Eating From the Ground Up

head on over!

2011-12-04T09:41:00.001-08:00

This site has moved! Head on over to www.eatingfromthegroundup.com , and I'll be there!

butternut squash latkes

2011-12-01T08:46:00.000-08:00

Oh December!
I like this month. I'm an omniholidayvore, so I've got a few packed in, plus my birthday AND my wedding anniversary. And also, cookies. And eggnog. And latkes.

Let's go back to October for a minute- back in the hilly wonders of California at Naya and Oliver's wedding. I was sitting at a picnic table, spacing out on the early sun and gnarled trees, waiting for coffee to clear the Champagne fog. There were lovely Californians all around me, bundled in their sweatshirts and anticipating coffee, and in the midst of the conversation, one woman (who kept wearing the most perfect shade of yellow through the weekend) said to another, "Oh yeah, I saw that at Bi-Rite."

"Bi-Rite?" I cut in. "Does that place really exist?"

They laughed and assured me that it did.

You see, a week or two earlier, I'd gotten this beautiful cookbook in the mail. (I know! It happens every so often, and it feels like my birthday, but I promise you I only tell you about the books that I love). It was nothing short of enchanting, and I turned the pages and wanted to inhabit every one. I made two recipes from the book that first week, and both were perfect. But the store that it came from? It seemed like something out of California legend.

A few days after the wedding, I was walking the streets of San Francisco with my friend and nearly-brother Andrew. It had been a while since we'd seen each other, and we walked and ate and walked and ate. Burritos in the mission. An eclair at Tartine. Noodles in spicy broth. And when we came to the right block, he pulled me into the Bi-Rite Market.

It was tiny. And (as a friend had so perfectly put it the weekend before) it was exquisitely curated. It was a living museum of artisan food, each cheese and fruit and meat local and gorgeous. Most liquids were in vessels that you would want to repurpose as vases, tiny ceramic crocks for yogurt and sensually curved bottles for oil. We stood in front of the jam and preserves shelf. Each bay area chef had their own preserves, and there was quince and marionberry and herbs and all of those different and elevated fruits. Andrew and I spent the next 45 minutes in there, as if it really were a museum, discussing the food like art on the wall.

There are a lot of reasons why you might want to pick up a copy of Bi-Rite Market's Eat Good Food. It is, in a way, a manual for conscious food shopping (as Marisa so eloquently described in her review). But the recipes! They are my favorite part of this book. That, and the fact that is stays so fabulously open on the counter. This is a book that inspires. It is sturdy, and beautiful, and (as we move into that season) exceptionally giftworthy.

Oh, the season. Because although Hanukkah is a few weeks away yet, I say- December is latke month. My grandfather used to be the latke maker in our family, and he and my grandmother would throw a party and make latkes all day long. Friends would stack those greasy pancakes on little paper plates with blue menorahs printed on them, chunky applesauce and sour cream along side. The day would begin with desire for latkes, and the day would end with the hope that we would never see latkes again. It would take three washes to get the greasy smell out of our clothes.

These are better, if that's possible. The butternut squash is sweet, the texture is perfect, and the flavor is... well, entirely worth of expletives. This recipe uses a method where the latkes are started on the stove and transferred to the oven and so the grease factor is nearly gone. This is my latke recipe now- I'm never going back to just plain old potatoes.

Oh, before we get to that- one more thing! Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow morning, my new site will be up! We're just working out a few last coding issues, but I can't wait to show you. So don't be scared- it's still me! And I've got a fairly rockin' giveaway to celebrate the site's first day, if I do say so myself. I'll see you there. Yeah!

And now, the latkes.

Butternut Squash Latkes
from Eat Good Food, by Sam Mogannam and Dabney Gough
Makes 18 (they say! but I got 24- lucky me!)

1 1/2 cups grapeseed or other neutral oil, more as needed
1 large yellow onion, halved, peeled, and thinly sliced lengthwise
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 1/2 pounds russet potatoes (about 2 large)
1 1/2 pounds butternut squash (about 1/2 medium)
4 large eggs
1 cup matzo meal
1/3 cup finely chopped fresh parsley
1/4 cup finely chopped fresh sage
1 tablespoon chopped fresh marjoram

Position racks the the top and bottom thirds of the oven and heat to 350 degrees.

Heat 2 tablespoons of the oil in a medium skillet over medium-high heat. When hot, add the onion and sprinkle with 1/2 teaspoon of the salt and a few grinds of black pepper. Cook, stirring frequently, until the onions are golden all over and very soft, about 10 minutes. Remove from the heat and set aside to cool.

Peel and grate the potatoes and butternut squash (I did this in the cuisinart using the grating disk, but a box grater will work too). Put in a large bowl, along with the onions, eggs, matzo meal, parsley, sage, marjoram, 1 tablespoon salt, and 1 teaspoon pepper. Toss gently to combine thoroughly.

Heat 3 tablespoons of the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. When the pan is hot, use a 1/3-cup dry measure to scoop a mound of the mixture into the pan. With a fork, spread and flatten the mixture to a 4-inch disk. Repeat 3 more times. When the first side is golden brown (about 2 minutes), carefully flip the latkes over and brown the other sides, about 2 minutes more. Transfer the latkes to a rimmed baking sheet and continue to scoop and brown the remaining latke mixture in batches, adding another few tablespoons of oil before each new batch. Arrange the latjes in a single layer on the baking sheet; you'll probably need at least 2 sheets to accomplish this.

When all the latkes have been shaped and browned, transfer the baking sheets to the oven and bake until the latkes are cooked through, about 15 minutes. Serve hot.

(With thanks to Ten Speed Press! Reprinted with permission from Bi-Rite Market’s Eat Good Food by Sam Mogannam & Dabney Gough, copyright © 2011. Published by Ten Speed Press, a division of Random House, Inc.)

the girls, traveling

2011-11-28T04:40:00.001-08:00

These days surprised me over and over.
My stomach turned at the thought of sitting in the airport with Joey and the girls, waiting for inevitably delayed flights, paying 3 bucks for water, packed terminals, food lines, tired and "when will we be there?" wishing I was one of those parents with a portable dvd player for my kids to watch something, anything, and by the time we are in Denver, we are done! ready to go home and done with laying toilet paper on the toilet seat and and (again inevitably) at least one child getting sick, most likely throwing up.

You might think me pessimistic, but I've done this before, and it's all come to pass.

But these days surprised me over and over. The girls with their backpacks and rolly bags, independent and looking forward to the next moving walkway so that they could break the rules and go backwards too, going back and forth until they were dizzy. Drawing and playing and watching- the girls were travelers in the very best sense. They were open and ready and adjustable in ways that made me marvel.

It was not just the girls that surprised me. It was the kind world around them. The smiles and comments from everyone. And on Tuesday, when we were surrounded by college students on their way home in their leggings and boots and big sweaters, the kindness was overwhelming. The girls, insisting on sitting together on the plane, sat next to a 15-year old boy coming home from boarding school, and he beamed at them as if they were his long lost little sisters. They talked deep into the dark airborne night, and when he, exhausted, couldn't stay awake any longer, he set them up on his laptop with a movie (only after politely asking across the aisle for parental approval from us).

After this momentous success, the girls said that they would always sit together with us in the row opposite. And so, on Saturday (after family and Denver and a turkey nearly on fire of course, but that is all another story), when all of the college students had been replaced by families, the kindness again all around us, Sadie and Rose took their seats next to Jessica, a woman in her twenties with shiny blond hair and heeled boots. The girls started to take out their books and coloring supplies but Jessica asked them about who they were, and because they are their home and their cats and their school and their family, she got all of the details. They talked all the way to Chicago, and then, learning that they would be on the plane together to Hartford as well, Jessica promised (with a pinky swear, Sadie told me), that she would save seats for them on the next plane.

As we pulled into Hartford, Sadie and Rosie were drawing our house for Jessica on a napkin. They wished Jessica and her terrier (waiting, with husband, at home) well, and Sadie gave her her prized polished rock at the baggage claim.

I can always create optimism in my little world. Traveler that I am, it is my home that feels brightest, and as much as venturing out can expand and enlighten me, I am just as prone to see the worst in things when the world (and so mundane a world as that within the Chicago Midway airport, for example) is pushing its way around me. But these masses- sitting on the floor of the airport, running through the terminals, getting up to share a table for a family who might be waiting, they shook me with their smiles and their kindness and their happiness. Couples holding hands, parents speaking so lovingly to their children, friends laughing as they found their gate. There was calm, and it shook me. They shook me with the ease in which they loved and supported my girls.

Perhaps I was watching with optimistic eyes? But I think something was different. Everyone just seemed... happy. Okay. Open. And for all the messes that we seem to be in right now in this country, I could not help but think that good things are happening, quietly.

the table awaits

2011-11-21T10:13:00.001-08:00

Saturday morning, we piled the turnips high in the elementary school. They nearly reached the basket ball hoop.

The place was a madhouse. I love the crazy Berkshire Grown holiday markets. I love working them, mostly so I can hang out with so many people who are thinking about cooking for the holidays.

That's a particular breed of loony, that one.

I'm tempted to bring a bottle of wine with me, so I can hand out little glasses while people tell me about how nervous they are to meet their brother's new girlfriend, and about how she's a vegan and have I ever stuffed a squash for thankgiving? I want Joey to make me a T-shirt that says, "Oh honey, it's all going to be okay."

But there's no time for that. I'm shoving change in people's hands, and telling them how to caramelize white turnips (sliced thin, tossed with salt and pepper and olive oil, 425 degree oven for 15 to 20 minutes), and I'm trying to convince people that broccoli greens are a fitting replacement for spinach on the Thanksgiving table. We sold so many turnips. Endless turnips.

There was serious panic about brussels sprouts. There were not enough in that little gymnasium, and anyone with a stalk poking out of their reusable bag carried it smugly like a trophy. More realistically, we should have probably been wearing shirts that said, "WE'RE SORRY. WE HAVE NO BRUSSELS SPROUTS." Then, perhaps Elizabeth would not have lost her voice.

Oh, honey. It's going to be okay.

A few things to remember:

If you are traveling, bring snacks, lots of snacks. Give your kids their own snack supply.
If you are a drinker, drink while you cook. Do not wait until the meal begins to have your first glass of wine. If you are a "no drinks before 6" kind of cook, break that rule.
And while you're at it, put booze in your cranberry sauce. Put booze in your brussels sprouts. Why not.
Don't forget the fucking gourds on the table. Even if you've read this one before, it merits a yearly rereading.
Oh, no you don't. Just don't!
Don't mess with it too much. Just leave it alone.

Today, I'm packing up for our very first ever family Thanksgiving travel experience. Oh yes, Denver- I'm talking to you.

And if you are one of the millions making there way through the Chicago airport tomorrow night, I'll be the one with the husband looking for the Chicago Dog (even if it's in another terminal) while I keep the girls from trying to ride on each other's rolly bags.

Yes! Here we go!

(You guys are so great, you know that? I'm not sure I tell you enough. All this grateful talk is making me feel, well, particularly grateful. I hope you all are having a good week out there, and... thank you.)

the weekend mix

2011-11-18T17:14:00.001-08:00

I was looking for something or other today, and I got lost in the polaroids.

They were tucked away, but before I knew it was sitting on the floor with them all around me.

It was that kind of day. But I made you a mix for the weekend. A quiet one.

Have a good one, friends.

I'll see you on the other side. Till Monday, then...

cranberry maple tart

2011-11-16T09:07:00.001-08:00

Oh, yes. Here we are.

When I was sixteen, my friend Jette and I hopped on a bus to New York late late the night before Thanksgiving. The ride took nearly the whole night, and we arrived in the city just as the sun was starting to come up. We sat on the sidewalk and watched the massive balloons inflate for the Macy's parade. We wandered the empty city, resting in parks with the pigeons. (I know, I know. What did our mothers say? Honestly, I don't even remember.) It was a gray day, and we had no plan. Somehow, we got on a train and ended up at a friend's house outside of Philadelphia. I don't remember how we got the invitation, but I do remember sitting at his fancy table with his very proper family, struggling to use my knife and fork correctly. I remember being bleary with sleeplessness and thankful to be in that strange and warm place. I remember that Jette and I were proud of ourselves for stepping out of the lines, for making the holiday an adventure, and for making the holiday our very own.

Four years later, my friend Eilen and I cooked for days, and we invited every straggler we could find. My parents were there too, visiting our woodsy home in Santa Fe. My mother and I were really fighting for the first time in my life, and she kept out of the kitchen. Eilen and I rolled and chopped and baked, and we were grownups in our own kitchen. We, too, made that holiday our own.

We've had Thanksgivings with friends and Thanksgivings with family. We have cooked and been cooked for. Every year has been different. But through these years with all of those meals, we are always finding ways to make the holiday our own.

How do you do it?
Have you found traditions that make this one yours?
We have an appreciations box. We learned that one from Gould Farm. Everyone writes down the things they are thankful for, and then we read them. That's a good one.

I woke up thinking about this tart last week. I made it a few times before I found it. Joey and the girls can attest to this. (It's a hard life in the kitchen of a food writer) But then I found it.

I thought you might be interested, just in case you haven't settled on your dessert options for next week. This is easy to put together, and the maple, cranberry, and orange sing to each other in a way that brings out the best in each.

And while we're at it, shall we take a moment for some dessert inspiration? I'll give it a go...

Pear pie. Poached quince. Damp gingerbread with pears (I can't get enough of that one). Indian pudding. Sweet cornmeal biscuits. Apple rhubarb pandowdy. Olive oil and sherry pound cake. Apple pie. Pumpkin Mexican hot chocolate. Buttermilk spice cake. Are we there? Did we find it? Let me know- we can definitely keep the list going.
But in the mean time, let's have a piece of this one to keep the hunger at bay.

Cranberry Maple Tart
serves 8 to 10, or thereabouts

For the crust:
scant 1 1/2 cups (7 ounces) all purpose flour
1 stick+1 tablespoon (4.5 ounces) cold unsalted butter (cubed) plus extra for greasing the pan
the zest and juice of 1 orange (this will be in both the crust and the filling)
1 teaspoon sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 egg

For the filling:
3 cups cranberries (fresh or frozen)
1/4 cup + 1 tablespoon maple syrup
1/4 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup heavy cream
3 egg yolks
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon salt

Lightly grease a 10-inch tart pan with butter. Combine the flour, butter, orange zest, sugar and salt in the bowl of a food processor fit with the chopping blade. Pulse about 10 times. Add the egg and 1 tablespoon orange juice, reserving the rest of the juice for the filling. Process just until the dough comes together around the blade. If it's too crumbly, you can add another teaspoon of juice.

Roll the dough out on a floured surface until it is a circle at least 14 inches in diameter. Transfer the dough to the tart pan. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Take the tart pan out of the fridge about 10 minutes before you are ready to bake. Bake the crust for 10 minutes, peeking in to gently press down any air bubbles that might rise in the crust over that time. Remove the crust from the oven, but leave the heat on.

Combine the cranberries, 1/4 cup of the maple syrup, brown sugar, and remaining orange juice (it should be about 1/4 cup) in a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil, then reduce to medium heat and cook, stirring often, until the berries burst and the mixture thickens, 5 to 7 minutes.

Meanwhile, whisk together the cream, egg yolks, vanilla, remaining 1 tablespoon of maple syrup, and salt in a mixing bowl.

Spread the cranberry mixture into the crust, then pour the cream mixture over it. Put the tart pan on top of a baking sheet and bake until the top is firm and golden, about 40 minutes.

Allow the tart to sit at room temperature for at least 1 hour before serving. If preparing a day or two ahead (totally fine- this holds up beautifully!), store in the refrigerator, then let it come to room temperature for at least an hour before serving. This is good on it's own, but also lovely with whipped cream. I served it with orange flower whipped cream (1 cup heavy cream+1 tablespoon sugar+1 teaspoon orange flour water).

quince jelly

2011-11-14T04:19:00.001-08:00

I appreciate the element of uncertainty in the kitchen. This might make me an inferior food writer. But I've never been particularly good at faking it.

I did, after all, promise you jelly.
Last year, I made a tiny batch of quince jelly--4 perfect half-cup jars. They were firm like tough jello- barely spreadable, but I was proud of the chemistry of that superhero pectin that lay within my beloved quince.
This year, the jelly was soft, just short of dripping off the knife.
You never know where the jelly's going to go. At least I don't. And although some might say I'm here to tell you what will work every time, when it comes to jelly, I promise to tell you when I figure it out. Until then, I'm wringing my hands, fiddling with my thermometer, and taking little plates in and out of the freezer.

I love making jelly.

I find deep satisfaction in the rough chopping of a whole piece of fruit, core and all. I like the process of coaxing the essence out of the fruit. And in this rare circumstance, I love not knowing if it's going to work.

There is, of course, always the cocktail option if you "fail". But when there are cocktails involved, you have simply not failed.

So, in the last chapter of our quince romance for the year (perhaps, although I'd never promise that), for those of you who don't mind a bit of hand-wringing in the service of these perfect pink jars, I offer you quince jelly. And, understanding that we are just over a mere week before Thanksgiving, I promise that I will shift into the more reliable and useful foods that you might be searching for this week. I've got a tart on deck that I'm pretty excited about, and we'll do the usual brussells sprouts roundups, too. But first, the perfume, the gentle stickiness, and the pink.

Quince Jelly Recipe
(makes about 11 cups)

7 pounds quinces
1 vanilla bean, split
8 cardamom pods
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
8 cups sugar

1. Wash the pubescence (the slight furriness) off the quinces. Roughly chop the fruit. Leave the skins on, and roughly chop the cores as well. Put the chopped quince into a large pot along with the vanilla bean and cardamom pods. Just barely cover with water. Cover, bring to a boil, and reduce the heat to a simmer. Cook, stirring occasionally, for 1 1/2 hours, or until the fruit is so soft that it starts to fall apart.

2. Set up a jelly bag, or rig your own with a pot, a colander, and a length of cheese cloth. Let the fruit drain (without smushing or poking!) for at least 3 hours, but up to overnight if that's convenient.

3. You should end up with about 12 cups of juice. Combine the juice, sugar, and lemon in a large pot and stir to dissolve the sugar. Bring the mixture to a boil, and keep it at a rolling boil until it registers 225 degrees on a candy thermometer OR (if you're thermometer-phobic) it makes a nice jelled drop when you put a bit on a plate that you have been storing in the freezer. This will take between 10 and 20 minutes of rapid boiling (and hand wringing).

4. Decant into sterilized jars and process for 10 minutes in a hot water bath. If you're new to canning, hop over here first!

jeans

2011-11-10T05:04:00.001-08:00

Oh, my beautiful girls.
Oy.
This week, I bought Sadie a pair of new jeans.
I rarely buy new clothes for the girls. My 13-year-old sister (who never spills anything on anything) passes all of her clothes down to Sadie (who spills everything on everything), and then Rosie gets the dregs. Rosie is okay with it, as long as she has socks she likes. I buy her new socks.
My sister is narrow and willow-y like her father, and so as time goes by, I filter out the jeans and send them to goodwill for children of that tall and willow-y body type. And so, last week, when Sadie pointed out another pair of stretchy cotton pants that were all of the sudden 4 inches too short, I agreed to go in search of some new pants.

I picked up the girls at school and we headed to the outlets. Small planned city with manicured bushes. Really big strollers. Christmas music piping over the sidewalks. Cinnabon.

We were cheery. And with one girl's hand in each of my own, we crossed the street to start our adventure at the Gap. The girls laughed at the early Christmas music, and I thought to myself, this will be easy. In and out. Comfortable and inexpensive pants in hand.

Store 1: Into the dressing room with a pile of every fit and several sizes. And also lots and lots of these things called jeggings. Jean leggings. Jeggings. Rosie explained it to me. And then, one at a time, Sadie tries on each pair. She falls over trying to get the things off. She pulls them up. She struggles with the buttons. She runs around the dressing room and does the mandatory "squat in your jeans" test.

She shakes her head and hands them all back to me, one at a time.
"Mom," she says. "I can't do the skinny jeans. I don't get them, and I can't get them on."
It's either skinny or slim fit. And neither fits. I size up, and then they're huge. She starts to look discouraged.

Jeans are hard! I say. Maybe you're just not a Gap jeans kind of girl. Most people have to try on a million pairs before dining the right one.

Store 2: Again with the skinny jeans! Only these have silly zippers on them, too. They're out of almost every size, and so we try on more jeggings. Sadie shakes her head again. The staples-on paper label on the back pops off, and she bursts into hysterics.
"My butt is too big for these pants! I popped the label off!" Rosie falls on the static-y carpeted floor laughing. Coldplay is playing Christmas music in the dressing room.

Store 3: There are lots of styles and sizes and I am hopeful. There is, however, no dressing room. I ask the woman at the counter where we can try things on, and she says, "try on? why?" We try to go into the back store room, but there are a bunch of guys in baggy pants in there. I grab the nearest skirt, a tulle tutu, and hand it to Sadie. She puts on the tutu, takes off her pants, tries on the jeans. Rosie is again on the floor laughing. Sadie shakes her head.

Store 4: It is dark, and we are hungry. Sadie is asking why there is Christmas music, and why all the jeans are skinny. I am telling her that some people don't even like wearing jeans at all! That we will find the right ones some day. That all these stores are lame and we don't want their jeans anyway.

I don't want her to hate shopping. I don't want her to hate jeans shopping, or swimsuit shopping, or situations when she has to be under bad lighting in front of a full-length mirror. I just need a pair of decent pants for my beautiful beautiful girl.

In the darkness, the inside of the another store calls to us. "GIRLS DENIM!" I repeat the words, and pull the girls into the store. There is a wall of jeans. None of them are skinny. They are "bootcut" and "straight" and there are jeans in every size. My arms are filled with little jeans, and we head to the large and empty dressing room.

The first pair fits. Perfectly. She slips on her sneakers and runs the full parameter of the store.
"These are my jeans."

