50 posts from 2008

If you're a word-nerd like me, this isn't so much a dictionary as it is a reference manual for words. To illustrate: the entries go something like this.

• hindrance (not hinderance.)
• compatriot for a fellow countryman. Not to be confused, in meaning or spelling, with expatriate.
• British Honduras. Former name of Belize.
  

Next to a different plant in the Six A-plant's old pot for scale:

Boston.com's The Big Picture (long one of my favorite photoblogs) has the rest of these amazing photos.

Pat Kiernan, newsman supreme for NY1, has a blog. With video of Pat's Papers.

Now I never have to move to New York.

For REAL? Thanksgiving is next week already!?

I've often been the cook for holiday festivities, and either vegetarian myself or cooking for those who are. Here's my best food-for-a-crowd holiday recipe for those who don't love the meat. (Honestly? I think turkey isn't so delicious anyway.)

Please don't use this much cheese or you will throw your back out taking it from the oven, AND die of a heart attack. Recipe via Bon Appetit.

Butternut Squash and Mushroom Lasagna

• 1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
• 2 1/2 cups chopped onions
• 1/2 pound crimini (baby bella) mushrooms, sliced (about 3 cups)

• 2 pounds butternut squash, peeled, seeded, cut into 1/4-inch-thick slices (about 5 1/2 cups) *
  
• 1 14-ounce can vegetable broth
• 4 tablespoons chopped fresh thyme, divided
• 4 tablespoons sliced fresh sage, divided

• 3 15-ounce containers whole-milk ricotta cheese
• 4 cups grated mozzarella cheese, divided
• 2 cups grated Parmesan cheese, divided
• 4 large eggs

• Olive oil
• 1 9-ounce package no-boil lasagna noodles

*Updated to add - the precut butternut squash takes 90% of the labor out of this. I don't usually go in for precut stuff, as the packaging is wasteful and it's not usually that hard to cut stuff up. However, cutting up a butternut squash is tedious at best and dangerous if your knives need sharpening.

(Vegans, you can replace the cheese with silken tofu/nutritional yeast...you know how to do it!)

you know the internet is getting popular when your mom sends you LOLpresidentz.

this page has so may fabulous photos of my favorite presidential candidate evar.