The Dominant Fiction and the Night Kitchen

The Winter's First Bread, and other Nibbles

2011-12-09T16:38:00.000-08:00

I did something unprecedented this morning and stayed home, finally giving in to the third trimester fatigue (and threatening emotional meltdown) building since working the bookstore on Black Friday. I think I'm just too pregnant for retail. All the running around, bending and squatting and ferrying books places, and responding courteously to all the strangers commenting on my bulk: Is this your first? Your life will never be the same! (That comment is always accompanied by a slightly crazed, sinister glitter of camaraderie.) Boy or girl? When's she due?

And then there are the people who are disappointed in my size, as if I should go listing around clumsily like a cargo ship. Which I do feel like sometimes (though I love the cargo), but I look more like someone who's taken to wearing a basketball under her shirt than a ship. I put on a red sweater and beanie the other day, and as I left for work T turned to me and smirked, "You look like a hoodlum tomato." He swears it was said with love and complete acknowledgement of my eternal attractiveness. Hmm.

But today. Today I gave in and called in and am resting. Which for me means doing a lot of laundry, cleaning the bathroom, finishing watching Midnight in Paris, reading on the couch, and doing my favorite thing: baking bread.

Little projects like last weekend's cinnamon rolls aside (do make them!), it's been a long time since I've seriously pursued baking bread. Life just got in the way (as it does). But then my friend lent me 52 Loaves, and while in some ways it's a very silly memoir, William Alexander's passionate pursuit of the perfect pain au levain reawakened my need to open the fridge and see a yeasty tub of dough fermenting until dinnertime. Besides, the teaching term is about to end and aside from working the bookstore, my evenings and weekends will be freer. And then I'll have maternity leave. Which really makes this winter the best time to start a sourdough culture and reinvest myself in my bread-baking self-education.

So today I pulled down the standing mixer and made a batch of mostly white (a little rye) dough, which I've shaped into a boule and am about to pop in the oven. I didn't have great expectations--it's been a long time since I baked artisan-type bread and my shaping and slashing skills were never that great--but it's exciting to get started. I couldn't wait to see the dark brown crust (in actuality, a lovely golden) or to hear it crackle and sing when it met the cooler air of my kitchen. It turned out so much prettier than I had anticipated!

Plus, I get to share it tonight with my book club, for whom I've also made French Onion soup and a flourless chocolate cake (yes, I'm bad at resting). Though...that cake might need to be taste-tested before I serve it. You know, just your basic quality control slice two hours before the gathering.

Flourless Chocolate Cake (courtesy of the Whole Foods website)

I think this cake must be delicious (though to be fair I haven't tried it yet, which I know is a recipe-posting heresy), because as I was checking out at the Whole Foods near my apartment the clerk said, "Baking today?" When I answered yes, a flourless chocolate cake, she brightened and said, "Have you tried ours? It's amazing!" I was thrilled to report to her that I was planning on making the same one.

For the cake:

8 ounces bittersweet chocolate chips or pieces

2 sticks unsalted butter, in chunks (I used salted butter, as the recipe calls for no salt, which seemed odd--a little bit of salt really enhances chocolate)

1 C sifted cocoa

1 1/4 C sugar

6 eggs

For the ganache:

4 ounces bittersweet chocolate

3 T unsalted butter, in chunks

1 T milk

1 T honey

1/4 tsp vanilla extract

Cake:

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

2. Grease a 9-inch springform pan. Line the bottom of the pan with parchment paper and grease this as well. Set aside.

3. Melt the chocolate and butter together over low heat on the stove (or microwave).

4. When melted, remove from heat and stir in the sugar. Whisk in the eggs one at a time, and then add the cocoa until just blended.

5. Pour batter into the pan and bake for 35-40 minutes, until the cake has risen and thin crust forms at the top. The center of the cake should be just firm to the touch.

6. Let the cake cool for 10 minutes. Then, invert the cake onto a plate, removing the side of the springform pan first, and then the bottom of the pan. Finally, peel off the parchment paper. Put a second plate on top of the cake and flip the cake over. Let cool.

Ganache:

Meanwhile, make the ganache.

1. Melt the chocolate and butter together as in step 1 (above).

2. Remove from heat and stir in honey, milk and vanilla extract.

3. When the cake is cool enough, pour the ganache onto the center of the cake and use a spatula to gently spread it over the top and sides of the cake.

4. Place cake in the fridge for 30-60 minutes before serving to set the ganache and make slicing easier.

Quick Bread Cinnamon Rolls

2011-12-04T19:37:00.001-08:00

I've been remiss as a blogger, and tonight is no exception because I do not have pictures of my cinnamon rolls for you. First, in a pregnancy-induced craze I ate three of them, and second, I brought them to and then left them at my in-laws in a desperate attempt to avoid eating more of them. So you'll just have to take my word for it that these are heavenly, easy rolls, perfect for the lazy baker who wakes up needing cinnamon buns and doesn't have the stamina to wait 2 hours for the dough to rise.

I found the basic recipe for these rolls on the web, and then modified them somewhat for a more tender crumb and less buttery interior. They bake up just as puffily as their yeasted cousins, but have more of a biscuity texture (pleasingly dense and flaky). You can still top them with a cream cheese frosting, but I like them unadorned with a cup of coffee. You can also make them a little healthier by using whole wheat flour and lowfat milk instead of whole or cream in the dough. I think you'll sacrifice some tenderness and flavor by doing so, but you may feel a lot more virtuous.

Quick Bread Cinnamon Rolls

These are best eaten warm the day they are made. You can re-heat them gently in a 300 degree F oven, covered by aluminum foil to prevent drying out.

2 C pastry flour: whole wheat or white

3 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

4-6 T softened butter, cubed

3/4 -1 C milk or half-and-half

brown sugar

cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

Butter a 9X11 square pan or a 8-inch round cake pan.

In a bowl (or the food processor fitted with a pastry blade), mix together the first four ingredients.

Add the cubed butter and cut in until well-blended. You want the dough to be pretty sandy in texture--no need for the pea-sized lumps of pie or biscuit dough.

Add the milk until you have a silky, slightly sticky dough.

Roll the dough out on a floured surface to the approximate dimensions of 10 inches by 5 inches (I didn't measure mine).

Leaving a 1/4 inch border around the edge of the dough, pat the dough with brown sugar and then cinnamon to taste. Use more sugar than cinnamon, and place a nice layer down. You do want the interior to be spicy-sweet and gooey.

Roll the dough length-wise, starting at the long end closest to you, pinching as you go to encase the filling. You will end up with a dough log.

Cut the log into equally sized pieces (I ended up with 8 or 9) and place each piece snugly against one another, swirly end-up, into the prepared baking dish. It's okay if you have more dish than rolls--I did. Just make sure the rolls you do have are securely snuggled together .

Bake for 20-25 minutes, until risen, lightly golden and firm-ish to the touch. Let cool slightly, pull apart, and enjoy.

P.S. If you feel a little guilty about indulging in these rolls (though you should not! Unless, of

course, you eat three of them), make this lovely, bracing salad to go with lunch or dinner:

1-2 raw ruby-red beets, peeled and very thinly sliced and match-sticked (use a mandoline if you have one)

2 clementine oranges, peeled and sectioned

a small amount of very thinly sliced red onion

lemon juice

good olive oil

sea salt

cracked pepper

Mix the above ingredients together, season to taste, and get ready to feel both seasonal and virtuous. And now if you'll excuse me, it's time for "second dinner." It's for the baby, okay?

Croissants: Take One

2011-11-12T19:38:00.001-08:00

Two nights ago on impulse I decided to dedicate this weekend to croissants. They've been on my baking to-do list for ages now, and it was time to flour up my counters and beat the hell out of some butter.

I did a little internet research and found an amazing blog post at mamaliga.com that details Julia Child's croissant recipe step-by-step, with beautiful, captioned photographs. I also looked in my copy of The Italian Baker (which I've been saving for the future day when I feel like I've graduated from decent amateur to real home baker, master of sponges and puff pastry), but the recipe makes three pounds of dough and I just don't have the confidence to make that much of it. Julia's recipe makes a quaint dozen croissants and doesn't involve building a butter block; instead, you simply bash a stick of butter with a rolling pin until smooth, and then shape it into a circle. This is a good way to burn pre-croissant calories and simultaneously work out the day's aggression.

So, with Gabi from mamaliga behind me (metaphorically) and a mound of pastry flour, Kerrygold Irish butter and parchment paper at my front, I set into the most intimidating yeasted baking process of my life. Because these are not the innocent cinnamon buns or wholesome whole wheat bread, or even the intricately shaped Greek Easter round loaf that I bake every winter; no, croissants come with an intimidating array of baggage: layers of buttery, flaky, fat little crescent-shaped baggage that break my heart every time I excitedly buy one only to bite into a glorified, greasy roll. The best croissant possesses infinite golden striations that make a mess on your plate and gum up the jam knife. A croissant worth eating is rich without being greasy, and airy enough to crack on the surface, while dense enough to provide a pliant, buttery middle. In essence, a croissant must offer you all, or it is nothing.

That's a lot of pressure for the casual home baker, and I think it's why (other than the butterfat quotient) most of us choose to occasionally grab a croissant as a treat rather than incorporate them into the kitchen repertoire. But, I figure I'm at home, a little bored, a lot pregnant, and the weather is cold and rainy. So why not take a chance? Besides, I was wrapped in a fantasy of pulling croissant goodness from the oven like a goddess of butter and Sunday breakfast good will. I envisioned myself benignly dropping off homemade croissants at my parents' and in-laws' houses and basking in the oohs and ahhs.

To be fair, the dough-making process was a lot easier than I'd imagined it to be. You do need to be at home for a six-hour or so stretch, because the dough needs to rise, and then be turned, rolled and chilled twice for 1-2 hours at a stretch before being shaped, and then the shaped rolls have to rise before being baked, and then washed with egg, and you get the drift. This is not a baking project for commitment-phobes. But actually making and shaping the layers isn't too hard, especially with Gabi's awesome instructions. What turned out to be hard was shaping the rolls.

I thought that would be the easy part! You cut little triangles and roll them from base to tip, curving them into crescents. Just like rugelach. But somehow mine turned out long and thin, like the French chef's answer to Virginia Slims. And the four I stuffed with bars of dark chocolate looked like sand crabs. Never mind, I told myself, they'll improve with the final rise. And to a certain extent, they did. Besides, sand crabs are an interesting design choice and probably highly original. And whatever shape they take, they still taste good.

They don't break into a million layers, but they're crispy and buttery and fragment a little bit when you bite into them. The corners are marvelous. The plus side of my shaping snafu is that I'll just have to continue making croissants until they look perfect. The minus side is politely enduring the sound of T's laughter as he walks my little butter crabs across the table...which is somehow made worse by the fact that it is funny. Stinking little pastry crustaceans. Get in my belly!

Cumin-Scented Fall Grain Salad

2011-10-30T22:02:00.000-07:00

This weekend, after two years of grumbling and surreptitious back rubbing, we finally bought a new mattress! It's a luxurious pillow-top queen with memory foam that we plan to spend lazy weekend mornings in before the baby arrives. Sure, we don't have any sheets that fit it and our feather-bed will droop over the sides like my great aunt's upper arms, but these are piddling concerns when met with the fact that we will sleep like babes in arms.

But that's not the only good thing to happen this weekend. The other one involved black rice, millet, butternut squash, onions, cumin, garlic, cilantro, avocado, lemon and olive oil. Not only healthy and beautiful to behold, this fall salad is hearty enough to comprise a vegetarian meal and flexible enough to act as a side dish or potluck contribution. So where's the picture? In my pregnant belly, which is increasingly capable of eating large amounts of food before I find the camera. But I promise you, picture or no, this is worth cooking. You'll feel virtuous and happy eating it, and those two sensations don't always go together.

Cumin-Scented Fall Grain Salad (adapted from Bon Appetit 11/11)

You can substitute any rice and whole grain for the millet and black rice I used in this salad. The original recipe calls for red quinoa, as well as some parsley and chives. I had millet and cilantro on hand, so that is what I used.

1/2 C short-grain black rice

1 C millet

2 C butternut squash, cubed and roasted with some olive oil and coarse sea salt

1/4 C chopped cilantro

1 onion, finely chopped

3 garlic cloves, minced

2 tsp cumin seeds or 1 tsp ground cumin

1-2 lemons

1 bay leaf

4 T olive oil

1-2 avocados

sea salt and pepper

1. Combine the black rice with 1 C water in a small pot. Bring to a boil, cover and lower the heat, and simmer gently until the water is absorbed, about 20 minutes. Set aside.

2. Combine the millet with 2 1/2 C water or stock and the bay leaves. Bring to a boil, cover and lower the heat, and simmer gently until the water is absorbed, about 20-25 minutes. Fluff, remove the bay leaf, and set aside.

3. In a pan, cook the onions in 2 T olive oil until softened. Add the cumin and garlic and cook until aromatic, about 2 minutes.

4. In a large serving bowl, combine the millet with the onion-cumin mixture. Add the rice, cilantro, roasted butternut squash, 2 T of olive oil, and lemon juice to taste. Season to taste with sea salt and pepper.

5. Serve the salad with additional lemon wedges and sliced avocado. I like to top a big bowl of salad with avocado slices, and then drizzle a bit more olive oil and lemon juice on top.

This keeps well in the fridge, but let it come to room temperature again before eating leftovers (or zap it in the microwave--sans avocado--for 1 minute). Definitely taste the leftovers to see if additional lemon juice, olive oil, or seasonings are needed, as grains tend to absorb flavors over time.

Cry Baby Likes It

2011-09-07T21:04:00.000-07:00

I know the pregnancy hormones must be getting to me because the Glee cast's rendition of "True Colors" just made me cry. This is not a good sign, folks. Tomorrow I'll be weeping at long distance telephone commercials, and then woe betide the day I watch a movie with an actual baby in it.

This excessive sentimentality might also be a symptom of the September heat, which has been keeping me up at night. The only thing that gets me to sleep is envisioning little pink baby feet (the bottoms, specifically, which are so wrinkly and soft), and that just loops back to the above issue of my becoming a baby-bearing, infant-centric human weep-a-thon. But before you judge me, O Unpregnant Peoples, know this: There is no stopping the onslaught of irrational feelings that besiege the pregnant female. You might say to yourself, "This is not my beautiful mind." And you might be right...four months ago. Because now you have a brain that might misplace the keys, burn dinner, and forget entire conversations, yet it can spot a fellow mama from a distance of .6 miles and smell any baby in the greater metropolitan area. You don't ask for these changes. They're part of the experience of pregnancy, like painful breasts and frequent urination. And since you have to live with them for nine months, I say revel in them.

I like crying easily at stupid television shows and cheesy songs, because I've never been like this before. I like my little belly, because I've never had one before; and I especially like to rub it absentmindedly while I read or when I'm falling asleep. I like being careful with myself, and taking a rest from heavy lifting and biking to work. I love yoga class. I love eating coffee ice cream (it's safe) with chocolate chips after dinner every night and not feeling guilty. There are still lots of scary thoughts and sometimes experiences to get through, and the never-ending sense that this is so fragile and needs the tenderest care, (and all of these feelings may change when I can no longer see my feet), but right now pregnancy is mostly nice. It's rare to get the opportunity--or to be more honest, feel comfortable giving yourself the opportunity--to treat yourself like a goddess, and pregnancy allows you to do that. At least, the first one does because you don't have to take care of anyone else and everyone wants to take care of you.

The Pickles at the End of the Garden

2011-08-29T14:39:00.001-07:00

Today is one of my favorite kinds of days (the others involving tropical beaches, wineries, rainstorms, fireplaces and movie theatres, though not all at once). It's the last day of a long weekend vacation, the majority of which we spent in Bend, Oregon performing at the inaugural Bend Shakespeare Festival. It was awesome. The audiences were huge and enthusiastic, howling with laughter and thoroughly bent on enjoying themselves--and us--as much as possible. The stage is in the beautiful Drake Park, right in front of the river, which makes the matinees picturesque if brutal (the heat, oh the heat) and the evenings perfect. We spent Thursday through Sunday morning in Bend, swimming and sunning when not onstage, and then joined our friends and cast mates Christy and Jason at the Oregon State Fair in Salem. It had been years since either T or myself had been to the fair, and it did not disappoint. State fairs have to be the tackiest American custom, with the deep-fried candy bars, garish game booths and evangelical stations (our favorites included the "Are You Going to Heaven Booth: Free and Only Two Questions Long" and the anti-abortion booth that was giving away little plastic fetuses, available in Caucasian and ambiguous ethnic). T ate a fried Twinkie and I happily drank frozen lemonade while petting the miniature horses and ogling the piglets. The evening ended with dinner at my in-laws, which is always a pleasure.

But perhaps the greatest pleasure was going to sleep knowing I had today off, too. I love lazy weekday mini-vacations; I always get loads of laundry, cleaning and cooking done, and yet still feel luxuriously unburdened. Today's major project involved converting excessive numbers of zucchini and wilty tomatoes into Zucchini Dill Pickles, Bread and Butter Zucchini Pickles, and Tomato Jam.

Pickles are fun to make because they're both labor-intensive and easy: all you do is prep the veggies and make a brine. The mildly tricky part is sterilizing and processing the jars so that you can safely store the pickles in the cupboard for fall and winter eating. Plus, just as with jam, there's tremendous satisfaction to be had to gazing at all of your gorgeous filled jars in the pantry. I ogle mine several times a day until the new wears off.

I haven't tried the pickles yet (they need to soak up all of the flavors in the brines for 1-2 weeks), so proceed with the above recipe links knowing that they were tested in the Bon Appetit kitchen and so are likely reliable. The August issue recommends serving the bread and butter pickles--a wonderful sweet and sour pickle that I grew up eating, but know is new to many people--with grilled ham and cheese sandwiches. I also love them with cold cheese and charcuterie plates and with tuna sandwiches. The dill pickles, which like the bread and butter pickles are normally made with cucumbers, should go well with any deli-type sandwich, burgers, and again, tuna salad. The tomato jam, which is kind of like a fancy, chunky ketchup with a smoky punch, will taste amazing with chicken and ham, sturdy seafood like swordfish or sturgeon (I can even imagine pan-tossed prawns dipped into the stuff, mixed with a spoonful of horseradish), grilled tempeh, and smeared onto any sandwich with flavorful cheese. And if you don't feel like going to the trouble of canning the jars, just sterilize them and refrigerate the pickles for a month's worth of happy noshing.

One last tip is that while you can experiment with the spices in the brine, don't alter the amounts of sugar, vinegar or salt in pickle recipes. These amounts are carefully measured to kill harmful bacteria; likewise, follow each recipe's instructions for sterilizing and processing the jars. You want a full belly, not an aching one.

I also want to say that it is infinitely lovely to be back to writing on my blog. I've had an amazing summer of rehearsals and performance, but for once I'm eager for the summer to wind down (if not for the sunshine to disappear) because I'm taking this year off from theatre and so will have more time to cook and nest and write. I'll still be working like crazy for the bookstore and the college, but not having evening commitments should mean more grading during the week and more fun projects on the weekends. (Two plans for this fall: apple and pumpkin butters.) Plus, I feel a bit shy but I suppose the time is ripe to mention that T and I are expecting a little buddy in February, which will for sure send our lives into noisy, messy, hopefully adorable arrears, but also slowly afford me more time at home to learn to be a mommy and to teach my little one the pleasures of the kitchen.

Stem Pickles, of the Swiss Chard Variety (Part 1)

2011-06-22T20:46:00.001-07:00

Leafing through one of my cooking magazines the other day, I came across (and have since been unable to find!) a blurb about a bartender or chef who turns swiss chard stems into refrigerator pickles. After last summer's success with pickled sugar snap peas, and in my effort to use every edible part of all of our vegetables, I have decided to give the pickled stems a try. Tonight. Because I have nothing better to do and a huge bowl of fuchsia stems in the kitchen, winking prettily at me, asking to be made into something other than compost.

Because I can't find the official recipe (did I dream it up? and if so, what does it mean that I'm dreaming about pickles?), I altered a promising recipe for asparagus pickles that I found online and followed the sugar snap pickle protocol:

1. Sterilize a quart jar and lid.

2. Boil equal parts water and vinegar with some salt and sugar--in this case, 2 C each water and cider vinegar, with 1/2 T salt and 1/8 C sugar.

3. Put 2 smashed garlic cloves, 2 red chilies, some dill and some mustard seeds, along with the chard stems, into the sterilized jar.

4. Pour the boiling vinegar brine into the jar, using a funnel if you're spill-prone.

5. Seal and store in the fridge. Can be made up to a month in advance.

In my (trivial) pickling experience, the pickles will start to taste snappy in about 24 hours, but will increase in flavor over the next couple of weeks. I'll keep you posted on the result, but my intended use for the pickled stems is for cheese and pickle sandwiches, or what we around here call "jungle style." I imagine they'll also taste nice in Bloody Marys, for those of you in the cocktail set.

Japanese Turnips

2011-06-16T21:37:00.000-07:00

Before you navigate away, because the word "turnip" is not only boring but sounds like something your grandparents were forced to eat as children, know that I am discussing Japanese turnips. And unlike their American relatives, which are rock hard and rooty, these delicate white veggies are crisp, juicy, sweet and fresh. They can be enjoyed raw like jicama, or roasted or sauteed in olive oil and garlic. The first method is refreshing, the second as savory as potato and as juicy as fresh pear.

We've been getting large bunches of them in our CSA tote each week, and at first I sliced them thinly and ate them for breakfast on buttered toast with a sprinkling of smoked salt. Then I shredded them into a lemony salad with young beets and sunflower seeds. The next time I parboiled them and rolled them in a bit of butter and coarse salt. And yesterday I did the best thing yet, which was to slice them thinly, toss them with a bit of olive oil and a lot of minced garlic, and roast the bejeezus out of them. The resultant "chips" were salty and golden, and juicy as hell. I nibbled a few out of the pan and tossed the rest for lunch today with brown rice, black beans, cherry tomatoes and feta.

If you think you dislike turnips, or are finding large quantities of them at the farmer's market or in your own CSA tote, try the below recipe. It would make a nice accompaniment to any type of roast or richer fish; or, eat them on their own, as I did, standing at the pan with a glass of wine.

Simple Roasted Japanese Turnips
Note: All of the literature I've found on Japanese turnips say they're spicy and strongly flavored. Ours have been sweet without even the slightest radishy kick, but it might be best to taste one raw before determining what to do with your bunch.

Japanese turnips
olive oil
2 cloves garlic, finely minced
coarse salt
pepper

Preheat oven to 425 F.
Trim and thinly slice turnips (1/4"), setting aside the greens for sauteing.
Toss the turnip slices with a healthy lug of olive oil, the minced garlic and a pinch of salt, and spread into one layer.
Bake until the turnips are starting to turn tender and golden, then flip with a spatula.
Continue baking until golden and somewhat shriveled, but not dry or burnt.

This all takes roughly 45 minutes, but as I didn't watch the clock (I was watching Buffy), be sure to check the veggies occasionally to get the texture you like.

Fudgesicles, Jessica-style

2011-06-13T19:16:00.000-07:00

It's happening.

The rainy hours are growing fewer and the blue skyed moments are beckoning us outdoors to sit in puddles of sunshine. My brandywine and roma tomatoes are reaching upwards, and the yellow squash adds a new leaf each week. The strawberries are putting forth green fruit, and the sage looks like it will take over the world.

It's springtime in Portland. When summer seems almost possible.

And because we Portlanders go a little crazy when we see the sun, we drag out the summer dresses and the pale ale and tbe BBQ well before the weather warrants. We do crazy things, like shiver sweaterless on the patio and make popsicles that we have to eat indoors.

As if to tease, and in the time-traveling way of all food magazines, my Bon Appetit and Food and Wine are arriving with the brazen heat of midsummer in their recipes, all ice creams and cold seafood salads. And even though no reader above the Mason-Dixon line has access yet to local heirloom tomatoes or watermelon, it's hard to resist the urge to run out and buy all of the shipped-from-overseas produce that you can hold, so that you too can eat fig and feta salad and fried squash blossoms. I practically sit on my hands on our backdoor stoop, whispering to my plants to grow, grow, grow into such marvelous meals.

Luckily, one doesn't need to wait for hot weather to make popsicles. And when I saw Deb's recipe for fudgesicles on Smitten Kitchen, all of my memories of the 3pm summer camp ice cream ritual arose and I knew I had to make them, rain or shine.

First I went out and bought the cheapest, most colorful popsicle set I could find (Jelly Belly brand, in case you're interested). And then I bought organic dark chocolate and hemp milk, because my sister Jessica can't eat dairy. And then I got to work.

This recipe takes ten minutes. Substitute whole milk or any other alternative "milk" for the hemp; I like to use hemp milk in vegan baking because it's tremendously rich and creamy, and full of omega-3 fatty acids. It doesn't taste great straight out of the box, though. A little...plant-y. You can also use semi-sweet chocolate for a milder flavor; again, I had to avoid dairy and dark chocolate is a lot more appealing than carob.

Fudgesicles (makes 4)

2 T chopped semi-sweet or dark chocolate

1/3 C sugar

1 T cornstarch

1.5 T cocoa

1.25 C whole or vegan milk

pinch of salt

1/2 tsp vanilla

1/2 T butter

Melt the chocolate in a heavy pan over low heat. Whisk in the milk, cocoa, cornstarch and salt and cook (5-10 minutes) until thickened. Remove from the heat and whisk in the vanilla and butter. Cool slightly and pour into the popsicle molds. Freeze.

the girl next door

2011-06-06T18:16:00.001-07:00

We have a new neighbor.

She's like chartreuse molasses, or something else similarly vibrant and spaced out; maybe she's a neon flower through the haze in an opium den.

She came to the door in black clothes and a beige beret and stayed for an hour. I know about her previous relationship in Georgia; her injuries as a dancer and photographer in New York City; her need to repaint her bedroom turquoise because the sage color is too deadening. Her love of curtains, and how she doesn't really drink much, but a beer on a hot day in the backyard is really nice. And she'll be drying her unmentionables on a laundry line out back.

I was in the middle of playing hooky to grade papers all day when she rang the bell, and the whole time she stood here, petting the cat, drawling sweetly about this and that, I couldn't decide if I'd met my new best friend or someone I will spend the next several months studiously avoiding by allowing the dinosaur ferns out front to finally obscure the front door.

I'm charmed by her friendliness and her weirdness (she kept referring with nostalgia to her "old neighborhood," which it turns out is a few blocks north of here, about five minutes away), but a little worried that the (miniscule) backyard is about to be invaded by 8,000 carefree artist types plunking away on guitars to all hours, amid the fuschia underpants swinging drowsily from the clothes line.

And then, what's so terrible about that? I'm always bemoaning the lack of community in our short row of apartments, and a super friendly neighbor who loves our cats and vintage furniture and fabrics and, okay, adds a little quirk to our backyard sounds fun. I think I've become so used to people being inaccessible--maybe to being a little bit that way myself--that someone so un-anxiously outgoing is a bit of a shock.

It's almost like Pippi Longstocking went to Sarah Lawrence, mated with Phoebe from Friends, and then the issue of that union moved in next door.

Readers, I sense a story.

Humble Pie

2011-05-22T16:55:00.000-07:00

My husband doesn't really like dessert. The first time I made dinner for him, aside from extracting a promise from my roommate Justin to retire to his room very early in the evening, I baked almond biscotti and hand-dipped each cookie in bittersweet chocolate. While I was cooking the seafood rigatoni and making the salad, I gazed approvingly at those golden crescents, imagining T dunking a cookie into a cup of coffee at the end of our (amazing) meal, and envisioning me in bridal white. (I can't help it; like all 18th century authoresses before me, the best romances end in matrimony.)

Well, Justin and I enjoyed the cookies, albeit with neither of us desiring subsequent nuptials. T ate two generous helpings of the pasta and praised the salad and ignored the biscotti. Sweets just aren't his thing. I was baffled, and a little impressed. I like my dessert.

