Life, Love, and Food

A Rainbow to the South

2009-07-13T09:23:00.000-07:00

I saw a rainbow the other day on my way home from work. A real rainbow. I had to pause and admire it. It was directly south of me as I stood on Chicago Avenue, outside the Jewel-Osco. This rainbow was fat and glorious, and it reached straight up into the clouds, a ribbon of color just hanging from the sky. I was surprised to see it, but I’m always surprised to see rainbows. I see images of rainbows all the time—I do live in Chicago, after all, home of several famously gay neighborhoods, some of which are decorated festively with rainbows—but it’s rare that I see a real rainbow. The real ones are much more magical, shimmering elusively in the air. They lie just out of reach; we can never touch them or find that pot of gold at the bottom. Rainbows exist for beauty and imagination and to remind us that illusion can be a pleasure and, likewise, pleasure can be an illusion.

The fact that this rainbow stood directly south of me felt apropos. Just days earlier I delivered an answer to the biggest question I have ever faced: this fall, I will be moving to Texas to start a postdoctoral position at Texas A & M University. From where I sit right now, Texas is very, very far south.

Why Texas? The short answer is chance. I have spent many hours this year thinking about what to do next with my life. I thought long and hard about science: do I still want to do science? If not, then what? But if yes, then what? I cycled through all sorts of career possibilities. With some of them, I tried on that career for a spell. For a while, I was going to teach high school science. I had lunch with a chemistry teacher whose science fair I had judged in December. We talked about all sorts of things, including teaching, and at the end of our lunch her advice surprised me. “It sounds like you do want to teach at the college level,” she said. “You can always teach high school, but this is like your one shot to be a professor. You should go for it.”

This wasn’t the first time I’d heard this advice or something similar to it. But graduate school beat me down, made me question all of my career aspirations, drained me of any ambition, replaced my excitement with bitter cynicism. The obvious solution was to leave science because clearly science was to blame for all of my misery. Or was it? The truth is that yes, science is difficult, but my unhappiness was a multifactorial equation, and I was part of it. The interesting question was this: if we change part of the equation, what will the result be?

And that’s where Texas comes into the picture. After lunch with my friend Cheryl the chemistry teacher, I thought long and hard about what a postdoc could be for me. Clearly it needed to be something other than Graduate School, Part 2. What if I were more independent, more excited about my work, less scared of my boss? What if I weren’t in Chicago, with its six brutal months of winter every year? What if I lived in a place where warm is the default setting, where I almost certainly will not be wearing a wool coat in June? What if I gave this PhD a chance to really show off? As I let these questions seep into my brain, it became very clear to me that there were a lot of unknowns and until that moment, I was so convinced that a postdoc would be awful that I wasn’t even willing to consider otherwise. For all my scientific training, I was unable to see that graduate school, like every experience, is just an experiment. Change the conditions, get a different result. It’s that simple.

Finally, I was warmed up to the possibility of a postdoc. I was still very skeptical, and I certainly wasn’t excited, but I was ready to look and see what I could find. My friend Josh reminded me to focus on the process, which got me thinking: what do I like about science? What do I find fascinating? The answer was simple: I like behavior. I like flies. I like molecular biology. I like experiments. I like sex. When I mixed all those things together, I came up with this plan: look for labs that study sexual behavior in fruit flies. Bingo.

Surprisingly, I found just one lab in the United States that has published a significant number of papers in this area: Hubert Amrein’s lab, located in sunny Durham, North Carolina. How wonderful!, I thought. I love Durham! It’s in the South! It’s warm! It’s beautiful! Nervously, I contacted Dr. Amrein about a position, expecting nothing. To my surprise, he e-mailed me back quickly and enthusiatically. One thing led to another, I interviewed with his lab, and boom: job offer. I was absolutely elated. The problem was that a week after that, I had a second job offer, this one at the University of Iowa. It was a great offer, and I was utterly torn between them.

But wait, there was another twist. Dr. Amrein’s lab was in Durham but it wouldn’t be for much longer, because he had accepted a position at Texas A & M University in College Station, Texas, just a 45-minute car ride from Houston. Texas? Seriously? What? It was such a bizarre twist, and now my job offer had this totally unknown factor in it: the Texas factor. What could I possibly think about Texas, having never been there and being filled with all sorts of Northern fears about Texas? Like, it’s hot. Really freakin’ hot. There’s no water—it’s a desert down there, right? All they eat is beef, corn-fed beef, that they purchased with their oil revenues. They’ve never even heard of a vegetarian, let alone met one. Everyone sounds like George W. Bush and they all say “nu-cu-ler” instead of “nu-cleeee-ar,” the way it’s supposed to be pronounced. And everyone is an evangelical Christian, trying to save the souls of us poor, unbelieving heathens. God, it sounded like hell.

And yet, Matt had recently moved to Texas, also for work. He was loving it, but then again, he’s a Southerner. (Although, to be honest, I don’t know how he pronounces nuclear. I’ll check and get back to you.) Once Texas became the home of someone I adore, I started paying more attention to it. For one thing, the weather in Texas sure looks nice in March. And I’ve always wanted to live in the South, at least for a little while. Texas, to my mind, seemed exotic and interesting. Also, Matt told me today that there are lots of swimming pools in Texas, which is good because I have too many bikinis that I never wear. I realized that Texas could be a wonderful place to spend a few years as a postdoc. It could be my next big adventure, in a big beautiful state.

With my two job offers in mind, I proceeded to ignore my decision for a week. The two offers seemed perfectly balanced; I couldn’t choose between them, and if I chose one, I couldn’t lose. They were amazing offers, and I wanted to accept both positions. I knew I couldn’t, but I just wasn’t ready to choose. Finally, I made a list. I scribbled down all the things that mattered to me, and I ranked each offer according to these objective criteria. Then I tallied up the scores and announced the results to myself: I was moving to Texas.

Yes, Texas. Now that all the hard work is behind me, I’m excited about my new job. I feel confident that I have what it takes to be successful. I have this sense of knowing what I’m getting myself into, and knowing what it takes to muddle through the bad times in the lab. My new boss is very excited about me joining the lab, and I feel hopeful that we will work well together. But we shall see. Like the rainbow, these impressions of mine are illusory: the reality may resemble the illusion, but I’ll never find the pot of gold at the bottom. I hope to be surprised and delighted by what I find during my next adventure. I hope they have good grocery stores and farmers’ markets in College Station. Most of all, I hope I find inspiration. I’ll take that over a pot of gold any day of the week.

