The Barefoot Kitchen Witch

Slipping Into Place

I embrace coincidences.

Though, really, I don't think they're coincidences.  (So why call them that?  I don't know - do you have a better word or phrase?  Perhaps "serendipitous occurances" would do.)  But anyway...they are not things that just happen randomly.  It's more like Fate or God or The Universe or Mother Nature showing something to you and then...just to keep your attention focused where it's supposed to be (whether you realize it or not)...you are shown something else - something similar but different, kind of the same, but maybe from a different angle.  Told, perhaps, in a slightly different voice, but still on the same overall topic.  Again, to keep you paying attention.  Or to reinforce what you're starting to pick up on.  It's a gentle process, at least at first.  I find that if you still aren't getting it, the Powers That Be will come along and give you a good, hard smack upside the head.

But anyway.  Back to the gentle process part.

Periodically I'm sent books by publishers to look at and talk about and sometimes host book giveaways.  I'm not paid, at least not in money.  But I get free books that I might not otherwise have bought, and so for me, that's better than cash.  After all - FREE BOOKS!  Mostly it's been cookbooks, which is great, because even if I've got eight billion cookbooks, there's always room for one more.

A little while back I was sent an advanced copy of Meat:  A Love Story, by Susan Bourette.  Ms. Bourette is an award-winning journalist based in Toronto who went undercover at a slaughterhouse for a week and after that decided to become a vegetarian.  But that didn't last, and she was lured back to meat by the smell of bacon cooking in a diner.  Her ensuing quest, after experiencing the blood and screams firsthand from the slaughterhouse assembly line, was to find a way to eat meat and have a clear conscience about it. 

I'm still reading the book - and it's a good read.  Ms. Bourette goes on a whale hunt with the Inuit, a Canadian moose hunt, she spends time on a Texas cattle ranch, and on and on.  And it is possible, she shows us, to find and purchase and consume meat that is raised well and respectfully, and dispatched with compassion.  Pioneer Woman has written about this sort of thing on her blog.  Their cattle are given the best lives they can have.  They roam and graze freely - they aren't crammed nose to tail in mounds of their own manure, and they don't eat mysterious blends of grain and bits of distant cousins.  No Mad Cow Disease here.  If I were a beef cow in Oklahoma, I'd want to grow up on THAT ranch.

So there's one little "something" - the book I was sent.

Our friend, John, who I've mentioned before, most often in conjunction with the brewing of beer or the catching of trout, has, for lack of a better way of describing this, kind of gone caveman.  He still shaves, and his head went on strike in the hair department long ago anyway, so I don't mean in a furry way.  And I don't know which car insurance he has, either.  What I mean is, he has learned how to make a fire from sticks. 

Not long ago, he skinned a groundhog (I think that's what it was) that he found (already dead) by the side of the road.  To learn how.

And, more recently, he skinned, cooked (fried), and ate (yes, ate) a squirrel.  It was fresh.  And no, according to him, it did not taste at all like chicken.

He called to report (to me, because I have this foodish blog and would be interested in his tasting notes) that it tasted "sweet, gamey...and would be perfect in a curry."  John takes his tasting notes seriously. 

On one level, part of me cringes at the whole squirrel skinning notion. 

But.  Apart from the rodent factor, there's nothing all that different between eating squirrel and eating chicken or beef.  It's just the up close and personal aspect that's different.  Most of us don't grow our own chickens or beef for food.  We buy it wrapped in cellophane at the store.  It doesn't look a whole lot like an animal that lived and breathed at that point.  At least, not like any of the cuter animals.  Still - it lived, and someone had to kill it so we can eat it.

We go fishing, and we used to have lobster pots, and I have killed my share of fish and lobsters (and crabs and mussels and oysters and clams) for dinner.  Bill, of course, has, too. But we aren't killing for fun.  We catch the fish or dig the clams or harvest the mussels for dinner, and we make sure that when the creatures are killed, it is done as swiftly as possible.  We are not wasteful - we only take what we will eat.  And our children know that the seafood on their plates was alive at one point and was killed so we could eat it.  They know where their seafood comes from. 

So that (mainly the squirrel) is another little "something."

Bear with me - I know I'm rambling.  I sort of have a point.

I was at Barnes & Noble last week.  Alex had the day off from kindergarten because it was so VERY hot, and many other schools only stayed open half the day.  Coincidentally it was his birthday.  Daycare, which is air-conditioned (the schools generally aren't) was open, so we dropped Julia off and spent a few hours of quality mother and son time doing a bit of bookstore browsing.   We had a little nosh in the cafe, some lemonade for him and iced coffee for me, and then we headed to the children's dept to get a few things.  First of all - some Kumon workbooks for him and Julia to work on through the summer - and then a couple of stuffed animals (it was his birthday, and he wanted one for Julia, too) and another book from the I'm Going To Read series Alex likes.  And then I made Alex follow me around for a bit as I racewalked through a few sections hoping something would jump out at me.  (I don't racewalk when I'm alone, but I kind of have to with a child in tow.  They don't like to stand there watching you leaf through volume after volume.  As Alex frequently reminds me "It's hard for a kid to be patient.")

Anyway - back to the jumping out at me part - something did.  Or at least it waved and shouted "OVER HERE!"

It was actually a little cardboard stand display, posed next to an endcap near (I believe) the Essays section, which was on the way, sort of, back to the cooking section (I thought I could get away with two laps through there, since it's food, and Alex does like to help me cook or bake sometimes.)

And the book on display was this one: 

And my hand just shot out and plucked one from the cardboard stand and tucked it into the basket along with fluffy creatures and Kumon workbooks.

