Armchair Foodie

Not Pretty, But Pretty Darn Good

2009-02-16T21:25:00.000-08:00

I need to save up for a better camera. I made a delicious pasta dish tonight, and this photo makes it look rather less than appetizing. I took nine shots of it, and this was the best I could come up with. Granted, the primary ingredients were cauliflower and whole wheat pasta, so you might assert that, photo or no, it is unappetizing. But trust me, it's damn good. Check out this blog, Pink Bites, for the recipe.

The only difference from that recipe to this, was that I used four times as many onions (2, instead of the suggested 1/2), twice as much liquid or more (pasta water and white wine), and cilantro (instead of parsley). However, Ms. Pink Bites' photos are ten times better than mine.

Speaking of whole wheat pasta, Adam made an astute comment this evening while we scarfed our dinners. Whole wheat pasta is like whole wheat bread. You grow up (if you're an average American) preferring white bread. When you take a bite of wheat bread, it's dense and unpleasant. But then you grow to love it, and find white bread is actually pretty pathetic. We're hoping that whole wheat pasta will become like wheat bread: an acquired taste.

afaic, 8-) FMH2urs

2009-02-11T21:11:00.000-08:00

OMG. I'm not one to heavily emote; even less extensively do I emoticon, or otherwise venture into the acronymous language to which cell-phone texting has given birth. But OMG. I think I've found the supreme chocolate-lovers dessert. You also have to love coconut.

. . . And curry, but stay with me.

Purchase and then have ready these ingredients:

-1 14 oz. can coconut milk (lite is fine, and I'd recommend it, since regular weighs in around 40 grams of fat per can)

-3 Tbsp. sugar

-Scant 1/4 tsp. salt

-2 Tbsp. arrowroot powder

-1 teaspoon curry powder (optional, but try it. Come on.)

-2 Tbsp. good cocoa

-3 1/2 oz. semisweet chocolate, chopped or chocolate chips

-1 tsp. vanilla

-1/4 c. sweetened, flaked coconut, toasted in a hot, dry skillet (unless you're soulless, 1/4 cup ain't going to do it here, so make sure you have extra on hand)

1. Shake the coconut milk can vigorously before opening. Then heat one cup of it in a saucepan over low heat with the sugar and the salt, until it just barely starts to simmer.

2. In a separate bowl, whisk together remaining coconut milk, arrowroot and curry powders, and cocoa. It'll look like thick chocolate pudding.

3. When coconut milk/sugar mixture has started simmering, take 1/4 c. of it and whisk it gradually into the arrowroot mixture. Turn the heat down to its lowest setting. Then gradually mix the arrowroot mixture into the coconut milk in the pot, whisking vigorously and continuously. Keep whisking until it returns to a simmer and thickens a bit, ~1 minute.

4. Remove from heat, and continue to whisk for another minute. Now whisk in the vanilla and chocolate; stir till smooth. Portion the pudding into ramekins (or mugs, or small bowls, or glasses) and refrigerate until thoroughly chilled. Plastic wrap=no pudding skin. When ready to eat, garnish with toasted coconut. Devour. (Adapted from The Oregonian, who in turn adapted it from 101cookbooks.com, which happens to be on my blogroll. Go figure.)

P.S. If you use dark chocolate in this, then it would be vegan!

Cry if I want to

2009-02-08T19:43:00.000-08:00

Planning a wedding has turned out to be an extraordinary undertaking. To be honest, I'm not sure I'd do it again, if I had understood the number of details - and dollars - it is necessary to juggle in one's mind. (Let me qualify that. I would and will marry Adam with no doubts. It's the kind of wedding I chose that I might re-think.) Here are a few examples of the things I've had to think about this weekend. The caterer provides glasses for non-alcoholic beverages like water and lemonade, but not wine or beer glasses. They will however provide linen for the bar table, so all I need to rent at the rental place are pint and wine glasses but no linens. Also, will we want the preacher miked? A lapel mike or a standing mike? A lapel mike will be less unwieldy, but a standing mike will be great for later if people want to make drunken or tearful speeches. There were invitations envelopes to purchase (fifty unforeseen bucks right there) and RSVP cards (another six). And the great question of my Saturday morning, how many tables will there be??? I called the owner of the wedding site and the caterer who were not home and sort of evasive (respectively) before I realized that as the bride I decide the number of tables. Or the wedding planner decides, though we had thought on a sunny mellow day last summer, "Who the hell needs a wedding planner? How hard can it be?" Indeed.

And then there's the honeymoon, a backpacking trip from Santa Fe to Taos, which thankfully Adam has taken charge of. I like the contrast: We'll be going from a day of apricot-glazed salmon, chardonnay, flowers and a dignified view of the river to seven days of gorp, freeze-dried meals, 12 miles a day, and no showers. Though I admit I look forward a little bit to being princess for a day, I'll be abolishing any self-perception of royalty pretty darn quick after the wedding by inserting myself into the Pecos Wilderness with only a pack on my back and a map-reading man at my side. Ah well. Inflated egos are unbecoming.

So. With all that in mind, why don't you think about whipping up a chowder for one of your meals this coming week. It'll be nice comfort food to assuage whatever anxiety is sticking voltage between your shoulder blades. In my case the wedding worth a small house. Well, maybe a small shack. But still, shacks are not cheap ya know.

The chowder I comforted myself with tonight was of the shrimp, potatoes, and corn variety. It was good - very good - but as you can probably detect by all the butter and cream globules floating on the top, it was not low fat. If you are not fitting into a wedding dress any time soon, please email me for the recipe. If you are interested in keeping your calories low, I'd highly recommend another wonderful chowder recipe, Corn and Quinoa Chowder. I'm sure I'll post on that one at some point, as it's one of my all-time favorites. But anyway, Here's to the Happy Couple. Couple of chowders, that is.

Great Food Website

2009-02-05T09:06:00.000-08:00

If you're like me then sometimes you trawl food blogs and websites for dinner ideas. Check out this genius food site; they list their recipes in the perfect possible medium: photographs. Warning: do not look at this site hungry. You might just eat your laptop.

Thanks to Claire for the tip.

Simple. Wonderful.

2009-02-05T08:52:00.001-08:00

I feel like I've been trumpeting the glories of roasted vegetables pretty constantly lately, though I can't remember if I've been doing it on my blog, or just verbally to friends, co-workers, whoever is willing to listen. So let me just praise the roasted vegetable one last time, because a roasted veg will turn a bland, basic meal into a nutritious feast. See above photo. Carrots and rice, basically. How would you feel if you walked in the front door one evening, asked your beloved, "What's for dinner?" and got the response, "Carrots and rice"? You might lobby to go out for sushi.

But if you hear "Roasted carrots," you'll probably have a seat at the table and tuck the napkin right into your collar. If you don't recall, the secret to roasting is no secret at all. Set the oven to 400, chop your veggies into comparably sized pieces, toss to coat thinly with olive oil, and season however you choose. Remembering a dish from many years ago, I tried thyme and cinnamon on my carrots. I found some leftover homemade pesto languishing in the freezer too, which went great mixed with wild rice (and felt significantly healthier than pasta).

I made a wonderful veggie roast the other night too, with fennel, a veggie I'd never used before. The dish was absolutely delicious and was gone before photos could be captured. So try these veggies in your first vegetable roast: fennel (green stalks discarded, and white bulb chopped), butternut squash, red potatoes, carrots, and garlic. Do as I did. Celebrate the winter cornucopia... before bidding it good riddance for the season.

Lasagna Part Deux

2009-02-02T21:30:00.000-08:00

I'm learning the art of winning friends by cooking for them. This weekend I made a batch of lasagna for my friend Lynne as a belated housewarming/Superbowl gift. This morning in my email box I found such tickling statements as "Truly that was the BEST lasagna I've ever eaten" and "everyone raved about it." And at the end was a plea for the recipe. Well! If one person thinks it was that good, then maybe others will too. I've spent some time honing my vegetarian version of this dish, so if you're looking for a change of pace from the old ground beef game, then give this a shot.

The way to make veggie lasagna is start about four or five individual cooking projects (make this recipe, by the way, on your day off-- it ain't no 30-minute meal). At the end each of these projects will come together, each its own layer. Work on each project as simultaneously as you can. As you develop your technique you'll be dancing like a prima ballerina from one burner to the next, to the cutting board, to the cuisinart, and back again. It's really fun.

*Sauce. Dice one onion and garlic to taste and saute in olive oil. After a few minutes, add one large can of tomato sauce (cheap stuff=fine) and one can of diced tomatoes. Season to taste with pepper, oregano, thyme. Do not add salt! Those canned tomatoes are very salty already. (Although Lynne, you might need a 1/4 cup of salt or so here...) The key ingredients of yumminess: a splash of red wine, and a pinch of sugar. Let simmer.

*Pesto. This element is optional, but well worth the effort. Wash and pluck the leaves from a large container of basil (my store sells them in large tubs). Place leaves in the waiting Cuisinart and add two cloves of garlic (don't need to chop 'em), a large splash or two olive oil, about 1/4 c. pine nuts, two big pinches grated parmesan, salt and pepper. Blend till a thick paste (add a little water if it balls up).

*Veggies. Thaw two 10 oz. boxes frozen spinach. This is one of the few cases where frozen is better than fresh. Trust me; I've tried it with fresh leaves and they come out like bloated dental floss nestled between the noodles. Rather unappetizing. When totally de-thawed, squeeze spinach as dry as you can through paper towels. [If you really want to waste not want not, reserve the squeezed water for future pasta or rice water, or soup stock. There's some major nutrients in that green juice.]

Also, chop whatever fresh veggies you want. A couple zucchinis, halved lengthwise and sliced. Sliced mushrooms, squash, artichoke hearts, grated carrot. Chop what you love.

*Cheese. Mix one large (not huge) container of ricotta cheese with two eggs, a couple pinches of parmesan, salt, and pepper. If you have made pesto, stir it in too.

Grate a whole wedge of fontina cheese. It's more expensive than mozzarella but infinitely tastier, and not at all rubbery like our childhood pizza friend, Mozz. The fontina's too good to waste between the layers, so save it all for the top.

*Assembly. Spoon enough sauce on the bottom of the baking dish (at least 9x13) to create a thin layer. Lay out enough no-boil lasagna noodles side by side to cover the whole surface, but don't let the noodles overlap. Spread half the ricotta mixture on top of the noodles. Sprinkle half the spinach. Do another layer of noodles. Spread another layer of sauce. Sprinkle your veggies. Are you getting the idea here? Continue the layering till the ingredients are gone or the dish is full, with the idea that dry and wet ingredients should alternate. Make sure the last layer of noodles is covered with sauce so they don't dry out, and then sprinkle all of the fontina cheese over the top. Bake, covered, at 375 for 45 minutes. Uncover and bake 15 minutes or so more, until cheese is browning at the edges.

Phew. That's a large recipe, sorry. I'll be as succinct as I can when describing the ideal side dishes

Salad. Garlic bread. Red wine.

Heart-y Fare

2009-02-01T11:08:00.000-08:00

My, how time flies. It's about as hackneyed a statement as I can think of, but it's really describing my life right now. It's the tail end of a three day weekend, and I'm finding myself making rigorous lists of the things I need to do to relax today, since I spent the first couple days of the weekend running around accomplishing things (another house-showing, meeting with the mortgage banker, clean the house, help a friend move, wedding errands...). But wait: should the words rigorous and relaxation be used in the same sentence? Probably not, but today I want to go for a hike, take a peek at the Superbowl, and do homework for an online class I'm taking. So though my much-adored ArmchairFoodie provides respite and therapy from my workaday obligations, I'm only going to give some pretty cursory descriptions of two meals we ate this week.

This is just a repeat on a running theme: pasta with sauteed veggies. This is a great meal because it's always different, and if the precept that one learns from one's mistakes is true, then it's always better than the last. This time we set chopped onions, garlic, tomatoes and artichokes to a saute. Boil pasta, and while you're taking the pot of pasta to the sink to drain it-- don't forget this part!-- pour about 1/4 or 1/2 cup of the water into your saute. This helps break down the veggies and turn them into a sauce.

Yum. Good toppings: chopped parsley, toasted pine nuts, parmesan.
A couple days later I took out some leftover green chile enchilada sauce from the freezer. See former post on that here. This time though, I whipped up some calabacitas ("little squash," if I'm translating that correctly) to stuff the enchiladas with. Chopped zucchini, corn, and onions, sauteed with salt, pepper, and oregano. When they're just tender, roll scoops the stuff in tortillas, line up in a baking dish, top with cheese and bake covered for a while. After a while is up, take off the tin foil and bake for a smaller while so the cheese gets brown and bubbly.
This was truly awesome. While eating it and loving it, I was pondering my favorite foods: enchiladas and lasagna. They are really just different realizations of one basic concept: an Americanized "ethnic" dish using the appropriate herbs and spices of their respective native lands, but really just centering around the combination of bread and cheese. Granted, the more veggies, the better; but I'll admit where the real attraction lies. Noodles layered with ricotta, parmesan, and fontina. Tortillas smothered in jack and cheddar. Pizza dough dressed in mozzarella and fontina. Ah well, at least I'm not a sedentary person. My fierce attachment to the bread and cheese duo might not be so wise in that case. And speaking of which, gotta run. Happy Feb!

Monday Morning From My Back Porch

2009-01-26T07:55:00.000-08:00

Feeling Centimental?

2009-01-25T19:50:00.000-08:00

I'd like to trumpet the SECOND world-altering event of this week, after a lovely inauguration last Tuesday: this is my 100th blog post! If you were here, I'd pour you a glass of champagne and feed you canapes. But as it stands, the only people around who actually read this blog are Adam my husband-to-be and my dog Cally. And it's a toss-up between those two as to who actually reads my posts on a regular basis. So no champagne for them.

Speaking of Cally, here we are emerging from a nap today. (And she wonders why I yell at her for getting on the couch.) It's been a snowy day, perfect for lounging at the coffee shop, the briefest of walks along the river, and cuddling on the bed... not very good fodder for a celebratory blog posting, I admit. But sometimes 'homey' is the name of the game on a Sunday in late January.

Dinner actually turned out to be a little exotic: I whipped up a really yummy batch of Pad Thai, that pink-hued noodle dish with shrimp, bean sprouts, and peanuts. Only my grocery store didn't have bean sprouts and if I was going to spring for shrimp I didn't want to spring for peanuts (I'm trying to buy a house here, people). The irony of the thing is, peanuts do not sell for peanuts. Nor do any nuts, really. It turned out well anyway, though I'll definitely try both stores in my 'hood for bean sprouts next time. It was missing that fresh, juicy crunch.

It's fun to make, and has some rather unconventional ingredients. You cook shrimp, green onions, and garlic in a hot saute-- would 'stir-fry' be the appropriate jargon here?; then add ground dried shrimp (sounds grody, but it adds great flavor), fish sauce, chili flakes, sugar, and ketchup (is that what they use in Thailand?!). Stir for a few minutes, then drag the mixture to one side of the pan, and pour two beaten eggs in to the other side. Let the eggs cook un-disturbed for about a minute, then scramble them up with the other ingredients. Dump in the rice noodles (which have been drained after you soaked them in very hot water for 15 minutes), and stir for a couple more minutes over high heat. Garnish with cilantro and lime wedges (and bean sprouts and peanuts). Very delicious flavors, though next time I'll probably cut back on the noodles to allow for more sauciness.
Then Adam devised a very scrumptious hand-held dessert. Homemade (by Adam!) chocolate chip oatmeal cookies with a heavy dousing of Tillamook vanilla ice cream on top. Mmm. That's cause for celebration right there.

Thanks for reading, my friends. If you continue to do so, I promise at least one hundred more.

Braised Be

2009-01-20T21:31:00.000-08:00

An otherwise fabulous Alice Waters recipe instructed me to scatter this delectable braised cabbage and roasted potatoes in a circle around the halibut-- for some reason the highest organism on the food chain always gets featured front and center on a plate, with the afterthought veggies serving as a mere picture frame. If I ever make this dish again, and I can assure you that I will, the cabbage will be shaped into a big heart in the middle of the plate, and the fish and potatoes will be served on a little saucer on the side. What I mean to tell you is, this method of making cabbage is... ...the only way to make cabbage.

Now I know what you're thinking! Ew, cabbage. Ew, stinky, sulfuric rabbit food. But no! Try this recipe. You will be converted. Take a head of green cabbage (the recipe called for Savoy Cabbage, which looks like green cabbage with a perm, but we're not that fancy in Hood River). Cut the head into 2 inch wedges and pack them into a baking dish. Oh yeah: turn the oven on to 400 while you're prepping. Sprinkle the wedges with thyme, and tuck a bay leaf in there somewhere. Pour over it all 1/2 cup of vegetable stock, and 1/2 cup of dry white wine. Slice up to 3 Tbsp. of butter and dot the tops of the cabbage wedges. Cover and bake for 30-45 minutes, until the cabbage is tender. When cooled enough to work with, cut the core off of each wedge and discard, roughly chop the leaves, and return them to their juices in the baking dish. Here is a shot just before going into the oven. As is usually the case when something comes out amazing, I forgot to take an "after" shot. Eh voila. Cabbage for people who hate cabbage.
Oh, and if you want to make something good to go with your ambrosia-cabbage, you can douse a couple filets of halibut in some wine and veggie broth and roast 'em at 500 for a few minutes; and you can toss some quartered red potatoes in a bit of olive oil, salt, pepper, and maybe some rosemary or something before baking them covered or no for about a half hour at 400. Or you can just save room for more cabbage.

Wresting Acceptance

2009-01-19T09:35:00.000-08:00

I guess when cooking, as with anything in life, failure is inevitable. That doesn't mean I like failure in cooking (or anything in life). Losing control over something I'm doing makes the tendons stand out on my neck, and a very small but powerful muscle between my shoulder blades start shooting bolts of electricity outward like wings of tension. Adam and I had a discussion about control recently, so my failure with falafel last night was aptly timed. He had said (in a sort of irritatingly Zen kind of way) that exerting control over factors that you cannot change will only cause suffering. I tried to maintain (with neither of us quite falling for it) that ambition is a good thing, and continuing to strive for control is equal to progress.

I still don't know the answer to the dilemma, though I'm beginning to suspect that a combination of ambition and acceptance-- namely, a little of the former and a lot of the latter-- is one good solution. (I could choose ALL acceptance like a monk, but those of you who know me know that a Sunday hike to hell and back is a likelier proposition.) I tried to manifest some acceptance when my falafel turned to mush in the frying pan last night. But I'll leave it to you to decide on my level of success.

It all started out so well. Falafel from scratch! Look at the beautiful beans, painted with the lovely hues of cumin, turmeric, cayenne and salt. And as I added parsley, green onions, garlic, lemon juice, water, and eventually flour to the mixture, I knew-- just KNEW!-- I was onto something ground-breaking.

I pureed them all to a thick paste and heated some oil in a pan. The batter smelled like heaven itself-- a complete 180 from the powdered mix I had always bought in a box. This meal was going to be like our new president: in a word, perfect.

I formed little balls of the stuff and placed them lovingly into the sizzling oil. So far so good. But after the requisite ten minutes I flipped them over, and they started to disintegrate. What was going on here?? This was not part of my plan! Soon I had a panful of boiling falafel crumbs... and there was NOTHING I could do about it.
The butterfly wings of electricity were shooting outward across my back. In a few drastic measures of pure reaction I dumped the lot of it into a bowl, and as soon as it cooled I was going to toss it in the trash. (Luckily I had that foresight, otherwise the burning oil would have burned through the trash bag and my punishment for rashness would have been to wash out the trash bin.)

Then my angel of patience walked into the kitchen. "What are you doing?" he asked, and I unloaded my wrath toward the falafel (or toward my lack of control?) on him, and he responded wisely. He was quiet. Then he said, "Do you want to go out instead?" I took a breath. No, I didn't. I didn't want to give up yet. But I also didn't want to be a baby.

So, I turned the heat back on under the pan, poured significantly less oil into it this time around, and started over. Fortunately there was plenty of batter left. And it worked, kind of. The consistency wasn't amazing-- they were a bit pasty on the inside, instead of fluffy like they should be. And the outsides were not crisp-fried since I was afraid to use too much oil. But they did taste delicious, especially thanks to a fantastic Lemon-Tahini Sauce drizzled over top. And at least we didn't head down to the pub for a veggie burger with my tail between my legs and a black cloud over my head. That would have been no fun for anyone.

So, they weren't perfect, but they were good. And I'm glad I stuck with it. So, hey! One point for ambition! Oh wait. Or is that acceptance?
P.S. This post is far too long to include recipes, both of which I'd actually recommend, if you've got an idea to prevent falafel disintegration. Email or comment for recipe(s).

And P.P.S. Let us take a cue from our falafel kerfuffle, and not expect too much from 44. He's just a person, like the rest of us.

Tener o no Tener

2009-01-16T19:54:00.000-08:00

Thank God it's Friday. After a busy week at work, a head cold, and a less than stellar credit report (more on that another time. Maybe.), I needed to end my day and ring in the weekend with an El Rinconcito burrito and a cold beer, and there was really no two ways about it.