Make It Dirty, Make It Clean

2009-07-05T19:35:00.000-07:00

Does unwrapping a banana and slathering it, bite by bite, with peanut butter count as cooking? If so, then I have been doing a lot of cooking. If not, then I’ve been doing a lot of uncooking.

Summer is the season of uncooking, and I for one could not be happier. Between the gloriously warm weather and writing my PhD thesis, I haven’t much time for elaborate cooking plans. In addition, I’m finding thesis-writing to be strangely exhausting. It’s almost an exclusively mental exercise, but I find myself physically exhausted after a few hours of serious concentration. My brain isn’t capable of handling much in the way of recipes right now.

But I love to putter in the kitchen these days, even if I am in a state of Thesis Daze. The puttering feels wonderfully refreshing after all that time in front of my computer. It’s a chance to stand up, stretch my legs, fix myself a snack. My thesis looms so large and unknown in front of me that mundane tasks are tangibly rewarding. That’s good news, because one mundane task in particular has been giving me trouble, and that’s my sink full of dirty dishes.

Dishes. I have grown to hate them. Why is it that after I do all the hard work of feeding myself that I still have to deal with piles of dirty dishes? Haven’t I done enough? Can’t I just throw the dirty dishes in the trash with the other stuff I don’t want? This is, I think, my rebellion after six years of serious home cooking with no dishwasher. For six years now, I have been washing all my dishes by hand, and I don’t think I can take it any more. I desperately need either a dishwashing machine or a handsome, hungry man who will let me feed him in exchange for dealing with the mess I make. Matt is a rather sexy dishwasher and he usually shows up at my door ready to eat, but he’s here far too infrequently to be a reliable solution to my dilemma. He would be none too pleased with me if I saved up three months’ worth of dirty dishes for him to wash while he visits me!

For now, there is a different man helping me get my kitchen back in order. His name is Jace Everett, and while I don’t know if he’s a cookin’ man, I do know he’s a singin’ man. He just put out his second album, Red Revelations, and it is a gem. You may have heard his song “Bad Things”—it’s the theme song for HBO’s True Blood—and while “Bad Things” has been included as an extra treat on the new album, Jace is so much more than a one-hit wonder. Red Revelations is lusty, edgy, ironic, and smart. I’ve listened to it every day since it arrived in my mailbox. It’s all I really want to hear. Best of all, it’s the perfect sonic accompaniment to scrubbing all those dirty dishes to shiny wet perfection.

One of my favorite songs on the album is the first track, “Possession.” It grabbed me the first time I heard it. I felt like a woman possessed! The song is about lust, plain and simple. On the surface, its meaning seems pretty clear: Possession, Why don’t you own me? Name it and claim it babe, I’m your possession.

But I think (and this is what I love about Jace’s lyrics) that by making such an offer, the narrator is trying to control his own lust. Seize control by giving it up? It seems rather circular, but let’s not get carried away here; it’s just a song. An even better set of lyrics from “Possession” sounds a little like this: Naked dirty, Naked clean. Make it quick or make a scene.

Or that’s what I thought at first. Replace “naked” with “make it” and you have the actual lyrics, not the ones my dirty mind filled in for itself. I use the real lyrics as my clean-up anthem: Make it dirty, make it clean! It’s not quite as sexy, but it works for me.

Uncooking is much sexier than washing dishes. As a bonus, there are fewer dishes to wash! Jace goes well here too, even if I’m making a girly salad with strawberries and a honey-balsamic dressing. This is exquisite: a palate cleanser featuring crisp greens, juicy red strawberries, and a drizzle of puckery-sweet dressing. I’ve been lucky enough to get the greens and berries at my farmers’ market. Local strawberries won’t be around for much longer this season, so I wanted to slip this salad into the recipe archives before it’s too late.

The combination of strawberries and balsamic vinegar is an old Italian trick. There’s a reason it’s a classic: it is delicious, especially if the strawberries are very sweet or you give them a little help with a sprinkling of sugar. Either way, the combination heightens the sweet-tart flavors present in both ingredients. The perfumes burst forth like a summer thunderstorm, but afterward the mouth feels clean and sparkly. By combining that effect with salad greens, it’s doubly refreshing. Here I must confess I have an unusual habit: I often prefer to eat my salad after the main course. It feels more enjoyable to me that way. My hunger has been sated, and I can better appreciate all the subtle flavors in fresh produce. If I try to eat a salad before the main course, I’m usually too ravenous to really notice it—it’s just food. But afterward, a salad can be a work of art.

When one is writing a thesis, it is hard to make time for art, but one still has to eat. I find it handy to have a salad that, with just a few minutes of uncooking, can be beautiful, unfussy, and very easy to eat. It gives me hope that I’ll finish this thesis and have enough energy to celebrate at the finish line.

Salad with Crisp Greens, Strawberries, and Honey-Balsamic Dressing

Serves 1

Salads are often an opportunity to trot out your very best ingredients, and this one is no exception. My friend Shawn Marie shared with me a pour of the fancy balsamic vinegar she picked out at Whole Foods, and it is delightful in the dressing here. So if you’ve got a high-quality balsamic, don’t hesitate to use it here—you will be amply rewarded.

2-3 crisp leaves of green leaf or Romaine lettuce

5-6 perfect small strawberries

1 tbsp. honey

1 tbsp. best-quality balsamic vinegar

1) Prep the lettuce leaves by rinsing, drying, and tearing them into bite-sized pieces. Prep the strawberries by rinsing them off, drying them gently, slicing off the green tops, and then slicing the berries into thin slices. Pile the lettuce on a plate and artfully arrange the strawberries over it.

2) Whisk together the honey and balsamic vinegar. Drizzle it over the strawberries and lettuce. You may not want all of it; in which case, save it for another salad later! Serve the salad, either as a starter course or (the way I like it) as a palate cleanser between the main course and dessert.

Seeking Recommendations

2009-07-02T09:09:00.001-07:00

Dear readers, I have upgraded! Consider this my pilot post written with Windows Live Writer, a program which I hope will solve my blogging woes. Internet Explorer 8 will not allow me (and, apparently, anyone else) to copy text from a Word document into Blogger. Weird! With as many words as I write, it was very clear to me that this was unacceptable. The wonky formatting on yesterday’s post was a result of using Firefox. I thought funky Firefox was a better choice than not posting my piece at all. Still, I was not happy. Let’s consider today’s post an experiment. Everything is an experiment when you are a scientist, especially one who is on the cusp of getting three little letters after her name.

