Mixed Media

I'm so, so, so, so excited about the Top Chef premiere tonight. Whoopee! I've been leafing through my Top Chef cookbook today, and got kind of intrigued about how many recipes have cauliflower. In the grand scheme of things, it's not really a ton, but for the relatively few number of recipes in the book, it seems disproportionate. I have to say, though, that one of those cauliflower containing recipes is a family favorite...the Turkey and Pork Meatballs. Wonderfully flavorful, different enough to be interesting, and a sneaky way to get spinach into the gang.

I've been looking for a new food book to read. In light of all the Julie and Julia movie hoopla, and having read Julie and Julia and My Life in France, I did try Backstage with Julia, but after about fifty pages, I just felt that if Julia had wanted me to know those things, she would have put them in her own wonderful memoir. She didn't, so perhaps she'd rather I didn't know. I've found myself back with Peter Mayle's French Lessons. I've read it before, but it's been awhile. His writing is always easy to read, and like slipping back into a conversation with an old friend. I think next up is My Homemade Life. I do love Ruth Reichl, and enjoyed much of Jeffery Steingarten's The Man Who Ate Everything, although in the words of my seventh-grade reading teacher, I "skimmy-scanned" some of it. But I was flat out fascinated to learn that potato eyes grow in a double helix. Really.