Sweet Pickles

Sunday afternoon, almost hot out; Stella and Tybalt are starting to assume that Mark Twain pose. And I'm pickling.

In between my mom's overflowing sweet pea beds and the CSA, T and I have been overrun with sweet and snow peas. Remember the ending of Weird Science when the popcorn bursts through the roof of the evil (dean's? president's?) house and threatens to overtake the neighborhood? That's analogous to our pea dilemma. Open our produce drawer and the little green pods jump out in a tumble of wilted lettuce (don't get me started on the lettuce problem) and the dessicated beet tops I genuinely meant to cook three weeks ago. It's getting dangerous down there.

Luckily, I discovered a recipe for pickled sugar snap peas, which I've now applied to snow peas and, today, baby carrots and radishes. For the peas I add tiny hot chilies (you can buy them super cheaply at Indian markets and store them in the freezer) and lots of garlic, while the carrot-radish pickles got some garlic and a few sprigs from the lavender plant. I borrowed the lavender idea from a recent article in the Oregonian's FoodDay section. I have no idea what flavor the lavender will impart to the brine, but the results are so pretty--my lame camera work does not capture how vibrant these jars are--that I'm not sure I care.

I made a jar of sweet pea pickles a few weeks ago, so I can attest to how freaking delicious they are. Tart (and tarter the longer they sit in the brine), sweet, garlicky and hot all at once, these little pickles taste amazing on cheese sandwiches and chopped into tuna salad. I brought the last of the jar to my in-laws last week and Fred ate a few alone, dripping over the sink. He's picky, so I'm taking that as a compliment.

I don't know what to do with the carrot-radish pickles yet. Veggie sandwiches? Bloody Marys? A garnish/side for a meal of sticky rice and teriyaki? What do you suggest?

Sweet Pea Pickles

• 1 LB sugar snap or snow peas
• 1 1/4 C white vinegar
• 1 1/4 C cold water
• 1 T kosher or pickling salt
• 1 T sugar
• 4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
• a few whole, hot red chilies or red pepper flakes
• 1 quart jar (sterilize it first) with a lid

1. Put a dry glass jar and lid (separately) into the oven at 300 degrees F for 15 minutes to sterilize. Set aside.
2. Stem and remove the strings from the peas. (I don't remove the strings and have no issues with the pickles' texture, but you may be less lazy than I am.)
3. Heat the vinegar, salt and sugar into a non-reactive pot until the salt and sugar dissolve. Remove from heat and add cold water. Stir and set aside to cool.
4. Pack the sterilized jar with chilies, garlic and peas. Ladle cooled brine over the pickles and seal tightly. Let the jar sit in the fridge for up to two weeks to really pickle up nicely.*

*Note: We actually start eating these within the first few days. The pickling solution grows really intense after about 3 weeks--I like it, but be prepared to pucker--so at that point you might want to pour some out and dilute it with water. (I think that would be alright. I haven't actually verified that idea.)

Eat Beautiful Food

It's been summer for approximately three weeks now, off and on, with coldish cloudy mornings and warm afternoons. It's glorious. After all of my caterwauling about the endless rain, it feels luxurious to sit in the sun on our back stoop, wade through 2666 and watch the tomato plants grow. I'm watching our arms grow tan, our cheeks rosy and glowing.

And while we're still waiting for tomato season (hurry up! I want tomato corn pie and toasted tomato breakfast sandwiches smeared with a tiny bit of mayo), we have baby fingerling potatoes and sweet corn and fava beans to play with and distract our stomachs.

Oh, Favas.

Have you eaten them? Vivid green beans that require shelling, then blanching, then skinning, then cooking and which are so worth it for their buttery, almost cheesy taste. Our last foray into favaland was a pasta I made last week with garlicky lemon sauteed favas tossed with pasta and homemade mint-pistachio pesto. This week I might make a fava spread or a salad, something to eat with a cold lemon-garlic-olive oil dressing and the Puy lentils sitting in the fridge, and roasted baby squash. And some time this week we'll eat a fingerling potato and sweet onion tart and I'll smear avocado on sour rye bread and devour my breakfast.

I love eating in the summer. It takes no effort and everything tastes wonderful.

Today at lunch a (very lanky) co-worker of whom I'm fond admitted to being addicted to food. At first this sounds like a scary admission--something a contestant on the The Biggest Loser says to his shame and the viewers' consternation--but I think I know what he meant.

