I am striking that day from my memory and will speak of it no more.
I picked up Year Zero earlier this week. Like Reznor's previous release, I was a bit ambivalent on my first listen through the disc, but to be fair I was trying to listen via my computer at work, and I was having to cope with innumerable interruptions. I have given it a couple more listens through since I got it home, and I have decided that I like it a fair bit.
In his previous release, Trent had obviously given thought to the broader commercial market; e.g., The Hand That Feeds is definitely a radio-friendly track. In Year Zero, the message supersedes the music, and the latter becomes just a vehicle for the first. Survivalism and Capital G have both received some airplay on the local alternative station, but none of the tracks on this disc fall into what I could consider mainstream.
Reznor is not industrial, nor has he ever claimed to be, but his music often gets lumped into that category. Whether the people applying that label knew something, or whether Trent finally decided, "If you want industrial, then I'll give you industrial", this album is full of the jarring dissonance inherent to that genre. This is Downward Spiral, minus the anthems, if it was recorded in a garage. Apparently he's in a writing mood these days, and he wrote this album while he was touring in 2005. Rumour has it we may get another album of new material (that's right, not remixes, but new stuff) sometime in 2008. I am looking forward to it.
I give this album 3 1/2 Silver Plonqies out of 4.