Over the years I've learned the few desserts that do appeal to T. Anything with fresh berries. Dark chocolate brownies with walnuts. Salted chocolate chip cookies. And we fight over coffee ice cream. So this morning when I offered to make dessert for Sunday dinner with his parents, I already had in mind a lazy crisp filled with strawberries and rhubarb.

Crisp (or crumble, I've yet to determine a real difference between the two) is a wonderful alternative to pie, because it's both less time-consuming and fruitier. Pie is lovely (okay, beyond lovely and bordering on heavenly), but the pastry crust does become a dominant flavor; in a crisp/crumble, a sweet, nutty and buttery crust gives way to a spoonful of rich stewed fruit. What lands on your tongue is fruit, and the topping simply provides a spicy complexity and wonderful texture.

Also, I'm lazy. Why fret over a pie crust that falls apart or is too tough or doesn't have enough flakiness when you can scrunch some butter, oats and sugar in a bowl, pour it over fruit and call it good?

I added oats, ginger and cinnamon to the usual flour/butter/sugar topping to add texture, nuttiness and a subtle kick to the streusel. You could add finely chopped nuts, too (almonds or walnuts would be nice), or grind the oats a bit for a finer crumb. It's pretty impossible to go wrong with a crisp, so experiment with your favorite fruits and flavors. In the summer cherry-almond is a nice combination, as is peach-pecan. One last note, crisps aren't always beautiful in the pan, but pair your spoonful of vibrant fruit and golden crumb with a scoop of softly yellow vanilla bean ice cream, and you have a sweetheart of a dessert.

Strawberry Rhubarb Crisp (adapted from Gourmet)

In a bowl, combine: 2 lbs strawberries, halved; 1 1/2 lbs of rhubarb stalk, in 1/2 in slices; 1 C sugar; 3 T cornstarch; and 1 T lemon juice. Toss and pour into a 3 quart baking dish.
Wipe out the bowl and combine: 1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, softened and cut into small pieces; 3/4 C brown sugar; 3/4 C flour; 1/4 tsp salt; 1 1/2 C rolled oats; and a pinch each of cinnamon and ginger. Mix together with your hands until the butter is integrated and the topping comes together in little clumps.
Spread the topping over the fruit, pressing down a little with your hands if you like a firmer crust.
Bake in a 425 degree oven for 45-50 minutes, until the fruit is bubbling and the topping is golden brown. Serve warm, with ice cream or whipped cream as desired.

Charlotte, NC

2011-04-10T21:27:00.000-07:00

We just returned home from a whirlwind trip to Charlotte, North Carolina for my little cousin's bat mitzvah. It was Tom's first bat mitzvah, and elaborate Jewish event, and I was as excited to show him the cultural markers of American Jewish adolescence as to see my extended family. We sat through the marathon Saturday morning service, line danced to Shania Twain at the after-party, and ate lots of bagels with my many cousins. The little kids zoomed around in a pack, the ladies (of a certain age) ate and complained about their weight, my grandma looked downright foxy, and in a moment of either pride or utter humiliation (jury's out) I exchanged party dresses with my eight-year old cousin, Olivia, who in my defense is tall for her age. It was really nice.

We rarely get out to the east coast where most of my family and three of my best friends live (though I didn't get to see them), and we miss so much: little kids grow up, we've become adults...it's hard not to feel like an interloper, albeit one with the same genetics, when you pop in and out of people's lives at lengthy intervals. As a little kid on Long Island, I took it for granted that everyone sees their grandparents every week, and that older cousins (now moms of bat mitzvah girls) always babysit for them. That's one of the reasons Tom and I are so invested in staying in Portland--to afford our future kids the same proximity to all of that grandparental, et al love and companionship. I just wish we could have our lives here, in a place so much healthier for and in tune with my nuclear family than Long Island ever was, and still be close to all those aunts and uncles and cousins and grandmas back east. Family will drive you crazy, it's true (I mean, I do tire of my grandmother's comparisons: "You look just like my mother! She wasn't a great beauty, but..."), but families are also tremendously comforting in their, well, familiarity. There's something lovely about walking into a room and knowing all of the old ladies are going to gush about your figure, and there will be little children to tease and tickle, and the male relatives who still pinch your cheek, and the cousins to gossip with. The outlandish symphony of kvetches and kisses and shrieks and coffee spoons stirring into endless teacups is paradoxically a melody of intimacy. Maybe you have to be born in it to find it soothing, or maybe you have to move 3000 miles away to enjoy brief returns to it; whatever the reason, for all its hectic travel, this weekend was relaxing.

Charlotte itself is a pretty and clean, if somewhat anonymous city. Most of the historic buildings have been razed and replaced by skyscrapers, but there are tons of fountains and open plaza spaces with modern art and restaurants. The cleanliness reminded us of Portland circa 1992--wide pristine sidewalks surrounded by trees and happy-looking pedestrians. Tom and I took a long walk Saturday afternoon with my parents and Lukas, and stumbled upon a little graveyard with fallen soldiers from the Revolutionary and Civil wars. We also walked to the "historic South End," which FYI is a ghetto and should be avoided. But what's travel without (minor) misadventure?

Pinky Finger Food

2011-03-31T21:38:00.001-07:00

Well, the arthritis has struck again! Almost two years to the date of the last (and first) flare-up, my little left pinky finger is red, itchy and swollen, and I'm back on the elimination diet of misery. It's not so bad. I can still eat meat, vegetables and fruit. But wheat, dairy, coffee, alcohol and sugar? Nooo. Mornings without coffee are like days without sunshine; and since we have a lot of days without sunshine, mornings have become especially dark. Though I will say this for breaking the caffeine habit (again): after a couple of days, you wake up feeling remarkably alert; instead of plodding downstairs like a zombie, you fairly prance down the steps on the way to herbal tea. I can't decide if the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed perk of going without compensates for the absence of strong, dark, hot liquid in one's mouth. And since that sentence veered so far from its humble intention, let's move on.

I don't understand why a 30-year old woman would get arthritis of the finger, but my naturopath (who speaks in riddles, like a Korean Yoda) tells me it's a good thing, as it's better to store toxins in the joints than in the organs. Because of this, he thinks that I'll probably live a long, cranky life of creaky bones. Nevertheless, it's best not to store toxins anywhere, and thus we come back to the Diet, which is supposed to set things aright. So for the next little while I'm going to focus on the simple foods that I'm eating to detox, in the hopes that it will help someone out there who needs to do the same, for whatever reason. The recipe below isn't much, but it makes a quick and filling breakfast. To feel even more virtuous, you can leave out the yolk.

Breakfast of Champions: Avocado and Egg Duet
1/2-1 ripe avocado
1-2 hard-boiled eggs (I use 1 egg and 3/4 avocado)
coarse sea salt pepper
1. To boil the egg(s): Place 1 or more eggs in a pot and cover with cold water. Add a generous pinch of salt, and bring to a boil. Boil the egg(s) for 1 minute. Then, remove the pan from the heat, cover, and let sit for 10-13 minutes. This should yield a firm but creamy yolk. Run eggs under cold water and peel the shell.
2. While the eggs are cooking, slice an avocado into cubes. Put into a bowl.
3. Crumble or dice the egg(s) and add to the avocado. Season liberally with sea salt and pepper. A squeeze of lemon or lime wouldn't be amiss, either.

What to do with Education

2011-03-25T13:06:00.000-07:00

I was planning to write an entry titled, "What to do with a big pot of roasted buckwheat," because that's my current culinary dilemma, but Oregon's educational crisis (plus the mayhem in Wisconsin, Michigan, and elsewhere) has me thinking. About reform, to be precise, and from an educator's perspective.

Our governor, John Kitzhaber, is currently locking budgetary horns with the Oregon Teacher's Union, which is a fiscal powerhouse in the state and also legitimately upset about classroom size, layoffs, and school closures. The problem is that we don't have enough money in Oregon to cover our constituents' basic needs: food stamps and pantries, mental healthcare, low-income health coverage, housing services and public education. Services need to be cut, and since we've already stripped social services to the bone, the school budget has to be renegotiated.

I think the first problem is that people hear "we're cutting the school budget" and freak out: Classroom size will be out of control! Test scores will go down! Teachers will be overworked or laid off! The powerful teacher's union kicks into an emotionally fueled diatribe about how hard it is to be a teacher.

And it is hard. Non-educators equate teaching with instructional hours, but the fact is that most educational work is done at home or in our offices, when we're planning lessons, grading papers, and dealing with students and administrators; for adjunct college instructors like myself, this is unpaid labor. Public school teachers are compensated for some of this time, but because the work is invisible it is not given the recognition that it deserves. Or the financial consideration. A teacher who goes from having four classes with 25 students each to 4 classes with 45 students each is not given a parallel raise in pay.

(Worth noting: The average class size as of 2009 in Oregon was 19.4 students per teacher, giving us a national ranking of 49th in terms of poor student to teacher ratios. I think the number, low to the naked eye and high by national standards, is impacted by the high number of tiny, rural school districts in Oregon. I was in public school here from 1992-1998, in advanced classes, and never had fewer than 25 peers per class. )

Let's step into that teacher's shoes for a minute: with 180 students, it is safe to assume that the teacher is grading 180-360 pieces of homework per week, which will vary in length and detail depending on the course. That's roughly 25-50 papers to grade each night of the week (weekends included), in addition to planning lessons and having a life outside of work.

Do you think that teacher is carefully examining each piece of homework to determine each student's strengths and weaknesses, and then revising the lesson plan to cater to those needs? Is that essay being proofread and the grammatical and content errors rigorously addressed? Is it likely that the high-performing students are being lauded without being challenged, and the low-performers chucked, however unintentionally, to the side because there simply isn't time to sit down with the student who after several weeks of class still doesn't understand the quadratic formula or how to write a thesis statement?

No, he isn't.
No, it isn't.
Yes, it is.

I know this because I know public school teachers, but more importantly because I teach their students once they've arrived in college. And my students can't read or write at the college level. Sometimes, and I'm not being snide, my students' critical faculties (reading comprehension, understanding of symbolism and irony, ability to make connections between diverse materials, or apply philosophical or critical concepts to texts) pale in comparison to my eleven-year old brother's, who is fortunate enough to attend Montessori school.

And I think, "We are failing these kids." I think, "My God. I live in an America unaccustomed to thought."

There are people who argue that class size doesn't matter. And to them I reply, "You stand in front of a classroom of 25-45 children or adolescents four times a day and know each of their names, all of their pertinent skills and weaknesses, how to address their individual learning needs, and by the way, keep everyone focused." Smaller classes make these tasks easier. And a teacher who can't do the above with a class of 25 or less should not be a teacher.

Which brings me to the second problem: teacher evaluation.

Currently in Oregon teachers with seniority are protected against firing or lay offs. As a union member who has recently benefited from seniority protection (though not in the educational sector) I understand the security this imparts. But let's be honest--seniority doesn't always equal enthusiasm, innovation or skill; the only thing seniority ensures is experience, and depending on what you've done with that time, that experience could be of negligible use in the classroom. And the only way to gauge the value of that experience, and its application, is to evaluate teachers more frequently and in person.

The current and favored method, standardized test scores, is not a legitimate way to evaluate teaching.

First, a teacher "teaching to the test" is limiting the students' knowledge and abilities to those needed to pass an exam. Standardized tests rely on formulaic questions (multiple choice, chiefly) and brief passages of text, as well as short essays. So students learn how to narrow down an answer from four to two likely choices, and they learn how to read and write very brief documents. And they're not reading interesting texts, or responding to exciting essay prompts; they're being taught to scan a paragraph on any subject in order to pull out the main idea and chief metaphor. They're not being taught that symbols have wide interpretations. Or that reading is fun. Or that critical thinking is more than memorizing facts--that critical thinking, indeed, is being able to ask questions as well as answer them.

And the worst part of this system is that students who are not adept test-takers are labeled un-teachable or left back. And the teacher who has a high proportion of these students in his classroom, or who dislikes this model of education, is considered a bad teacher.

You know what a bad teacher is? Someone who doesn't like kids. Someone without patience. Someone who doesn't remember what it's like to struggle to learn something. Someone without the energy and imagination to continually try new methods of engaging and teaching students. Someone who won't take critique to heart and change her approaches to students and materials. Someone who can't communicate clearly to lower-performing students. Someone too burnt out to care. Someone who doesn't make learning as fun as possible.

There are experienced teachers and new teachers who are bad teachers. If all teachers were evaluated at least once a term by fellow educators, and then given the opportunity for discussion and growth, and then reassessed, and then let go if they couldn't do the job, that would be fair. And it wouldn't cost a dime to implement. And it would raise the stakes for teachers to do their best; and it would raise the stakes for administrations to support their teachers.

But now you're thinking, what about the budget? We still need to cut money.

We do.

And my answers are, in no particular order:

1) Get rid of seniority-based firing.
2) Stop using so much expensive and (studies continue to show) fairly useless education technology.
3) Reduce the administration and increase the teaching staff.
4) Do not hire administrators who are not also educators. Do not hire outside of the state. Set a time limit on job hunts for new administrators. Do not pay administrators more than teachers.
5) Instead of offering "gourmet" course options like anthropology, integrate those subjects into standard courses like English and Science and select teachers who can do that.
6) Look into alternative educational models like Montessori or Waldorf that manage to integrate intellectual autonomy and creativity into largish classrooms that also focus on hard science, math and english.
7) Ask the students where they want money to be spent.
8) Make all teachers contribute to their pension plans (just like every other employee on the planet, who pays into his 401K).
9) Reduce classroom size but have teachers double as academic advisers.
10) Reduce classroom size but have teachers lead extracurricular activities and clubs.
11) Put the school into the community, and the community into the school. Make the school the cultural center of the community by hosting events, renting the gymnasium, inviting in outside groups to host events and join in school celebrations.

At the end of the day, what a school really needs is a safe building, a blackboard, desks, paper and pencils. It needs computers for word processing, and a cafeteria that offers simple, healthy food. It needs students and teachers and a principal.

That's a lot, but it's not impossible and it doesn't need to be expensive.

Tomato Orange Soup

2011-03-01T07:42:00.000-08:00

While the rest of the country gets snow and tornadoes and mysterious earthquakes (not that the latter two are remotely enticing), Oregon gets rain. Full weeks of pouring rain that wails from the sky and mutes our days to a perpetual dusk. Is it any wonder that Oregonians love coffee and microbrews, or that our restaurant journalists write an article a week on where to find the best grilled cheese and tomato soup?

When the sky is slate and the air is that damp wet that eats into your bones, tomato soup fills your center with a delicious, radiating warmth. Other soups are good, too (I'm thinking in particular butternut squash soup and chili), but at least twice a month T marches downstairs and announces, "tomato soup!" with the boyish, military precision of a toy soldier. And I look outside at the cold and the wet, and get cooking.

While I make several different tomato soups, the soup I'm sharing today is our favorite, and can be assembled in no time; plus, it only improves with a day or two in the fridge. The butter and cream amounts are flexible, as is the orange juice. I've made it with the full two cups and been thrilled by the flavor, and also with 3/4 C and enjoyed the tiny orange hint in my soup spoon. And though I rarely eat this with grilled cheese, it begs at least for baguette and a side salad.

Tomato Orange Soup, adapted from Elephant's Delicatessen

2 28-ounce cans crushed tomatoes (I like the Whole Foods 365 organic brand)
1 stick butter
a couple glugs of olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp thyme
up to 2 C orange juice (I prefer 1 C)
1/4-1 C cream (I probably end up adding 1/3 C cream)

Heat butter and olive oil in a deep soup pot over medium heat until sizzling but not smoking.
Add onion and saute until translucent (10 minutes).
Add the tomatoes, baking soda and thyme. Stir, bring to a boil, and then reduce heat to low medium.
Let tomatoes simmer for 20 minutes or so.
Remove pot from heat and puree soup. This is easiest with an immersion blender (a cheap and absolutely wonderful kitchen device), but can be done carefully in batches in the blender.
Set pureed soup back on low heat and add the orange juice and cream. Heat through, tasting for seasoning. (I never find that I need salt or pepper, but I use salted butter and tomatoes.)
Eat, preferably by a window, so you can stick your tomatoey tongue out at the rain and remind yourself that sometimes the winter is worth it.

Farro & Greens Casserole

2011-02-20T20:44:00.000-08:00

I got the idea for this dish from Heidi at 101 Cookbooks, who has posted several lovely farro dishes, including a baked farro risotto. Her recipe calls for uncooked farro which is slowly baked until al dente in a mixture of homemade tomato sauce, vegetable broth, onion and Parmesan. That's a wonderful idea if you have a stash of sturdy grains like farro or kamut in your pantry and no idea what to do with it (one of those well-intentioned bulk bin splurges, sadly resigned to staleness in the cabinet); I've been eating a lot of whole grains lately, and so had a pot of cooked farro in the fridge and no idea what to do with it. When I realized that I also had half a tub of homemade tomato sauce, some leftover Parmesan cheese and a bunch of wilting kale in the fridge, I formed a battle plan.

Skipping the broth, which is only necessary if you're using uncooked grains, I sauteed an onion in some olive oil until softened, added a couple of cups of cooked farro and chopped lacinato kale, stems and all, to the pan, and cooked that until the kale was softened and bright green. I then tossed in the tomato sauce and maybe 1/4 C of Parmesan cheese and let the flavors blend, stirring, for maybe five minutes. Adjust for salt and pepper.

Following Heidi's lead, I rubbed an 8X8 baking dish with olive oil and scattered the zest of one lemon on top of the oil. Don't skip this step. The lemon zest adds enormous flavor and aroma, and imbues the dish with a bracing brightness that contrasts nicely with the rich tomato and Parmesan flavors and the bitter kale. I then dumped the farro mixture into the dish, scattered the top with the remaining cheese, and baked it in the oven at 400 degrees for twenty minutes. The casserole came out golden brown, with a wonderful lemony steam and chewy texture.

What's fun about this dish, and whole grains in general, is that they're so versatile. I could easily have combined cold farro with avocado, citrus, feta and a lemon dressing for a light but filling salad, or warmed it up with a bit of olive oil and garlic, and added pink beans, salsa and sour cream for a taco bowl. I've been making an effort to keep a small pot of whole grains (I like to switch it up, but chewy grains like kamut and farro are my favorite) and one of beans (this week they're pink, just for the prettiness of it) in the fridge each week for easy, healthy meals. Add some roasted veggies or stir-fried greens, and you have a near-instant meal.

Plus, when you eat such healthful meals, you can afford to splurge. Coming next: the easiest, cocoa-iest scones, for you and your sweeties, courtesy of Alice Medrich, cocoa queen.

Something to Blog About: Brown Butter Cocoa Brownies

2011-01-24T19:53:00.000-08:00

I have a growing collection of unfinished blog posts and random pictures of recipes in mid-process, but nothing that I've felt like publishing. I've been busy with work and the holidays and shows, and then I got a cold that just won't quit last week, and the house always needs to be cleaned, and you know how life goes. We've eaten plenty of good meals, and there's political fodder galore for a rant, but somehow writing just gets pushed aside in favor of bed and a few minutes with Alison Weir's fantastic volume on the wives of Henry VIII. But tonight I made what may be the best brownies on earth, and I want to share them with you.

We're going to start trying to get me pregnant (T hates the "we're pregnant" trend, since it's physiologically untrue) in a few months, so I've been making a concerted effort lately to cook more wholesome meals and fewer treats and breads featuring white flour. I am in love with black bean chili with squash and bulgar wheat, and Mark Bittman's tomato sauce featuring squash, ground lamb and cinnamon. Roasted beet salads with feta, avocado and oranges have been making routine lunch appearances. I've also been experimenting with brown breads full of seeds and nuts, trying to replicate the amazing seeded whole wheat from Whole Foods, to some success. But the February Bon Appetit arrived with the Brown Butter Cocoa Brownies on the cover, and I knew they needed to be baked, by me, immediately.

The fact of the matter is, I love chocolate. Not to the chocoholic extent (mostly because I hate the images of romance novels and minivans that the term conjures), but I can't imagine a more satisfying close to pretty much any meal than a square of dark chocolate, or a homemade treat studded with the stuff. These brownies rely on plain Hershey's cocoa powder for their oomph, but contrary to most expectations, cocoa powder creates a more intensely flavored dessert than you would get using bar chocolate. It's also a little more affordable than high quality chocolate, and a little goes a long way. Bon Appetit advises that one use plain as opposed to Dutch processed cocoa, which is darker but apparently less flavorful than unprocessed cocoa. As for the walnuts in this recipe, you could easily omit them, but then why eat a brownie? (I jest, though slightly. There was a time when I wouldn't touch a baked good with nuts in it.) If you do like them, however, the slightly bitter walnuts in this recipe cut the richness of the chocolate and brown butter just enough so that you can appreciate both flavors alone and savor their partnership, simultaneously.

Bon Appetit's Brown Butter and Cocoa Brownies

2 eggs, chilled
3/4 C cocoa
1/3 C plus 1 T flour
1/4 generous tsp salt
2 tsp water
10 T butter (1 and 1/4 sticks)
1 1/4 C sugar
1 tsp vanilla

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Line a 8x8 inch pan with aluminum foil or parchment paper (leaving an inch or two draping over the sides of the pan, for easy removal), and grease lightly.
Melt the butter over medium heat in a large pan. Stirring frequently, wait until the foam subsides and the bottom of the pan starts collecting little browned butter bits. Take off of the heat and add the cocoa, sugar, salt, water and vanilla. Combine well.
Add the eggs one at a time, stirring well to incorporate.
When the batter looks glossy, add the flour and stir well.
Beat the batter 60 times (do it by hand for a nice, quick workout).
Pour the batter into the pan and spread into the corners, leaving a nice, even top.
Bake for 25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out with a few fudgy crumbs clinging to it. Let cool in the pan on a rack.
Once cool-ish, lift brownies out of the pan using the paper or foil and let cool completely before slicing and enjoying.

Brownies can be made up to 2 days in advance. Store cooled brownies in an airtight container.

Buttermilk Biscuits and Portobello Gravy

2010-12-27T21:21:00.000-08:00

I first encountered biscuits and gravy at Humps, one of the greasy "family dining" restaurants my mom loves to stop at on road trips to the Oregon coast. Oregon greasy spoons are like retro Mystery Spots. They transport the diner back to a time when jello on a lettuce leaf constituted salad and everything came with canned green bean casserole. Our ultimate greasy spoon experience, the one that lives on at family dinners and college plays (cough) and any time we cook coq au vin, was in Dexter, Oregon, not at the coast at all but on the way home from Mt. St. Helens.

When we pulled into Dexter we were starving and tired from a long hike--and a terrifyingly close call on what my mom calls dot-dot-dot roads. The one cafe in town had a giant hand-painted sign declaring, "Deadheads Welcome!" and a lot of cheerful hallooing coming from the bar. Thrilled by the surprisingly leftist local culture, my parents shooed us all into the cafe side of the building, where we were met by a tiny middle-aged lady with a big black beehive and cat-eye glasses. That should have been the first clue.

The second was that nothing on the menu was actually on order except for burgers, fried chicken and the evening special coq au vin, which our hostess whispered to us conspiratorially, "has wine in it, you know, but don't worry, it evaporates." She sighed and looked reflective for a moment. "I sure wish the cook would make something I can pronounce!"

The third was when the two gentlemen who arrived shortly after us ordered "hamboogers."

The fourth was that, despite the welcome sign, there were no hippies in evidence; we were decidedly out of our element.

And the fifth was when our lady of the elevated locks cocked her head toward the kitchen window and hollered, "Velma, heat up the oil!"

All of this is true. And the chicken came with a jello mold on leaf of iceberg lettuce, canned wax beans, and some suspiciously hard biscuits.

But at Humps, although there was no adorable hostess in a fifties pants suit--or any deadheads, there was biscuits and gravy. Lumpy, fatty sausage gravy that congealed quickly on top of rich Crisco biscuits. I had the worst stomachache after that meal, and decided I was allergic to biscuits and gravy, which was probably a good call for my heart but a bad one for my mouth, because my word, biscuits and gravy can be good.

Take tonight's dinner, for example. With homemade buttermilk biscuits and a vegetarian portobello mushroom gravy, this country dish takes a slightly sophisticated turn while staying true to its comfort food roots. I'm not going to lie--this isn't health food (though the gravy recipe is from Eating Well magazine and would be healthy served over mashed potatoes or some lean meat), but it is delicious and perfect for cold nights when its pouring (Portland) or snowing (east coast) and you want something warm and simple to eat with a salad. Or a jello mold on lettuce, your choice.

The biscuit recipe is taken from the FoodDay section of the Oregonian, given to me by my father-in-law, and it's one of the best biscuit recipes I've tried (and perfect biscuits are a minor passion of mine). I think the trick is rolling the biscuits in melted butter, so that both top and bottom get a little crunchy while the inside turns into soft, flaky layers. Be sure not to overwork the dough, and to press down lightly on the flour mixture just after integrating the butter. This creates flaky layers during the baking process.

Note: get the gravy simmering before assembling the biscuits. Biscuits are best eaten fresh out of the oven, so you want to wait until 20 minutes or so before the gravy is done to get started on them. The gravy can be made in advance; unbaked biscuits can be chilled in the fridge for up to an hour before baking.

BUTTERMILK BISCUITS AND PORTOBELLO GRAVY

For the biscuits:

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F and melt 4 T butter in an 8-in square baking dish. (I just stick the dish in the oven as it heats up.) Set pan with melted butter aside.
In a large bowl, mix 2 C flour with 2 tsp baking powder, 1/4 tsp baking soda, and 1/2 tsp salt.
Cut 4 T of cold, unsalted butter into small chunks and toss into the flour. Using a pastry cutter, two butter knives, or your fingers, work the butter into the flour until the mixture resembles coarse cornmeal. Gently press your palm against the mixture once or twice.
Make a well in the center of the flour mixture and pour in 3/4 C buttermilk. (I found I needed 1-2 more T of milk to make the dough cohere.) Using your hands, mix the dough just until it forms into a ball and leaves the sides of the bowl.
Dump the dough onto the counter and knead no more than 10-12 gentle times before rolling the dough out no less than 1-inch thick. Using a biscuit cutter or a drinking glass, cut the dough into 2-3 inch biscuits. Gently gather up the scraps to make more biscuits until all of the dough is used up. You should get between 6-9 biscuits per batch.
Roll each biscuit in the melted butter so that each side is buttered, and nestle all of the biscuits into the pan (you want them to touch). Bake for 12-15 minutes until risen and golden brown.

For the portobello gravy:

Finely chop one small onion, two cloves of garlic and 2 medium-sized portobello mushroom caps.
Heat 1 T of olive oil in a pan and gently cook the onion and garlic until soft and translucent, roughly 5 minutes.
Add the mushrooms and saute, stirring occasionally, until they release their juices, around 10 minutes.
Add 2 1/4 C vegetable or chicken stock to the pan, along with 3 T of tamari or low sodium soy sauce and a couple pinches of dried thyme and dried sage. Let simmer for 10 minutes.
In a separate bowl, make a slurry of 4 T water and 2 T cornstarch. Mix until well combined.
Add slurry to the gravy and simmer for another 10 minutes, stirring frequently.
Pepper and salt to taste.
Split open a hot biscuit and add a couple ladlefuls of mushroom gravy. We ate ours with a raw broccoli and apple salad, but any fresh green veggies will cut the richness of the dish and add some vitamins.

Banana Cranberry Cupcakes with Dark Chocolate Ganache

2010-12-08T20:52:00.001-08:00

I love birthdays. I don't understand people who hate to celebrate their birthdays, or who hide the day from well-wishers, misanthropically defying community celebration. After all, unless one has a genuinely traumatic memory associated with his birth date (and I did know one such boy), isn't it nice to be alive for another year? And to have a day on which all of the people who love or even just know you celebrate the fact?

This debate came up during the most recent Leadership Meeting at work. In a discussion about how to boost morale around the warehouse, I suggested making a birthday calendar. (Which, incidentally, I thought to be an embarrassingly innocuous suggestion. I just figured that a pizza party and raises for everyone was a pipe dream.) Immediately, half of the lame indie posers I work for asserted that no one would want to participate in this, people hate sharing their birthday, it was a terrible idea, how would they fit into their skinny hipster jeans if they ate cake, etc. I like how no one wondered how this crushing criticism might affect my morale. I also thought the objections stupid.