I exhale.

membrillo, or quince part one

2011-11-07T15:16:00.000-08:00

I adore this fruit.
There are a few foods I feel this way about. Rhubarb. Leeks. Celeriac. When I have a pile of quinces on the counter, I feel newly in love, tingly, unsure of what will happen next. I feel like I've discovered them. And I always have.
This is something I want to do more, that is, adore my food. We talk all about being connected to the source of our food, thinking consciously about the social implications of our food, blah, blah, blah. And I don't blah because I don't agree- of course I agree! But I think that for me, the heart of it is somewhere else. I want to love the food itself.

Simple as that might seem, let's think about it together for a moment.
Have you ever come across a food that stunned you with its beauty? Was it the fertile curve of an eggplant? The flowering spike of an artichoke? Was it the swirling marble of a perfect cut of meat? The pale glow of a triangle of wonderful cheese?

And then, catching yourself admiring that very ingredient, you prepared it--washed it, chopped it, cooked it to a perfect softness in whatever way was appropriate... and then, you ate it?

How did it taste? And how did it feel?

When I eat quinces, I feel like I am consuming art and perfume and beauty. I feel like I am eating history.

And then, instead of cooking because I have to, I'm cooking because I am in love with this fruit. (Which, incidentally, can not be eaten raw, so cook it we must.)

Last week, when we were buried under the snow, a friend asked me what to do with quince. Her tree, it turned out, had dropped most of its fruit under the weight of the blizzard, and she could not keep up with them. Quince chutney! I told her, and poached quinces! And without trying to sound too excited so as to give myself away, I offered to dispense with some of the beloved fruit in my very own kitchen in exchange for the results of my labor.

And that is how I came to these particular quinces.

When quinces sit in the kitchen, they perfume the entire house. My mother, who does not like most smells, kept asking, "What is that sweetness?" and I told her quince! My sister hovered in that corner of the kitchen in particular, smiling and breathing in. And for those few days before I had my way with the fruit, I walked in the door and breathed deep. And like a lover who has come back to her beloved, I dropped my bag and, shoes still on, made my way to the kitchen for a deeper inhale before I fully arrived in the space of home again.

These quinces, 12 pounds in all, met two different fates. I was having a party, and dreamed of serving sweet cubes of membrillo with cheese, and so that was one.
And then, of course, there was jelly. That will be part two, soon, soon.

My friend Nikki showed up at the party with her fantastic pear ginger vodka. I held out the tray of membrillo with manchego, and confessed that although I was in love with the rosy little squares, I might just never make them again. She's a cook too, and she laughed, I think, because she knew what it was to spend hours and hours making a 9x9 square of quince candy. And although I said it then, I think I'm taking it back. Because for my beloved quince, it's always worth it. And if you are having the right kind of day filled with stirring and warmth in your kitchen, this will be worth it for you too.

Membrillo (quince paste)
with help from here, and here too

makes one 9x9 square pan's worth

(note: Most people peel and core their quinces when making membrillo, but I opted to keep both the peels and cores in the mix, as that is where most of the pectin comes from, and it's less work for you. Most of the fiber was removed in the food mill step, but the end result had just the slightest amount of additional texture from the pith of the quince. I admit that I love it! But if you want a smooth, smooth candy, then core the quince.)

4 pounds quince, scrubbed of pubescence (the lovely fur), and roughly chopped
peel of 1/2 lemon
1 vanilla bean, split
4 cardamom pods
4 cups sugar
1/4 cup lemon juice

Put the chopped quince into a large pot and just barely cover with water. Add the lemon peel, vanilla bean, and cardamom pods to the water. Cover, bring to a boil, and then lower the heat to a simmer. Cook until the quinces are very soft, about 45 minutes.

Use a slotted spoon to transfer the quinces to a food mill (or you can press them through a sieve if that is what you have and you want to work really really hard). Remove the vanilla bean and cardamom pods as you go and set them aside. Pass the mixture through the food mill. You want the puree to be fairly smooth (mine was not, because my food mill has big holes), and so, if needed, transfer to a blender or food processor to make it smoother.

Wash the pot, and return the puree to the pot. Add the sugar and lemon. Put the vanilla bean and cardamom pods back in the pot.Then cook over low heat, uncovered, stirring often, until the puree gets quite thick and turns a rosy shade of reddish orange. This will take somewhere between 1 1/2 hours and 3 hours. I know this is a long time. You need to keep an eye on it and stir every few minutes, so this is a recipe for a rare day when you can just be in the kitchen making things. Perhaps you are also making jelly? Or dinner? Either way, the quince will merrily cook as you bustle around it--it doesn't need your full attention. Feel free to taste when you stir. It will keep you going all afternoon.

Preheat the oven to as low as it will go. For me, this is 170 degrees. Line a 9x9 baking pan with parchment, and then grease the parchment with butter. Transfer the puree to the prepared pan, removing the vanilla bean and cardamom pods as you do.

Bake for about 1 hour. Remove from the oven, and let sit for a few hours before cutting into squares.
It will get more solid as it cools.

Store in the refrigerator in a covered container. I am told that it will keep for up to 2 months or so, but I'll let you know if it makes it that long.

sisig

2011-11-03T08:09:00.000-07:00

Well, sort of sisig.
This is the story.
Last week, on our final night in San Francisco, we went to eat at the food trucks at Fort Mason. I know I've already told you this part, but I've got to set the stage.
This is my uncle, Gary.
Gary was at the heart of why I was there with my mother, and why I traveled up to San Francisco after Naya and Oliver's sweet wedding in Carmel. It was a fortifying sort of weekend that left me full of love and hope and good food. Joey went home after the wedding, and I met my mother in San Francisco. In the interest of time, and of getting to talking about that bowl up there, I won't give you all the details, but I will tell you that we were there to do some work on a family rift (you know that rift that most families have in some shape or another? this would be ours), and that long ago, before the rift was so severe, it was Gary and his wife, Sondra, who taught me a whole lot of what I know about how to cook, and how to eat, and how to love food.

And so, on our last night in that full-bellied city, Gary took us to the food trucks. And as he admitted that he had been there several times that summer, we took his recommendations as to how to prioritize. With so many choices, we had to eat wisely in order to draw out the appetite. It was necessary to imagine with each choice that we were eating the very best thing there- the pork buns with pickled daikon (the best!), the fish tacos on homemade tortillas (also, the best!) and finally, the pumpkin and mushroom dumplings (again, the best!). But sitting in my little black folding chair in the middle of the parking lot, one truck kept catching my eye.

It's the brown one there. And finally, at the end of it all, I asked Gary the question that had been humming in my all night.
"What, exactly, is Sisig?"
I take a fair amount of pride in knowing my road (and food truck!) categories, and this one was utterly new to me.
"Oh, it's good!" he told me. "But you'll never be able to fit it in your stomach now. It's brisket over coconut rice with an egg on top."
Yes. I know.
Brisket over coconut rice with an egg on top? Have you ever heard of anything so exciting? I thought (okay, I obsessed) over the combination as we packed up and made our way to the plane. I dreamed of it while I dozed over Kansas. I cursed the 2 feet of snow that fell within hours of our return- I cursed it because it prevented me from getting to the store to buy brisket so that I could create my own sisig NOW.
But then on Monday, I went to The Meat Market, our very own new and wonderful local butcher, and Jeremy gave me the brisket that would become my very own sisig.

After I had the brisket safely in my possession, I did a little research to get more details on this new food. How should the brisket be spiced? Are there any other elements I need to include in there?

I went through at least 10 obscure and cloudy websites on Filipino food before I entirely believed it- there is no brisket or coconut rice involved in sisig. The main ingredient that I needed was actually pigs ears.

I have no pigs ears, although I know of a few places I could get some.

As far as I could tell, I needed some pigs ears and some chicken livers, and a really really hot plate. It would ideally sizzle together with peppers and onions and ginger and a the juice of a fruit called calamansi. Then I would eat it on a street corner in the Philippines with a cold beer, and that would be sisig.

I don't know if Gary had it wrong, or if the food truck was actually selling a version of sisig that the obscure cloudy Filipino food websites weren't aware of. Either way, I had brisket, and I knew what I wanted.

Brisket over coconut rice with an egg on top.

I'm stubborn when it comes to cravings.

And so I'll call it sisig, because that's how it came about, but it's really not quite. It is, however, really, really delicious. It did not disappoint. And although it might look like a lot of steps, active time is pretty minimal. Very very worth it.

Sisig, sort of
serves 6 to 8

For the Meat:
2 tablespoons olive oil
One 2 lb brisket
1 tablespoon soy sauce or tamari
5 cloves minced garlic
2 tablespoons rice vinegar
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon chili garlic paste (fabulous stuff! It looks like this:

but if you don't have it, combine about 1 tablespoon of chili powder with 2 cloves minced garlic, adding a drop of soy sauce and a bit of water to get a thick paste
1 red onion, minced
1 bottle dark beer
4 cups water or beef broth
1 dried d'arbol chile

For the rice:
2 tablespoons coconut oil (or butter if that's what you have)
2 cups Jasmine rice
2 tablespoons shredded coconut
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 15 oz. can coconut milk
1/4 cup water
1/2 teaspoon salt

For the final bowl:
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 cups chopped sweet peppers (add in a bit of hot peppers here too if you can)
1/2 onion, sliced
1 tablespoon grated ginger
salt and pepper
1 egg per person

Some sort of sliced pickle, for garnish

Make the brisket:
Preheat the oven to 250 degrees.
Combine the soy sauce, garlic, vinegar, sugar, salt, and chili paste in a small bowl. Rub the mixture over the brisket. Heat the olive oil in a large skillet or roasting pan over medium high heat. Cook the brisket for a few minutes on each side so that a nice brown crust develops on the meat. Take the meat out of the pan and set it aside on a plate. Add the red onion, shuffle it around for a few minutes, and then pour the beer in the pan. It will bubble and sizzle- scrape all of the brown bits from cooking the brisket into the beer. Put the brisket back into the pan. Add the water or stock, and tuck the chili pepper into the liquid. Cover the pan with a lid if it has one- otherwise cover it with tin foil.
Put the pan into the oven and forget about it for the better part of the day. Cook for at least 4 hours, but it could be 6 or 7 if that's what works for you.

Make the coconut rice:
I did this in a rice cooker, but if you're making it in a pot instead, you'll need to increase the liquid. Essentially, you'll need as much coconut milk as you usually use water when you cook white rice.
So- in the rice cooker, first melt the coconut oil in the rice cooker bowl. Add the rice, stir to coat it with the oil, and close the lid. Let it it cook for 5 minutes. Then add the coconut milk, dried coconut, water, and salt. Close the lid and set it for the regular cooking cycle.

Then, when the brisket and the rice are ready, finish it up!
Heat the olive oil in a skillet over medium high heat. Add the peppers, sliced onions, and grated ginger. Stir stir stir until it's all shiny and starting to brown. Transfer the mixture into a bowl, keeping the pan hot. Add a bit more oil or butter if the pan needs it--then fry one egg per person.

Now the pickle- I leave this one up to you. Do you have a fridge pickle languishing in there from August? This is the moment. I had these beautiful pickled baby squash inspired by Marisa, and they were perfect. You can also make a quick carrot or daikon pickle- this one would be nice here too.

And now... the bowl.
First the rice, then the peppers and onions. Lay a few slices of the brisket over that. Then the egg on top of the brisket. Pour a bit of the spicy fatty sauce from the brisket over the whole lot of it. Then the pickle gets tucked in where the bowl needs a bit of color.

eating off the grid

2011-11-01T10:54:00.000-07:00

Oh California.

I don't even know what to say. Do I laugh? Cry? Tease you?

Or do I jump in with glee? (my mug filled with blue bottle coffee and the sriracha mayo on everything)

You, my friend, are serious about your pickles.

Of, course, so am I.

And the cynical New England in me, the one that knew that I'd be sitting in 2 feet of snow in 24 hours, could not help but laugh, and say, California!

Every Friday night at Fort Mason, there are food trucks. Lots of food trucks. It's called Off the Grid.

It's kind of like a Grateful Dead show, but for hipster foodies.

I was happy to play the part. If only for the fish tacos with pickled red onions.

And for pork buns with pickled daikon.

Oh, California. You and me, we go way back. And although you make me laugh and feel a bit silly about your best-of-all-possible-things-are-here ways, I'm always happy to come back to your kitchen.

Till next time, friend.

what we eat after dark

2011-10-27T23:53:00.000-07:00

We walked all the way to the ferry building again, just for the coffee. And without too much searching, there was a sandwich with fresh mozzarella and hard boiled egg.

The other night we were walking through Chinatown in search of noodles. And we stopped at a store that sold little silken shoes and shiny chopsticks, and we asked, "where can we get a good bowl of noodles around here?" The girl in charge pointed us to a little place up Clay Street called Capital Restaurant.
"I don't know if it's good. But we get every single meal there."
That seemed like enough of a recommendation. And so we hiked our way up the hill, and we walked into Capital Restaurant. Everyone turned around and looked at us, and that seemed like a pretty good sign.
We ate wonton noodle soup with barbecued pork. Every bit of it.

Then last night, we ate Burmese food at hands down the most recommended place in this city, a little clean and coconut smelling joint called Burma Superstar. We met family we haven't seem in a long time, and we played it cool and kept track of our own worth. We worked out of love, and remembered that this is our work.

On our way home, we went to Maria's pastry and we sat with a napoleon and coffee. It was dark as we made our way back.

I am eating with my mother. And tonight we went to Zuni Cafe. My friend, Andrew, was working the chicken station and so that's what we had. And I sat there, happy, eating, getting drunk while my mother drank bubbly water, us, watching Andrew make chicken at the wood fired oven. He is a friend who feeds my soul. And when I had sobered up with quince sorbet and coffee, he took me downstairs to see the walk-ins.

My mother and I walked into the night, and, unsure of what bus might take us home, we hopped on the trolley car with the late night tourists, all abuzz with meals and city walks. The road was steep, and the air was clear, and as we passed California Street, my mother said, there! That's where I lived with your father. We slept on blankets.

I was born here in this city, you know.

I have been away from the girls for nearly a week now. I'm thinking of their cheeks and their hugs, and their asking everything of me. I want to go home. I want to answer everything for them.

And Joey. He went home on Sunday morning, after our sweet friends were married, but before my mother came out so that we could do the family work we came to do. He's waiting for me at home as the snow falls. California's got nothing on an October snow. I can't believe I'm missing out on such weather. I'm ready to go home to him, too.

Tomorrow is our last day. I think we might go back to the ferry building, for coffee and cheese. And California will do it's thing, and then we will say goodbye.

we made it

2011-10-25T21:36:00.000-07:00

Dear fabulous woman on the flight from Hartford to Dallas,
I know that you'll be curious to know whether Joey and I made our connection in Dallas. You were so great to prepare us for what direction we should run, and to give us the hint about taking the skytram. Unfortunately, the tram was broken, and we had to run much longer than we originally thought. I was wearing my boots, and carrying a bag that was too heavy for it's own good, and so, well, I'll tell you that at one point I broke down, and I crumbled, and Joey had to drag me to the moving walkway and talk me through it a little. And by the time we got to the gate, I couldn't even see a thing except the flight attendant cheering me on. He was bald, and he had glasses. And they didn't even check my boarding pass- there was just, I think, a fair amount of jumping up and down, and shouting "You can do it!" until we took a running leap onto the tarmac. Or at least, that's how I remember it now.

So yes, we made it.
And thank you for talking about your parents who don't have electricity in Alberta. And about work and politics and, most of all, the carrot soup that you made. It's rare that strangers will talk to each other about so many important things, and I don't know about you, but it makes me feel more optimistic about the world as a whole. Because we might have all sorts of differences that could stop us from talking, but if you made soup last week and I made soup last week, that's a whole lot we have in common.

Thank you.

That shared enthusiasm for soup started us of on such a good foot. And we made it to our funny white rental car, and we drove to the ocean.
We really did make it.

And you know what I've been doing since then? I'm been talking to strangers a whole lot more than usual. You gave me that idea, really. And now, this week in the city, I'm talking to people when I order my coffee, or waiting for the bus. You've upped my optimism, to be entirely truthful about it. I am just a little more open this week. A little bit, but it can feel boundless.

Thank you.

beets and leeks

2011-10-19T15:35:00.000-07:00

I'm packing.
I have that strange feeling that I get when I'm about to go on a trip. Like everything is different already, exciting and ungrounded at the same time.
I'm going to San Francisco.
First, to be honest, I'm going south of San Francisco, to Carmel, so that I can be there to watch my friends start their marriage. I'm excited for that. Joey will be with me then, and after that he flies back home and basically changes places with my mother. She meets me on Monday in San Francisco.
We'll be there for the week. We have some family business there (that's the short story), and it's been a long time since we've taken a trip together. Since I was little, really. I'm excited for that, too.
It's also been a long time since I've seen that city, and I'm ready to go back. I was born there in a little house on Willard Street, and I've gone back for long stretches a few times in my life. I've somehow felt like I've failed San Francisco in the past. I've lived there at times when I wasn't so happy, and wasn't so...well, the only way I can think to say it is, I wasn't so me, and I've blamed it on the place, on the fog, on so many things. But at the same time, I think so longingly of it, and I can't wait to be there. It's been 10 years since I've been there, and I'm very me now.

I wanted to leave you with a little something, and so we come to beets and leeks. Nice to say, isn't it?
Kind of like as if Dr. Seuss got going about his farm share.

Years back, I had a friend, Emily, and she was in town and came to cook for us right after Sadie was born. She's an opera singer now. She made us beets and leeks, and many other wonderful things I'm sure, but those beets and leeks had lasting power for for me. I've done it so many times, and it always feels special. It's the leeks, I think. Magical.

This is a roasting the beets recipe, and I know everyone has their own method. As much as I hate using all that tin foil, this is how I do it:

Cut the greens off the beets, leaving about 1 inch of stem. Leave the tail on. Wrap each beet individually in tin foil, putting a touch of olive oil and a dash of salt and pepper on each one before sealing the foil up. Roast in a 375 degree oven for and hour or so for medium sized beets, or more or less for big or small ones. Then take them out of the foil, and let them cool for a bit so that you can touch them. Slide them right out of their skins. Your hands will turn red. But I like that.

Cut the beets in bite-sized pieces and put them into a bowl.

And then, there are the leeks. For a bunch of about 5 beets, I use 2 leeks, but one would do if that's all you have. Cut the bottom root and the very top off the leek. Slice the whole thing in half lengthwise, and then slice both halves into 1-inch pieces. Transfer them to a bowl, add a touch of white or apple cider vinegar, and swish them around. This will release the dirt. Lift them out of the water into a colander.

Melt a few tablespoons of butter or olive oil in a skillet. Add the leeks and cook, stirring often, until they are just starting to brown and your house smells like heaven. Pour the leeks over the beets, and add a glug or two of the best olive oil you've got. Then salt, then lots of pepper. Then it's ready.

I'll keep you with me in my travels, if that's good with you. I've got my camera, and I'll be looking for new things. New things! Aren't they wonderful? I'll let you know what I find.

how to freeze kale

2011-10-16T07:47:00.000-07:00

Six kale plants.
A six-pack of kale starts will run you about $2.50. Kick in a little more for a bag of compost and you're on your way.
Those six plants can be packed into a tiny garden bed in the spring. Nurtured. Watered. Even sung to, if that is how you roll.
They will start to feed you by the end of May, in little fits and starts of delicate, baby kale. Any by July, you will have trees, a jungle of green leaves that grow faster than you can eat them.
But that's not even the best part.
Because long after the rest of everything has frozen and withered away, there is the kale.
It is better after the frost, sweeter and worthy of eating it raw, even if you're not the kind of person who does that kind of thing.
And, depending on the strength of the winter, the kale will feed you long after the world has bundled into its cold envelope, and you can trudge out through the deep snow to pick a few leaves for dinner. Even if it feels frozen, it will warm on the counter after a few minutes, perky and ready as it was in October. And after that? There has been extra all along, enough to freeze in little bags to get you through February, March, and April. Powerful stuff, this kale.

I've been thinking about revolution lately. A withered word in itself, I think, and sometimes I wish that I'd been there to make a difference in the decades before I was born, back when revolution was revolutionary. Back when there just seemed to be more conviction in the power of revolution.

A year and a half ago, when I decided to run for office in my little town, I was sick of feeling like I couldn't make a difference. I felt fed up with apathy and anger, and I decided that I would strike out and do something I had never considered. I would participate.

I'm not sure that the experiment has entirely been a success. Most days when I walk out of meetings at town hall, I feel less empowered and more hopeless than I ever did before. I feel like there is such a divide between people and government, and I somehow I feel it more profoundly from this side, the government side. Local government and national government are different enough that it's hard to make accurate comparisons, but in someways, I think the comparison is fair. And this divide between the people and government? It undermines democracy itself. If the people don't participate, there really is no democracy.

But I'm still plugging along. And I think, in the end, that participation really does create change. I think that the decision to be there, to go to a local town meeting, to run for office, to write to your representative, to stand on the street in New York or just your own home town and to say what you think--I think that each one of these actions strengthens democracy and (depending on how you feel about the present state of things) brings it back to life.

Which brings me back to kale.
Six plants. $2.50. If you've got a tiny bit of space and you're thinking about turning it into food, I'd start there. And every time you take your food production into your own hands, you are participating. If you believe you can make change, it's a self-fulfilling prophesy.

This is my mom, Jamie, and my stepfather, Chris. Last weekend, I was heading out for the day, and they offered to demonstrate (for you!) how to freeze kale.

They asked for a quick refresher on the method, and so before I left, we went through one batch. They put on some Steely Dan, and I took that as my cue to get out of the kitchen.

And so, (with thanks to Chris and Jamie for documenting the experience),

HOW TO FREEZE KALE
(or, revolutionary food preservation)

1. Soak the kale in the sink to remove dirt and bugs.

2. Take the leaves off the stem by holding the stem at the base and running your hand up the length of the stem. Chop the leaves roughly.
3. Bring a large pot of water to boil. Set up a large bowl of ice water on the counter. Next to it, put a large colander inside a pot or bowl.