El Rinconcito is a terrific taqueria housed in a trailer on Cascade Ave. I was glad to find that someone has even taken a picture of it and posted it online:

As you can see, there are no bells and whistles on this establishment. Unless you count the umbrellas. And the Mexican pop band calendar hanging inside featuring photographs of Latino men in waxed mustaches and painted-on jeans, with their thumbs slung through their belt loops. But bells and whistles are not necessary when you can get a huge Veggie Supreme burrito filled with fresh, delicious ingredients that actually hold a candle to the mission-style-heaven-in-foil-wrapped-cylinders of my young adulthood. I'm talking fresh, whole pinto beans, yummy rice, sour cream, shredded Jack, and this amazing kind of pico de gallo involving cilantro, cabbage, and onions all chopped superfine. And then there are two homemade hot sauces to choose from (and if you're smart, you'll get one of each): the smoky, spicy red sauce; and the green, fresh stuff. It's good enough that I completely forgot to take a picture of it before polishing it off.

But my allegiance to this place was put to the test tonight. While Adam and I stood at the cash register placing our order, I asked the pretty young cashier if we could get avocado in the burritos. She turned around and asked an elder Hispanic woman-- a woman shaped somewhat like a burrito herself-- "Tenemos avocates?" The woman looked up from the grill, which, being inside of a small trailer, was a tortilla chip's throw from the cash register. She eyed Adam, and then me, each of us head to toe. We stood there, the cashier stood there, somebody else's carne asada sizzled on the grill. Then she looked back down and said abruptly to her grilling meat before resuming to chop it: "NO."

Sigh. Well, we hope that whichever customer passed the avocado test tonight is enjoying the fruits of their coolness. And we'll still go back to El Rinconcito. Sometimes you just gotta eat what the woman gives you.

A Day in the Life

2009-01-12T19:10:00.000-08:00

I had what you might call a synchronous moment the other day. I was peevishly scanning through radio stations; on the hour-long drive to Portland on Sunday, NPR was inexplicably out-- its normal station had been replaced by a dull static and it was bookended by a Christian call-in show on one side, and some Spanish crooner on the other. Not to sound narrow minded or anything, but I never listen to anything but NPR on the radio, and without wasting my time or yours in trying to explain why that is so, I will just skip that and say that I certainly didn't plan on finding anything of remote interest while pounding the Tune button.

Then I heard the unmistakable harmonies of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, in what had to be a Beatles song, only one that I had never heard before. I stopped my channel surfing at once. The song soon ended (before I had the wisdom to pay attention to some of the lyrics, so I could find out later what it was), and the announcer came on with his honey-voice, welcoming me to the Beatles Basement, and declaring the purpose of the show to be in honor of Sir George Martin's 83rd birthday. It took me a second to remember who George Martin was-- ah yes, the producer of all the Beatles records-- and I almost changed the channel again. But then I thought, hmm, well, might as well listen to some classic old Beatles songs. Even if you never need to hear "Hey Jude" again, you can still always manage to hear it one more time. Better than fire and brimstone, any day.

Then a clip of Martin speaking came on, and he told a story about how John approached him before the making of Let it Be and said, "We're not going to need any of that production crap on this album." Apparently John wanted each song to be an organic whole, recorded and preserved in its integrity from beginning to end. And so Martin obligingly went home. Only problem was, Sir George recounted, sometimes it would take 20, 50, even 75 takes before they'd get a song right, if they got it right at all. Which of course did not exactly lead to harmony within the recording studio. By the time they shelved the project (out of frustration maybe?), Paul called George Martin and asked him to come back. The product of Martin's return was Abbey Road. Of course, I was transfixed.

So when "Day in the Life" came on, I heard the song with brand new ears. And hearing a Beatles song, especially a really good one, for the first time, is a pretty shattering experience. The hairs on my arms stood up on end. First John's ghostlike and melancholic lines, "I read the news today, oh boy..." and then Paul's perky piano interlude: "Woke up, fell out of bed... ." What an incredible song! I will confess, that by the time that intense piano chord is struck at the end, my chin was quivering a bit.

But I think the experience was enhanced by the fact that it was the Sunday morning of what was turning out to be an awesome weekend: I went for a great hike with a new friend, Adam and I went house-hunting, we had some other new friends over for dinner... It's like I was being escorted right into a new life that was very excited to have me. New house, new friends, new town. And then, right when I'm rushing headlong into the future, here are The Beatles all over again. Those four Liverpoolians did no small work of flooding my mind with the existential blasts of childhood. If my metaphor isn't too irritating, I'd like to venture that life is a little bit like lasagna. There's old stuff, that you love so much. You know, like The Beatles, and listening to their records with your little sister when she was so young and cute, and being in that old house that you can still smell and imagine but will never see again. But the new stuff piles on, and you forget about the old stuff for the most part, but sometimes at very well-timed moments all that new stuff sort of comes to a head to make you love the old stuff that much more. Funny thing is, I'll probably look back at these crazy novelties one day and have a little sniff of nostalgia. And there might even be a Beatles song playing. But anyway, what I'm trying to say is, and the reason I sort of weirdly mentioned lasagna at all in the first place: it's all about the layers.

Quick Tip-Oatmeal

2009-01-06T21:37:00.000-08:00

While making one of my staple breakfasts this morning-- oatmeal-- it occurred to me to do the thing that makes all sweet things so delicious: add salt. I've tried to be creative with my morning porridge, stirring in all manner of sweeteners (brown sugar, maple syrup, honey, molasses), fruit (dried or fresh), nuts, seeds and spices (cinnamon!)-- all at varying degrees and combinations. But never have I gone back to the basics with this particular dish. So, next time you're making oatmeal, throw in a pinch of salt. It makes it more... three-dimensional. I think you know what I mean.

In other news, today my mom sent me this wonderful quotation on happiness. Like a good mama, she knew I needed it.

"Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it might be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness." -Robertson Davies

Motley Meals

2009-01-04T09:23:00.001-08:00

2009 has been a productive year so far, but in one respect only: food. I've been making so much of it, I have to cram four different dishes into one blog post. As for doing ANYTHING that involves going outside (and you'd be surprised by how much of our lives we conduct outside of our homes), there is nothing doing. The roads are icy, it continues to snow every other day or so, and when it's not snowing, it's raining and leaving a very depressing slush on the ground. Having hit the bottom of the barrel of my cabin fever yesterday I called a friend to see if she had any snowshoes I could borrow, and happily she did! I took Cally out to the Post Canyon trail and had a blast-- I'm definitely getting me some snowshoes. Our trip was cut short when a couple of yahoos started shooting a gun in my general direction, so I came home and made soup (see below). When stuck or driven indoors by wayward firearms, make soup. It seems like a good enough answer to the problems of life and winter.

Anyway, here are those shrimp I described in my last post. The marinade was delicious, but I made the mistake I'm not going to make anymore of buying frozen shrimp. I can never get frozen seafood to lose its fishy flavor upon cooking. But here's the marinade. I'm sure it would be good on any ol' fish or tofu.

1 garlic clove, chopped

1 bird's eye chili, deseeded (if you wish) and chopped

1 Tbsp. tamarind paste/concentrate

1 Tbsp. sesame oil

1 Tbsp. soy sauce

2 Tbsp. lime juice

1 Tbsp. brown sugar

Put the lot into a small saucepan and stir over low heat until the sugar melts. Cool completely. Marinate your food item of choice for as long as you can, even overnight. Recipe from What's Cooking Thai.

Here is a beautiful batch of roasted cauliflower, the idea for which I took from Hilary Kooks. It's super easy: chop a head of cauliflower into chunks and stir into it several cloves of chopped garlic, some chili powder, dried basil ("or other green herb," says Hil), s&p, a few Tbsp. sesame oil, and a couple Tbsp. tahini. Spread out in a pyrex dish and roast at 375 for as long as an hour (I cranked it up to 400 for the last ten minutes). It was good served over quinoa.
This is the best thing I've made recently: Brazilian Black Bean soup. Inspired by the Moosewood recipe but much tampered with, it goes like this. And I'm going to be quite general here, because the best soup will contain the ingredients and proportions that YOU like (I know, I know, Hilary is starting to rub off on me here).

Soak 2 or 3 cups of black beans over night. When you're ready to start cooking, put the beans (drained) with 4 or 6 cups of clean water to a boil in a big soup pot, then simmer and cover for an hour or hour and a half. Your life partners will thank you for changing the water-- it reduces gassiness.

Meanwhile, chop a BUNCH of onions-- three cups or so-- and a BUNCH of garlic-- I used about ten cloves, crushed. I was weirded out to see the recipe call for that much garlic, but I'm glad I went with it. Garlic=good. Then chop a carrot or two. Toss onions, carrots, and HALF the garlic to saute in evoo over medium heat until carrot is barely tender. Stir in cumin, salt and pepper. This'll need to season the whole pot of beans, so don't be shy.

Add the rest of the garlic, and a chopped red pepper and saute for another ten or fifteen minutes. Scrape all the veggies into the beans. Add a couple chopped tomatoes if you like. Add a cup and a half of orange juice. Simmer for as long as you can stand it. Stir in some leftover quinoa or rice if you like-- this was my random idea, and an excellent choice if I say so myself. Garnish with any combination of green onion, cilantro, cheddar, crumbled tortilla chips, hot sauce and/or sour cream. Oh boy this was good, and it'll be even better today.
And lastly, oatmeal cinnamon waffles. These were pretty good, but not good enough to share the recipe here. Email me if you absolutely need the recipe.
Sorry for cramming so much food into so little space. This blog is starting to look like my fridge.

The Improvisational Kook

2009-01-01T10:21:00.000-08:00

So when you're fourteen and a freshman in high school and you're looking around at all the candidates for your life-long best friend, my advice is that you choose someone who is very creative and generous. Trust me, it really pays off. After many years of hard work, you can actually trick this person into thinking that you're worthy of her attentions, and she'll start to give you some incredible stuff.

As if walls full of art work, and several rad pieces of handmade or hand-silkscreened clothing were not enough, my well-chosen friend Hilary sent me this book for Christmas. It is, as usual, handmade-- and when I say handmade, I mean bound and designed by HAND. This ain't no gussied up storebought sketchbook. Anyway, in the words of the author, here is the thesis of the creation:

A cookbook! Or should I say Kookbook? I have always enjoyed the syntax of Hilary's recipes-- I've got a few treasures from years past, and it's really fun to laugh while cooking at phrases like "splashies of tamari" and "lemon of 1 juice." This book is no exception in the creative descriptions department, but it is also so so much more. Look at these pages for example.
Beautiful! In her characteristic style, she mixes and matches drawings and prints. How appropriate that recipes are the newest addition to her amalgamation of media; if any of you have ever eaten something that Hilary has cooked, chances are you've swooned and asked, "What's IN this?" But like any true creative, Hilary shuns precise measurements and instructions.
There are as few numbers and quantities as possible, which can be a bit unnerving for a Virgo cook like me. But the principle is sound: she wants you to trust yourself and your ability to think of the meal as a balanced composition. Why should some recipe-writer miles away from one's own town and life and tastes know any better how to assemble your dinner?

And so I started with two of the recipes and ran with them. It's what Hilary would have wanted. I made the "Marinated and Baked Tofu" (soy sauce, ginger, garlic, sesame and olive oils, pepper, chili flakes, lime juice-- that was my version, not Hil's) and cubed it up and threw it on top of "Taylor's Favorite Salad," which is now also Megan's Favorite Salad as well. (Hilary, was this inspired by The Bangkok from Savor?)
It's a pretty basic salad-- lettuce, tomatoes, cukes, carrots, lots of cilantro, green onions, but it stands out in three ways. One, the aforementioned tofu, especially if it's eaten while still warm. Two, a lovely and spontaneous sweet and salty Asian-flavored salad dressing composed of orange and lime juices, soy sauce, oils, ginger, honey, and other stuff probably too that you can find if you rummage around. And three, a crunchy nut topping akin to crack cocaine in its addictiveness. I got a little wild with my nut topping too-- I threw some honey roasted peanuts, coconut, and cashews into the mortar and pestle and pounded them into a rough crumble. And as you can see, I did not use sparingly.
It was so delicious! Adam wasn't feeling well and only ate a bite or two of his before going to bed early, so after inhaling mine I polished his off as well. I'm not proud to admit it, but I mention it as a testament to the deliciousness. There are lots of leftover salad makings, so tonight I'm going to make it again, only this time I'm going to top it with Chili/Tamarind shrimp. Drooling yet?

Here's one last excerpt from Hil's book. Don't forget the peeper!

The Virtues of Being a Follower

2008-12-29T21:01:00.000-08:00

Blogger.com has this cool feature where you can declare your love publicly for Armchair Foodie, as well as staying apprised of all my posts via your own blog's dashboard. Just click on "Follow This Blog" to the right to become a True Follower. Come on, everyone's doing it. Ok, well my mom and my sister-in-law are. But they're both two very happening chicks.

Soul Food

2008-12-29T19:26:00.000-08:00

Happy Holidays, Friends.

The following is my very first explicitly NON-food-related post. In the interest of proving my total devotion to a life lived through food, I had vowed not to jibber jabber off-topic. But I just returned from a trip where I had a life-changing experience, not in a restaurant, but in a tiny apartment in a downtown Vancouver high-rise where there is a business called, of all things, Smile Thai Massage. Don't let the simply optimistic name (or the potentially smarmy combination of the words "Smile" and "Massage") distract you.

In the hands of Austin Sakchai you will find yourself... reborn. If you should find yourself in Vancouver, treat yourself to the best (and, if you can believe it, least expensive) massage of your life. Just in case you didn't catch the hint or two, find his web site here.

And, to get you in the mood for Vancouver, here's a cool shot I took from Stanley Park.

Stir Crazy Days

2008-12-21T21:25:00.000-08:00

This is my default outfit for the last week. I told you I wasn't going to show it, but it's become so part of my every day life that it just didn't seem right to hold out on you any longer. Though the mannish snow pants were strategically cropped from the picture. Anyway, I've got another snow day from work tomorrow. The freeway is closed. My grandma in Wilsonville had to cancel her holiday travel plans to my mom's house, leaving both of them vastly disappointed. My own trip (romantic getaway to Vancouver followed by a couple days visiting my sister Claire in Seattle), scheduled for Wednesday, is starting to look dicey. This weather is starting to be a bit of a bummer, my friends. I keep telling myself it's really not that bad, but then when I think of Adam driving on the freeway at five o'clock tomorrow morning and I break into a cold sweat, I realize that I have been slightly kidding myself.

And to top it all off, we've been stuffing our gullets with carbs galore. It must be that cold-phobic, nesting instinct kicking in full force because my meals have consisted of a multitude of flour- and lipid-based products; today alone we had pancakes, cheese and crackers, spaghetti, and cookies. So by the time dinner rolled around, it was definitely time for something decent.

Enter the vegetarian's friend, Seitan. For those of you who have never heard of it, it's a form of wheat gluten that, like tofu, complements the flavors of whatever you cook it with. Unlike tofu, it has a slightly tougher, chewier texture and in the words of Adam, "Mmm! It takes like chicken!" Sorta looks like it too:
After sauteing it with some onions, shallots, and garlic for a few minutes in olive and sesame oils, I added chopped kale and purple cabbage. Pretty colors:
I popped a lid on the pan for 5 or 10 minutes so the veggies would steam themselves, and then stirred in a sauce consisting of the seitan's juices (reserved), some cornstarch dissolved in water, soy sauce, fish sauce, chili flakes, and pepper. Served over rice with a splash of sesame seeds on top, it really turned into a "chicken" stir fry to write home about. If the local postal service weren't shut down, that is.
P.S. I started a new infusion today. I had all these lemons that I was going to bring to a meeting for work (as garnishes for sparkling water) but it was cancelled because of the weather. Luckily I had a bit of vodka left and luckily I didn't know what the hell else to do with the lemons, and so in a few days I'll have a zinger of an alcoholic beverage to enjoy in front of the woodstove. I added some sugar too, to see if I can make it taste like Limoncello.

Cold Day, Hot Food

2008-12-19T21:41:00.000-08:00

This is my backyard right now. Actually, the snow is about twice as deep now as it was when this picture was taken this morning. Also, that very excellent looking icicle is no longer with us because I discovered today that Adam has somewhat of a compulsion about wrenching off icicles. As soon as one forms on the eaves of the house, he pulls it off. The things we learn about the people we love.

Anyway, when weather like this hits, making soup is pretty much required and as luck would have it, I didn't even have to set foot in the snow for it. If you don't already know it by now, discovering that I just by chance have the ingredients for a cool dish without having to shop is one of the GREATEST things EVER. So, the presence of a two-pound bag of carrots in the fridge dictated what kind of soup it would be...
If you should find your backyard full of snow and your fridge full of carrots any time soon, here's what to do. Wash and roughly chop the carrots (a recipe I was taking inspiration from suggested that I peel them, but I was not about to waste my time with that). Throw them in a pot with 3 or 5 cups of water, and a quartered potato if you've got it. Set it boiling, then simmer, covered, till the veggies are tender.
Meanwhile, roughly chop up a cup's worth of onion and/or shallots and saute them in some olive oil. In a few minutes, add a few cloves of crushed garlic and saute a little longer. Don't get fancy with your chopping-- it's all going in the blender in a few minutes. When they're soft, add a few teaspoons salt, and the herbs and seasonings of your choice. I added cumin, oregano and a little curry powder.

Transfer the carrots, potato, water and the onion/garlic/herb mixture to a blender and puree. Unless your blender is industrial-sized, you will need to do this in batches. Return the lot to the pot and taste. Adjust seasonings as needed. Garnish with any fresh herbs you have lying around-- I happened to have my favorite, cilantro. If no herbs, try some pumpkin or sesame seeds. If no seeds, good old fashioned salt and pepper will also do the trick.
According to the weather forecast we are due for a blizzard this weekend, so Adam and I stocked up on other comfort foods to enjoy once the soup is gone: homemade tamales from a co-worker, good old spaghetti with tomato sauce and garlic bread, breakfast burritos, pancakes... maybe we'll fit a few carbs in there somewhere too. Kidding. More to come from the winter weekend kitchen...

Ghee, this is good.

2008-12-18T19:34:00.000-08:00

Hi Honies!!! I'm home...

Sheesh, I can't believe it's been so long since I last posted. But cut me a break, my (probably few) remaining devoted readers: it's the holidays, which, even if you're a bigger grinch than the Grinch, really throw a wrench into the schedule of daily life. Luckily I'm not a grinch, so I don't mind the alterations; I even like them, most of the time. I even don't mind the several inches of snow we've been showered with over the last few days, though I certainly don't intend to include any photos of myself in my snow gear (hint: this outfit conceals any indication of my gender).

I have been cooking though, and am especially thrilled about the recipe I am posting today, "South Indian Prawns in Coconut." Before I give you the details, let me plug its cookbook for a sec. Don't let the Smarmy-Used-Car-Dealer title fool you; The Classic 1,000 Indian Recipes contains the recipes for utterly authentic Indian food, and I can tell this in two ways. 1. Last week I made two dishes from this book that rivaled some of the best Indian food I've eaten in restaurants. 2. The recipes contain ingredients that you're only going to find in either a really good American ethnic grocery store, or in a standard grocery store... in Bombay. Black mustard seeds. Asafoetida. Black cardamom pods. Gingelly oil. Jaggery. Luckily this recipe suffered not in the slightest from a few missing ingredients.

2 lb. cooked, peeled prawns (just get the frozen bagged kind; it still tastes great)

1 tsp. turmeric

5 Tbsp. coconut milk (I used about double this amount-- your call)

1 cup shredded coconut

2 Tbsp. coriander seeds (I only had ground)

1 Tbsp. cumin seeds

1 large or 2 small dried red chilies

1/4 tsp. black peppercorns (I pestled them)

1 Tbsp. black mustard seeds (if you can find them!!)

2 tsp. tamarind concentrate (ibid)

1 red onion, roughly chopped

5 cloves garlic, roughly chopped or crushed

1 inch ginger root, roughly chopped

3 Tbsp. water

3 Tbsp. oil

2 fresh curry leaves (if you can find them)

2 Tbsp. chopped fresh cilantro

Mix together the prawns, turmeric and salt and set aside for ten minutes. Puree the cocunut milk, coconut, coriander and cumin seeds, chilies, peppercorns, mustard seeds, tamarind, onion, garlic and ginger to a paste, adding water if necessary.

Heat the oil and fry the puree for 10 minutes, stirring continuously. Stir in the prawns and curry leaves and simmer for 10 minutes.

Garnish with the cilantro and serve hot with rice.

My revelation about this dish and another one I made from this book ("Chickpeas in Sauce"), is that the thick, fragrant sauce that most Indian dishes are composed of is made from pureed onions and garlic! If that's your base then no wonder FLAVOR is the name of the game.

Scenes from a Thanksgiving Kitchen

2008-11-30T11:32:00.001-08:00

What a Crock

2008-11-23T09:48:00.000-08:00

For my first crock pot recipe, I tried something on the sweeter side: Rice Pudding. Heretofore a recipe most commonly used when there was at least 2 cups of leftover rice (already cooked) sitting in the fridge, I've now got a recipe that calls for raw rice, which takes a lot longer to cook in a slow cooker, and which means you can leave the house while it simmers. My recipe is also a lot healthier than the ones that call for condensed milk, cream, or eggs. Now that I think about it, it's actually vegan. But don't let that stop you: it's quite rich and delicious.