I started reading that one a few days ago, and it's one of those books I don't want to end.  I am more than halfway through, and I don't want to finish.  I also know (or am pretty certain) that when I finish the book I will read it all over again, right away.

What's it about?

Well, first of all, I'll skip that question and say that for whatever reason, I haven't read anything (that I can think of) by Barbara Kingsolver.  Not on purpose - just...hadn't.  Yet.  Til now.

The book chronicles a year in which Ms. Kingsolver, her husband, and two daughters (husband and elder daughter are co-authors of this book) "abandoned the industrial-food pipeline to live a rural live--vowing that, for one year, they'd only buy food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it." (from the back cover.)

Month by month we see the fruits of a farmer's labor, all following the natural cycle of plant and season.  With just about every fruit and vegetable available at every large grocery store at any time of the year, we get away from the natural order of things.  Asparagus arrives in May (in this part of the world), and you have to stop harvesting it so it can grow tall and ferny and gather strength and nutrients for next year's growth.  Then come the leafy greens...and the berries...and tomatoes...and potatoes and squashes...each in turn.

They also raise turkeys and chickens - turkeys for the table, chickens mainly for the eggs, but roosters are for the table, too, since too many roosters means a lot of poultry testosterone and that means a lot of fighting.  The turkeys begin as fluffy little cute things and eventually, because this is why they were raised, many of them will be swiftly beheaded, bled, plucked and frozen. 

I love this book.  I am not doing it justice, but I'm trying.  I found myself nodding in agreement through much of the book - descriptions of different varieties of vegetables...of cooking...of food memories...of observations such as this one:

Once you start cooking, one thing leads to another.  A new recipe is as exciting as a blind date.  A new ingredient, heaven help me, is an intoxicating affair.  I've grown new vegetables just to see what they taste like:  Jerusalem artichokes, edamame, potimarrons.  A quick recipe can turn slow in our kitchen because of the experiments we hazard.  We make things from scratch just to see if we can.  We've rolled out and cut our pasta, raised turkeys to roast or stuff into link sausage, made chutney from our garden.  On high occasions we'll make cherry pies with crisscrossed lattice tops and ravioli with crimped edges, for the satisfaction of seeing these storybook comforts become real.

Yes, exactly!  We do that, too!  We're growing kohlrabi this year - we've never grown it, never eaten it, either.  But they're out there, in a little patch of garden, and they're actually starting to LOOK LIKE KOHLRABI!  How cool is that?

The bad thing about Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, is that it makes me wish we had a much larger plot of land so we could grow MORE. 

I've just finished reading chapter 17, entitled "Celebration Days" and subtitled "November-December."  Toward the end of the chapter, Ms Kingsolver writes about food and holiday traditions, and specifically, among others, about Dia de los Muertos - the Mexican Day of the Dead.  Dia de los Muertos "is...an entirely happy ritual of remembering one's departed loved ones, welcoming them into the living room by means of altars covered with photographs and other treasured things that bring memory into the present."

The chapter ends thusly:

I'm drawn to this celebration, I'm sure, because I live in a culture that allows almost no room for dead people.  I celebrated Dia de las Muertos in the homes of friends from a different background, with their deceased relatives, for years before I caught on.  But I think I understand now.  When I cultivate my garden I'm spending time with my grandfather, sometimes recalling deeply buried memories of him, decades after his death.  While shaking beans from an envelope I have been overwhelmed by a vision of my Pappaw's speckled beans and flat corn seeds in peanut butter jars in his garage, lined up in rows, curated as carefully as a museum collection.  That's Xantolo, a memory space opened before my eyes, which has no name in my language. 

When I'm cooking, I find myself inhabiting the emotional companionship of the person who taught me how to make a particular dish, or with whom I used to cook it.  Slamming a door on food-rich holidays, declaring food an enemy, sends all the grandparents and great aunts to a lonely place.  I have been so relieved latley to welcome them back:  my tiny great-aunt Lena who served huge, elaborate meals at her table but would never sit down there with us herself, insisting on eating alone in the kitchen instead.  My grandmother Kingsolver, who started every meal plan with dessert.  My other grandmother, who made perfect rolls and gravy.  My Henry grandfather, who used a cool attic room to cure the dark hams and fragrant cloth-wrapped sausages he made from his own hogs.  My father, who first took me mushroom hunting and taught me to love wild asparagus.  My mother, whose special way of beating eggs makes them fly in an ellipse in the bowl.

Here I stand in the consecrated presence of all they have wished for me, and cooked for me.  Right here, canning tomatoes with Camille, making egg bread with Lily.  Come back, I find myself begging every memory.  Come back for a potholder hug.

God.  Exactly. 

When I am baking the German cookies at Christmas time, my late mother-in-law is right there in the kitchen, too.  Fishing - that began with my dad's father and continues into the generation after mine.  Yorkshire pudding - the instruction to "beat it til lit plops" (the batter) - from my mother's mother.  Other foods...my mother's father loved "stinky cheese" and I'm sure that contributed to my love of all cheeses bleu.  And from my dad's mother - the little treat of butter on saltines...and the tradition of Cornish pasties.  And, though I'm fortunate that they are still among the living, I have food memories from both my parents...shucking scallops in the garage with my Dad while the rain poured outside...and innumerable moments in the kitchen with my Mom. 

And now I pass that along to my kids...we bake cookies...we make pasta...we're going to do an awful lot of food things this summer. 

And, to get back to my long-ago original theme...that book was the next "something." 

I don't know what to call it.  An awareness.  A respect and reverence.  A going back to basics.  I've always had it to some degree...I can bake bread from scratch, make pasta dough, pastry dough, and so on.  And next up - I'm going to make cheese.  I just made a batch of ricotta yesterday.  I bought a couple books and I'm going to make fresh mozzarella and who knows what else.  And the kids will help, and watch, and learn that this is where cheese actually "comes from." 