I do have an actual purpose for this post, and that is to seek your recommendations regarding a new laptop computer. The Dell I use now is not really my computer; it belongs to my lab. When I graduate in September(!), I should give it back. In the meantime, I need to buy myself a computer. I’m looking for a PC that has a decent amount of space for storing data. It must come with built-in wireless ability (although I here it’s rare for a new computer not to have this—true?) and not weigh a thousand pounds. I like the size of my current computer (about 10.5” x 12.5” x 2”) and wouldn’t mind finding something with similar dimensions. I can be flexible about the price because I firmly believe you get what you pay for, and I will be using this new computer every day for a long time.

Do you have any suggestions for brands or models I should check out? Which stores have the best service for computer customers? Any happy stories about recent computer purchases? Or, on the flip side, are there any warnings you want to offer? Advice you wish someone had shared with you before you wasted your money on a crappy machine?

I thank you in advance for your words of wisdom! Have a beautiful day, dear readers.

Toddler Charm

2009-07-01T09:09:00.000-07:00

My niece Lydia is possibly the most wonderful thing to ever happen to me.

I didn’t have much to do with her coming into my life. Her parents did all the work on that end of things, and they continue to do all the heavy lifting when it comes to taking care of her. My job, as I see it, is to have as much fun with her as possible. It seems a little unfair that I do no work and I am rewarded with big smiles, laughter, and endearing requests from Lydia to hold her, play with her, help her. I never say no to those requests.

Since I am her aunt, I suppose I am doing my job when I spend time with her. We make up games, play catch together, and tag-team it on the swings: I push, she swings. (Her parents watch us nervously.) Being with Lydia is magical; she casts her little toddler charm on me and I’m a goner. I feel so very blessed by her presence in my life. We get along so well, like we were meant to be together. Ever since Lydia joined our family almost three years ago, I have felt that she was always meant to be with us, like she’s always been with us, but we just didn’t know it until she was born.

Her mom, Amanda, likes to say that Lydia showed signs of being her dad’s daughter early in life. She’s always been opinionated, strong-willed, and independent. You just can’t force her to do something she doesn’t want to do. But I think it’s clear she’s also her mom’s daughter: Lydia is a kind, happy, generous person. Her smile feels like sunshine, and her voice sparkles like Lake Michigan in the morning. I am totally and completely smitten with this child. I couldn’t anticipate feeling this way about her before she was born. I knew I would love her, but my love for her humbles me. I feel small compared to this love.

Last weekend Lydia and her parents made the drive out to Chicago to visit me. It was Lydia’s first visit, although Amanda tells me that Lydia swears she remembers the last visit, the one where she was a bun in the oven. On Friday night, my door buzzer hollered, and I let my guests into the building. Then I bounced down the stairs to meet them. Lydia was ascending the stairs, slowly, one two-footed stair at a time: up left, up right, stop. Up left, up right, stop. She walked ahead of Amanda and Charlie, holding the banister, looking steady, and smiling a toothy grin at me as I came into view. My first thought was the same first thought I have every time I see her: She looks so grown-up! Followed by She’s so beautiful! This niece of mine is quite possibly the most gorgeous little creature I’ve ever seen, with her blonde (“lellow,” she says) curls, round cheeks, and blue eyes framed by long, dark lashes. But what got me was her smile, because it mirrored exactly the way I felt upon seeing her again. So much joy and excitement tucked into that little face! My heart was literally buoyed up by the sight of her, so happy to finally be here, ready for a weekend of trains and big city fun.

Truth be told, we didn’t do much in the way of planning for this trip. My family is not big on elaborate plans, and Lydia’s parents are especially fond of spontaneous plans. When all your plans involve a two-year-old, it’s best to stay flexible and keep things simple. So that’s what we did. On Friday night, after unwinding a bit at my place while Lydia ran across my living room ten thousand times, we went to Dixie Kitchen, one of my favorite Evanston restaurants, for a Cajun dinner. Food is a little tricky with Lydia and Amanda; between the two of them they are gluten-, corn-, and dairy-free. Charlie and I have iron stomachs—we can eat anything. Cajun food provided simple meat-and-vegetable options for our free-eaters and delicious meals for everyone. Before dinner, Lydia received a picture, crayons, and a toy crocodile. She proceeded to feed the crayons to her “dinosaur” and asked us to take down the tricycle which was suspended from the ceiling (campy restaurant décor at its finest). Although there was no tricycle-riding (alas), a fine night was had by all.

The next day, after a morning of shopping at the farmers’ market and Whole Foods, Daphna and Ian met us at my place for a simple lunch of stew and salad. I really wanted to have at least one home-cooked meal with my family while they were here, but coming up with a decent meal to feed us is nothing to sneeze at. I settled on a chickpea and rice stew seasoned with cumin and smoked paprika. This stew is a very nice riff on beans-n-greens. It’s the kind of recipe that belongs in every repertoire. I was inspired by a bag of fresh spinach, thriftiness, and these three fine recipes. The spices and chickpeas give it a faintly exotic edge, but it’s wonderfully homey and comforting at the same time. It’s also one of the first recipes to raise its hand when I ask for a main dish free of gluten, corn, and dairy, but at the same time, it will happily accept additions, such as cheese. I imagine sausage would be delicious here too—the spicy flavors would take kindly to a rich, meaty texture. Make no mistake though: this stew is very good without any extras.

The salad was a fruit salad. Its assembly reminded me of stone soup, where ingredients come from all over the place. At the farmers’ market, we found fresh blueberries, strawberries, and raspberries. Amanda had brought grapes, so we threw some of those in as well, along with a diced mango from my kitchen table. Lydia, my little mango monkey, kept asking for more mango from the fruit salad, so Amanda poked around with the serving spoon, retrieving one piece of mango at a time. Mango is just one of many things Lydia feels strongly about!

On Sunday morning, we met in the kitchen, this time for a homestyle breakfast prepared by Amanda. While she made French toast* and bacon, Lydia discovered my high heels and realized what great fun it would be to wear them. The problem, though, is that if you’ve recently learned how to walk, putting on a pair of heels is verrrrry tricky. Sometimes she sat down, put them on, and let me stand her up. Other times she’d sort of bend over so that she could brace herself with her hands, put the shoes on, and then push herself up to standing. Either way, she would end up on her feet and announce, “I’m wearing high heels!” Indeed! Then she would clomp around my apartment, as pleased as can be, making all sorts of racket. I only hope my downstairs neighbor will forgive me—I forgot to warn him there’d be a toddler in my apartment on Sunday morning! In between high heel sessions, there was plenty of time for tickling, Slinky, and pulling every item off the front of my refrigerator. I miss Lydia terribly now.