3/4 c. short grain rice (you could even try brown)

3 c. soy milk (try vanilla-flavored if you've got it)

1/4 c. white sugar

1 1/2 tsp. vanilla

3/4 tsp. salt

2 cinnamon sticks, or ground cinnamon to taste.

Put all ingredients into crock pot, stir well. Cook on low for 2 1/2 hours, stirring once or twice if you're around. And be careful: as is the case with regularly cooked rice, if you leave it on too long, you can over do it. I was out running errands and came home to find my rice pudding quite firm and a tiny bit scorched on the sides. It's still delicious, but I'll keep a better eye on it next time. Enjoy for breakfast, dessert, or snack, chilled or warmed in the microwave.

Turkey Needs a Drink

2008-11-22T12:03:00.000-08:00

Check out my latest science experiment: cranberry-infused vodka. I spent a month fretting about those peaches, infusing and turning progressively browner with each day, and imagining that the whole thing would end up in the compost heap. But last weekend I spent several hours filtering the stuff and once the peaches were dumped, the remaining spirits were clear and a lovely peach hue. And more importantly, it tastes great! Especially mixed with orange juice or lemonade.

So I started another small batch to share with my Thanksgiving company, this time with cranberries. You know, in the holiday spirit and whatnot. Check out the top photo, taken immediately after combining the alcohol with the crushed berries. And the next photo is taken about five days later. The vodka is a bright, zippy red and the cranberries look like maraschino cherries (yuck). I added a little bit of simple syrup to this one, since cranberries are so sour. I wonder what kinds of cocktails I should make with it. Any suggestions?

On Being Loved

2008-11-21T17:28:00.000-08:00

This afternoon I came home from my first professional conference. Like many conferences that you hear about or see in movies, it was put on by an organization with a long and easy-to-forget acronym (AAWCC), and it's held at an airport hotel in one of those large, beige ballrooms. But it was actually wonderful and action-packed. AAWCC stands for the American Association of Women in Community Colleges, and surrounding myself with hundreds of women in my field was inspiring, motivating, and fun. Some of the women there were total powerhouses, and they served as not-too-subtle reminders that it is imperative that I follow in their footsteps. Not only for self-gratifying purposes, but because the country desperately needs well-qualified people leading its public schools. Did you know that the United States is the only country where there is a regressive attainment of college degrees? In other words, people are getting fewer degrees than their parents got. In other words, we are getting less educated. Which is not the case for any other developed nation.

So I drove home with my colleague-- like me, a young, starry-eyed and ambitious lass-- and we spent the whole time figuratively, excitedly, rolling up our sleeves for the arduous careers ahead of us.

And what did I find waiting for me? Love and friendship coming at me on all sides. Whoever said that there is no rest for the weary must not have been lucky enough to have loved ones. For one, my sweet Adam had gone grocery shopping and cooked a lovely and healthy meal for us, consisting of stuffed roasted bell peppers and steamed artichokes. You can see him below, chopping away. Check out his new buzz cut!

And prior to that, I came home from a dog walk to find this lovely Crock Pot sitting on my front doorstep! It came from my new friend Lynne, who had mentioned earlier in the week that she had seen a couple of these handy appliances on sale on our local classified webpage. What with my plans for the conference and a day of feeling under the weather, I wasn't able to respond to the seller and figured I'd probably lose out. But lucky me! I've got a friend, a Crock Pot fairy, who doesn't want me missing out on a winter full of stews and soups. So if you've got any good Crock Pot recipes, please let me know.

The Existential Mess. Dirty Dishes.

2008-11-15T20:08:00.000-08:00

Well, it has been a day. When I imagine my best self-- you know, that productive, talented person that each of us wishes to be and somehow imagines we will become-- I picture a Saturday spent reading copiously, writing semi-copiously, and then procuring in a mere twenty minutes the dinner of a lifetime. I'm sure you all have your own best imagined selves too. Maybe you spend three hours in the garden on the ideal weekend day, or perfect your latest screen print, or paint the deck of your boat. And these projections get so near to our hearts don't they, so important to our senses of self, that when we realize that we are not spending our spare time quite realizing our ambitions, it can be a bit of a crushing blow.

I received that blow a little bit today. I don't read a book a weekend, and I haven't brought myself to write the sparkling, social commentary-saturated book reviews that I visualize myself being so good at. But life was wearing big cushy boxing glove because when it hit me that there are probably not enough hours or days to accomplish every item on the Great To-Do List, it then occurred that I might spend my energy enjoying what I do do. I mean, in other words, life is too short to fret over unattained goals.

And so what did I do today? I cooked!

First, Adam and I whipped up a batch of pumpkin chocolate chip muffins. They are seriously easy, sinfully good, and outrageously fattening. 2 cups of sugar and 1 1/4 c. vegetable oil! But worth every drop. Anyway I've heard that applesauce is a good substitute for oil. But as you can see, I've never bother with such healthy shortcuts. Case in point: you see that round maroon mound on the bottom of the above photo? My belly. Find the recipe here.
Later, after finding three cookbooks on my front doorstep, thanks to a gift certificate to Amazon courtesy of my lovely Grandma, I got inspired to go whole hog and just spend the rest of the evening in the kitchen. Without the hog, of course.
I wish this red chard translated better on screen. It was a glistening ruby bouquet. Inspired by Alice Waters and her Chez Panisse Vegetables, I sauteed some shallots, and then tossed in the chopped chard and braised it, covered, over medium heat for twenty minutes. When it was done it got a little squeeze of lemon, salt, and pepper, but that's all.
Meanwhile, at the direction of Mollie Katzen in her famous Moosewood Cookbook, which it has taken me five years as a vegetarian to finally buy, I made mushroom strudel and was inordinately pleased by how easy it is to make something with filo pastry dough. Or is it phyllo? Katzen spells it filo, the box said phyllo. Tomato, tomahto.

Saute chopped mushrooms, and mix them with goodies like cottage cheese, yogurt, dill, scallions, bread crumbs, lemon juice, etc. and roll it all up in a log. Bake, and then slice, as below:
Notice how the chard looks almost black. Quite a meal. I'll probably make a few adjustments to the filo next time I cook with it-- you need more oil between "leaves" than you'll probably want to use in order to avoid a thick, cardboard-like material; and next time I won't spend so much time draining the precious juices from the mushrooms, like Katzen directed me. But, as you can see, the campers were happy. And there were muffins for dessert.

So, life is short. If I can't review novels for the New York Times, then I'll review cookbooks and my imagination for my blog. I'm already happy anyway, so it's all the same.

Frustrated Foodie

2008-11-12T21:50:00.000-08:00

Aaargh!!! I've been trying to upload some apple pie pictures for the last few days, and Blogger is really letting me down. Every time I select the file to upload, the little wheel just spins and spins ad infinitum until I give up and close the window. I've started saving the photos much smaller (ie, fewer pixels) so I know it can't be a size issue.

What should I do? All you techies out there, help! I'll reward you with some sumptuous pictures of homemade apple pie.

Perhaps I need to start looking for a new host....

How to Clean Out Your Fridge Without Making Soup; Or, Casseroles 101; Or, If You Need To Fake It, Bake It

2008-11-06T20:54:00.000-08:00

Some people are just cuckoo for soup. Not me. I did make soup this season as my faithful readership knows. It even came out good, not to mention served as a perfect final resting place for some celery that was really starting to confound me. But, there's something about soup that's just so insubstantial. So... thin. I like to chew my food. So imagine my happy surprise when I discovered that a casserole is just as perfect a place for all the random tidbits in the fridge as soup is. Even more perfect, really, if you're like me and don't love to drink your meals. So the above three pictures are examples of casseroles I've made over the past couple weeks-- some were loosely inspired by recipes, but all were made mostly with what I already had on hand. By the time I got to casserole #3, I was so intrigued by the possibility of baking something delicious without doing ANY shopping, that I deliberately stayed away from the store, even though I might have thought it would benefit from some this or some that. Self-reliance, people. That's what we're going for here.

Casserole #1: Rice (pre-cooked), crumbled tofu, chopped kalamata olives, spinach, some kind of cheese (I forget), a couple eggs for a binder, and chopped red onions and toasted chopped almonds both inside and reserved for garnish. Except for the garnish, mix all of the above and bake in a large dish till crispy and golden. This one got high marks for flavor, but low marks for moisture. Next time I'll add another egg, maybe some milk.

Casserole #2: This really is no different from potatoes au gratin, so I won't trouble you with how to make it, since there are probably several thousand such recipes available on the internet. Three things I did somewhat creatively, and that I'd recommend: use Fontina cheese (a whole wedge of it, half mixed with the milk and poured in with the sliced potatoes, and the other half sprinkled on top 3/4 of the way through baking); season it with pestled cumin seeds; and garnish it with salsa. It was a gorgeous, Latin rendition of a classic American dish.

Casserole #3: This one was by far the best, and I'm most proud of it because it was based on no recipe whatsoever, and like I said, I refused to shop for it. Last night I prepped everything: I made 2 cups (uncooked) rice. And the best way to make rice is to start out sauteing onions and garlic, then add the rice and water and prepare as usual. I roasted chopped carrots and, after 15minutes, added green beans to the pan. In a separate pan I roasted large chunks of tomatoes. I went to bed.

Then tonight when I got home from work, I put the rice in a huge bowl and dumped in all the roasted veggies (WITH juices!). I whisked two eggs with about a half cup of sawdust parmesan (like I said, I refused to go to the store), a half cup of milk, some cumin, oregano, s&p, and then stirred that in with the rice and vegetables. When the mixture is uniform, spoon it into your baking dish (which I deliberately hadn't washed after roasting the carrots and green beans in it). Sprinkle with Panko and more parmesan. Bake at 375 till golden! Oh, man it was good. Due to the roasted tomatoes and parmesan, it was faintly redolent of pizza, but is there anything wrong with that?

And just as an aside, I have to point out this tomato (see below). This came from one of Adam's coworker's gardens, and I used it on the 4th of NOVEMBER. This is a very late tomato, my friends. It's an Election Day tomato. Notice, too, how the tomato is in the shape of a heart. As in, I (heart) Obama.

Open Fridges Down Under

2008-11-03T20:04:00.000-08:00

Hi Friends,

Check out the latest blog post of Confessions of a Food Nazi. She has rounded up everybody's fridge photos, including that of Yours Truly. Pretty Cute!

Love,

Megan.

P.S. Don't forget to V-O-T-E tomorrow!!!

Autumn's Up

2008-10-31T20:05:00.000-07:00

When I got home from work this evening I was knocked squarely in the face with the full force of fall. A crisp bike commute and the fact that it's Halloween did no little work to invigorate me to the season of spices and woodsmoke, so I went inside to get my camera and came back out to just sort of roll around in the leaves a bit. You know when the clouds get that fuzzy, quilted effect? (See above picture for a pathetic representation.) Like the whole world is tucking in and hunkering down. Which reminded me: I went inside and tossed some firewood into our new favorite contraption, the woodstove, and got it goin' nice and cracklin' hot. Woodstoves are what every home should come with, because we have not turned on our heat but once or twice this year. We've also been sleeping on the foldout couch in the living room because our bedroom, on the other side of the house, is the approximate temperature of a meatlocker. But anyway.

The evening called for something hearty, and the last of the late season's crop of tomatoes, courtesy of our friend Raina, were duly chopped, tossed with a bit of olive oil, salt, pepper, and thyme, and roasted in a big Pyrex with garlic. I kept the cloves whole, but probably wouldn't again with this recipe. If you decide to give this a whirl, give your garlic a nice chop.

Meanwhile I boiled a mess of spaghetti and when I poured it out to drain, I let some ricotta melt in the hot pot. Suggested ratio of pasta to ricotta: about a half pound of pasta to 1 cup ricotta. For greater richness and fat content, add more ricotta to taste.

When the tomatoes are shriveled and brown around the edges, spoon them with all their attendant juices into the pot with the ricotta. Mix the two till you get a thick, pink sauce and add more salt and pepper to taste. Stir in pasta, and if too thick, add a couple tablespoons of the pasta water, which you have wisely reserved.

Enjoy in front of a hot woodstove.

Bare Naked Fridge

2008-10-27T22:59:00.000-07:00

Dear Confessions of a Food Nazi,

I can't resist a good, weird challenge. When you defied your fellow bloggers to reveal the contents of their fridge I felt that inexplicable, sadistic call toward complete self-exposure. So here it is. If I am what I eat, then... hmm. I must not be very exciting.

A large tupperware full of shredded purple cabbage, leftover rice, soy milk, homemade vinaigrette, tortillas, cornmeal, pickles, cheap parmesan/sawdust... God, what do I EAT? I swear I put together round meals on a regular basis...

The funniest part of this exercise, and really, the only reason I published the stricken state of my fridge for all to see, is my freezer. Aside from a few non-descripts and some ice trays, check out the three main items, from left to right. Ice cream. Vodka. Shrimp skins.

Come on, they're for stock!!

Thanks for the challenge,

Megan.

P.S. Melbourne rocks! I spent a few happy weeks there once. Betcha never heard of Hood River, Oregon.

Sumptuous Sushi

2008-10-26T15:28:00.000-07:00

For some reason I have to be in just the right mood for sushi. But then, when I'm eating it, I think "I love this stuff. I need to be eating this on a very regular basis." Happily, there is an incredible sushi bar in town called Sushi Okalani. It is the spot that I will be indulging in what I hope to be a much more frequent communication with this fresh and sort of funny dish. The owner, a balding and bespectacled Rick Moranis-type, stood behind the bar with his sous chefs the entire time Adam and I were there, with his hands wrist-deep in sticky rice and strips of raw fish. I like it when a proprietor is down in the trenches like that-- it conveys a sense of pride, and the notion that "if you want something done... ."

But I'm glad for selfish reasons too, because I had the pleasure of sampling some of this man's truly heavenly creations. To start we had a filet of Crispy Grilled Trout. It arrived unassumingly, with only some scant sliced cabbage beneath it which seemed to serve less as a garnish than as a ventilating method to prevent the fish from getting soggy on the plate. The filet itself wore a thin, crispy, tempura-type batter and came with a bowl of dipping sauce on the side. The sauce was awesome: sweet and salty and suggestive (not the harsh, jelly-like teriyaki glaze you'll find at a lesser joint), but it was just the icing on the cake because the fish itself was fresh, tender and flavorful. Even the skin was yummy and oily but not rubbery in the way that fish skin can too often become.

But here was the real star of the show:

Called the Locals Only Te Maki, this gorgeous sushi roll contained smoked Steelhead, sauteed lobster mushrooms, and I believe some slivers of cucumber. It was absolute heaven. There are few things tastier to my mind than a well-smoked piece of fish. To pair it with some pretty dang interesting mushrooms, and then to wrap it all in the perennially yummy combo of seaweed and sticky rice... well, let's just say you've got some serious moaning and groaning going on.

Interesting note: I just looked up Steelhead on wikipedia and you might like to know that Steelhead and Rainbow Trout are exactly the same species, but only Steelhead go to the ocean for a few years and then return to fresh water to spawn. Rainbow Trout live in fresh water their whole lives. The flesh of Rainbow Trout is white and the flesh of the Steelhead, as you can see, is pink like salmon. I'm not sure why this is, since they are virtually the same species. I imagine it's due to varying diets, but my cursory research didn't shed any light on that.

The roll was so good that, after we had cleaned our plate (even munching down all the pickled ginger when the sushi was gone), we called for another order and happily put that away too. This on top of a Spicy Tuna roll and some Inari! What's that you say? Smoked fish has no place in a sushi roll? You're not supposed to cook the veggies first? Well, my friends, I guess only locals would understand.
The meal was rounded out by a great bottle of sake, called Hakutsuru Junmai Daiginjo. Hakutsuru is the name, but Junmai Daiginjo refers to the production method of the sake. The rice used has a high polish, which means a large percentage of each grain of rice (at least 50%!) is buffered off, leaving only the creamy, flawless inner part. The brewing methods are much more careful, too, and sake of this quality is often handmade, instead of being entrusted to machines. The restaurant served it chilled with a highball class, instead of one of those thimble sized-ones we're all used to. Easier to get a good nose on it that way. (The only reason I know any of this stuff is that I wrote an article for the Portland Monthly on another kind of sake, to be published in November! More on that when the article comes out.)

It was an exquisite meal. Perhaps my reticence toward sushi was just proof that I hadn't found the right purveyor, because it's only been 24 hours and I'm already sensing a craving coming on...

Another Old Standby

2008-10-21T20:12:00.001-07:00

Back when I lived in Santa Fe, I had the great good pleasure of having The Best Neighbors Ever. And, yes, by those capital letters, I mean to say that it's official. They are the best. Ever. Among the many things that Doug and Jenni did to support, entertain, counsel, and just all around make us feel good, they also had us over for dinner. And since you know that the most direct route to my heart is through my stomach, I thought it was very cool that our neighbors took it upon themselves to feed us every once in a while.

And one evening Jenni whipped up some of her Curried Red Lentils. I immediately requested the recipe, and I've been making this lovely, simple dish once every few months ever since. Since Jenni was so cheerfully willing to part with the How-To, I'm sure she wouldn't mind if I shared it with you here.

In order to keep this recipe as UN-time-consuming as possible, here's what you can do the night before.

--Cook enough rice to yield 2 or 3 cups (with, as Jenni suggested, but I've never been willing to spring for it, a pinch of saffron) and just leave it in the pot with the lid on in the fridge.

--Chop one small or half a large onion, a clove or two of garlic, a red bell pepper (and I threw in a couple ribs of celery for the first time tonight), and store in the fridge.

When you want to eat,

-- Saute your chopped veggies in a splash of evoo "until softish," as Jenni writes in my recipe book.

--Rinse a cup or so of red lentils, add to the pot with the veggies, and add water to cover. You can add more water as it cooks down, if you like. You'll find the consistency that you dig after you make it a couple times.

--While it simmers add any or all of these spices: curry*, s&p*, cumin*, coriander, allspice, turmeric, and tonight I thought "What the Hey," and I tossed in a little cinnamon and ground cloves. *= most important.

--As the lentils are cooking, add a couple tablespoons of water to the rice, and re-heat on a low burner.

--When lentils are tender and spices are adjusted, serve spooned over rice.

--Garnish with yogurt, chopped parsley or cilantro, and a small squirt of Bragg's Liquid Aminos or soy sauce.

Not only is this recipe utterly delicious and fantastically easy, it reminds me of friendship. Here's to that!

Tuck in Thyme

2008-10-19T13:54:00.000-07:00

At last! The season for justified vegetating on the couch all day is here! And thank god, because I've got some serious reading and movie-watching to catch up on. I must say, I'm a bit relieved too that the spectacular, but let's admit it, rather fragile produce of the spring and summer is no longer around for us to exalt and make a fuss over. (Full disclosure: I'll be exalting with the best of them come May.) But now is the time for hardy fruits and veggies, like tubers and apples and pumpkins. Good, wholesome, blue-collar vegetables that can sit in the produce bowl or in the crisper for a few weeks until you rediscover them. And when you do discover them and cut off a few brown spots, you can throw them all in a pot and their flavors all come together unpretentiously to make a delicious soup. Like so:

This yummy concoction was born of no recipe at all, which is the great thing about veggie soup. It's spontaneous, and it's a fabulous way to clean out the fridge. This particular batch contains a russet potato (bought a couple weeks ago for breakfast burritos that never came to be), celery (purchased by Adam for some reason but never used), carrots (which are always sitting around), half an onion, a leek (the only ingredient bought special for the soup, for its flavor), garlic, a yam (not sure where that came from) and spinach (bought on sale a few days ago because it was old and ready to meet it's maker).

The hardest part about it all is the cleaning, peeling, and chopping. Luckily you don't need to be pretty about it. Saute all the hard, dense veggies (in my case, everything but the spinach) for five or eight minutes in a big soup pot with some olive oil. By the way, I'm noticing lately that recipes are telling me to wait a few minutes before adding the garlic to a saute. I've tried it a couple times, and I think I like this new method-- it seems to prevent the garlic from burning. While you're stirring the saute, mortar and pestle a few herbs that you like, such as thyme, oregano, salt, pepper, and toss in.

Pour stock, water, bouillion, or any combination thereof to cover. Put a lid on the pot and just leave it alone for an hour or so. Stir once in a while. When the veggies were tender, I turned off the heat and stirred in the chopped spinach. Season to taste with more s&p, a sprinkling of parmesan, or if you really want to get fancy, a dollop of pesto.

Instead of messing with pesto, I decided to focus on the other integral part of soup: the bread. If all you've got in the house is sliced, storebought wheat and some oyster crackers then it's time to roll up your sleeves and fish out a packet of yeast from the fridge, where you have wisely stored it. Then you can make some of this utterly delicious focaccia, whose recipe you can find here. In the recipe, it tells you to make one "loaf" with thyme kneaded into it, and the other with parmesan sprinkled on top, which to me is sort of like eating a peanut butter sandwich one day and a jelly sandwich the next. So I made BOTH loaves with thyme and parmesan and threw some sliced tomatoes on (before baking) to boot.