Food is a pleasure. And in the summer it is a fragrant, colorful pleasure of fruits that stain your lips and hands and sweet baby vegetables, and heavy red tomatoes that taste like a voluptuous promise of happiness and beauty. When food represents so much that is good in the world, when cooking it well makes your friends smile and you hum and dance in the kitchen, as long as you eat it with care and eat what is beautiful (because what good food isn't beautiful: the lacy grain of wheat, the jeweled red of beets, the bright green of new peas) an "addiction to food" is less a pathology than an effort to appreciate what grows in each season and how it gets into your belly.

Increasingly, I find myself looking forward to the day when I can teach our future babies to shell fresh peas and water the basil. And stuff fresh raspberries into their mouths and understand that to live life with this sweetness and gluttony and appreciation and attachment to what sustains us is the best way to live. I work on learning these feelings and living this way every day now. It is hard, but it is good.



P.S. This is Princess. T won him for me at Wunderland Nickel Arcades this afternoon and is immensely desirous that Princess appear in this blog post. Sometimes in marriage it is just best to agree.

The Gray Days of Summer

I know that whining accomplishes nothing but social alienation, but man, these cool gray days are wearing me out.

For a while--meaning, from October through to the present--I was able to content myself with cooking and baking projects, reading, theatre, working and daydreaming, but my body is screaming for some sustained sunshine. We've had random beautiful days, and I've ridden my bike gleefully, even to work, and eaten my lunch, back pressed against the warm concrete walls of the warehouse. I've trudged to the gym and run back out as soon as my workout was over, to drink a glass of wine on the back stoop and gaze lovingly (if fretfully) at my potted vegetables and herbs. I've eaten a small mountain of baby beets and tender lettuce and fresh sugar snaps, and even a couple of tiny, sun-warmed strawberries from my little plants. Summer is here, fitfully.

But on the 4th of July, it is cool enough to keep the back door closed and wear a sweater, and I don't feel like baking bread. The small pile of herbs sitting on my cutting board, snipped this morning from my parents' garden, induces more angst than creativity. And this month's literary project, Roberto Bolano's 2666, does not entice, perhaps because reading about depressed literary critics isn't uplifting. It raises spectres of my own abandoned graduate studies, making me glad and sad, both, to have left the ridiculous and insular world of academics.

I keep trying to imagine myself on the Irish coast, where it is often cold in the summer time, or at the very least, already on our September honeymoon to Kauai. I'm reading side novels about wars and magic--anything to distract me from the moon-colored sky and my uncharacteristic boredom. I even talked the management team into running a warehouse-themed haiku contest at work, and am now at a loss because all I can think of to contribute is

Books books books books books

books books books books books books books

Books books books books books.

When we were little, my sister and I used to sing this kids' song "Mr. Golden Sun," that went as follows:

Oh Mr. Sun, Sun, Mr. Golden Sun,

Please shine down on meee.

You hear that, Mr. Sun? Portland invites you to visit.

Three Pestos

With the herb bounty from our Creative Growers box increasing each week, I've been forced-- really quite aggressively, in that passive-aggressive way languishing fruits and vegetables have of fomenting guilt in the lazy cook letting them rot--to do something with them, something more lasting and copious than adding a teaspoon of fresh chopped herbs to the top of a tart or the last stir of a sauce. Hence the little plastic baggies of pesto dollops now filling our freezer, mint-pistachio pesto, parsley-sunflower pesto, and the standby basil pesto to be precise.

Truth be told, I'm not 100% pleased with any of the pestos--a crime considering the amount of kitchenware, herbs and olive oil that went into them. We did eat a lovely pasta with a combo of the basil and parsley pesto last night, and I have a feeling that the mint-pistachio pesto is going to find its cause smeared onto homemade flat breads and then baked with a smattering of ground lamb and aromatics. But by itself each pesto tastes too...green. A symptom of a lazy cook chucking them into the Cuisinart stem and all (so don't do that!), and a lack of lemon juice, perhaps. The pestos manage to taste both leafy and flat, a little too rich and not bright enough. Like Paris Hilton.

For this reason, I'm not going to give you precise recipes for these pestos. Besides, pesto is easy (just take off those stems and have plenty of lemons on hand). Grab your herbs, your olive oil, lemons, salt, garlic, nuts or seeds and cheese if you like, and grind them up. I like to toast the nuts/seeds before using to bring out their flavor and add depth to the pesto. Then, either put dollops of the pesto into a spare ice-cube tray, or do what I do, and place dollops (they will look unappetizing in this form, but go with it) onto a parchment paper-lined baking sheet. Freeze the pesto lumps until solid and then scoop up with a spatula and pack loosely into plastic baggies. Voila! Instant flavor for pastas, soups, pizzas, roast fish and meats, and sandwiches. Or follow T's example and eat it with a spoon. Just don't, like T, expect a kiss afterwards.