Humble Pie

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. Add the eggs one at a time, stirring well to incorporate.
4. When the batter looks glossy, add the flour and stir well.
5. Beat the batter 60 times (do it by hand for a nice, quick workout).
6. Pour the batter into the pan and spread into the corners, leaving a nice, even top.
7. 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.
8. 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.