And I'm also going to can things.  I always roast tomatoes and freeze them for sauces...this year I want to do more - make sauce and can it...make jams...pickles, chutneys, and so on.  I remember jewel-toned jars of fruits and sauces high up on the shelves in our back kitchen when I was a kid.  I remember shucking corn and snapping the ends off beans with my sister and our friends - free labor for my mother, who would then blanch the vegetables and pack them in the freezer.  The corn tasted just like August corn, even when we were eating it in December.

And I'm buying from the Farmers' Markets.  I'm trying to become a "locavore," as the new term has been coined.  I'm more conscious of where my food is coming from, and I'm making my purchases based on what I'm learning.  And I want my children to grow up knowing where their food comes from.  And respecting the whole process, from the growing and caring for to the cooking and eating. 

It's not a new concept.  But I am all fired up with the renewal of it.

Niche-less

I've been thinking about this for some time now.  I'm still not sure what I'm going to do.

I was thinking of splitting this blog in two - one for JUST food-related content, and the other for JUST family/kids/my own silly thoughts.

But.

It's not so easy to peel them apart.  My kids help with a lot of the cooking and baking (as you've no doubt noticed if you've been reading me for oh, more than a week)...my husband and I both love food, love cooking...it's hard for me to separate the two.  Because then...if my kids are decorating cookies...is that a food post or a family post?  If my husband and I go out to eat at a new restaurant and I want to talk about the food here...well, it was a "date night" so it's about family, but there was good food involved, so should that be on the food site?

I don't know what to do yet.

Why does it matter?

Oh, because I'm trying to fit into a few different niches.  I'm going for targeted advertising and sometimes there are stipulations - like your blog needs to be a certain percentage of food-themed posts in order to be considered a food blog (in some places)...or a certain percentage of family/parenting posts...or whatever.

The problem is, food is a big part of my family.  We grow it, we catch it, we cook it, we eat it.  (I do most of the dishes, but that's a different issue.)  The point is, we are not separate from the food.  We are intertwined.  Food and family.  Family and food.

I'm still thinking about what I'm going to do.

If anyone wants to put in their two cents...feel free. 

Right now I'm going to help my son create a book of sea creatures.

(See, now, you'd think that would be a family/parenting kind of a situation, however, the story of these sea creatures is that, in turn, each one gets eaten by another sea creature bigger than itself.  So...does that make it a food post?  And WE eat a lot of seafood, too.  Again, food post.)

That's what I'm talkin' 'bout.

Subdividing

Hi.  For a while now I've wanted to better organize all the recipes and things that were originally just grouped under "You Look Hungry" for the most part.

So that's what I've spent the past couple hours doing, more or less.  I'm not done with it - there are other sub-categories I want to include, and some of the recipes belong in a couple different headings...but for now, this is what I've done.

Have to put the laptop away.  The kids and I are making miniature blueberry pies.  I'll let you know how that goes.

Swoon-Inducing

Hi again.

I have a loaf of American Irish Whiskey Soda Bread that I got from the King Arthur Flour Baking book - and oh, my, god, is this smelling ever good. 

I'm also going to make aNOTHER loaf of bread - this one a Royal Hibernian Brown Loaf, which is made with whole wheat flour (mostly) and has neither raisins nor carroway seeds in it. 

I'm thinking that risotto recipe may not get finished til the weekend - I have so much else to post - hopefully tonight. 

In the meantime, pardon me - the scent of bread is overpowering - I don't think I can type any more now.

Update:  Surprise!  I finished the risotto post.  Woo - hoo!

Running Around a Bit

This morning I bought just about all the extra things I'll need to make the corned beef dinners tomorrow night.  And dessert.  And some cheese and crackers to start with.

And all of a sudden my sluggish brain remembered another idea I'd had - I'll make Irish Soda Bread, too!  Glad I remembered. 

AND...I've got a risotto recipe that i'm nearly done with, but what with the lizard funeral and my stupid digital self-mutilation yesterday, I just haven't finished it as quickly as I'd wanted to.  And the shopping. 

I know.  If I spent less time whining...

Anyway, I'll be back later. 

Food Plans

Well, it's March, and of course, to many people, that means St. Patrick's Day and green beer and Corned Beef and Cabbage.

Those aren't the first things that come to my mind, and I have no use at all for green beer because - why?  Really?  And being Not Irish (blame the adamantly Scottish portion of my family for that), we didn't pay St. Patrick's Day a whole lot of attention anyway.  And we didn't make it a point of eating corned beef and cabbage on March 17th, either, not that it's really all that traditional in Ireland either, as I understand it.

However.  I got married a while back, and my late mother-in-law did the corned beef and cabbage thing every year, and it was something Bill looked forward to.  When I didn't bother making it in the first year or two of our relationship, he didn't say much, but then I think maybe HE went ahead and made it one year - because he missed having it.  So we make it now.  And we make sure to have plenty of leftover corned beef, because to me, really, the best part of all that boiled food is making really kick-ass corned beef hash with the leftovers.  And yes, I'm tooting my own horn here, but I am actually impressed with my bad corned-beef-hash-making self. 

AND.  I got my March copy of Bon Appetit magazine a couple of weeks ago, and one of their features this month is how to make your own corned beef.  And THAT - the make it yourself part - was what got me.  And so one of the food things I'll be doing and writing about this month - beginning later today, actually - is the making of my own corned beef.  Should be fun.

Also - it's Easter this month.  And while my kids think of bunnies and chocolate, my thoughts turn to lamb.  Not cute ones.  Not religious metaphoric ones.  But legs of lamb.  Roasted, with garlic and rosemary.  So at some point this month, I'll be cooking up some absolutely delicious lamb.  Not necessarily to eat on Easter, because we will be going to my cousin's house for that and it's a whole different thing.  But at some point.  Because - yum.