Sometimes I think about Lydia as a teenager, and it freaks me out. I’m not ready for her to be that grown-up. I think about her facing all sorts of scary things, like mean kids, peer pressure, sex, and drugs, and I wish I could just snuggle her against my hip and keep her there forever, safe and protected. It’s a great relief to me that even after not seeing her for six months, she is almost the same child I kissed good-bye in December. Now she’s shed her bulky diaper (hurray for potty-training!) and her gait has lost the slight waddle that newly bipedal toddlers show. She’s got a mouthful of teeth and a bigger vocabulary, including her favorite question, why? She understands so much now! But when I see her in a cluster of other kids, like when she was playing in the water-splurting thing at the Lincoln Park Zoo, I realize how very tiny she is and how we have so much more time to enjoy together before she’ll want to pretend she’s not related to us old fogies. Seeing her in my high heels, her baby feet dwarfed by those giant grown-up shoes, made me laugh again and again. Is there anything more symbolic of childhood than playing dress-up in your mom’s (or aunt’s) shoes? Is there anything more adorable than my Lydia wearing heels? I doubt it.

In her two-year-old way, Lydia reminds me once again that ours is a special bond. From her I discover what it means to be learning everything for the first time. From me she discovers what it means to be a woman with no kids and no husband, someone who can focus all of her attention on Lydia when they are together. I’m a sort of alternate reality to the family life that Lydia experiences every day: I’m family, but I’m not a mama. I own all sorts of cool grown-up toys, like high heels and swizzle sticks, but I’d rather play with Lydia when she’s around. I don’t wear a wedding ring, but I have a “boyfriend,” whatever THAT means. The whole thing is just very confusing when you’re tiny. I have a lot to teach my Lydia, but for now I think we’ll just take our time.

* For those of you who are curious, yes, Amanda did make dairy- and gluten-free French toast, which was pretty amazing. She found a gluten-free bread in the freezer section at Whole Foods. For the custard, she used eggs and Odwalla’s Mango Tango, a fruit smoothie thickened with banana pureé. I think the Mango Tango worked quite well in place of milk, and it’s awfully tasty on its own. I may have to replace the jug they left behind…

Lydia’s Stew (or Chickpea and Rice Stew)

Serves 4-6, depending on what else is on the menu

Lydia loves to slurp soup broth, so I thought a nice brothy stew would be perfect for lunch. She liked this broth, but she absolutely LOVED the basmati rice that Daphna cooked for us to eat with the stew. At the end of the meal, there may have been more rice on her shirt than in her belly, but no matter: lunch was a success!

A word about the greens: I like spinach best here, with the leaves thinly sliced and the stems finely chopped. But my brother found a handsome bunch of kale at the farmers’ market, so that’s what we used last weekend. He prepped the kale by removing the stems and tearing the leaves into bite-sized pieces. Really, I think most hearty greens will work here—just choose one you like and go with that.

Several cups of basmati rice

4 cups vegetable stock

2 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil

2 medium onions, chopped

2 tsp. smoked paprika

2 tsp. cumin seeds

A shake or two of red chile pepper flakes (I left these out for Lydia’s sake, but I’d definitely keep them in when cooking for adult palates)

4 cloves of garlic, chopped

4 cups or more of chopped or bite-sized greens (see headnote)

2 15-oz. cans chickpeas, drained and rinsed

Salt and pepper to taste

Cheese, such as feta, for serving

Hot sauce, for serving (this one’s for Charlie)

1) Get the rice going: prepare it according to the package’s instructions.

2) While the rice cooks, prepare the stew. Heat the stock over low heat. Pour the olive oil into a separate soup pot and heat over medium-low heat. Add the onions and sauté for several minutes until softened. Add the paprika, cumin, red chile pepper flakes, and garlic, and cook for another minute.

3) Add the greens to the onion sauté and let them cook for 30-60 seconds, stirring frequently, to wilt them into the pot. Pour the warm stock over the greens and bring everything to a boil. Turn down the heat and let the stew simmer, covered, for about 10 minutes.

4) Add the chickpeas, bring the stew to a bubble, cover, and simmer for another 10 minutes. The goal here is to make the chickpeas nice and tender, so taste one and if it isn’t soft and silky, simmer for a few more minutes. Repeat until the chickpeas are perfect. Taste the stew and adjust the seasonings with salt and/or pepper.

5) Scoop the rice into bowls and top with the stew. Serve alongside any additions, such as cheese or hot sauce.

On Lunch, Skybound and with Wheat Berries

2009-06-24T14:30:00.001-07:00

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Greetings from an eastbound CTA train, dear reader! I’m aboard the Blue Line, enjoying a dusky Chicago skyline and looking forward to a night of sleeping in my own bed. I have completed my interview circuit and now I have a week to decide between two job offers.

I am of course grateful to have two awesome positions on the table, but more than that, I’m grateful I won’t be traveling anywhere for at least a month (hopefully longer, but I’ll try not to be greedy here). Traveling is exhausting; traveling for job interviews is strange sort of exhaustion. I’ve found that as long as I am “on,” I don’t feel the exhaustion at all. But as soon as I’m left alone, I collapse in a heap on the hotel bed, utterly spent by the sheer effort it takes to be pleasant, enthusiastic, and brilliant. My postdoc interviews have had this lovely break between late afternoon and dinner during which I get dropped off at a hotel and I can crawl into bed for a nice nap. Right before that, I strip off all my fancy interview clothes: high heels(!), stockings, skirt, conservative little sweater. My whole body breathes a sigh of relief and for a few blissful hours, we forget about science and trying to impress people. I wake up later, drunk with sleep, but refreshed and ready to rock and roll.