The hot soup and warm crusty/chewy focaccia were pure comfort, so delicious and homey that after dinner Adam and I immediately retreated to the couch to snuggle. Not long after, the kids followed suit:

Sipping Pretty

2008-10-18T16:19:00.001-07:00

One of the great things about living in a small town is taking trips to the big city. Last night I went to a French short film festival at the Portland Art Museum and then went out for a late-night artichoke and arugula dip at an old favorite, The Sapphire Hotel. I was practically overdosing on culture after such a prolonged stretch without it. Don't get me wrong: I love my orchards and countryside bike rides and killer farmer's markets. It's just nice to get gussied up and stay out past 9pm every once in a while.

Last week, for example, I made the trip out to Portland and engaged in a nice, close examination of the fine art of cocktails. And no better place to do research than at the Nuevo Latino-inspired Andina restaurant in the Pearl district. And though Raina and I munched on Yucca croquettes dipped in three different kinds of salsa, and shrimp-salad-stuffed avocado halves, the snacks were really just there to accessorize the true purpose of our visit. Mine, a cocktail I now daydream about at the end of a long workday at the rural community college, is called the Sacsayhuaman (sound it out). It consists of habanero-infused vodka, passion-fruit
puree, cane sugar, a sugar rim, and a cilantro leaf garnish. It's darn near perfect: spicy, sweet, tropical. It's hard not to suck it down and order two more.

And here's Raina's: the Atardecer Porteno. To quote from the menu, because I couldn't top this description: "pink quava nectar shaken with honey infused vodka and lime juice topped with a float of ruby port and a spritz of lime zest, served up with an anise sugar rim." Whoa. As you can see it looks like a sunset, which reminds me of the exact time of day I'd like it to be when I'm sitting on a cafe terrace in Rio de Janeiro, sipping on this very drink and happily regarding the Atlantic.

Modern Day Madeleine

2008-10-12T10:44:00.000-07:00

It takes a lot to be able to call a place home. When I moved from San Francisco to Santa Fe-- i.e., from my hometown and the greatest city on earth to some dusty, forgotten trading post in the middle of a state a lot of Americans have never heard of-- I had no intention of putting down roots. Funny how fast a girl can eat her words. As it turned out, Santa Fe was such a magical place that just one blog post could never do it justice. I might be a bit biased-- after all, I spent two years at a wonderful school, I met my future husband, I got a really fantastic dog, and had some great friends during the time I spent in The City Different. The cards really were stacked in my favor.

But let me describe one of the things that makes Santa Fe, and the southwest as a whole, objectively special: chile. My first night in Santa Fe, I arrived at the hostel after dark. Hungry and tired, I asked at the front desk if there were any decent restaurants close by that would still be open. Ten minutes later I was sitting at a little two-top tucked in the corner of one of the dark, labyrinthine rooms of a Santa Fe institution, Maria's New Mexican Kitchen. While I stared at a margarita menu several pages long, a waiter who looked and acted like he'd been working there for 20 years (and I later found out that he had), asked me what'll I have. Cheese enchiladas, please. Red, green, or Christmas? he asked. When I looked up at him blankly, he actually cracked a smile and said, Red chile, Green chile, or both? And right then and there, yet another fierce addiction to chile was born.

Some people adhere to red chile, the chile which has been allowed to ripen to redness and is then dried-- it's a much smokier, earthier flavor, and often much spicier than the green. And others are intense supporters of the green chile, picked while still young and then roasted in massive, rotating metal roasters till the skins blister off. Green chile, since it is cooked fresh, is always chunky; red chile, since it's made from dried chiles that must be blended, is always smooth. Both, especially in late fall right after harvest, are as spicy as anything you have ever eaten. I myself, ever since my first night in Maria's, have always been a Christmas girl.

After Adam and I graduated from school, curiosity brought us to Portland, and then a year and a half later, a job opportunity brought us out to Hood River. We love it here, and I hope we stay a long time, but we are both homesick for Santa Fe, there's no denying it. But as luck would have it, New Mexicans are not as few and far between as I thought, and I discovered that not only is one of my new co-workers from Albuquerque, but she loves chile too! Loves it so much that she stocks up on it when she goes home to visit, and even had enough to give me a bag of it! I couldn't believe my luck, and after some cursory protestations, I happily received her kind gift.

A couple nights later, look what Adam and I had for dinner:

Green chile enchiladas! Though the October Gorge winds whipped around outside our house, and the snow-capped Mt. Adams sat stately in the dining room window, we were transported to the dry sunny heat of the high desert for a few happy minutes.

My coworker gave me a great recipe for green chile sauce, too-- after thawing the raw green chile, you just stir it into a roux and then thin or thicken to your contentment with water. You may also add oregano and cumin if you like. If your chile is from New Mexico, you will NOT need to make it any spicier than it already is. Case in point, my shiny forehead:

As we gasped and exhaled and chugged water, Adam said, "Woo! I'm starting to get leaky." and he blew his nose. We laughed, and reminisced some more about our beloved southwestern town.

Garden Nymphs

2008-10-09T09:02:00.000-07:00

My friend Raina is "that friend," the friend that each of us has at least one of, the friend who has an incredible garden. The garden that, if you weren't so proud of your friend, you'd be extremely jealous of. A recent evening when Raina had a few of us over for dinner, us girls went out to take a look at the finale of her veggies. As we discovered, the veggies were still going strong in late September. The tomatoes were almost shoulder high, and hid tons of little, red ripe ones under her skirts; the cucumbers yielded almost five massive fruits; and the chard just wouldn't quit-- Raina said she was harvesting it for the fifth time that season. There were carrots too-- cute, crisp ones, and as you can probably see in the background of some of the shots, Raina's nasturtium is aspiring to a mountainous size. Berkeley (curly hair) and I were so excited by the bounty and thrilled by Raina's (blue tank top) handiwork, we decided to have an impromptu photo shoot. Here we are rolling around in the garden, picking veggies, eating them straight from the vine, and just all around loving and relishing the fact that you can grow what you eat. Astonishing.

Hoppy Boy

2008-10-06T23:02:00.001-07:00

Here's a shot of a festive-looking Adam right at the start of our shift as pourers at the 2008 Annual Hood River HopsFest. It was also taken right before my camera died, so I don't have any other documentation of the next three hours of rain-soaked beer drinkers wandering among the dozen or so breweries' tables tasting, quaffing, or otherwise chugging the fruits of this year's hops harvest. It was fun, though it is rather unfortunate that hops have to be harvested late enough in the year that the beer they end up going into won't be ready till October; I had to sit through untold demonstrations of Adam literally pouring water out of his shoes, a sight to momentarily dampen even the most voracious appetite for a good local microbrew.

Easy Weeknight Recipe

2008-10-05T17:18:00.001-07:00

Has it really been a week since my last post? Being a working girl now whose day ends at 7pm, far too late to serve a decent dinner before 9pm, I've had to make some adjustments. I will admit there was a little bit of a tantrum last week, when I threw down the kitchen towel and made some comment along the lines of not being able to let my artistry shine under these conditions, and we went to the (very cheap and very delicious) taco truck on Cascade Ave. for dinner.

Luckily, in my search for recipes that are relatively quick, yummy, and healthy, I came across this winner. The tofu did take a little longer than I had hoped to roast, but maybe a firmer tofu and a higher temperature would help this problem. So, on a hectic weeknight when you can't in good conscience go the taco truck again, try:

Roasted Tofu with Shiitake and Ginger Over Spinach

6 Tbsp. soy sauce

6 Tbsp. rice wine vinegar

3 Tbsp. plus 1 Tbsp. evoo

2 1/2 Tbsp. honey

2 1/2 Tbsp. minced fresh ginger

2 cloves garlic, minced

3/4 lb. shiitake and/or crimini mushrooms, sliced*

1 lb. firm tofu, patted dry, sliced 1/2 inch thick

1 quart baby spinach leaves

*For the record, crimini mushrooms are young portabellas. Consider this when paying twice as much per pound for their parents in the grocery store.

1. Preheat the oven to 400. In a bowl whisk together the soy sauce, vinegar, oil, honey, ginger, and garlic. Place the mushrooms in a bowl and add enough marinade to evenly cover them. In the remaining marinade, bathe each tofu slice and then arrange in a baking dish. Bake tofu, pouring remaining marinade over halfway through, until marinade is evaporated and tofu is brown around the edges, about 30 minutes. Spread the mushrooms out in a large baking dish and transfer to oven, baking until tender and golden, about 10 to 15 minutes.

2. In about a tablespoon of evoo (or sesame oil, if you've got it), briefly saute the spinach until just tender. Turn off heat even before you think it's done. It'll wilt while it sits in the pan. When tofu and mushrooms are done, arrange spinach on plates; top with slices of tofu, followed by mushrooms. Sprinkle with sesame seeds for garnish (optional).

The Pear That Found Itself

2008-09-28T17:27:00.001-07:00

Once upon a time there were two enormous Comice Pears. Well, for that matter, there is a whole bag of them, but suspecting their ripeness, I only started with two. I washed and sliced them in preparation for the next vodka infusion. But as I sliced, my suspicions were confirmed-- they were too crisp, and not sweet enough. And so I needed to think of another plan.

I thought of my beloved radio show, The Splendid Table, and the advice given on it last week to a caller who had to figure out what to do with his bumper crop of pears. The infinitely knowledgeable host Lynn Rosetto-Kaspar suggested a roast. Sprinkle the sliced pears in olive oil, sugar, cinnamon, and rosemary (pestled to avoid crunch) and spread out in a casserole. Roast in a hot (450) oven until brown, bubbly, and carmelized.

The result was gorgeous, rich, and delicious. But what to do with them? Was I to eat them plain? While eating one slice was decadent, I couldn't foresee that I wouldn't be wholly taking advantage of the flavors eating them unaccompanied. And so I whipped up a coffee cake, the recipe for which belonged to my great-grandmother. Instead of chopped walnuts or pecans for the topping, I toasted and chopped some almonds instead. Also, in went the pears (chopped).

The cake, as you can see, is beautiful, and better yet, it tastes great. The sweet, smoky roasted pears provide the perfect mushiness to counterbalance the crunchy nuts, and to moisten the dense cake. I knew these pears were destined for something great-- and to think, I had planned for them something as lowly as vodka! (The pears' brothers and sisters, however, still ripening in a bag on the counter, won't be so lucky.)

Looking Sharp

2008-09-27T11:13:00.000-07:00

Dear Mary and Mike,

Your wonderful birthday present-- a Chef's Choice Diamond Hone Knife Sharpener-- arrived in the mail yesterday. Thank you! I was so excited that I plugged it in, and after a cursory reading of the directions (which I wouldn't normally do, but it seemed worthwhile in the interest of my knives), proceeded to sharpen every knife in the house. It worked beautifully! Knives that I had given up for worthless were slicing my test apple into paper-thin slivers.

The occasional addition of a luxury item to the kitchen is so exciting-- it feels like the breakthrough of an industry, like the invention of the cotton-gin or the printing press-- because my food improves exponentially. Some recent breakthroughs in Megan's Kitchen, Inc.: a food processor (I can't believe I used to rely on a blender!!), a mortar and pestle (ah, the flavors of crushed herbs!!), and now, a knife sharpener (chopping is fun again!). To carry on with my industrial metaphor, I thank you for your investment. As a stockholder, I'm sure you'll be very pleased with the dividends (when you come to visit and eat my cooking). In the meantime, rest assured that your son and I eat very well.

Love, Megan.

Pizza My Heart

2008-09-24T20:56:00.001-07:00

I think the food that I crave most often is pizza. Then margaritas, then Thai food. In that order. Luckily, the #1 craving is extremely easy and delicious to make at home. Even easier than margaritas, if you can believe it (all that business about lime juice and triple sec in perfect proportion to tequila-- it's a mystery). And if you make your own crust and sauce, the tastier it'll be. But don't get intimidated, because you can segment your tasks, and when it comes time to actually bake and eat it, you'll be satisfied in minutes flat. So, here's how to make pizza in five easy steps, steps which do not necessarily need to be completed in proximity to one another.

1. Dough. This is the hard part, if you can call it hard. If you haven't worked with yeast, or kneaded dough, it may intimidate. But look at it this way. If you've always wanted to learn how to make bread, perhaps pizza dough is the best way to start because a) you only let it rise once and b) it makes no difference how ugly it is-- you'll be slathering it with toppings. So:

Pour a packet of yeast into a measuring cup (the large Pyrex kinds with a handle and spout are best, so you've got room to spare). Without yet filling the measuring cup, get the hot water going with your finger under it until you reach a temperature comparable to that of a hot tub or bath. Fill the measuring cup to 1 1/3 cups. Let sit under the stove light, or even in the oven with the light on for five-ten minutes so that the yeast will re-awaken. Meanwhile, measure 4 cups flour (feel free to substitute half with wheat), 2 Tbsp. veg or olive oil, and 1 tsp. salt into a bowl. When the yeast/water is foamy and bubbly, add to the flour mixture. Mix well with your hands, and turn out onto a floured surface. Knead for ten minutes (you'll work up a sweat). Cover with a damp cloth and let rise for two hours. I usually stick my rising dough back in the oven with the light on, and hey, if you need to get ready for work, give it as much time as you can; in my case, an hour. When you're flying out the door, stick the dough in an air tight plastic bag and throw it in the fridge.

2. Sauce. So easy. Roughly slice, chop, or crush as many garlic cloves as you desire. Let sizzle lightly in a Tbsp. olive oil for a minute or two. Add a can of chopped tomatoes. Season to taste with your favorite herbs (some of my faves: a touch of rosemary, liberal oregano, basil, a touch of cinnamon, salt, pepper, red pepper flakes). Be sure and add a teaspoon or two of sugar. This cuts the acidity. Pour the lot into the blender and blend. Some may prefer to leave it chunky, but I don't want to interfere with the toppings.

3. Prepping the dough. You'll want to take it out of the fridge a fair while before it's time to bake; I'd say a half an hour or so. If you're planning on baking soon, set the dough (still in the bag, or on a pan) on top of the stove while it pre-heats (to 400 degrees). This'll soften the dough more quickly. When it gets malleable, squish and push and squeege the dough outward on a cookie sheet that has been greased or sprinkled with cornmeal until its big and flat-- no thicker than a quarter inch. I only put this as its own step because it takes a while for the dough to soften after being cold.

4. Toppings! This is the best part. First off, get fontina cheese instead of mozzarella. I read this once for a lasagna recipe and I will never, ever go back. Fontina is to a Moonstruck Chocolate truffle as mozzarella is to the waxy, tasteless chocolates you find in an advent calendar. Trust me on this one. But as for the rest of your toppings, the sky is truly the limit. See how many old things in the back of your fridge or cupboards you can use up for a topping. Canned pineapple? Pine nuts? Basil from the garden? Some mushrooms on the verge of funkiness? Maybe even some fruit? I've heard some intriguing things about the combo of pears and blue cheese. Have it your way. My own concoction pictured here consists of onions, red bell pepper, kalamata olives, sundried tomatoes, fresh tomatoes, red pepper flakes, and parmesan.

5. Bake. I'm bad at giving times. People like their food different ways. But here's what to look for: bubbling cheese that's just beginning to brown. Fifteen, maybe eighteen minutes. Then it's done. Remove from oven. Let cool if you can bear it. Enjoy. You deserve it: you built it from scratch!

Day Two-- Infusions

2008-09-24T08:58:00.000-07:00

Coming along nicely, eh? The fruit is surrendering its color and life-force to the vodka in holy self-sacrifice, and meantime, the vodka is becoming a rich, peachy and, I hate to say it, Jolly Rancher-like color. Maybe tonight I'll try some. Lord knows, working at a community college during the first week of fall term, I'll need it.

Merry Peaches!

2008-09-22T21:02:00.000-07:00

Well, the cat's out of the bag. People, this is going to be your Christmas present. I just couldn't keep it a secret!! I had to chronicle it for the blog! I can't help it, it's becoming an obsession, this blog! I must describe in detail every culinary project I undertake. So now you know, family and friends, you're getting infused vodka for Christmas.

While riding through orchards the other day and telling myself for the three thousandth time this summer that I really need to learn how to start canning soon, I tried to come up with some other way to preserve the heaven-sent fruit that comes from my area. What are the ways to stave off bacteria? I re-counted my options in my head: well there's lowering the temperature to bacteria-shunning levels. But nobody wants a bag of frozen peaches, not to mention that by the time they arrive in the mail, they'd be a soggy, moldy mess. There's drying. This is not a bad idea at all, and I might well try this next year, especially because my co-worker gave me a great recipe for Peach Leather, where you puree your fruit and spread it in sheets and dry it in the sun. And when it's done, you roll it up like a Fruit Rollup! Yum. Anyway, there's salting, like what people used to do with pork and bison on the ol' Western Frontier. But salted peaches? Uh, no. Pickling and canning: yes, I do intend to teach myself that process. Next summer. And what does that leave? Spirits!

So I followed some very simple directions found on the internet: I cleaned and sliced the LAST (I'm not kidding, the very last) peaches that Rasmussen Farms had to offer this year, dropped them in some cute old Mason Jars, and covered them with vodka. Eh voila! I'm going to give them four days and then we'll see what they taste like, so I'll keep you posted. I'm also going to do some pears, who, unlike peaches, are right at the beginning of their season-- so much so I need to let mine ripen for a few days. But I shall keep you apprised, as always, for the chronicle of infusions.

Dog River

2008-09-21T20:27:00.000-07:00

As you may or may not know, I love coffee shops. They are the neighborhood point of convergence for a certain type of person that I don't think I can describe, but I can tell you that I am certainly one of them. Coffee shops embody either leisure or work, but if it's work you must do there, then it's leisurely work, punctuated by sips of tea and long looks at the other patrons and out the window. When I was a senior in college, I walked to the Cafe Abir in the Western Addition neighborhood of San Francisco every day and wrote my senior thesis almost in its entirety at one of their corner wooden tables. (Out of curiosity by the way, I just re-read the first few paragraphs of that paper-- on Henry James-- and thoroughly embarrassed myself.)

In July, as Adam and I hauled our pets and possessions east of Portland, the land of great (if hip and expensive) coffee shops, I wondered somewhat frantically if there would be a decent spot for me to rest, caffeinate, and people-watch in Hood River. I jubilantly noticed a good-looking place just a couple blocks from our new house, but after a few visits met with extraordinarily high prices ($2.50 for a day-old muffin), the non-existence of iced tea (in July), and a spotty wireless internet connection, it was clear that my search had to continue.

Enter Dog River Coffee. Even the name is fantastic. Our first couple weeks in Hood River I had no job and our house had no internet, so Dog River quickly became an everyday destination. And the baristas quickly acknowledged it: "What, no beer today?" they'd ask, or "Iced-tea-no-lemon, right?" There were actually lots of locals here, too, unlike that other place. As they say, if you're looking for good Chinese food, go where Chinese people eat.

The prices are downright cheap: $1.40 for an iced tea, and I couldn't tell you on the coffee, but my friends and family don't seem to complain. Their food selection is ok: a few sweet breads like banana, zuchini, and chocolate-- enough to tide you over. Plus bagels, a muffin every now and then, and some homemade energy bar-looking thing. But they do have a local beer or two on tap, so should you find yourself still camping at your table around five o'clock, you can make the transition of beverages as easily as you please.

I thought I'd be contenting myself with maybe one good restaurant and one good coffee shop here in our Pop. 6,000 town, but it turns out, Hood Riverites like to eat and drink well. I am so pleased. And there will be more to come on the merchants of food and wine, I assure you.

WOW BEANS

2008-09-16T17:47:00.000-07:00

This recipe title, WOW BEANS, takes its inspiration from another food product enjoyed by some friends of mine. It's called Yum Sauce. A pre-packaged, all-purpose sauce that you can find on the shelves of most health food stores, Yum Sauce has adherents who would lay down their lives on its behalf. I myself find it to be a thinly disguised replica of Vegemite. So, if you're Australian and like yeast-paste in a jar, then you might have a response to Yum Sauce somewhere along the lines of "Yum." If not, I wouldn't heavily recommend Yum Sauce. But I will recommend WOW BEANS.

Also known as: Green Beans with Crisp Shallots, Chile & Mint

(Yes, Chile AND Mint!)

1 1/2 lbs. green beans

2/3 c. oil

6 oz. (5 medium) shallots, sliced and separated into rings

1 small, fresh Thai or Serrano chile, thinly sliced (red chile flakes will also do)

1/2 tsp. salt, or to taste

1/2 c. chopped fresh mint

Heat oil till hot but not smoking. Fry shallots until golden brown. Remove with a slotted spoon and dry on a paper towel. Note: do not leave unattended! The transition from raw to golden brown in frying shallots occurs in the blink of an eye. And trust me: you WANT your crispy shallots (you may even start making them in large batches and eating them in lieu of potato chips).