And some spring vegetables will be showing up here...asparagus, broccoli rabe...those are the first two that come to mind. 

And on the dessert front?  Lemony things.  And probably something chocolate.  Because - well - chocolate.  No excuse or reason needed there.

So that's part of the plan for the month of March in 2008.  Grab a fork and stay tuned.

Play Date - Times Two

Yesterday I barely looked at a computer or a camera.  Instead, I spent my day hitting the grocery store early and coming home and cooking for the menfolk.  And the kidfolk, too. 

Yesterday was a Brew Day at our house.  My husband, in case you aren't aware, brews beer as a hobby, and he's pretty damn good.  He and his friend John have been doing this for years.  They hadn't been at it more than a year or so when I came into the picture, so I've observed and experienced many of the ups and downs as they have fine tuned their process.

Currently most of the brewing equipment is kept at our house, so this is where Brew Day takes place.  Yesterday they made 25 gallons, which will be divided among the 5 guys in total who were here to help (and eat.  and play darts.  and drink beer). 

Bill had asked me to make Buffalo Ball Sandwiches, so I picked up roughly a ton of ground beef and pork and veal at the store (okay, more like 6 lbs) and torpedo rolls and additional hot sauce.  I made a ton of meatballs and put about 2/3 of them in the buffalo sauce and the other third in regular (and yes, canned!) spaghetti sauce for the kids. 

Ah, yes, the kids.  In addition to my husband's friends, we also had, at long last, a little playmate for Julia.  One of the guys brought his 3-year-old daughter and Julia was beside herself with joy because she finally had a little GIRL to play with.  Sure, she can hang with the boys, but it's nice to be with your own kind at times, too. 

I have to back up for a minute about the whole girl thing.  Initially there were going to be two girls coming over - the 3-year old and an 8-year-old daughter of one of the other guys.  On Friday when I shared the news with Julia and Alex, I naturally got two responses.  Julia gasped, her eyes got wide, and she was speechless with joy.  Alex rolled his eyes and groaned, and said "Two ladies?  Now I won't have anyone to play with!"

(Excuse me while I laugh again at that.  "Ladies."  hahahahaha)

So I said, "Alex, there have been a lot of times when your friends come over and Julia doesn't have any girls to play with."

And he said "Yeah, but ladies and boys can't play together!"

(where does he get this "ladies" thing???)

I said "Sure they can!"

"Not this boy!" my man's man boy-child replied.

So that was the plan.  And since he has had a sore throat for a few days and hasn't felt all that great anyway, if he wanted to spend the day just lying on the couch, that's fine with me.

Anyway, back to the show. 

The guys all arrived at different times.  John first, and then Peter (who was going to bring his 8-year-old daughter, but she didn't come after all - probably to Alex's great relief), and eventually the others.  David and his 3-year-0ld daughter arrived late morning, and she was adorable - dark hair, dark eyes, serious little 3-year-old face.  She was eager to meet Julia, and headed on downstairs like she'd been here before. 

Now, the reason David brought Jackie (or Jakey, as Julia called her) over was partly because he said Julia was a lot like Jackie.  And we all thought it would be interesting to put two headstrong three-year-old girls together for a day just to see who survived it.  Amazingly enough, they got along very well.  I think at first, Julia was just SO happy to have a girl her own age to play with, she didn't care who decided what.  Bill was downstairs when the two girls first started playing together, and Julia handed her beloved pink elephant to Jackie in an instant sign of friendship.  She was pulling out toys for them to play with, dumping everything all over the floor - a vast smorgasbord of Playskool people and animals.  Alex stayed on the couch and tried to ignore them.

There were little flare-ups here and there, but the girls managed to sort things out with no hair-pulling, biting, or hitting. 

Jackie was definitely Julia's kindred spirit.  She said what she thought with no hesitation.  At one point she pointed at a napkin Alex had left on the table.  It had a purple blueberry-applesauce stain on it.  She said to me - and she speaks in a rush - "Could you take that nakkin away - it's freakin me out."  I was too busy trying not to laugh to realize I was now being bossed around by two preschoolers instead of just one.

I fed them their lunch before I fed all the menfolk - mini meatball grinders and french fries.  They all ate the fries first and just nibbled at the meatballs.  And then they were done.  And off and playing.

Toward the end of the visit, you could see little cracks starting.  Jackie was pushing Julia's little princess baby stroller around the house (and around and around and around) and finally Julia wanted to play with the penguin (who had been strapped into the stroller the whole time).  Julia reached for the penguin and Jackie immediately pulled the stroller back and said "No!  I'm playing with it!"  "But I want to!" "No!"

I intervened - "Maybe you can SHARE.  You know, TAKE TURNS." 

So that almost worked, until Jackie said "You can borrow it (the stroller) but you have to give it back because it's mine."

And Julia roared back "NO IT'S NOT, IT'S MINE!  I GOT IT FOR CHRISTMAS!"

Hey!  Do you girls want to play with Play-Doh?

War averted.

And when it was time to go home, Jackie DID NOT want to go.  I told her we'd love to have her come over again some time.  But she was tragically heartbroken and inconsolable as only a 3-year-old can be as her father put her coat and hat and mittens on and led her dejected little form out the door.

They were really very cute together - those little girl voices.... And the little girl screaming.  Bill played an impromptu game of hide and seek with them - he was a roaring monster of some kind and whenever he found them he'd ROAR and the two of them would SCREEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAMMM with terror and glee as they raced to another room to escape. 

Cuteness abounded.