In science, we have a saying from Louis Pasteur that comes in handy: Chance favors the prepared mind. I think it’s also applicable to traveling. It’s important to plan wisely when trying to catch a plane. One never knows when she’ll be stranded in the Eastern Iowa Airport for three hours with nary a homemade crumb to eat, forced to suffer bad cheese quesadillas at a bar where not even a single salad is vegetarian. (I’m not bitter, really!) Traveling is hard on us control freaks because we give up so much of the thing that makes us tick: predictability. Who knows if the plane will be on time, if the weather will be favorable for airborne cruising, if the person sitting next to us on the plane will have a few cracks in his windshield? If I were a praying sort of person, I would pray that my god work these things out for me ahead of time, but instead, I just pack a lunch and know that even if everything else goes wrong, at least my noontime meal will be good.

As misfortune would have it though, an airborne lunch presents its own difficulties. My entire repertoire of soups is off-limits, unless I measure out an itty-bitty three-ounce portion to conform to TSA regulations on liquids. Anything else worth considering must taste good at room temperature; otherwise lunch will be disappointing. Lunch must not require refrigeration or else I can count on a rather unpleasant visit to the emergency room later that day. No meal is worth that.

So what’s left? In a word: salad. When I travel, salad is my friend. It doesn’t mind if it has to sit in my bag for a few hours. It won’t complain if it gets tossed around a bit on the journey. The flavors wait patiently for me to dig my fork into them. It easily passes TSA inspection, unlike my laptop computer which was swabbed for chemicals on my way to North Carolina last week. I don’t even know what I would have done if they’d confiscated that! But my salad didn’t even get a second glance, which made my belly happy. It would have been a much less pleasant trip if they’d taken my salad away, especially since my super-early morning made my belly grumble by about 11 AM.

Right before a trip, I am usually running around like a maniac, trying to get ten thousand things done before I leave. A salad that can be prepped well ahead of time is my traveling dream. How about a salad that keeps so well in the fridge that it can be dinner one night and—almost without thinking—a skybound-lunch the next day? Dear reader, I give you the recipe for an almost-magical wheat berry salad, courtesy of Vegetarian Times. It was featured in an article on make-ahead foods that keep and travel well. My heart pounds in excitement just thinking about this recipe! It features a jumble of unusual ingredients: chewy wheat berries, herbally crunchy fennel, salty olives, plump sweet raisins, creamy cheese, and the almost Cheez-It®-like flavor of roasted pistashios. (Surely I’m not the only one who thinks pistashios taste like Cheez-Its®?) If you’re fancy, you can serve the salad over a bed of crisp greens, but I have found that this salad is great even without the greens or the cheese. It’s a salad that tries to cover all its flavor bases, and it could have been a horrible clash of tastes, but somehow, it works. Magically, it works.

Even though I don’t plan to board any more planes for a while, I plan to make this salad all summer long. Maybe when I make my next bowlful, I’ll use that time to contemplate which lab I should join. If the salad helps me make that decision, I’ll declare it magical indeed.

Summertime Wheat Berry Salad
Adapted from Vegetarian Times
Makes 4-6 main-dish servings

1 1/2 cups cooked wheat berries, cool or at room temperature (start with 1/2 cup dried wheat berries)
1 15-oz. can chickpeas, rinsed and drained
1 small bulb fennel, sliced as thinly as you can manage
1/4 cup raisins
1-2 shallots, finely chopped
8 olives, any kind (pick your favorite; I like Kalamata olives), pits removed and coarsely chopped

For serving:
Several cups of chopped greens, such as spinach or Romaine lettuce
4-6 oz. cheese (pick your favorite), chopped into large dice (I use ~1 oz. per serving)
1/4 cup roasted pistashios, or more to taste, coarsely chopped
4 tbsp. balsamic vinegar
4 tbsp. honey

1) In a large bowl, toss together the wheat berries, chickpeas, fennel, raisins, shallots, and olives. Refrigerate this mixture if you aren’t serving the salad at this time. Otherwise…
2) When you’re ready to serve the salad, plate the greens. Pile a large spoonful or two of the wheat berry mix on top of the greens. Scatter some diced cheese and pistashios over that.
3) Whisk together the balsamic vinegar and honey. Drizzle some of this sweet-and-tangy dressing over the salad and serve.

*Travel version: Prepare a single serving as directed above but place the ingredients in a travel-ready container. This mixture will keep well at room temperature for a few hours, but I’m sure it’s better if “room temperature” isn’t disgustingly hot.

One Snazzy Batch

2009-06-17T14:47:00.000-07:00

I didn’t mean to throw a party the day before my first job interview this month, but that’s what happened. And it turned out to be just what I needed.

The truth is that I just wanted a friend to listen to my job talk because it felt like it wasn’t ready for the big time. It was hard to find any time to work on it! I needed a way of delivering it that would convey the enthusiasm I felt when this story was still fresh and exciting. Even if I felt stressed and ragged, I wanted my story to be beautiful. Hoping to find just a single person to listen to my talk, I e-mailed a bunch of my friends and much to my surprise, they all said they were willing and able to help. So I invited them all over to my place and baked a batch of cookies. We made tea and gossipped for a while, then we rolled up our sleeves and got to work. I talked, they listened. When my tongue tripped over its own words, they waited patiently while I untangled the mess. If something didn’t make sense, we dissected the problem until it did make sense. A friendly argument broke out, and I couldn’t have been more pleased. For a scientist, there’s nothing better than listening to other people become passionately engaged in your work. Conflict never sounded so good.

Best of all, my friends took my talk and my ideas and they made them better. Clearer. Simpler. More precise. They saw where I stood and pointed out the path toward my destination. It was remarkable. I’m not sure I’ve ever been more impressed with my friends than I was that afternoon. Their criticism was an act of kindness and generosity—it was one of the nicest things anyone has ever given me. I’ve never felt so supported, so buoyed by other people’s cheerful advice. Such love! Such warm fuzziness! If I thought before that leaving Chicago was going to be hard, I think now it might be one of the toughest moves I’ve made yet.

Because they are fabulous, my friends probably would have cheered me on even without cookies, but I like to think the cookies helped. These cookies were particularly fabulous, if I may be so immodest about my baking. The recipe is one I’d bookmarked long ago from the February 2008 issue of Bon Appétit. It appeared in an article about whole-grain baking (oh yes!), and I swear every time I looked at it I’d see these words appear: “Rose-Anne, you must bake these cookies immediately. Get thee to the kitchen!” Of course I did what I always do with new recipes: I waited a year and then jotted down the ingredients on my shopping list. An eager beaver I am not, but I do have a sharp memory for cookie recipes.