"Why not make it volunteer?" I asked, "Besides, doesn't the fact that the leadership team won't assert the warehouse as a caring community suggest an origin for the low morale levels?"

One day, prior to speaking, I'll just remove my shoe and sock and insert my foot into my mouth. Unfortunately, at the meeting, I exacerbated my blunder by staring stubbornly at the management team, silently daring them to come up with a better idea.

I won, ironically by dint of the management's genuine lack of interest in employee happiness; the lanky wonders who boss me around all day were too antsy for a smoke to continue arguing. I'll be sure, however, to honor their original wishes by ignoring their birthdays. Which is a shame, because tomorrow someone else will get these cupcakes.

Banana Cranberry Cupcakes with Dark Chocolate Ganache
Adapted from How To Be A Domestic Goddess by Nigella Lawson

This cupcake batter is assembled in one pot, and bakes up with delicious results. The moist little cakes taste like banana bread, with bursts of cranberry and a wonderfully deep, adult dark chocolate lid.

For the cupcakes:

3 overripe bananas, mashed
1/2 C unsalted butter
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 C sour cream
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
2 eggs
1 1/3 C all-purpose flour
3/4 C sugar
1/2 C dried cranberries

For the frosting:

1/2 C dark chocolate chips or pieces(I used Ghiardelli 60%)
100 ml heavy cream

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Put 12 cupcake wrappers into a muffin tin and light mist cups with cooking spray.
Melt the butter in a large pot. When melted, pull off the heat and whisk in the sugar, vanilla and mashed bananas until blended. Next, whisk in the the eggs and sour cream until incorporated. Add the salt, baking soda and baking powder, and mix well. Finish by adding the flour and cranberries and mixing until just blended.
Bake for around 20 minutes, or until the cupcake tops are golden and springy, and a toothpick inserted into the middle of one comes out relatively clean (a few moist crumbs are fine, you just don't want batter still clinging to it).
Let cupcakes cool in wrappers on a rack.
When the cupcakes are cool, add the chocolate pieces to the cream and heat to a boil in a saucepan. As soon as the cream boils, remove from the heat and whisk until smooth and thick. You can adjust the texture by adding more chocolate or cream.
Using a spoon, frost the top of each cupcake, smoothing with the back of the spoon. It may run a bit, so place a sheet of wax paper underneath your baking rack.
Let cool and enjoy! (Or, as I did below, take a gigantic bite while the chocolate's still warm and resign yourself to happiness.)

Grape and Gorgonzola Pizza

2010-11-28T15:37:00.000-08:00

Last Friday night T and I had a date with my parents and sister at Zupan's yearly champagne gala. No one knows why we keep getting invited; we don't know anyone else present, and only my father buys champagne. But we go, because you can taste as many glasses of fancy champagne as you like and there's a phenomenal oyster bar, along with other delicacies like smoked scallops and manchego with quince paste. Besides, it's fun to dress to the nines and then watch all the trophy wives struggle to remain upright against the weight of their diamonds.

But the party begins late, and by 6:30pm our stomachs were growling. We wanted something satisfying, but fast and light enough to brook a 10pm oyster splurge. And that's how our grape and gorgonzola pizza was born.

I love the combination of of sweet and savory on pizza, and often bake pizzas with pears or figs and crumbles of sharp cheese, or slivers of prosciutto. I make these pizzas with an olive oil base, lightly rubbed with garlic, and then drizzle the toppings with more olive oil and large sea salt crystals. I love a good tomato-sauce and cheese pizza, too, but those tend to be heavier, and T and I are locked in a permanent pepperoni vs sausage debate that nearly always results in Canadian bacon. Last Friday all we wanted was a snack, something to add substance to a green salad. A quick trip to the store yielded red grapes on sale, a tiny wedge of raw gorgonzola, and premade pizza dough. (I know, LAZY.) I thought the high heat from the oven would wilt the grapes and make the strong cheese run a bit, permeating the crust with pungent salt and sweet juice.

It did. The grapes do release a little more juice than is desirable, but you can always pre-roast them to prevent the juices from running all over the top of the baked pizza. As with all pizzas, make sure not to overburden this one with toppings. A healthy smattering will do. Reducing the number of toppings to 2-3 helps you to taste each one individually as you eat, which also allows you to appreciate how they combine to create new, complex flavors. Go easy on the cheese, too; while not a delicate foodstuff, you don't want your pizza to be a gut-bomb.

Grape & Gorgonzola Pizza

1 batch homemade or store-bought pizza dough

1 clove garlic, peeled and halved

healthy handful of red or concord grapes, halved

healthy handful crumbled strong blue or gorgonzola cheese

smaller handful of good-quality Parmesan

extra-virgin olive oil

sea salt

Balsamic vinegar (I used white)

Preheat oven to 500 degrees. If you have a baking stone, put it into the oven now so that it can thoroughly warm up.
Roll your homemade or store-bought dough into a large circle. The thickness of the crust is up to you--I like them on the thin side, because I enjoy the toasty flavor of caramelized flour.
Prick the dough all over with a fork to encourage it to remain flat.
Rub the surface of the dough with raw garlic and then spread a thin layer of olive oil on top.
Scatter the top with grape halves and gorgonzola crumbles.
Sprinkle Parmesan cheese over the toppings, and add a few sprinkles of coarse salt.
Drizzle a small amount of olive oil over the top, followed by an even smaller drizzle of balsamic vinegar.
Bake pizza for 8-10 minutes, or until golden brown and bubbly. Cool slightly and enjoy.

Warm Bread

2010-11-13T22:07:00.000-08:00

T passed his national and Oregon boards today! Which means, of course, that he's out celebrating with the other soon-to-be doctors, and the wives are at home doing...whatever it is we all do when left to our own devices. Or at least I'm at home. Drinking rum. Watching romantic independent films. Baking bread.

Now that the CSA box is coming to an end, and with it the weekly free loaf of Grand Central bread, there's flour in the kitchen crevices again, and the sleeve ends of my house sweaters are caked in dough. (Oh, don't grimace. I do launder them. Occasionally.) This is homely bread--you can see the giant crack in the loaf above--but it's soft and tender, and very convenient. I mix a big batch, store it in the fridge for days, tear off a piece and let a loaf rise in the evening for a late baking. It's not as precise or professional as the breads I make with the Merry Bakers, but it's good and the house smells divine. Plus, a warm slice of bread is perfect for sopping up the rum before bedtime. And the tears, if that movie's kind of sad.

The Humble Loaf
adapted from Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day

6 1/2 C flour: 3 1/2 C white and 3 C white whole wheat
2 C warm water
1 C warm milk
1 1/2 packets of yeast
1 1/2 T coarse salt
a handful of sesame seeds (optional)

In the bowl of your standing mixer, combine the yeast and warm liquids. You can let sit until frothy, or proceed--as I do--with no regard for that chemical process.
Add the 6 1/2 C flour, the 1 1/2 T salt, and the sesame seeds, if using. Stir with the paddle attachment (or by hand) until integrated.
Do not knead! Once the flour and liquids are well-mixed, top the bowl with some plastic wrap and set aside to rise for a few hours. You'll know it's done when the the dough has risen and fallen into a large, flat-topped mound.
At this point, stick your dough in the fridge for up to 2 weeks, or bake a loaf immediately. The chilled dough is easier to work with, and gains more flavor the longer it ferments in the fridge.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees at least 20 minutes before baking. (If the dough is cold, pull off a loaf-sized chunk--1-2 lbs--and shape it and put it into a greased loaf pan to come to room temperature...around 1 hr and 40 minutes.)
Place the loaf pan in the hot oven and bake for 35-45 minutes, The loaf should be risen and golden, with a firm crust and corners. When tapped, the bottom should feel hollow. If it doesn't, or the corners seem soft, remove the loaf from the pan and stick back into the oven for 5-10 minutes.
Let cool completely before slicing for optimal crumb.

Beans and Freedom

2010-11-03T21:48:00.000-07:00

Those two words, analyzed from a global socio-political perspective, can be seen as opposites. After all, and I don't mean to be glib here, impoverished people the world over eat legumes while their political leaders misdirect foreign and domestic capital to their pleasure yachts. But for me, beans are a symbol of a smaller freedom, the personal sort, because they're one of the first things I cooked when I moved into my own apartment; dried beans are the graduate student's Platonic ideal of dinner because they're cheap, you feel hip shopping the bulk bins, and a big pot of beans yields an incomprehensible number of meals.

Tonight, however, beans are synonymous with neither the third world (I'm beginning to suspect that analogy is tasteless, no pun intended) nor my college days. Tonight I happened to meet with my book group to discuss Jonathan Franzen's new novel Freedom and then came home, realized there's no lunch for tomorrow, and threw together a black bean, butternut squash and kale stem (yes, stem) stew in the crockpot. I hope it's good. If it is, I'll post the recipe.

You might want to read Freedom. It's very good, and that's coming from someone who'd thrown Jonathan Franzen into the detested Jonathan Safran-Foer Over-Rated Writers Club. A.k.a. Authors Who Write About Things They Know Not Club. A.k.a. You Tricky Little Man, I Read Yet Another Of Your Novels And It Took Me Until The End To Realize What A Senseless Dodo You Are AGAIN Club. You get the picture. I don't like Foer's gushy sentimentalism or Franzen's condescending "oh I'm so not the elitist white liberal I am (but if you're not like me, you must be a hillbilly)" subtext. But I liked this book a lot.

Maybe because Franzen owns and explores liberal pretensions (while obviously fantasizing about being a rock star). Though I think the book is much more about the true limits of the American freedom concept, applied to romantic and familial relationships. We had a really nice discussion, which included the female readers' fascination with the rock star and the male readers' attraction to Connie. It was fun. I spend so much time sticking labels on books and reading papers about "the Islams" and terrorism (no joke) that I sometimes feel my brain cells holding tiny hands over tiny ears, mouths wide and howling. I enjoy having an outlet for my under-stimulated brain.

So here's to beans and Freedom. May the stew be as tasty as the reading!

Meeskite Soup

2010-10-31T10:15:00.001-07:00

There's a sweet song in the musical Cabaret called, "Meeskite," about two ugly parents who give birth to the most beautiful baby their shtetl has ever seen.

That's a lot like this soup.

Lumpy, frizzy-skinned celeriac meets knobby, chin-haired jerusalem artichoke to produce a smooth, voluptuous soup with a complex herbal flavor and wonderful, yogurty tang. You would never guess that such unappealing roots could soften into rich knobs of earthiness; these are simple vegetables that only need a bit of heat and fat to turn into treasures.

You could leave out the bacon and make this vegetarian, but why would you? The bacon flavor really comes through to provide a lovely smokiness that sits very well with the sour yogurt. All you need to finish this soup off is some chopped greens for garnish (any greens you like: I used spicy, raw salad greens, but kale or savoy cabbage, lightly wilted and seasoned, would do well).

Meeskite Soup, or Celeriac Soup with Jerusalem Artichoke and Bacon

Olive oil

2 celeriac roots, peeled and chopped into 1-in cubes

1/2 lb jerusalem artichokes, roasted and cooled (optional, but so worth it)

1/2 C chopped shallots

2 slices thick applewood bacon, chopped

5-6 C organic chicken broth

1/4-1/3 C whole fat plain yogurt

seasoning to taste

greens for garnish (optional)

1. Roast the jerusalem artichokes, first cutting big roots into small pieces. Toss the raw jerusalem artichokes in oilve oil, coarse salt, pepper, a pinch of dried lemongrass and some red chili flakes. Roast at 425 degrees F for about 20 minutes, until tender. Set aside to cool.

2. Heat olive oil in a medium-sized pot over medium heat and add bacon. Sautee until bacon softens and add shallots. Sautee gently until shallots are soft and translucent (5-10 minutes).

3. Add celeriac to pan. Cover vegetables with a wet piece of parchment paper, put the lid on, and lower heat. Gently steam vegetables for ten minutes.

5. Remove parchment paper. Add artichokes and broth to pot and bring to a simmer. Reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes, or until veggies are tender. Remove from heat and cool.

6. Blend soup in cuisinart or with an immersion blender until smooth and creamy.

7. Add yogurt and blend until integrated. It's important that the soup be cool-ish, or the yogurt may curdle.

8. Reheat gently, adjusting for salt and pepper. Add extra broth if the soup is too thick.

9. Top with optional garnish and enjoy!

Molly's friend Glenn's Banana Bread with Bittersweet Chocolate and Crystallized Ginger

2010-10-27T21:41:00.000-07:00

Hungry yet? I'll admit the lighting for this photo isn't ideal, but trust me when I say that this bread turned out perfectly: moist but light, with each bite a flavor blast of humble banana, dark chocolate and crystallized ginger. It's not too rich or sweet to eat for breakfast, but it would also make a lovely dessert, plain or with whipped cream and an espresso.

I've been making banana bread for years, ever since I went to college and decided to try the old Wendy Gordon Bake a Banana Bread and Find a Mate for Life trick. (Banana bread is how my parents fell in love. In our family, banana bread baking is synonymous with serious monogamy.) I didn't find my mate in college (in fact, in an odd turn of events, my first serious boyfriend baked me a banana bread), but I do make my mom's banana bread relatively frequently for T, and like to think that each loaf is a little dose of love potion.

What I like best about my mom's recipe is its focus on the banana. She uses canola oil instead of butter, which yields a wonderfully moist and banana-y taste without the distracting richness of butter-based breads. She also uses brown sugar and plenty of cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger. When we were little she would make one plain loaf and one with chocolate chips, and that second loaf would maybe last two days, with each of us savoring the slightly sticky top and the banana flecked crumbs.

The bread I made last night is a fusion between Molly Wizenberg's, which I read about in her book A Homemade Life, and my mom's tried and true recipe. I swapped the butter for oil and the sugar for brown, and added a bit of vanilla extract to the batter. Otherwise, it's exactly as written on Orangette and it is perfect.

Bake some for your lover. Or...bake it, open the window and see who strolls by.

Winter Squash with Bacon-Walnut Pangrattato

2010-10-26T22:17:00.000-07:00

When I opened my CSA tote last week and lifted out the enormous green squash of indeterminate title (let's call it the Hulk), several thoughts ran through my head, all delicious:

Squash soup with lots of fried sage leaves
Squash and black bean stew

Squash risotto with parmesan pangrattato and amaretti cookie crumbs

Two loaves of squash bread with dark chocolate slivers

But life gets busy and the best laid plans--lazy, slowly-stirred risotto, for instance--get shoved aside for quicker meals that fill us up and get us on to the next activity. And even though 5 nights out of 7 you'll find me munching an impromptu salad and some melted cheese and veggies on toast, alone on the couch with a book or even worse, Netflix, musing moodily on my students, I really do prefer exciting tastes and lovingly prepared dinners with multiple dishes. Which is why I decided to make something simple yet special for dinner tonight:

Steamed, mashed squash with a crunchy pangratatto of bread crumbs, crisped bacon, fried sage, ground walnuts, and parmesan spread over the top and rendered extra crunchy over the broiler.

I got the idea from Jamie Oliver's Cook with Jamie, which boasts some incredible, easy vegetable recipes. His version involves boiling butternut squash, cubing and frying it, and then serving a parmesan pangrattato with fried squash seeds on the side, for people to spoon over their forkfuls. My squash, steamed all day in the slow-cooker, was too mushy for Jamie's approach, and I was longing for something more substantial, too, like a mash with the richer accents of bacon and walnuts.

Make sure to save the seeds from your squash to either fry and add to the topping, or toast with sea salt, paprika and the smallest bit of cocoa for a great snack and salad topping. You can also choose to keep the squash skin on--especially for tender varieties like butternut--as it is sweet and difficult to separate from the flesh once cooked. (You can easily peel a butternut squash prior to cooking, though.) One last note: the pangrattato can be used as a poultry stuffing or a flavor blast for a squash risotto. It's also really tasty on its own, when all the flavors meld and the parmesan starts to melt and crisp and clump the bread crumbs in the nicest way possible...I finally had to kick T out of the kitchen in order to have enough for the squash.

This recipe yielded a creamy, sweet, salty, crunchy dinner, perfect with our brown rice and apple-fennel-cabbage salad. It also made enough leftovers for lunch, which makes going to work tomorrow almost enjoyable.

Winter Squash with Bacon-Walnut Pangrattato

Steam, bake or boil a butternut or other sweet winter squash.

Scoop out the seeds (save for toasting) and either remove the flesh and mash or cut the flesh into bite-size chunks.

Season the squash liberally with salt and pepper and place in a 8x8 baking dish (or whatever meets your squash volume needs).

While the squash cooks, prepare the pangrattato:

Blend 1-2 C breadcrumbs (I used homemade bread and didn't measure) with a big handful of raw walnuts until fairly fine.

Chop 3-4 slices thick bacon and saute until crisp. Add a handful of chopped sage and cook for 1 minute.

Add the breadcrumb-walnut mixture to the pan and toss to coat. Add a nice glug of olive oil and a few dashes of balsamic vinegar to the pan and mix well. Let it become toasty and golden. At the end, toss in a handful of good quality parmesan, mix, and turn off the burner. The residual heat will allow the cheese to melt and crisp up without burning. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Preheat the broiler.

Spread pangrattato onto squash and broil for around 3 minutes, until crispy but not burnt.

Enjoy on its own or as a side, and happy fall!

Kaua'i, Hawaii and a Gluten-Free Chocolate Marmalade Cake

2010-09-26T15:27:00.000-07:00

T and I got back last night from our honeymoon trip to Kaua'i, Hawaii. It was our first trip to Hawaii and our first vacation in seven years, so needless to say we were chomping at the bit for a week alone on a coast where the water is actually swimmable.

We weren't disappointed.

Everything you hear about Hawaii--that it's paradise, that the water is warm and aqua, that flurries of colorful fish swim just below the surface in shallow reefs (that they share with giant sea turtles!) and coral--it's all true. The picture above is from a hike we took on the Na Pali coastline on the north side of the island. The hike was muddy and rigorous, taking us over the sea cliffs and into a guava jungle to a 100 ft waterfall with a cold, deep pool. (Where no one was nude--it just looks that way.)

T taught me to snorkle, which was fun after I stopped hyperventilating. We swam and snorkeled in the calm waters of Ke'e Beach and Anini Beach on the north side, on the very slightly rougher (and my favorite) Po'ipu Beach on the southeast of the island--where on the same afternoon a monk seal crawled onto the beach to nap in the sun and a giant sea turtle hauled herself on shore to lay her eggs--and we waded in the body-slamming surf at Barking Sands Beach, on the western shore.

Other than fresh fish, the food on Kaua'i wasn't exciting. We found ourselves missing home-cooked meals and fresh vegetables, but the ahi tuna was deep red and buttery and the fruit was unbelievable. If you go, economize by eating ahi poke, avocados, and any fresh fruit you can find. I was particularly taken with dragon fruit, if only for its name and unique appearance.

And drink mai thais. The late afternoon we discovered the $3 mai thais at the poolside bar was a drunken, sweet and happy one.

T's favorite day was when we took a boat up the Na Pali coastline, stopping to snorkel and cheering on the spinner dolphins as they leaped alongside us. My favorite was our second visit to Po'ipu Beach, when we exhausted ourselves snorkeling and then lay in the shade of a palm tree, reading, sunning, and watching the chickens.

I suppose catching a wild chicken would be another bright way to economize. They're everywhere, and the roosters, while beautiful, lose some appeal during their customary 4am salute to the dawn.

If the snorkeling, wildlife, mountain valleys and bright blue ocean doesn't do it for you, then go to Kaua'i for the flowers. This is plumeria, my favorite, for its rich scent and waxy white petals.

But for those of you with a more wintry mind, or for whom the words "Hawaii" and "vacation" elicit feelings of bitterness, longing or despair, try this chocolate marmalade cake. Rich, with a light crumb, sticky, ridiculously easy and gluten-free.

Chocolate Marmalade Cake (adapted from Nigella Lawson's Feast)

10-14 ounces marmalade (pick your poison)
6 eggs
2 C almond meal
1/2 C cocoa powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 heaping tsp baking powder
1 C light brown sugar, not packed
a pinch of salt
a handful or two of bittersweet chocolate chips or shards

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Butter and line an 8-inch springform pan. In a bowl or food processor, combine all of the ingredients above until smooth. Pour into prepared pan and bake for around an hour (mine took about 70 minutes). You'll want to check after 45 minutes to make sure the top isn't burning--if it is, simply cover the top loosely with aluminum foil and continue baking until a cake tester comes out mostly clean. (A few fudgy crumbs clinging to the tester are fine--better to under cook slightly than to dry the cake out.)

Cool completely in the pan before slicing and serving. Enjoy alone, with barely sweetened whipped cream, with a liquored whipped cream (orange liquor or maybe brandy or rum), or ice cream.

The Meat of the Matter, and How to Make a Monte Cristo

2010-09-12T21:39:00.000-07:00

(Or Two Dumb Bums with Beef on the Brain.)

This is me and Nathan:

About a month ago our spouses, T and M, decided to instigate a food feud between us; it was their thinly veiled objective to inspire countless evenings during which they would be fed, copiously, beautiful sandwiches inspired by mutual contempt and competition.

Unfortunately, being who we are, the competition's been mild. (Exhibit A: we keep voting for each other's sandwiches.) But the food...that's been anything but.

A couple of weeks ago we made vegetarian sandwiches with brie and goat cheese, oven roasted tomatoes and roasted garlic mayonnaise, fresh basil, bell peppers, and toasted pine nuts. They were mighty fine. I ended up being handicapped by the goat cheese--not a crowd pleaser--but even I had to concede that Nathan's fresh-tasting yet creamy sandwich was delicious.

Tonight was round two, the Meat Sandwich, and I was ready to dominate. Unfortunately, Nathan slaved away all day and made the most glorious French Dips we've ever had. He smoked and then roasted the beef, sliced it into thin strips and smattered the top with pan-fried onions. The meat and onions ended up on very lightly toasted baguettes with aged Gruyere, dipped by the eater into a rich, salty jus. Somehow intensely satisfying yet not rich.

Thank goodness, because we had to save room for the Monte Cristos.

A Monte Cristo, though recipes vary, is a battered sandwich stuffed with thinly sliced ham and melted cheese. I made mine by pressing two crustless pieces of high-quality white bread around black forest ham and Havarti, with thin smears of butter and homemade currant jelly. The sandwich is chilled, tightly wrapped, for a few hours, and then dipped into a simple batter (think thick pancake batter) and fried like grilled cheese in a hot buttered pan. The hot golden sandwiches get a final dusting of confectioners sugar and are eaten dipped into jam. Homemade blackberry jam.

In all honesty, as luscious as the monte cristo was--like savory French Toast, crisp and creamy, salty and sweet--I preferred the French Dip. I just wouldn't order anything like a Monte Cristo in a restaurant, because I don't enjoy very rich foods.

T agreed with me, but M and Nathan liked the monte cristos. So we tied.

Which, with all of the objectivity I can muster, was exactly the right decision.

To Make Your Own Monte Cristo: (1 sandwich)

2 slices high-quality white bread, with the crusts cut off and saved for another use (I ferret mine away in the freezer for future bread crumbs)
2 slices thinly cut ham or turkey
1 nice slice of havarti / any melty cheese you like
butter
jam
confectioners sugar
1/3 C flour
1/3 C water
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 egg

Lay bread slices on your working surface. Butter both slices of white bread and spread jam onto one of the pieces.

Fold the ham or turkey so that it fits onto one of the slices of bread (nothing should hang off the side of the slice).

Top the meat with the cheese.

Cap the sandwich with the second slice of buttered bread and firmly press on the top and sides so that the sandwich is sealed.

Wrap tightly in plastic wrap and chill for 45 minutes to several hours. This helps to seal the bread and keeps the sandwich from falling apart during the frying process.

Next, Prepare a thick batter using the flour, water, salt, baking powder and egg. Whisk until uniform.

Unwrap the sandwich and dip into the batter, covering completely.

Fry the sandwich in butter over medium heat until golden on both sides.

Hint: My technique--and this makes flawless grilled cheese sandwiches, too--is to heat the butter until golden, set the sandwich into the butter, and then cover the pan and lower the heat to medium/medium low. Flip when golden on the bottom and repeat process. Covering the pan over a low heat encourages a golden crust to develop while trapping enough heat to melt the cheese before the sandwich burns.

Serve hot, sprinkled with confectioners sugar and dipped into jam.

Apple Dried Cherry Challah and Sweet Corn Chowder

2010-09-11T17:18:00.000-07:00

One of the best parts of summer's end is using summer produce, like tomatoes and sweet corn, in fall dishes like soups and stews. On a rainy day earlier this week a bundle of delicate, baby carrots and sweet onion went into a beef bourguignon, and tonight we'll eat a light, creamy chowder of sweet corn and heirloom tomatoes. All week we've been biting into challah stuffed with new apples and dried cherries to welcome in the Jewish New Year, Rosh Ha'shanah.

I love this comforting food that's still fresh and green. We're in that tiny space of the Oregon year where we can enjoy the colors and diversity of summer veggies while baking the breads and stirring the thick soups essential to our damp, chilly nights. It's also the time of year that I associate with returning to our kitchen table, and replacing the hastily gobbled tomato sandwiches and pesto pasta bowls that get us through summer with longer, more complicated meals that involve sitting together with cloth napkins, silverware, a glass of wine. Summer is supposed to be languorous, but I find the fall and winter to be so; fall and winter in Oregon stretch from October to June, and the steady drip of rain sets a slow metronome rhythm to each day. The here-and-gone vitality of our summers is thrilling (look! the sun!), but it's easy to fall back into the seductive lull of rain and steamy tea pots.

That said I'm glad today is sunny. I've spent the afternoon outside sewing a quilt for Kate and listening to history podcasts on Catherine the Great and Catherine D'Medici (in case you've been wondering, the horse story is a myth, but the Black Queen earned her moniker) drinking thai iced tea with milk and sugar and missing my bike, which is at the shop, suffering from multiple mechanical woes. (The guy looked at me and said, "You ride your bike a lot, huh?" I wanted to be truthful and admit that I just commute on it, but I loved the unspoken assumption that I was a hardcore biker too much to say so. I don't know why I needed the charade, but I could almost feel my leg muscles strengthening and defining as I stood there.)

Tomorrow is phase two of the Nathan Whitney-Little Chef Sandwich Competition, in which neither chef is as competitive as his and her respective spouses, and everyone drinks too much hard cider. I think I'm going to do a riff on the Monte Cristo and stuff sturdy but soft bread with aged ham, Havarti cheese and some kind of chutney, press in the sides, dip the sandwich in egg, and fry it until golden and melty in butter or olive oil. It's not the kind of dish that I would normally eat, but it's luxurious and unusual.

And I feel compelled to say something political, given today's date, but all I feel is political exhaustion and frustration. I want the wars to be ended. I want there to be available healthcare and jobs and housing assistance for all Americans. I want the government to admit that we can't keep funneling money into a fight against an "-ism," which is only an idea and thus indefatigable in its ability to influence, to be acted upon, to be disseminated and undercut. 9/11 was a tragedy, but it is not a reason to continue dangerous and endless policies in countries whose histories and rivalries we do not understand.

To commemorate 9/11 I'm going to share a meal grown by local farmers with someone I love. I'm going to buy a Koran and put it next to my Hebrew bible. I'm going to approach my life as if I lived in the pluralistic, tolerant, humane world I would like my children to inherit. And maybe, inshallah, they will.