So that was the junior edition play date.  Very successful.

Grown men version went well too.  The beer was made without any major problems - which was nice because Bill's had a sinus headache since Thursday night and woke up in such horrible pain Saturday he didn't think he's be able to participate at all.  I said I thought the cold outside would actually help matters, and so he went and sat with an icepack on his head to jump start the recovery process.  And it worked.  (yay, me!)  Abrupt weather changes will bring about these headaches, I've noticed, and we've been going from wet and warm(ish) to cold and dry over the last couple of days. 

Anyway, the beer-making went well, and lunch was a hit.  And not just the sandwiches.  I asked Bill the day before what he wanted along with the buffalo balls, and he came up with onion rings.  So that's what I made.

And they were the hit of the party.  Not a one left.  Well, no, I take that back.  There was one left - Julia had tried it and didn't like it and threw it back in the warming drawer while I was taking the rest of them out for lunch.  But that doesn't count.

I also made a spicy sauce to dip them in - a mixture of mayo and sriracha and lemon juice.

For the onion rings, I bought some large, sweet onions - a perfect onion ring shape.  And I'd read a recipe somewhere about soaking them in buttermilk, like some people do when they make fried chicken.  So I sliced the onions into half-inch wide rings and soaked them in buttermilk while I was shaping the meatballs.  Then all I did was dredge the wet onion rings in a mixture of flour and salt and pepper before frying them in 350-360 degree oil.  Cooked them til they were crispy and golden brown, and kept them warm til I'd fried them all.  Simple as anything.

I have another onion.  I'm almost thinking of making them again today, just so I can take pictures.  Well, that, and so I can eat them again, too. 

Welcome!

An enormous welcome to all of you who have come to my site via the photo and link of my Poached Pears on Tastespotting.  Wow!  I'm stunned at the huge influx of visitors.  That made my whole morning!

Valentine's Day Ideas to Resume Shortly

Friday and Saturday - I just didn't put up any Valentine's Day food posts.  Friday, well, too many other things going on.  And Saturday...I was taking pictures with Julia and then I just...oh, I have no excuse.  I just didn't do it.  So now...I'm going to try to catch up.

Next Stop on Our Culinary Tour: Mexico

Saturday, when my sister's kids stayed over, this was the menu:

The first meal Bill ever cooked for me was a Mexican dinner.  The recipes came from the two cookbooks he had - one was a Betty Crocker publication, and the other was a book of name brand "Mexican" cooking - you know, where all the recipes stipulate that you use Kraft cheese or Philadelphia Cream Cheese - real authentic stuff.  Still - it was a start.

I'll be posting them over the next couple of days, for your reading and salivating enjoyment. 

We Interrupt This Photo Essay on Last Night's Dinner Preparation...

So yesterday Bill (mainly Bill - I was soft shell crab fry cook, dishwasher, and photographer) prepared this absolute FEAST of Japanese food.  Primarily sushi - related things, but not just that.  I'll post the recipes separately, because there are too many to cram into this one post.

But after the meal, and after the clean-up, I uploaded the pictures I'd taken while the meal was being prepared, and what struck me funny were not the pictures of the food, but the unexpected pictures that showed up here and there in between the chronology of the food prep.  Basically what happened was while Bill was making the soft shell crab maki rolls, and I was taking pictures of them, Alex yelled from the other room "Mommy!  Come quick!  The sky is pink!"  And so I just peeked out the kitchen window, saw that yes, the sun was setting and pink clouds dotted the sky, and took a quick step outside to take a few pictures before the pinkness was gone.  Alex knows I will to this, so he is vigilant.

So here's an example of my viewing experience...

Thai Spring Rolls, Green Chicken Curry, Sesame Noodles, and Rice Noodle Soup with Shrimp and Banana Blossoms

Before we had kids, Bill and I used to cook meals together a lot.  When we had kids, that kind of fell by the wayside for a while because someone usually had to tend to a baby or a small toddler or a baby AND a small toddler or two small toddlers...until now.  Now, we've got a kindergartener and a preschooler, and they are amazingly tolerant of their parents' desire to both work on something AT THE SAME TIME. 

So we've started doing that, mainly on weekends.  Sometimes one of us does more of the cooking, and the other one is kind of the assistant and will maybe take charge of one dish.  But still - it's nice to be elbowing each other out of the way and fighting over burner space on the stove top again.

The weekend before last, we did up some Asian dishes.  Now, sometimes we'll stick to a particular country, like Japan or Thailand, when we pick recipes.  Other times, it's just whatever sounds good to us or whatever we have ingredients for.  Bill actually planned ahead for this meal, and went to one of the local Asian markets on Saturday so we'd have everything we needed to cook on Sunday.

Here's some of the haul:

That brownish bud-shaped thing to the right of the limes is a bud from a banana tree.  You peel away the petals and underneath are little skinny banana blossoms that (obviously) haven't bloomed.  They're a couple inches long and the same color as the outer petals.  They don't taste like much, but you can detect a little sweetness.  You could use them like lily buds, though lily buds, to me, have a distinct apricot flavor.

Anyway.  That's what Bill likes to do - he'll pick a couple of items he's never seen before (usually labled "Fresh Vegetable" in English and something in Thai that he can't read.  And sometimes he'll ask what it is, and other times he won't.  It's fun.

He did most of the cooking that Sunday.  My job was the spring rolls.  We got our ideas and actual recipes from two books:  Keo's Thai Cuisine, by Keo Sananikone and published by Ten Speed Press, and Classic Oriental Dishes, edited by Lisa Dyer - a bargain book put out by Smithmark years ago.  We've had these for about ten years - along with a couple of other Thai and Japanese cookbooks we bought one day.  They all bear the splatter stains from frequent use. 