The recipe in question is for Whole Wheat S’More Cookies, but my version was a little more like Whole Wheat Less-Is-More Cookies because I left out the marshmallows. Those fluffy campfire companions are usually not vegetarian because they’re made with gelatin, so I feel a bit funny about eating them. I try to be consistent in my vegetarianism, but quite frankly, if I’m going to break my own rules, I’d rather do it for Cajun food or the best chicken dinner I’ve ever had (Brick Roasted Chicken with Roasted Baby Carrots, Broccolini, Mashed Potatoes, and Preserved Lemon Pan Sauce, Villa Creek, Paso Robles, California, eaten with my favorite carnivore). I don’t feel deprived not eating marshmallows. I prefer setting them on fire to eating them anyway. Besides, aren’t the chocolate and the graham cracker the best parts of a s’more?

The best part about leaving out the marshmallows is that the ratio of cookie to tidbits is perfect. In this case, the tidbits are milk chocolate chips and walnuts, an underused combination, in my opinion. Dark chocolate gets all the love and all the praise, but I love a good milk chocolate—sweet and friendly, tasty alone or in a whole-grain cookie.

The cookies were very popular with my friends: between six of us, we ate more than a dozen. And these aren’t dainty little cookies, either. While they aren’t the behemoths I told you about last week, they’re hearty and a little rustic, which is just the way I like them. Ammie loved them so much that she jotted down the recipe and started making plans with herself to bake a batch that same night. (That Ammie—she’s such an ambitious cook.) These cookies have an unusually cakelike texture—due, I think, to the fact that the dough is made more like that of a muffin than a cookie. Rather than creaming butter into sugar, you melt the butter and stir it into a mixture of eggs, buttermilk(!), molasses, and vanilla. This buttery blend is then combined with the dry ingredients, in go the chocolate chips and walnuts, and you’re ready to drop and bake. That small amount of work gives you one snazzy batch of cookies, perfect for bribing friends or calming yourself down before stepping out of your comfort zone and onto the job market.

Whole Wheat Less-Is-More Cookies or Whole Wheat Cookies with Walnuts and Milk Chocolate Chips
Adapted from Bon Appétit
Makes a lot of cookies—more than three dozen

Like I said above, these cookies have a delicious cakelike texture. They’re soft with just a hint of crunch on the bottoms. And the flavor is fabulous: rich but subtle, vanilla sugar sweetness combined with sassy chocolate and wholesome walnuts. I really like them. To seal the deal, I’ll just tell you that they travel well too. I packed two in my lunch to be eaten while on a plane to North Carolina, but I ended up eating them as a pre-dinner snack in my hotel room. They were so good that I thought to myself, I should eat cookies before dinner every day. Doesn’t that sound nice?

3 c. whole wheat flour or white whole wheat flour (I used the latter, but I’m curious about using hearty whole wheat flour. If anyone does, report back with your results!)
1 1/2 c. light brown sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. baking soda
2 large eggs
1/2 c. buttermilk
1 tbsp. molasses
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1/2 c. (one stick) salted butter, melted and cooled slightly
1 1/2 c. milk chocolate chips (about 9 ounces says Bon Appétit. I like Ghirardelli brand here)
3/4 c. coarsely chopped walnuts

1) Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line a few cookie sheets with parchment paper.
2) In a large bowl, mix together the flour, sugar, salt, and baking soda. In a separate bowl, whisk together the eggs, buttermilk, molasses, and vanilla extract. Whisk in the melted butter.
3) Pour the egg mixture into the flour mixture and stir to combine. Stir in the chocolate chips and chopped walnuts.
4) Use a tablespoon to drop rounded spoonfuls of dough onto the prepared cookie sheets, leaving about 3 inches between cookies. Bake the cookies one sheet at a time for about 15 minutes or until cookies are golden brown around the edges and dry to the touch but still slightly soft. Place the cookie sheet on a wire rack and let the cookies cool on their sheet for about 10 minutes. Transfer the cookies directly to racks to continue cooling. Eat, preferably with a mug of tea and a gaggle of friends.

PS For those of you who love vegan cookies, Ammie made a vegan version of this cookie. In fact, she beat me to the punch, telling all her readers about it yesterday! Her enthusiasm about this recipe makes me happy. I hope you'll hop on over to her site to check out her version, made with a banana and almond milk. (And I hope she saved me a cookie...)

The Happy List

2009-06-10T13:46:00.000-07:00

On days when I’m feeling particularly misanthropic, like today, I find it useful to make a happy list. Except for gelato, the happy list is the most effective known cure for misanthropy. And if writing this happy list doesn’t help, you can find me at the gelato place down the street.

* Two pounds of Bing cherries: fresh, red, perfect.

* German butterball potatoes, fresh from the farmer’s market, sliced, tossed in garlic oil, 1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika, salt, and pepper, then roasted at 450 degrees F for 25 minutes. Oh baby. It’s like Germany meets Spain, and these potatoes are their love child. Delicious.

* My new yoga mat! So squishy, so comfortable. It lets me perform perfect warrior poses with nary a slip of the feet. I’ve never been so sore after doing yoga as I am with this mat. I can’t believe I did yoga for seven years without a mat. Now that I have one, it’s a brand-new day.

* Addictive Peanut Butter Granola, in my belly or delivered to Shannon’s doorstep. Please note that when making edible gifts for other people, it’s important to make a batch for yourself so that you don’t eat the gift.

* My treehouse apartment with its tree all sexy and greened up with spring rain and sunshine. I’m going to miss this place when I leave in the fall.

* A delicious new cookbook borrowed from the library, Olives & Oranges: Recipes and Flavor Secrets from Italy, Spain, Cyprus, & Beyond by Sara Jenkins and Mindy Fox. I want to eat everything in this book. Where’s my personal chef when I need him?

* Mango, fresh and sweet as candy. I’ve finally figured out how to tell if a mango is ripe! My life is infinitely better because of it.

* My 2-year-old niece, who wants to plant mango trees in her garden…in Michigan.

* Finally, two job interviews this month. Finally. I can’t believe this is really happening.

So what's on your happy list today?

* * *

Dear readers, I have an announcement to make. Due to my interview schedule this month, I won’t be able to meet you here on Mondays like I usually do. Instead, I’m thinking Wednesday is a good day for us to chat. So I’ll see you back here in a week, hopefully with something delicious to share. Until then, take care of yourselves and each other!

"I Vote Yes!"