4. In batches suited to the size of your pot, submerge the kale in the boiling water for 30 seconds.

5. Use tongs or a slotted spoon to transfer the kale to the ice water. Keep it in there for a few minutes, or until it is fully cooled. Replenish the ice as you go, so that the water stays cold.

6. Then, transfer to the colander, gently squeezing the water out as you do so.

6. Transfer the kale to small freezer bags. Press the air out, seal, and flatten out the contents so they will stack nicely in the freezer.

Use in soups all winter. You can defrost first, or just stick a kale-sicle in a pot of soup as it cooks.

joe beef's jerusalem artichokes with ketchup

2011-10-11T20:08:00.000-07:00

All last Fall, when we were working on the photos for the book, Jennifer May was so wonderful to work with that she made me feel like I was the only book she was working on. She spent endless hours with us, played with the girls, played with the cat, and of course, she took so many beautiful photographs.

The other books that she was doing at the time came into conversation here and there. I knew that she was spending many of her days with artful cuts of sustainable meat. And I knew that on the weekends she wasn't hanging out with us, she was living it up in Montreal with the Joe Beef cookbook.

I was quite aware that her weekends with us were the quiet ones, the rural and family friendly ones, the days where she ate homemade crackers instead of foie gras sandwiches. And I was okay with that! I knew that Jen loved her time with us, and that her other needs were satisfied by her exotic time in Montreal with the other woman, er, I mean, cookbook.

A few weeks ago, the book arrived in the mail. I did not ask for it, but it showed up, beautiful, hip, both feminine and masculine at the same time. And if this book was the other woman, she was wearing clothes I would never think to try to pull off, and man oh man did she pull them off! She knocked on the door (at least, UPS did), cigarette hanging from her mouth, and in a faint Montreal accent, she greeted me and pushed her way in. And just like that, after Jen had been seeing us both, separately, for so long, we were there in the same room. And I fell for it. I fell for that cookbook.

This book has some recipes I can't wait to make, and some that I know I will never attempt. The photos are (of course!) stunning, and the writing is wonderful and witty. And, true to its name The Art of Living According to Joe Beef, the book conveys an entire atmosphere, a way of relating to food, yes, but also time, and love, and communication. The recipes are sexy, but in the way that Montreal is sexy. If you have been to Montreal, I'm guessing you know what I mean.

I have never known a city to be filled with more beautiful people than Montreal. But unlike some other cities where I feel outside of it all, there seems to be no standard, no model of beauty. People are all shapes and sizes. Fashion is all over the place, and always fantastic. And it is contagious. When I am in Montreal, I feel so beautiful, exactly as I am.

I'm looking forward to my next trip out there. I want to go to Joe Beef.

In the recipe for bagna cauda and aioli, we are instructed to "sit down in a garden chair with a bottle of rose or pastis, a cutting board on [our] knees, and good paring knife. Throw the peels straight into the garden."

I know! Sighs, blushes, and an ever so slightly shaking hand.

I wanted to tell you about one of the simpler recipes in the book. It deals with jerusalem artichokes, those strange little tubers that grow beneath what you might think is a bushy sunflower. They look like ginger, but they taste like something between a potato and an artichoke. And no one quite seems to know what to do with them.

This was my first year growing jerusalem artichokes. I did it against everyone's advice. "They'll take over!" people said. "You'll never get them out of your garden!" That's okay with me. While the weeds strangled everything else, that jerusalem artichoke grew taller than me. The deer ate it every day, and every day it grew anyway. That's my kind of plant. One that can survive anything.

And so, in the way of Joe Beef, I roasted those indestructible tubers. I flipped them over, and then I roasted them some more. And then I popped a jar of the special occasion peach tomato ketchup, and Joey and I ate them in the garden, as we were meant to.

Jerusalem Artichokes with Ketchup
adapted from The Art of Living According to Joe Beef, by Frederic Morin, David McMillan, and Meredith Erickson (with photos by Jennifer May)

8 large jerusalem artichokes
a handful of coarse salt
butter, for greasing the pan
more coarse salt (or pretzel salt, if you have it)
a few sprigs fresh thyme
ketchup

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Smear a baking tray with a good layer of butter.

Put the jerusalem artichokes into a heavy duty freezer bag with a handful of coarse salt and a few tablespoons water. Seal the bag, and shake it several times. This will clean the jerusalem artichokes.

Rinse off each tuber, and cut in half lengthwise. Lay them cut side down on the prepared tray. Sprinkle with salt, and then with the leaves from the thyme sprigs.

Roast for 45 minutes, then flip the jerusalem artichokes over and roast for 30 minutes more. Allow to cool slightly, and then serve in the garden, with a side of ketchup.

pear, kale, and sorrel salad

2011-10-07T16:22:00.000-07:00

Last week, I came into the small fortune of 20 perfect seckle pears. Those pears were so beautiful, we almost missed their ripeness because we were so busy admiring them. The first one spouted a few tragic snowflakes of delicate mold, and then it became clear that we had 24 hours to eat the rest of them. We did it. We rose to the challenge, and at any given moment of that day (and into the night), there was a pear attached to someone's face. There was juice running down arms, and there were pears in everything.

And so we found this happy combination, well-timed, I think, as we are waiting patiently for our first killing frost. Still, still waiting, and then the plants, and more importantly, the weeds, will wither and keel over, and the site of them will stop making me feel... well, I'll just come out and say it, like a failure.

I know that this is the second post in a row in which I've talked about failing my garden, and I know (or at least I'll go ahead and imagine) that you're saying, "lay off it, Alana! We're all there- we've all given up, the weeds have taken over!" Or, even, "garden! I don't even have a garden! Stop being so hard on yourself!"

But those who have sat in my "garden" this summer while I try to distract them with cocktails know the truth. I never had a chance this year. My friend, Brandee said it best sometime in early July, as I hacked at the thistle in order to get at the mint for her pimm's cup.

"Oh, honey. You need some help out here."

But there have been successes. A proud number of green zebra tomatoes. 3 crimson lee peppers. Very happy jerusalem artichokes (always happy, of course). Enough tomatillos for a damn fine bowl of salsa. 6 stalks of brussels sprouts that just might be ready by December. And 4 vigorous kale plants that only have more sweetness ahead of them when the frost comes.

Hooray for kale. It makes me feel like a winner in every way.

Pear, Kale, and Sorrel Salad

1 small bunch curly kale
2 seckel pears (or 1 larger pear)
6 leaves sorrel (You can, of course, leave these out if you don't have them, but they add a delicious tang to the whole dish)
juice of 1 lemon
2 T olive oil
1/4 cup toasted almonds, roughly chopped
peeled parmesan
salt and pepper

Tear the kale off the stem, and chop it finely. Do the same with the sorrel. Cut the pear into 1/2-inch slices and toss with the greens. Squeeze a lemon directly over the whole thing. Then spoon the olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and toss to combine. Finish off with the toasted almonds and parmesan. This will serve 4 as a side dish, or you alone if you bring it out to the back yard to watch the sun set as you reflect on the beauty of things.

fall clean up, and a few announcements!

2011-10-05T11:23:00.000-07:00

I have a few things to tell you! (don't you just love a good announcement?)

The first... is that this site is getting a bit of an upgrade and a makeover. My outrageously talented friends Aurel and Molly de St. Andre are working on it as we speak, and I can't wait till the whole thing goes hoppin' live. I'm just telling you now! I know that change can be a little jarring, and so consider this a gentle preparation. It will look different, but it's still me, just with a bit more lipstick on, shall we say. Soon! Soon!

Also, for you who are in the area, I am so excited to announce that I'll be teaching a food writing workshop this fall. We'll meet over the course of four Thursday nights around that big lovely table at Rubi's Coffee and Sandwiches in Great Barrington- reading some great food writing, writing some of our own, and talking about ways to get our writing out there. And the best part? Plenty of wine and cheese is included in the cost of the workshop. (How can we talk about food writing without getting hungry?) We'll meet November 3, 10, 17, and December 1, and the cost of the workshop is $225. Just send me an email through the contact link up there if you are interested in registering.

And... one more for the locals! Berkshire Grown is hosting a pretty fantastic (and FREE) series starting tonight. They will be showing 9 videotaped lectures from UC Berkley from a series called Edible Education in the lecture hall at Simon's Rock College in Great Barrington. You can go here to learn more about the series, but just to entice you, here's the line up:

October 5: FOOD AS CULTURE- Peter Sellars
October 12: THE POLITICS OF FOOD- Marion Nestle
October 19: PERSPECTIVES ON RACE, PLACE, AND FOOD- Alegria de la Cruz, Rebecca Flournoy, and Yvonne Yen Liu
October 26: NUTRITION, HEALTH, & DIET-RELATED DISEASE- Patricia Crawford and Robert Lustig
November 2: CORPORATIONS & THE FOOD MOVEMENT- Jack Sinclair and Michael Pollan
November 9: SCHOOL LUNCH & EDIBLE SCHOOLYARDS- Ann Cooper
November 16: FEEDING THE WORLD- Raj Patel
November 30: AGRICULTURE AND SOCIAL JUSTICE- Eric Schlosser, Gred Asbed, and Lucas Benitez
December 7: WHAT IS AN EDIBLE EDUCATION?- Alice Waters

That's all for today, friends... Happy Wednesday!

what to do when the jelly doesn't set

2011-10-03T13:07:00.000-07:00

It seems that although jam making is on the rise, jelly making is making a slower comeback.
Perhaps it is the sweetness that puts people off? The slight jello-ness that undermines its sophistication? Or for some, perhaps, it is the fear that the jelly won't set.

I have always used pectin in my jams, and I never feel the need to experiment outside of my beloved Pomona's Pectin. This gives the jam a good set with minimal sugar, and I don't have to think too hard about it. But when I get my hands on a basket of really high pectin fruit, I can't help but envision a delicate and clear jelly, and these are the few times in my canning career that I mess with gel points and thermometers. Last year, I made quince jelly, and the fruit was so high in pectin that it hardened as if thickened with gelatine. It was pink and smelled like flowers, and I hoarded my few little jars of it all winter. This year I made red currant jelly, and the little bit of precious juice overflowed onto the stove when I boiled it with sugar. I ended up with one prized burgundy jar, and it was perfect.

I thought that we'd go through the jelly making process here, in case it is a new one to you. Except this time- with this recipe, I didn't end up making jelly at all. I had to confront the moment and figure out what to do when my jelly didn't set. The day comes for us all, and all we can do is be prepared.

The process of making jelly starts with the process of making juice. The fruit must be clean, because you will use every bit of it. Pectin, that magical stuff that makes the jelly gel, is more densely in the skin, core, and seeds of the fruit. So cut the fruit roughly, and throw it all into the pot. Then we add water, and cook it all until it it is soft.

You might have a special tool called a jelly strainer- this is basically a mesh bag suspended over a plate. You can rig up your own with a piece of cheese cloth. I tie it to opposite ends of a colander, and then put the colander over a bowl to catch the juice. The key is to suspend the cloth- this will get you clearer and more wonderful juice.

Pour all of the softened fruit (along with the liquid) through the cheesecloth. Let the whole thing drain for at least 3 hours, but up to a day. Let it drain on its own without squeezing or poking it. I'm serious about that- one good squeeze will give you cloudy jelly.

When the fruit has finished draining, you now have juice. Combine the juice with the sugar in a pot, and boil until the mixture reaches 220 degrees F. You can also keep a plate in the freezer, and when a drop of the mixture solidifies on the frozen plate, you know that you have reached the gel point. Then the jelly goes into jars, and sometime in the next day, it gels, and it doesn't slosh around in the jar when you nervously pick it up to see if it has turned firm and lovely.

Except when it does slosh around. And when and if this ever happens to you, you have 2 options. Crying and dumping out the contents of your jars is not one of these options. You don't have to. You can make this better!

The first option is to unseal your jars and re-cook the jelly. Add more sugar, add some pectin, and you'll get your gel. Resterilize your jars, top with new lids, and process again.

I know. It sounds a little exhausting, right? If so, this is your path. When the jelly doesn't set, it's time to make cocktails.

In my case, I know exactly why it didn't set. I was living dangerously and laughing in the face of well-established science. One thing you might notice about jelly recipes is that they have so so much sugar. Enough sugar to make your teeth hurt when you eat it. And so every time I make jelly, I mess with the sugar. This time, I went too far. But sometimes the mistakes taste better than the goal. And so, I present you:

Apple Mint Syrup

Mixed with gin or vodka in a shaker with a little ice, this is pretty fantastic. And, (need I say it), paired with a ribbon and a little bottle of booze? It's a DIY apple-tini holiday gift bag.

makes ten 8-ounce jars

7 pounds apples
1 large bunch mint (stems and leaves)- I used a variety called apple mint that seemed quite fitting
6 cups sugar

Coarsely chop the apples without peeling or coring them. Put them into a large pot with the mint, and just barely cover with water. Cover, bring to a boil, and lower the heat to medium low. Continue to cook until the apples are very soft and breaking down, about 45 minutes.

Set up a large piece of cheese cloth over a colander and a large bowl. Pour the mixture through the cheese cloth and let it drain without poking or squeezing it. Let it drain for at least 3 hours, but up to a day.

You should have between 12 and 14 cups of juice. Combine the apple mint juice with the sugar in a large pot. Bring to a boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Let the mixture cook at a rapid boil for ten minutes. (If you want to make jelly instead of syrup, increase the sugar to 10 cups, and make sure that the mixture reaches 220 degrees F.)

Pour into sterilized jars, top with lids, and process in a water bath for 10 minutes.

car snack 4 (or, the banana oat bar)

2011-09-29T13:54:00.000-07:00

Last week, I visited the middle school classroom at the Montessori school where Joey teaches and the girls learn. The middle school is in its second year, and the small group of brave (isn't it just brave to wake up and move through the world at that age?) tweens and teens have been busy planning out the year ahead. One of the projects they started last year was a snack program where they purchase snacks and sell them to the rest of the students several times a week. The money they raise through the snack program helps to fund trips and other exciting activities, and the kids get to have the experience of running what is essentially a small business.

Julie Haagenson runs the middle school program, and in the end of the summer, she asked me if I would be willing to come in and do some cooking with the kids. She thought they might be interested in making some snacks instead of buying them, and she was hoping to give them some tools as they moved into the discussion.

The whole program is small- maybe 8 kids if that, and when I walked in last week, they were sitting around a U-shaped table. They had invited me to come for four sessions over the course of the Fall, and this was to be our brainstorming session about what we might like to make together. I started with the snacks that they already offer, and we talked about some alternatives. Popcorn from a bag? Why don't we use an air popper? The result will be far less expensive and taste a whole lot better. Everyone loves the days when the kids offer goldfish as a snack--I asked if they were interested in learning how to make their own cheese crackers.

As savvy business people, those kids wanted to provide a product that all the other kids in the school would be interested in buying. And as they considered whether they should start making food from scratch, the question arose as to whether kids would want snacks that were "more healthy". Right now, there are healthy snack days (cucumber slices, oranges) and there are the other days (goldfish, bagel and cream cheese). If goldfish were replaced by homemade cheese crackers, would that be a healthier choice? Or would it be perceived as one?

"Whoa, hold on a minute there!" I couldn't help but jump in. "Who said anything about making healthy food?"

I was raised on health food. I have always been able to list the seven ancient grains, and I know the difference between white and red miso. I've turned many people on to sprinkling their popcorn with nutritional yeast. But I don't think the health label is helping anyone. Honestly, I think it's just confusing. Because whether something is healthy really depends on who you ask and what their definition of the term is. Are they concerned about their weight? Then they think whole milk is unhealthy. Sugar? Then maybe diet coke is healthy. Really, I have no idea what the term means.

So what if we choose a word that is in full acceptance of that it means different things to different people? How about if the goal is good food?

I continue to cling stubbornly to the idea that taste will lead us to the right place. All summer, I worked with kids in the kitchen at food camp, and they supported this idea with every meal. There were all sorts of ideas about what was healthy and what their parents wanted them to eat, but in the end, what inspired them and made them sparkle was the first bite. So many kids went home and cooked for their parents--they left the camp kitchen saying, "I can't wait for my dad to try this. He's not going to believe how good it is!"

I'm no nutritionist. I can't even begin to sort through the constantly changing information about food and health. I start to wade through some of the mess that we're in around food safety, and I feel like the system is broken, and I'm not sure how to navigate through it. But I keep coming back to this idea of good food, and of always going towards food that tastes good to us. It seems simple, I know, but it's the best I've got. And if there's a possibility of raising a new generation of people who actually pay attention to what they put in their mouths, and who even can have a sense of whether it feels good or bad in their bodies? This could be nothing short of a revolution.

And with that, we move to the car snack. Oh yes, old friend, we've returned.
The short story is that the car snack is the granola bar, the energy bar, the bag of goldfish, the fruit leather, or whatever else you pack for your kids to ease the panicked hunger of 3:00. Of course, it's for grownups too, and you can eat it in whatever vehicle you choose. I wrote about car snacks 1 and 2 a ways back, and car snack 3 joins them in the book. But all three involve a fair amount of butter and varying amounts of refined sugar, and I've gotten a bunch of requests for a healthier car snack.

And so I bring you...the banana oat bar. No white flour, no refined sugar (except the wee bit of chocolate), and no butter or oil either. It comes together quickly, holds together well for the car, and (need I say it?) tastes really really good.

Car Snack 4 (the banana oat bar)

Makes 20 bars (about 2 1/2 x 3 inches)

3/4 cup whole wheat flour
2 cups rolled oats
1 1/2 cups puffed rice cereal
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon cinnamon
3 very ripe bananas, peeled and mashed
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup plain yogurt
1/4 cup peanut or almond butter
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup bittersweet or semisweet chocolate chips

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a 9x13 baking pan with parchment, leaving enough hanging over on the edges so you can pull out the finished product.
2. In a large mixing bowl, combine the flour, oats, rice cereal, salt, nutmeg, and cinnamon, stirring well to combine. In a second large bowl, combine the banana, honey, yogurt, nut butter, and vanilla. Stir until the mixture is fairly uniform.
3. Pour the dry ingredients into the wet ones and stir until they come together into one uniform mixture. Gently stir in the chocolate chips. Transfer to the prepared pan and flatten down with a spatula. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, or until just starting to brown on top. Remove from the oven and let cool for at least 1 hour before removing from the pan and cutting into squares.

the fall festival circuit

2011-09-26T05:50:00.000-07:00

It's finally Fall festival time.
I went to my first Fall festival 9 years ago. At least, that was the first fall festival that I remember. It seems that they should be part of my childhood memories growing up around here, but I'm not sure that I ever got to one before I was a grownup.
Joey and I had just graduated from college, and we had recently migrated to the Berkshires to be nearer to my family. We were 23, and I was pregnant. It was one of those in-between times--we were living at my parents, planning our wedding, and trying to figure out where we would live and what our life would look like. We took my sister Maia to the Apple Squeeze festival in Lenox, and Joey walked through the sidewalks lined with cider donuts and crafts of varied quality with wide eyes. Maia was four, still small enough that we could play family and try out the feel of parenthood. The next weekend was the Harvest Festival at Berkshire Botanical gardens, and the weather was in cahoots with the perfect bratwurst and the fantastic book sale. They all worked together, somewhere in the midst of that sparkly day, Joey said that he thought we should just stick around and move to the Berkshires for good.

A year later, we were at the Apple Squeeze again, this time with new friends. We had all met in birth class the previous winter, and one late pregnancy double date (greasy Chinese food works!) set off both of our labors in April. Sadie and Willow were born 12 hours apart, and at that point, sitting at the table on the sidewalk drinking cider, we could only fantasize about the girl's future together. Meagan and Todd were thinking about moving to Tennessee to start a Montessori school, and we were trying to keep our heartbreak quiet. But that day, while the girls played in our laps, they said that they were thinking they might actually stay here and start a school, crazy as it all sounded.

Yesterday, those girls ran around the Apple Squeeze festival, their little sisters running behind them, totally independent. I sat in the Montessori School information booth at the festival with Joey, and he talked about how new the school was--only in its sixth year.

I love these festivals most, because for me, they mark the passage of the time. More than any holiday, they are fixed in the girls memories, and they know everything they have eaten or made at every festival. We always eat too many sweets, and we come home exhausted. But these festivals always make us so happy to be here, and to be here right now.

This weekend, we packed it in. Saturday, we went to the Harvest Festival at Hancock Shaker Village. A friend had asked me if I would be willing to judge the food vendor competition, and I was excited to get to this festival for the first time. It was Apple Squeeze weekend too, but really- that's what we have a 2 day weekend for, right?

I wandered through the vendors, sampling shortbread and smelling lavender sachets. And Joey and the girls stayed put in the food tent, following along with the pie contest.

Each pie went to the judges first, and then slices went out for 2 bucks a pop. Joey bought every kind he could get to, and the girls sat like baby birds in the nest, waiting for bites.

They all agreed the apple was the best, and in the end, it won.

Next week is the Harvest Festival at the Botanical gardens. That one is pony rides, and music, and pumpkins, and more bratwurst. I admit that I love it the most. But all through these weeks there are Fall Festivals all over this part of the world, and so I thought I might compile something of a list. If the Fall Festival is new to you, it is so worth your weekend. They take all different forms, but there is always cider, and people playing music, and the air tends to smell especially fantastic. I'll list a few that I know about here, but if you've got one where you are, pipe in and let us know.

October 1, 2
The Harvest Festival, Berkshire Botanical Gardens, Stockbridge, MA
North Quabbin Garlic and Arts Festival, Orange, MA
Conway Festival of the Hills, Conway, MA
Stone Barns Harvest Fest, Pocantico Hills, NY

October 8, 9
Ashfield Fall Festival, Ashfield, MA
Hawthorne Valley Fall Festival (just October 9), Ghent, NY

October 15, 16
Dutchess County Sheep and Wool Festival, Rhinebeck, NY

apple celeriac soup

2011-09-23T09:32:00.000-07:00

This is not the first time I have been inspired by a celeriac root.
It wasn't just the soup. It was the day. And although the day was filled with all sorts of other agenda items, this celeriac root was hanging out around my thoughts like a muse. If I am to be entirely honest, I must tell you that it was not one, but two celeriac roots, and I had brought them home from the market on Saturday in the hope of this very inspiration. I didn't know what they would be, but I knew I would love them.