Slow Cooker Sweet Corn Chowder, However You Like It

This isn't so much a recipe as a suggestion. I used what I had on hand, and so should you: feel free to add in diced bell pepper, chunks of potato, leftover chicken, or sliced celery. You can also cook this on the stove--simmer until everything but the dairy is just tender and bright, and then add in the milk, heating through. It actually takes far less time on the stove--maybe 2o minutes of simmering and then 5-10 minutes after you add the cream. The advantage of the slow cooker is that it allows flavors to concentrate...and you can leave the house.

approximately 3 C fresh or frozen sweet corn (remove the kernels from the cob)
a few slices of bacon, diced
1 small onion, finely chopped
1-2 smashed garlic cloves
1 small hot pepper, minced, or a 1/4 tsp dried chili flakes
an heirloom tomato, roughly chopped
tiny fistful of fresh sage leaves
2-3 sprigs of fresh thyme
a dash of smoked paprika
stock
1-2 C milk or cream
salt and pepper to taste

Heat a bit of olive oil in a pan and add the diced bacon. Cook until crisp and then add add the chopped onions, garlic and hot pepper (you may drain the bacon fat if you like, but it adds significant flavor). Saute until the onions are translucent but not browned. Add the onion mixture to the slow cooker, along with the corn, stock and spices. Stir and cook on low, covered, for 2-3 hours. If you are using potatoes, be sure to add them in at this stage.

About an hour before eating (less if you're making this on the stove), add the milk or cream to the soup and taste for seasoning. Salt and pepper as you desire. Cook the soup on high for about an hour. When finished, adjust seasoning as necessary and serve hot with grated cheddar and crusty bread. I bet a dash of hot sauce would be good, too.

And then sometimes good things happen

2010-08-30T20:54:00.000-07:00

It's been a hard few days for us, and then the rain came this morning and it was difficult to get out of bed and drive to work. I fueled myself on long-steeped tea, reasoning in that not very coherent, early morning way that if Edith Wharton's characters can get a buzz from English Breakfast, so can I. (Not true. A cup of coffee and another cup of tea later, I felt somewhat conscious. Also, why is caffeine the only thing I remember from House of Mirth?) I pulled on my Oregon Girls Rock t-shirt that I save for cheerless days and my favorite ripped jeans. I packed an especially delicious and unusual sandwich. I slipped a Neko Case CD into my purse.

I was ready to be gloomy like the baddest most emo hipster poser you know.

And then I went upstairs to kiss T goodbye.

I think I married T because I had no other choice. And before you get huffy, let me explain. I met him and electrical currents zinged and I felt peace descend. My brain shut down completely except for one reverberant thought, thrumming through my limbs, that let me know, in these absolute almost godly tones, that this someone was for me. Of course, I didn't know that we would fall in love and get married and become the proud co-owners of an orange velvet couch (seriously Tom, I like the couch), but somehow I knew that future was possible.

I tried to delude myself for a little while, imagining T as a wild fling before I moved to New York for school, but it's hard to resist a 6' 3" dark-haired, blue-eyed prankster who dances to embarrassing love songs he makes up about me, and makes the best hash browns, and attracts the adoration of animals and babies everywhere, because he's really that kind. True, he also likes to pants me while I'm washing the dishes, and he's filled my Netflix queue with manga and monster movies, but I'd watch a month's worth of manga for one of T's hugs, because I feel like I'm disappearing into comfort. Six months into knowing Tom and I was hooked. More than seven years and life without him is like a Caesar salad without the anchovies in the dressing. (In other words, improbable. Inedible. Completely and utterly beyond the order of things.)

Tomorrow we will be married two years, and it's been awesome. Not easy, not all the time, but maybe better for that. I know I'm braver and kinder and just possibly, minimally less stressed because I get to kiss him goodbye each morning, and hello every night. And because he's a chiropractor and will give a back rub in exchange for a back scratch. I've never been in better alignment.

Take that how you will.

Happy anniversary, my sweet man. I love you.

Unlike Snow White

2010-08-27T18:12:00.000-07:00

Yesterday one of Tom's childhood friends died of an oxycotin overdose. We think he took it recreationally, with his girlfriend, and just took one too many and so never woke up. Like Heath Ledger, and so many other people who take these drugs liberally, with no stigma, because doctors dispense them.

We have some experience with less acceptable drug use in my family. One of my siblings is a recovering methamphetamine addict. When she was high she was a raving lunatic with drug-induced paranoid schizophrenia and painful ulcers from head to toe, where she'd scratched the "bugs" away. People see what meth does to a person and they think they're looking at a trailer trash loser whose parents did something wrong. It's shaming to the parents, and the siblings, and eventually--if you're lucky enough that this person stops using--to the drug user, who knows that she's done something illicit and ugly. My mom thinks that the cultural stigma against crystal meth helped bring my sister back from the brink; she wanted to live in this world.

Meth is a bad drug. And while I support the legalization and de-criminalization of drugs, to reduce drug cartel violence and hopefully inspire a more transparent social conversation and response to drug use and treatment, it's really hard to say that people should be able to buy it. Heroin fits into that category, too, because it's so dangerous. Two Reedies (my Alma mater) have died of overdoses in the last year. But I'm not sure that making heroin illegal has stopped anyone who wasn't already disinclined to try drugs from using it. Instead, illegalizing drugs like pot, heroin, cocaine and meth has flooded our prison system with low level offenders and helped a devastatingly violent black market to flourish in South America and Mexico. Perhaps most importantly, making these items illegal has allowed Americans to push drug use off to the side as a marginal thing, a low-life activity; we do not face the fact that it is our country's demand for drugs that keeps the Mexican drug lords' pockets fat, and Mexico's northern states in the flux of brutality.

But we do allow Americans to take vicodin, and valium, and oxycotin, and any number of medical narcotics. The last time I was at the dentist I had a root canal, which if you haven't had one hurts, but really not that badly--not badly enough for the vicodin they offered me. I don't know why a doctor would offer someone an addictive substance when maximum strength Tylenol is sufficient; I don't understand how a drug like oxycotin, which has a physical impact and addiction risk to rival morphine and methadone, has been given to my cousin for the last ten years to help her mask the pain of a knee injury that should have been rehabbed. And yet it's okay for her to spend her days in a minor fog of substance abuse, to drive a car and mother her children. And it was okay for Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich and myriad celebrities who have crashed cars, passed out, and died in their sleep, because they weren't doing drugs. They were doing medicine, and medicine is safe.

Prescription drug abuse ranks second behind pot as the nation's largest drug problem (http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov/drugfact/prescr_drg_abuse.html), and yet even after several high-profile accidents and overdoses, most of the people I know love to have a vicodin and a glass of wine before bed, if they can get it. Because it feels good. I know, because I tried it once with Tom many years ago and all I can think about tonight is how goddamn lucky we are that we woke up. How unbelievably overjoyed I am that I didn't wake up like Justin's girlfriend to find the person I love most in this world gone from this world. And for nothing. The waste makes me feel like raging.

Tonight I feel sad because my husband is so deep in grief, and angry because drug use and abuse is just one problem on a long list of things we could change about American policy--and so change about the world--but that we do not because these pills make a few people a lot of money. And so tacit approval for the use of these drugs, legitimately, recreationally, leaks out into our culture and into the bodies of people who someone loves, and for whom they mourn.

Tortilla de Patata

2010-08-10T20:09:00.001-07:00

When I was fifteen, I accompanied my cousin Kate and her dad, "Uncle" Michael, on a 7-month stay in Salamanca, Spain. We lived in a furnished three-bedroom apartment with two bathrooms (amazing when you think about it), a living room, and a sizable kitchen with the world's smallest washing machine set into the wall. My bedroom wall had a reproduction of a famous Jesus on the Cross painting, in which a gangrenous Messiah wept down upon my sleeping, Jewish form. Other rooms had crosses, and the girls' bathroom had a beday. Which blew our minds, and which we used to clean our feet.

At the time Kate was a fairly picky eater and I was a vegetarian, neither of which are ideal conditions for eating in Spain where ham is king and there are all sorts of amazing, adventurous dishes to try like fresh sardine bruschetta, paella, baby squid in lemon, olive oil and garlic, giant salads with tomatoes, olives, tuna and hard boiled eggs, Basque panfried trout stuffed with bacon, and a cocktail called Tinto de Verano, which combines Fanta Limon with red wine and is actually pretty good. In addition to being difficult eaters, Kate and I were also teenage girls, which meant that we spent a lot of time mooning over creamy American peanut butter and 6pm dinner times and crinkling skeptical noses at late night tapas. What a waste of a culinary opportunity, though I know we each grew up a lot during that often difficult but wonderful stay. We also grew up into eager eaters, so perhaps exposure, if not ingestion, has its benefits.

Amidst the seafood that Kate wouldn't touch, and the meat that I wouldn't eat, we discovered the humble tortilla de patata, or potato omelet. Creamy on the inside, barely crispy on the outside, egg yolk-yellow and rich with the flavors of olive oil and caramelized onion, the tortilla is a simple dish with a deep soul. Spaniards eat it at room temperature, cut into wedges or, better yet, placed between two pieces of fresh bread just lightly rubbed with olive oil or mayo. Kate and I used to walk down to a tapas bar on the Plaza Mayor and share bocadillos de tortilla de patata and coca-cola in glass bottles for dinner. Sometimes for dessert we'd eat coconut ice cream that arrived in the coconut shell. I remember the waiter snickering at us just a little each time we arrived, maybe because we were eating a traditional snack for dinner, or maybe because of our accents, and maybe because the simple omelet brought us so much pleasure.

I started making tortillas of my own in graduate school, when my friend Erin lent me her fantastic tapas cookbook, Tapas by Penelope Casas. The secret to the dish is an obscene amount of olive oil, which you use to slowly simmer very thinly sliced potatoes and onions until tender. You don't want to fry or brown the potatoes! They sort of boil in the oil until partially translucent, and this draws out the sweetness of the potato and creates a velvety mouth-feel. The second important trick is learning to flip the omelet. I'm still learning this technique, but at least no longer break them. What you want to do is heat the omelet pan until very hot, which helps prevent the eggs from sticking. You'll probably need to help the omelet remain unstuck by periodically shaking the pan and running a metal spatula around the sides and under the omelet. When the omelet is cooked on the bottom, place a plate over the pan and invert the omelet onto the plate so that the uncooked side is resting on the plate. Then, carefully slide the omelet back into the pan to finish cooking. Ideally, the tortilla will be golden yellow on the outside and moist within. In all honesty, I've only ever managed golden brown; I don't know how Spanish chefs achieve a yolk-yellow finished product. Just be sure not to overcook the tortilla. You want it dense and moist inside, not dry.

It might take you a few tries to master the flip, but regardless of how your tortilla emerges from the pan it will be delicious. It's a tiny bit salty and rich, with layers of creamy potatoes and dissolving onions. Eat it with a salad and some crusty bread, grab a glass of light red wine, and you'll be a happy chica.

The following is based on what I remember Penelope Casas's recipe, but I tinker slightly with the type of potatoes I use (tonight they were baby goldens from the farm, with a sweet onion) and have occasionally added a green like kale.

Ingredients:
around 3-4 russet potatoes, very thinly sliced
1 onion, I prefer sweet, very thinly sliced
1 C olive oil
1-2 tsp coarse salt
4-5 eggs

Technique:

Pour the olive oil into a nonstick or other skillet (I use a cast iron). Bring to a medium-high heat--it's ready when a test piece of potato sizzles gently on contact. Lower the heat to medium-low, to sustain the simmer.
Place a layer of potato slices in the skillet and sprinkle lightly with salt. Now add a layer of onion slices and salt. Repeat until all of the vegetables are in the skillet.
Let the potatoes and onions simmer until tender but not brown, stirring occasionally. Don't worry if some of the slices break.
When the potatoes and onions are soft, remove the pan from the heat and drain the vegetables. I like to place the strainer over a bowl in order to save the olive oil, which should amount to 1/2-3/4 C. This olive oil should be stored in a jar in the fridge and used over the next few days to cook or dip bread. It's delicious.
In a separate, large bowl beat 4-5 eggs until frothy. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
Add the potato mixture to the bowl, mix, and let sit for 5-10 minutes.
Meanwhile, clean the skillet and add 1-2 T of olive oil. Heat until very hot but not smoking.
Add the egg-potato mess to the skillet and cook until the bottom is golden.
Flip the tortilla using the method described above and cook until golden.
Set the tortilla aside to cool slightly and eat plain, with a tomato sauce or salsa, or a garlicky aioli.

Sweet Pickles

2010-07-25T12:17:00.001-07:00

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

Put a dry glass jar and lid (separately) into the oven at 300 degrees F for 15 minutes to sterilize. Set aside.
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.)
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.
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

2010-07-21T21:22:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-04T13:11:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-03T20:45:00.000-07:00

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.

At the Hop

2010-06-26T20:06:00.000-07:00

Our retro-tastic 1950s cocktail party was a vibrant, if mellow affair.

There was the booze...

...and the jello.

In rich reds and greens, laced with tuna and dotted with olives, these jiggly gems reminded us of why our (grand)parents drank so many martinis.

The night's winner was probably Fred's mold, which looks like a night's worth of vomit topped by a jujube. Needless to say, only T tried that one. (Brave man, T! And handsome.)

Slightly more palatable, though no less era-appropriate, were the pigs in a blanket, francheezies, tuna noodle casserole, cream cheese and jelly sandwiches, Velveeta fudge, and Judith's chocolate Coca-Cola cake.

The sandwich loaves sounded promising, but it turns out that grape jelly, minced shrimp, cream cheese, bacon, and olives do not mix well.

My mom's was a bit ahead of her time; I call this The Ken Kesey Loaf:

While Dave presented the more streamlined Londoner:

And when we weren't hesitating over the food table, or drinking Fred's handmade Manhattans, martinis and whiskey sours, we were watching Joe and Dee's hilarious beer-can baby.

A good time was had by all. (If not by our stomachs.)

Waiting on the Cake

2010-06-19T22:22:00.000-07:00

It's late, I'm waiting for the half-pound cake in the oven to rise to its golden domed climax (oh my) and rest into its cooling stage before tucking myself in. Tybalt is raging around the room , chasing one of those white bulk bag twist ties that I hoard in the small appliance drawer in the kitchen for reasons unknown even to myself.

Tom and I went to the wine country last Sunday.

Wildflowers, and small grape vines, Gewurtraminer and Pinot Grigio, and dry salami on rosemary crackers in the sunshine. And time alone with T. It was a good day.

It occurs to me, in my baby-addled mind, that these impromptu trips to the movies, the pub, our favorite wineries, will probably disappear when we start making little Waltons next year. Not that I don't intend to haul said tiny Waltons wherever I wish to go, but I need to start savoring these moments with T. Too often we get wrapped up in our lives and I forget to value him as much as I should.

It's been raining again, all week, cool and gray, making this a good weekend to prepare a Father's Day-Parents' 34th Wedding Anniversary feast for my family. I wish the date didn't coincide with Finals Grading Weekend and Theatre Audition Extravaganza (one audition today, call-backs tomorrow, followed by a first read of our summer beach show), but I have the Fennel Honey Pork Loin marinating, the pate fermentee for the baguettes fermenting, the pound cake baking, and a lovely roast beet and carrot salad, mashed potatoes with caramelized fennel and young Walla Walla onion, and a velvety butter lettuce salad waiting to be made tomorrow. My father asked for the homemade bread, roast pork and strawberry shortcake; I am surreptitiously adding beets to the menu to show my family that, when cooked properly and laced with my mom's Italian herb vinegar and olive oil, they can be quite nice.

One day, if I open the Ramona St Keep, I will serve this simple beet salad, maybe adorned with fresh thyme and a soft white cheese. The recipe comes from my CSA farmers, who adapted it from the Chez Panisse Vegetables cookbook. It made a convert out of me, especially the next day wrapped up in a whole wheat tortilla with creamy avocado slices and cheddar cheese. But I eat weird lunches.

The Beets that will Change your Mind

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Remove the beet tops (you can save these for another recipe--I chopped and sauteed them, and added them to a quiche), leaving about 1/2 inch stem. Wash the beets and cut in half. Put them into a baking pan with enough water to cover the bottom of the pan. Cover tightly with foil and bake for 45-60 minutes, until easily pierced with a knife. Uncover and allow to cool. Slip the skins off (this is quite fun) and cut off their tops and tails. Cut them into quarters or slices, sprinkle with at least 1 tsp vinegar (the recipe suggests sherry vinegar, but I used my mom's homemade herb vinegar to delicious results) and salt to taste. Let stand for a few minutes to allow the beets to absorb the flavors. Toss with a generous drizzle of olive oil and enjoy, warm or cold.

*If you want to add carrots, as I'm doing tomorrow, simply blanch the carrots in boiling water for around two minutes--until just tender--and cut into chunks or coins.

Of Grahams and Granola

2010-06-10T21:10:00.000-07:00

When I told my friend Julia this evening that I had just made granola, she replied, "If that isn't a stereotype."

Julia lives on the East Coast.

She's a Portland girl by birth, and probably owns more tie-dye than I do (one shirt, which my parents bought for me, okay?), but the stereotype of the dread-locked white chick baking granola to Phish while fragrant waves of Patchouli grace her cleansed-with-biodegradable-food-products skin is strongly ingrained in the popular culture. For an east-coaster--even one with Western roots--the fact that I do not have dreadlocks or scent my house with Patchouli is nullified by the fact that I bake bread, belong to a CSA and utilize (privately) the term "locavore" without cynicism.

Well, sprinkle me with fairy dust and send me to the Oregon Country Fair. Because granola this good is worth the name-calling.

The recipe is Molly Wizenberg's, taken from June 2010 Bon Appetit. I modified the recipe slightly to use cashews instead of pecans and slightly less honey than Molly calls for; granola is both flexible and forgiving. I've only tasted a few of the crumbles--one must eat a real dinner, after all--but I'm already looking forward to breakfast tomorrow. This granola is sweet and wholesome, without the sometimes cloying sugar and rich fats of store-bought varieties.

Tonight's other project--less socially stigmatized but still rarely performed--was to bake graham crackers. I was inspired by Deb's graham tartlets, but didn't want to deal with macerated strawberries and whipped cream. True to recent cravings, I wanted something reasonably simple, with whole grains and a homey flavor.

As you can see above, the little buggers were hard to hold together, resulting in an unhappily patchy surface. (Though the little bears are pretty darn cute. Even with mangled feet.) I followed Deb's recipe exactly, but next time would add a little milk or even apple juice to the dough to make it softer and less dry. The recipe also yielded far fewer cookies for me (10 instead 16), but that might be due to the fact that after a few unsuccessful attempts at rolling out the dough, I resorted to lightly bashing it flat with the side of the rolling pin. The spicing is just right, though, and once baked, the graham crackers are crunchy, buttery and not too sweet, perfect for dipping into tea.

(I couldn't resist.)

pain au son

2010-06-06T16:50:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, after 3 weeks of rain, it was warm and sunny and it seemed like the entire city was outside mowing 2 feet of grass from their front lawns. Arms full of grading, I sat on our back stoop and let my arms freckle, overjoyed with the sun.

And when my work was finished, I walked to the store and came home with bags of tomatoes and green beans and pints of California blueberries, and baked a lemon blueberry tart and a roasted tomato salad.

It all tasted like summer.

This morning we woke up to a steady rain driving past our windows and clattering onto the street. There are pools of water in my tomato and sweet pea pots. The cats are damp again and settle into our laps to dry.

Time to bake bread.

This morning I thumbed through one of my favorite bread books, Home Baking, by husband and wife bakers/photographers/travel writers Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid, and settled on the pain au son. A French bran bread, pain au son is kind of a rustic Branola, with a sweet wheat taste, moist crumb, and crunchy, toasty crust.

I didn't have enough wheat bran for two loaves, so I added an equal amount of raw whole oats, as Alford and Duguin note that they always use oat bran in place of wheat. I also replaced some of the white flour with whole wheat. I like the combination--the oats disappeared into the loaf and whatever the science of it is, the results are soft and sweet on the tongue.

This is a nice everyday bread, to be eaten as toast, or alongside soup, or slathered with peanut butter and eaten as a snack. It tastes like the warm bread served in the dining room of Bascam Lodge on Mt. Greylock, where people hiking the Appalachian Trail stop for a night in bed and the best, simple, warm home cooking. My family used to stay there for a week at a time when I was a kid, all of us in bunk beds, hiking different trails each day and inhaling the kitchen's warm bread and gingerbread pancakes. I haven't been to Mt. Greylock in a long time (and now as a Pacific Northwesterner, the mountain wouldn't look so high), but this bread brought me back.

Pain au Son (adapted from Home Baking)
Makes two very large loaves

4 C lukewarm water
6 T light brown sugar or honey
3 tsp active dry yeast (I used the extra quick rise kind)
1 1/2 C what bran
1 1/2 C raw oats
2 C whole wheat flour
5 C all-purpose white flour, plus some for dusting and adding to the dough if need be
4 tsp salt

Stir together the yeast, sugar and water. Stir in the bran and oats and set aside to soak for 10 minutes.
Sprinkle 1 C of flour over the top and stir in. Sprinkle the salt on the top and stir in. Working 1 C at a time, add the remaining flour to the dough. I use a standing mixer for this, but you could also use a wooden spoon, stirring flour in until it gets too difficult, and then adding the rest as you gently knead the dough.
Once the flour is incorporated (you want a soft, not too sticky dough), knead for 8 minutes, incorporating as little extra flour as possible. I found myself adding a little extra flour to prevent drying, and then adding water to soften the dough, just to add a bit more flour. Just watch the dough as you knead, adding what it needs in tiny increments until you have a large, smooth ball.
Place the dough in a clean, lightly oiled bowl, cover and set aside some place warm for up to 2 hours, until doubled in volume.
Lightly butter two 9X5 loaf pans. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and give it a few kneads. Let it rest for 5 minutes, loosely covered.
Divide the dough into the two pieces and shape each into a loaf (the easiest way to do this is to flatten the dough into a rough square or rectangle and roll it up from the shorter side, pinching the seam closed as you go). Gently plop each loaf into a pan and cover, letting rise until doubled in volume, about an hour.
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Bake for 50-60 minutes. You'll know the loaves are done with they're a rich brown and you hear a hollow sound when you tap the bottoms. Another trick is to pinch the loaf's corners: they should feel firm. If they still feel a bit soft, pop the loaves (without the pans) back into the oven for 5 minutes.
Let cool on a rack before slicing.

oatmeal scones

2010-05-30T11:04:00.001-07:00

I've been on an oats kick lately, from granola and yogurt to gooey oatmeal pancakes and now these, oatmeal scones with dried cranberries and white chocolate.

I baked these scones this morning, having woken up feeling both energized and defiled by my late night at the Pallas stripper contest. (Don't judge me until after you've eaten these scones.) The experience was so out of my usual orbit that it was necessarily exciting, if a little skeezy. I sat at the table next to my friend Brandee (a Stripper-oke veteran), in awe of what those women can do around a pole. They're athletes, and saying that isn't some hackneyed, post-feminist excuse for an activity that actually debases women (though I saw evidence of that, too)--the core muscle strength, flexibility and grace of the dancers is jaw-dropping. I was startled to find myself at one point with my mouth wide open, staring in unbridled amazement.

Plus, once you've seen a couple of vaginas the nudity gets less noticeable. At least to those of us who have vaginas and find them mildly disgusting at the best of times. But we were talking about scones, right?

So the stripper contest made me want to both jet to the gym to increase the flexibility in my hamstrings and reassure myself that domesticity is not divorced from sex appeal. Hence these seductive scones...and the 9am trip to the gym with T (who's working out to prepare for a shirtless scene in a new movie project--lady readers, keep your pants on).

Nubby and flaky on the outside, rich and dense on the inside, studded with soft raw oats and tangy cranberries and sweet, melty bits of white chocolate, these scones are like a wedge of the best possible oatmeal cookie married with the superlative homemade granola bar. I started with an old Gourmet recipe, but these scones are divorced enough from the originals to be called my own. The significant changes I made were to use self-rising flour with a bit of extra baking soda; dramatically increase the spice quantity and variety; add some wheat bran for fiber, dried cranberries and white chocolate chips; reduce the butter and include a couple tablespoons of organic vegetable shortening to increase the flakiness; and cut them into magnificent craggy triangles, homey enough in look to be comforting and full enough in flavor to be special.

By all means play with this recipe, leaving out the wheat bran or using whole wheat flour, brushing the scone tops with milk, brown sugar and oats before baking, omitting the fruit and chocolate, changing the spicing and making them savory with paprika and cheddar. These are yummy. Bake them and eat them, and do a little sexy jig in the kitchen while no one's looking.

Homey Oatmeal Scones

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F and line a baking pan with a sheet of parchment paper.

In a bowl or your food processor, combine 1 2/3 C self-rising flour, 1/2 tsp baking soda, 1/3 C wheat bran, 1 tsp cinnamon and a 1/4 tsp each nutmeg and cloves, and 2/3 C brown sugar (I was out and ended up using powdered sugar with no problems). Add 1 1/3 C raw oats and pulse 15 times.

Add a handful each of dried cranberries and white chocolate chips and mix well.

Cut 1 cold stick of butter and 2-3 T of vegetable shortening into 1 T pieces. Add to the flour mixture and pulse until the texture resembles cornmeal with a few pea-sized lumps of butter. You can also do this with your hands or two butter knives.

Gradually add in 2/3 to 1 C milk, buttermilk or cream. Pulse or hand mix until just combined. You want the mixture to be moist enough to hold together, but not wet. The dough shouldn't stick to your hands when you pat it out to the shape the scones.

Dump the shaggy mess onto a very lightly floured counter top and knead a few times. Don't over-knead unless you like very dense pastry.

Pat the dough into a thick circle (maybe 8 inches across and 1 1/2 inches high) and cut into eight triangles. Place the scones on the sheet with a little space in between them. Bake for approximately 16 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the middle of a scone comes out clean.

Let cool to warm and enjoy. I like these without butter or jam, but I'm sure they'd be lovely with salty butter or a dab of marmalade.

May Storms

2010-05-23T18:29:00.000-07:00

It has rained for eight straight days. And that may be a conservative estimate, because I can't quite remember the last day yellow light filtered through our blinds to create sun spots for the cats to sleep in. Instead the felines have chosen my lap as their primary source of heat, a decision that wavers (in my experience of it) from drowsy and comfortable to please get this wet cat and her muddy paw prints off of my laptop and out of my water glass.

I'm exaggerating a little--not about the cats--but about the rain. Not about the rain's duration, either, but about my unhappiness with the sun's vacation from Portland. Truth be told, I like the rain, and the stormier the better. The weather suits my inclination to cook and bake, read and write, and watch back episodes of Survivor in the early weekend mornings with Tom. I do miss running around outside, biking and pulling grass shoots out of my plants, and grading in the sun, but since I'm not an X-Man and have no control over the weather (I know! You're shocked!), I can be patient and appreciate the gray sheets soaking my strawberries and encouraging me to drink one more cup of tea before getting up to do something more productive.

So it is that I find myself on Sunday evening, after a mellow day that started early with the gym and will end late with the finale of Lost--filled in the middle by oatmeal pancakes with blackberries and warm maple syrup, reading and working, baking cranberry walnut bread, starting my first batch of yogurt, and a simple solo dinner of wheat berries, red chard braised in (T's amazing) tomato sauce, and a creamy poached egg--sitting on the couch with a damp cat and a computer on my lap, about to dive into the first of Robert Jordan's endless fantasy series.

For the readers who don't know this already, I harbor a secret love for (good) fantasy novels. I came to this self-realization late, when T thrust a Robin Hobb novel into my arms and said, This will change your mind. (It had been a pretentious, dismissive mind.)

It is now a more flexible one.

If you like Grimms Brothers' fairy tales (enough to have read them as an adult) and The Princess Bride and bildungsroman and the dubious authenticity of the Arthurian Legends (and dragons, princesses and magic), you will like fantasy novels. They're fun and expansive worlds, especially in the hands of character-driven authors like Hobb and George R R Martin (though curse you, Martin! For failing to finish the Sword of Thrones series, and for leaving us hanging with a book covering the exploits of the least exciting characters). I've read some Terry Goodkind, too, but a few books into his series I tired of his lovers kept apart by destiny fighting a never-ending stream of evil plotlines. I watched Buffy for that, you know? Give me something with a little more to chew on. Give me less obvious allegories for modern-day struggles.

(So, I am still a little pretentious and dismissive. But I believe in standards. Even brain candy should contain a few nutrients.)

So. Yes. The rainy gray evening and the less damp cat and the more damp sweater and the glass of water with an unmistakable trace of mud. And the book.

I don't really mind the rain.