Discard all but 1 Tbsp. of oil, cook chile about 2 minutes. Add beans, salt, and stir till cooked. Remove from heat and toss with mint. Garnish with shallots.

Optional: In the interest of time, you can briefly blanch, boil, or steam the beans before finishing them in the saute pan. If you cringe at the thought of another pot to wash, just cook them with the oil and chile, though it'll take a while longer.

You'll take one bite, and I guarantee the first word out of your mouth will be: WOW!

Who Needs Deli Meat??

2008-09-13T10:04:00.000-07:00

Pesto: A Recipe in Photos

2008-09-09T21:00:00.000-07:00

Ingredients:

-A large capacity mortar and pestle (at least 2 cups) *thanks, Dad!*

-Clean basil leaves

-Garlic

-Olive oil

-Parmesan Cheese

-Pine Nuts

-Salt

Note: Did you know that "pesto" and "pestle" come from the same Latin word, meaning "to crush?" Makes you think twice about the role of the food processor in the art of pesto.

Megan and the Giant Peach

2008-09-07T10:44:00.000-07:00

Not long ago my future in-laws were in town. Adam and I had still not decided on a wedding venue, so we thought his family might like to come along to scout a site with us. Driving to the bed and breakfast whose website looked appealing, we got a bit lost. Not very lost-- we knew it was close-- so we pulled into a diner parking lot to ask. As soon as we stopped, Adam hopped out and said, "Be right back." Mike, Adam's dad, and I gasped. "My son!" Mike cried. "Asking for directions?! Has he lost his manhood? He's been kidnapped and replaced with a stranger!" I myself was shocked too; in the nearly four years we've known each other, I've never once seen Adam ask for directions. But, it turns out, we had nothing to fear-- Adam's testosterone levels were normal. At the front door of the diner, Adam veered left and went behind the building. "It's probably back here somewhere," he called to us. His mom, Mary, exhaling the universal sound of exasperation, got out to get directions herself. Inside of thirty seconds she was back in the car with the information we needed, while Adam was still bushwacking through story-high blackberry bushes out back. "Oh, phew!" Sighed Mike, "Thank goodness. I thought we lost him."

Though I was laughing my head off at the time, I was thinking of this incident yesterday, with significantly less laughter. It's very difficult to laugh when you're riding your bike down a broken glass-riddled highway shoulder with semis roaring past. "Are you sure this is the right way?" I called. I was determined to not lose my cool. He was sure, he said, but we might as well consult the map. We pulled over and looked at the really cool book my mom gave us, containing lots of road biking routes in the Columbia Gorge area. We had gone the wrong way; we were supposed to cross the freeway, not turn onto it. So instead of turning back to the road we were meant to turn onto in the first place, Adam said, "Let's just turn on to this road here. I'm sure it'll join up with the path." I hemmed. "Just trust me," he said.

Twenty minutes later, I was pushing my seventies-era, VERY heavy road bike up the steepest hill I've seen since leaving San Francisco. As sweat poured down my face, and my breathing verged on asthma, I repeated the loving-kindness mantra in my mind. Twenty minutes after THAT, I was still pushing my bike up the hill. Adam by now was off his bike and pushing too.

But twenty minutes later still we had come to Panorama Point, the true starting point of the loop. As I caught my breath and guzzled water, this is what I beheld.

Do you see what appears to be a green furry carpeting lining the valley floor? Those are the hundreds of fruit orchards that keep us all in good fruit supply all summer long. One of those orchards down there, in fact, was to supply what would turn out to be one of the best lunches I've ever eaten.

The one nice thing about pushing your bike up an enormous hill is that you get to ride down it. As we barreled down the hill and continued to pedal easily through the flat countryside, we passed green fields, idyllic orchards, a few white steepled churches, and charming farmhouses, many with For Sale signs that we eyed enviously. We just could not believe this beautiful place. We live here, we said out loud more than once.

As we approached one of the many signs proclaiming the presence of "Fresh Fruit" Adam suggested we turn in and get something to eat. After our earlier navigational debacle I actually had the fleeting impulse to say, "No, let's just stay on the path. I don't want to backtrack anymore." But I was tired and hungry and my goal was fun, not disputes. We turned into the Rasmussen Family Farm parking lot and kicked down our kickstands.

The fruits and veggies they had for sale were plentiful, cheap, and gorgeous. Luscious bell peppers, plums, squash, shallots, basil, the season's first apples. But the peaches were clearly the stars that day. We were drawn to the peach table by scent alone. I didn't write down all the varieties-- I should have-- but there were probably five different kinds, all downy and round, and colored that indescribable blending hue of reddish orange. Adam and I pressed a few for ripeness and discovered that all of them were perfect, and ready to be eaten NOW. We each chose two enormous peaches, the size of small grapefruits. One dollar each.

Outside we sat on some wagons and bit in. The peaches exploded all over our faces and we leaned forward to let tributaries of juice spill to the grass. They were perfect: sweet and fleshy but so juicy we half drank, half chewed them. We were full after one, but couldn't resist a second go-around. Fortunately, before I devoured mine, Adam got a couple shots of me with my peaches.

Later, back on the road, Adam said, "I'm stuck on that peach. I'm still biting into it, you know?" Mmm, yes. A man after my own heart. I guess I'll follow him anywhere.

Great and Easy Dinner, Mon'

2008-09-01T14:26:00.000-07:00

I've got one of those old black and white composition notebooks devoted to recipes from all places-- written in by friends and family, printed out from websites, torn out of magazines. I've even got an old index card that belonged to my great-grandmother, containing a recipe for chocolate fudge. Some of the recipes are old standbys, but most, alas, have never been made by me. Here is a recipe that I printed out from the NYTimes website sometime last year, taped to one of the pages of my recipe book, and finally made for the first time last night. I love it when recipes make the transition from "never made" to "beloved!"

For this recipe, make sure you've got an ovenproof pot. It'd be a good side dish, but it shines in its own right.

Jamaican Rice and Beans

-2 Tbs. evoo

-1 med. onion, finely chopped

-1 bell pepper, preferably red or yellow, stemmed, seeded, and finely chopped

-1 fresh or dried chili, like jalapeno or serrano, stemmed, seeded and minced (Note: I didn't have this so I used a couple pinches each of chile powder and smoked paprika)

-1 Tbs. minced garlic

-1 1/2 c. cooked kidney or other red beans, drained and rinsed (this equals one 15 oz. can)

-1 1/2 c. rice

-1 can coconut milk

-1 tsp. fresh thyme OR 1/2 tsp. dried thyme

-s/p

-1/2 c. fresh parsley or cilantro (I highly recommend the cilantro)

1. Preheat oven to 350. Put oil in ovenproof pot over medium heat. Add onion, bell pepper, chili and garlic. Cook, stirring occasionally, until onion is soft, about five minutes. Add beans and enough water to barely cover. Bring to a boil, then turn off heat. Use an immersion blender, potato masher, or pastry cutter to semipuree beans in pot (leave half unpureed).

2. Stir in rice, cocunut milk, 1/2 cup water, thyme, and don't be afraid to douse in salt and pepper. Cover pot. Bake until liquid is absorbed and rice is tender, 30-50 minutes (sorry I can't be more definitive on this-- the recipe says 20 to 30, but it took me 50). Taste and adjust seasoning. Garnish with parsley or cilantro.

Pesto, Part Two

2008-08-31T13:29:00.000-07:00

Earlier this summer, when my sister Claire and her boyfriend Geoff were visiting me in Portland, cilantro almost made an enemy of me. It would have been a tragedy, because cilantro is my all-time favorite herb, and I would have been sad to see my frizzy green friend go. As we all piled into the car one evening to drive Claire and Geoff back to their hotel, I made a quick stop in the veggie patch to test out a theory. I had heard that, to address the problem of quick-bolting herbs like basil and cilantro, don't give yourself a hernia trying to prevent it in the plants you've got; just give the plant a shake after its gone to seed in the hopes that new, little plants will sprout up around it. This I thoroughly did with my blossoming cilantro plant, and then got in the car with my family. Soon enough the car filled with a blooming, overpowering aroma. It was so strong it was on a par with skunk, freshly sprayed on your dog's nose. I made the mistake of sniffing my fingers and almost vomited.

Luckily, several weeks and some distance from the herb renewed my love for the stuff, so when I received my latest email newsletter from 101cookbooks.com containing a recipe for a Cilantro Noodle Bowl, I found I was ready to renew my relationship with the green. It was apropos, too, of my recent foray into another kind of unconventional pesto (using kale), so I thought I'd give it a whirl. In the Cuisinart, that is. The 101cbs recipe looked a little stark, so I also consulted my Curry Book, by Nancie McDermott and found a recipe for a cilantro-ginger pesto. Ever the brassy and independent cook, however, I glanced at each of these recipes once, and did not use them again. Here is my own rendition, and you will find it very flexible since no recipe was used.

Cilantro Pesto

-1/2 to 1 bunch cilantro, washed, dried or spun in a pillowcase, with leaves plucked from stems

-A hunk of ginger to taste (I used about a thumb's worth), peeled and quartered

-1 clove garlic, peeled and quartered

-1 large dollop of sesame oil (I'm sure olive would do)

-1 quarter jalapeno (more to taste: the heat resides in the seeds)

-1-3 tablespoons brown sugar

-Juice of half a lime

-Soy Sauce to taste

-Water, as needed

Toss the lot sans water into your food processor and pulse till blended to resemble pesto (though when you lift the lid, you'll smell something entirely different). If it's dry and not blending, add a couple Tbs. of water and blend again. Set aside.

Chop half a package of tofu into cubes and saute in a film of olive oil, with generous pinches of chile, curry powder, and salt stirred in. Leave on medium-high heat, turning the cubes occasionally.

Meanwhile, set a pot of water boiling and add a package of chow mein noodles. I was hoping for soba noodles, but my country bumpkin Safeway had never heard of such a thing. When the noodles have about a minute to go, toss in chopped broccoli florets. Yes, toss the broccoli IN to the boiling pasta! Isn't that such a cool idea? I gratefully acknowledge 101cbs for such a timesaving tip. Let sit for 30 seconds to a minute, depending on how crunchy you like your broc, then drain both noodles and veggies in a colander.

Combine noodles/broccoli, tofu, and cilantro pesto in a large bowl, and toss well to coat. Season with soy sauce, and maybe even garnish with some lime zest if you're feeling zesty. Yum!

Quick Tip

2008-08-20T11:47:00.000-07:00

If you've ever made homemade macaroni and cheese, then you know one of the great pleasures of life. I always make a whole lot so I'll have plenty the next day for lunch. I'm always bummed, though, when a night in the fridge turns the mac tough, pasty, and bland. Even a good stint in the microwave and a pinch of salt doesn't do much. But today I discovered a way to make your mac n' cheese very good the next day-- after you reheat it, mix in a couple tablespoons of fresh salsa! If there be no salsa, then a few dashes of your finest hot sauce will do nicely too. Stir it all up! The moisture and flavor will be re-introduced and then some.

The Ugly Duckling Vegetable Garden

2008-08-20T11:26:00.001-07:00

Well, here she is: possibly the least attractive garden you've ever laid eyes on. A couple weekends ago Adam and I rented a roto-tiller and turned our wasteland into workable soil. Unfortunately, while the soil was being tilled just about every single weed seed in town got wind of the fresh, aerated soil and flew over and dove right in. I can't get grass to grow on my lawn for example, but it sure loves the veggie patch! The hideous cardboard is covering the pathway as well as some spots that are as yet unplanted. I'm hoping this will keep weeds at bay, and will create a nice dark, moist, welcoming spot for worms (they'll eat the soil and weeds and from their back ends will emerge nutrient-rich "black gold" that the veggies next spring will love.)
We've had some success so far-- my roommate Christie, a refugee from another house in Hood River that burned down recently, brought over as many plants as she could salvage. This basil is looking good.
Also, she brought about ten broccoli plants, and they seem to be flourishing. Her tomato and pepper plants are small, but alive. We'll see about those. The watermelons, sniff, are no longer with us.
These broad-leafed sproutlings are squash-- I planted Waltham winter squash and Butternut. Of the seeds, these came up the quickest, largest, and most robust.
As for my carrots, chard, and kale, I'm worried about this weed. What IS this stuff??? It's too tiny to pluck and I'm afraid that I'm going to wake up one morning and these things will be chest high and my little veggies will be dead in infancy. Any tips from you green thumbers out there? Note, the chard does seem to be emerging-- I did clear the areas around them as best I could.

Note to Readership

2008-08-19T16:27:00.000-07:00

Hello, faithful readers,

Now that I've got quite a collection of labels for each post, I've decided to reveal them in the blog. To save space, I've placed them at the very bottom of the page, which requires a bit of scrolling down to find it. I've also recently begun to label each recipe with the time of day the meal would be most appropriately consumed. For example, Kale Pesto would be under Recipe: Dinner.

I hope you will find the new system most convenient.

The Armchair Foodie

Food Blogs and Kale

2008-08-18T21:18:00.000-07:00

During a long and lovely chat with my sister Claire last night, she told me that on a list of the best foods, the number one healthiest ingredient you can put into your mouth is Kale. The formidable, tough, weedy, crunchy but very lovely and sometimes purple-hued KALE. To give you an idea of how hardcore of a veggie it is, it's Hilary's favorite food. To give you an idea of Hilary, well, lets just say that Hil would rather eat raw cremini mushrooms than dessert. So. I believe I have made my point.

Therefore I would like to devote today's post to kale, and the multitude of-- Ok, two, that I know of-- ways that you can transform it so that it is edible and even yummy. But first I will make a brief detour to another topic. Why? Because I can.

Usually, when I sit down to write a post I try and get some research in first. My research is of your standard, Google-variety. I don't have a whole lot of cookbooks, and plus I'm lazy. So but whenever I type in a foodstuff into the little google searchbox, I'm always rewarded with the discovery of at least one new food blog. Today I found two terrific ones. One of them, 101cookbooks.com, has a list of recipes by ingredient along the left side, so I checked out the Kale link (here it is). It looks pretty good-- there are about six or seven recipes using the intimidating green-- and two of them that looked especially lovely are the Chickpea HotPot, and Kale & Olive Oil Mashed Potatoes. Now this woman, I'm led to believe, has got a LOT of cookbooks, unlike me, so maybe her recipes are really good.

As I continued to skim the site, I came across the inevitable Food Blogs link, and browsed it for catchiest title. cook eat FRET. Perfect. I clicked on it. This blog is great-- the author is wry and funny and fully admits that all cooks are cooking to impress that one mythic cook in her mind. In cook eat FRET, the imaginary cook-judge was a toss-up between Gabrielle Hamilton and Mario Batale. I don't know who mine would be. The mushroom-munching Hilary, perhaps. So thanks to my two new food blog finds, forever immortalized in the column on the right, I will now be re-titling that column. It is no longer called Food Blogs I Like, but will now given the heading that is far more appropriate... (see right).

Ok. Kale. The simplest way to cook it is in a saute pan. This is perhaps the best way to introduce yourself to the vegetable if you are unacquainted. You will get to know the flavors and textures that kale is capable of-- to know it in its pure form, you can put it to good, creative use in the future. So, chop a couple or three cloves of garlic per head of kale and toss the garlic into your pan with a good smattering of olive oil. While the garlic sits in heat just high enough to sizzle SLIGHTLY (garlic burns all too easily, so watch it), chop your kale into ribbons. Some people like to chop the stems up and toss them in too, but don't pressure yourself the first time around. After the garlic has sizzled for a minute or two, toss the kale in and stir till its coated with the garlicky oil. Cover. Come back in five minutes or so, and stir it till its tender. Now, a word. Kale will not become as tender as spinach. It'll still be crunchy and will take several more chews than you might be used to (think steak, here). This will grow on you, I promise. Soon you'll feel like Popeye, after he has just guzzled a can of spinach.

Next recipe. This is for a Kale Pesto, and its lovely. It reuses the water the kale is steamed in for the pasta too, so you don't waste any of the plant's nutrients.

-1 bunch, kale, washed, drained, de-stemmed

-8 oz. penne pasta

-1/2 c. whole almonds, toasted (dry in a small skillet till aromatic and slightly darker in color)

-as many cloves of garlic as you can stand (it will be essentially raw)

-1/4 c. Parmesan, plus more for garnish

-1/2 tsp. salt, 1/8 tsp. salt

-2 Tbsp. evoo, 1 tsp. evoo

-juice of 2 lemons

-1-19oz. can cannellini or Great Northern beans, rinsed and drained

-1/4-1/2 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes (optional)

-s&p

1. Steam kale over 2 quarts of boiling water for 5-7 minutes, till tender. Transfer with a spoon or tongs to a colander to drain. Don't toss the water, but boil your pasta in it until al dente. Now you can drain. (Hell, see if you can use the water one more time-- let it cool and water your garden with it.)

2. Chop your almonds in a blender or food processor until well-chopped (but not a butter). Add garlic, cheese, 1/2 t. salt, and juice of one lemon. If you haven't already done so, cut the thicker parts of the stems from the actual leaves of kale, leaving leaves with slits halfway up the middle. Chop roughly. Process till all ingredients are finely minced. If the ingredients are too dry for the blender to process, and even if they aren't, add 2 T. oil till paste forms. If still too dry, add another T. oil, and after that a little water or milk (spoken by the person with a very crappy blender).

3. In a medium bowl toss your beans with juice of the other lemon and 1/8 tsp. salt. (Don't forget to rinse beans first Claire, or else they taste like can.)

4. In a large skillet or pot, fry your red pepper flakes in 1 tsp. evoo for a minute. Add the pesto. If still too thick, add a little water. Stir till hot, then add pasta and beans and toss gently till heated through. Garnish with parmesan, salt and pepper.

Unless you've got a couple football playing teenage sons, you'll definitely have leftovers for lunch the next day.

Just Call Me Prawn Jeremy

2008-08-14T20:48:00.000-07:00

"Many of [M.F.K. Fisher's] successors see food as an end in itself-- and end up producing something like food porn-- but the most successful memoirists write about food and the self in order to write about the human condition."

--Molly O'Neill, Introduction to American Food Writing

"Thanks for the lovely food porn, dear."

--my friend Berkeley, in reference to the blog Armchair Foodie

After reading Molly O'Neill's luscious introduction to the best collection of writings since... well, maybe ever, I vowed to be the food writer who falls into the latter of the two types she above describes. What lofty ends these writers attain, all while scribbling about eating! Food as metaphor for freedom, as Frederick Douglass writes: "The odors [of cooking] I shared with the winds, but the meats were under a more stringent monopoly... ." Or food as a re-introduction to nature, as Thoreau points out: "Our diet, like that of the birds, must answer to the season." Or even food as an illustration of a culture, like George C. Foster's Old New York: "The chief merit of these establishments is that they are kept open all night, and that hungry Editors or belated idlers can get a plate of biscuits with a lump of butter in the belly for three cents, and a cup of coffee for as much more... ."

And what do I do? I manipulate, then flaunt and exploit my groceries so that they become like maidens, made up and thrown across a bed, stripped all too young of their innocence. My food-- I can't help it-- is an end in itself. When I returned from the sweltering August Farmer's Market today there was nothing I wanted to do more than to lay my bounty across the table in as decorative a way as I could muster, and drool over it, fondle it, photograph it. I eyed it and thought long, lascivious thoughts about just what exactly I was going to do to it as soon as I could get it inside. Sigh. What else can I say, but: Hello. My name is Megan, and I am a food pornographer.

Old Standby

2008-08-12T21:02:00.000-07:00

Every family's got their old standby, the when-all-else-fails meal that, over the years becomes a sort of edible member of the family. Ours is the Breakfast Burrito. In fact, I think it was the first meal that Adam ever cooked for me, on a camping trip near the Bosque del Apache in New Mexico early in our courtship. So intimate with the Breakfast Burrito have Adam and I become that we now affectionately refer to it simply as "BB."

It was living in Santa Fe that taught us to integrate the BB into our lifestyle; after all, the cheesy, spicy treat is offered at every cafe and coffee shop worth its salt. The New Mexican tradition puts green chile and bacon into its BB, but as herbivores who no longer live in chile country, we omit both those ingredients. This by no means limits us. Which, I guess, is why the BB is so fantastic-- there is no limit to what you can include.

There is a base, however, which includes tortillas, scrambled eggs, potatoes, shredded cheese, and preferably salsa, though hot sauce will do in a pinch. Beyond that, let your imagination fly. Avocado, cilantro, sour cream or yogurt, beans (black, pinto, refried...), fried onions, hash browns, corn, tomatoes, squash, chives, oregano, quinoa, as many different kinds of hot sauce as you want. Tonight, on a whim, I even supplemented our paltry potato supply with a quarter of a purple cabbage, sauteed in cumin, chile powder, and smoked paprika (which, by the way, was the best six bucks I've spent recently). It turned out great! Nice crunch to counterbalance the starch of the spuds and the soft tortillas. Another tip: if you've got it, stir cream cheese or sour cream into your eggs when you scramble them-- they'll come out soft and fluffy.

The cabbage looked so pretty in the pan, I'm enclosing a before- and after-cooking shot, along with the final product: the beloved BB.

Eating...TOO Well?