There was also a leek, and an imposing pile of apples in the kitchen. And throughout the day, I thought about these soups of fall made of ingredients that I never have in such abundance save for now. A bunch of leeks in the supermarket in February, and I'll be out five bucks- more if I fall for the organic. Apples are so precious for their place in the lunchbox, and at other times in the year, I would never think of disappearing them into a soup. But right now? It's all abundant. The vegetables that I love and crave and wring my hands over in the supermarket all winter are in my fridge right now. They are all in my fridge. They come from the farm, or the market, or my very own garden. There is no end to the celeriac.

What happened on that day was this: As I got through this and that, and I thought about celeriac through it all, I dreamed about making dinner. Just that dreaming felt like an accomplishment in itself. Because all too often, even though I love to cook and I love to eat and I love to feed these people I love, I feel heavy when I try to plan it out. I sigh, and I think about the 30 minutes I've got before this meeting, or about how so and so won't want to eat this, or about how I just wish it wasn't my night to cook. I end up cooking fast, with my attention half on the stove and half on everything else. I have created a quick weeknight meal, a meal in 30 minutes! and some of the time, I'll be damned if I even remember what it was a few days later. Quick, weeknight non-memorable meals. Hooray.

But on this day, I set up at 4:30, and I turned on NPR. I poured myself a glass of wine. I did the residual dishes from the day. And then I made dinner.

I'm sure there was chaos involved. It was, after all, the hour before dinner. But I was so happy to be happy cooking. The slowness and luxury of actually feeling the desire to be there made me float through it. It made me pause to do a braid for Rosie's doll without any hesitation. It made me pause to cut Sadie an apple to tide her over. It made me pause to give Joey that hug that I want to give him at that time of day. A long conversational hug, punctuated by a real kiss.

Do you know the study that a Japanese man did on emotions and water? Someone told me about it when I was nursing the girls, and we were talking about whether the emotions we feel while nursing affect the actual quality of the milk. If you've never heard about it, go take a peek. There's all sorts of controversy over his methods and conclusions, but whatever surrounds it, I think that it holds extreme merit as a philosophical idea.

Essentially, he says that water responds to the emotions that we put into it. It makes sense, right? And as most of what we are and live with are mostly water, this means more than just talking to a glass of water. It means that the water in my children and it myself will behave differently depending on what emotions I shoot at it. Stay with me here! Because I only bring it up because not only are we and our children made of water, and so much of the world made of water. Let's get to business and get down to what really matters. That's right. I'm talking about your soup.

How many days do I cook dinner in a half panic? It's a rough time of the day, and everyone needs me, and I'm not always my best self. I may not be talking to the soup, but I'm talking around the soup, and at the air. I move fast and I burn the bottom of the pot, I burn my hand, I break a glass, or all of the above. What that soup gets is a whole lot of profanity. But on these other days, when I love every moment of it, and I am inspired by what goes into that pot? I'll say it. I'm sending love into that pot, and that in itself seems to make a damn fine soup.

I'll leave that one out of the ingredients list. Because if I only cooked when I was calm buddha mom, we wouldn't eat all that much. But even without it, the apple and celeriac might pull you through. And after all, I think it's a soup that's hard not to love.

Apple Celeriac Soup

2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 medium leeks, washed and sliced (using all of the white and half the green)
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 small onion, roughly chopped
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
4 medium apples, peeled, cored, and quartered
2 medium celeriac roots, peeled and roughly cubed
8 cups water
1 cup milk
pepper
optional (but fabulous, if you have it): piment d'espelette, for serving

In a large, heavy bottomed pot over medium heat, melt the butter and olive oil together. Let it brown, just slightly. Add the chopped leeks, garlic, and onion, and cook, stirring often, until the veggies are soft and shiny, about 5 minutes. Add the salt and nutmeg and continue to cook for another few minutes.
Add the celeriac, apples, and water. Cover and raise the heat to high. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat to medium-low and cook, stirring occasionally, until the apples and celeriac start to fall apart, 30 to 40 minutes.
If you have an immersion blender, stick it into the pot and blend until smooth. Otherwise, transfer to an upright blender in batches and return to the pot. Add the milk, and taste to adjust salt and add pepper.
Serve with healthy dusting of piment d'espelette, if you have it. A nice smoky paprika will also do the trick.

dance with your shadow

2011-09-20T18:54:00.000-07:00

When the sun comes through, just so.

And there it is.

Screw it. If the shadow wants to dance, might as well go for it.

Here's a few tunes, if you need 'em.

peach cinnamon butter

2011-09-15T18:30:00.000-07:00

There are just a few things that I'd like to talk about, and then, if you like, we'll make peach butter.

I've been following this pretty beautiful train of thought on twitter, something started by the photographer Penny De Los Santos. I can't say I follow too much on twitter, but I check in and I read along here and there. Penny has just moved to New York, and in support of her journey and new beginning, she has began talking about her "dream big and leap" moments, and asking people to share theirs.

If you ever do look at twitter and you haven't gotten to breathe these moments in, just type in "dreambigandleap" and there you will be.

I was talking to a woman who I know just the littlest bit. I was tired, and after one meeting and before the next, and I had stopped in to buy myself a coffee. I was waiting for it, and there she was, waiting, and we said hello. We shared the kind of conversation that happens when you don't know each other all that well but are plenty happy to be talking, and just like that, she told me that she had just left her job so that she could start making cheese.

I couldn't help it. I clapped my hands. I think I might have even let out a little whoop.

Reading through these moments, I look for patterns. I think I see them. That they are times when we decide not to give over to the fear and whatever else might try to lead. These are the times when we finally decide to do what we love, to be who we want to be, to get through the day with our own heart leading the way.

Imagine what we could do, if we only believed that we could, right? If only those moments of honesty and bravery could come more often. I guess we should be thankful for their appearance, here and there.

And maybe I'm crazy, but I can't help but notice that there are certain things that people seem to dream big and leap towards. Love, of course always love. And art, that's in there too. But food! Is it just me? What is it about food? How many people have left their jobs to work in bakeries, or to start a business based off that delicious thing they make? Let's hear it for the new cheese makers out there!

I get it. Because food is so real. There's no fooling when your creating nourishment, deliciousness, dinner. And it belongs to all of us. Anyone of us can cook for anyone else, and they will say thank you. The power to feed is weighty and mighty and big.

Thank you Penny, for bringing these words into my past week. I'm working on it.

I started thinking about peach butter when I read this, and then I couldn't stop thinking about it. And as I chopped and stirred, I was overwhelmed by this memory of being in high school (boarding school! but that's another story) and standing in the breakfast line with my friend, Cea. We're still friends now, and then we were fifteen, and searching for something delicious to eat. It was a difficult task, but someone back there in the dark chasm of the kitchen had decided that instead of just canned peaches, there would be yogurt, and dense swirls of cinnamon. And so on certain days there were these little pitiful green bowls of peach cinnamon yogurt. I think of Cea, because I remember that on those mornings, we would cheer, and we would fill our trays with a few bowls each, as one bowl might have only contained one or two slices of peach.

So as I stirred this lovely bright orange peach butter, I wanted it to be brown, and spicy, and warming. I put so much cinnamon in, and then I put more. I only made enough that night for one jar, but a few days later I found myself enough peaches to make a real batch. I try to stay rational about my canned goods, to keep my wits about me. I can't. I want this on everything.

Peach Cinnamon Butter
inspired by Smitten Kitchen (original recipe here)

makes about 6 cups

5 pounds peaches
1 cup water
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
1 1/2 to 2 tablespoons cinnamon, to taste

Quarter the peaches and remove their pits. Combine the peaches and water in a large pot, cover, and bring to a boil. Lower the heat to medium low, and cook, stirring occasionally, until the peaches are tender, about 20 minutes. Send the whole mixture through the food mill. (Alternatively, you can blanch and peel the peaches before you cook them, and then put them in the blender at this point.)

Add the sugar, lemon, and cinnamon to the peaches. Increase the heat to medium, and cook, uncovered, stirring often, until the mixture thickens. This will take 45 minutes to an hour, depending on the water content of your peaches. Taste, and adjust for sweetness and spice.

To can the peach butter, process in a water bath for 10 minutes for 1/2 cup or 1-cup jars.

the surprise canning tool (and a winner!)

2011-09-13T05:36:00.000-07:00

Okay, before we get too deep into this here, we have a winner of my favorite cookbook!
I've got to say, if you haven't read through the comments, do it. The assortment of cookbook favorites is pretty amazing- new, old, quirky, classic- they're all there. But the winner is....
#23, Amanda! She talked about Melissa Clark's new book (on of my favorites too), and Bull Cook and Authentic Historical Recipes which I am officially now looking for. I do need to learn how to skin a badger, Amanda, I really do. Send me an email via the contact link- and I'll have Rustic Fruit Desserts off to you!

And now, to the day's business.
Although some people can their hearts out all summer, fall canning is my favorite. I make a little jam here and there through the various berry seasons, but the deep contentment of clutching my jar grabber and holding my face over the voluminous canning pot hits me in September. Then it is applesauce and canned pears, and the really good peaches, and then... (dare I name it?) my beloved quince.

So I've been going for it, and on many late nights you'll find me hunched over the food mill (a tool, which incidentally I hate, but I have yet to buy one of these). There are jars on the counter every day waiting to be taken down to the dusty shelves in the basement, and yes- I'll admit it! I keep the jars on the kitchen counter for a while because every time I look at them, I feel contented, and happy, and just a little bit smug. That's the magic of the home-filled jar.

Today, I don't want to talk about what goes into the jar, I want to talk about what goes on it. How we label jars is one of those individual choices, and every canner has their own method. Me? For the most part, I'm a top labeler.

I don't use those sweet little labels that comes with the jars because I hate peeling them off when it's time to reuse the jar. Because lids can't be reused anyway, I label the top. And here's the secret part... (ready for it?) I use my favorite surprise canning tool- THE SHARPIE PEN.

Have you seen these? They have a little spring loaded mechanism so that they work like a ball point pen. They have a really thin tip, so you can fit a lot of words on the lid if you're prone to complicated canning recipes (this week- pear-apple star anise butter). I know it's not rocket science, but this pen is amazing. I can label the world!

By the way, Sharpie has no idea that I'm promoting them. They didn't send me any free pens or anything (although Sharpie executive, if you're reading, go ahead! I love these pens so much- I have no shame).

That's all for today, friends. Congrats to Amanda, and happy Tuesday! I'll be back in a day or two with an actual canning recipe, I promise.

stone fruit tea cake, and how you can have my favorite book

2011-09-07T13:58:00.000-07:00

Yes!
The girls are back in school, and it won't stop raining, and it is possible that I've never seen as many beautiful peaches as I have seen in the last few weeks. Seen? Let me be more precise, caressed, admired, adored, EATEN. Things all feel a little buzzed this week in a good way, like there are tingles in the air, and exciting events about to happen. Rosie started first grade, and although she had a hard time finding a place to sit at lunch on the first day (I only cried once, Mommy), she reported that today was much better. She's been multiplying things.

I must admit that on weeks like this, I may be guilty of dropping everything to make a cake.

The cakes come about partly because although I am not a housewife, I always seem to want to be on the first week of school. Because there is something deep and satisfying about feeding the family love through this transition. Joey comes home from his new preschoolers sparkly, and exhausted, and all at once inspired and slightly terrified, I think. He wants cake too.

I have decided that right now if you ask me, my favorite cookbook in the world is a little book called Rustic Fruit Desserts. It's a bit like a love affair that I've been denying all along, because I've written about it many times and sung its praises. It's just that I've been resistant to thinking that such a small book would be my favorite, or a book on such a limited topic. Even more, I don't even like fruit desserts. None of it makes sense.
I love this book so much. When fruit comes into the house, I go directly to its perfect petite binding. I look up the ingredient in the index, and then I usually have to start baking then and there. This makes me feel hungry, and inspired and instantly propelled to bake.

I also feel compelled to give this book away. I've bought copies for friends, and I've lent my copy out. I get that way with books--I think Joey's worn off on me that way. Come in and have a conversation with Joey about graphic novels, and you will walk out of here with a stack of books up to your chin.

I can't help it. It's that kind of week. You guys are just too fantastic. I'm giving this book away.
I know another copy will come my way someday. I'll be ready. But this one? I'm sending it to you.
Despite it's constant use, it is in surprisingly good condition. There might be a few butter stains here and there, and yes, I've made a few notes. I write in pencil, so I'll let you erase them if you don't agree. I think slightly marked up cookbook is better than a new one any day, wouldn't you agree? This cookbook has lived a life.

So let's do it like this, shall we? If I were to ask you today, at this moment, what your favorite cookbook is, what would you say? I'd love some new recommendations. I'll keep it open until Monday night, the 12th. Then I'll choose a winner, and the book is on it's way to you. It will be right in time for apple season! Remember that apple rhubarb pandowdy? Page 16.

And if you aren't the lucky winner, you can still have cake. This might be one of my favorites from the book yet. The dough is simple and shortbready, the method is deeply satisfying, and it will work with any stone fruit that you have rolling around where you are. And then, of course, you have an excuse to invite a friend for tea.

Stone Fruit Tea Cake
adapted from Corey Schreiber and Julie Richardson, Rustic Fruit Desserts

makes one 10-inch cake

3/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon unsalted butter at room temperature
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 cup granulated sugar
3 eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups coarsely chopped stone fruit (can be frozen)
1 tablespoon turbinado sugar (or you can use granulated sugar, if you like)

Whisk the flour, baking powder, and salt together.
Cream 3/4 cup of the butter with the sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer or with an electric beater. You want the mixture to be extremely light and fluffy, and this will take 3 to 4 minutes. Add the eggs one at a time, scraping down the mixture from the sides of the bowl after each addition. Stir in the vanilla.
Add the flour mixture and combine with a few strokes of a spoon just until a dough forms. Turn the dough out onto a piece of plastic wrap, and wrap it tightly. Put it in the freezer for 1 hour.
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Use the remaining tablespoon of butter to grease a ten inch cake or tart pan. Divide the dough into two equal portions, and pat one of them into the bottom of the prepared pan. You don't have to be fussy about getting the dough to the edges--if there are some gaps, the dough will expand in the oven.
Spread the cut fruit evenly over the dough. Then, break up the second half of the dough into tablespoon-size pieces, and spread them evenly over the fruit. Sprinkle with turbinado (or regular) sugar. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes, or until golden. Cool before serving.

corn and nectarine salad with basil

2011-09-04T10:59:00.000-07:00

So I've written a book!

A couple of years ago, when I thought about the possibility of writing a book, I thought of it more as an exercise than a reality. I was absolutely sure that it would never go anywhere, but I thought it would be good for me to follow through and see what I could make of it. At the very least, I'd have the experience of writing a book proposal, and even that seemed glamorous and exciting and fulfilling. Even more, I was realizing how much I loved the process of writing, torturous as it was, and as someone who has always put great stock in real, bound books made of paper and glue, I did feel like I'd love to try to create one.

For a few years before I started working on the book, I was a personal assistant to a filmmaker. She is a pretty remarkable woman, and she and I had a conversation once that helped all of this along. I had just picked her up from the airport, and we were somewhere on the Taconic Parkway. She was telling me about her trip and her meetings and then she changed the subject.

"When are you going to stop working for me and start doing what you love?"

Now the real truth of it was that there were parts of that job that I really did love, and it was actually in those few years that I had the chance to eat some of the most remarkable meals of my life. This inspired me to no end, as did the interactions that I had with actors and filmmakers who had made so much out of nothing, and who continued to be humbled and surprised by their success.

But she knew that my heart was in this next step for which I was gathering my courage. And when I asked her how she did that thing, that is to jump in and to know that she could start with a spark and keep working and working until it was something, and then something big, even when the task seemed impossible and the world around her even said as much, she gave me a piece of advice that is with me every day. She told me to think about the next step, and the next step only. She said that if I looked to the end result, I'd risk getting overwhelmed and losing the whole process, so I should just go step by step. Most importantly, I should believe that the next step was possible, and to put all my work into that. So that's what I've tried to do. I've put all of my energy into envisioning and working on the next step. I'm one of those people who thinks so big that the results can feel impossible, and so I've had a lot of plans that I've abandoned early on.

So when I thought about writing a book, I thought about the beginning of the process. I went to talk to a friend who I worked for when Sadie was just born. She's worked in publishing for a long time, and I asked her where to start. And so on from there. And every accomplished step felt like a milestone, and I kept saying that if I didn't get any further, I'd still feel so good about making it this far. About writing a book proposal. About finding an amazing agent who wanted to work with me. About getting the proposal to the point where it could go to publishers. About selling (!) the book to a publisher. About actually writing (!!) the book, and learning about the process of working with an editor and a team. About finding a photographer to work with, and working together on creating the images. Every time we get to a point, it feels like the peak of a mountain, and I can't help but jump up and down and holler into the air.

A year ago, it all started to feel real enough to tell you about, and with sweaty palms and a dry mouth, I introduced you to "untitled cookbook." The book is not totally done, and we still have a while until I can put it in your hands, but I wanted to make another introduction, because whereas that book was still a bit of a dream, it's now more of its real self. So, palms even sweatier, heart beating faster than it was a minute ago, I'd be honored if you'd allow me to make the introduction again.

This past week, I saw it all for the first time. Pictures and recipes and stories all designed into real pages of a real book. And I'll share more of it over the coming months, but today, I wanted to show you this page. Because when I saw it, I started to shake and there was a lump in my throat and a lot of other reactions all ran around inside of me. Because I think I've been steadily making my way through each step, and I still don't believe that this could be real. I still don't believe that my girls will be able to have this book about our life and our food and our granola.

The parts of this process that feel big keep surprising me. Months ago, I finished the manuscript and I sent it off, and then I made some dinner and put the girls to bed, and mentioned it to Joey, and he said "What? You did it?" and he let out a cheer. It all surprised me by feeling quiet and orderly. But the other night, Joey confessed that he'd been curious and checked on Amazon. He put the computer in front of me, and I typed my name into the Amazon search box. There's no cover image, no author page or anything flashy, but there it is,

The Homemade Pantry: 101 Foods You Can Stop Buying and Start Making

To be published April 3, 2012, and available for preorder now! Coming in at #1,960,623 in books, which is pretty good I think, considering it doesn't exist yet. Yeah!

So here's to envisioning each step, and to the possibility of impossible things. And here's to you, friends, my favorite company in the kitchen. As nervous as I am (and man am I nervous) about these coming months when I have to keep exercising my sell-myself muscle (advice anyone?), as long as we can keep talking here, I think I can keep a level head. It turns out that it's not the writing that's the scariest for me, it's the asking people to read it. I'll keep working it, but thank you for helping me out with that one. It's an understatement to say that none of this would be possible without you.

And speaking of you, what are you making for dinner? I've got this salad that I've made over and over this week--I've got to say that it's one the only things I'm interested in eating right now. Maybe it's the combination of summer in a bowl that does it, maybe it's that I'm holding on to the season? I'm not sure why it took me 32 years to eat raw corn, but better late than never. Did you know about this secret? Why didn't anyone tell me?

So this is corn, nectarines, scallions, lime, salt, pepper, and basil. That's it. It's sweet and sour and crunchy and slightly reminiscent of a cocktail that I have yet to try. And it's especially excellent on the potluck picnic table, so if you've got one of those this weekend, maybe it could make an appearance. Or if you've got a suggestion for what I could make when I've had enough of this, I would be eternally grateful.

Corn and Nectarine Salad with Basil

serves 4-6 people, or just me if there is a bowl of it in the fridge all day

4 ears corn, kernels removed
2 nectarines, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 large scallion, whites and a bit of the green thinly sliced
6 leaves basil, sliced thin
juice of 1 lime
salt
pepper

Combine the ingredients and stir to combine. Taste to adjust for salt, pepper, and lime juice.

grilled beets

2011-08-30T15:04:00.000-07:00

This was our day.
We woke up to the rain, windows closed the night before in preparation. It was a rainy morning almost like any other, and we sat in our pajamas and watched the rain fall. The water pooled in both the front and backyards. The basement leaked. The radio talked. The phone rang all morning--were we okay? What was the path of the storm? When would it get bad?

Mid morning, we got a call from friends of ours we hadn't seen in years. They were at a wedding nearby, and although they were supposed to get back to New York that day, there was no way. Could they come? The house filled with friends, and we all watched the rain. The power stayed on, we waited for it all to come.

When I was six, hurricane Gloria hit. We were living with my mother's boyfriend out in a log cabin in the woods. I don't remember where he was, but she and I played cards all day, declaring War or yelling Spit! and the day is so clear for me. We walked out onto his deck that extended into the trees when the eye came. I think the sky was blue, at least I remember it that way. The air was still and clear and we marveled and looked into the forest. Then the wind came again, and we went back to our card game. I remember that day- I remember that my mother and I were such partners in the world, and we weathered that storm. I don't remember if we lost power or whether that day was more or less dangerous than this day just now, but I remember that, being six, I loved that day, and I loved my mother.

We didn't know what would happen on Sunday. We filled jars of water and we had flashlights and candles ready, and we had plenty of fuel for the grill. I thought about what we could grill if our power was out for days and days. I thought about what would happen if our whole world changed because of this storm. You never know when the world will change, what event we'll look back on and say that we thought we were solid, and then the power went out and the telephone lines came down and life shifted completely.

We sat through the night in our house while the wind did its best. At one point, something big hit the window, and we admitted that it was better that it was finally dark so that we didn't have to watch the trees bend and sway and lose their limbs. We could stay in the warm room with our dinner and our scrabble board and hope that the walls would hold. I made up couches and beds for our friends, and then we went to sleep.