Classic Crumb Cake, like Papa Used to Buy

2010-05-16T17:35:00.001-07:00

When I was little we used to go to my grandparents' house on Sunday mornings for brunch, and if the weather was warm, an afternoon of swimming in Wincoma Bay. The brunches were typical Long Island Jewish affairs, with piles of fresh, chewy bagels, the whipped cream cheese I loved because we only ate it there, my Papa Lenny's herring (still an object of horror), lox, tomatoes, and onion slices. And those bagel sandwiches were really, really good...

But nothing beat the crumb cake.

If you've never eaten New York crumb cake, picture a thin slice of cake covered in at least 1 1/2 inches of dense brown sugar-butter-cinnamon crumbs. To be truthful, the cake part was never that spectacular; the typical slice crumbles into dry, tasteless pieces as soon as it makes contact with your mouth, causing minor choking problems. But we endured the cake in order to put off the slow, extravagant eating of the rich crumbs, trying to make them last just long enough to make our siblings jealous but not to invite the attention of our dad, who is an unethical eater when it comes to his favorite treats. ("Let me show you how to lick that ice-cream cone." "Can I see that cookie?")

So why does this admittedly flawed cake incite so much pleasure? In part the memories amplify its deliciousness and downplay its flaws, especially since my grandpa passed away, but it's also because the cake has potential. The crumbs are already delicious, right? So all that remains is to turn the bland cake into a lush crumb accompaniment.

Abigail Johnson Dodge does just that in The Weekend Baker, which, by the way, is totally worth the purchase. It's full of fast and delicious homemade goodies that you can whip up at 7am the morning of a birthday brunch because you kind of forgot to make something. I mean, who does that, though?

Dodge's cake is soft and subtly flavored with vanilla, which is a nice counterpart to the spiced topping. It just gets better as it ages, too, because the crumb top softens and solidifies into a rich mass (it's a lot more appetizing that it sounds) and the cake gains a certain density. The only alterations I made were to add an extra bit of cinnamon, use only brown sugar (and to reduce the amount slightly), and to just barely reduce the amount of melted butter, which is pretty extravagant.

The 9x13 cake will feed a small breakfast army, so make this for the people you love. And eat it with them.

Classic Crumb Cake (from The Weekend Baker)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Melt 3 1/2 sticks butter (yeah, I know) in a small saucepan. Set aside 3/4 C for the cake.
To make the topping: Mix the remaining butter (16 T) with 3/4 C brown sugar, 1/2 C granulated sugar, 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon, 1/4 tsp nutmeg, pinch of salt , and 2 2/3 C flour in a large bowl. Set aside.
To make the cake: In a large bowl, mix 3 C flour, 1 1/4 C granulated sugar, 1 1/2 tsp baking powder, and 1/2 tsp salt. In a separate bowl, combine the reserved butter (12 T), 1 C whole milk, 2 eggs, and 2 tsp vanilla extract. Add the wet ingredients to the flour mixture and mix until just combined.
Pour the batter into a lightly greased 9x13 baking pan. Sprinkle the crumb mixture over the top in an even layer (it will be quite generous).
Bake for about 40 minutes, until the cake springs back when lightly pressed and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
Let cool before eating. And, if you can wait, don't eat it for a few hours. It just gets better.

Green Grocery

2010-05-06T22:35:00.000-07:00

I just, for the first time, added up how much I spend on food and house-related goods per week and was surprised to see an average $144/week (caveat: this includes low-cost prescription medicine and toiletries).

That's a lot of money. Especially for someone who prides herself on shopping wisely, buying seasonally and buying bulk, making most stuff from scratch. I know you're looking on the blog now and thinking, ricotta tart? Not exactly budgetary. But to be honest a tart is just flour, butter/oil, and something in the middle that doesn't have to be too expensive, like cheese. That fresh ricotta made two dishes with a lot of leftovers. And who doesn't have flour, oil and cheese in the pantry? So where's the money going?

One culprit is definitely multiple trips to the store. I never seem to have everything I want in one go, and so back to the store I fly (with glee--I love grocery shopping) and I inevitably end up with something not on my list. Like last week's little wheel of Spanish goat cheese and that small red wedge of Dorset. The loaf of ciabatta and the organic tomato to go with them (especially egregious given that I baked ciabatta last weekend!). The bottle of wine for Ryan's birthday party that no one drank...and stayed with Ryan.

The other culprit, much as I hate to say it, may be my food choices. I shop at Whole Foods. I do buy beans, grains, nuts, granola and some flours in bulk, but I counter that with organic produce, dairy and meat. I buy myself little yogurt containers to take to work instead of the more budget-friendly large buckets (which seem to languish in our fridge, collecting mold colonies), and I always find something to splurge on: ginger granola, asparagus, pink lady apples, buckwheat noodles. Because I don't buy packaged goods and I do cook a lot, even our sweets, I forget that even the most budget-conscious person is going to spend more for an organic, well-rounded diet. And if that person has a bread-baking habit and a subscription to Bon Appetit, well...it's hard to resist that pancetta that so perfectly tops those roasted baby leeks.

I need to make an effort to stick with one list all week and bear out the consequences. This week is shot as I have a Mother's Day Brunch to attend to (well, come one, what's lucre compared to the gift of birth?), but starting next week I will plan and implement with the fastidiousness of the most anal-retentive wedding planner. One list, one trip. If we run out of milk then we'll be the unhappiest unintentional vegans on the block. And I'll set a reasonable budget, something of an average of my usual visits: $75/week for two people, with an extra $25 for cat food, etc. Forty-four dollars saved is something, right? I probably won't stick to such orthodoxy, but I want to see what happens to my money.

I believe in eating well, and I believe that food should be a larger factor of my budget than entertainment or clothing or anything else other than rent, but I also want to live within my means. And those means ain't so much.

So farewell fair Dorset; grace another plate with your red wedgy magnificence. And pass the beans, will you?

Savory Ricotta Tart

2010-05-01T16:44:00.001-07:00

Maybe it's a spring thing; the birds are singing, tree pollen is floating, the neighborhood squirrels are playing capture-the-female, and I can't stop thinking about tarts.

And while sweet fruit desserts like the rustic strawberry tart I made last week are nice, what I really yearn for when my stomach yells, "Tart!," is something savory. A sugar-loving pastry chef might disagree, but I find the balance of salt and fat, mixed with whatever herbs, veggies, cheeses or meats you use, much more compelling in a tart than the sour-sweet tang of fruit. And while the various combinations of nuts, fruits, chocolates and spices in dessert tarts are exciting, there's so much more to play with when you shun the sweet for the multifaceted world of animal, vegetable, mineral.

That said I find it hard to bake a tart just for the two of us. Would we eat it with greedy bites, toasted or out of the fridge, stone-cold, with guilty crumbs on our lips? Yeah. And we have. But tarts are so presentational that it's way more fun to bring them to parties for your friends to ooh and ahh over. Besides, it's a well-known fact that food tastes better when the cook's ego has first been seasoned with praise. (Oh, you know it's true. Don't even try to deny it.)

So it was that I found myself thinking about our friend Ryan's birthday party tonight, which led to thoughts about the half container of fresh ricotta on the floor of our fridge, which led to memories of Clothilde's amazing olive oil pastry crust which led to a reminiscence about last fall's tomato tart, which led to the unstoppable urge to make one, right now, for Ryan.

Obviously, this tart is for Ryan.

I started with David Lebovitz's recipe for an herbed ricotta tart, changing out the spring onions for a leek and some shallots. I also added fresh goat cheese to the ricotta to increase the tang, and mixed in fresh rosemary and thyme. My final substitution was to use a few pieces of crumbled, crisp bacon in place of the chorizo. Normally I love chorizo, but something about spicy sausage in a tart turned me off. And I'm sure it would be extra delicious to use crisped pancetta or prosciutto in place of either.

The extra 8 ounces of cheese made the tart bake a bit longer, almost an hour. Just wait until the middle sets before you take it out of the oven. Then, as it cools, sprinkle the top with some reserved fresh herbs. So pretty!

Savory Ricotta Tart (serves 8)

1 tart crust (olive oil or French butter, even puff pastry might do in a pinch)
8 ounces fresh ricotta
8 ounces fresh goat cheese (mine was covered in crushed herbs)
1 1/2 tsp fresh thyme, rosemary, or any combination of herbs you like, plus a few springs for garnish
1/2 lb leek, thinly sliced
2-4 shallot cloves, thinly sliced (optional)
3-4 pieces of bacon, crisped and crumbled
1/2 C heavy cream or creme fraiche
1/2 C whole milk
1 egg
salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F and grease your tart pan if it isn't a non-stick.

1) Follow your preferred tart pastry recipe, chilling the dough once it's in the pan.
2) While the crust is chilling, thinly slice and wash the leeks. I find it easiest to slice the leeks, pile them into a bowl, cover the whole mess with cold water, and let the leeks soak to draw off the sand and dirt. (The sand will float to the bottom.) After 10 minutes or so, drain the leeks and rinse well.
3) Thinly slice the shallots.
4) Add the leeks and shallots, along with a pinch of salt and pepper, to a hot pan with a bit of butter, olive oil, or leftover bacon fat in it. Cook over medium heat until tender. Add the chopped herbs and let cool.
5) In a bowl, mix together the ricotta, goat cheese, milk, cream, egg, bacon, leek mixture, and any additional herbs. I added 1 tsp of salt and 1/4 tsp of pepper.
6) Pour the filling into the crust and bake until the middle sets and the top of the tart is golden brown, 35-60 minutes.

I'm a Tart, You're a Tart

2010-04-22T21:03:00.001-07:00

Eat a tart.

It doesn't have to be pretty, big, or take all night. In fact, this tart's juicy, cheap and easy going down.

It all started with the strawberries, on sale, at Whole Foods. Organic strawberries, from this coast, on sale! After a winter's worth of kale and yams, those ruby gems sailed into my cart with visions of summer and the sharp, green smell of berry vines hot in the sun. Strawberries aren't my favorite summer berry, but they are beautiful and sweet, and the shocking accumulation of black bananas in our freezer tells me we're due for a change in fruitage.

But I couldn't leave well enough alone. After 1 day of fresh strawberry snacking I was hit by a pang to do something with them. I tried to ignore the pang by grading reading journals, but the berries called to me like seeded sirens--a song made more persuasive by the asinine quality of student comments, like the following, which made me question why I bother:
"I have never had, nor taken any interest in America, especially politics."
Note the redundant phrasing. Note the apathy. Feed this child to the Kracken.

After ten of those, messing around with butter, flour and fruit sounded downright stimulating. I did some food blogging research and found an easy recipe at The Kitchen Sink for a rustic, low-fat strawberry tart.

Hey, I was dubious about the "low-fat," too. But it turns out that you can make a flaky crust with half the butter. Is it as delicious? I'm not going to lie--probably not. But I felt a little better about eating it and now you can, too.

Rustic Strawberry Tart: adapted somewhat freely from The Kitchen Sink (serves 4)

1 C flour
3 T cold as ice butter, in pieces, Plus a little extra for dotting on top of the tart
1/8 tsp salt
3-5 T ice water (I needed 5)
2-3 handfuls of strawberries
1/4 tsp almond extract (or lemon/lime/orange zest or liqueur)
1/8 C sugar or more, depending on your sweet tooth
1-2 T cornstarch
a bit of heavy cream to wash the dough before baking

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and butter a cookie sheet (or use parchment).
Dump the flour and salt into a bowl. Add butter and cut into the flour using two knives, a pastry cutter, or your fingers. You want to the butter-flour mixture to resemble rough cornmeal, with a few pea-sized butter lumps.
Drizzle 3 T of ice water into the bowl, adding just enough to dampen the dough and allow it to come together in a rough ball. Add more water if needed.
Turn the dough out of the bowl, and knead just a few times so that it coalesces in a decent ball. Place the ball between two sheets of plastic wrap, and roll into a nice disk. Chill for at least 30 minutes.
Meanwhile, toss sliced strawberries with almond extract, sugar and cornstarch.
When the dough is ready, roll it into one or more rough rounds. Layer the strawberry slices (working in concentric circles), leaving 1-2 inches of bare dough on the ends.*
Fold the sides of the circle up around the strawberries (forming a bowl), pinching where necessary to hold the shape. Brush the sides with cream.
Dot a bit of butter on top of the strawberries, and sprinkle the whole pastry with sugar.
Bake for 30-45 minutes, until golden brown and bubbly.

*I left 2 inches, as per the original instructions, and felt upon tasting that I had too much pastry on the top of the tart.

Carrot Cake Sandwich Cookies

2010-04-18T09:30:00.000-07:00

Crunchy, oaty, not too sweet. Grated carrot and walnut chunks. Rich cream cheese filling.

These lovely cookies soften with time, so don't worry if they're a bit too crunchy for your taste when you first remove them from the oven (I know they were for me). They can be served solo and iced on the top, or as you see above, turned into the cutest 2-bite sandwich cookies. There's something about a homemade sandwich cookie that makes people swoon: I hid the cookies on top of the theatre fridge yesterday to ensure that they'd make it to the cast party, and the house manager was still fending people off! The sandwich shape also invited lots of aesthetic commentary, the least appealing of which --though perhaps the most accurate--was that they look like little hamburgers. I prefer "little nubbly bites of fun," but that is a mouthful. (Ha! Get it?)

Adapted, slightly, from Bon Appetit May 2010 edition.

Soak 1/4 raw oats and 1/4 C raisins (optional) in 1/4 water.

Cream together: 1 stick butter; 1/2 C brown sugar; 1/2 C white sugar.

Add 1 egg, mix. Add in 1 C finely grated carrot (about 1 largish) and the oat mixture.

Add 1 1/2 C self-rising flour, 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon and 1/2 C walnut pieces. Mix well (I used my hands).

Drop cookies (1 level Tb each) onto greased cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 18-20 minutes, depending on the kind of crunch you like.

When the cookies are cool, ice them with the following comixture:

1 C powdered sugar, 6 ounces cream cheese (or neufchatel, which is a little lower in fat), 2 T lemon juice, 2 T whipping cream, and 1/2 stick butter. Mix well until smooth.

Note: This makes WAY too much icing, so feel free to halve the recipe or freeze the remainder for a future batch of cinnamon rolls or carrot cake.

Samedi, Still Life

2010-04-17T13:13:00.000-07:00

I'm taking a four-day weekend. I have a lot of little errands to attend to and also just need some r&r. Yesterday, the first day of staycation, was lovely: deep cleaned the first floor of our apartment, ran errands on my bike in the sunshine, bought a sexy dress at Buffalo Exchange, ate Thai green papaya salad and Thai iced coffee on the warm bench outside the theatre, finished the night with a glass of Cabernet at our crappy, beloved mainstay bar, Tennessee Reds.

Today's been a little less productive, although I can now officially call myself Mrs. Walton, as the Social Security Administration and the DMV now have my married name on the books. My new photo is awful (don't get your picture taken early on a Saturday morning, at the local mall's express DMV, amidst the aggressions and sweaty bodies of strangers' families, wearing no makeup and your glasses).
I'm excited.

Since then I've spent the last couple of hours on the couch, reading the first genuinely difficult novel I've read in ages: A. S. Byatt's Still Life. It's a very cold novel, edging on literary and art criticism, but with interesting enough characters and ambiguous enough relationships to maintain my interest. I wouldn't say I like it, exactly, but I'm intrigued by it. Byatt is smart, economical and pretentious. Her characters aren't likable but they are full of the niggling doubts about marriage and love and intellectual satisfaction that most people share, and they are all deeply flawed. I find myself offended by Francesca's disinterest in her Provencal adventures, but also recognizing my fifteen year-old self, in Spain in 1996, in her cultural detachment and embarrassed homesickness. Likewise, Stephanie and Daniel's marriage seems so lonely to me, and yet marriage is ultimately a permanent union of two, and not, realistically, the Hallmark ideal of two making one. So the isolation each feels within their love...I think this is true.

But philosophizing about life by Byatt, while stimulating, is too melancholy on this grey and chilly day. It's time to rise from the couch and fold the laundry. Make some carrot cake cookies. Paint my toenails.

Ward off Monday, and enjoy the peace of a quiet afternoon with nothing of consequence to do.

Pizza Sunday

2010-04-11T21:36:00.000-07:00

Homemade boule dough, marinated hot Hungarian peppers, salami, feta, tomato sauce, roast potato (on the left) and radicchio (on the right).

Pizza night.

The pictures aren't great (once the sun goes down, the lighting in our apartment really goes down hill), but the pizza was. A little too thick--when will I learn to flip dough?-and a teensy bit scorched, but that gave it a wood-fired oven taste. T gave it two thumbs up, and he's been picky lately. I had to eat an entire brisket by myself! This is what marriage does to you; summons from within incredible sacrifice.

I've been making pizza quite a bit lately, experimenting with unusual ingredients: rainbow chard, softly set eggs, garlic and olive oil, brie and butternut squash, dried figs, prosciutto and Parmesan. Not too much cheese, so that the other flavors shine. Tonight's mix of spicy, salty and a little vinegary was a keeper.

Today's menu also featured brioche cinnamon rolls, so be sure to check out the Merry Bakers blog. And if you live nearby and want a roll...well, come on by. Brioche is most definitely for sharing. (Unlike pizza. Pizza is for hording. And for breakfast.)

It was a Dark and Stormy Night

2010-04-05T19:19:00.000-07:00

Perfect for brisket with caramelized onions and carrots and dilly, buttered potatoes, and a date with Arrested Development. Perfect for cleaning the bathroom. Perfect for bread.

I haven't baked bread in weeks, due to rehearsals and grading deadlines and Passover. So tonight, as the sun sinks and Passover falls with it, I'm making rustic boules.

I decided to go back to Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, chiefly because the next Merry Bakers project is brioche, and that's too rich for a daily bread. I'll probably make brioche this weekend and then T and I can enjoy decadent cinnamon rolls. Preferably in bed, with strong tea and the impetus to go nowhere and do nothing. I'm feeling that impetus more and more lately, a result of a freezing, rainy spring and too much work. Baking bread at least lends the illusion of leisure and time; it's such a patient process that I can't help but be calmed by it.

I'm sure I've written about Artisan Bread. It's a great bread book because the recipes produce exactly what is advertised: tasty, crusty bread that needs literally 5 minutes of mixing and, later, 5 minutes of shaping. Plus, the dough requires no kneading and lasts 2 weeks in the fridge. I've yet to get the airy crumb I expect from artisan bread, but that could be the recipes' lack of a prefermentation process. Or the instant yeast. Or my technique, which is being slowly honed. At the very least, the results are always really tasty (the longer you leave the dough in the fridge, the more flavor it acquires), and I like the versatility of the standard recipe, which makes ciabatta, baguette, focaccia, pizza dough, etc. My eventual goal is to produce crusty, airy bread made from natural yeast, collected from my home environment, but I'm willing to take my time getting there. As I said, bread is a patient art. It teaches me stillness.

Tonight's project is boules, which are round French loaves slashed at the top. You bake them at a very high heat, and the result is a golden brown crust that shatters a bit when you first slice down on it, and then gives way to a dense, soft crumb. This bread is so good with a slice of cheese and apple, or dipped into olive oil. In the summer I like to broil slices rubbed with garlic and topped with smashed cherry tomatoes, feta cheese and cracked pepper. The best breakfast ever.

So, as the rain pounds on my windows and scares the cats, I dream of my first bite of bread in 8 days and I make that dream come true.

Obama MD

2010-03-22T07:41:00.001-07:00

I don't have much time this morning, but I'd like to add my voice to the liberal clamor and cry, "Yea healthcare reform!"

Let's be clear: the new bill isn't the universal healthcare coverage I wanted. Why is it acceptable to Congress to insure 32 million Americans, but not all Americans? Even excepting the illegal population, we're leaving around 16 million people out of the loop. Hopefully, they belong to the tea party and the Republican groups that have been likening healthcare reform to death camps and claiming that this reform is the worst thing since LBJ passed civil rights legislation (I kid you not--Newt Gingrich made this stunning analogy). Nevertheless, it is an opportunity to do what is right, which is to give American citizens a fair opportunity to take care of themselves.

I find it interesting that opponents call healthcare reform paternalistic; in their eyes, this is evidence of totalitarianism, unfettered government interference in our lives. This bill merely requires that most of us act responsibly and provide coverage for ourselves. It assists in this process. Its intent is to drive down the exorbitant costs associated with the uninsureds' visits to emergency rooms, and to rein in insurance agencies. Find me a republican who likes the fact that his premium goes up yearly, in unregulated increments. I personally hate it. Every cost of living increase I receive goes immediately to pay for my increased premium. And I'm unionized. I pay a monthly due for the privilege of having people continually going up to bat for me and my right to decent healthcare. Everyone deserves such an advocate.

So, while I'm cynical regarding the reach and success of this reform (and petrified to see it frozen in congressional repeals and lawsuits), I am very proud of my lawmakers today. And I haven't said that in a long time.

Pickled Onions with Cheese and Thomas Keller's Roast Chicken

2010-02-03T20:52:00.000-08:00

I'm a fickle lover when it comes to roast chicken recipes. Sometimes I rely on Nigella's lemony roast, while other days Julia Child's buttery, basted bird appeals to my mouth. Once in a while, I remember to make Gourmet magazine's amazing paprika roasted chicken, which is rich in flavor, bejeweled in color, and a lot healthier than Julia's buttery cuisine. (It also makes the most fantastic base for chicken stock. I've started adding paprika every time I make stock for the golden color and resonant flavor.) My standby chicken is a Nigella-Julia hybrid that gets rubbed with a bit of butter or olive oil, sprinkled with coarse salt and pepper, and stuffed with a pierced lemon and a sprig of rosemary. I baste at the end and serve with the jus. Simple but effective, and it leaves the house smelling lemony savory.

Well, my philandering days may be over. Like a 45-year old bachelor finally realizing the simple appeals of domesticity, I have been won over by Thomas Keller's roast chicken recipe (suggested, of course, by Shauna and Dan, who I wish were my friends). It is simple as salt, and positively golden. The only changes I made were to resist "slathering" the cooked meat in butter (unnecessary) and to leave the bird untrussed. I wanted to try trussing it, but I couldn't find any twine and really, the chicken's still pretty in its free form state.

The roast came out with a crispy, salty skin just laced with thyme and pan juices. We spooned the extra jus over oven-roasted parsnips and completed the meal with a salad of butter lettuce, blue cheese and red wine vinaigrette. I do insist that you try this recipe with a free-range organic bird. Is it pricier? Yes, by a dollar or two per pound (my four-pound chicken cost $14 at Whole Foods). But I promise you, you will not get such a clean, rich flavor from one of those flaccid ghost-white hens grown in a pitch-black poultry house. The carcass will not yield a deep golden broth, and your tummy will be full of hormones and antibiotics. Also, remember that one chicken yields at least one meal of roast meat and at least two as a soup. So the monetary breakdown's not bad. I plan on using leftover chicken in tacos tomorrow, with sour cream, home-pickled onions, cilantro, and beans.

Which brings me to the pickles.

These are the pickles in an early stage of development. Now in the jar, they are fuchsia and glistening, begging to be tucked into a sandwich with sharp cheddar cheese or used to add a piquant note to tacos. They have a surprisingly mild taste, sweet with lingering notes of the cinnamon, cloves and cumin I soaked them in. I got a yen for them on Saturday night, when we had our friends over for a late supper of tomato soup and grilled cheese, hard cider, and a game of Munchkin. I remember eating cheesy, pickley cold sandwiches when I was a student in London, and the appealing contrast of rich and tangy has stayed with me. I knew I could do better than the mysteriously black London relish, however, and started trolling the net for recipes.

I found David Leibowitz's recipe (his blog is great by the way) and altered it to fit my spice selection. The onions were a big hit, even with Melissa, who hates onions. Our husbands ate them plain, like a salad. And now they sit pretty in the fridge, tempting me with all kinds of culinary possibilities.

Baby's Got a Pretty Face

2010-01-28T21:16:00.001-08:00

Tom's birthday meal was so lavish and so beautiful, I had to post a few photos here.

These are oysters, cured in a bit of lime juice and some other unidentified, yummy stuff. Courtesy of our friend Carrie, who's a wonderful chef.

My winter slaw, stolen from Shauna and Chef of glutenfreegirl.com. Broccoli, savoy cabbage, raw brussel sprouts, and a tangy dressing starring homemade mayonnaise.

Again to Carrie, whose dishes were indisputably the prettiest. Here, a prawn ceviche featuring a creamy cilantro sauce.

What 30-course BBQ-themed meal would be complete without a mini serving of homemade buttermilk waffles topped with a piece of cruncy bacon and finished with a drizzle of syrup? These addictive morsels were my mom's doing.

My dad is king of the homemade onion ring. Look at these golden, fluffy rings and try to deny it.

The rest of photos can be found on facebook.

Parmesan Crumb Calamari

2010-01-28T19:22:00.001-08:00

I had one of those long days today, where the march until lunch seems interminable and the post-lunch doldrums extend to 5pm. The quality of the day was so grey and dull that I had to make something colorful and rich for dinner.

T and I have been living off the leftovers of his 30-course birthday feast all week, which means we have practically no groceries, so tonight I indulged in a stroll through the Whole Foods meat and seafood departments, waiting for dinner to call out to me.

I examined the whole dungeness crabs, the beautiful strip steak, the organic chicken breasts. But what called out to me was the humble tub of raw squid, all tiny purple tentacles and smooth, creamy tubes. By itself squid isn't much to write home about, and I know it makes a lot of people squeamish. But fried up with spices and lemon juice, it becomes a delectable treat that's easy and cheap.

To my mind, homemade calamari is a lot like risotto: ridiculously easy to make well, and yet so rare in the home kitchen that people think it's restaurant fare. I have to admit I rarely make it myself, but that has a lot more to do with the amount of oil calamari requires than the difficulty of making it.

I don't use a recipe per se, but draw inspiration from Nigella Lawson's ridiculously fun Nigella Bites, which has a recipe for salt and pepper calamari (listed under "TV Dinners," which should tell you how easy this is to make). Instead of using her cornstarch, salt and pepper mix, I tossed the calamari rings and tentacles in a Parmesan bread crumb mixture left in the fridge from last week's mac and cheese. I fried the crumb-coated squid in a generous amount of extra-virgin olive oil in a cast iron skillet, and then finished them under the broiler for three minutes for crunch and color. Once cooked, I tossed the calamari with red sea salt, pepper, and lots of lemon juice. T and I ate the golden rings with extra lemon and a creamy-tangy cabbage and apple slaw.

There are even leftovers for lunch tomorrow. Which is Friday. Suddenly, I'm feeling sunny.

The Portobello Project

2010-01-21T07:22:00.000-08:00

Sing, O Muses, of the sporous wonder of the edible fungi!

Look at these little beauties! Such globular tops, such sturdy stem legs, umbrellas branching out to shade the surrounding compost. And they're three times the size today than they were when I took this picture. Now the cluster in the corner crowds the box with magnificent brown crowns.

Sure, the mulch, with the myceleum poking through (that's the white, mouldy looking stuff) appears disgusting, but it hides a treasure trove of mineral rich fungi waiting to be turned into a lasagna (something like this, though with a layer of creme freche instead, fried sage and no chicken: http://www.gourmet.com/recipes/2000s/2009/03/cheesy-chicken-and-mushroom-lasagne). Or, if the crops yields more than currently promised by the five mushrooms in the box, I'm going to try drying them for risottos. What could be better than your own home-grown dried mushrooms, sitting in the pantry like a promise of self-sufficiency and comfort meals to come? (So many people think of risotto as a company meal, but it's just a savory rice pudding; stir until creamy and indulge. T and I love it at the cold beginning of spring, thick with asparagus and lemon juice.)

I'm teaching a class on dystopian literature, so the ideas of gardening, foraging and drying, canning, pickling, etc. are on my mind. (Of course the apocalypse makes me think of food. Other people are hording guns and machetes, and I'm wondering what's for lunch.) I'm reading Into the Forest with my class, and while I'm not sure I find Hegland's essential argument of returning to the hunter-forager lifestyle appealing, I do like all of the narrative about home canning and the like. It's inspired me to at least three projects this summer:

1) Can my own tomatoes. Sure, I'll have to buy them by the bushel at the market, but what the heck? It's the only time of year you can buy that many organic tomatoes without going bankrupt. I might even be able to convince Whole Foods to sell me their banged up, mushy tomatoes at a lower price at the end of the day.