2008-08-07T09:18:00.000-07:00

Before my next house guests get into town, I better hurry up and put up this posting, showing off some of the good food we made when Hil was in town. I was actually able to stave off my ravenous gobbling long enough to take photos of these dishes, so I figured I might as well display them here, they're so beautiful. I'll refrain from posting recipes, but everything, sauces included, was made from scratch. Need a recipe? Email me!

1. Shrimp tacos. Oh boy, every time Taylor, of berry-gallette fame, comes to town he graces us with his Chipotle-Cilantro taco sauce. While he's busy putting that together, Hil gets some shrimp marinating. This time was extra special because we had a campfire to cook the shrimp on (we got creative with little foil trays). Flour tortilla, shrimp, chopped tomatoes and cabbage, as much sauce as the thing will hold.

2. Summer Salmon dinner. First night after camping we went a little over the top with our return to society. Salmon baked with soy sauce and brown sugar in foil packets, roasted summer corn, roasted summer squash, and this fabulous Columbian rice recipe where you cook the rice in butter, onions, garlic and veg broth instead of water (hello?! Why did I not think of this before?)

3. Mole Enchiladas. Mole sauce has always struck me as an exotic mystery when I get it at restaurants. Well, I found a terrific recipe in Vegetarian Magazine, and I'll never be afraid of this sauce again. It's creamy, chocolatey, spicy, earthy. Cheese enchiladas with our homemade cows milk cheese, boiled and salted to resemble crumbly Mexican cheese, and mole sauce; Calabacitas with squash foisted on us (it's that time of year) and corn; yogurt and cilantro for garnish.

4. Stuffed eggplant. We found some huge, gorgeous eggplants at a country farm on our way home from camping, so we stuffed them with (you guessed it) more zucchini, bread crumbs, onion, garlic, pine nuts, parmesan, herbs, and laid them on a bed of Hil's tomato sauce. Garnished with crostini, a dollop of homemade goat cheese, and chopped basil.

If you can believe it, none of these dinners took longer than an hour to prepare, and much of the stuff you can do in advance. If you're looking for dinner ideas, think of this posting...

Hot for Pancakes

2008-08-05T20:21:00.000-07:00

Whoa. I just had quite possibly the best pancakes in the world. Harkening nostalgically back to the occasional breakfast-for-dinner evenings created by my father (a bachelor during much of my youth), and desiring to get rid of the buttermilk used in cheesemaking last week, I looked up a buttermilk pancake recipe for dinner tonight on the old tried and true epicurious.com. I like that site because you can type in whatever ingredient you're overloaded with, and a long list of recipes calling for that ingredient will come up. They are rated with a fork system, and this recipe got four out of four forks, so I thought I'd give it a whirl. I give it an enthusiastic four forks too.

The recipe actually includes this whole other part that sounds really good-- sauteed apples in maple syrup and cinnamon-- but I had yesterday-picked blueberries and blackberry jam, so I decided to try the apples another time. But the pancakes themselves are really outstanding, whatever you top them with-- a little crispy on the outside, and moist, fluffy and slightly sour on the inside. Find the recipe here.

Also, I love it when you look up a recipe for something kind of random, something you wouldn't think of alone by just staring at the cupboards and fridge and hoping for inspiration, and then you realize that you actually have all the ingredients. It makes me wonder how many meals-- good meals-- I could make with the contents already in the kitchen. Hundreds, probably. Thousands.

Blackberry Blitz

2008-08-04T10:22:00.001-07:00

While riding bikes around my new town, Hood River, Hilary and I discovered miles and miles of blackberry bushes-- first we found them on May St, but once we started looking around we realized they're ALL OVER town, including at the dead end a block and a half from my house. It's newly August, so the berries are pushing each other out of house and home to find space to ripen on their vines, and of course Hil and I were there to relieve them of their housing crunch with as many bowls and tupperwares as we could find in my kitchen.

If you are as lucky as I am, and live in a place profuse with blackberries, here are a couple recipes to put the berries to good use. The first is a simple jam-- we brewed up over five quarts of the stuff (using, also, some of the many pounds of rhubarb Adam's co-worker forced upon him the other day). See my strawberry jam recipe for details on how to make it.

The other recipe, for Blackberry-Basil Crumble, I'm taking right out of Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. So, I give all credit to Ms. Kingsolver for making this recipe so shamefully easy. But I will take a small slice of credit for the specific one executed by me, and photographed here. We must gloat over our desserts when we can.

Blackberry-Basil Crumble

2-3 apples, chopped (I peeled them first)

2 pints blackberries

2 Tbsp. balsamic vinegar

1 large handful of basil leaves, chopped

1/4 c. honey (or more if your fruit is not so sweet)

Preheat the oven to 400F. Combine the above ingredients in a casserole dish or pie plate; mix, and set aside.

5 Tbsp. flour

3 heaping Tbsp. brown sugar

1 stick cold butter

Cut butter into flour and sugar, then rub between your fingers to make a chunky, flaky substance-- uniformity not necessary here. Sprinkle over the top of the fruit and bake for 30 minutes or so, till golden and bubbly. And, of course, be sure there is vanilla ice cream in the freezer.

My friend Hilary-- She's so Cheesy!

2008-08-02T16:47:00.000-07:00

I have two pieces of advice for all you blogosphereans out there: 1. Make Goat Cheese!!! 2. Don't attempt to make mozzarella, unless you're looking for a really infuriating project.

Our day of cheese did actually turn out pretty well all around, because the soft, cream cheese-type cheese that resulted from our botched mozzarella attempt was converted expertly by Hilary into a fabulous dip. She roasted some garlic, chopped up some basil, toasted some almonds, and poured a little tomato sauce and evoo onto the somewhat funky stuff, and whipped it all up in the Cuisinart for a scrumptious appetizer, causing me to hold my friend in deep reverence for not the first time in our long friendship.

The goat cheese was a dream from beginning to end, however, and I wasn't too busy struggling with it to take pictures of the very simple process.

1. Pour a gallon, or half a gallon if that's all you've got (or are willing to pay for-- I really need to make some goat-owning friends), into a large pot. Heat the milk to between 190 and 200 degrees F. You will need a thermometer for this, because as the recipe we used told us, "In cheese making, the temperature is up there next to God, so it has to be right!" We also used a bain-marie for this (see my post on corn pudding), so as not to scald it, and to maintain the temp once we reached it.

2. When you get to your desired temp, slowly mix in 1/2 c. (per gallon of milk, so we used 1/4 c.) white vinegar OR lime juice OR lemon juice. Mix very minimally-- just enough to distribute evenly. Watch it curdle!

3. Let the temp get down to 100 degrees F, and you'll probably want to take it out of the bain-marie for this, if you want to accomplish it while you're still young. Add salt to taste, it says, but are we really going to be tasting curdled goats milk? No. Add a little salt, and you can add more later if you need to.

4. When you've gotten her down to 100 degrees, S-L-O-W-L-Y stir the curds until they break up into small, coin-size nugs. We used ultra-pasteurized milk, which really impeded the curdling process. It's not impossible, but it sort of sucked, as you'll read later, so buy un-pasteurized if you can, or pasteurized if you have to. Ultra-pasteurized would be a last resort.

5. Pour the stuff as gently as if it were your first-born over a cheesecloth-lined colander. Our curds were so fine, we had to use a pillow case. Pull the corners of the fabric up so your curds form a little satchel like those on the end of a hobo's stick. Let it hang somewhere inventive (a clothesline? a cabinet directly over the dog bowl, so she can lick up the whey?) for as long as you want. The longer it hangs, the harder the cheese will become. Due, we believe, to our ultra-pasteurized milk, we had to let it strain overnight before we could even hang it. Then we let it hang for a good three hours.

And oh, boy. When we tasted this stuff.... expressions of rapture were plastered on our faces. Gosh, food-writing is hard. How do you describe a perfect-tasting substance? It was so creamy, it resembled creme-fraiche, and the goatiness was very subtle, not stinky at all. Just the slightest hint of barnyard. Dip a handpicked blackberry into the stuff, and you may attain spiritual enlightenment. It was easy and great fun, and I'd recommend it to anyone who likes her some chevre.

Challah Back!!

2008-07-29T14:06:00.000-07:00

Pie #3, Sort of

2008-07-28T18:43:00.000-07:00

Well, I think I've been converted. Anyone who would mess with the time and painstaking labor of a piecrust, when they could just (literally) throw together a galette dough, has obviously got too little to do. Our friend Taylor, while visiting our little berry patch from San Francisco, showed me how to make a galette with some blue-, rasp-, and blackberries obtained from my local farmer's market. He was inspired, he said, by a show he saw on the Food Network where famed chef Jacques Pepin made a galette in about thirty seconds flat. I timed Taylor on his galette-- about 19 minutes, which is peanuts compared to any piecrust. Watch, follow, and learn.

1. Put 2 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour in a bowl. Put together a glass of ice water and set it to the side within reach. Add a pinch of salt, and three big pinches of sugar. Pour a little ice water on, and start kneading. Add ice water as needed until the dough holds together.

2. Turn dough out onto a floured surface. Roll out until you have a large, flattened piece of dough in, really, whatever shape you like. Cut in half, and lay each piece next to its mate on a cookie sheet.

3. Mix your berries (I had three pints) with sugar-- a quarter cup, I'd say; less if your fruit is extra sweet. Add a squeeze of lemon, and a tablespoon of tapioca if the juiciness is out of control, and mix 'em up.

4. Spoon half the berry mixture in a little heap onto one dough sheet, and repeat with the rest of the berries on the other dough. Fold up the sides of the dough and make little pouches out of them. You could probably make quite cute little purses, if you cared to. Try and make sure there are no holes in the bottom so as to not lose any precious juices.

5. Bake at 425F for 25-30 minutes.

If you're going the fresh summer berry route and if you're taking the galettes camping with you as we did, you'd probably best pick up a can of whipped cream and douse them well before eating like a hog.

Hello, Hood River!

2008-07-21T11:56:00.000-07:00

Well, we made it in one piece! Only one thing broke-- something made out of glass-- and it smashed into so many smithereens, we still have no idea what it was. Which is a good sign, I guess. Here's a picture of Adam, enjoying our first meal in our new house. Speaking of armchair foodies! Lucky boy. We had homemade pesto on pasta, with a kalamata olive tapenade for spreading on a farmer's market-bought artichoke bread. (The tapenade is simple and amazing: throw a clove of garlic with a handful of olives into the blender.) Add to that organic cherry tomatoes from our neighboring town, the Dalles. YUM! We sat on our new back porch and admired Mt. Adams while enjoying the yummy local tastes.

Last night I made a terrific summer meal, and want to share the recipes with you. They are easy and shine the spotlight on two delicious gifts of summer: corn and nectarines.

Corn Pudding

4 or 5 cups of corn (4 or 5 ears, shucked and shaved)

2 c. milk

6 eggs

1 c. or so cheddar cheese

1 Tbsp. chopped fresh basil

1/2 tsp. salt

Pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 325 F and butter a 2-quart square baking dish.

Separate one cup of corn and set aside. Put the rest with one cup of milk into the blender and puree to a moderate chunkiness. Pour it into a large bowl. Whisk in the eggs, then stir in remaining corn, milk, cheese, basil, salt and pepper. Pour into the baking dish.

Set the dish in another, larger baking dish, and pour hot water into the larger dish till it comes about halfway up the sides of the smaller one. This is called a Bain-Marie, and it'll cook the food more evenly and prevent it from scorching.

Bake for about an hour, or until it's puffy and golden. Let it cool for as long as you can stand it-- I waited about fifteen minutes.

And for Dessert, I'd like to thank Raina for her easy and very yummy fruit crisp recipe. I hope she won't mind if I reproduce it here!

For the topping, mix:

5 Tbsp. butter

1/4 c. white sugar

1/4 c. brown sugar

1/4 tsp. nutmeg

1/2 tsp. cinnamon

6 Tbsp. flour

1/4 tsp. salt

Refrigerate for at least a half hour. (This, I found out the hard way, is important. Otherwise it'll all melt right away.)

For the fruit filling, mix:

6 pieces of fruit, peeled, cored, and sliced. Apples, pears, peaches, and nectarines all work great (I used nectarines)

3 Tbsp. sugar (but this could be variable, depending on how sweet your fruit is)

Lemon zest, and lemon juice.

Mix and put into two pie dishes. Add topping. Bake at 350 F for 30 minutes. Then crank the heat to 400 for ten more minutes to brown the topping.

Variations on this dish are infinite. A good idea, especially in the summer, is to use berries with your fruit. Add one cup if you like, or sub out half your fruit for an equal amount of berries. Also, I didn't have any lemons, but I had a grapefruit so I grated a little of the peel for my zest. It was amazing!! Lastly, as if I needed to mention it, this dish really should be served warm with ice cream. (I hope I got the recipe right: Rain, if you're reading, please send along corrections and I'll fix it. Wouldn't want to get your special dish wrong.)

We've still got a full month of summer left! Eat it up.

So Long, Sellwood

2008-07-17T14:54:00.001-07:00

This morning I weeded and watered my little veggie and flower garden with unusual gusto. I asked myself as I kneeled what I was going to this effort for, as I will not be tasting a single one of these vegetables. And I suppose my last little sprucing up of the plot was from an impulse akin to a mother paying extra attention to the clothes and cleanliness of her little kid before sending him onto an airplane by himself. When you send your own off into the world, you want their best foot to be forward. Only thing is, I'M the one going off into the world and my little creation is to be left behind.

I had hoped to sample a tomato or two before I leave, but the little guys are still small, green, and cute. There are lots of them though, and the plants are huge-- twice as big as last year-- so I pat myself on the back for that at least. To the new tenant: enjoy! Please don't forget to water.

I'd also like to bid farewell to my other favorite foods, native only to Sellwood. San Felipe, you make the best enchiladas I've ever tasted (they're made with cotija cheese instead of your usual jack), and it doesn't hurt that your margaritas come in a glass the size of a mixing bowl. Oaks Bottom, I've stuffed myself many times on your totchoes (imagine the offspring of tater tots and nachos if they were to meet and fall in love). New Seasons, you are very expensive for a grocery store, but it's been great having you within walking distance, and I do very much appreciate the attention you give to local farmers-- thanks to you I had Oregon cherries for lunch today. And oh, the Ugly Mug, one of my all-time favorite coffee shops. You have supplied me with much tea, hot or iced depending on the season, while I spent hours reading, looking for jobs, or tapping away on my laptop. Thanks so much for allowing Cally inside; she appreciates that very much.

Take care, little blue house. Tomorrow I sleep in Hood River!

More Pie Talk

2008-07-16T09:05:00.000-07:00

Adam's mom Mary sent me this article from the Washington Post this morning. In it, a pastry pro gives a few lessons to a woeful pie baker. The slide show is great, and all the tips are contained therein, so if you want the advice but don't want to read too much, I'd recommend that. Thanks, Mary!

And one more thing. I'm sure that cherry pie she made tastes amazing, but would anyone else agree that that lattice was not as outstanding as another cherry pie lattice featured recently on this blog? Just asking.

Eat Here Now

2008-07-15T22:02:00.000-07:00

Neenie took me to a great lunch today at Meriwether's in NW Portland. The patio was gorgeous, with fuschias and hydrangeas and very ornate birdhouses decorating the borders, and the food was delicious. We shared a fantastic beet salad to start, then had shrimp and chicken salad sandwiches, respectively. Though I was full, I couldn't resist a fruit tart for dessert. After all, it's summer in Oregon. Local fruit is worth its weight in gold these days.

But the greatest part about Meriwether's is that they have their own farm up on Skyline Blvd. right here in Portland. They grow much of the produce used in the restaurant, and it was apparent! Sliced heirloom tomatoes on a restaurant sandwich are a rarity to be savored. According to their website, they are establishing a flock of laying ducks too.

They've also got a CSA program, which stands for Community-Supported Agriculture. The way it works is that a farm will sell a certain number of subscriptions to local consumers for a set price at the beginning of the season. Then, every week, the subscriber can pick up a box of whatever that farm has recently harvested-- usually a variety of produce corresponding to that farm's geographical climate and time of year.

There's an easy way to find the CSA's in your area at LocalHarvest.org, an amazing website dedicated to local and organic food (farm's, farmer's markets, restaurants, community gardens, CSA's...). I just did a search and found a farm coop in Hood River named, creatively, Hood River Organic, and I'm thinking of joining. These things aren't cheap of course, and can cost between three and five hundred dollars up front. It'll take some calculations to figure out if it's worth it. Of course, I can't compare out-of-season produce trucked in from far away to local, chemical-free food by price alone. It's obvious which would win out (which makes me nervous about how the person with whom I share a bank account will respond to my proposition about this). But if you're looking for reasons to join a CSA, Hood River Organic's got a pretty compelling list of them here (scroll down).

If any of you, faithful readers, have a story to share or advice on local agriculture, please do share. Any CSA subscribers? Do you like it? Would you do it again?

Reading Assignment

2008-07-14T13:16:00.000-07:00

I encourage all of you to read this great article published in the American Conservative Magazine. I'm very glad, from a political standpoint of across-the-aisle unity, to introduce to my vast readership some thoughts on the politics and culture of food written by a conservative. I share his sentiments almost entirely, but possibly for different reasons: I don't consider that we should attempt to persuade Congress to alter the Farm Bill because I don't believe in centralized government, for example (though my thoughts on centralized government are far from solidified). But we should show major agri-businesses and the politicians who kowtow to them what we think of their practices by using our dollars wisely. The way we spend our money is our loudest voice, and anyway, it's the most consistent way to localize our consumption. Would it make any sense to write letters to our Senators about the travesty of massive corporate food production, while we continue to patronize it?

Much more on this topic to come, starting with a shout out to Barbara Kingsolver's excellent book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. (Just as soon as I finish it.)

Hip Cake

2008-07-13T11:39:00.000-07:00

I have observed lately that cupcakes are outrageously popular here in fair Portland. I feel I am qualified to make this claim for three reasons: I am a great lover of baked goods and pay careful attention when they're around; I am a frequenter of coffee shops, partly because they are great venues for sweets; and as of recently, I'm planning my wedding, and I've been surprised, as I trawl the internet for cake ideas, by how many bashful brides choose cupcakes over a large single cake.

There is one coffee shop-- Crema, on the corner of SE 28th and Ankeny-- that specializes in cupcakes, and I wanted to shine the spot on them for a moment. For one, their flavors of cupcake are quite innovative. Pictured is a Lemon Rosemary, but I've also witnessed flavors like Mexican Chocolate, and Red Velvet with Cream Cheese frosting. And for another thing, they pile the frosting on to precarious heights. To excessive heights, even. If the frosting weren't of such high quality and didn't bear being eaten plain with a spoon after the cake part is gone, I might not be posting this here today.

If you should find yourself in Southeast Portland hankering after sugar, now you know where you need to go.

Sweet Tom

2008-07-12T11:32:00.000-07:00

If you love tomatoes, then you have to make this recipe for Bruschetta. It's so easy, so delicious, and a very picturesque way to feature this gorgeous summer fruit on your table.

Gather four or five cups of tomatoes, optimally local, ideally from your backyard. The plants in my yard have only been able to muster tiny green nubs as yet, so I purchased two kinds to make a colorful mix: yellow cherries, and a big red heirloom from a farm just outside Portland. Chop them up into bite-size pieces (and I seeded the larger, heirloom tomato) and toss into a medium bowl.

Add several tablespoons of chopped basil, several tablespoons of olive oil, one to two tablespoons balsamic vinegar, one very small finely chopped red onion, and mix 'em all up. You can and probably should do all this an hour or two before you serve (but no more) so all the juices can mingle and gather. If you do it in advance, leave the bowl on the counter-- don't put it in the fridge.

When you're ready to serve, toast or broil sliced french bread or focaccia and while it's still hot, rub both sides of the bread with a halved garlic clove. This is my first time with the garlic rub-- it WORKS! I was offending my own self with my breath later that evening, so if you're a garlic-o-phobe, maybe rub only one side of the bread, and briefly at that.

Top bread slices with a heaping spoonful of the tomato mixture. Admire, and serve immediately.

Also pictured: orzo pasta tossed with garbanzo beans, goat cheese, lemon juice, olive oil, and oregano. Good, but nothing in comparison to the sweet, salty, garlicky, bruschetta.

Happy July! And if you've got any superb tomato recipes, please let me know!

Beauty Queen

2008-07-09T21:51:00.000-07:00

Well, here she is. Gorgeous! Yummy, too, though my shrewd grandma tells me to ease up on the crust (ie, don't work it so hard). But I'm starting to feel like this is turning into a Pie Blog, rather than a Food Blog, so I think I might take my pie-making underground for a while. And anyway, I spent a good two hours cleaning my oven today, which means fumigating my house with foul oven cleaner, and then scouring oven racks out on the sidewalk. In other words, not fun. In even other words, no more pies till my new house (where, by the way, I will promptly lay a fat sheet of foil across the bottom of the oven floor).

Perhaps I will devote the next week to blogging about the food we eat when we're in the process of moving. I'll be needing to clean out my freezer sooner or later...

Bada Bing!