In the morning, we learned more of what had been happening all around us. The girls and I drove to the next town to buy new school shoes, and each little river we crossed was fuller and more vigorous than the next. One neighborhood along a river had taken in the river itself, and water extended to each house's back door. Even strangers were talking to each other, sharing the same sentiment. We escaped it this time. It could have been worse. I am so thankful.

Thankful, but heartbroken for those whose main streets are filled with water, whose houses are ruined, who lost so much in the storm. Oh, New England. You are strong and beautiful and bursting with life.

There is nothing like a storm to make us stop for a moment, and to think thoughts that don't always make their way in. I could lose all of this, and as long as the kids are okay I wouldn't care. Who of my neighbors needs my help? Yes, it is rough out there. But I will come and save you, if need be. We have enough, and more than enough to share.

Had we lost power, I had beets ready. It would have been sweet, earthy beets on the grill to sustain us through whatever was to come. But as the power stayed on, we cooked on the stove, and saved the beets for a sunny day.

Grilled Beets

Cut the greens from the beets, and trim the tops and tails. If the skins are thick, peel them.
Cut the beets into 1 1/2-inch thick slices. Brush with a bit of olive oil and tamari or soy sauce. Grill the slices for 10 minutes on each side, or until they are sweet and soft inside.

my favorite

2011-08-25T12:16:00.000-07:00

This is it.
These last weeks of August leading into the first weeks in September--I could live in this time forever.

In New England, the shift always comes in one day. Wednesday, it is summer, and the air is hot, and the fan stays directed at the bed all night. Cooking means watermelon, because who could actually decide to add heat to the world.
Then it's Thursday, and all of the sudden the air moves instead of stands still, and for the first few hours of the day, you've done it. You've worn a sweater. Here, this change is always accompanied by mist that rises from the ground in the morning, and that's what I remember from every late August that I ever got ready to go back to school. Standing in that mist waiting for the school bus to come, cold earlobes, new notebooks. It still feels the same. And every late summer blends together in a wave of mist and corn and books and tomatoes, and every year at this time, I miss every other year and memories hit me with astounding clarity. It must be in the air, because it always happens.
10 years ago, I think maybe to this very day, I met Joey.
I had seen him before and maybe we'd said a few words to each other, but on this day we stood side by side watching the new freshman nervously make their way through the opening ceremonies of college. We were about to be seniors, and we stood in the back with the amused superiority of those who think they have put in their time.

Joey critiqued the the freshman girls' fashion as they walked across the stage and the college president took each of their hands in his, one at a time. I laughed, and then we compared schedules (identical), agreed on the benefits of living off campus (neighbors!), and then we walked out into the cool, 5 o'clock air. We have spent nearly every day together since then.

I have finally come to terms with the fact that I love to miss things. I love to miss people who might be far away, and I love to miss other times in my life. It makes me feel more here, and alive, and when I close my eyes and imagine what I miss, I remember again that my imagination is that good, and that all the things I miss can be almost with me if I try hard enough.

My friend Lissa taught me how to use this sense in the kitchen. More than anyone I know, she can close her eyes and know what she misses. In her imagination, she can taste it and smell it and decide that it is exactly what she needs. Then, she knows what to make for dinner. Just get her started talking about cold blanched greens with scallion dressing on some hot July night. You'll end up going home and making them yourself.

I've been getting more "I'm so uninspired in the kitchen- what do I do?" questions lately. I think that that feeling too is dependent on the time of year. In this last chance at summer, there is so much to do and eat and see and finish before the kids go back to school and the routine starts again. Around here, we have produce bursting out of every seam. Some of it is tragically rotting already, but the rest is perfect, and in the absence of time to think and dream and chop and cook the most marvelous dinner, we end up snacking through the day on tiny golden cherry tomatoes and salted cucumber slices and wedges of sinfully juicy peach.

Of course, sometimes dinner actually has to be made, and the goal is some vehicle that can hold the produce that would normally get shoved in the mouth, juice running down the arm. Pasta always works, as does the trusty galette. Platter salads of any variety will will never get dull, as long as there is a mix of cooked and uncooked vegetables all tossed in a good vinaigrette. But a few weeks ago, Lissa brought a tomato tart to the little lake where we all swim. It was on puff pastry, and the tomatoes were thinly sliced so that they could dry out a bit. There were dallops of goat cheese throughout, and a few different herbs that I'm guessing she had on her counter. It was beautiful, and delicious, and when we oohed and ahhed over it, she said that of course it was easy, and that earlier that day she had started dreaming of it and she knew it was exactly what she wanted to make.

I have a silly habit of sometimes not buying the foods that I know how to make from scratch. I'll think- why buy it? I'll just whip up a batch! And it will be better, and cheaper, and, well, you know the drill. In the case of some foods, like ricotta cheese or granola, this is an entirely logical train of thought. But puff pastry? It took Lissa's tomato tart to convince me to stop saying that I was going to whip up a batch of puff pastry and just buy the damn stuff. And it turns out that on a night when you don't know what's for dinner, a box of puff pastry in your freezer might just be the secret weapon.

On this particular night, I wanted my tomatoes to keep their juice. That was what I tasted when I closed my eyes and imagined the taste of my dinner. So I cut the tomatoes thick, and I scattered a little olive oil and parmesan and the herbs that I had on my counter. This tart had a bit of basil and a scatter of my favorite herb right now, summer savory. But the beauty of it all is that it could of been anything on that pastry, and dinner would have been perfect. I know that this is all simple and easy enough that you know it! But I needed a reminder from Lissa, and so I pass it on to you. And if you're not sure what's for dinner, close your eyes and see what you taste. It might be easier than you think.

Vegetable Tart

2 sheets puff pastry, thawed at room temperature for 30-40 minutes
Olive oil
Cheese: parmesan, goat cheese, ricotta, mozzarella, or none at all
Vegetables: sliced tomatoes, sliced and sauteed zucchini, sliced and lightly roasted potatoes, caramelized onions or fennel... (the list goes on!)
Fresh herbs, chopped
Salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Lay the puff pastry sheets out on baking sheets. Brush a bit of olive oil on each sheet. Top with vegetables, leaving 1 to 2 inches of space around the perimeter of each square of puff pastry. Then the herbs, the cheese, and the salt and pepper.
Bake for 25 to 35 minutes, or until the crust is golden.

peace flags

2011-08-20T17:19:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I laugh at myself for loving my laundry line so much. Little pleasures.

Happy Saturday, friends!

how to freeze corn

2011-08-15T20:13:00.000-07:00

Joey was supposed to take the girls camping, and they've stuck around after all. After changing his mind over and over for 24 hours, obsessively checking the weather on the internet in a fashion that rivaled my own, he put the tent back in the basement. Up till the very end he thought perhaps they would rough it, he thought that a long stretch stuck in the tent next to the stormy ocean would be adventurous and somewhat thrilling, and then when the forecast turned to 100% rain mixed with the occasional thunder storm, he couldn't lie to himself any longer.

I'm relieved, because of course I love them, and I'm glad to have them home and all that. But really, honestly, I just don't know how I would have shucked all this corn by myself.

I had come into the lucky fortune of 80 ears of sweet corn, and my goal was to transform those guarded and husked pods of gold into freezer bags full of corn for the winter. Corn for burrito nights, for corn chowders and shepherds pies, corn for this dish that can perk us up on any February night. I was concerned that the girls would rebel, that they would take the exchange of camping with Daddy for corn husking with Mommy with sour disappointment, but they came through.

Rosie has recently inherited Maia's little ipod shuffle, and Maia loaded it up for her with Lady Gaga and Abba and all the music that she asks for. Joey found these tiny speakers at the dollar store, and now Rosie walks around most days with the speakers in her pocket, singing through the house, in the garden, or on the swing that hangs from the tree out front. She grabbed the iPod and found some Lady Gaga, and while the rain poured all around the perimeter of the roof over our front walkway, those tiny speakers boomed (okay, actually tinkled) with music. Sadie and Maia industriously husked while Rosie cheered them on by picking up ears of corn and using them like microphones, swinging her hips and belting out the lyrics. Occasionally, when prodded by the other girls, she would actually husk the corn, and then a new ear would become her microphone.

Inside, Joey was listening to Herbie Hancock. He had the big pot of water going on the stove, the little sink filled with ice water. We had a system going, and I'd walk the husked corn in to the kitchen and put it in the steaming pot. Joey would transfer it to the ice, and then he shucked the corn. All along, I kept messing up my verbs, and he'd remind me:

Husking takes the husk off.
Shucking takes the kernels off.

He used a little tool that I'd borrowed, an actual corn shucker. Pretty simple really, except that where a knife takes off most of the kernel and loses all that wonderful creamy juice, the shucker takes off the whole kernel. More corn. More cream. More delicious.

And so we worked like that, me going from Lady Gaga in the rain to Herbie Hancock in the steam. And when it was so dark outside that we couldn't see the corn, it was time for bed.

The girls each ate an ear of corn. Joey said he never wanted to see corn again. I filled the last freezer bag, and then we cleaned the corn off the floor. I told the girls they would be rewarded for all their hard work with sweet corn through the winter. They laughed at me, as if winter was just a story that I had made up.

How To Freeze Corn

1. Husk the corn. Remove as much silk as you can.
2. Bring a large pot of water to boil. Prepare a sink or tub with ice water. Have extra ice ready.
3. Boil the corn for about 1 minute. Then transfer directly to the ice water. Keep the corn in the ice water for at least 5 minutes, replacing the ice as it melts. You want to chill the corn all the way through the cob.
4. Shuck the corn, using a shucker or a knife.
5. Transfer the corn to freezer bags in quantities that make sense to you. I ended up with several 2-cup bags (good for most recipes), as well as a few 6-cup bags (corn chowder).
6. Flatten out each bag and stack. Transfer to the freezer.

tortillaville

2011-08-08T20:02:00.000-07:00

Okay, so some of you might be in cities all filled with food trucks and exciting Mexican Food, and really the only question for you is, "What fantastic fish taco will I eat today?"

That's not quite where we are. But last week, the family hopped in the car and drove to Hudson, and we got our fill.

This is Tortillaville. Nothing fancy. Really good tacos. A very welcoming front door.

We had exactly 17 bucks on us, which fed us all.

We live in a small town, and it's easy to get in a rut. It's nice to be able to hop over the state line and see different scenery. And I'd give this place all my stars (however many I have to give) if you happen to be passing through Hudson, NY. Which you should, I might add, for many reasons.

And I have to ask, have you discovered any fabulous little places lately? Something around the corner? Or down the road? No need for it to be around me... maybe I'll be passing through one of these days.

where to put your blueberries

2011-08-05T19:34:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, four of us picked 18 pounds of blueberries in 1 hour. It was Joey, Maia, my friend Lissa, and I. We tromped through the fields up at Blueberry Hill in Mt. Washington, buckets hanging from our shoulders. There was a few minutes of merciful cloud cover to get us started, and we each took a row.

There were more blueberries on those bushes than I have ever seen in my life--more blueberries than there were leaves. I'd pick, and then I'd find myself moving on to the next bush even through I hadn't made a dent in the first, just because it seemed like I should be moving somewhere. We were chatty for the first little while, shouting at each other over the rows, and then like that, we all shut up. Everything just hummed, and we picked, quiet, quiet, quiet.

There are some pick your own farms that feel good, but not great. Sometimes they're packed, or they're set up like little fairs and there's too much going on. Sometimes the fruit is so beautiful, but it's sprayed with chemicals that I have to tell the girls not to eat the berry right off the bush. Our hands smell funny and we change our clothes when we get home.

Blueberry Hill is the other kind of farm. Where it feels like you've snuck into someone's backyard berry haven, like you have discovered the mother of all berry discoveries. The bees buzz and cars drive in here and there, but when it all comes down to it, you can pick a row and it's all yours.

Although I aspired to make jam, these berries went into the freezer. Frozen berries make jam as well as fresh, and some day, some other day, the jam will happen. I was too tired to make dinner, and so we ate some corn and other random vegetables that were tragically wilting in the fridge.

I was not, however, too tired to make dessert.

Have you had a white peach? They're more delicate than yellow, and so they tend not to be the supermarket variety. They might be at your farmer's market, tucked into the rest of the fruit at someone's table. What's the difference between white and yellow peaches? Don't waste time asking. Just go for the white! Trust me on this one.

White peaches are floral, as if the blossom of the tree reshaped itself as a fruit then and there without losing its perfume. I can smell a ripe white peach across a room.

So there were white peaches. And fat, perfect blueberries. And with the last of our energy, we baked them into a cobbler. I enlisted Maia to cut the butter into the topping, and we smelled it for dinner, and we ate it for dessert.

Maybe it's that you can't go wrong with such good fruit. Maybe it's the magical combination of blueberries and cornmeal. Maybe it was that we were hungry from just eating vegetables for dinner. But oh my.
Make this.

Blueberry Peach Cobbler with Cornmeal Biscuit
adapted from Corey Schreiber and Julie Richardson, Rustic Fruit Desserts (Oh, how I love this book!)

For the Filling:
1/3 cup sugar
3 tablespoons cornstarch
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1 1/2 pounds (about 5 1/2 cups) blueberries
2 medium peaches, cut into 1-inch pieces
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice

For the Biscuit:
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup fine cornmeal
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) cold unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
1 cup cold heavy cream

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees, and butter a large baking dish.
Combine the sugar, cornstarch, and salt in a large mixing bowl. Add the blueberries and peaches, gently tossing to combine, then add the lemon. Transfer the mixture to the prepared pan.
Whisk the flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder, and salt together in a mixing bowl. Add the butter, and toss it in the mixture, gently rubbing the butter into the dry mixture until the mixture is more uniform. Add the cream, and, with a few quick stirs, bring the mixture together.
Scoop the batter onto the fruit in 6 or 8 portions. Bake for 40-50 minutes, or until the filling is bubbling and the biscuit is golden.

white beans with sage

2011-07-30T19:52:00.000-07:00

If you have ever spent time in Santa Fe, you have no doubt found yourself in one of those little casitas, guest houses on the property of other larger estates. They are usually built by hand, constructed of salvaged wood and adobe, and there might perhaps be a loft bed to make the best use of the tiny space. Throughout the four years that I lived there in Santa Fe, I walked into a few of those magical little houses, invited to a party or finding myself in a friend's house, and always thinking on the perfection of the miniature space.

My sophomore year in college, I went to a party at one such house. I was in a new relationship, and the host was the ex-girlfriend of my new boyfriend. It seemed like it should be awkward, but it wasn't. She was lovely, and they were still friends, and there I was at her party.

As many years ago as this was, I can feel the warmth of her little house. It had a wall of windows, and although it must have been late winter, the New Mexico sun came through those windows and created the feel of a greenhouse. It was a morning brunch party, and everyone stripped off their sweaters and scarves, and we bathed in the sun like tired cats. I didn't really know anyone there all that well, and so I stared out the window, and I ran my hands over the knotty salvaged wood, and of course I focused on the food.

It may have been a potluck, but I don't think so. I think that our host, Lindsie, was the one who filled the table with food, and I imagine that it was all wonderful. I base that imagining on the one dish that I do remember, the dish that I will forever link to Lindsie. Although we never got much closer than we were on that morning, she stays with me through this dish, and I always make it with her voice in my head.

This is how it went. She carried a bowl of cooked beans to the table--big fat cannellini beans in some beautiful serving dish. Then there was a handful of fresh sage leaves in one hand, and a bottle of olive oil in the other. We were all young, and most of us not so domestic, and so these actions were striking. I didn't cook much at that point, and I knew very little about putting flavors together in graceful ways. We all watched her as she tore up the sage leaves and scattered them over the beans. And there must have been several "ahhhs" because just then Lindsie said, "People always think this is so impressive, but it's just beans! Beans, sage, olive oil, salt and pepper, done." And she poured several luxurious glugs of olive oil over the bowl as she talked, and it was the most beautiful action, without any thought or self consciousness. That action was mature, and delicious, and fancy. And so were the beans.

To this day, this one of my favorite party dishes. Ideally, the beans should be cooked at home instead of poured from a can to prohibit the possibility of tinniness or that peculiar canned bean texture. But if from a can is what you have time for, then that will work too. They can be warm or cold, or my favorite, met in the middle at room temperature. They are simple, and Italian, and as Lindsie pointed out, always impressive. If you can, prepare them in front of your guests. Tear the sage leaves. Let the olive oil pour with abandon. There will be sighs and ahhs, and as the perfume of the sage makes its way through the room, you can say "Just beans!" knowing full well that this is much more than that.

White Beans with Sage
(with thanks to Lindsie Bear after all these years)

1 pound dried cannellini beans
7 to 10 fresh sage leaves
olive oil
salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 250 degrees. Sort through the beans and remove any stones. Pour them into a large cast iron dutch oven and cover with water. There should be about four times as much water as beans. Bring the beans to a boil, cover, and transfer to the oven. Cook until just tender. This may take as little as 1 1/2 hours, and it may take as many as 3. Beans are just like that. Check after 1 1/2 hours, and remove when they are firm, but delicious to eat. You want to get them out of the oven before they start to split.

Drain the beans, and let them cool a bit. Transfer to a lovely serving bowl. Carry it out to your guests. Roughly tear the sage leaves and sprinkle them over the beans. Pour several glugs of olive oil over as well. Then the salt, and many grinds of pepper. Stir, taste, and adjust if necessary.

mint ice cream

2011-07-22T19:12:00.000-07:00

There is a point in the summer where the brain stops being efficient. It happens all in one day, and it's the same day that wearing a bra is no longer an option given the discomfort it produces. It is the kind of day where one must either be near a body of water or in love or both--otherwise life is unbearable. When the heat wave hits, there is not much to be done.

And when I say not much, I mean, really, that there's only one thing to do.

Today is the day to make ice cream.
I know you don't want to cook. I don't want to cook either. But mint is almost a green vegetable, and milk has lots of protein, and there you have it. Fresh mint ice cream could easily pass for dinner. I'm guessing you won't get any argument from those around the table.

That is, if you're sitting at a table. We are just scattered about, looking for colder pockets of air.

When I set out to make fresh mint ice cream yesterday (because it was absolutely the only thing I wanted to eat), I had every intention of making an egg custard base and of whisking and thickening and all that. But then I got into it, and I came to the part where I would start breaking eggs. I wiped the sweat out of my eyes, and I gave up even on this, and I just went ahead and made ice cream with the simple base that I had, just the milk, cream, mint, and a little sugar. A Philadelphia style mint ice cream, if you will.

And I have to tell you, that on a day like today (or yesterday), I just might prefer an eggless ice cream. It is lighter, and fluffier, and it just makes more sense. Best of all, it is outstanding easy to make--even today, you can handle it.

Some people don't grow mint because it takes over. This is exactly why I grow it, and I spend all summer shoving it into water and tea and jello and cocktails and anything else. This recipe requires a good heap of leaves, so if you don't have a rampant patch for your very own, find a friend who does.

Mint Ice Cream

2 cups heavy cream

1 cup whole milk

1/3 cup sugar

pinch of salt

1 1/2 cups loosely packed mint leaves

Combine one cup of the heavy cream, the milk, the sugar and the salt in a small saucepan. Heat and stir until the mixture is warm and the sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat. Add the mint leaves to the mixture, cover, and let steep for 30-45 minutes.

Strain the mixture through a sieve to remove the mint leaves. Add the last cup of cream, and refrigerate for at least an hour.

Pour into your ice cream maker (I love the Cuisinart), and churn.

the croissant

2011-07-19T20:50:00.000-07:00

We are away for a few days, fulfilling obligations of work, family, and pastry.

I hope your week has been a good one, and if it is as sultry where you are as where I am right now, I hope there is a cool drink by your hand.

Back in a few days, friends.

the best part about summer

2011-07-14T19:03:00.000-07:00

Sometime last week or the week before that, we had a few people over. There were lots of kids fighting over our one swing, and they stayed fairly merry while the grownups ate meat on the back porch, but at one point in the early evening, Sadie lost it.

She had made some cookies for the get together, some meringues that she and her auntie who was in for a visit had teamed up on. She was proud of those cookies, and rightly so. But Rosie was mad that she didn't participate in their making, and so when she had her turn on the swing and all the other kids were standing around her, watching and waiting for their coveted moments on the swing, she announced that she thought Sadie's cookies were not really all that special.

Sadie couldn't take it. She was tired and sunned and full of sugar, but in the end it was the sister that put her over the edge. She ran around the side of the house to where we were sitting, stomping and crying and unable to even get the story out. I thought up an excuse for a car ride, and before she even let out an answer, she had sprinted to the car and buckled herself into her booster. Then, for ten glorious minutes, we drove.

The best part about summer is 6:00 pm, in the car, windows down, music loud. I have thought so since I was very little, and in the depths of February it is this moment that I crave. It is the blue light, the endless green on the side of the road, the smell of cut grass and grill smoke and trees in their full foliage. It is the smell of marigolds and lilies and of bathing suits after a day at the lake. I remember being in the back seat as a kid, rolling my window all the way down, and soaking it in. There was the first summer I knew how to drive, when I could turn up the music as loud as I could. The summer I had a boyfriend with a convertible, and we would drive in the summer nights with the music all the way up and the heat on to balance the cold night air all around us. And with every different car, and every different summer, and every different album, it is always as wonderful to have the windows down, music loud.

That's what I told Sadie as we got into the car and pulled out of the driveway. And those ten minutes were so good. We came back, barely missed, and snuck back into the little party. She was a whole new girl.

This is what we were listening to, a special mix that Joey made for July 4. It's longer than the kitchen mixes, because it is, after all a car mix, but it will probably do fine in the kitchen, too. Be warned- it's a big file, but I hope you'll find it worth every bit of space... download here. Then tomorrow, 6:00, in the car, windows down, music loud. I'll keep an eye out for you.

gooseberry elderflower jam

2011-07-08T20:33:00.000-07:00

I have some memories that I know I never lived. Some tastes that bring me back to places I've never been, and to people I've never met.

My great-grandmother on my father's side was a woman called Buckner Hollingsworth. I have heard that she was a woman of many talents, but the one by which she is remembered by the few people who find her books in a dusty and treasured corner of a used book store or who happen to be studying the history the areas where anthropology and flowers coincide is that she wrote about gardening and flowers.

