Author Archives: Andrea Middleton

Currently at Reddit, I spent 10 years as a community organizer on the WordPress open source project. I'm also an avid reader, wine enthusiast, and parent of two.

A kid-pleaser: pasta with sausage and kale

  This excellent, simple recipe from Mark Bittman was a huge success at dinner time tonight: Pasta with White Sausage Sauce. I got Bittman’s excellent How To Cook Everything app for free (!!!) a few years ago and have really enjoyed it — I would buy it all over again if I had to, as it’s super-handy to have a high-quality cookbook on my phone. 

In the app, Bittman offers a variation on the above dish in which you blanch greens in the pasta water before you cook the pasta, then chop them up and add them to the sausage after its done sautéing but before you toss it with the pasta. We had some youngish Tuscan kale from the farm stand in the fridge, and it balanced out this simple dish like a dream. For the meat, I used Trader Joe’s sweet Italian chicken sausage. The sweetness of the sausage smoothed out the bitterness of the kale, and the kale cut the richness in this otherwise very mild, buttery dish.  

This meal might only be a kid-pleaser in my house, as our kids have an unusual fondness of kale and other dark leafy greens (as long as they’re not overcooked), but if your kids are odd like mine, I highly recommend trying this recipe. I only used two of the 5 sausages in the package, so I can get another whole dish from that $4 meat purchase. Yay, frugality! 😉 Also, there are at least two adult meals in the leftovers from tonight — win!

Oh, and it was all extra tasty with Trader Joe’s vinho rose Espiral, which sells for the very attractive price of about $4.50 per bottle and is a juicy, refreshing thirst-quencher that you’ll be happy to drink all summer long. Check out their yummy vinho verde, too! 

 
Now all I need to do is figure out what to do with that giant zucchini that Amelia brought home yesterday. Recommendations welcome!

On Being: Mirabai Bush and Contemplation

I’m really enjoying this On Being podcast episode called Mirabai Bush — Search Inside Yourself: Contemplatuon in Life and Work. I cherish Krista Tippet’s excellent podcast On Being whenever I make enough time to listen; it so often feeds my soul.

Here’s a description of this episode:

She works at an emerging 21st century intersection of industry, social healing, and diverse contemplative practices. Raised Catholic with Joan of Arc as her hero, Mirabai Bush is one of the people who brought Buddhism to the West from India in the 1970s. She is called in to work with educators and judges, social activists and soldiers. She helped create Google’s popular employee program, Search Inside Yourself. Mirabai Bush’s life tells a fascinating narrative of our time: the rediscovery of contemplative practices, in many forms and from many traditions, in the secular thick of modern culture.

Blog recommendation: kingofstates.com

If you like funny feminists or New Jersey — or both — then run, don’t walk over to subscribe to my friend and co-worker Michelle Weber’s stupendous blog http://kingofstates.com/

She’s just so goddamned funny. I mean, really — how does someone learn to be so funny and write so, so well? And how did she become so courageous, too? And if I move to NJ and sit next to her a lot, will it rub off on me?

Here’s a very funny, angry feminist post if you like that sort of thing: http://kingofstates.com/2015/06/20/got-a-second-racist-white-dudes/

Here’s a frightfully brave post that made me cry, if you like that other sort of thing: http://kingofstates.com/2015/04/16/on-survival-and-enough/

Blog recommendation: elizabeth.place

If you’re interested in poetry, feminism, rabbits, and reading, you should subscribe to my friend and co-worker Elizabeth Urello’s blog: http://elizabeth.place/

Elizabeth lives in Albuquerque, reads voraciously, writes brilliantly, loves to travel, and makes me laugh frequently — to be clear, I’m laughing at her jokes, not at her. 😉 She’s got a pet rabbit named Thomasina. In parallel universe, I’m certain she’s a movie star. I love the stories she tells.

Here’s a video of Elizabeth reading a hilarious poem that she wrote (at a company event): http://elizabeth.place/2015/02/19/poem/

Blog recommendation: chris.ink

If you like reading/talking about philosophy, liberal politics, equality, and tech, then you should subscribe to my friend and co-worker Chris Rudzki’s blog: http://chris.ink/

His wit is very dry and wonderfully enjoyable, he worked on the Nader campaign in 2008, and he lives in Pittsburgh. He also used to work in a neuroscience lab. To sum up, he’s crazy-smart, very funny, and deeply thoughtful.

Here’s a fun post to get you started: http://chris.ink/2015/06/how-to-buy-a-toothbrush/