One really cool thing about my new apartment is that the nearest grocery store isn't the really depressingly bad 24-hour Shaw's in Fenway where they seem to leave produce for like a week and all the potatoes I find by the time I actually get there are growing eyes and turning green. Maybe we were in a potato off-season but I spent most of the summer without the comfort of nice crispy hash browns in the morning.

Seasonal or not, in my new place I'm near a Whole Foods with a Stop & Shop a little further out and at both of these locations I can find some really nice fresh potatoes, ones that aren't covered in bruises and sprouts, ones that aren't turning green. With the cooler months incoming, too, this means I'm going to have a lot of really nice potatoes to enjoy.

This morning was hash browns made of tiny white round potatoes and seasoned with ground black pepper, sea salt and a little bit of cayenne pepper. The cayenne pepper adds a bit of a spicy kick to the potato. I had eggs, too, of course, which I scrambled the way I always do.

The best part of serving scrambled eggs and hash browns together is if your hash browns are crispy enough you can put the eggs on top of them and just feel the incredible contrast between them. They complement each other in so many beautiful ways. They are breakfast soul mates.

I also had a "meatball" my mom made for some reason. Except they're vegan and made of soy and she forgot I'm allergic to soy.

Overall rating:


Vegan meatball rating:


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About the author: A prolific contributor to Jul with some 2067 posts published, Sofi better fancies herself as a cinema geek, a composer, an occasional gamer, a budding fashionita, an absolute cooking newbie and a general life enthusiast-satirist. She is responsible for a number of notable discussions about meteorology and current events and may be contacted at any time through private messaging.

I tried to make chicken rice soup today from scratch but I didn't have any of the ingredients at all which really sucks. The stock mixture that came out didn't have much flavor aside from faint chicken, ginger and tarragon flavor to it but I mixed it into the rice with pieces of chicken anyway and then afterward I drank the soup and ate the pieces of chicken and left the rice and the peas and corn I put into it behind in a plastic half-sandwich bag ready for disposal but at the last minute a wave of inspiration came over me and I stirfried the rice with some soy sauce and an egg and made something that resembled a soy sauce and egg risotto only without much of the creamy fluffy gluten. The risotto/fried rice was significantly more edible than what I had before and it made me wonder why I didn't just try making a risotto of some sort from the beginning.

Lunch was looking like a dud but it turned out to be pretty decent if not what I had planned.

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About the author: A prolific contributor to Jul with some 2073 posts published, Sofi better fancies herself as a cinema geek, a composer, an occasional gamer, a budding fashionita, an absolute cooking newbie and a general life enthusiast-satirist. She is responsible for a number of notable discussions about meteorology and current events and may be contacted at any time through private messaging.

I've never worked with ricotta and unfortunately I've only ever had it on pizza but I'm assuming you can use it to enrich the flavor and texture of all sorts of different dishes with it.

Five things to do with ricotta

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About the author: A prolific contributor to Jul with some 2074 posts published, Sofi better fancies herself as a cinema geek, a composer, an occasional gamer, a budding fashionita, an absolute cooking newbie and a general life enthusiast-satirist. She is responsible for a number of notable discussions about meteorology and current events and may be contacted at any time through private messaging.

Yesterday I had an awkward dinner with my dad at the Stockyard Restaurant in Allston. The restaurant's okay but what made it awkward was my dad, but that's a different story. Anyway, I really like eating a steakhouses because it means I get to have two meals if I eat only a part of the steak and take the rest home. There is just something marvelous about a leftover Porterhouse.

That's lunch today, which consisted of some brown rice, some rice pilaf leftover from the restaurant and the rest of the T-bone steak. I served it with some pork gravy from a just-add-water mix except I split the water and added milk for a creamier taste. People really like making gravy from a paste but one of these days I'm going to graduate from them and become one of those people who actually take the trimmings and oils leftover from meats and vegetables and mix them into a roux with some flour and then gradually add in milk to create a creamy wonderful sauce. It sounds really simple so I have to try it.

The gravy was served in a metal gravy boat I got for a dollar at a thrift store during a half-off Labor Day sale. It was perfectly suited for its task and probably can also be used whenever nice facilitated pouring is necessary, like when making a risotto or when making a cheese sauce for a mac and cheese or when pouring milk into a pan with a roux to make gravy. Gravy boats are wonderful.

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About the author: A prolific contributor to Jul with some 2079 posts published, Sofi better fancies herself as a cinema geek, a composer, an occasional gamer, a budding fashionita, an absolute cooking newbie and a general life enthusiast-satirist. She is responsible for a number of notable discussions about meteorology and current events and may be contacted at any time through private messaging.

I made spaghetti tonight with tomato sauce from a jar plus some pork meatballs I made from scratch using ground pork mixed with breadcrumbs, sea salt, ground black pepper, sage and crushed red pepper. The mixture was rolled up into little one-and-a-half inch balls and then fried on a skillet until browned on all sides and then simmered with the sauce.

The meatballs were actually pretty good but I think I need to push them together tighter next time so they hold better when bitten into. I'm not sure if pork is the best meat for a good meatball. Spaghetti and sauce are awesome as always.

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About the author: A prolific contributor to Jul with some 2080 posts published, Sofi better fancies herself as a cinema geek, a composer, an occasional gamer, a budding fashionita, an absolute cooking newbie and a general life enthusiast-satirist. She is responsible for a number of notable discussions about meteorology and current events and may be contacted at any time through private messaging.

I only used pork because it's the only ground meat I had around. I'm pretty sure I'm going to use something like ground beef next time. Or ostrich.

I had the usual for breakfast except I defrosted the Jones Dairy Farm pork sausages. They cooked a lot nicer so I'm pretty sure next time I plan on eating sausages for breakfast they're going to be defrosted in the refrigerator the night before (or in the sink that morning [via running water]). It seemed to give the casing a very nice satisfying crunch without really burning it.

I still hope some day I can make a sausage so awesome that I wouldn't need to rely on frozen breakfast sausages anymore. That would be like totally wonderful.

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About the author: A prolific contributor to Jul with some 2081 posts published, Sofi better fancies herself as a cinema geek, a composer, an occasional gamer, a budding fashionita, an absolute cooking newbie and a general life enthusiast-satirist. She is responsible for a number of notable discussions about meteorology and current events and may be contacted at any time through private messaging.

Following a reading on fermented food served worldwide, lunch was Nongshim-brand Korean instant noodles that's been hanging out in the kitchen cabinet unopened. Today's flavor is seafood and to dilute the overwhelming spiciness, I actually used the suggested amount of water in preparing the dish. Nongshim probably produces the best quality noodles but they are just so overwhelmingly spicy that it drowns out the rest of the palate.

To curb the spiciness, I ate the noodles with two glasses of milk which contains casein which binds nicely with the oils that cause that hot feeling. This is a pretty cool solution, but seriously this dish would have been more enjoyable if I didn't have to resort to this. Maybe in the future I'll just eat Pablo noodles for a Korean no-heat compromise.

I have quarter-pounder sliders on the horizon for dinner.

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About the author: A prolific contributor to Jul with some 2087 posts published, Sofi better fancies herself as a cinema geek, a composer, an occasional gamer, a budding fashionita, an absolute cooking newbie and a general life enthusiast-satirist. She is responsible for a number of notable discussions about meteorology and current events and may be contacted at any time through private messaging.