2) Make some fun pickles. Pickled carrots? Okra? At the very least, I'll be stocked for cold weather bloody marys.

3) Create a sourdough starter. Or, even better, attract my own yeast from the local environment. By this summer, Kate, Glenna, Jonathan and I will have completed our informal course in artisan bread baking (courtesy of Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice) and I'll be ready to start a yeasty science project.*

*By the way, we invite you to follow our bread making travails at http://www.themerrybakers.blogspot.com/. No posts as of yet, but we're making our first bread this weekend!

Damn. When did it get to be 8:09am? I better water the mushrooms (in the instructions, I am told to sprinkle them like the morning dew) and get to work.

Wouldn't it be lovely to cook and write all day?

ihatemyjob.com

2010-01-13T17:19:00.000-08:00

We're switching to a new computer network at the bookstore, which is a massive undertaking. Basically, we have to rewrite every buying, selling, storing, transferring, reporting and accounting process that the store utilizes, and there are a lot, because I work for a giant company. As part of this procedure, we have to wean every employee off of our antiquated system and train them to use a Windows-based operating system with entirely new rules. It is expected that management and trainers (that's me!) will locate bugs in the new system and invent ways of utilizing the current system regardless of dysfunctionality. It is also expected that managers and trainers will do this without one iota of formal training themselves; as I noted to my boss this afternoon, this kind of technological autodidacticism isn't in my job description. He wasn't happy.

Maybe he doesn't understand the word "autodidacticism."

I hate my job today. I'm never entirely thrilled with it--the pendulum swings from complacent to bored--but never before in my life (excepting student papers) have I been confronted with such illogicality! In one week I'm to train people to use a system that I haven't been trained on. And when I had the audacity to politely express my discomfort to the powers that be, I was hit with a barrage of the following:

1. You're a trainer. (Oh really? Is that why my job title is "trainer?" Thank you so much for enlightening me. I can cancel my visit to the Dalai Lama now.)
2. You're supposed to know this stuff. (Yes. I realize the discrepancy between your expectations and my reality. That's why I'm here requesting training.)
3. If you don't know something, ask me. (Hm. I'm in the process of following this directive, and it isn't going so well.)
4. You're supposed to be finding bugs in the system. (Yes, but how do I differentiate between a bug and the limitations of my own knowledge when I haven't been trained to use the system?)
5. We don't expect you to locate bugs in the system. (DO YOU LISTEN TO YOURSELF?)
6. I'm really nervous about your network abilities. (Yeah, me too. That's why I want some more f**king training!)
7. I think you do an amazing job. (I hate you.)

When I mentioned to my boss--again in a polite, controlled manner--that I was feeling nervous about asking questions because each time I do, I'm met with a wall of hostility and impatience--he defended his anger and then apologized. I think my boss was having trouble being decisive today.

Maybe he doesn't understand the word "hostility."

He's not a bad man. I kind of like him most of the time. He has sparkling green eyes and a nice smile. And he's smart, despite my snarky comments about his vocabulary. And no one taught him how to use the program, either. He's just had a year to play with it. I have two weeks. Somehow the discrepancy between his readiness and mine has been overlooked in his zealous desire to make me feel like an ass. Plus, his apology was insincere. He feels as angry as I do--the difference is that a) I tactfully hide my feelings and b) my anger is valid and his is a retarded response to the even more retarded company decision not to train trainers.

I know. Next week, when I meet with my class, I'll quiz them on the end of the novel, even though they'll only have read the first 80 pages. They're supposed to know that stuff. They're students. I think they do an amazing job.

Going Rogue (you knew I had to write about it)

2009-12-15T21:33:00.000-08:00

Tonight I'm presented with two options: clean the bathroom or write on my blog. Difficult decision there. The way I'm justifying this arguably lazy decision is that, one, writing is edifying, and two, my book group's coming over on Sunday and the bathroom will just have to be cleaned again. (I'm omitting the fact that I could also be grading papers tonight, but somehow managed to avoid that task by cleaning the kitchen and living room, buying 3 songs on iTunes, making tamale pie in the slow cooker, and checking my email.)

So, Going Rogue, otherwise known as The Longest Campaign Message in American History. We listened to 3 hours of it today at work out of a collective perversity for bad literature. First of all, Sarah reads it herself, making for a peppy and gosh-darnit authentic Palin experience. Her perkiness is as eerie and disingenuous as a Stepford wife; this vocal tone is particularly disturbing when she chirps her way through an account of her miscarriage. But more irritating than Palin's cheerleader delivery is the superficiality of her memoir. This is a woman with a potentially interesting life story. She was raised in Alaska just a few years after it gained statehood, and probably did have an unusual childhood compared to most Americans; after all, few of us hunt and eat bear or have parents who were modern pioneers. She could have written in detail about life in early Alaska: relationships between Native Alaskans and settlers, domestic hardships, natural wonders, what it was like to be a member of an tiny gender minority, etc. Instead, what we get is a Little Igloo on the Tundra, snow globe fantasy of life in America's coldest state, where all the men are men, all the women are men, and the children are named after motor vehicles.

According to Sarah, life in Alaska is big, fat snowflakes and pink, fat babies. It's also the locale for her heroic battle against "politics as usual" (the repetition of which phrase could inspire a drinking game). Despite the hundreds of pages in Going Rogue, all the reader gets is the old campaign mantra of a maverick soccer mom. If the memoir reveals anything new, it's Palin's inability to accept criticism and her predilection for thinly veiled character assasinations of people who think critically about what she says and does. She uses her book to lambast Wasilla critics, campaign critics, and any government official who ever made it difficult to get her way. Apparently Sarah is of the Cheney-Bush camp, which reviles the checks and balances process as obstructionist and views independent thought as tantamount to treason.

Perhaps actual autobiography was too much to expect from Palin, but as my friend Katie noted, the book has no depth. There is not one iota of frailty, or bildungsroman failure and growth. Judging from Going Rogue Sarah Palin came out of the womb the wolf-shooting, glasses-wearing, grammar-eschewing, baby-producing cowgirl she is today. And every step along the way was idyllic. (If a little bit chilly, gosh darnit.) Sarah Palin represents herself as the least likable character an author can create--one who is perfect and therefore unrelateable. Her reduction to political ideologies of real-life hardships like miscarriage or having a baby with Down Syndrome (in this case, both anti-abortion messages) made it hard for me to care about her. And her sunny gloss of life in Alaska made me want to puke.

Nothing is that perfect, and no ideology is that cut and dry. The utter absence of difficulty and emotion in Palin's memoir should make any reader suspicious.

But it won't, and that's the hardest part of her story to digest. Right now millions of men and women are reading Sarah Palin's memoir and agreeing with all of her simple, cheery pronouncements. Despite the fact that every sentence in Going Rogue can be re-written more concisely as "I'm a maverick, vote Sarah for president!," this book has generated over 200 million sales.

I'd rather get a lump of coal in my stocking. At least coal, given time, becomes a diamond, whereas Palin will always be a sack of scat.

Thanksgiving

2009-11-29T15:03:00.000-08:00

Orange Pumpkin Clover Rolls

The rolls were a little dry, to be frank, as I had to bake them several hours before the feast, and had no oven in which to warm them. But the fresh ones, the ones I rolled with butter, cinnamon and brown sugar, which we ate warm from the oven at 10 in the morning...those were marvelous. Heady with orange zest and cinnamon, and tender as silk. I realize now the rolls need to be eaten immediately, or toasted with some extra butter and honey.

What To Eat When Your Heart Is Empty

2009-11-21T00:15:00.000-08:00

Golden foods: brioche, roast chicken, yukon golds, pumpkin curry, yellow tomatoes fat in the sun, olive oil, salted butter, sweet corn bread a little north of pudding.

Tea: Bracing black tea mellowed with milk. African rooibos tea sweetened with raw honey. Chai, peppermint, licorice. If times are really rough, honey vanilla chamomile.

Homemade hot cocoa with a shot of whiskey.

Foods that smell good; that wrap you in their scents like a fog of comfort: Cinnamon, baked apples, burnt cheddar, mushrooms cooking in butter, garlic, meat simmering all day in a bottle of wine, freshly ground coffee, chocolate, bread baking, red wine hitting a hot pan, truffles, tomato sauce, my mom's gingersnap cookies.

Macaroni and cheese. Grilled cheese with chili sauce. Nachos with cheese. Feta cheese sauteed in olive oil with lemon juice and artichoke hearts. Cheese.

Standing in the kitchen, stirring a pot.

Big Bread for the Sweetest Little Whorehouse in Portland

2009-10-10T21:30:00.001-07:00

Perhaps in an effort to compensate for the whore-y-ness coming out of me at rehearsal this morning, I have decided to bake an enormous loaf of herb bread. The Hulk Hogan loaf, rising precipitously in the oven, overshadows the swearing, vomiting, sluttish and otherwise charming characteristics of Doll Tearsheet, restoring my sense of self as a nice girl more accustomed to book lights than red lights. The fact that I went to Octoberfest this afternoon with a group of strange men, acquaintances of T's, and proceeded to get drunk is completely besides the point. The gargantuan bread is a towering paean to domesticity that amends my momentary lapses in gentility.

Ah, Doll! The biggest acting challenge I've encountered since deciding to write and perform a one-woman amalgam of Euripidean tragedy my senior year of college. (Really, where do I get these ideas? And why do they seem so good at the time?) She's really tough. A drunken whore--literally--with a mercurial temper that swings from tender to hallucinatory in 30-second intervals. My first line is "hem," Shakespearean for "very big vomit, upstage right." I've been prepping for the role by recalling encounters with drug addicts and listening to Amy Winehouse's "Back to Black." I really like the title track, but the music conveys less heroin-laced insanity than I was hoping for. The music's bluesy, but too triumphantly so, with horns and sass, to be representative of Winehouse's problems. But that's off subject.

Anyway, hollering Doll's lines and embodying her sadness is more upsetting than I'd anticipated. She inhabits such a tawdry, hopeless world--the only whore in a flopsy tavern on a dirty street in London, with an impotent fat man as her only glimpse of the kind life--that it's hard not to leave rehearsal a little ickier than I walked in (not to mention much hoarser). It's good, because the worse I feel the better the character is, but I've never felt so emotionally depleted by a part. Or, not depleted. More impacted: I feel like a dirty whore onstage and am embarrassed by myself.

See why I need to bake bread? Floury, crunchy, salty, aromatic piles of flatbread for dinner (tonight with butternut squash, red onions and stinky blue cheese); giant crusty, herby loaves of white crumb; whole wheat and walnut rounds laced dark with grain. Too much bread to eat, and so bread to freeze, alongside our beef and pork and voluminous bags of ice (T!). Bread to assuage the stress in my shoulders and the inky worm of self-doubt and loathing creeping toward my heart each day at rehearsal's end.

Bread for life. Bread for happiness. Bread for me.

The Zen of Some Butter, Sugar and a Little H2O

2009-10-04T18:17:00.000-07:00

The calm before the storm. The island lull before the big kahuna. The deep lungful of oxygen before the plunge from the plank.

It is my last day before the 100-hour work weeks begin.

It's time to bake pie.

I'm not amazing at baking pie, but I love every minute of it. Pie baking is therapeutic, maybe even more so than bread making, because your standing mixer can't pound and smooth the dough, and it doesn't have the eyes to gauge the length and thickness of the butter smears traveling the length of the round. Mixers don't have the hands to appreciate the velvet smoothness of a rich crust, or to delicately pinch the pie into a picture-perfect crinkle (okay, neither do I, but go with me here). More than anything, baking pie is an old domestic art that fills the house with the aromatics of hominess, and ties us to the histories of people who have also spent afternoons in the warmth of kitchens, rolling dough and peeling apples. It's hard to explain, and sounds silly, but when I bake pie I feel like a woman. The rolling scent of my pie is like a maternal caress of all the people I love; warm pie from the kitchen is a kiss and a hug and a premonition of safety.

Today's pie is of apples, scarlett pears and dried cranberries from the farmer's market. The fruit's ensconced in a butter crust heady with lemon zest and brushed with egg yolk and cream to make it golden. I even cut out some sweet little hearts with the extra dough to garnish the top, which I was very proud of until T criticized them as girly. (No matter. Who wants a masculine pie? Should it be covered in soccer balls and naked women? Or for T-Money, a foxy Blood Elf from WOW?) The best part is that the pie is in our gorgeous Italian copper gratin dish, which we've never used and makes it look so rustic and lovely. Even if it tastes bad it looks pretty.

So will tomorrow and the next day and the day after that be a madhouse of grading, shelving and memorizing lines? Yes. But is today filled with pie? Yes.

And for the moment that is enough.

Sola

2009-09-27T08:32:00.000-07:00

T's out of town and I'm constructing a perfect bachelorette Sunday. So far it has involved tea drinking on the couch while catching up on food blogs. I should go look at the NYT, but I've been finding American politics increasingly frustrating, polarized and transparently ineffective (these last two qualities work in tandem). Even the mystery novel appearance of Iran's nuclear letter failed to do anything but trigger my inner skeptic. Is John Le Carre is running the world now?

So rather than be a responsible patriot and dwell of the show trial of American politics, I'm going to visit the Irvington Farmer's Market, meet a friend for coffee, and cook dinner with another friend this evening (butternut squash gnocchi in sage brown butter). I may also make an amazing brunch for one with my market finds, some concoction with fresh cheese and heirloom tomatoes and local sausage and my homemade broa.

Ah broa! I've just discovered it; I baked it by accident. Broa is what happens when you combine regular flour with fine cornmeal, add yeast, salt and water, and bake it into a fine crusty wheel. It's a South American bread, I believe, and its barely sweet, slightly salty, moist, dense crumb is perfect for cheese or sopping in stews. It would be equally good flattened into a pizza crust or studded with salami, sharp cheese and olives. I've just made my last loaf from the dough and can't decide whether or not to bake it right up again, or go back to my challah, which was such a resounding success last week for Rosh Hashanah that my parents abducted the second loaf and left T and I crumbless.

Tomorrow is Yom Kippur, day of atonement, so baking challah or bagels today would be appropriate. My family and I will be fasting all day tomorrow and the knowledge that homemade carbohydrates await at the end of the tunnel of atonement might make the day less dreadful. It's not that we're religious Jews (my father announced that he was a pagan several Hannukahs ago, and we have Christmas stockings, if that helps clarify our collective divinity), but the one day of fasting is a cultural reminder that most Jews (my great-grandparents included) grew up poor and hungry in the old country, and that many non-Jews in America today will "fast" tomorrow because they have no cash for food. Here I am rhapsodizing about heirloom tomatoes and someone next door could be dreaming about having enough food to feed her kids this week. I don't think it's bad for me to care about food, perhaps especially because it's wrapped up in an interest in community, farming and environmentalism (or is that just a self-gratifying excuse?), but sometimes I think T and I should turn our once-yearly contribution to the Oregon Food Bank into a monthly thing. I mean, we don't have much, but we have much more than others. Yom Kippur makes you think like that.

But I've gotten away from my Sola Sunday. It's 9am and high time I trek to the market. After all, I have a busy day of relaxing ahead of me. Time to get started!

Eat this Roasted Tomato and Onion Tart

2009-09-17T07:16:00.001-07:00

Roast cherry (or other small sweet tomatoes) and sliced sweet onion in some olive oil and sea salt in the oven at 375-425 degrees until soft, browned and slightly blistered.

Meanwhile, brush sheets of fillo dough with olive oil, and drape over a tart or pie pan, layering as you go, until you achive your desired thickness.

Season the roasted veggies with crushed black pepper, and transfer to the tart pan, saving the juices (put this gorgeous broth aside for other uses: I combined it with some greek yogurt to make a dressing for a yellow potato and asparagus salad). Bake the tart in a 375 degree oven until lightly golden, crisp, and bubbling. You may raise the heat to quickly reduce liquid if the tart is too juicy.

Please note that you can first layer the fillo crust with pesto, goat cheese, ham, etc. I made my tart plain, but the beauty of tarts is that you can enrich them in a thousand ways.

Eat this tart. Enjoy the summer. It'll be fall soon!

The End of the Wedding Season

2009-09-14T08:04:00.000-07:00

Home sweet home! By some miraculous happenstance the cats have not destroyed the plants, the laundry or each other, and I missed no important emails from school. No new organisms are growing in the fridge, and the apartment needs just a minimal clean-up to de-cat it. The kitten has developed a new taste for human flesh--mine, specifically--but I'm willing to roll with the punches. A few nips are well worth the fact that the little beasts finally managed not to barf all over the bedroom while we were gone.

Kate's wedding was wonderful. There were no hitches (the 5am thunderstorm simply added drama), the food was great, the bride looked beautiful, my toast went well, and the big band music got everyone dancing. Kate and Phil's ceremony was also very touching and personal; several members of the wedding party read poems, prayers and sang songs to supplement the couple's vows. I stood there trying hard not to cry, but I failed miserably. I also cried during my toast. I'm such a girl.

The best part was getting to meet so many of Kate's friends from graduate school, whom I've heard so much about. What a fun and interesting group of women! We had an unabashedly girly time, complete with a pajama dance party (well, by "dance" I mean "last minute seating chart session") and champagne by the pool (and champagne with breakfast, as an afternoon snack, late in the night...) and a bridal lingerie photo shoot. Plus, there was so much love for Kate! It made me really happy. It also made me wish that my best friends lived in Portland, as opposed to being scattered across the country. How do I live without them?

So now I'm back, and life has to resume its normal course. It's hard to gear myself up for what is going to be a hellacious fall of 80-hour work weeks and the opening of the theatre season, but I'm starting today, with an apartment clean-up and my last class of the summer term with what must be the world's most apathetic group of students. (I'm actually tempted to toss their final essays down the stairs, the essays are going to be so revolting.) But it won't be all bad: the autumn is my favorite season, and my birthday's only a couple of months away. And the wedding season, as glorious as it is, is over for another year. We can rest content that there is now more love in the world, and we no longer have to look at people's registries.

The Comos that Didn't

2009-09-04T21:28:00.000-07:00

I have two Italian como breads baking into listless loaves in the oven right now. It's all my fault: I left the loaves rising for 10 hours, which might be okay for my slow rise wheat sandwich bread, but it doesn't fly with tempermental artisan breads. The worst part is that I knew this would happen when I patted my carefully tended dough into satisfying rounds before work this morning; two days of patient work from starter to oven, ruined because of impatience and a certain degree of culinary apathy. I have a ton of biga (starter) leftover, a relief since I promised fresh bread for Sunday dinner, but that's little salve for my irritated chef's heart.

When you let breads over-rise, you risk the chance of the yeast dying, which is exactly what I think happened today. My loaves smell lovely and look golden, but they haven't gained a milimeter in the oven and have the surface appearance of rumpled dress shirts (with our names emblazoned across the top--T had some fun while I was at work). Which means they'll probably be dense, doughy and overly crisp--okay for a bread salad or bread crumbs, or fresh from the oven (ALL bread is delicious hot, smeared with salty butter or drizzled with olive oil, or just consumed plain, in secret, in greedy bites)--but not acceptable for proud presentation to all and sundry who wander into the kitchen. (Which means T. But still.)

I think I'll use some of the remaining starter to make puccia, which are little olive-studded rolls from Puglia. I'm hanging out with my little brother Lukas on Sunday and he'll get a kick out of forming the dough balls. Not that I'm abandoning comos: once we eat these lame loaves, I'll be doing it again, and this time doing it right.

In other baking news, Fred, my father-in-law, and I are making croissants in the next few weeks. We've watched the old Julia Child PBS video and read up on the difficulties of creating flaky pastry. I'll keep you posted on the progress and success of our buttery adventure...if you've made croissants before, let me know what your experience was like.

Political Seafood: What's Real in District 9

2009-08-22T20:07:00.000-07:00

Attention: Contains spoilers.

District 9 is well worth seeing. It may look sensationalist and sci-fi (it does star prawnish aliens slumming it up in a militarized Johannesburg) but it contains enough realistic elements to keep the plot current, and often scary, in the way that catastrophic news is scary, subverting our everyday ease with the knowledge that well being is ephemeral.

The basic story takes place 20 years after an alien ship has broken down in the sky above Johannesburg. Well intentioned humans have retrieved the ill and starving aliens and established them in filthy refugee camps that are eerily reminiscent of both the post-Katrina FEMA trailer parks and the real slums of Johannesburg. As the aliens grow despondent in the face of unemployment, racism, interment in refugee camps, and permanent estrangement from home, they begin to act out, sometimes committing acts of violence against humans. As you can guess, the South African populace and government respond to the aliens' behavior with that particular blend of militarism, ownership and fear of the unknown that is the trademark of the modern nation state. When the movie begins, the alien affairs branch of the government (MNU) has decided to issue eviction notices to the alien inhabitants of District 9 and move them all 250 kilometers outside of the city.

If you know a little about the history of apartheid then you will get this reference to the independent homelands that the white South African government set up as a means of sequestering, denationalizing and controlling black South Africans. Like the alien homeland being established in District 9, these homelands were policed; likewise, both homelands devolved into crime-ridden ghettos full of angry people. The sociopolitical disaster that was apartheid evolved into a protracted and violent struggle for black independence, but it is not this struggle that the movie copies as the plot progresses. Instead, the movie seems to follow the more recent violence in South African slums between black South Africans and illegal immigrants from Zimbabwe. In the past year Zimbabweans and other aliens have been murdered and burned out of their homes by furious citizens afraid that the immigrants are taking the few jobs available in South Africa's weak economy.

This intra-slum violence is referenced in the relationship that District 9 explores between the aliens and a Nigerian gang squatting in District 9 in order to supply the aliens with desired goods (cat food, for some reason) and acquire alien weaponry (which no human can actually use). The Nigerian boss also engages witch doctors, who tell him that murdering and eating the flesh of the aliens will allow him to acquire their strength, intelligence, and ability to use their advanced technology. Ritual amputations and murders like this do still occur in parts of Africa today, and the movie makes a strong visual statement about the barbarity and idiocy of such "magic."

Alien rebellion is mentioned in the film, but the true focus is on the fears and actualization of miscegenation, and on the ways in which we tend to underestimate the abilities of people when we don't speak their language or understand their culture. The film highlights the political tactic of impoverishing people in order to disenfranchise them; its images of aliens corralled into fenced compounds resonate because there are people in South Africa and elsewhere who really live this way. I referenced Hurricane Katrina earlier; what violence and hopelessness are we engendering by treating our own citizens like aliens, too antithetical to the American dream to touch?

It's impressive that District 9, a mock-umentary that indulges in human-alien sex humor, sight gags, and stereotypical characterizations of shady, sadistic government agencies and brutish soldiers, manages to be simultaneously hard-hitting and entertaining. While the government and military characters are painted with broad strokes, the main characters--Wikus, a clumsy MNU officer, and the ironically named Christopher Johnson, alien genius--are given pathos and greater dimensionality. Wikus's horror at turning into an alien and his growing, grudging respect for Christopher, while well-trodden movie fodder, are sincere and engaging. And Christopher defies alien film convention by eschewing violence; if anything, Christopher's technical genius and self-appointed savior role mark him as the movie's hero.

District 9 doesn't do anything new as a blockbuster sci-fi film, but it's the first high budget fantasy I've seen that acts so simply as an allegory for contemporary political and humanitarian issues without being polemical or contrived. The viewer isn't lectured to by the film's focus on human inhumanity; rather, she is implicated in it, and forced to watch what we do to ourselves and our own.

And we wonder why extraterrestrial life won't come to Earth.

Bon Le Weekend

2009-08-16T19:28:00.000-07:00

It's been a day of labor, grading and housework, but now I'm listening to Ella and Miles Davis and relaxing as the mingled scents of basil, mint and roasted tomato swell in my apartment, mixing with the cooling evening breeze.

It's a beautiful night.

I had quite a lot of leftover sundried tomato pesto from the other night, and all day recipe possibilities have been percolating in the back of my mind. I finally decided upon a roasted tomato tart with wilted radiccio and kalamata olives, resting on a liberal layer of pesto and nestled into a whole wheat olive oil crust. I'm serving the tart alongside a roasted patty pan squash and herbed chickpea salad (basil, chives and mint) in a lemony dressing. I'm finishing the tart with a balsamic reduction to add just a trace of sweet verve.

I am so excited for T to come home to this pretty, pretty meal, and I don't care how Donna Reed that is.

My culinary life has changed since discovering Chocolate and Zucchini, which I know is already very popular, but oh my goodness I was late to the table. Clotilde is responsible for the tart crust and is the inspiration for the squash salad. I was persuing her recipe index and can't wait to try a variation on her lentil apple salad (I might make mine more Indian than French inspired, because I have red lentils and Nigella seeds) and the zucchini and mushroom crumble (to do away with the green club our friend Yael thrust upon us the other weekend--her squash plants are palaeozaic--and the sad creminis languishing in the fridge). I must admit that I also love the blog because "Clothilde" is my pseudonymous title of choice when I have to write staff recs for really embarrassing books, and I take a lot of delight in its mixture of Flaubertian bourgeois exoticism and mothball old-ladyness. Chocolate's Clotilde is no doddering old lady, but she's a devastatingly good cook.

But oh, T is home and it is time to eat.

Bonsoir.

The Ramona St Keep

2009-08-06T20:43:00.000-07:00

One day I will own and operate a little restaurant that isn't much more than a cozy hole in the wall. The tables and chairs--maybe 8 tables total--will all be rustic and mismatched, as will the tableware and glasses. I'll buy the stuff at rich lady rummage sales and I'll call my restaurant the Ramona St Keep in honor of our town's own Beverly Cleary, and here is what I'll serve.

In the mornings I'll make buttery yellow eggs served with seasonal vegetables, sweet roasted roots in the winter, crisp poached asparagus in spring, heirloom tomatoes and corn and patty-pan squash with bacon in the summer. Eggs come with biscuits some days, some days rich Irish soda bread, studded with fennel seeds or dried currants. For people who don't eat eggs I'll offer one or two alternatives, like an ever-changing breakfast panino--figs, parma ham and goat cheese one day, spinach, garlic and feta the next--and house-made granola with Greek yogurt. Strong coffee. Strong tea that comes to the table in a pot. Maybe on Sundays a wicked Bloody Mary. In a pitcher.

Lunch will be a stream-lined affair, with one daily soup and 2-3 blue plate specials. I'll cook what's on the market and according to whimsy, but it will be lovely comfort food. Creamy roasted tomato soup with my own special red chili grilled cheese, zucchini-corn cakes, curried chicken salad stuffed into hot naan, lemon risotto topped with butter-laced crabmeat. Warm bread twists folded with salt crystals and garlic.

No suppers. I like to spend evenings cooking for my family.

I think the trick will be to keep it simple. Find a rotating menu that I can make sublimely and stick to it. (Experiment at home only.) Get cute waitstaff. And have a little place, so that I don't get too stressed out. And make arrangements with local farmers to get fresh everything.

I'm really serious about this. In the last two years of thwarted ambition and career hell, with the resultant malaise of mediocrity settling over me, I have only genuinely enjoyed a few things. And cooking for other people is one of them. And I've found myself growing unaccountably jealous of the Portlanders I see, not older than me, running their own foodie businesses and seeming, well, happier than I am. And I think to myself, why the f**k am I lugging boxes around for management I despise when I could be at home elbow-deep in flour? And so, I need a plan to get myself elbow-deep in flour and happiness.

I'm going to start taking some cooking classes to bone up on skills I have but need to improve upon, like shaping artisan bread and cooking for a large number of people. (Can you even take a class on that?) I want to start making my own chutneys and pickles, too, and I'll need to start ferreting some money away. I'll also need to read up on running a successful small business.

But--unless life gets in the way, which it does do--this is my new 10-year plan.

At 38, I will own a thriving little business that smells like cinnamon and carmelized onions and pays more than my crap job at the warehouse.

You'll come, won't you?

It looks like two pigs fighting under a blanket

2009-07-25T23:11:00.000-07:00

I need to watch every movie starring Olympia Dukakis.