2009-06-08T07:50:00.000-07:00

Today’s post has an alternative title: “Defiantly, I Go All the Way.” It could have been the primary title, but I worried about what sort of scandal that might cause. I like a little scandal, but even I have my limits. Do you have any idea what sort of crazy stuff people ask Google to find for them? Yeesh.

But indeed, defiantly, I do go all the way, and I’m mighty proud of it. Whole grain is the way to go, and I like to go all the way. Don’t you?

My love affair with whole grains started long ago. I vaguely remember discovering “wheat” bread (as opposed to “white bread” which is also wheat bread but has that odd, squishy texture). It was like taking a peak into a room in my grandparents’ house, a room filled with history and magic which beckoned to me, Come inside. Wheat bread had a lovely tan color, actual wheaty flavor—wheat bread had personality while white bread had none. It felt like comparing two kids from high school, one a pretty but dull cheerleader and the other a nerdy guy with glasses who wore vintage-style shirts and asked the most interesting questions in class. Actually, that latter person is Matt. Yes, wheat bread is like Matt: quirky, delicious, and good for me. I love them both.

Now I realize that the wheat bread that started it all was hardly a whole-grain bread. Maybe it had a little more whole-grain wheat in it than its squeaky white counterpart, but it wouldn’t be my first choice today. It got me started on this path, like another childhood favorite, the oatmeal cookie. My goodness, how I adore the oatmeal cookie. I could go either way on raisins versus chocolate chips in my oatmeal cookies, as long as there was plenty of cinnamon. I don’t quite understand the spell that oatmeal cookies cast over me. Was it their chewiness? Was it the aroma that wafted out of the oven, an aroma that convinced me the kitchen really is the best room in the house? Or was it the tactile pleasure of the dough, so sturdy and flecked with oats, rich and sweet, an absolute delight to make and then eat straight out of the bowl? Oatmeal cookies enchanted me. They still do.

These whole-grain revelations occurred before I knew anything about whole grains. I didn’t know they were packed with nutrients or less processed. I didn’t know they bring satiety to a meal or that they help keep your blood sugar on an even keel. All I knew is that they were different, and I liked them.

Today whole grains make me very, very happy. For the home baker, there are so many options for incorporating whole grains into treats; the sheer amount of choice is dazzling. The two basic flavors of choice are the grain and the type of flour. Whole wheat flour can be rustic, unapologetic WHOLE WHEAT FLOUR. Or it can be pastry flour or my personal favorite, white whole wheat flour, a softer, gentler version of whole wheat flour, just perfect for baked goods. Oatmeal can be rolled oats, quick-cook oats, or even oat flour. I like to play around with the texture of the oatmeal: with rolled oats, oatmeal’s presence is bold and sure-footed. Quick-cook rolled oats are a little more shy, and oat flour makes a barely discernable, nubbly crunch. These days, whenever a recipe calls for oat bran, I use oat flour and I’m quite happy with the results.

All this whole-grain goodness can make a girl feel downright virtuous at mealtime. I think virtue is overrated, so to keep myself from having a religious experience, I take my whole grains with a side of butter, sugar, and chocolate in the form of a seriously delicious, entirely whole-grain chocolate chip cookie. Oh yes. These cookies are intense: this isn’t a cookie you eat when you want a sweet little something after dinner. This is a cookie you eat when you want a DESSERT. Thick and dense, these cookies ride the line between chewy and crunchy. They are almost over the top, but I never have any problem finishing one in a single sitting. Because they are so rich, they make wonderful impromptu gifts. I gave away half of dozen of them last week. Consider the following conversation:

I approach the desk of my friend Daine. I wait patiently for him to notice me. He looks over at me, smiles, and says, “Hey, what’s up?”

“Hello, sir,” I say. “How do you feel about chocolate chip cookies?”

“Uh, I’m in favor of them!” Daine laughs.

“I vote yes!” I say, laughing at this silly exchange. “I’m going to bring you some cookies later this week.”

“Excellent,” says Daine. And then we both go back to work.

A few days later, after the cookies have changed hands, Daine asks me for the recipe, which is kind of an amazing thing because Daine uses recipes in the loosest possible way. You see I had no choice but to oblige. So now I’m shooing you off to the kitchen, recipe in hand. See for yourself if this recipe doesn’t make you want to go all the way too.

Whole-Grain Chocolate Chip Cookies
Adapted from this recipe
Makes ~20 cookies

One more plug for these amazing cookies: they are good, sturdy travelers, perfect for picnics or cross-country flights. I trotted them out for both last summer and was mighty pleased with their performance. They could become my top cookie choice for picnics—I rather like the idea of having a go-to picnic cookie recipe.

1 1/2 c. white whole-wheat flour, such as that from King Arthur
1/2 c. oat flour
1/2 c. quick-cook rolled oats
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. baking soda
3/4 c. (1 1/2 sticks) salted butter, melted and cooled slightly
1 c. granulated sugar
1 tbsp. molasses
1 tbsp. vanilla extract
1 egg
1 egg yolk
3/4 c. bittersweet chocolate chips (I like Ghirardelli here)
Cooking spray (optional)

1) In a medium bowl, stir together the flours, oats, salt, and baking soda. In a large bowl, stir together the melted butter, sugar, and molasses until well blended. Stir in the vanilla, egg, and egg yolk until well combined.
2) Pour the flour mixture into the butter mixture and stir them together, working just until everything is combined. Stir in the chocolate chips.
3) Chill the dough in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes. The dough keeps well in the fridge for at least a week, and it can be frozen for longer periods of time. I find it helps to let the dough warm up a bit on the counter if it’s been in the fridge for over an hour.
4) When you’re ready to bake, preheat the oven to 325 degrees F and prepare a baking sheet by either spraying it with cooking spray or using a Silpat. (I’ve tried both and they yield similar results.)
5) Pack the dough into a 1/4-cup measuring cup and then use a table knife to plonk it down onto the baking sheet. Space cookies ~3 inches apart.
6) Bake cookies for 15-20 minutes. A shorter baking time will give you chewier, softer cookies, while a longer baking time will give crunchier, harder cookies. I tend to go for the former, but it’s up to you. Note that since we’re working with whole-grain flours here, these cookies won’t pick up much color while they’re baking—they’re brown at the start, and unless you burn them, they’ll be brown at the finish. So be sure to time the baking because color is not a useful indicator here.
7) Allow the cookies to cool on their baking tray on a wire rack for 5-10 minutes. Then place the cookies directly on wire racks to continue cooling. I find it essential to taste-test a cookie during this cooling period--you know, for quality control. When the cookies are completely cool, store them in airtight zippered bags.