To say "my father's side" still sticks a bit in my throat, and although the mention of sides at all seems to imply that there is half of me from one place and half of my from another, I am one of those people for whom that is just not true.

I was raised only by my mother, and she descended from Eastern European Jews on both sides. We were never religious, but there was a fair amount of Yiddish around, and every funeral to which we traveled was in some Jewish cemetery in New York. My last name growing up was Yost, changed at Ellis Island from Yoskowitz, and there was never any hesitation in my voice when I reported to anyone who asked that yes, I am Jewish. And besides my cousin Sharon the doctor who somehow surpassed the 5' 2" height limit of the women (and most men) in the family, I was always the tallest woman in the room at any family reunion. My blue eyes, my decidedly British nose, these features inspired family members to say (with just a bit of disdain), "you favor your father."

Those who met my father during the few years that he spent with my mother all seemed to speak of him with similar adjectives. He was charismatic (in a creepy way), self-centered, intelligent (though not always using his faculties to the best of his ability), and generally a bad match for my mother. As I grew up with this vision of him, my once every several years phone conversations confirmed it, and right around the time when my mother found me a new father (in my stepfather), I decided that I didn't have so much in common with the old one. I was seventeen, and as I let go of my efforts to convince him that he (that is, my old father) really wanted to be a parent, I finally decided to seek out that side of my family through the two people who created my father, his parents.

My father's parents had divorced when he was a child, and in the same way that my mother came from Eastern European Jewish stock on both sides, he came from English blood on both sides. Both his mother and father were from good, highly educated, American families of British descent, and, true to the interpretation of my aunts and uncles and cousins, I looked exactly like them.

I only bring all this up because I've been thinking about those parts of our families that we will never know. In the last several years, I've learned a lot about those pieces of that that side of the family, the Hollingsworths and the Kirks and the Mortons, and I've sat down with my father's mother and father many times, and I am so happy to know them and count them as family. My grandfather in particular is kind enough to email a story to me here and there on a regular basis, and I think that it's through these stories that I do feel more one part my mother's family and one part my father's family (and one part my step father's family too, as luckily there's endless space for additional parts).

My grandfather's mother wrote these beautiful books on gardening and her experience in the garden, and through her writing, I've had the opportunity to find memories with her even though she died the year after I was born. Because you may never be able to find the book yourself, I feel like I have to give you at least a little taste from Gardening on Main Street.

"Ghosts walk in gardens. Usually they are called up by sentiment. Every spring I carry a cluster of pansies and lilies of the valley to the secretary of a friend of mine because, on her way to work, she often pauses by the fence to remark that her mother grew and loved pansies and lilies of the valley.
...My ghosts are less personal ones--a valued business acquaintance, three men I never saw, and a farmer-florist who, all unconsciously and because I provided him with an audience, stimulated my childhood interest in the flowering world. None of my family were gardeners, so I have no sentimental memories of my mother or grandmother bending over the plants they tended."

I love the way this woman writes. And I love knowing that in some small way, I come from her. And while I've never come across a mention of gooseberries or elderflowers in her books, I can't help but feel that my sighs over the tiny delicate and fragrant stars of the elderflower and my constant marveling over the striped and translucent rosiness of the tart and complex gooseberry come as a result of Buckie Hollingsworth's blood in my veins. At least I like to think so. And I can't think of a lovelier and more welcome ghost in my garden.

I have written about both gooseberries and elderflowers before, but never in combination. In this case, the marriage comes about by gently cooking the gooseberries with the elderflowers lightly resting on top of the berries. The flowers are so delicate that they instantly blacken with the heat--then they are removed. The result is a jam that tastes like gooseberries (sweet and tart at once, with a green a grape-y overtone), but smells like elderflowers.

Gooseberries can be hard to come by, but they are coming back into fashion. Preparation of the berries takes forever-each berry has to be snipped at each end with a scissors to remove the stems, but the berries are so beautiful to work with that it is just okay. I recruited my sister to help with the job, and we stood there at the counter, quiet, snip, snip. Every so often, one of us would hold up a berry with a particularly striking hue and exclaim over its beauty. These berries came from a friend's patch, as my little gooseberry bushes haven't yet started to bear fruit. They glowed in the colander, each and every one of them. I would wear those berries as jewelry if I could.

I took the last of the elderflowers from the top of my bushes, and they spread above my head like little starry umbrellas. Elderflowers grow wild in New England, and my bushes that I planted just a few years ago are the hardiest thing in our yard. If you have never seen an elderflower, seek out a bush when you can. I can't walk by without pausing over their geometric blossoms and sticking my nose in the center of one. They seem to belong to some other time an place altogether.

This jam is for my great grandmother, and the parts of me that come from her. And it's for you too, of course. There is plenty to share, and we'll spread it on toast and eat it in the garden.

Gooseberry Elderflower Jam
adapted from The River Cottage Preserves Handbook

Makes 8 to 9 cups

3 pounds gooseberries (can be ripe or slightly unripe)
8 elderflower heads
3 cups sugar

"Top and tail" the gooseberries (thanks to River Cottage for that apt description) with scissors, and put into a heavy pot with 2 1/2 cups water. Bring to a low boil, then a gentle simmer. Make sure that the elderflowers are free from bugs and brown bits--then lay them on top of the berries as they cook. Cover the pot, and cook for 5 to 7 minutes, or until the berries are soft. Remove the elderflowers.

Add the sugar and stir gently to dissolve. Bring the mixture up to a rolling boil and let it cook for about 10 minutes, or until it registers 220 degrees on a candy thermometer or it gels a bit on the back of a wooden spoon. Transfer to sterilized jars and process in a water bath for 10 minutes.

deep-dish strawberry rhubarb pie recipe

2011-07-04T07:00:00.000-07:00

I've had my way with the last of the strawberries.
Joey went to pick at Thompson Finch Farm on Friday while I was at kids' cooking camp, and he stopped in on his way back to drop of strawberries for the last meal of camp. We filled a colander and the kids descended on them, leaving just enough to slice into our crepes that we had so (un)carefully flipped all morning. Then I came home, washed the week's aprons, drank a Pimm's cup, and made 10 half-pints of jam. Joey's only request was that there was enough left over for a pie.

Have I told you about Joey and his love for fruit pie? His obsession with fruit pie? His passion for fruit pie? About how he'll go hours out of his way if there is even a whisper of a rumor of halfway decent pie?

Well I'm telling you now.

And I wouldn't be giving you the whole story unless I included the fact that I'm not such an enthusiastic partner. I'll come along for the scenery, but even the most revered fruit pie tends not to meet my tastes. I'll admit it's a failing of mine. I am many things, good and bad, and pie snob is one of them.

It's that thick, syrupy, sweet thing that happens when fruit and syrup and cornstarch come together just so. It's the sugar in the crust and the sugar on top of the crust. It's too sweet for me, and even diner coffee doesn't quite get it down. Joey looks at me in disbelief.

So I make the pie that I want. Where the fruit is still recognizable, tart and citrus-y. The crust is flaky with a bit a bit of salt. And although a cup of coffee on the side is always pleasant, it isn't a necessity. The juice overflows, and I always set off the fire alarm. Lucky for me, Joey is not a pie snob, and he loves my kind of pie too.

The other night, Joey set up the tent in the backyard. Each of the girls had a friend over, and we ordered pizza. My sister Maia had a few friends over too, and so it was an impromptu party, and the light hung around the yard in that very specific way where it could only be those weeks right after the solstice, where the days are long and the summer stretches ahead. We ate pizza without plates, and the girls shrieked and ran through the yard.

At some point in the night, we heard a distant and blaring alarm, and I made some smug comment about second home owners and their car alarms. Joey nodded, and when it didn't stop, we looked at each other for a split second before sprinting inside to the kitchen.
That was no car alarm. When the smoke alarm goes off, the pie is ready.

I have a pie dish that I love, a deep-dish 10-inch white one. Every pie recipe fills a 9-inch shallow dish, and then I fudge the recipe a little to fill my white pie plate. So today, just in case you have a favorite pie plate that's a little bigger than the norm, I'm going to give you a recipe to fill it. And if you're working with a smaller dish, just scale back a bit.

As you roll and fold this one into being, remember that every pie is beautiful. Fill it with good fruit and weave your lattice however you like. It will be your greeting to summer, your kiss on the cheek to all that abundance. Something so good has no need to look perfect.

Deep-dish Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

For the crust:

6 ounces unsalted butter, cut into 1-inch pieces
6 ounces lard (or butter if you prefer), in small pieces
3 1/3 cups (1 pound, 2.75 ounces) all-purpose flour
3 teaspoons apple cider vinegar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup water

For the filling:

5 cups strawberries, hulled and sliced
2 cups rhubarb, in 1-inch pieces
1/4 cup cornstarch dissolved in 1/4 cup cool water
1/2 cup sugar
juice of 1 lime (or lemon, if that is what you have available)
2 tablespoons butter, cut into small pieces

Make the crust:

Combine the butter, lard, and flour in the bowl of a stand mixer. Toss the fat in the flour so that it is thoroughly coated. Put the bowl in the fridge.
Combine the vinegar, salt, and water in a cup. Put into the freezer for 10 minutes.
Remove the flour mixture from the fridge, and fit your mixer with the paddle attachment. Mix the flour mixture until the fat is in small crumbly pieces. Remove the vinegar mixture from the freezer and, while the mixer is running on medium speed, slowly add the wet to the dry until the dough clumps around the paddle.
Separate the dough into two discs, wrap in plastic or waxed paper, and refrigerate for at least two hours.

Make the filling:

Combine the strawberries, rhubarb, cornstarch mixture, and lime juice in a large mixing bowl. Gently stir until thoroughly combined--then let the mixture sit for 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Remove the crusts from the fridge. Grease your pie dish with butter.
Roll out the first crust on a floured counter with strong strokes until you have a 12 to 14-inch circle. Transfer the dough to the prepared pie dish.
Fill the pie crust with the strawberry mixture. Roll out the second pie crust to the same dimensions as the first, then cut it into 1-inch strips. Arrange the strips in a lattice. I know that there is some correct way to do this, but I like to improvise my way through it, weaving here, folding there. Tuck the butter in under the lattice so that it melts into the strawberries.
Put a baking sheet on a lower shelf of the oven to catch the drips. Bake the pie for fifteen minutes in the upper half of the oven, then reduce the temperature to 375 degrees. Bake for another 30 to 40 minutes, or until the crust is golden, the juice bubbles, and the smoke alarm goes off.

agua de jamaica

2011-06-28T19:54:00.000-07:00

So we had a dinner party.
For now, this will have to stand in for my fulfillment of the salon challenge. And by stand in, I mean hold its place until I can follow my own rules, which I didn't quite.

My friend Jen and I made this dinner together, and fifteen minutes before everyone arrived, when I fully realized that we only had about half the food completed, I took a swig of my pre-guest arrival drink, and I asked Jen, "Will I ever learn to do this better? More efficiently? On time?" She answered that where would be the rush in that?

Last year we did a similar dinner party together, a benefit for the school like this one. That day was a bit of a mess, and by the moments before everyone arrived, we were actually sprinting through the kitchen. This time we didn't sprint, but I certainly lost a fair amount of hope, and I accepted the fact that dinner, in my hands, will almost always be later than intended. Lucky for all of our guests, Jen's hands were involved too, and so they didn't go hungry for too long.

As soon as I let go of any hope of keeping it together, of course I started to have a much better night. Our intent was a Mexican feast, and all night we pressed tortillas and squeezed limes. And because the flavors might just come back into my mouth as a recount the menu to you, I will do my best to reconstruct the affair. Ready? Or rather, should I say, hungry?

We started out with rhubarb margaritas and chili lime popcorn. The margaritas, entirely responsible for my next day headache, were made with rhubarb ginger syrup. They were worth the headache. For the popcorn, I melted butter, and whisked it together with lime juice, salt, and chili powder. That whole delicious mess went on the popcorn.

Then there was soup, a fish soup mostly from Diana Kennedy that was made from chicken broth, vegetables, and fish that I had brought back with me from Maine the day before. We floated little circles of lime in each bowl, a trick that I will be sure to repeat again.

And then there were pork tacos, but I've already told you about those. That time turned out to be practice for this time, and they were just as delicious. We pressed corn tortillas as we constructed the tacos. And then there was shredded pork, and radish and white turnip salad, queso fresco, creme fraiche, and guacamole.

Then there was salad, and because all the produce for the whole dinner was from Jen's farm, this was no slouch of a salad. She and her husband grow magical lettuces. I'll leave it at that.

Then, because we hadn't had enough homemade tortillas, we made more, and we topped them with swiss chard and garlic scapes, then Oaxaca cheese, a bean and corn salsa, and a fried egg.

This was my favorite course to look at, but I was too full to clean my plate.

Then finally there was flan, which almost wasn't at all. I burned the caramel twice, and then I had to send Joey out to buy more sugar. I had never made flan, and as we coated the pan in caramel, I couldn't figure out how this would actually work or why it would soften into the sweet brown liquid I knew it should. We stuck that custard in a water bath and said a prayer. And although we could have put it into little individual ramekins, I had the image stuck in my head of Penelope Cruz turning over a big flan in Volver, a move I found so inspiring and deeply sexy that I thought it needed to be attempted. If you haven't seen that movie, see it just for that moment. You'll like the rest too.

When we went to overturn that flan, Penelope Cruz was nowhere to be seen. Instead, it slid right out of the pan without turning over, but we cheered anyway because it was flan despite our failings.

To drink through the night we had cheap Mexican Beer (I'm partial to Tecate in a can), and agua de jamaica, or, if you don't want to be saucy about it, hibiscus tea. I've had a big beautiful jar of dried hibiscus that Jen brought me back from her last trip to Mexico, and the last of those precious flowers went into our drink.

Again, absolutely worth it.

Before you go lamenting the fact that you have no friend just returned from Mexico bearing dried hibiscus, I'll tell you that it's not so hard to find. Some bulk herb sections in the store will have them, and if not, the online marketplace will help you out. In a pinch, however, a few Celestial Seasonings red zinger tea bags will do the trick here.

Agua de jamaica is sweet and sour, dark red and wonderful, and exactly what you need in your refrigerator on the hottest of days. That, and some cheap Mexican beer.

Agua de Jamaica

adapted from Diana Kennedy, The Essential Cuisines of Mexico

2/3 cup dried hibiscus flowers
4 cups water
1/3 cup sugar, or more to taste
1/4 cup fresh lime juice

Combine the hibiscus and 3 cups of the water in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Let the mixture boil for 5 minutes. Remove from heat. Stir in the sugar and the remaining water, cover, and let sit for 4 hours. Strain out the hibiscus flours and add the lime juice. Adjust sweetness to taste.
Agua de jamaica can also be topped off with a little bubbly water if you prefer.

Because this is functioning as my salon challenge until I get to the real one, it's a perfect time to tell me about your dinner party! Anyone take the challenge out there?

sea glass

2011-06-22T11:33:00.000-07:00

We are finding some excellent pieces for our collection.

We have been to this little beach, "sea glass beach" as we call it, so many times. We have jars of smooth glass we have collected here.

This time, there are so many pieces of glass that aren't quite ready yet, with sharp edges still. We throw them back into the mix so that they can be churned for another year or two.

We'll come back to collect them next time.

away

2011-06-20T07:02:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, we packed up the car and we drove away.
10 minutes into our trip, we stopped in our neighboring town of Stockbridge to gas up the car and get some money from the ATM. Joey and the girls waited for me as I walked the block from the car to the bank, and as I made my way through all the tourists who had come to see Norman Rockwell's very own Main Street, the whole town looked different to me. Because with the slam of the trunk that contained our bathing suits and books to read for the week, I became one who is on vacation. And even being in Stockbridge, the town that I drive through most days to pick up the girls from school, I felt different, like I could wander down the 2 or 3 alleys that the town has to offer, like I could discover something and then have an ice cream cone. Vacation, it seems, is all about a certain way of thinking about it all.

And today we are in Maine, on our favorite island of Peaks, just 20 minutes off my favorite city of Portland. The girls have planned out their ice cream flavors, and they have brought special sea glass collecting bags. Happy Monday, friends. I hope there is some part of your day today that feels at least a bit like a vacation.

fire escape farms

2011-06-17T10:31:00.000-07:00

Someone once told me that one's thirties are the time to conquer the world. I was in my teens at the time, and 30 seemed outstandingly old.
In the last few years, I have seen the truth in this prediction. All around me, friends who once had ideas and hopes of what they wanted to do are making those ideas into real life wonderful things.

The other day, I got a little package in the mail from my friend, Naya. She has started Fire Escape Farms, a resource for the urban and small space gardener. She has a great website, and she's also taken over this gallery all summer as a pop up store front. Just the thought of it makes me miss San Francisco. Naya has an inspiring aesthetic sense- she has always loved beautiful things, and her store is filled with them. Handmade pots, classic and satisfying tools, and the most beautiful seed packets that have ever arrived in my mail.

I love that no space is too small to grow your own food. I love that gardening uses what you have and makes the best of it. Go take a look at Naya's website, or if you're in San Francisco, pop in and introduce yourself. Just be ready to walk away with at least one package of seeds.

I may be a country gardener with a whole acre, but I'll plant these seeds all the same.

carnitas

2011-06-14T14:49:00.000-07:00

Due to the events of the weekend, I ended up with a very large pork shoulder in my refrigerator. A VERY LARGE PORK SHOULDER. It had been rubbed with every chile in my spice drawer, and it took up nearly half a shelf of the fridge. There had been a dinner party in the works for Saturday night, a benefit for Joey and the girls' school that involved the pork shoulder, and when the kiddo got sick, the plans changed. But Sunday morning, I awoke, bleary-eyed and relieved at Sadie's lack of fever, to see the pork shoulder sitting there. And it was a little tragic--all that meat and no big party to enjoy it.

That problem is easily solved, of course.

There is nothing like a sick kiddo getting better to make me feel endlessly thankful for everything.

And so, all day long, we shuffled around in our socks. Joey made art. I organized my desk. Maia played piano. Sadie ventured outside and Rosie spun her around on the swing.

And through it all, that pork shoulder in its evening gown of spice made its way through the day, bubbling away in a gentle bath of chicken broth. An extra chile and a bay leaf were tucked into the pan as its only accessories. And the smell fed us, good fat and red chile and the aroma of an anticipated full belly.

At four o'clock we transferred the pan to the counter, and the shoulder fell apart as we snuck bites of meat. I turned the heat up on the spicy stocky sauce, and it steamed out its water until it was dark and thick. Shredded meat in the sauce, homemade tortillas, radishes.

Lissa and Mark and Will showed up. Joey and Mark talked about baseball and The Kinks. Will entertained the girls as only a 15-year-old boy can. Lissa started the guacamole.

We didn't even need forks. And Sadie, cheered by the fact that I had told her she was in the clear to go to school the next day, had her third pork taco.

I was having tea with a friend of mine last week who's in her early twenties. She's living alone, on the brink of some transitions, and she's working a lot out right now. We were talking about the feeling when you are medicating yourself with food, and she said she'd been struggling with that in the past weeks. She always been a food lover--all through her teens she cooked and baked and traveled and enjoyed food. And as we talked, I was thinking about that phrase, "medicating with food." I've certainly used it, and I've absolutely done it. And I think that so often, it's looked at as a negative thing. We need love, or inspiration, or comfort, and so often food does the trick. And in times in the past when I've done this more, I know that I've started to hate food and to feel like I should avoid it altogether.

Nasty cycle, that one.

And so, as we ate our cake and drank our tea, we talked about how important it is, through that frustration, to keep loving food. To remember that there are very few things so wonderful as a really good meal.

I think that after all, food really is medicine.

Carnitas
serves many, for days

One 5 to 7 pound pork shoulder (ask your butcher or farmer for the pork shoulder, usually they hide it in the back and give it to you for not much money)
1/2 cup chile powder, or some combination of chile powders, if, like me, you collect chile powders
3 tablespoons dried oregano
1 tablespoons salt (or wood smoked salt, if, like me, you collect unusual salt)
fresh ground pepper
3 tablespoons olive oil
3 cups chicken stock
1 dried d'arbol chile
1 bay leaf

Three days before you intend to cook it, rinse and dry the pork shoulder. Combine the chile powder, oregano, salt, and pepper in a bowl, and then massage the mixture into every sensual curve and crevasse of that beautiful piece of meat. Keep rubbing until the entire thing is very covered in the mixture, and then rub a bit more just because you might be enjoying yourself. Put the shoulder in a casserole dish, lightly cover it with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for three days. Admire it regularly over that time. It will make it more tender in the end.

Take the pork out of the fridge and let it sit on the counter for 30 minutes. Preheat the oven to 250 degrees.

In a large cast iron skillet or roasting pan, heat the olive oil. Drop a bit of water in the oil, and when it sizzles, it's ready. Put the pork shoulder into the pan, and let sit for about 3 minutes, or until browned. Repeat with the remaining sides of the shoulder as much as you are able. Remove the shoulder from the pan and let it rest on a plate.

Pour the chicken stock into the hot pan, then bring to a boil. Scrape any brown bits that have gathered in the bottom of the pan so that they can incorporate into the stock. Return the pork shoulder to the pan, and tuck the bay leaf and dry chile pepper into the stock. Cover the pan (if the pan has no lid, cover with tin foil.) Transfer to the pan to the preheated oven, and cook for 6 hours.

Remove the pan from the oven, and transfer the meat to a plate. If it falls apart, you've done well. Put the pan, uncovered, over medium high heat to reduce the stock to a sauce. Let it bubble away until reduced by about half.

Meanwhile, shred the pork. Stir the meat into the sauce.

Invite friends. Ask them to bring cheap Mexican beer. (I prefer Tecate in the can.) Serve on corn tortillas with the toppings that inspire and excite you, including, but not limited to, guacamole, radishes, fresh lime juice, salsa, creme fraiche, queso fresco, lettuce, pea shoots...

rhubarb clafoutis

2011-06-11T13:28:00.000-07:00

Eesh. I have just come off of a kid in the ER morning, and so let's talk rhubarb for a few minutes before I fall into bed for a nap.