2008-07-06T16:50:00.000-07:00

My heart is still pounding over the feat I have just accomplished and never thought I would: I made a pie lattice!! Yep, for pie #2-- cherry-- I felt there would be no fruit for which a lattice would be more appropriate. And since I drove to Hood River for fresh Bing cherries at the Draper Girls Country Farm, and then crippled and stained my fingers pitting them, I figured, why not go all the way?

But I'm getting ahead of myself here. How, you may ask, was pie #1? You may gather from my last exuberant post that it was a pie of perfection, but it wasn't. It was just really good, which I wasn't expecting, and which caused me to post for joy. The things I would like to improve upon, based on my experience from pie #1:

1. Crust. I used Adam's aunt Sarah's bicep-enhancing recipe, where you cut a half-and-half-combo of shortening and butter into flour. I thought such a workout would yield a fantastic crust, but I'm starting to think that maybe I worked it to hard. It was a bit dense, like shortbread. Not flaky and fluffy, like crust should be.

2. Fruit. Now, it's hard to improve upon the perfect flavor, shape, and texture of blueberries. They have a musky, deep, aromatic flavor that's almost sexual, and they pop like little juice explosions when you bite down on them. Why were these blueberries not as superb as they have been in the past? Possibly they were a bit dry. Possibly I added too much tapioca as a thickener. On the happy side though, I usually produce pies that rather resemble soup, and this one was dry on the bottom, allowing for an all-the-way cooked bottom crust, and an intact, lovely slice.

If you've read this far, you've probably already examined the photos above of the different stages of pie #2. Lovely Bing cherries direct from the fruit bowl of Oregon, Hood River (and my new home in twelve days!). Yours truly digging pits out of said cherries with a bobby pin. It actually worked quite well; now my nail beds are wine-red and I'm proud. And lastly, the making of the lattice. It's not as hard as you'd think! I forced myself to really read the directions in the Joy of Cooking-- not something I usually do very carefully. Let's hope it tastes as good as it looks! Thanks to my sweet Adam for photographing on command.

Hallelujah

2008-07-02T21:13:00.001-07:00

YAHOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

GardenPoet

2008-07-02T16:44:00.004-07:00

Here's that photo of my mom's jam. I don't know if you can make out the label, but it's darling, and she does them for all her canned goods. She's calls herself GardenPoet, even though it's not a title that seems to refer to her skills in producing heavenly jams, pickles, chutneys, and apple butter. But I guess it sounds better than GardenCanner.

The Next Veruca Salt

2008-07-02T16:32:00.000-07:00

Ever since I wrote my last post, I've been obsessing about pie. I've been trawling the internet for tips, and contemplating the few comments I've received after my call for help. What I've found is that, basically there are as many "tried-and-true," "fail-safe" pie tips and methods as there are pie bakers out there.

Some interesting ones:

-- Put a piece of aluminum foil or a cookie sheet directly under the pie or on the rack below so juice doesn't spill over into the bottom of the oven.

--Mix a tablespoon or three of quick-cooking tapioca to thicken your pie juices and avoid pie soup.

--Saute hard peaches in a little water, maybe some sugar and lemon juice, before putting them in the pie.

-- Bake the pie on top of a pizza stone, or directly on the bottom of the oven for the first twenty minutes to ensure browning of the bottom crust.

--Roll out your crust between wax paper.

--Use half shortening, half butter (shortening for flakiness, butter for flavor).

--Decide what kind of pie you're going to make based on sales at the market. In other words, don't get your heart set on blueberry pie, if it's going to cost you $16 for a pie's worth of blueberries.

Well, as I embark on my pie making adventure, I'll employ these tips and more, just to see if they are as imperative as some say they are. I've got Pie #1 cooling on the stove right now-- a sixteen-dollar blueberry pie, if you want to know the truth-- and it looks gorgeous! I'll get a photo up when Adam comes home with the camera.

And I can verify one tip already: put foil or a pan underneath the pie while it bakes!! I forgot that step and now I have blueberry tar on the bottom of my oven. Great.

Pie O My (Remember? From the Sopranos)

2008-06-27T09:37:00.001-07:00

Ok, so it's pie season. As Adam and I prepare to move to Hood River for his new spiffy job (yay, Hood River! yay, job!) I started to get creative with ideas for my own income. The idea that I liked the most, until I made the world's WORST peach pie the other night, was to start a little baking operation. Nothing huge, you know, just a few pies every week to sell to local coffee shops, maybe restaurants, and even if I just broke even or made enough for a six-pack of a weekend, that would be great.

Little did I factor into my calculations that you actually have to know how to bake first. Good lord, when did baking become so difficult? It used to be, back in my grandma's day, you just whipped up a pie with crust from scratch of course, threw it in the oven, and then let it cool idyllically on the window sill.

Ha ha.

So where did our grandmothers learn this hardwon art? I suppose from their grandmothers and mothers. Not that I can blame my own mom-- I could have asked for some guidance, and if I had, I'm sure she would have taken the time out of her schedule running a marketing and design firm to show me. But I didn't, and though I get occasional tips from my grandma, I'm afraid I'm turning into an old dog whose capacity for new tricks is on the wane.

I've made probably ten pies in my lifetime. Maybe nine. Or eight. They've ranged from pretty good to abysmal. The abysmal one was the most recent, and though it was an embarrassment from which I'm still recovering, I think it was the slap in the face that I needed. I need help. I'm sure that I can justifiably distribute blame-- my oven sucks for one, leaving the top crust nearly burned and the bottom crust completely raw; and my peaches really were no good-- dry and mealy. But the thing is, good bakers work around these obstacles. In the face of adversity, they flourish. They mask dry, gross fruit and they do something to the crust-- I don't even know what-- to make sure it's not two-toned charred and raw at the same time.

So here's my proclamation. I vow, here and now, to make ten pies this summer. (Whoa, I got butterflies in my stomach, just writing that. This is a huge commitment!) But I'm sticking to my rolling pins here. Ten pies. If, by the tenth pie I do not succeed in baking something decent, then I'm going to give up the practice forever. Before I get started, do you have any tips? If you pie bakers out there could single out the most important thing to remember when baking a pie, what would it be? And hey, if it's all a bust, well, at least my oatmeal chocolate chip cookies are winners.

Mama Jammer

2008-06-27T09:17:00.000-07:00

First off, before I even write my dismayed post for the day, I have to give a shout out to my mom's strawberry rhubarb jam. WOW. Quite possibly the best jam I've ever tasted. I busted it open this morning for breakfast (with a little toast, of course) and didn't even make it to the table, but rather stood over the kitchen sink, munching in ecstasy. Mom tells me she thinks it's the rhubarb that makes the jam-- gives it a roundness that strawberry alone doesn't have. Whatever it is, it's damn good. Too bad she doesn't market them, otherwise I'd put a link to her website right here:

(I've got a photo of it too, but for some reason I'm not able to upload it right now. I'll try again later.)

Veggie Reuben Recipe

2008-06-20T19:45:00.000-07:00

Hi, fellow food-lovers. To relieve you of my recent verbosity, today I'm going to post a simple recipe, made up on the fly this afternoon by yours truly. As a vegetarian, I had been missing the awesome flavor and texture combinations of the Reuben Sandwich (salty and chewy pastrami, sour and crunchy sauerkraut, pungent mustard, sweet thousand island, musky swiss), so I decided to attempt a vegetarian version. It came out great! It has a lot of potential too, as I had to make do with some less conventional ingredients. But here's what I came up with.

Veggie Reuben Sandwiches (2 servings)

-1 package of Tofurkey deli slices (they didn't have fake pastrami at Trader Joe's)

-4 slices wheat bread (but rye is probably better)

-About 1 cup of sauerkraut, rinsed and drained (squeeze it to get all the water out)

-A few slices of white cheddar (but try swiss; I believe that's the tradition)

-Mustard to taste

-A few tablespoons of homemade Thousand Island dressing (see below)

Homemade Thousand Island: mix the following 3 ingredients

-1 1/2 Tbsp. ketchup

-1 1/2 Tbsp. mayo

-1/2 to 1 dill pickle, coarsely chopped

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Split the package of Tofurkey into two stacks on some tin foil, exactly as you would like them to appear on the sandwich. I suggest folding a few of the slices in half and at different angles to bulk it up. Lay your slice(s) of cheese on top of each stack. Bake, then crank it up to broil in five or so minutes, to get your cheese all melty.

Toast your bread. Slather one side of each pair with the T.I. dressing, and the other with mustard. If you don't like too much mustard, which I don't, don't slather. Just dab.

When the cheese on top of your "meat" has gotten bubbly and melty, take them out of the oven, and lay each on a slice of bread. Split the sauerkraut between them, and put the remaining slices on top of each.

Cut each sandwich in half, and serve! I'm very emphatic about slicing my sandwiches in half, even veggie burgers. The cross section of a sandwich is fascinating-- you can see all the ingredients making their collision with one another into one whole flavor combination. Plus, that way the meal lasts longer.

Home Sweet Dinner

2008-06-16T18:27:00.000-07:00

I just got back from San Francisco, and had so many foodily orgasmic experiences that I want to describe them all. In the interest of producing one of those sound-byte blogs that are the only kind that people actually read, I will devote only one sentence each to my best meals or tastings.

(Friday the 13th. Around 2 in the afternoon.) After visiting Papa in Santa Rosa Mom and I wound our way through baking hills on our way to downtown Calistoga, and while we mused about Papa and mortality and the heartbreaking beauty of the countryside, we came upon a cherry stand where a young man-- just a kid, really-- sat with his part-Husky, part-wolf dog named Snow, selling fat, sweet, dark red cherries from Lodi and we bought several pounds of them.

(Still Friday, probably around 4). I had been to Domaine Chandon before, and so had Mom, only many years earlier, and under much more interesting circumstances, and we told our stories on the patio while sipping two flights of sparkling white wine, the seven of which kinds I wouldn't be able to recollect, but I can tell you that Mom was right when she said the Blanc de Noirs was the best, and I suppose she also must have been telling true when she said that "dry" means "sweet" when it comes to sparkling wine, and "brut" means "dry," though as far as regular white wine is concerned, "dry" means "dry" and "sweet" means "sweet" and I'm not sure I can explain the logic behind this.

(Friday, 6-ish.) Thanks to the thinly disguised laughter from the host at Thomas Keller's other restaurant (as in, other than French Laundry) when we tried to get a table without a reservation, Mom and I walked down the street in Yountville to a place called Hurley's and I'm so glad we did, because it was there that I tasted my first squash blossoms stuffed with herb-y goat cheese and I vowed then and there to reproduce the dish or at least something like it with the blooms from the zucchini plant in my own garden, but there were also many dishes besides that we noshed with deep, great pleasure, like asparagus salad, and heady Sauvignon Blanc, and crab cakes with corn relish, and warm chocolate cake to seal the deal.

(Saturday, nearly ten p.m.) Puerto Allegre is my all-time favorite Mexican restaurant in San Francisco, and my best friend Hilary proves her friendship to me by accompanying me there every time I visit; there's always a wait, and this time we definitely broke the one hour mark, no doubt because there were six of us and it was Saturday and lovely out, but it's ok because as soon as you finally sit there are bowls of chips and salsa flowing as fast as you can scoop them, and thanks to Taylor, Hil's pleasure-loving boyfriend, margarita pitchers being passed with frequency, so that by the time your mole enchiladas arrive, you're probably already more than satiated, but the company is so entertaining, and by now you've had enough drinks that you are happy to sit another hour, even if it means cleaning your plate as the time approaches midnight.

(Sunday, Father's Day brunch.) I think it's called simply, La Boulangerie, and it's on Union St. where all the people who are around my age but earning several times my income gather of a weekend noontime, but anyway it's food we're talking about here not money, so though the place has savory stuff like the open-faced goat cheese, pesto, roasted peppers and mushroom sandwich that I would call very good, it is truly the pastries that deserve all my attention, and it would be apt for me to even focus solely on the french toast my dad had the wisdom to order, because it's made from day-old brioche, saturated in some egg-y mixture and then I want to say it's fried in a pan like any french toast, but it arrives so custard-y, so fluffy and delicately angelic, that I can't imagine it would survive such a harsh application of heat, but either way Dad groaned over it, and I had a similarly happy reaction to my berry tart.

(Sunday, 1 p.m.) This wasn't a meal, but definitely deserves to be the epilogue: when we swung by the house to fetch my bag and then head to the airport, Jan had left for me as a parting gift a big ziplock bag brimming with her homemade granola, still warm from the oven, and this time she even added dried mango slivers, turning the crispy, flaky, cinnamon-y, muesli from heaven into an even greater feat of baking, and in the process solidifying her family-wide reputation as the world's best maker of granola.

Ok, well so much for succinctness and sound-bytes. I can't help it: if you know where to look, the food available in the Bay Area is worth a thousand words and more.

The Coldest Summer I Ever Spent

2008-06-12T10:12:00.000-07:00

There are rumors that it's going to get up to eighty degrees this weekend here in Portland, and I'll believe it when I see it. The past weeks don't bode well, that's for sure. Here it is, mid-June, and the other night I had to turn on the heater! Rain, fog, and wind like you would not believe are blustering over our town, and I am sick to death of it. The weather page in our local paper at least is having a sense of humor about it. One of their headlines on Tuesday read, "Merry Christmas! At least that's what it felt like in La Grande."

I was getting a bit worried for my vegetable garden-- is it getting enough sun? Too much water? Too cold? So I decided to do a little investigative reporting, and I called up Terry at Kasch's Nursery on Tacoma St. to see what she had to say. A short, blond woman with a deep, husky voice, Adam and I have seen her the last two springs that we visited Kasch's to pick up our tomato starts and flower seeds. She's always charging around, watering plants and just generally getting stuff done.

I was hoping she would answer the phone, and she did. The hook I was looking for didn't really pan out, though. Apparently, plants are doing just fine in this weather. For the most part, at least. Terri told me genially that some people who started planting their spring veggie plots really early had to come back and replace some of their plants. But for those of us who procrastinated till late May, or early June (or haven't even really started yet), there should be no problem.

I could see the truth of her words in my own plot, but I had just been chalking that up to the compost bin that Adam made last winter and which we positioned right in the corner of the plot so it would, we hoped, leach nutrients to its green, growing neighbors. We've got tomatoes, corn, beans, lettuce, basil, cilantro, an eggplant, and a zucchini going strong, and the only thing that didn't seem to take was the okra (which, truth be told, was just fine by me).

Well, I guess I don't need to worry about waking up one wet morning to a plot full of dead veggies. I suppose the little guys don't mind the rain nearly as much as I do.

Old New Mexico

2008-06-11T20:48:00.000-07:00

There's a restaurant-- Adobe Rose Cafe-- near our house that serves New Mexican food, and unpretentiously at that. Once I found out about the purveyors of green chile and sopaipillas, I knew we had to go at once. Some of you may not know that Adam and I met while living in Santa Fe, the enchanting and strange southwestern town at 1700 feet above sea level, and many miles from anywhere resembling anything metropolitan. Such isolated places inevitably cultivate unique cuisines, and I have been missing terribly the exotic, spicy offerings which, over several hundred years, have been informed by Native American, Mexican, and American cultures.

The interior of Adobe Rose is unprepossessing-- linoleum floors, basic wooden chairs composed the basic skeleton of its decoration, though a couple flowers sat in a vase at each table, and lovely photos of the Land of Enchantment hung on the walls. We looked at our laminated menus, and decided to go pure-- Huevos Rancheros for Adam, and cheese enchiladas for me. That way we could appreciate New Mexico's most valuable invention-- chile-- in an unadulterated fashion.

While we waited chips and salsa (free) flowed generously forth, and so did some decent margaritas (not free). We admired the photos on the walls and tried to guess where they were taken. One gorgeous church, where Adam and I actually contemplated looking into as a wedding location, turned out to be near Adam's old house in Espanola. We missed the rolling red deserts with aching hearts, and discussed the prospect of returning to live in a few years. (On that note, Adam got a job today! He'll be working for PGE here in Oregon as a wind technician, which means he'll be climbing windmills many hundreds of feet tall every day so that we may have appliances running on clean, sustainable energy. Needless to say I'm proud of my boy. Anyway, Adam said that there are a few windfarms under construction in New Mexico, and we just might look into one of them as sources of income when they come to completion.)

So our food was out by now-- plain white dishes with vast plains of melted cheddar lying on top of our enchiladas (only difference was that Adam had a few fried egg mountains on top of his cheese desert). And oh, delicious memories of sitting, on a balmy evening on the patio of The Shed in Santa Fe, or remembered nights of setting many such chile-and-cheese baked plates in front of tourists and locals alike at Maria's New Mexican Kitchen (where I waited tables for a year). The chile was good-- very good. Very spicy, which is good. I ordered mine "Christmas," (red and green chile) and both colors were fabulous.

I struck up a conversation with our waiter, who turned out the be the owner. Larry and his partner Terry ("Just remember, Larry and Terry") met while living in Albuquerque and came to Portland almost twenty years ago to start Adobe Rose. Apparently there are either enough New Mexican natives making their way through town craving "sopas" (sopaipillas are big, deep-fried dough pillows that you can use to sop up your chile or douse in honey for dessert), in order to support such an establishment, or there are sufficient local Portlanders who consider the spicy unique flavors worth returning to, again and again.

Lord knows we will be returning. Prices are modest and most importantly, the food set us into a sweaty reverie of the arid, sage-smelling place we knew and loved as Santa Fe.

Paper Bag Blues

2008-06-05T17:45:00.000-07:00

I just heard a very interesting story on NPR about the rising cost of groceries. In it they profiled three women of three very different income levels, and each women spoke about the changes she had to make in her life as far as grocery-shopping is concerned. And though I was fascinated to hear what these women had to say, both because I am interested in food and because I'm interested in saving money on food, I was a bit disappointed at the lack of creativity in their solutions. The woman with the lowest income (about $700 a month, with kids to support: Yikes!) said she had to switch from whole wheat bread to white bread, and she started shopping at a Mennonite grocery store where the products have passed their expiration dates, and where cereal costs a dollar, but you run the risk of finding an insect colony in your breakfast bowl. The woman in the highest income bracket said she had to stop shopping at Whole Foods, the poor dear.

So I'm interested to know: what have you done to make your dollar stretch further in feeding yourself and/or your family? I would love to get a response on this, even to the point of publicizing my blog to all my friends and family, a step I had not fully taken. But the more comments, the better, I think. Let's inspire each other to save much and eat well in the process.

I guess I should start, since I'm asking the question, but I'll be honest: I'm just learning how to be frugal. Going out to dinner is one of my all-time favorite activities, and though I do love to cook, I'll go to the store five nights a week to get the ingredients for ONE meal at a time! So I'll share my practices with you, though I'm hoping some of you out there can outshine me in the creativity department (come on Mom! I know you've got some good ones up your sleeve!).

1. Look at your price per unit. This is not original, but many of my generation may not know this. It really is cheaper to buy a $30 dollar drum of olive oil than a $9 bottle, if the larger one is cheaper by the ounce. All price tags will have this per-unit price on it.

2. Find the cheap produce market in your town! See my other blog today about Limbo Produce in Portland to see what kind of savings you can get. As long as it's not all the way on the other side of town and only open during rush hour, the drive should be worth it. The drive to Limbo for me, for example, costs me no more than a pound of cherries. A Limbo pound of cherries, that is! (ie, a couple bucks!)

3. Plan meals where there are ingredient crossovers. For example, this week we're planning on making seven layer dip one night for dinner (thanks to Raina's birthday party for the inspiration). The avocados and tomatoes and cheese used in it will be used for sandwiches and salads. The yogurt (great sour cream replacement) will be used for a yummy curried lentil recipe. Your ingredients take you farther, and you waste less.

4. Plant herbs, lettuce, and tomatoes! They are so easy to grow, and freshen up any meal. Of course there are a million other things you can plant, but these are the easiest, and you won't be paying for your most basic salad fixin's all summer long.

Ok, People. Lay it on me: whether we're in a recession, or headed for one, or just want to plain have greater awareness of our consumption, What's your greatest tip for saving money on food? What's your favorite recipe that's dirt cheap to make but tastes like a million bucks? What have you sacrificed from your shopping list? What item can you not live without?

Lucky In Limbo

2008-06-05T13:31:00.000-07:00

Thanks to a co-worker who inspired me to keep a tighter grasp on my finances (and subsequently install the bafflingly complex computer program Quicken, which as yet lies unused on my computer desktop), I suggested to Adam that we do some meal planning and go for a hefty grocery trip to the affordably priced Trader Joe's. And while I do have lots of laudatory remarks about Trader Joe's abundant and inexpensive offerings (exemplified, of course, by its three-dollar bottles of wine), it the store's neighbor I would like to talk about today, Limbo Produce (SE 39th near Steele).

I thought we'd check it out first-- stock up on fruits and veggies, and then hit up TJ's for our dry and canned (or wine-bottled) goods. And what an idea that turned out to be! Like your typical produce-only market, little attention is devoted to architecture or decoration, but when you have sweeping mountains of melons and tomatoes, box after box of potatoes (red, fingerling, russet), and of course, since it is June in Oregon, tiers and tiers of blue-, rasp-, and strawberries to bring tears to the eye-- then interior ambience is of little importance. Happily the plentiful produce was local and largely organic, and happiest of all... it is DIRT CHEAP. 99-cent avocados! Dollar-a-basket strawberries! (Recall, those were three-fifty at the farmer's market.) Cherries for two dollars a pound! (At New Season's they cost literally four times as much.) Big boxes of already-washed spinach for a buck!

