I'm Rose. I live in South Philly with my husband, Sous Chef Brian, and cats.
I'm not a spectacular cook, but I do cook a lot, and I'm learning. Most of it turns out pretty good. I'll tell you about it when doesn't. I try to cook seasonally, and use local foods wherever I can but the occasional far-away veg hits an off month menu. I cook a lot of vegetarian meals, but I make meat once a week or so. Bacon doesn't count, because it's a seasoning, not a meat. I'd cook more vegan dishes if cheese wasn't so awesome. More details here.
I'm not a spectacular cook, but I do cook a lot, and I'm learning. Most of it turns out pretty good. I'll tell you about it when doesn't. I try to cook seasonally, and use local foods wherever I can but the occasional far-away veg hits an off month menu. I cook a lot of vegetarian meals, but I make meat once a week or so. Bacon doesn't count, because it's a seasoning, not a meat. I'd cook more vegan dishes if cheese wasn't so awesome. More details here.
Why Saturday's Mouse? It's a reference to a story about my cat. Or about mice.
You know how it goes, I'll just be walking down the street and throngs of people will come up to me with questions. So finally I was like, "Whoa." And I set up this FAQ.
Why do you do this?
What, talk to myself in FAQ format as though people care? Or the blog thing?
A friend of mine suggested it, probably hoping I'd stop filling up her Facebook feed with one liners about dinner. It's handy for me as a reference page for those nights when I'm like, "I don't know what to cook." Or those nights when I'm asking sous chef Brian to get dinner started before I get home, and he's all, "How do you cook that?" Or when a friend asks for a recipe. Most of what I cook that involves anything more than pasta and cheese is posted here, so it's easy reference.
Why "Saturday's Mouse"?
Because I think I'm hilarious. Seriously. And that's a phrase I used in a totally unrelated blog post years ago. And I liked it.
Who are you to tell me how to cook?
Seriously, nobody. There's a lot of better places to get recipes and techniques.
Your meals baffle me. I see posts for bacon cheeseburgers and for seitan.
That's not a question. I don't see myself giving up meat, but most days I don't eat it. So if you don't want to even look at meat, this may not be for you. Also, I tag things vegan if one of the many recipes in a post is vegan, or if the only non-vegan thing is honey, because you can always swap out a sweetener.
You're sort-of wishy washy on the organic thing. What's the point?
Yeah, I try, sort of. There are a lot of foods that I only buy organic, and then I get all loose with it. I buy organic milk, whether it's cow, or almond, or soy, but then I buy some conventional cheese, because I like options in my cheese, unless I'm able to get local cheese and then I get local, organic, raw cheese. The organic labels don't all mean the same thing anyway. I buy meat without antibiotics or hormones. I will buy some conventional produce, but I try to stick to these minimum guidelines. Sometimes I have to choose between organic and local, and it's a coin toss, unless it's one of the veg listed in those guidelines. There are local farms I know I can buy from even though they're not certified organic. When I buy something in a package, I really try for organic, but I don't succeed all the time. I talk about eating food "made of food" and that's my main goal - knowing what all the ingredients are. Triscuits, for example, are generally kept around, and they have three ingredients. Nice. I can't stick to Marion Nestle's rule of not eating anything with more than 5 ingredients, but I keep it in mind. I also eat Doritos and other garbage, but that's at work and thus does not count.
You make references to CSAs pretty often. What's that?
See this. While we're talking about local stuff, I tag a recipe local if 1. I remember to and 2. most of the stuff comes from around here OR 3. it's a local restaurant or event. Also, my current farmshare barely counts as local (if we're using 100 miles as our yardstick) because they're 92 miles from my house. You know what's closer than my farm? The Atlantic Ocean. Seriously.
Who is Sous Chef Brian?
My husband Brian often helps me cook. He asked me to call him that. He has some misguided belief that he can't cook (probably based on the years of harassment I gave him when he put cinnamon in the meatballs). If he's not at school, he's probably helping me, or at least taking pictures. Also I like him. He mentioned that I didn't say that here.
How do you do that Printable Recipe at the end of your posts?
I rely on Recipe Wiz for this - I type in my recipe and it spits out some HTML for me to use. It's supposed to help recipes appear in Google's new recipe searches, but I'm never going to have the definitive recipe for any dish, so I don't care so much about that - I just thought the printable page would be handy to add.
Send me your comments, complaints, questions and recipe suggestions.
updated 11/12/11