All are well (ish, as there is still a fever to contend with), but Sadie was a tiny superstar in there, and I will say here, as I've said before--I feel very fortunate and grateful to have health insurance. I cannot imagine being in a situation where I had to pick and choose medical care for my child because of the prohibitive cost, but I know that there are so many in exactly that predicament. We use our health insurance so little, but when we do, this always strikes me again. Sadie was tested and pricked and poked and imaged today, and not once did I have to say, "Stop! We can't afford that." Yes, I am lucky, but I know that this system is broken, and for this reason among so many, I feel that health care is a right. No one should have to say no to medical treatment for their children because they can't afford it. I hope that someday we'll be able to figure this out as a nation.

I have also been fortunate not to have to make too many medical decisions for my girls, as they've been pretty healthy. But when they do happen, there's something about those moments that bring the responsibility of parenthood right to the front, when we realize that there is no one else to make these decisions, and it is our instinct and action in the moment is all we have. Watching Sadie navigate through this morning made me feel so proud of her courage and her strength, but also thankful for the trust that she puts in me and Joey to take care of her. I'm thankful for that trust, but it also scares the shit out me.

These babies come into the world and they trust us--I think they even choose us. It's big and scary but that trust is probably the thing that keeps me trying to be a good person.

In honor of two new amazing little girls who have come into the world in these past weeks, let's sing the praises of rhubarb. (we had to get to rhubarb sometime, right?)

One, Lola, who has arrived to join her two older brothers who I predict will protect and love her with such fierceness. Any combination of her parents attributes will serve her well, and may she grow stronger and more wonderful every year, like the perennial rhubarb.

And Eden, born just a few days ago, a fourth to some of my favorite three out there. For Eden, let's roast some rhubarb.

It was Ashley who made the suggestion that rhubarb was a feminine vegetable, and it has stuck with me ever since. Pink and complex, a this vegetable masquerading as a fruit is prolific, endlessly generous, versatile, sexy, perplexing, and filled with vitamin C.

This rhubarb clafoutis was for my sister, Maia's womanly 13th birthday. I remember the stormy morning she came into the world too, eyes open before she was even fully out of my mother's body. She is coming into the time where she is learning to trust herself to make her own decisions, a moment equally big and scary as the one that came 13 years before. And so, for Maia, it was rhubarb, strong and sour sweet in the cape of a French tea snack. If you've never made a clafoutis, it's time, it's time. It's more custard than cake, and the fruit stands with the custard in one bite, holding together a crumb provided by the tiny bit of flour.

Welcome, sweet girls. You have chosen your parents well, and we'll do our best to support them. The world is a better place with you here.

Rhubarb Clafoutis

from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, River Cottage Every Day (yes! the newest River Cottage book- fantastic)

serves 6 (but I doubled it, and served it in a large springform, which worked great)

1 pound rhubarb

a pinch of cinnamon

grated zest of 1/2 orange and the juice of the whole fruit

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

a pinch of sea salt

3 eggs lightly beaten

1 cup whole milk

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Cut the rhubarb into 2-inch lengths and put it into a baking pan with the cinnamon, orange juice, and 2 tablespoons sugar. Toss well, and roast for 20 minutes until just starting to caramelize. Let it cool, and drain it in a sieve.

Turn the oven down to 350 degrees. Butter a 10-inch round baking dish or springform. Arrange the rhubarb on the bottom of the dish.

Sift the flour and salt into a bowl and stir in the sugar. Make a well in the center and add the beaten eggs. Stir the flour into the eggs, and then whisk in the milk a little at a time.

Pour the batter over the rhubarb and bake for 35 to 40 minutes, until the clafoutis is golden and puffed. Serve warm or cold, with whipped cream.

melissa clark and her artichokes

2011-06-06T13:56:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I had a surprise visit from my friend Hedley.
Since the last time I saw her, she has traveled through India and moved to Pittsburgh, and although I have regularly mourned the loss of Hedley and her sweetheart Zoe from our daily lives, I didn't recognize it fully until she appeared and I felt a full breath of air in my lungs. She is all sparkle in the best of ways.

And of course she appeared, and I had these few open surprise hours, and so we walked to town and back and then we sat on the bench that is almost back up to my house before you reach the crest of the hill--it's right where you need a rest. It belongs to a neighbor I have never met who flies a very big American flag over their driveway, but they have been kind enough to put a bench right there on the side of the road where it is so obviously for those just about to make it to the top of the hill, and on the occasions that I use it, I say a quiet thanks to those neighbors.

We sat and talked about her life and my life and the food that we have eaten since we last saw each other. And I left the conversation standing up straighter, sad to see her drive away, and so grateful for those surprise hours.

I've mentioned Hedley before here- she is so many things, but among them a cook and a baker. She patiently taught me how to make real buttercream and aioli and how to chop an onion. And yesterday when she asked me how it was all going, and started with the short answer (well!), but then she looked a little harder at me, and I had to admit that I've been batting around a few words in my head lately, and when I opened my mouth, there they were.

I'm afraid that I don't actually know how to cook.

She started this smile that began small and turned into a laugh. And then she said, "okay, well, I can tell you that in the at least hundred times you've fed me over the course of our friendship, I've never thought, wow, this girl cannot cook."

(sigh of relief)

It's not just cooking. I've been having one of those times when I'm stepping in my own way a lot, when I waste time worrying about a thing instead of actually doing it. Maybe you know what I mean?

And yes, yes, I know that I know how to cook. I can make puff pastry and strawberry jam and beef stew. I can figure out a sauce for most things, and only half the time I'll curdle it in some way. But sometimes the great expanse of what I don't know feels more like a weight than a challenge. And I forget that last year I knew less, and the year before that, even less. I forget to remember what I always say, that life is long, that I love that there is so much to learn!

A real friend will pull you out of the way of yourself.
Hedley said something so delicious just then, I feel like I need to pass it to you. She said, "Hold on! Stop it with all of this!" She repeated something that she has said before, that cooking is not rocket science or a innate skill that either you have or you don't. Cooking is about skills. Every skill can be learned. And one skill at a time, we learn how to cook. The rest of the time, we fake it, and that works too.

I feel the old and wonderful familiar phrases coming back in a way that I actually believe them.Life is long! I love that there is so much to learn!

Before last week, I had never trimmed an artichoke.

I had eaten hundreds, even grown a few. But when I was instructed to trim, I scoffed. I can handle the prickly thorns--why break out the scissors? For my whole life, I've steamed and eaten untrimmed artichokes, and it's always gone well for me.
Besides, I didn't know how.

But oh, Melissa Clark! You, with your personable down to earth "I've written so many cookbooks but I'm just here in my kitchen, piecing it together like you, so let's make some delicious Brooklyn-y food together" tone! I cannot help but say Yes to you. And with so much kindness, you share your skills. Thank you for being such a friend through your pages.

Do you know how to trim an artichoke? If so, make this. But if not? Watch Melissa first, she'll show you. And then, make this.

And what is fregola? I don't actually know. And because I'm feeling nostalgic for the time before google when I could actually have an unanswered question, I'm going to wait until the answer comes to me. But Israeli couscous was excellent here, and life is long! There is plenty of time to learn about fregola. (I love that there is so much to learn!)

at the market: radishes

2011-06-02T06:39:00.000-07:00

Radish-es! (I'm singing here, a little off key)
I can not stop singing your praises. You are, in essence, love with a root and a leaf. Round or cylindrical, sensual in your crunch and shocking bite, I will love you forever.

These, in no particular order, are some of my favorite things about radishes.

1. Radishes get spicier as the season moves in. It is the heat and sun that gives heat to your radishes. So in April? Mild. In June? Wowsa.

2. Yes, you can eat the greens! Saute with garlic!

3. Radish butter.

4. I love that there is a radish called the French Breakfast Radish. I believe that this name has inspired many people, including myself, to eat radishes for breakfast.

5. This is a very exciting way to use salt.

6. Radishes are wonderful to grow. Sow your seeds, don't even thin them out, and the radishes will be up before you can blink. When they start to show themselves poking out of the ground, take your pick.

7. Roasted radishes. Yes, Nigel Slater does say that we should "ignore any suggestion of cooking them," and he claims that "the writer is surely deluded." But still, roasted radishes.

8. Radish dip. On a bagel.

9. And then of course, there is the fanciness of the radish. Blame it in the French for elevating this anything but ordinary mustard.

Radish-es!

watermelon licuado

2011-05-31T05:05:00.000-07:00

Hot and steamy.
In true New England fashion, we have skipped from winter to summer, and as Joey said it so well this morning as he clung to his cup of coffee with a visible desperation that it would open his eyes enough to get to school, "it's hard to go back to spring after this taste of summer."
Memorial day weekend, 2011. A wedding. A farmers market. A work party. Several pimm's cups and a most of a growler of beer. Most of a trellis built for the raspberries. All the beds are grainy from dirty feet that tromped all over the neighborhood. Several tick bites and a little bit of what's looking like poison ivy. Sunburned necks. Two parades. Lost sunhats, already. Comforters switched out for thin blankets. And when Joey drove up to get the flat tire fixed yesterday, he called me a bit later, and said, "turns out, I'm in Vermont." Summer brings out the adventurer in him.
This morning when I stumbled into Rosie's room at 6:30 to see if she was awake, she was staring into space, sitting in her rumpled bed in her tank top and underwear. "I am so, so tired."
Summer is coming. Summer is coming!

Watermelon Licuado

(Do I have to write a little something to entice you to make this? A little headnote, describing it's perfect sweetness, thirst-quenching abilities, and shade of pink? I didn't think so. I'm guessing you already get this one. Are you heading over to your blender? Pulling that leftover quarter of watermelon out of the fridge? Yes! Yes! Yes!)

serves 2

4 to 5 cups cubed watermelon
1 cup vanilla ice cream
1 cup milk

Combine. Blend. Drink.

why i plant marigolds

2011-05-27T14:25:00.000-07:00

The spring of my junior year at St. John's in Santa Fe, I moved into a little house with my friend, Eilen. We had lived together before in a big house filled with cranky roommates and lots of conflict, and we were eager to set up on our own where we could cook and sing and do anything we pleased. We found a house on Cortez Street, which was just slightly on the wrong side of the tracks, enough so that there were fireworks exploding in adjacent yards all summer, but not so much that it was too far away from school. The house was a perfect little square with a front stoop, adobe of course, but newly renovated by a St. John's graduate who had stayed in the area, and there was new paint and fresh tile in the bathroom, and the back room had a washer and dryer with a tiled laundry folding table built on top. It was small, which is to say that it was exactly big enough for us, and there was a guest house that shared the property about 20 feet from the back door. That space served as a house and workshop to a crazy old guy named Elliot, and he and his huge and poorly behaved dog made leather goods and drank beer through most of each day. We would sit in our dusty section of "yard" and he would sit in his, and we would listen to the fireworks explode around us.

I miss Santa Fe.

Diagonally across from the house was one of my favorite restaurants, a greasy green chile spoon called Dave's Not Here. The story, as I remember it, was that the owner, Dave, ended up getting busted on drug charges and going to jail. The restaurant stayed open, but as an answer to everyone's question when they noticed Dave's absence, they changed the name of the restaurant. The food wasn't particularly good there, but it always tasted good anyway, and the decor reminded me of some kitchen or other from my childhood, and so I always felt so at home there. Dave's Not Here lived in that space for over 20 years, but now the place houses The Tune-Up Cafe, which I hear from many people is hands down the best restaurant in Santa Fe.

I'm thinking it might be time for a trip back.

Eilen and I lived happily in that house on Cortez Street. That was the year that she really started writing music, and she had some of her first little shows at the Cowgirl. I met Joey that year too, and even though there was all sorts of drama around the start of us together, enough time has passed that I only remember the happy parts. There was a big plum tree out front, and for some reason we never made it to the fruit on time, but there was a silly satisfaction in stomping all over the rotting fruit on the driveway. Eilen planted tiny tomato plants in the dusty back plot that got munched by the misbehaving dog and never made it to fruition. But in the dry front bed, right between our own section of stone wall and the width of sidewalk, she planted marigolds.

At first I thought that marigolds were not my kind of flower. Spindly and orange, the petals lacked delicacy, and the smell of the plants was acidic and strange. Eilen showed me how to coax the roots out of their ball, and we put compost in each hole and tucked the plants into the bed. It seemed a little mean to put them into such a desert where nothing else seemed to be able to grow. We were in the most extreme level of drought at the time, and we weren't allowed to water. But Eilen seemed to have faith that they would make it anyway, as long as we gave them what we could from our leftover bath water and water bottles.

They lived all summer, and they filled out the bed with greenery. Every so often, the flowers would get so dry that we'd figure they were done with. but we'd pour our cooled pasta water or some other thing over their parched roots, and they would come back to life. By the end of the summer, I thought they were so beautiful, and I have planted them ever since.

Some marigolds are edible, and others are used for pest management in the garden. If you plant them in the midst of your vegetables, they will protect them from a whole host of bugs. In Mexico, marigolds are essential for the alter for the day of the dead, and in India, they are considered a holy herb, and festivals are filled with marigold garlands. I love them for their usefulness, but I also just love them for their humble little petals. I love the way the sun seems to shine from them instead of on them.

And with Memorial day weekend comes the green light to plant anything you want, even if you are in New England! Is there any thing you are especially excited to plant this weekend? Tell me! I still have room in one bed...

rhubarb pop-tarts

2011-05-24T13:17:00.000-07:00

This weekend, we made a video.
The thought of this has been hanging around for a while now, between my wonderful agent (who I do my best not to disappoint) and my also wonderful publisher (who, also, I do my best not to disappoint), everyone was excited for a video. This has been one of those things that wakes me up in the night for the last few months--I am deep in dreams and then my eyes open and I see Ina or Giada or Aida well dressed and primped at their butcher block kitchen aisles, and I think, "Shit! How am I going to make a video?"

We gave it a try a while back, and my friends Bruce and Amy came over and Joey and I made pizza crust all day while we tried to keep a straight face. We got some great footage of Rosie torturing the cat in the background, but the sound didn't quite come through, and none of us had any idea of how to edit those hours of pizza kneading and stretching (not to mention cat torturing). And then one day I was talking to my friend Luke who makes movies about how I had to get off my butt and learn how to edit, and he suggested that I focus on the cooking and leave the editing to him. And so this weekend, his friend and movie making partner Ethan came up with his camera and we shot some footage.

I would like to tell you that I was entirely calm, prepared, and on my game. I would like to tell you that I was totally confident that I would know what to do and say. I would like to tell you that I knew I would be able to cook and talk at the same time without falling over.

And then I would say, "and so, in honor of how fabulous I am on camera, why don't you make these rhubarb pop-tarts. Here is the recipe."

Or I could tell you the truth, which, like truth tends to be, is a little more complicated.

For weeks, I've been practicing. I've been making attempt after attempt at bringing my mission and my hopes for all this into a few clear, perfect, and inspiring sentences. I've been talking to myself as I cook, and I've been searching for original and exciting ways to talk about food. I've been staring at my closet hoping that it might spit something out at me besides an old and stained black tee shirt. I've been contemplating buying concealer. And I have been watching the Food Network, at least as much as the 5 minute clips on their website will allow me.

In short, I've been driving my family crazy.

Between the food network, the cooking channel, and all of the little indie food videos out there, there is definitely a show for everyone. Simple French cooking in 10 minutes? Yes. Hip in Brooklyn with all day to cook? Absolutely. Midwestern locavore who eats the weeds in his garden? I love him too. Mom in a stained shirt who makes imperfect looking food while her children complain that she's not letting them do all the steps?
Here I come.

This was the project for the weekend: make three different segments--two in the kitchen and one interview. Each would be peppered with shots of me in the garden, me at the market, me out and about.
Ethan showed up on Friday morning as I was arranging bowls on my shelf in a panic, purple circles under my eyes from the sleepless night before filled with phrases that would be the perfect and authentic intro to my recipe. "Today, we are going to make perfect, satisfying, homemade, yellow, astounding butter in your very own satisfying perfect home!" My room was strewn with friends' clothes that I had gathered after my closet refused to offer up anything of use, and I was already shaking from my third cup of coffee. Reality show? Maybe. But I was having doubts about my cooking on camera potential.

At one point last week, I ended up in the kitchen muttering and searching for my lost measuring cups, and when my mother asked me how it all was going, I had to say it out loud:
The more I tried to pin down what I wanted to say, the harder it was to remember what I was trying to say in the first place.

And after all that, with the circles under my eyes and the nervous tummy and the over thinking, Ethan walked into the house and everyone relaxed. The girls fell in love with him, I started to breathe again, and Joey took a nap. We made butter, we walked all over town with the camera, and then,
well, you know what comes next, right?

Then we made pop-tarts.

Like making a video, pop-tarts may be prone to over thinking. It is entirely possible to get caught up in it all, to convince yourself that because homemade poptarts are so amazing and impressive and novel and likely to raise the eyebrows of anyone to whom you might casually drop that you happened to make pop-tarts, because pop-tarts are POP-TARTS, that maybe they are hard to make. It is easy to get tired and overwhelmed before you even begin, because maybe you feel that you are not skilled enough to be someone who makes pop-tarts. Maybe it seems like all those people on food network have very shiny hair as they lean over their butcher block islands, that they are wearing shirts that never seem to get dusted with flour or smattered with oil, and that they actually would cut these damn rectangles all the same size without having to take out a ruler. Maybe you're not up for all that.

How about we work on this together. How about if we just give it a try. What's the worst that can happen? Your pop-tarts might ooze a little. Maybe they won't be shaped quite right. Maybe I'll look silly on camera.

Hell, at least we'll get a really fantastic snack out of it.

It is almost always easier to do something than to think and plan for and worry about it. Sometimes the ease and (let's go all the way here) pure awesomeness of actually making something, be it a video or a pop-tart, will amaze and astound you. And before you know it, you've done it. You've made something that seemed so hard.

Rosie and I made these pop-tarts because she wanted to practice before we did them on camera. We filled them with backyard rhubarb, muscovado sugar, and lemon.

They oozed rhubarb, and they were far from perfect.
Although, I guess it depends how you define perfect, right?

Rhubarb Pop-tarts
(yes, incidentally, I did write about pop-tarts last year, and looking back at the post, I also wrote about how imperfect they were. But I have to say, these are looking a bit prettier than last year's. Next year? Perfect pop-tarts.)

1 1/4 cup chopped rhubarb (1-inch pieces)
3 tablespoons muscovado sugar (can substitute dark brown sugar)
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1 tablespoon butter
flour for the counter
1 recipe pie crust for a double crust pie (divided into 2 discs)
1 egg, beaten with a teaspoon water

Combine the rhubarb, sugar, lemon, and butter in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil, cover, lower the heat, and simmer for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the rhubarb is entirely broken up. Let the mixture cool.
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
Roll the first disc of pie crust out on a floured counter, trying to get as close as possible to a 9x12-inch rectangle. Cut into 6 rectangles and transfer to a parchment lined baking sheet.
Paint each rectangle with egg wash. Spoon about a tablespoon of filling down the center of each rectangle, leaving lots of space on all sides.
Roll out the second disc, cut into rectangles. Lay the second set of rectangles over the filling.
Paint the tops with egg wash. Use a fork to crimp the edges together. Then prick a few holes in the top of each pastry to allow steam to escape.

Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until the tops are golden.

scrambled eggs with morels and violets

2011-05-19T05:56:00.000-07:00

I've been shortening my to-do lists and I've been lengthening my to-do lists. I'm torn between the two, and so I spend a lot of time thinking about how long my to-do lists should be.

First, they are short. I follow those columns in all of the magazines that I am now buying in order to see if I can write for them. They say, go easy on yourself! Know that you are doing your best and that you should set out only as many goals as you can actually accomplish in the day. I say, yes! I love going easy on myself. So I take out "make croissants". Those have often been on my to-do list, and I still have never made them. Life is long! I won't stress it. I take out "make orange marmalade that you froze forever ago for that exact purpose". Didn't happen yesterday, and I'm guessing it won't happen today. Buy Sadie new shoes? One more day of squeezed toes won't do her in, and she's so indecisive that we really need an entire afternoon at the carpeted shoe warehouse where everyone walks around with their hair sticking up because of the mysteriously excessive amounts of static electricity. We'll do that one tomorrow. Soon enough, I am down to three or four agenda items that I actually have to do, usually write this, cook this, write that. Thank you Good Housekeeping.

But then I am tempted to lengthen the list just so I can have the deep belly-tingling satisfaction of crossing things off the list. Eat. Change the toilet paper roll. Make the bed. Pencil goes to paper, and I cross, cross, cross! At the end of the day, there are those familiar items still left: write this, cook this, write that.

I think I might be going about this the wrong way.
In the last few years, I have started being late to things. I have started speeding more often, running into meetings or to pick up the girls with an automatic "sorry!" as I careen into the room.

I know that it doesn't have to be like this. I say, I will slow down! I will stop taking on new jobs! I will take walks. I will drink more cocktails (this one, I'm doing better with). I will fold the laundry right away. I will finally get the girls to clean the bathroom. I will (someday) have the wisdom not to run for public office. I will read novels again. I will breathe several times a day, and I will chew my food.
There I go with the to-do lists again.

I absolutely positively know that I can shift the rhythm of the day with my attitude. The crazier I feel, the crazier I am. It might seem backwards, but I think that's how it works, at least with me. So in my best moments, I exercise my patience muscle, and I take an extra few minutes. I sit out on the porch, or I read a book to Rosie, or I go see how the radishes are growing.

I am pretty sure that the life I want to live is happening all around me. As soon as I slow down, there it is. And instead of eating crackers and cheese in the car as I speed to a meeting, I'm picking violets in the yard to add to my lunch. Little, little things.