One of the nice things about having a garden (and growing a variety of hot peppers) is that we can make up batches of green and red Thai curries and freeze them in ice cube trays, to use all through the winter.  (I say "we," but this is really Bill's territory.)  So one of the easiest things to do for this meal was the green curry Chicken.  (Extremely easy for me because Bill cooked it.)  All Bill had to do was take out a couple of cubes of the green curry...

 

thaw them, and cut up some chicken,

and throw the whole thing together.  (Those skinny brown things in the upper right are the banana buds, which he used in his soup.) 

It's a delicious, hot/spicy, fragrant dish, and the recipe actually calls for shrimp, but you can use chicken, pork would work, and we've also used tempeh, which is a fermented soybean and grain product that's got a nice non-meat but meaty texture.  For this meal, Bill also added in sliced red chilis (hot), mushrooms, scallions, cilantro, and baby corn.  Here's a little glimpse of the final product....

Bill also made sesame noodles, primarily because if the kids didn't like any of the other stuff, sesame noodles are a sure bet.  He's made these so often he doesn't use a recipe.

And the soup...it was kind of a thrown-together noodle soup using rice noodles and shrimp, cilantro, scallions, banana blossoms and a chicken stock.

I made the Thai spring rolls, as I mentioned, which I've put up in a separate post so it's easier to find later.  But for now...some snapshots of the evening...

Bill at his "station" - the wok and the pot on the back burner are his.  He'd already made the sauce for the sesame noodles, and the noodles themselves were in the warming drawer of our stove.  Those bowls over on the right, near the glass of beer, are all his too.  I have to juggle all my stuff in order to deep fry the spring rolls.  He hogs the whole place....

 

This is the green curry chicken coming together in the wok.

And these (above) are some spring rolls just after I put them in the oil. 

   

Time to eat...

We serve the soup in this...with some sterno in the center to keep it hot and to scare the heck out of Alex when the flame flares up.  Heh heh.  Dinner should be exciting, we say. 

And speaking of exciting, we always put out chopsticks for the kids to use when we have any kind of Asian meals.  Their techniques vary a bit....

They do love their sesame noodles...

They both tried a spring roll and some of the soup.  Julia liked the mushrooms in the soup.  Alex didn't like the soup or the spring rolls - he's a sesame noodles guy, and that's that.  Julia also tried one of the baby corn from the green curry chicken dish, but didn't like the heat from the chilis.  We don't force them to eat everything, especially the spicier dishes, but they can try anything they want.  Sometimes if we don't put something on their plate, they'll want to try it, which is nicer for us than if they just see something odd we've put on their plates and they reject it without even knowing what it is.  Alex will sometimes take a look at a new dish and just tell us he doesn't like it.  But as long as it's not spicy, he has to try it.  Just have a taste.  If he doesn't like it, fine.  But the point is to always try new foods.  To be adventurous. 

Pizza Making

Well, even though the repair guys from Sears came out on Thursday to fix the fridge, over the weekend, things have gotten WORSE - now in addition to random things freezing in the fridge, now things on the door are freezing too.  And supposedly everything is fixed.  HA!  And also - the water line in there is frozen (I assume) because while the icemaker is working just fine, the water won't come out now.  It was working Saturday.  It did not work on Sunday.  Bill called the repair center on Saturday to get someone out here and Wednesday was the first available appointment.  I called again this morning, because of the water line, thinking that maybe I could get someone out sooner, but NO.  Wednesday is apparently the first available date.  Lovely. 

So instead of continuing to rant and rave about that, I'm just going to put up a few pictures of the kids from when we made pizza a couple of weekends ago. 

There.  That's better than my annoying refrigerator stories.

Comfort Food

I made a birthday cake for the boyfriend of a friend of mine.  He's turning 40, so it was an "over the hill" sort of theme.  I made a mountain - or the upper part of a big mountain - all brown with little bits of grass here and there and gray rocks around the base...and at the bottom of the cliff at the back of the mountain.  Then I made little signs like you'd see while hiking a trail, and on them were numbers: 5, 10, 15 and so on up to 40.  The top of the mountain had a white drape of snow, upon which I wrote the requisite "Happy Birthday" message.  The signs - construction paper glued to toothpicks - the only inedible part of the project - began a the bottom and pointed the way up a winding, zig-zagging trail to the top of the mountain.  The "40" sign was at the back, angled down, pointing at the rocks at the bottom of the cliff.  Over the hill.  I should have taken a picture.

I used to take pictures of all my cakes.  But apart from family birthdays, I haven't done a whole lot of cake-making.  This was kind of fun, this cake I just did.  I'm never really satisfied with them, but my son thought it was terrific - it looks rather similar to the two "volcano" cakes I've done for him (with plastic dinosaurs all over the terrain) for his past two birthdays.  He liked the fondant rocks, especially.

And my friend liked it, so that was a good thing.

She came by yesterday morning to pick it up, after calling first to make sure she had the directions right.  She hasn't been to my house in a few years. 

When she called, I was making my breakfast.

I'd fried some bacon - left over from last weekend's camping trip - HAD to cook it up or it might go bad.  Right?  Of course I had to.  So anyway, bacon, nice and crispy the way I like it.  (My husband likes his less crisp.  But he wasn't home.)  I toasted an english muffin.  And made myself a peanutbutter and bacon sandwich.  Okay, I had two of them.  Yes, coronary in the making.  I don't have them very often at all, (the sandwhiches, I mean), so I figured it was okay.  And let me tell you, even cold, those were the yummiest things I've had in ages.