I just watched Steel Magnolias for the first time since childhood. First of all, it stars Dolly Parton and I love her, big hair, face lift, boob job and all. And then, my husband's away at the coast, and Steel Magnolias is the sort of film you only ever watch when your husband is away at the coast and there's only the cats to see you cry buckets when Sally Field finally breaks down. The really surprising performance is by Daryl Hannah, who is hilarious in her various manifestations as nervous wallflower, reformed party girl and evangelical Christian. I didn't know she had comic chops like that! What an underrated performer.

But lest you think that I have lulled myself into a Thai takeout chick flick stupor, I'll have you know that I've been mulling over a very deep question for the last two days.

Does knowledge carry moral weight?

No, I'm not stoned. Seriously: is knowledge morally relative; for example, does that fact that NASA recruited Nazi scientists (aka war criminals) to get us to the moon before the Russians somehow devalue the achievement? Should we have left humanity's feet firmly on earth rather than use our least heavenly brothers to reach celestial heights?

This is a good question, I think, especially given the recent and well-publicized prosecution of John Demjanjuk, an 89-year old alleged concentration camp guard now being held in Germany on murder charges. I'm of two minds about this situation. On the one hand, if he's guilty then he should spend the rest of his life in jail. He's lucky to have lived a happy, safe life after denying the same to thousands of innocent victims and it's time to pay the Piper. On the other hand, what's the point? At 89 he's probably repressed or rationalized his involvement in the Holocaust. Either he feels remorse or he does not, but packing his wrinkly butt in prison will only inspire self-pity and put the burden for his care on the German tax payer. Besides, it's hypocritical of the US to aid in the prosecution of octogenarians 50 years after recruiting their colleagues for the air and space program. Are these arrests the result of residual guilt? A tacit acknowledgement of the failure of the space program to establish whatever world stability and happy American hegemony the original Cold War ideologues thought it would?

Thank you for your time and energies, Herr Nazi. You bad boy, you.

I'm sure that the Nazis' contributions to academia weren't limited to rocket science. What about Mengele's medical experiments, how have they impacted modern medicine? Are we morally obligated to eschew this material; or, are we morally obligated to embrace this material as a means for saving future lives? What about Mercedes Benz and Volkswagen's and Doc Martins? Are ideas and items eternally innocent? And, a related question, when does responsibility for the Holocaust end? Will we hunt and prosecute every last member of the 3rd Reich so that we can people the German jails with incontinent Aryans and wipe from our consciences the shame of sending boats of refugees back to Germany?

...

I try not to dwell on the Holocaust. My application essay for the seminary (yes, I have a graduate degree in modern Jewish history...so how is it that I have just learned about NASA?!) was about relinquishing our hold on a traumatic past that does nothing to strengthen modern commitment to Jewish community and culture. I care very deeply about not defining Judaism by what has been done to Jews. Yet, learning that our trip to the moon was the end result of Nazi experimentation, and enslavement, and the careful erasure of war records, tarnishes an act I've always idealized a bit. And this idealization has been aided by an American educational policy to not teach students about the Cold War and to interpret all technological progress as inherently good and ethically neutral. When you separate "one small step for man" from the USA's and the USSR's petty rat race for universal domination it is an amazing triumph. Looked at within its socio-political context, Armstrong's moonwalk was a colossal pissing contest between two countries desperate to do anything besides examine their own moral failings.

So how did I get from Steel Magnolias to Wernher von Braun? It would trivialize both to reduce each to a lesson about life and death, or the impact of independent decisions on a community. Is science like art, heavy with history and continual meaning? Should it be studied for its nuances, for its dalliances with the emotive--something we try very hard to excise from our laboratories and science funding?

Surely yes?

Two Ham Sandwiches

2009-07-22T20:57:00.001-07:00

Some days call for nostalgia, even of tastes or sounds we did not experience in their original era. I find that books do this to me all the time; I want to sit at the dinner table with the characters and break their bread, because the author makes those kitchens smell so good.

So it was that I found myself craving a kitschy ham and cheese sandwich with a thin layer of real mayo on white bread all day today. Store-bought bread, too, the kind that tugs at the roof of your mouth tasting like mayonaise and sugar. I'm reading a novel set in the early 1960s, and the children are constantly devouring platters of sandwiches put out by adoring mothers in twin sets and pumps. Several days of such descriptions, and my stomach was growling for Cold War culinary Americana. My reading, combined with my growing disgust with the low-carb, low-everything-that-tastes-good skin diet, made this desire too strong to combat. After work I walked to the store and purchased sliced Virginia ham, sharp cheddar cheese, and Franz buttermilk bread. I came home and put together my white, orange and pink sandwich. I cut it into two triangles.

It looked like elementary school, like childhood. Not my childhood, because we ate crumbly whole grain bread with tuna fish and minced black olives, but the childhood you read about in novels that take place on Canadian air force bases in 1963. Campbell's tomato soup childhoods.

It was so good. I ate my sandwich in the early evening sunshine with a glass of OJ, and then had some cherries. And a couple of hours later, I ate another sandwich, curled up reading on the couch. (I understand now why storybook children eat multiple sandwiches. They're not very filling--probably because they're not very nutricious. I'm already hungry again. And only the grimmest self-restraint is preventing me from going right back to the fridge to make myself an old-fashioned PB&J.)

I know I shouldn't eat like this every day, and tomorrow I have a gourmet meal planned because my parents are coming over (Mussels Marseillaise, baguette, salad, poached peaches) but once in a blue moon you gotta get your Kraft on.

Tybalt

2009-07-14T07:40:00.000-07:00

What's little, polydactyl and black all over?

Tybalt, of course! Our new kitten, companion cat to the ferocious Stella (who likes this not at all).

We'd noticed for some time now that Stella gets very anxious when we leave for the weekend, often so anxious that she stops eating and begins vomiting all over our clean laundry. The vet suggested that we get a companion cat for her, but we hestitated, because Stella isn't exactly friendly with other cats. In fact, she's the street bully and enjoys spending her days tormenting the neighbor's dogs. She's sweet and beautiful with us, but she also bites and hisses when she doesn't get her way, and she doesn't adapt well to new individuals.

So.

Knowing all of this, we decided to get a second cat anyway. The lure of a new furry beast was too strong to resist. T's the household animal expert and he's confident that Stella will eventually stop hissing and lunging at Tylbalt; I hope she'll stop making those unearthly Gollum noises while she eats, keeping one violent eye trained on the kitten. In the mean time T and I are relegated to separate bedrooms so that each kitty gets a human and Tybalt doesn't cry all night. Stella has been shirking our company, preferring to make lots of noise under the bed to ensure an unrestful night's sleep and remind us of our perfidy.

Tybalt. The most ill-fitting name for such a merry, prancing kitten! He's joyful and sweet, sleek and black, with the mouth and ears of a Siamese. He talks constantly, which is a little irritating at times (for example, 5am), but he's so loveable and soft that the mewing is more funny than annoying. He likes to meow fiercely at me while I wash dishes. I look down and there at my feet is a tiny little kitten roaring like a miniature lion. Right now he's sleeping against my knee, with one many-toed paw thrown over my leg. How could anyone resist such sweetness?

We think he'll stay sweet, too, because at his age Stella was already a little huntress. She would lurk in corners and doorways for the sheer pleasure of climbing up your bare leg or back, her kitten talons needle sharp. She was completely adorable, but a little scary, too. To me, at least, since I was her favorite victim (T thinks she liked the shrieking).

I look forward to the day when the kitties reconcile. In the mean time, though, we just drink in his cuteness. And give Stella some extra, sympathetic snuggles.

A Post in Need of a Plot

2009-07-09T23:08:00.000-07:00

Oy gevalt I've been so busy, you wouldn't believe so busy. Tonight alone I had a rehearsal, went grocery shopping, cooked for the camping trip, consolidated my lesson materials for photocopying tomorrow morning, and began finalizing my plans for Kate's bridal shower. Now I'm waiting for the chickpeas to cool so that I can finish the hummus, shower, and get to sleep.

I have made some tasty treats for camping. In addition to the ubiquitous meats for grilling (in our case turkey maple sausage and burgers) we have watermelon, a brown rice salad with julienned cucumbers, red bell pepper, and napa cabbage in a spicy peanut sauce, and homemade hummus. We also have fresh corn, yams, and russets for slow roasting in tin-foil, Kettle Chips, and rice flour tortillas. I figure if we're going to car camp, we might as well do so deliciously. T is promising a meal out in Manzanita, too, which is very dashing and romantic. In this household, anyway.

I've also been planning my cousin's bridal shower brunch, which is going to be full of all sorts of delicious foods that I shouldn't be and haven't been eating, and so will enjoy with greater gusto than usual. There's going to be a fresh fruit salad with mint, roasted potatoes with sea salt and rosemary, a strata with rustic bread, gruyere and ham, wild rice salad with sundried tomatoes and goat cheese dressing, baked blueberry French toast, scones, cake, mimosas and rose! And lots of silly games and present opening.

This is my first stint as matron of honor, and I'm taking it very seriously.

New York, New Yawk

2009-06-18T13:57:00.000-07:00

Here I am in the Big Apple, not doing so much as looking out the window while the rain comes pouring down, and reading a gothic romance (it's from the 18th century, so there's a little literary credibility there). My friends' daughter, Annika, is taking a nap, and so we're taking a break from city activities. Though truth be told, all we've done is gone to see Up in 3-D. We're planning on walking up to Fairway soon to procure ingredients for a great dinner, but I don't know how long the little one sleeps for. It doesn't really matter; I lived in the city for two years, so I don't feel like I have to run around shopping and seeing shows. Especially in the driving rain. It's cold here!

Tomorrow will be more of a city day. I'm going to meet with my friends Sue and Julia, probably for dinner and wine, and I'll probably leave my home-base apartment a bit early in the day to shop at H&M. I've been dreaming of a slice of Zabar's coffee cake for four years, so I might splurge Saturday morning on my way to the LIRR. I'll have to compensate with mountains of broccoli and gallons of carrot juice, but sometimes culinary memories have to be sated and re-explored.

To me NYC is food and parks, anyway. I'd forgotten how amazing the grocery shopping is here: loads of foreign staples and fresh pastas and amazing fruit and vegetables. Fairway was a wonderland last night despite the crowd and rude clerks, and I'm so looking forward to Zabar's. Dean & Deluca is tempting, too, because I know I can find nigella seeds there. My friend Glenna, with whom I'm staying, has been my city cooking companion since we met at seminary, and so seeing her always means making delicious food and indulging in the kind of easy, close friend conversations that one doesn't often have, and so are a kind of nourishment in of themselves. We used to take long walks up Riverside Park; I also took lots of solitary walks when I was lonely or thinking, and once T moved here, we would walk through the Inwood parks with overly sugared coffee and bagels and the newspaper and just be happy.

But the baby has awakened and I'd like to get back to this rare bit of city socializing. God, vacation is good.

Homemade Beef Jerky

2009-06-16T15:36:00.000-07:00

I have to force myself to grade ten more papers in the next 2 hours, but I can't resist taking a break to encourage you to make your own beef jerky.

I've never really liked store-bought jerky--it's so hard and dog-foodishly over-processed--but in my search for new protein-rich snacks it occurred to me that homemade jerky just might prove the ticket: chewy, portable, salty, sweet, lean, and somewhat naturopath approved. Besides, my toaster oven has a dehydrator setting, and I've been dying to use it. (As it turns out, the dehydrator is nifty but the oven is better. But do use dehydrating racks, if you can. They'll save you the mess of wiping down greasy oven racks.) And I am so glad that I tried it out, because this jerky is yummy to eat and painless to make. The hardest part is waiting 24 hours for the strips to marinate and dry so that you can eat them with childish abandon.

After doing some internet research, I decided upon a relatively lean cut of steak (top loin) and a marinade of tamari sauce, sweet chili sauce, agave nectar, and thai fish sauce. The soy and sugar in the marinade aren't ideal healthwise, but they seem important if you want your jerky to be salty-sweet, which most people do. You want a pretty lean cut of meat because fatty jerky is both messy and disgusting. Plus, it will go rancid much faster than leaner beef. The same is true for poultry, so make your turkey jerky (so fun to say aloud) with breast meat.

The only downside is that jerky is a somewhat expensive snack, even homemade. 2 lbs of steak cooks down to around 1 lb of jerky. But compare that to the store brands, and this is a steal. Plus, it's a nice alternative to peanut butter crackers or cheese, and hits the spot if you crave something salty.

Here's the rough recipe:

1 C tamari (or regular soy sauce)

1/2-1 C sweet chili sauce (hot would be great, though)

a couple squirts of agave nectar (or some brown sugar)

2 T fish sauce (optional)

2 lbs lean steak

Freeze the beef for an hour or so, so that it's easier to slice into thin (approximately 1/8 of an inch) slices. Dump the marinade ingredients into a ziplock bag or tupperware and shake to mix. Add the beef, coat completely in marinade, and throw in the fridge overnight.

Sometime the next day, place foil on the bottom of your oven, and preheat your oven to 160 degrees (or 200 degrees with the door slightly cracked). Lightly oil your dehydrating racks or oven racks and place the beef strips in rows on top of them. Leave to dry out. This can take 2-4 hours, depending on how thickly you sliced your jerky. The oven temp is so low that you can go about your business without too much concern. I went to the gym, but maybe I'm reckless with appliances?

Pull the jerky out when its flexible but dry, and the coating is a beautiful dark caramel. Cool completely before storing in a tupperware in your fridge.

This won high ratings from T, and the cat seems pretty interested in it, too. Make some today and your family will love you forever. Or at least until the container is empty, at which point you just might make some more...

Taking Deep Breaths and Focusing on the Inner Carrot

2009-06-14T20:39:00.000-07:00

I'm learning a belated lesson in patience and the evils of superficiality. As my body detoxifies from its fairly benign history of misuse, my skin continues to worsen. I probably have the worst acne of my life right now, and age 15 didn't find me looking too pretty. It's getting difficult to work up the courage to put on my clothes and walk out the door, and even scary to host friends at our house without feeling pressured to cake on concealer and wear my long hair down around my cheeks. Poor T has to deal with a wife who's an emotional wreck with zero self-esteem and listen to my angry tirades against the naturopath who has me looking like this.

But. I'm sticking with it. The no wheat, no dairy, no sugar, no caffeine, all veggies, all meat, all water diet: the wacky nutrition regimen that has me drinking carrot juice and eating broccoli and turkey for breakfast. Because as horrible as this is physically and psychologically, I know it's good for me. And once all of this gunk is out of my body, and once my body is able to digest everything more easily, my skin will improve.

The thing with naturopathic medicine is that it is a slow, creeping process. Americans are used to going to the doctor and coming home with a miracle drug that cures our acne in 3 days; it is not in our collective patient psychology to wait 3 months for improvements to occur. The waiting game is hard. It's hard to wake up each morning, look in the mirror and cry. It's hard to have a gorgeous husband and not begin to question how he can look at you each day with such wonder and love; can such blind passion be real? And it's hard to admit, also, that this problem you're facing is a minor one in the grand scheme of the world, and that you should be grateful to have acne and not leprosy, and to have health insurance and a job and a beautiful man who loves you no matter what you look like. It is so much easier just to take a drug and stop thinking and feeling. And it's even easier to be seduced by our society's dominant ideas about beauty, and to associate one's beauty, or lack thereof, with one's success in the world.

So as I prepare to travel back east this week to visit friends and family, I'm working on finding my self-worth beneath my face and projecting it outward. I'm drinking lots of carrot juice and trying to focus on the positive. And it's hard. But if I'm going to detoxify my body then I might as well detoxify my mind and spirit, too. I think that both of those things have been neglected for a long time, having been filled with negative thoughts and energy.

This doesn't mean I won't wake up tomorrow morning and cry. It doesn't mean I feel proud of my face or that I want to leave the house. But it does mean that I won't let these feelings consume and define me, and I'm going to try really hard to reach that mythic "inner beauty" we're always hearing about.

Besides, I'm going to need to be in a real zen place when my father and grandmother both tell me how horrible I look. Which they'll do. Repeatedly. So that when the inevitable occurs I'll be able to stand there and smile, focusing on the inner carrot. And plotting revenge.

Weird Science

2009-06-06T21:54:00.001-07:00

Remember when you were little, and you would mix up a bunch of kitchen ingredients or bathroom supplies or backyard dirt and berries in a container like an amateur alchemist, just for the sheer joy of concocting something new? To see what fantastic, smelly potion you and your compatriots could design? And then dare each other to consume?

I still love doing that in the kitchen. These days I don't mix ketchup and vanilla extract on a double dare, and the only mud pies I like are of the Mississippi variety, but I love perverting other people's recipes and making them my own. My father calls this shit cooking, swearing up and down that this is the Yiddish term for kitchen improvisation. I don't know about that. It sounds like an excuse my Russian great-grandmother came up with to justify Sunday night failures. Still, it's the term that rings in my head every time I tie my apron on and set to deconstructing someone else's recipe, and it always makes me smile.

Now that I'm doing a lot of gluten-free baking, my mad scientist urge has to be curbed a bit. All successful cooking relies on chemistry, but GF baking in particular, because the unusual flours, starches and gums are simulating the protein, taste and texture of wheat gluten. Too much brown rice flour can leave pastry chalky and bitter. A heavy dry:liquid ingredient ratio makes for dry, crumbly inedibles. A heavy liquid:dry ingredient ratio yields mushy goods. Plus, you have to use more flavorings and sweetness to mask the flavor of rice and bean flours. A good recipe is hard to come by, and it's tempting to adopt an orthodox attitude when you find one you like.

The thing is, I just can't do that. Why leave well enough alone when you can put your own unique stamp on something, and then feel extra proud when you succeed in producing something delicious? So, after reading a bunch of GF blogs (I love Gluten Free Girl) and the introductions to trustworthy GF cookbooks, I decided to get jiggy with my muffins.

I need to pause here and mention my love for muffins, and pretty much every other carby breakfast treat. I love scones, rolls, buns, biscuits, croissants, tarts, savory pastries, even toast with really good butter, or mashed avocado and lemon juice, or crushed tomatoes and garlic. Breakfast just isn't the same without a wheaty companion, and I've been eying my recent egg and veggie breakfasts with lackluster appetite. So I allow myself to splurge on Sundays, which is when we go to the in-laws for brunch. My father-in-law is a rail of a man who disdains dietary guidelines, and so their house is a wonderland of salty, buttery, white-floured foods. It's pretty much impossible to follow any sort of diet there, and so rather than sit and mope while everyone else indulges (I tried that, and it was terrible), I've started bringing goodies that we can all share.

Truthfully, my goodies have run the gamut from delicious to "eh," but I think this week's sour cream apple muffins with grated coconut and toasted walnuts will be a hit. And what's so cool about them is that they worked--they rose, fluffy and moist, with a tender, slightly sweet crumb--even though I threw a bit of this in and a bit of that in, and basically turned my nose up at the GF gospel of no alterations. I did start with Annalise Robert's phenomenal recipe for a brown rice baking mix (I mix up big batches and keep it in my pantry) and I drew inspiration from her pumpkin muffin recipe and Gluten-Free Girl's sour cream apple muffins. But then I changed the sugar to honey and reduced the amount, added some vanilla extract and cardamom, used pureed apples, added some sour cream and molasses (it gives the apples a kick), and 2 big handfuls of unsweetened coconut and toasted walnuts. The best part? I didn't measure a thing once the leavening and flours were in the bowl.

There's something liberating about using your own kitchen sense to concoct something that will warm people's hearts and tummies, and something so satisfying in recognizing that you're learning to work with new materials, and doing so well. Baking is the best way to set a poor day aright.

Here are my muffins. Enjoy!

Sour Cream Apple Muffins with Coconut and Toasted Walnuts

1 1/4 cups brown rice flour mix
1 teaspoon baking soda
¾ teaspoon xanthan gum
¾ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon nutmeg or cardamom
½ teaspoon ground ginger
¼ teaspoon ground cloves
2 large eggs
water as needed
1/3 cup plus 2 tablespoons Canola oil
2 tablespoons molasses
approximately 1 C apple puree or sauce
1/2 C honey
couple handfuls each unsweetened coconut and toasted walnut pieces

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix dry and wet ingredients separately. Add the wet to the dry and mix until just combined. Don't leave floury pockets in the bowl, but don't over-mix because this will lead to drier muffins. Scoop batter into a greased muffin tin (go ahead and fill it to the top) and bake for 20-25 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean when you insert it into the middle of a muffin. Remove from the pan and leave to cool on a rack.

Eat with a warm cup of chai and your sweetie by your side. Or, at least with the chai. Let's get our priorities straight here.

The Little List of 21st century Irritables

2009-05-29T17:27:00.001-07:00

1. Facebook applications. (And the social taboo of ignoring them.) (And the fact that they always, invariably, do something terribly obnoxious to my computer.)

2. Text messaging. Yes, I understand its convenience. But does one have to text all the time: during rehearsal, in the middle of conversations, at the dinner table? What would Miss Manners say? I'm tempted to take the next texting phone that gets between me and the conversation/dinner/project/lecture I'm working on and throw it out the window.

3. American politics. Okay, so the American body politic is not an exclusively 21st century annoyance, but our government (including our eloquent, dashing president) can go suck the text message that just went flying out the window. War in Afghanistan? Increasing funding for the Pakistani government? Letting GM declare bankruptcy after giving the company billions of dollars in tax-payer funds? Refusing to close Guantanamo because heaven forbid a "suspected terrorist" acquire a cell in a Colorado maximum security prison? (Apparently we're okay with American born terrorists; we only break the Constitution for Muslims.) Paying attention to that gargoyle Dick Cheney, and running ads accusing Sotomayor of racism for suggesting--gasp!--that a judge might approach the bench with individual biases? Insinuating that North Korea behave or we'll kick the country's ass? And yet, somehow, despite all of this, today's top news story is about the government's new commission against computer hacking?

COME ON PEOPLE! This is making Mussolini's War Against the Mosquitoes look well-considered.

Nothings.

2009-05-24T14:57:00.000-07:00

You know those days when you're just very glum, and you yell at your husband for nothing in particular (and yet for everything: never making the bed or doing his lunch dishes or making money); when you desperately need a vacation, and looking in the mirror makes you feel like committing hari kari?

I'm having one of those days. My naturopathic regimen is doing a great job of keeping arthritis at bay, and an equally good job of giving me tremendous acne. I'm beginning to look like someone ate Elmo, had indigestion, and then threw up all over my face. And I'm just cranky, too. I finally have 2 entire, consecutive days off--a first since Christmas--and I'm too embarrassed to leave the house, which needs cleaning, anyway.

I did meet our new neighbors (well, one of them), whom I am determined to be friends with. T and I are both tired of having polite but superficial relations with our neighbors. It would be so nice to come home and share a beer out back, and feel comfortable asking someone to look after our cat and vice versa. Jennifer and John seem like really friendly people, so we may be in luck. They're also closer to our age; for too long we've been surrounded by silly college students who are in the dramatic throes of living together for the first time. I teach the fools. I don't want to live with them. Anyway, I'm going to invite the newbies over for a slamtastic wheat-free, dairy-free, sugar-free, caffeine-free dinner. Maybe we'll all develop moderate acne from dietary asceticism and form a club.

I do intend to leave the house to go to the gym in an hour or so, and to take a hike and have a BBQ with some friends tomorrow afternoon. One can't hide one's face forever--it's vain, and of all the seven sins I could commit today, I'd much rather indulge in gluttony and sloth.

So, I suppose that's all. If I was a songwriter or novelist I could write an angsty and yet emotionally accessible and literarily genius piece about my acne and become a millionaire. Alas, I am neither of those things, and so must content myself with some red bush tea and a rice flour scone, and the sunshine, which is quite nice despite one's unhappiness.

Vegan Gluten-Free Banana Yum

2009-05-17T21:53:00.000-07:00

Even the most skeptical gourmands will fall in love with the vegan gluten-free banana muffins I made this evening. The muffins are so good that I'm posting the recipe now, in the hopes that someone else will make them and be surprised by their spicy, moist homeyness.

As you know, I'm new to the gluten-free world, and as an avid baker I've been casting around for recipes that not only approximate the flavor and toothsome qualities of wheat products, but actually taste good, as well. Too many gluten-free breads and pastries crumble at the slightest touch, taste oddly beany or ricey, are prohibitively expensive, or require eight zillion obscure flours and additives to rise or bond ingredients. Thanks to my friend Abby I've found Annalise Roberts, who has a great gluten-free baking book titled Gluten-Free Baking Classics. Ms. Roberts provided the foundation and inspiration for tonight's banana muffins.

The original recipe is for pumpkin bread, and so the first substitution I made was to use 4 bananas in the place of 1 C of pumpkin puree (I do this switch-up all the time with quick breads: sweet potatoes, yams, bananas, squash, and pumpkin are all interchangeable). The second change I made was to swap 1/3 C + 2 Tb virgin coconut oil for the canola oil that Ms. Roberts calls for. I've been doing a lot of reading on coconut oil lately, and though it is high in saturated fats, not all saturated fats are made equal. Once consumed, the fat in coconut oil quickly converts into energy, and is not stored in the heart or arteries. It's a favorite with serious athletes and dieters. It lowers bad cholesterol, has antimicrobial and antifungal properties, aids in digestion, and helps boost immunity. A surprising number of people use it to treat acne. It also tastes amazing (in the muffins, at least) and feels very good as a facial moisturizer. The third change I made was to substitute cardamom for nutmeg, though to be honest this was a substitution borne of necessity rather than experimental verve. The fourth and final change was to use brown sugar in place of granulated white sugar. I just like the taste better.

Bake and eat these, because they will warm your soul. A word to the wise, though: these are not diet muffins. Just because they lack dairy and wheat, are whole-grain, and use a healthy fat does not mean that they are a health food. Treat them as you would any muffin, and at least eat a big bowl of fruit alongside one at breakfast. One more word: you could probably substitute regular flour for the mix as long as you keep the batter wet-thick and omit the xanthan gum.

Little Chef's Vegan Gluten-Free Banana Yum Muffins (inspired by Annalise Roberts)

1 3/4 C brown rice flour mix (see below)
1 C brown sugar, not packed
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp xanthan gum (Bob's Red Mill makes this and it lasts forever)
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp each cinnamon, ground ginger & cardamom or nutmeg
1/4 tsp cloves
2 large eggs
1/4 C water
1/3 C + 2 tsp coconut or canola oil
2 Tb molasses (I use blackstrap for its health benefits--potassium, magnesium, iron--and very rich flavor, but any molasses will do)
4 mushy bananas

(To make the brown rice flour mix: combine 6 C finely ground brown rice flour, 2 C potato starch--not flour!--and 1 C tapioca flour. Mix in a bag or Tupperware container and store in the pantry for easy access.)

It's just occurring to me now that I may have used only 1 1/4 C flour mix, in which case the muffins still turned out beautifully. They'll be a bit less moist with the proper flour amount, so I suggest adjusting the flour:ingredient ratio to meet your tastes.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Mix the dry ingredients (including the sugar) in one bowl. In an second bowl, combine the eggs, water, molasses, bananas and oil. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix until well combined. Do not over-mix. Add the batter to muffin tins, filling them up almost to the top. Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into one of the muffins comes out clean. Let the muffins cool completely (well, you can eat one lukewarm if you like, I did) and store in a Tupperware or wrap well in plastic and tuck in the freezer. Enjoy!

Moral Reasoning and the Great Acne Adventure

2009-05-16T22:01:00.000-07:00

I've just now finished writing my lesson plan on moral reasoning for Monday. I'm tired and shouldn't be blogging. I should be in bed reading the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. But I feel like discussing my ridiculous travels through the limited diet world, because food is weighing on my mind.

For at least two months now I have abstained from eating dairy because I was beginning to get rheumatoid arthritis in my little finger, and dairy can aggravate arthritis. Cutting out the dairy has really helped, and I don't miss it that much. I eat lots of dark leafy greens and fortified rice milk to get my calcium.