I don't know what it is about foraging, but it makes it all feel a bit enchanted around here. Even if the day is a flurry of craziness and impossibility, finding food in the yard or the woods puts us into a page of My Side of the Mountain, and it makes the day follow a different time. We cooked up Rosie's morels in butter and garlic for dinner, and then in the morning, my mother suggested that the leftover morels go into eggs with violets and greens. She was off to work and I was off to a meeting, but for the 10 minutes we sat together with our enchanted eggs, it felt just a bit slower and fancier. I'd say that eating wild mushrooms and flowers for breakfast can only make for a better day ahead.

Morels are all over New England right now. Some people have secret places to find them, but a search in the woods might reveal a little city of perfect caps. Make sure that the morels are are not false morels--there is a good description of both here. Soak the mushrooms in salt water to clean them, and chop the tops and slice the stems.

Scrambled Eggs with Morels and Violets
(an enchanted breakfast for two)

4 eggs
1 tablespoon milk
salt and pepper 2 tablespoons butter, plus more if needed
1 clove garlic, minced
2 to 3 morels, cleaned and chopped
1 cup spinach or other green
1 handful violets

Beat the eggs in a bowl with the milk, a pinch of salt, and a few grinds of pepper. Set aside.
Melt the butter in a medium skillet over medium heat. Add the garlic, and cook until it smells good, about 30 seconds. Add the morels, salt and pepper, and cook until they are tender and just beginning to shrink, 3 to 5 minutes. Transfer to a bowl and set aside.
Add the greens to the hot pan and cook in the butter and mushroom liquid just until wilted. Transfer them to the mushroom bowl. Pour the mushroom liquid out of the pan if there is any left in there.
Add a bit more butter if the pan seems dry. Pour the beaten eggs into the pan, and as soon as it starts to solidify around the edges, add the morels and greens. Use a silicone spatula to scramble the eggs around the mushrooms and greens, shuffling the mixture around the pan. When the eggs are cooked (but not brown), sprinkle the violets over the eggs, turn up the heat on the stove to high, and watch the eggs plump up and the violets wilt. Transfer to a plate and add additional salt and pepper, if needed.

what rosie found

2011-05-16T16:59:00.000-07:00

Rosie finds the most amazing things.

Her eyes are different than ours--we can look all over the house for something that we have lost, and then it is always Rosie who finds it.

"Yup," she says. "I'm a good finder."

In the woods, she is always lagging behind, and when she finally catches up, she is adorned with feathers, pockets filled with magical acorns and translucent rocks.

And did she eat her treasures?

What do you think?

(More for me.)

at the market: the spinach recipe

2011-05-13T19:59:00.000-07:00

"And what should I do with spinach?"

That was the question that I heard most at the market last weekend. Makes sense, considering that we had enough spinach on the table to feed a small country. Spinach lovers out there know that the possibilities are endless, but of course to answer that question, I start small, feel it out, try to assess which possibilities will make this one hungry person sing with spinach-induced joy, and if I can't get a read on them, I start out safe.

"saute it?"

On and off today I've been checking in with a workshop that Penny De Los Santos is teaching through creativeLIVE. She is an amazing photographer who works mostly for Saveur these days, but she is also one of those people whose passion is so infectious--to hear her talk just makes me want to take risks. She's teaching a three day workshop, and she invited people to make videos on why they would like to take her course (see my friend Nikki's lovely video here), and she chose 6 people to join her in a room in Seattle, but the rest of the world gets to participate too. Watch some if you can- any length of time with her is a gift. My favorite thing she said today?

"Self-assign your dream assignment."

Yes!

And that brings me back to the farmers market. Years ago now, the chance to work for Indian Line Farm at the market got me thinking about food in new ways, and it got me here, too. And I will never get sick of talking with people about how to cook spinach, at least I hope not. And whereas the basic sauteing if spinach with olive oil and garlic might be a standard for some, it is a new recipe for others. It is one of the things I love best about that place- do people ever ask how to cook a vegetable at the supermarket? I don't think so- they reach for what they know. So I'm bringing the market back in here. It's all far too connected to keep the two worlds separate.

This week, let's saute some spinach.

Slice a clove or two of garlic, so that it is in whole little chips. Heat a few tablespoons of olive oil in a big saute pan. Add the garlic, and cook until the tiniest bit of browning happens. Add a few handfuls of unchopped spinach (leave the stems on if its nice and fresh and not too big), adding more as it wilts and you can fit more in the pan. Toss as you go- it will wilt quickly, then shuffle it around and add more to the pan. When all of the spinach is in the pan, add 1/4 cup milk. (This prevents the spinach from doing that strange thing where it makes you mouth feel numb.) Cover for about 10 seconds, then toss again and season with salt and pepper. The spinach will be just wilted- stop before it starts to brown.

And for those who want to find new tricks for familiar vegetables, a few spinach inspirations around the web:

Winnie's baby spinach and violet salad with blue cheese

Joy's kale, spinach and pear smoothie

Heidi's spiced coconut spinach recipe

Jenna's spinach feta turkey burgers

perfect baked salmon

2011-05-09T16:54:00.000-07:00

I'm going to wish you a happy mother's day today. Because it's Monday, and maybe no one brought your breakfast in bed this morning. I appreciate you, especially on this day after mother's day.

This is my mother.

Beautiful, isn't she?

There she is, 23, after an excessively long homebirthing labor. Her midwife, Elizabeth Davis, long legged with straight hair in a perfect 1978-part, was soon to become something of a star in her field, and my 19-year-old uncle photographed the whole thing so that she could use the images for her book. Homebirthing was a new/old thing then, and Elizabeth was writing the book on it. He caught the moment right as I came in to the world, and the photo of my emerging head and my mother (in all her glory) ended up on the cover of the book and on the wall of every friend of my grandparents in suburban New Jersey. Embarrassing as I found it as a child, I am now thrilled that the photo actually inspired people to put a vagina on their wall. But I like this photo better. I like the look on her face and the way her long fingers just touch the top of my head.

My mother and I were on our own for a long time. She waited tables and taught exercise classes and found safe places for us to be. Every summer I would go to sleepover camp for long stretches, and she would make calendars for me to take with me. They were on watercolor paper, filled in with thick black ink and tiny details in her style, watercolored leaves with perfect veins and suns with fiery rays expanding through the graph of days. I would go, and she would stay home, and in those times she could be young and go on dates and work and not have to be mom. I would come home expanded and full of stories, and she would be ready to parent again.

Years later, my mother got married and had another daughter, and soon after, I got married and gave birth to Sadie. Over just a few years, we went from 2 to 7, and now that we're all under one roof we are, as she puts it, one family.

Now, we are friends.

I cook on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. She cooks on Sundays and Mondays. Joey and my stepfather take the other days. The girls like grandma's dinner nights best. She is calm and patient in the kitchen, and she makes just what they want. Soup and popovers. Chicken or salmon baked in tamari and olive oil. Steamed greens.

Some mornings we sit together before the day starts. She drinks her green tea and I drink my coffee and we talk about the day.

I was talking to a friend today and I asked about her mother's day. "Was it good?" "Yes... well, you know, it is complicated to be with your mother for a whole day." She paused for a minute. "Or, for most of us, it is."

My mother is a nurse now. She works harder than she ever did when I was little. She is inspired, and dedicated, and she is all grown up. In the fifteen years that we lived apart, we learned to do things differently from each other. She makes her rice in a pressure cooker. I make mine in a rice cooker. Her beans are on the stove top and mine are in the oven. I like spicy, she likes salt. It's hard to remember a time when our tastes led us in the same direction. It is complicated, of course. It is always complicated.

But I love living with my mother again. I am all grown up, too, but sometimes this is all too much. And the little rhythms of moving around my mother in the kitchen again, they calm me and make me feel safe. There is just more love. There is history to ground us.

My mother makes the most perfect salmon. People rave and sing about it, and they don't believe her when she tells them how easy it is. No magic. No tricks.

A while back, I finally asked my mother how to do it. Now people ask me, and I tell them that my mother taught me how to make perfect baked salmon. No magic. No tricks. Just my mother's universal rule. Are you ready for it?

Everything is better with tamari and olive oil. Everything. Any thing else is wild experimentation, but tamari and olive oil will never fail you.

I thank my mother for all that love and history, for weaving such a glowing web of calm safety in the midst of so much else. She worked all day yesterday, but when she came home, I had salmon waiting.

Perfect Baked Salmon

serves 6

2 pounds salmon fillets, 1 to 2 inches thick

juice of half a lemon

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 tablespoon tamari

salt

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Lay the fish, unwashed, skin side down on the parchment.

Squeeze the lemon over the fish. Then drizzle the olive oil, then the tamari. Sprinkle the whole thing with a very light snow of salt. Bake for 25 minutes.

the salon challenge

2011-05-07T13:27:00.000-07:00

The urge to invite people to dinner has hit me in full force. I don't just mean to dinner. I mean TO DINNER.
That's right, it's been a year, but I'm done hibernating, and the kitchen has moved, and I still don't have matching plates but that's okay, and yes,
it's time for a salon challenge.
I worked at the first farmers market of the season today, and everyone was talking to everyone else. You'd think people came for the spinach, but I think that they came for the conversation. And over and over, people kept saying, "whoa. it's been a long winter. it is nice to be out." There were people running at each other over the broad expanse of market, arms outstretched, and you'd think that we'd been snowed in all winter.
You would, after all, be right.
I started this salon challenge a ways back after I heard this essay. I couldn't stop thinking about it, and I dreamed of becoming someone who connected other people to each other, who created moments where people could sit face to face and talk and eat, someone who was (and I'll use this word, because this is my word of the day) BRAVE enough to sit back and let it happen, to invite people who might say no, to feed people imperfect food, to sit still and calm through long silences, and to handle it with grace or not but be okay with it either way. Even more, I wanted to feel that bringing people together could change the world and peoples lives, that I could do a little bit of what Jim Haynes did in my very own kitchen. I took his essay as a challenge, and I wanted to follow through.
And of course, I love a good dinner party.
So let's get this party started again.
The only rule is that you have to invite people to dinner that you do not know. And by "do not know," I mean only know a little, wanting to know more, never met, or whatever works for you. It needs to be different than a regular dinner, but again, do what works. Here's the layout of the rules and themes past, as well as a few other tidbits. And the theme for this challenge is.....
color!
Organize your menu around color, that's it. Serve your courses in a rainbow or an entirely purple meal, just let color guide you. You have until the end of June, so that gives us all enough time to get BRAVE, send out some invitations, and plan a menu.
There, I've done it! There's the challenge. Questions? Anxieties? Hoorays? Chime in here. Tell us all if you're taking the challenge and then check back in and we'll swap stories. I really do think that a few more dinner parties can change everything--I know they have around here.

millet muffins

2011-05-05T16:38:00.000-07:00

We have three cats now, and our one handsome cat who came to us last summer has been joined by the feline siblings who journeyed over with my parents and sister when they moved in. There was one tense hour of hissing way back, and then Artie (that's mine) and Leo (that's the tiger-y boy sibling) became friends and Artie fell in love with Isis (the grey princess-like girl sibling), who bats him away and breaks his heart every day. I only mention this because now since we have decided not to be afraid of the bear who is roaming around up here, and since we put the bird feeder back up, all three cats sit at the window all day long and pretend to hunt the birds and chipmunks at the window. They sit there in a row, and their tails bat against the windowsill with rhythm and force. They make little growls and squeaks, and their eyes are just bursting, and watching them like that all together all the time--it makes me laugh out loud, over and over. And I feel silly sometimes, laughing by myself, but then I feel silly for feeling silly and I laugh some more.

I finally put a few seeds in the ground, and then I watched the chipmunks dig them up. My nails are dirty, and the wind is whipping, and I am drinking so much black tea. And I finished the book, really this time. (I hope!) Yesterday I went to New York and I had a meeting in the Random House building. It was only the second time I had been there, but that building hums with all of the activity within it, and the great front room is filled with so many books. It was raining, and my umbrella kept flipping inside out on my way, and walking into the building and showing my ID made me feel like I feel like I am two people at once, and going up in the elevator I looked at the dirt from my garden under my nails, and I thought "shit. maybe I should have scrubbed my nails."
I guess I am really just one person, both in the garden and in the Random House building.

This is Heidi Swanson's new book, and I would say that it's the favorite book on my shelf these days, except for the fact that it doesn't ever make it to the shelf. It has been on the counter since it came home with me, and I've cooked so many things from it. The recipes are great, but there's something else about this book, something I can't quite explain, but I'll try.
This book just feels good. It is the right size, and the pages make me hungry. The design of each recipe on the page feels like the layout of a moment. And in that moment, I think, yes, perhaps I should make millet muffins. Sometimes I wander for a minute as I'm trying to figure out what's for dinner, and without knowing it, I have picked up this book and I am carrying it under my arm.
It's a good book, and I'll bet you have too many cookbooks and you've said you're going to stop buying cookbooks, but even if that's the case, this one will do some good under your arm and on your counter.

And one more thing while were talking about this and that--Rosie lost four teeth last week. Four teeth. Three of them were in one afternoon, and then there was another a few days later. I only bring that up, because I also can't stop laughing every time I look at her. And between the cats and their incessant imaginary hunting and Rosie's all-of-the-sudden lisp and total lack of teeth, I don't get a break. And this morning, she jumped on me in bed, and even though it had only been a few hours since I'd gotten home from New York, I cracked open my eyes and there was her gummy smile, coming towards me for a kiss. And even then, I laughed. And if it hadn't been 6 in the morning, and if I hadn't just gotten home from New York a few hours earlier, and if I had been able to keep myself awake long enough to do it, this is what I would have made for my sweet girls.

Don't let the millet, whole wheat, and honey fool you. Think of these as healthy if you want to, because they are, but really the most overwhelming thing about them is that they're so good, and their texture is perfect.

Millet Muffins

from Heidi Swanson, Super Natural Every Day

2 1/4 cups whole wheat pastry flour

1/3 cup raw millet

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon sea salt

1 cup plain yogurt

2 large eggs, lightly beaten

1/2 cup melted unsalted butter

1/2 cup honey

grated zest and 2 tablespoons juice from 1 lemon

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Butter a 12-cup muffin tin or line it with liners.

Whisk together the flour, millet, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl. In a separate bowl or liquid measuring cup, whisk together the yogurt, eggs, butter, honey, and lemon zest and juice. Add the wet to the dry and stir until just incorporated. Divide the batter among the muffin cups and bake for 15 minutes, until the muffin tops are starting to brown.

wordsworth and radish butter

2011-04-28T07:07:00.000-07:00

"Wisdom and Spirit of the universe!
Thou Soul, that art the Eternity of thought!

And giv'st to forms and images a breath
And everlasting motion! not in vain,
By day or star-light, thus from my first dawn
Of childhood didst thou intertwine for me
The passions that build up our human soul;
Not with the mean and vulgar works of Man;

But with high objects, with enduring things,
With life and nature, purifying thus
The elements of feeling and of thought,
And sanctifying by such a discipline
Both pain and fear,--until we recognise
A grandeur in the beatings of the heart."

-William Wordsworth, from "Influence of Natural Objects: In Calling Forth and Strengthening the Imagination In Boyhood and Early Youth"

Radish Butter

Combine 1 softened stick of butter with 6 finely chopped radishes, 3 snipped chives, a hefty squeeze of lemon, and the best salt in your cupboard. Mix, and enjoy.

best of the butter lambs

2011-04-25T14:13:00.000-07:00

I never quite know what to do with Easter. Usually we get invited to some egg hunt or other and we eat some chocolate, but yesterday we woke up, and the girls said, "Isn't it Easter?" and we said, "Yes! Let's eat eggs!"
And so we did. It was not our finest holiday moment.
Last year, we celebrated with the butter lamb, and that made me feel quite festive. Marya came and taught us how to turn butter into art (or rather, lambs), and the holiday was joyous and covered in butter. I swore that I would carve a lamb from butter every year, even though I am neither Catholic nor Polish.
Yesterday, I forgot about the butter lamb. I guess the tradition just isn't in my blood. Next year.
But today, on this day after the holiday, I thought we'd do a little something special, so that we all can experience the joy of the butter lamb.
Our first butter lamb came home with Joey when he taught Marya's daughter years ago. We marveled and cooed over it, and wondering what its story was, we did some research.
That is one fabulous thing to google. And to lift my spirits (as it did then too) I googled that lamb today.
Here it is... the best of the butter lambs.

This is from Patti at Comfy Cuisine. I love the parsley in the mouth. It's a "grass fed" butter lamb.

Here's a beauty from the St. Andrew's Ukranian Orthodox ladies auxilliary. And another, maybe my favorite, the modern art butter lamb from Joeware:

Then of course, there is the high end, groomed butter lamb, courtesy of the New York Folklore Society.

And the lovely "lamb among the iceberg lettuce" from DzyneLab SpookyDaffodils:

And, although a little intense, the "final" butter lamb from All About Being Inspired:

(love the nostrils on this one)

There are thousands of butter lambs out there, and today, I'd guess the remnants of them are being spread on toast. But I have to finish here with the first butter lamb that ever came into my house, the one that Marya made for Joey. I was just looking through google images, and my eye caught on this image, and I thought, now there is a beautiful butter lamb. Witness, "butter lamb with pea shoots":

Oh, Butter Lamb! You are truly divine.

Happy Monday, friends.

challah, or, on kids cooking (again)

2011-04-22T07:50:00.000-07:00

The girls are home this week, and they are hungry.

I'm locked away in my room, doing a final edit (okay, so I wasn't quite done with the book!), and so there is a lot of "Mom, we're going to.." and I say "fine!" before they finish, as long as they don't need my help.

The other day, the activity was challah.

Now, I hope I have made it clear in the past that the whole topic of kids cooking is one I continue to try to untangle. I read accounts of parents who claim that they do it every day--that their toddlers stir and whisk and chop and everyone is happy--and I can only think one thing.
That they are better people than I.
Don't get me wrong, my kids cook with me a lot, but it rarely ends well. I hand over the dry ingredients for a cake and they whisk whisk whisk until most of the powder has migrated out of the bowl. I take a breath, and say, "can I help?" and they say no, and then we all get grumpy. But lately, I've figured out the secret. I've got it.

Get the hell out of the kitchen.
Of course, it helps if they can read, which they can! And the twelve-year-old aunt, that helps too.
But as long as I'm out of there, it all goes well. At least, they solve the problems that come up and I don't have to witness them.

Sadie's been requesting that my next book be a kids' cooking book. I guess it should be called, "Get the Hell out of the Kitchen."

They found the recipe themselves, appropriately from the big book on the shelf called "Baking." And all afternoon, they kneaded and stirred. And then they braided and baked.

And then there was this beautiful loaf of bread.
I have to admit, I've never made challah. Those girls teach me a thing or two.

The next day, Rosie and Sadie were fighting, and Sadie got upset, and she stormed into my room with a stomp! stomp! (She actually stomps even when she's happy) And she said, "Mom? I need to make a cake. Cooking is the only thing that can calm me down."

That's my girl.

She had her eye on a recipe that she had seen on the back of the Hershey's Unsweetened Cocoa box, some basic chocolate cake recipe. She wanted to do this one all on her own. So I got the ingredients of the higher shelves for her, I gave her my best cooking advice (Read the recipe 3 times!) and then I got the hell out of the kitchen. Half an hour later, she tip-toed back into my room. "Mom, the cakes are in the oven!" Start to finish, that girl made her cakes. She was calm, and happy, and couldn't stop turning the light on in the oven. I also was feeling pretty self satisfied. Look at me letting go of control! Honoring my daughter's power! I must be getting better!
The rest of the day and a frosting mess later, we cut into that empowering and beautiful cake. I couldn't help but notice the tiny white dots of baking soda scattered throughout the cake, but I figured that frosting could solve it all. Sadie had the first bite.
"AHHHHHHEEEEEEEEEUGGGGHHHHHHHHH!" (Really, that was the sound she made)
Rosie took a bite and let out a similar sound, with a retch at the end. They both fell off their chairs laughing before I could even taste it. I figured that the baking soda had gotten them. But then I looked closer at the cake itself. There was a strange lighter colored center, and some chemical process hadn't quite occurred. I braced myself and took a bite. I couldn't even swallow it, but just having the cake in my mouth, I knew what had happened.
"Sadie, is it possible that you didn't put any sugar in this cake?"
She stopped, and put her chocolate covered fork to her chin in thinking pose.
"Yes, Mom, that is entirely possible."

Challah
from James Peterson, Baking (a totally beautiful book, by the way)

makes one loaf

5 cups flour
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup milk, barely warmed
5 eggs, warmed in a bowl of warm water
2 egg yolks
1 teaspoon active dry yeast, proofed in a 1 tablespoon barely warm water with 1 teaspoon flour
1 teaspoon salt
room temperature butter for the pan
egg wash (1 egg beaten with 1/2 teaspoon salt)

In a medium bowl, combine 1 cup of the flour with the sugar, milk, eggs, egg yolks, and yeast. Whisk lightly until smooth. Cover with plastic wrap and let sit for 1 hour at room temperature.
In a large bowl, combine the remaining 4 cups flour with the salt. Pour the egg mixture over the flour mixture and mix for 2 minutes. Cover with an inverted bowl and let rest for 20 minutes.
Knead the dough by hand for 10 minutes or with a stand mixer fit with the dough hook for 7 minutes, until the dough is smooth. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise for 2 hours, or until nearly doubled in volume.
Punch down the dough and divide it into 3 equal pieces. Stretch each piece into a rope about 2 feet long. The dough is quite elastic so do this stretch in stages, letting it rest in between.
Butter a 13x17-inch sheet pan.
Lay the three stands next to each other on the sheet pan so they all touch at the top. Take the left strand and fold it over the center. Take the right strand, lift it over the now-center strand. Repeat until you are at the end of the dough, and pinch the ends together.
Cover with plastic wrap and let rise for 1 to 2 hours, or until almost doubled in volume.
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F, and set a metal sheet pan filled with water on the bottom shelf of the oven. Brush the loaf with egg wash. Put the challah in the oven.
Crack open the door and spray with water at 30 second intervals. Turn down the heat to 375 degrees F. Bake for about 45 minutes, or until the loaf is golden brown.