I think I needed something yummy and containing my two favorite food groups: fat and starch.  I've had a lot on my mind and it's been affecting me in unexpected ways.  For instance - Friday night we went out for dinner - with the kids - at this old restaurant near our house.  It's a relic of times past when banquet halls were everywhere and turkey dinners made with canned gravy were common.  They specialize in old-fashioned comfort food.  They have meatloaf night, for example.  I've never had their meatloaf, but I'm sure there are a slew of regulars who come specifically for that dinner every week.  It's a great place to bring the kids, mostly because it's casual and they have good kid food. 

We ordered drinks and appetizers and then the meals.  And here's the weird thing...I ordered a glass of Kendall-Jackson chardonnay.  Because they don't have a wine list and it's something that I know I like. 

And this time, Friday night, I took a sip and it tasted like olive juice.  Not olive oil, but the liquid in a jar of olives.  I tried another sip, thinking maybe I was imagining it.  Nope, same taste.  Bill noticed the odd look on my face and said "it's gone bad?" and I told him what it tasted like to me.  He took a sip, evaluated it, and shook his head.  "It's fine."  I tried another sip, as if maybe his pronouncement would kick my taste buds into behaving properly.  No - still tasted like olive juice.

And when our meals came...he had ordered the prime rib (Friday's special) and I got baked stuffed shrimp so we could share and have our own surf-n-turf.  I had some of his prime rib first, and it was excellent.  He had shrimp and moaned with delight, practically.  I had a bite of shrimp...and it was cooked perfectly - had that sort of "pop" feel when I bit into it - and not overcooked at all.  But it tasted...off.  I don't even know how to describe the taste.  It wasn't like fish gone bad or anything...it just had some strange industrial taste.  I ate the whole piece, thinking, like I had with the wine, that my taste buds would correct themselves after a while, but no.  So I gave Bill the other shrimp and ate the rest of my mashed potatoes.  The carrots were from a can.  I gave them a pass.

And that was my meal.  Very odd.  Other elements tasted right - but those two things were so very off.  Very disappointing.  At least I didn't have to do the dishes.

So yesterday I cooked dinner.  And here's what I made.  It may gross some of you out, but hey, at least you weren't in the kitchen while I was cooking it, so be thankful.

I made mashed potatoes with red skinned potatoes, butter, milk, salt and pepper, a little bit of minced onion, and the remaining bacon, chopped up into REAL bacon bits.  Y.U.M.

And here's the best part - I took the bacon grease (oh yeah) and sauteed 4 sliced onions in it until they were golden and soft, then moved them out to the edges of the 14" pan and added two pint containers of chicken livers.  Yes.  That's what I said.  And I seared them on one side and then flipped them over and seared again.  Then I turned the heat down, added a slosh of red wine and salt and pepper, and simmered the whole thing for a while until most of the liquid was gone.  I added one more slosh of wine, sprinkled some dried thyme over it all and stirred that in, simmered a little more, turned off the heat and then stirred in some sour cream.  Oh yes.

Fortunately neither kid wanted any of it.  Bill had some - he has come to like chicken livers, although he told the kids last night (when they said they didn't like the livers) (they tried them though - that's the important thing) that he only pretended to like them the first few times I cooked them.  Really?  Well.  That scores points - it's very sweet.

Anyway, we also had spinach, and guacamole and chips, and some smoked bluefish.  An odd mish-mash of menu items, but there was something for everyone, and that was my goal. 

I am starving now, just reliving that meal.  I may have to have some for breakfast.

I'll talk to you later.  In the meantime - what's comfort food for you?

Summer

Bill called me at work yesterday afternoon - he'd picked up some sushi-grade tuna steaks and would be grilling them (just ever so slightly) for dinner, along with some zucchini.  And he'd make rice.

It's a lovely thing to have someone else decide what to make for dinner.

Anyway, I got home with the kids, and dinner was just about ready - just waiting for the rice.

I changed into more comfortable clothes, and put the kids in bathing suits and we watched them play in the pool their Uncle Bob recently gave to them as a joint birthday present.

They had fun:

And after a lot of screaming and squealing and laughter, we ate dinner outside on the deck.

When they were finished, the kids went back to play in the pool some more, and I wandered around taking pictures of flowers and pea tendrils and whatever else looked interesting.

I especially like this:

That's it for the moment.  I'm home right now - I'll be taking Alex in for his pre-K testing in a little while, then dropping the kids off at daycare and going in to work. 

It's warm.  Summer's here.

Limoncello

The first time I ever had limoncello was in mid-March, 1998. It was a Friday.

Bill and I had just signed the paperwork for our little rented house in Oakland Beach - a section of Warwick, RI. The tiny place (two rooms - one upstairs, one downstairs, and a bathroom) was a converted summer cottage. It had a huge fenced-in back yard and a front porch that was, perhaps, the very best part of the entire property. We sat out there many an evening, weather permitting, with wine, cheese and crackers, or smoked bluefish and sour cream on Ritz crackers (really - it is one of the best flavor and texture combinations in the universe)...or coffee early in the morning after coming back from a quick boat trip out to haul up the lobster pots and cast for stripers...we watched the sunset down at one end of the street...or watched the cars zip down Oakland Beach avenue at the other end. We watched a pair of bluejays build their nest in our neithbors' eaves, and later, with binoculars, saw the baby birds before they grew up (too fast, as all babies do) and left home to begin their own adventures.

But all those front porch moments were in the future...at that moment, that March Friday, all we had were a set of keys and a few pieces of paper - and an empty little house.

And we were hungry. We got back in our car, after the leasing agent (the landlord's cousin) drove away, and headed to the end of our new street, took a left onto Oakland Beach Avenue and then another left onto West Shore Road.