We stocked and stocked, and walked away with a thirty-eight dollar boatload-sized bounty, and I've been popping cherries in my mouth like jelly beans ever since. (I also made a lasagna last night for dinner layered with zucchini and spinach, courtesy of Limbo.)

Perhaps these well-kept secret permanent markets are an even better answer to the conundrum of over-priced, over-bland supermarket produce than farmer's markets. As much as I love my local FM, it's really expensive. I've noticed too, that the products at the FM are becoming more and more processed. Not like Kraft Macaroni and Cheese-processed, but more and more ready-made stuff is being sold, and is pushing out all the raw basics. For example, instead of a bunch of spinach, vendors now have spinach tarts and spinach tortillas and spinach facial moisturizer. They are often homemade and delicious and I'm sure very moisturizing, but the prices are also of course jacked up.

Limbo's fruits and veggies are just that: whole, ripe, just pulled from the earth, and ready for me to have my way with them. So when I want to take a gander at my neighbors on a summer's afternoon, or if I'm in the mood to plunk down some money for some artisanal goat cheese and homemade ice cream sandwiches, I'll head to my local FM. When I want my fruits and veggies untouched and inexpensive, I'll head on down to Limbo, the produce heaven.

Jammin, Take Two

2008-05-26T17:40:00.000-07:00

The last jar of jam is almost gone, and I still haven't written about it! So let me tell you, before the sweet taste is gone and forgotten, what the big deal is with homemade jam.

First off, it's yet another excuse for a trip to the farmer's market. Thursday was misty so the market wasn't as bumpin' as it no doubt will become on the imminent hot summer evenings, but the die-hards were there, including all the farmers, who no doubt don't even notice a little mosquito piss. Table after table were laden with greens and carrots (and turnips, and radishes, and snow peas, and...) and I began to get a little nervous-- was there any fruit to be had this early in the season? And then, at the end of the lot, there it lay, the strawberry tent. Strawberry flats, stacked into piles and pyramids, and two young farmer-cum-hawkers weighing and sacking the fruit and taking money just as fast as their dirt-stained hands could move. And all the while Portlanders flocked around the first fresh fruit of the year, like zombies deprived of human flesh.

At $3.50 a basket though, and $35 a flat, I must say I was a bit taken aback by the price. Do these rates sound normal? I must say, I'm going to have to do a little price comparing next time I'm at the store.

Well, I bought four baskets-- about two pounds, once you take the tops off. That's fourteen dollars worth of jam, not including the cost of sugar and lemon. This better be good. The berries were promising, though. Small, but not too small (large enough to work with, but not those gargantuan, hydroponic blandberries from Safeway). Ripe, but not too ripe. And fragrant. I dispensed one berry to each of us in the car on the way home. Yum. Summer is here.

So, wash, hull and slice right into a big skillet. Squeeze half a lemon or so over the strawberries-- I had a Meyer lemon left over from the starvation cleanse! Add about one cup of sugar per lb. of fruit. Well, that's what I've been told, at any rate. I ran out of white sugar, I didn't really feel like dousing my pure, sweet berries with two whole cups of sugar, so I put what I had of white sugar (a half a cup), and an equal amount of brown sugar. I hoped for the best.

Then fill a medium-sized bowl with ice water, and set a smaller bowl within the water (but don't let any water seep in). I'll tell you what this is for in a minute.

Stir up the fruit, lemon juice, and sugar. Bring it to a boil. Then turn the heat as low as you can, but keep it simmering well enough for the liquid to reduce. The recipe I went from says it takes five minutes for the berries and liquid to cook down. This is bull. It took twenty minutes at least, and about five tests.

To test it for readiness, spoon about a half teaspoon of the liquid into the by-now-very-cold bowl. Let it sit for 30 seconds. Tilt the bowl. If the liquid runs very slowly then your jam is done. If it runs fast, it's not done yet. Keep the heat on, and keep stirring. Important reminder: stir it a LOT! The pundits tell me that if you burn the sugary fruit, you'll never get rid of the taste.

This recipe does not require the whole rigamarole of pectin, sterilized jars, and vacuum-sealing. This jam will not keep outside of the fridge, and in the fridge it'll last you up to two weeks. But it's a good way to start your career as a jam-maker because it's easy and simple. You can get complex and start canning for winter later.

And boy, was it delicious!!! My berries yielded three small jelly-jars-worth of jam, plus enough for one bagel toasted with butter. It was a bit runny (perhaps because I cut back on the sugar? Didn't cook it long enough?), but hell, it soaks into the bagel better that way. Now that I think of it, this stuff would be stellar on pancakes. Also, I realized in retrospect that I sliced the berries pretty thick, because it was very chunky. My younger self would have sneered at such enormous morsels of soggy fruit (I used to go for the fruit-free purple sugar gel known as grape jelly back when my palette was less cultivated), but I now know the error of my ways. Now, I say, bring me the chunkiest jam you got.

The final verdict? Easy and fantastic. If you try this, you'll definitely be enjoying your breakfasts this summer. You might even re-instate a few times the wonderful childhood tradition of "breakfast for dinner."

Grace.

Holy Empanada!

2008-05-24T19:09:00.000-07:00

O, mi Pambiche. Portland's best Cuban restaurant, and possibly one of its best restaurants in any genre, fed us dinner tonight. At about 73 degrees, it was a real scorcher in P-town today, and, biking home from work Adam and I had the lightning bolt of inspiration to heighten the sense of summer and visit the vivid green, purple and yellow building that houses Pambiche. During the nine months of the year that it's miserable outside, the two long rows of tables lining the sidewalks lie frustratingly empty, cutting the capacity of the restaurant to a mere fraction of what it could be in the warm weather. The reason I say frustrating is that the turnout for fantastic Cuban food remains unvaryingly high throughout the year, causing the wait for one of the five or so tables inside to stretch, at times, to an hour and a half. But this evening, the colorful picnic tables were abuzz with scantily clad and sufficiently hip Portlanders, who, like us, thought some empanadas and sangria were pretty much essential on a Saturday like this. With more places to sit, we sat easily.

Sangria. Two options, white or red. I chose white because I had just biked from the Pearl and needed refreshment, as well as intoxicant, and didn't figure red wine would be as cooling. I chose well. My strapping Cubano server brought a full pint glass of something that looked like lemonade, only bedecked with such equatorial produce as a large sprig of mint, a lime, and a sugar cane stalk. I grunted and started chomping on my sugar cane with rather less than ladylike formality, and then slurped down a fruity, wine-y, tropical vacation in a glass that, upon closed eyes, brought forth visions of silly-blue seas and white rocky beaches with an unclothed Javier Bardem sprawled...

Ok, ahem, so we orded the Puerro Empanada-- I guess you could describe it as the Latin version of a calzone, only deep fried for that extra buttery flakiness. The Puerro was filled with a creamy, heavenly leek and cheese mixture and came adorned with a juicy beet salad (and these guys aren't afraid to mix beet greens with the ruby roots-- a wise move, in my view) and four thick-sliced, deep-fried plantains. And then we got the Pescado con Coco-- a piece of white fish (that I felt could have been bigger, but maybe I'm thinking from the American perspective, where one serving of restaurant food here could feed a developing country's family for a week) that was stewed in this creamy coconut sauce, flavored with peppers, onions, herbs and spices. Mio Dio, it was near perfect. Black beans and rice on the side. At $7.75 for the Empanada, and $9.50 for the fish, it was a sweet, sweet deal.

I've been there three times now, and haven't yet ordered dessert, though I swear I will next time. They have one of those cases filled with such things that make you press your nose against the glass in wonder. Individual-sized pineapple-upside-down cakes with toasted coconut siding, three-tiered Tres Leches cakes, enormous chocolate rectangles named Aleman (presumably, after their resemblance to German chocolate cake), and other treats too ornate and amazing to recall right now.

There will probably almost always be a wait at Pambiche, and they deserve it. But if you time your visit wisely, you don't need to do time for your plantains. Just head out around five on a warm afternoon-- the rush is an hour or so away, and all the tables are open and turnover is high. That sangria is meant to be drunk outside anyway.

Jammin!

2008-05-23T17:48:00.000-07:00

Ok so this post is supposed to be about making jam-- my first jam ever!-- but I have to take a second to brag about the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink dinner I just made. Check it:

So as both a Virgo and an ISTJ (I recently took the Meyers Briggs test for work), I tend to plan somewhat compulsively. Culinarily speaking, this means I start to think about dinner while I'm munching on breakfast, at least as far as the skeletal ingredients are concerned. I knew I wanted to use a withering leek I had leftover from potato leek soup last week, and I wanted to find a way to incorporate that with a gorgeous bunch of chard bought yesterday at the farmer's market. Perhaps some rice? and, Don't I have some leftover arborio somewhere on the cupboard? I let that stew during the rest of my shift.

But then I got home and opened the cupboard and said despite myself, Ooh! (While I did it, I realized that that is one of the great pleasures of my life, opening the cupboard, seeing something perfect, and saying, Ooh! That's sort of what this whole dinner was like.) There lay some pasta my grandma Neenie loves and buys from Trader Joe's, and bestowed upon me the other night (I think I inherited from her the notion that presenting your host with a package of good pasta is a perfectly respectable alternative to a bouquet of flowers, or bottle of chardonnay): spinach and chive linguine. Even better than rice! So I got that boiling while I sauteed some garlic, the leek, and a few minutes later, the chard.

Then the poking began. I will admit that a shot of tequila and the new Breeders album fueled my recklessness. I looked in the fridge, way into the back, past the tower of salsa tubs and crusty hummus (gonna throw it out one of these days) and Adam's perennially empty gallon of soy milk and found... CREAM. Oh jees, I thought, there goes my food awareness. Though I was fully aware that cream would make the dish much much better. Then I pushed the dry goods around on the cupboard. Hm! Sunflower seeeds! Better save those for a garnish. Wouldn't want them to get soggy.

And, apropos of my recent herb-mania, I traipsed out to the garden and snipped off some oregano, basil and parsley and chopped them all up coarsely. Then I mixed the whole shebang together-- veggies, pasta, cream, a tad more olive oil (ok and a little butter), s&p, and then sprinkled some sunflower seeds and a few shards of smoked white cheddar. My LORD it was heavenly. Probably the best non-recipe'd dish ever.

Well, this post was meant to be about jam, and yet it's turned out to be a rock n' roll inspired pasta dish. Ah well. We write about what moves us. Jam tomorrow, I promise.

Good Gracious.

Food Tip #1-- Herby Samwidges

2008-05-22T13:35:00.000-07:00

On a whim today I decided to dress up my sandwich. I had some leftover salmon that I had breaded and baked the other night to rather unglamorous results, so I wasn't too thrilled about eating it for lunch. Not only had it been only so-so, but now it was two days old, too. But: waste not, spend not too much money. So I toasted some bread-- good, Italian Como from our local bakery-- and went out to the garden to pick some lettuce. While I was out there, the basil fluttered in the wind and I worried that if I didn't pick any soon it would bolt. So I snapped a few leaves off, and as an afterthought, also grabbed a few leaves of the wild oregano, growing enormously right in the middle of our lawn. I slathered one slice of bread with mayo, and nestled the herbs in it. Then lettuce, salmon (microwaved just to room temp), and a thin smear of sweet, hot mustard on the other slice. Oh my lord, it was good. Crusty bread, meaty fish, crunchy lettuce, salty mayo, and a hint of sweet from the mustard. And then, after chewing for a second, the fresh punch of flavor from the basil and oregano. I'm definitely doing that again.

Onward

2008-05-22T13:09:00.000-07:00

Well, as you one or two faithful readers may have noticed-- the fast ended. At the end of Day 3 my head was pounding, and the terrible irony did not escape me that I'm already a sufferer of headaches-- a 48 hour headache, voluntarily self-afflicted was not something I needed in my life. What I did need was food. I ate-- a grilled cheese sandwich. Probably not the best choice and a serious stomachache afterward confirmed it, but my carb and dairy withdrawal was acute by that point. So I gobbled down my sandwich in shame and depression and my headache was gone. Instantly. It seemed to be a good choice.

I rationalized and regretted my decision by turns, and told myself that I would eat sparsely and ideally, all vegan, till the fast period would have been over. I did, for a few days, but I think that last night marked a turning point. A returning point, I should say, to fattier and happier times. After an afternoon lifting and sorting through boxes in the basement, it was evident that a veggie burger and a couple beers were in order, and so I traipsed down to the Oaks Bottom Pub. The fact that Oaks Bottom is famous for its "totchos," a large platter of nachos, only with Tater Tots instead of tortilla chips lying beneath the heap of cheese, beans, sour cream, jalapenos, etc, should indicate just about where this place falls on the health-o-meter. I ordered my own favorite: a veggie burger with blue cheese and sauteed mushrooms, a side of tots, and a pint of Proletariat Red. It hit the spot. I hadn't eaten cheese since my lapse, and had abstained from anything deep-fried for even longer than that. I told myself, if I keep the consumption of deep-frieds to a minimum, I think-- I hope-- I should be ok.

So anyway. I think I've escaped the guilt and shame of eating by now-- the fast would be over tomorrow anyway, so by then I'll really be out of the woods. But, guilt can be productive (and how would my parents get their occasional birthday gifts if it weren't?), and my awareness of what I eat has gone up drastically. A couple days after I quit the fast I decided to spend the day sugar free. At work of course someone brought in several tubs of cookies, and after lunch (when I find myself craving sugar the most) I nearly bit off all my fingernails instead of going for the cookies. A nasty tasting alternative, I tell you. And later that night after I finished dinner, I let myself have a half a cantelope for dessert. It was really good. But it wasn't enough. I wanted to-- literally, mind you-- go in to the kitchen and snack on a spoonful of sugar. Wow. That is a serious addiction.

I suppose this strange, obsessive relationship about food will continue. So I'll just write about it. That's what turns someone from a neurotic into an expert, isn't it? Just look at Freud, and Philip Roth.

Grace.

Day Three

2008-05-16T11:33:00.000-07:00

Well there's no way of putting this delicately, so I'll say it outright. This morning I woke up filled with hate. My headache was still taunting me from behind my left eyeball, and I resented the notion of getting up to drink a nalgene bottle's worth of salt water, and then proceed to starve myself only if all I was going to get out of it was pain and anger.

I walked to the kitchen and stared at a frying pan soaking in the sink with somebody else's egg, cheese, and grease particles clinging to the sides. I gagged. Repulsive.

Ok, so I guess it's not food that I want. At least not fried eggs. So, I made a deal with myself. 1. If I wake up with a headache tomorrow, then it's not worth it, and I'll quit. Anyone who has spent 24 hours with a headache will probably agree with me on that one. 2. Today I'm taking a day off of the SWF. The authors of this cleanse say that if it is not possible to take the salt water (and today, for me, it is not), then drink a cup of smooth move tea in the morning as well as at night. So, I poured a cup of my laxative tea, which actually is quite good, and turned to my heap of lemons. As I chopped and squeezed, I became more resigned, perhaps slightly accustomed even, to the routine. I knew from looking at the egg nasties in the sink that I didn't need to eat. I just didn't feel good.

When we do something that doesn't feel good, we stop. Why am I continuing on? My answer still continues to be, I don't know. I mean, when we exercise we continue when it hurts. When we're trying to meet a deadline, we don't quit working even though it sucks. So, I'll stick to my deal. Today I'll persevere. If I wake to a headache tomorrow, I'm having a piece of toast.

But now, two glasses of lemonade later, I'm sitting on the front porch. It's 70 degrees out and my headache is barely noticeable. Adam just weeded the garden and we're going to go to the nursery for plants. I'm not hungry, and I feel happy.

Could my anger and repulsion have just been part of the mass exodus of toxins from my body? God that would be great. But I suspect that that is a whole other de-toxing cleanse of its own. One that takes a lifetime of effort.

Grace.

Day Two

2008-05-15T22:21:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning with what felt like a terrible hangover. Headache behind my left eyeball, sore muscles. Same exact kinds of pain I feel when I've tied one on the night before. What the hell? I felt so great yesterday. It has lasted all day, and even now I'm squinting painfully at the computer screen.

I slept till 10am this morning, took a long nap around lunchtime, and now it's 10:30pm and I'm exhausted. I will try and drink my whole cup of Smooth Move before I fall asleep, but I'm not counting on it...

Grace.

Day One- Part Two

2008-05-14T22:02:00.000-07:00

Now it's bedtime. I feel great, really. Walking home earlier-- from tai chi class, I admit. I know, I know; I fast, I do tai chi. Just pass the patchouli-- anyway, when I was walking down my street, I felt so... I don't know. Elevated. Everything is so green right now. And when I walked up my front steps, I felt so strongly that I love my house. Simple things that felt very important.

A big ol' glass of lemonade for dinner and a cup of Smooth Move. I'm not full and I'm not hungry. I'm realizing that I have a very profound relationship to food. More on that later.

Grace.

Day One

2008-05-14T13:08:00.000-07:00

I lay in bed this morning, trying to go back to sleep, but my mind kept returning to the dreaded SWF. I had read that some people couldn't even hold down the nasty stuff, and I was worried that I might be one of them. What worried me even more was that I would be able-- just barely able-- to keep down 32 oz. of warm salt water and that I would therefore be committed to drinking it every morning for the next ten days.

It's not as bad as I expected. At the behest of the experts I invested in a five dollar jar of French Celtic uniodized sea salt. French Celtic? Hm. Well wherever it's from, the salt is lovely. Two nights ago my friend Berkeley made some fantastic zucchini, sliced, drizzled in olive oil and parmesan, and stuck under the broiler, and the fancy salt we sprinkled on it was noticeably more delicious than the usual Morton stuff. Mmm... I'm definitely making that zucchini when this is over...

Anyway.

I chugged down my French Celtic seawater with nary a gag, but with plenty a scrunched nose, and began to chop and squeeze my lemons and limes. It's a three-citrus cocktail, all organic: conventional lemons, Meyer lemons, and limes. I stirred in my maple syrup and cayenne pepper, and suspected by the dark maroon hue of the resulting lemonade that I had put in too much pepper. My first sip confirmed it, and as the day progresses, the spicy lemonade is only getting spicier as the cayenne pepper soaks and spreads through the solution. I suspect that my last cups this evening will have transformed into a kind of lemonade/hot-sauce cross-pollination.

More later.

A Clean Slate- Day Zero on the Master Cleanse

2008-05-13T19:36:00.000-07:00

What better way to start a food blog, than to begin it the day before a fast? Well, there are probably lots of better ways. I could be spending an inheritance eating my way through the Mediterranean, or sleeping on the beaches of Thailand and consuming the bounties of its cities. I could even trawl through my own hometown, one food cart after the next-- though that one's been done, and done well. So have Southeast Asia and the Mediterranean been sufficiently scoured for delectables by all the culinary pundits (and bloggers-- see the latest issue of bon appetit. They are the nouveau journalistes, I tell ya). But have any food devotees ever written about eating nothing at all?

So let me begin my written homage to food with an empty stomach, a blank canvas. The program is called the Master Cleanse. I know, it sounds cultish. It does seem to have quite a following. It's also known as the Lemonade Diet, because that is what you drink, almost exclusively. And this ain't no Minute Maid: think more along the lines of fresh-squeezed organic lemons and limes, water, maple syrup, and cayenne pepper. Sound good? Add to that stark menu two pints of salt water in the morning, and laxative tea at night, and the lemonade starts to sound a lot better, doesn't it!

It's a cleansing and de-toxing regimen. Supposedly, for the first several days, the feelings of pain, hunger, nausea, fatigue are just the toxins making their way out of the body, and then (again, supposedly) after that one feels great. No hunger, lots of energy, supreme mental clarity. It's also meant to take a figurative scrub brush to your intestinal tract. The veterans of this cleanse tell me that, even after being on the fast for a week or more, they are still having bowel movements as large as if it were the day after Thanksgiving. Wow. What is in my intestines, and how long has it been there??

So why, you may ask? What, precisely, am I thinking when I voluntarily limit my intake to "lemonade," salt water, and Smooth Move for nigh on two weeks? And my answer is, I don't really know! If it's even remotely possible that there is months' or years' worth of food and "toxins" residing in my colon, then I definitely want it out. I look forward for an excuse not to drink alcohol for ten days. I won't deny that the potential for losing a few pounds before tank top season has crossed my mind. But mostly I'm just curious. If mental clarity is a possibility, I definitely want to check that out. And if a mental wig-out it turns out to be, then so be it. That'll be interesting too.

The Last Supper: A bagel toasted with cheese, a salad, a glass of white wine. I thought about getting a burrito for my last hurrah, but it somehow didn't seem appropriate. Tomorrow is Day One! First item of the day: the saltwater flush. I have a feeling I'll be referring to it often. So let it now be known as my dear friend, SWF.

Grace.