Then T told me that wheat can aggravate acne, which I have in spades lately, the really lovely kind that sits in huge lumps under the skin looking and acting for all the world like underwater volcanoes. So I decided to abstain from wheat as well, and have been getting progressively better at baking with gluten-free flours. Unfortunately, my gluten orthodoxy has yielded nothing but a longing for my baking stone and a taste for brown rice flour scones; the acne remains, uglier by the day.

I think I can deduce that neither dairy nor wheat cause my acne. I'm still abstaining just in case, and because--to be honest--I feel more energetic with less wheat in my system. But I'll probably reintegrate some bread after seeing my naturopath.

So I'm down to the remaining dietary culprits for acne: soy, sugar, corn, caffeine.

I can live without milk, cheese and yogurt.

I can live without corn.

I can even live without wheat.

And I don't drink a lot of coffee.

But no sugar?

Do you know all of the delicious dishes made possible by a dash of brown sugar or honey?

Sauteed greens with tamari and sugar; Thai peanut sauce; tomato sauce; coleslaw; vinaigrette; every conceivable baked good, including bread and gluten-free goodies; dark chocolate; orange chicken; Vietnamese chicken and beef salads. Coconut curry.

I like sugar. Sugar is delicious. And it's not as though I can replace the maple syrup on my oatmeal with something savory like Parmesan cheese, because cheese is off limits.

I'm an epicurean trapped in the frustrated, pimply, arthritic body of a 28-year old book clerk. Yuck! I sound like an unlikeable character in one of Dostoevsky's short stories.

I don't know. There's really no point to this blog, other than catharsis. I will get to the bottom of my skin troubles one way or another, and I intend to enlist my naturopath in the hunt for a solution. Until then, though, I'm a little bit hungry and a lot bit zitty.

And I don't like either condition one bit.

The Recession in my Wallet

2009-05-15T07:46:00.001-07:00

Well, the inevitable has occurred: the greedy bastard who runs the book company I work for has reduced our hours. I'll be losing close to $100/month, which isn't pennies, especially as they just raised our health care premium. I'm lucky, I know, that this is as far as the recession's tentacles have reached into my life (thus far). But it is nevertheless frustrating and scary to know that the security of our financial future lies in one man's determination of how well books are selling.

I'm trying to look at this with a glass is half-full attitude. For example, I'll have a little more time now to research gluten-free baking, which I'm really enjoying. Sometimes I think I would be much happier if I'd studied baking instead of English and Jewish Studies. Mixing and shaping wheat breads, and doing all of the food science necessary for gluten-free baking, is really physically and emotionally satisfying--even when gluten-free pastries emerge from the oven and spontaneously deconstruct into sorry crumbles. (Damn you, rice flour!) Besides, I like getting up early in the morning and having my afternoons off. I like fussing around the kitchen and wrapping myself in cooking smells. Baking probably pays as well as what I do now, and the physical labor can't be much worse. And people will always need bread; books are a luxury, but bread is forever.

But instead I was seduced by academia, and here I am: bedraggled adjunct professor and bookstore peon, now on a temporarily reduced schedule due to the American consumer's new found fiscal responsibility. Which reminds me of one last thing, before I get ready for my day at the warehouse. Us bookstore employees listen to a lot of NPR, and I'm getting really tired of Nancy Pelosi's shrill and disingenuous appeals to the American public. Perhaps if the Democrats and Republicans took a day off from bullying each other, they might have the time to focus on real problems like unemployment numbers and, oh I don't know, the national budget. Or the fact that our new president, who I like immensely, but am in intense disagreement with, is ramping up another never-ending war in a Muslim country. I don't understand why our politicians are engaging in party assassinations at a time when they absolutely have to work together to help their constituents; how do they justify this behavior to themselves as they go to sleep each night?

I teach my students--and I will go to my grave believing fervently in the truth of this--that argument is for the purpose of reconciliation and solution. We don't argue to be assholes. We exchange conflicting ideas in the hope of salvaging peace, and establishing well being.

Our Congress needs to remember that its job is to reestablish well being in an ailing nation. So that we can all get this recession out of our wallets, and start living up to our potential.

Chekhov's Three Sisters at ART

2009-05-05T07:33:00.000-07:00

(Disclaimer: My husband is in this show.)

Just when I was satisfied with the excellent work of the ladies in NWCTC'S Richard II, I had to go and spoil my bliss with the tremendously charming Three Sisters at ART. A typical Chekhovian piece about the landed gentry's inability to find happiness in their emotionally and physically indulgent lives, Three Sisters focuses on--who else?--three sisters struggling for personal emancipation in a claustrophobic society crowded by suitors and soldiers and dead-end jobs. The youngest, Irina, imbues the far-off city of Moscow with all of the romance and possibility lacking in their small town; Masha, the middle sister, longs to escape her suffocating marriage to a kind, but weak-foolish, school teacher; and Olga, the eldest, just seems existentially unhappy, like she carries all of the historical weight of a fading Russian aristocracy. Olga is a premonition of the responsibility and fatigue of the new proletariat.

The actresses steal the show. I've always been lucky to see excellent Chekhov--I saw Vanessa Redgrave in The Cherry Orchard and a wonderful Uncle Vanya in Ashland--but I don't think that those productions eclipse the work being done by the three sisters in ART's cast. Amaya Villazan, Luisa Sermol, and Andrea Frankle slip into the lives of their characters so gracefully; there is no artifice in their acting. Their skill in establishing a naturalistic environment on stage is especially highlighted--and disrupted--by Marjorie Tatum's cartoonish performance as Natasha, the sisters' gold digging sister-in-law. Ms. Tatum's performance is dynamic and focused, but so campy as to be distracting. Natasha is vulgar enough without the yelling, charging, and sneering that this production emphasizes.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, the actor playing Vershinin lacks the dynamism and charm needed to convince Masha (and the audience!) that he is worthy of passionate, illicit love. Luckily, his is the only genuinely weak performance in a cast of stunning actors, and Ms. Sermol's Masha provides enough pathos to compensate for Vershinin's dullness. My one critique of Ms. Sermol--and this is really a directorial critique--is that she is too old to play the middle daughter. Ms. Frankle and Ms. Villazan are obviously much younger actresses, and the physical contrasts can be distracting.

The supporting cast is vibrant and varied, providing an exciting diversity of personalities and physical features. It is impossible to be bored by this production, which clips along at a perfect pace, pausing for moments of emotional intensity and highlighting much-needed moments of levity and satire. Design-wise it is lovely, with strands of birch trees mingling with house pieces like a piano and chairs. The characters drift in and out in choreographed movements, making the production visually arresting, and reminding the audience of the paradoxically highly structured and aimless lives of the characters.

ART's Cherry Orchard is a must-see production for anyone with a yen for a really professional show: tight, gorgeous, big budget. It is a genuine pleasure and indulgence, even while you cry your eyes out.

Tuscan Beans in Tomato Ragu

2009-04-28T20:36:00.001-07:00

Kenichi, you're probably going to find the following ode to Tuscan cuisine gastrically distressing:

O white buttery bean,
Cloaked in velvet rich tomatoes,
How I love thee!
Creamy on my tongue,
Aromatic to my nose,
Warming to my toes,
Such splendor! Such fiber! Such all-ensuing Grace!
I could eat thee with polenta day and night
and be content.
At least
for one or two
more days.

Okay, that was poetically distressing, as well. These beans are worthy of greater verse, so delicious were they in my mouth!

Tonight I made Gourmet magazine's recipe for Tuscan Beans in Summery Tomato Ragu, with the small substitutions of fennel stalk for celery (bleh, celery) and rosemary for thyme (someone's husband took all of the thyme for his doctor bag...an aromatic to revive all of those patients in stays? Very odd). The house filled with the heartwarming aroma of hot tomatoes, garlic, and herbs, and the buttery vapors of stovetop polenta. I swear this ragu has umami, what with it's luscious mouth-feel and taste: just the right amount of salty, with the right amount of rich, and all the conscience-quelling righteousness of vitamin rich tomatoes and fiber rich beans. It's also incredibly cheap and so filling. I used all organic ingredients and I can't imagine it cost me more that $.25 per serving. (And there are a lot of servings.) Oh dried beans how thou are the sustenance of frugal gods!

Seriously though, the dried bean is grossly under-appreciated by the majority of Americans. Canned beans are easy, sure, but you're paying the same amount for one pound of organic dried beans as you are for one can of cooked beans. And a pound of dried beans yields a lot more fruit. Plus, protein, fibre, and the lovely feeling of being so domestically savvy that you can create gourmet goodness from something as unprepossessing as a little, withered legume. I usually cook up a big batch and then freeze the beans in bags or tupperware. Now when I want hummus or a quick meal, it's defrost, fiddle with, and enjoy!

I know that (rude) people will cite the various gastrointestinal distresses that bean consumption causes, and these claims are true. Don't eat beans every day for 5 days if you don't want, let's just say, easy passage and your own built-in wind power system. But eaten in small amounts, beans are heavenly and healthy, especially when smothered in some sort of delicious sauce or whipped up with garlic, lemon juice, olive oil and salt (for hummus) or olive oil, cumin, oregano, and sofrito (for refried beans). I even toss pasta with white beans, adding some salty anchovies, olives, and lemon zest for quick flavor.

I know I'll probably be regretting my indulgence after the fifth consecutive lunch of bean ragu, but for now I praise the bean for filling my belly and warming my insides, in only the way that a truly yummy dinner can.

Calling All Portlanders: Go see Richard II at the NWCTC!

2009-04-18T21:59:00.000-07:00

I've just returned home from watching King Richard II at the Northwest Classical Theatre Company, and it is an excellent production. Director JoAnn Johnson uses an all-female ensemble cast to tell the (frankly, rather pathetic) story of the deposition of Richard II and the rise of Henry IV. My favorite aspect of the production is Johnson's addition of a Greek Chorus, which harmoniously blends the musical notes of Shakespearean verse with the play's cyclical sense of time, and something that I can only describe as "womb-y-ness." (Like a Wiccan convention at midnight in a dark wood, or one of those workshops where women look at their vaginas in hand-held mirrors.) It's not that patently ridiculous, but the chorus effects a deeply feminine community atmosphere that comforts, even as it reveals all of the decay and doom of the Plantagenet reign.

The ensemble cast is very strong, and the actors who don't capture your attention at first all shine magnificently at some point in the play. Their voices are all low and lovely, very grounded, which doesn't make them seem more masculine, but still somehow authenticates their inhabiting male characters. Likewise, there's perhaps one delicate woman in the cast--otherwise, they are strong, bosomy, handsome women who seem empowered both by the roles, which would ordinarily go to men, and by the bond of ensemble acting. No one ever dominates the stage, which is sometimes frustrating (shouldn't the king overpower his courtiers?), but overall does two really wonderful things: (1) It allows the audience to experience Richard's inefficacy as king, and to squirm just a little in what we imagine must be his shame and humiliation when his subjects ignore his commands, and (2) each actress is able to find little moments in her lines that are so poignant and which would probably be obscured by an overbearing scene partner. The actresses listen to one another and stand almost stock still until it is their turn to speak. The effect is still, solemn and tense.

The play is riveting, which is impressive given that it contains no sex, no fights, and the characters basically alternate between yelling at each other and grovelling at one another's feet. I think it's the passion that infuses every single line delivery, and again, that magic of stellar team work.

This is a show worth seeing; it's certainly Shakespeare worth doing.

The PB Blues

2009-03-30T16:35:00.000-07:00

Blue no longer. Peanut butter, bacon and white bread is the atheist's manna. Now the difficulty is resisting making it for breakfast every morning (luckily, we used up the rest of the bacon fixing our sandwiches). To stave off any errant PBB cravings I made a batch of oatmeal breakfast bars with dried cranberries, granola and bittersweet chocolate, and I have a pot of french onion soup burbling on the stove for dinner. I'm going to add some fresh focaccia and a salad and a large glass of red wine, settle on the couch, and write my new syllabus.

T starts rehearsals at one of Portland's premier theatres tonight, so the cat and I have the run of the house. It's so beautifully clean (downstairs, anyway)! T and I spent all day spring cleaning--stove, cabinets, bookshelves, linens--which was boring but entirely satisfying. I've promised to clean the bathroom, and I need to leave for the gym in 20 minutes, so I better stop blogging. I just wanted to recommend the Elvis-wich. EAT IT. It will curtail your woes and make a party in your mouth.

What Will I Eat To Cure These Sunday Blues?

2009-03-29T08:31:00.000-07:00

It's been a difficult week, partly because of Monday's dental fiasco and partly for reasons I don't feel like enumerating. There have been highlights, like finding out that my health insurance covers my visits to Bernie the Naturopath Sensei and watching my younger brother get spectacularly drunk and begin shedding his secrets like an itchy second skin. I also have T, who is always a comfort, and a carton of chocolate sorbet and a disc of Freaks and Geeks episodes for when I really need to mope. We also spent a couple of evenings with Tom's childhood friend Carrie, who is gorgeous, charming and so totally full of shit that every moment with her is delightful and hilarious. So when I survey the week in its totality life is not so bad.

But that's no reason not to eat like it is. To cure the aches in my heart this week I think I'm going to cook something divine and scandalous, like Nigella's grilled Skippy peanut butter and bacon sandwich on white bread. I'll walk to the local Safeway feeling deliciously guilty and excited. I've been morbidly fascinated by the Elvis-wich ever since Martha Stewart Living did a spread on alternative club sandwiches several years ago. It looks so good! Golden bread laced with butter, smothered in rich, sweet peanut butter and graced with a few strips of crisp bacon drizzled with maple syrup. Each bite must be a combination of sweet, salty, creamy and crunchy Americana that even Ruth Reichl would approve of. (Ruth Reichl is, by the way, my culinary hero. She understands the sensuality of ingredients and dining, and is never afraid of food.) I'll eat my sandwich on the couch and watch the latest episode of Survivor, just to fully savor the trashiness of my weekend coping mechanism.

But before I descend into the subversive world of emotional eating and television I have to finish grading my students' finals and call my sweet friend Glenna. T and I also have to go watch the latest show at the theatre and have dinner at his parents' house, so I will have to grade with speed and determination in order to save ample time for Glenna and my sandwich and possibly a long hot shower to wash away the yuckiness of this week and make me feel new again.

Food.
Friends.
Hot Water.

What else could a girl ask for?

Dr. Doom and Hades' Porcelain Crown

2009-03-23T17:25:00.000-07:00

It all started with an ill-fated trip to a dentist who specializes in cosmetics. I don't go in for unnecessary dental work, but Dr. Calcagano was recommended to me by a coworker and I needed a routine cleaning. This was several months ago. I went in for the cleaning and emerged with an appointment to have one of my metal fillings replaced with a 3/4 crown. According to Dr. Tooth Demon, this is because old fillings can crack and they contain mercury. I wasn't over-eager to spend the money on an uncracked filling, but the dentist's precaution seemed valid and I wanted to avoid the root canal that comes with a fractured tooth.

That was my first mistake. The crown was expensive and led to a lot of new sensitivity and discomfort. I decided after the procedure that I would resist all of Dr. Blond Evil's future efforts to replace my remaining fillings, but--on the plus side--I'd learned a lesson about the ideology of cosmetic dentistry (Why Leave Well Enough Alone When You Can Replace It With A Prettier, More Expensive Prosthetic) and moved on, albeit by favoring the left side of my mouth.

That was my second mistake. (Not that I had a choice by this point: it's useless to mourn over a tooth now calcifying in a bio waste facility.) Three months passed and I began experiencing a deepening discomfort in my crown. First an acute sensitivity to cold, then a deep ache that woke me up in the night and pursued my jawline in a near perfect semicircle of ow.

Back to the Dental Dominatrix for a new round of pleasure.
"I'm probably overreacting," I told the jovial dental assistant, "But it's really starting to hurt."
"No problem," she replied in the kindly, conspiratorial tone that all of Doctor Barbie's assistants employ. "We don't want you in pain!"
Not in pain, perhaps, but certainly in debt. For here is what happened next.

No sooner had the good doctor x-rayed and tapped my teeth when she cheerily announced that I had irreversible nerve damage and needed an emergency root canal. She got to work immediately, stuffing my mouth with a dental dam (the domestic equivalent of water boarding), numbing my face up to the eyeballs, and drilling away with a stunning array of equipment. I knew something was amiss when my otherwise petite and Prada-clad dentist started breathing heavily and sweating over the din of the drill.
"Well, I can only find one canal," she regretted to inform me. "And I can't even get down that one. We'll have to send you upstairs to Dr. Johnson."
Dr. Johnson is a root canal specialist. The perky assistant marched me upstairs mid-procedure, swollen, stuffed with cotton, and oozing little trickles of bloody spit, where I got to sit for 45 minutes and try not to cry with frustration. The icing on the cake was the unfeeling secretary, who informed me that I would just have to wait because they were very busy and I "didn't have an appointment." When I finally got into the new dentist's chair (shockingly Ken Doll-ish, if Ken was curt and a little chubby), I received another numbing shot, another joyous dental dam, a broken spit suction tool, an aggressive large male hand in my mouth, and HALF of a root canal.
"I'm sorry," Ken said sympathetically while I squirmed in pain and irritation, "But we're very busy today. I'll just medicate your tooth and see you next week to finish the job."
To be fair, I think he stopped in part because the numbing medicine that I had received 3 1/2 hours earlier was wearing off and I was clutching the arms of the chair like an action hero clutches the mountain cliff's edge. His sympathy didn't extend to the bill, however, which was enormous. Again, imagine me confronting the emotionless secretary, trying not to cry while I hand over my first born child. Still drooling blood, of course.

The day would have concluded relatively unhappily after this, but more adventure was in store for me. You see, Dr. Blond Evil's office validates parking, but Dr. Ken Doll's does not. So I got to walk several blocks downtown in the pouring rain, looking like Clint Eastwood after a stroke, grimacing in pain, to find an ATM machine to pay for parking. At this point I also realized that I hadn't eaten since 6:20am.

What eats at my heart and soul, and mouth, is that my tooth was 100% healthy before the Blond Death took over. And now I have paid for a crown, a root canal, and innumerable x-rays in two dental offices. The injustice of it all! The naivete of Little Chef! And deep in my lidocained, bitter heart is the (basically irrational) fear that they've tapped the wrong tooth.

I have half a mind to write my dentist a letter, but I hate to be "that patient." My mouth feels like Dante's 7th circle and my cheek looks like Cerberus' ugliest head. My wallet is empty and my faith in dentistry is shattered. Thank goodness for T, who is bringing me hot and sour soup. Life is full of the biggest blessings.

Cohabitation, Family-Style

2009-03-15T08:18:00.000-07:00

My dad made an interesting suggestion the other night, one which my parents have coyly talked around for years and are only now making explicit. I have a feeling that this change in rhetorical method has to do with the fact that T and I are planning on buying a house some time this year and that the houses we can afford are, in real estate jingo, "cozy," "full of character," and very "vintage." They also all happen to be in "good neighborhoods for first-time home buyers," which is a transparent euphemism for, "We've just evicted the meth addicts and people of color! Come, o ye educated young white folk, and gentrify the Hood!"

But this is besides the point. What my father is suggesting--with my mother hovering earnestly nearby--is that T and I consider moving into a large house with them.

Consider the benefits:
1. Built in babysitting when the time arrives.
2. Shared household expenses.
3. Shared organic garden.
4. A return to the centrality of family intimacy and support in American life that began to die out with the baby boomers.
5. Partially exempt ourselves from the failing American system of individual acquisition--reducing our geographical and, to a lesser extent, carbon footprints.
6. Provide our filmmaker friend with the basis for an excellent, European cinema-esque family dramedy.

It might be nice to live with my parents, provided that we had (as my father insists we would) a private apartment and the same financial and social independence we have now (more so, in fact, as we get older and more successful). I like the idea of collective dinners and proximity to the people we love. I also like the idea of living in a classy house in a beautiful neighborhood, rather than a 900 sqft bungalow in Felony Flats.

But, I have considerable concerns:
1. Is it possible to have real independence from your parents' concerns and hopes for you if you live one ceiling away from them? My father already shoots rays of anxiety and advice from across the river. Won't the temptation to intercede just grow stronger as the distance between us recedes? Also, how can T and I grow as independent adults if we remain somewhat dependent on my parents' resources?
2. There's something to be said for privacy. I like making my own financial decisions. I like raising the heat if it's really freezing out. I like coming home and feeling unobserved. Kicking my shoes off, changing into pajama bottoms and getting dinner rolling. Taking a hot bath if I feel like it, having sex on our orange velvet couch if I feel like it, conducting ridiculous and embarrassing conversations with the cat if I feel like it. Not waking up to the morning habits of other people. You might say that most of this is possible even living with my parents (the couch would obviously be in our section of the house), but a lot of my daily activities remain exciting and fun because they're things I started doing when I first moved out on my own. It just feels good--physically and psychologically--to stretch my legs in my own space.
3. I love my baby brother, but I don't want to become the in-house babysitter. This might change as T and I have children--why not have another youngster running around--but right now it's lovely to shirk the daily responsibilities of parenthood.
4. Our design input--house and garden--will be severely limited if we share space with my parents. It's important not to feel like a guest in your own house.

In the end, I doubt we'll move in together, at least right now; I'm sure we'll end up caring for either my parents or T's parents down the line. But I do think a seismic shift needs to occur in the American lifestyle so that we all live more sustainably and more connectedly with one another. Owning one's own piece of the pie may be intrinsic to capitalism, but it's hurting our resources and landscape. Maybe the independence and privacy T and I crave are the negative results of a social system that privileges consumer acquisition--that illogically equates success with buying your own stuff and spatially separating yourself from your family and friends. Our children would love living with grandma and grandpa and Uncle Luke. It would be nice after a long day to run down the stairs and suggest a communal dinner. To all be in one place and around to help one another.

I don't know. Part of me is seduced by the idea, and the other parts repulsed. We can always buy a house now and consider a collective move later, after watching the evolution of the American financial market and social welfare system (health care, education, employment) for a while. All I know is that I do want to make a greater effort to live well in this world, making healthy decisions for our environment and city. And it's a start, but not enough, to buy organic and local food and to use organic skin care products. It's going to require reappraising what it means to live successfully and self-satisfyingly in a space that needs to be shared and preserved.

Baketastic

2009-03-11T20:47:00.000-07:00

Maybe it's escapism from the dour economy, or a sign of a lagging social life, but I can't get myself out of the kitchen. Pork cutlets with thyme, apples and cream, roasted carrots with olive oil, thyme, and celtic sea salt, chicken stew with tomatoes, white beans and gremolata, whole wheat bread, squash with coconut and ginger...I just want to sink my hands into soft piles of flour and dazzle my tongue with spices.

Tonight after dinner I found myself back in the kitchen baking coconut macaroons with bittersweet chocolate and vegan oatmeal breakfast bars with dried cranberries and raw sunflower seeds. Everything is vegan these days, because my naturopath diagnosed my mystery finger as rheumatic and took me off dairy. I don't think the diet is permanent, but it hasn't been nearly as difficult as I thought it might be. I just use soy and almond milks for baking and cooking (soy cream worked wonders in the pork dish, above) and search around for vegan recipes on the internet. I try not to long for cheese, though it seems like every delicious recipe in the March Gourmet uses Parmesan or Gruyere--two of my absolute favorite tastes in the world. Somehow, despite vegan websites' arguments to the contrary, I just don't believe that nutritional yeast is a satisfying substitute for aged Italian Parmesan, with all of its rich, salty crumbles and crags. But despite the occasional pang of cheese envy, I'm a pretty happy omnivorous "vegan." It's a healthy way to eat, and it encourages experimentation. For instance, tonight's oatmeal bars have raw crunchy almond butter instead of butter or oil.

One troubling thing I have noticed, however, while perusing vegan cookbooks and websites, is the amount of additives and weird food science that real vegans consume on a daily basis. Plant-based milks, margarines, fake meats, egg substitute--all of these "food" products are made up of huge lists of ingredients with scientific prefixes and suffixes. I understand the moral--and certainly the dietary--arguments for veganism, but it seems a little odd to be replacing whole, natural foods with items that have to be made in a factory laboratory. I've decided that while organic almond or soy milk is a quasi necessity in the kitchen--to enrich homemade bread, dilute the morning coffee, make a creamy dish--margarine definitely is not. Neither is egg substitute (I use real eggs, but one could just as easily use ground flax seeds) or vegan cheese (it looks and tastes like a Kraft single; first, I will have to get desperate for a grilled cheese sandwich). There's just no need to be putting that crap into my body--I have a rheumatic finger because there are already toxins in my joints. Why add more?

But I didn't mean to lampoon vegan ingredients. I meant to express my surprise pleasure in exploring a whole new food world. I'm having especial fun with vegan-izing baked goods, as I was getting bored with my scrambled eggs or apple and almond butter breakfasts. And while I look forward to renewing my relationship with ricotta and sharp cheddar, I know I'm going to eat well dairy-free for the foreseeable future. I just hope the naturopath doesn't cut out wheat next. Then I might cry.

(Hopefully) Delicious Vegan Oatmeal Breakfast Bars

3 C raw oats
1/2 C whole wheat flour
1/4 C ground flaxseed OR ground almonds
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
a couple pinches of ground ginger
1 tsp vanilla extract (optional)
6 Tb brown sugar (or honey, if you like)
1 C apple juice
1/2 C raw almond butter (or mashed avocados, bananas, apple sauce, peanut butter, etc.)
additions: dried cranberries and raw sunflower seeds (or chocolate chunks, other dried fruit, nuts, coconut)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease a square pan. Mix dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Add wet ingredients, stir well. (It will be pretty sticky.) Press into pan and bake for 30 minutes. Transfer pan to rack and cool completely before slicing.

On the Pleasures of Chocolate

2009-03-09T15:16:00.000-07:00

Hot, melty dark chocolate stuffed into the center of hot, doughy bread, straight from the oven. Culinary heaven; so good I can't write a complete sentence about it. You must try this.

Sometimes I bake bread with a bar of dark chocolate tucked inside the raw dough, waiting to melt, stain and enrich the loaf. Other times--like today at lunch--I nestle two squares of chocolate into a steaming slice of fresh bread for dessert. Once in a while I make a chocolate panino, lightly broiling the chocolate sandwich for five minutes a side, until the toast is golden and the chocolate rich and runny.

Because I bake whole wheat bread and use dark chocolate, the effects are tremendously earthy, a bit bitter and sweet. The paninos are best with airy white ciabatta, though I still prefer the dark chocolate filling. And if you're feeling especially decadent, I'm sure brioche and challah are glorious companions to chocolate.

There are endless, more interesting variations on the chocolate sandwich. Try a thin layer of berry jam or marmalade. Drizzle the bread with almond or hazelnut oil; blend or trade milk, white, and dark chocolates. Dip the sandwich in egg and fry it in butter, dusting the end product with confectioners sugar. I haven't done any of these things (yet), but I encourage experimentation.

Just be sure to eat some vegetables first.

DIY Butchery

2009-02-23T18:45:00.000-08:00

I did something new and relatively disgusting today: I cut a whole chicken into pieces.

I know you're thinking: So what? Any douche-bag with a sharp knife can sever a carcass. But you are wrong. Cutting a chicken is a dicey and messy enterprise for the uninitiated. Fat sprays, bones crack and pierce your fingers, and the innards fall with a wet and disturbing thunk onto the formica countertop. I even pulled the heart out with my fingers.

I watched the Gourmet.com video on chicken dismemberment, but video instruction did not save me from wrestling with the chicken, sawing on bones with my best chef's knife while diluted blood trickled in little rivulets across the counter and the slippery skin beckoned, siron-like, to my cat, who kept jumping onto the counter to nibble at discarded fat. You try waging battle with a cat while neatly separating joint bones from muscle. It was supremely distracting and besides which, she is now lightly coated in grease and no doubt laying on the bed.

It was disgusting, and yet satisfying. Now I have this gloriously crispy, deep red paprika roasted chicken and roasted green beans with cashews and garlic for dinner, and a rich golden stock simmering ever so slightly on the stove. Somehow all of this food will taste better because I communed with the carcass in a new and intimate way. I held its heart in my hands and understood just a little more that my dinner once walked and squawked, and that I am thankful to be eating it.
(I'm sure the chicken would tell a different story.)