There are several restaurants and bars along that section of West Shore Road...the Inn has a mix of basic American fare and some Italian pasta dishes - and a pretty good salad bar...the Backstop is kind of a biker bar, and we just weren't dressed right to fit in there...the Islander is a great Chinese restaurant, and there's another one further up that wasn't so good at first, but a few years later they renovated and hired some better cooks and things improved for them.

But we weren't in the mood for any of that.

We were in jeans and sweatshirts and sneakers (casual day Friday at work for both of us), and pizza seemed the right choice for the night. Up just past the Islander, on the other side of the street, is a restaurant called Nonna Cherubina. A white boxy looking building that was obviously a home converted into a restaurant. There is a big sign out front for oncoming traffic in either direction to read - the biggest letters spelled out PIZZA and underneath it said "and more." I think there's more on the sign...perhaps something about Northern Italian cuisine - all we saw at that moment was "pizza" so we pulled in there and opened the front door.

Linen, linen everywhere....we were so clearly underdressed - we almost turned around to go somewhere else...but too late - a tall, slender gentleman with a slight stoop and longish black hair, some of which was combed over a thinning area on top, a moustache, and a warm, friendly smile greeted us with a small nod of his head and led us to a small table for two.

I counted one time - there are eleven tables in this tiny restaurant. Three are in the smoking section. The walls and flat surfaces are decorated with photographs, candle sconces, plastic flowers, and mismatched pieces of china. The prevailing color is a pale, muted pink which, with the dim lighting, renders the small rooms cozy and intimate, no matter how many other people are there.

The tall man handed us menus and a wine list and left to get us water glasses and a small loaf of Italian bread in a basket - sliced, and very hot.

I don't remember what we had to drink that night - probably wine. We didn't order pizza. They have pizza on the menu, which is probably fantastic. But oddly enough that's the one thing we've never tried. And we've gone back plenty of times.

Their menu, which changes periodically, carries about 8 to 10 appetizers, a couple of salads, about half a dozen pizzas, and about half a dozen meat dishes, same number of seafood, same number of vegetarian, and about 8 pasta dishes. There are a few side dishes offered too. And later they tell you what the desserts are that day, or bring around the dessert cart.

I don't remember what we ordered, probably some kind of appetizer to split and then an entree each. A few minutes later the same tall man brought out a little dish of something - a little stew of some kind, perhaps - to have while the appetizer was prepared. They do this for everyone. Just a little taste of something. Here, try this and let me know what you think. An unexpected little gift of food.

The appetizer might have been something like this - a small piece of pizza dough, fried, with sliced prosciutto and provolone slices on top, and some baby greens on top of that, and a drizzle of olive oil over all of it.

Dinner might have been veal marsala for Bill and their homemade gnocchi for me.

Dessert? Tiramisu, if they were offering it that night, was probably what we would have picked to share.

And with dessert - limoncello.

Tiny little glasses, icy from hours in the freezer, filled halfway with an icy cold, syrupy, yellow liquid. Gratis. Another gift.

The tall man, we discovered over time, is Luigi. He and his wife, Stefania, take turns with the cooking and the serving, although on weekend nights they usually have a waiter or waitress on the floor and the two of them work the kitchen. Every year they go home to Italy for 3 to 4 weeks in January or February. There is a big sailboat on a trailer in their yard - I think it spent one summer in the water. Bill and Luigi usually talk boats every time we visit.

They are sweet, charming, welcoming people. Instead of feeling like we were a couple of stray mutts stumbling into the Westminster dog show that first night, we were made to feel like family. Long-lost family. We don't eat there as often as we used to, or as often as we'd like to - but whenever we do, we are long-lost family once again.

Back to the limencello. They make it themselves - grain alcohol, lemon rind, sugar and water. That's really all it is. You can use vodka instead of the grain. A little goes a long way. This is not something you do shots with. This - you sip. It is powerful, but it is refreshing and a lovely balance of tart and sweet. Grown-up lemonade, if you will. But again - you sip it. Goes well with any of the desserts....especially (just my opinion) the bittersweet chocolate and pear tart.

Over the years we've said we should try to make it. And we haven't. Bill's made gallons of beer, and some wine (from kits - he takes no credit for how they come out) - but not the limoncello.

Until now. I'm making it. I don't know why. Maybe the hint of spring in the air (before this week, when we had a couple of hints of winter as it reluctantly relinquishes control) - I don't know.

But I bought lemons last week - and limes - and so now I have three batches of potent citrus brewing on the top shelf of my pantry. I'm doing two different versions of the limoncello and one of lime. One of the lemon versons consists of the rind (none of the white pith - it is nothing but bitter) of 6 large lemons soaking for about 3 weeks in 4 cups of vodka. Later I will add a simple syrup - a mixture of sugar and water, cooked just to dissolve the sugar, and then cooled - and the mixture will sit for a month. Then it will be strained and bottled. I found the recipe in a gardeners' cookbook that I got as a wedding shower gift.

The other two batches are quicker. The lime version is an adaptation of the original limoncello recipe found here. Both recipes are similar - I think the main difference is that the recipe from the gardening cookbook uses fewer lemons per batch and therefore has to sit longer to develop the same flavor. Mario Batali's recipe is the quicker of the two. I just want to compare them, or maybe tinker around with them and come up with my own version.

Not that I'll be having any for a couple more months. But that's okay - they will keep.

I plan to keep most of the stash hidden, to be saved for gatherings of our friends, or special occasions....

But also I just want to be able to break it out on warm, lazy summer evenings when Bill and I are sitting out on our deck, after a dinner of freshly-caught fish of some kind...or steamers...or mussels...or lobster...and fresh vegetables from the garden, and maybe some good cheese and sliced bread, and the kids are in bed.

I want to feel a late day summer breeze on my face, maybe catch the perfume of sea air as well, and recapture some of our then to blend with our now.