Still Rockin’, Choppin’, Tearin’: Two Years of Life, Love, and Food

2009-06-01T10:48:00.000-07:00

I’m sitting in the kitchen right now, feet propped up on a chair, laptop on my thighs, with a tomato soup bubbling behind me. The room smells like an Italian trattoria. I can’t think of a better way to celebrate. On Friday, this little blog turned two. Who knew we’d make it this far?

Indeed, life is good. I have so much to celebrate these days, so much for which to be grateful. I’m graduating in August! Soon you can call me doctor! More importantly, I’m feeling healthier and happier than I have felt in a long time. Part of it is the impending graduation, I know, but a larger part is that I’ve been enjoying the benefits of therapy, the chance to really delve deep into who I am and what makes me tick. The experience has been eye-opening and a little tearful, but every week I take a few baby steps toward becoming my next self. I feel like a cocooned caterpillar, taking my sweet time to change my outfit and emerge, fully winged and ready to fly.

But it’s not just me who has good news. Many of my loved ones have something of their own to celebrate. My sister Theresa will be graduating in December; after that she’ll start a new job and make more money than I will ever make in my life. One of my best friends landed a fancy new job, another one got a fancy promotion. My friend Aaron had a baby girl AND finished his PhD this year; another set of friends is pregnant with twins. (Twins!) As you can see, we’ve been busy.

And every week, I stop by this wordy blog of mine and deposit a new set of thoughts, preferably with a recipe included. I’m pleasantly surprised to see that we’re still going strong, two years later! To be honest, I live on the brink of having nothing to say. I think I like it that way because it keeps me open to new ideas, new recipes, new opportunities. I like the spontaneity that goes into the writing I do in this space. I surprise myself! I like a mixture of planning and not planning in my life; this blog lets me do both.

Recently Matt (my muse) and I were talking about our perspectives on time. A simple model for us is that we are opposites: he luxuriates in the moment, here and now; I’m always brooding about the past or anticipating the future. It might sound like a recipe for disaster, with me always looking at my watch and Matt sitting by the pool, oblivious to the passage of time until the sun goes down, but we get along really well. He is able to pull me into the present like few other people have been able to do. It’s one of his magic tricks (he’s got lots of ‘em—I can’t say anything more or I’ll get myself in trouble). As we were talking, Matt described to me how he welcomes the unknown of the future, how he looks forward to the surprises that he’ll encounter. I, on the other hand, carry around with me a jumble of emotions about the future—anxiety, dread, excitement, wonder. But what’s odd about me is that I hardly ever plan things out into the distant future. I like to know what I’m doing tomorrow, what I’m having for dinner later today, maybe what I’m doing this weekend. But what I’ll be doing five years from now? Who knows? I’ll figure it out.

I tell you this story because I think it illustrates how I think about my blog. I have an idea that I’m going to keep writing here because I have something to say. But what that something is won’t be the same each week. It changes as I change. I hope you like the surprises around here; I know I do.

Two years is a long time to spend together, dear reader, and I know many of you have been around for most of that time. I would still write even if I were a virtual hermit with no visitors, but it’s much more exciting to have a couple readers. You keep me on my toes. You make me want to make it worth your time to read whatever it is I have written. But I confess that it is a blessing to have a small readership. I feel more freedom to be my weird, quirky self, knowing that I am not writing for the masses. Nothing is off-limits except what I deem to be off-limits. In the “About” page, I say that this is a writing blog. To me, there is a huge difference between defining your site as a food blog versus a writing blog. If I wrote the former, the title would feel constricting to me, like I should just stick to the cooking and eating and call it a day. A writing blog, however, can meander wherever it wants. It’s up to you if you feel like jumping into that river with me.

But the current of that river always flows toward food. The food gives me a starting place and an ending place. It provides structure and focus, two things that I sometimes sorely lack. In my real life, meals provide the same type of structure—my day is planned around when and what I’m eating. It is not an exaggeration to say that I am obsessed with food—in the best way possible, I think.

Lately I’ve been obsessed with a main-course salad that emerged directly out of the efforts that create this blog. I just love it! That, and I’ve been preoccupied with the big things going on in another area of my life. Making this salad has become a comforting ritual for me, a time when I can turn off my brain and just putter around the kitchen, assembling the ingredients while I take a deep breath of relief. It’s no wonder I’ve fallen so hard for this salad, as it contains lots of my favorite ingredients: minimally dressed greens, toasted walnuts, and my favorite cheese, Organic Valley’s Wisconsin Raw Milk Cheese Jack Style. To make a heartier main-course dish, I’ve added another layer of vegetables and freshly-made croutons. When plated with a fork for a sidekick, the end result makes me positively beam with pleasure. Then I dig in and eat every last scrap.

Happy birthday, little blog. I didn't make you a cake. I made you a salad. I hope you don't mind.

Rose-Anne’s Chicago Salad (or Main-Dish Salad with Homemade Croutons, Toasted Walnuts, and Shredded Cheese)
Serves 1

Astute readers will note that this salad is an expanded version of another salad I like, Romaine Lettuce with Toasted Walnuts and Vintage Cheddar or Green Apples. I’m not going to apologize for repeating myself because these two salads speak for themselves. And eating salads is good for you!

Why call it a Chicago Salad? Because some of the most important ingredients in the salad (the bread and the cheese) are regional products: I like to use Breadsmith’s bread for the croutons; my loaves are made by a franchise in nearby Skokie. The cheese is made in Wisconsin (of course it is! This IS the Midwest, after all!).

As with all salads, the most important part in making this salad is freshness. The fresher your ingredients, the tastier your salad will be. This rule applies to everything: the croutons, the walnuts, the cheese. I learned this lesson the hard way: for a while, I used to try to make extras when I would make homemade croutons, but they were never as good as those that were freshly made. So I’ve stopped that nonsense.

If you’re the type who has multiple bottles of olive oil, this salad is a nice opportunity to use the really good stuff.

2 tbsp. chopped walnuts
1 slice of craggy, rustic bread, such as that from Breadsmith (I get mine at my neighborhood Whole Foods)
1 clove of garlic, peeled and chopped in half.
A few drizzles of extra-virgin olive oil (to taste)
2-3 large and very fresh leaves of green leaf lettuce
Several drops of fresh lemon juice (to taste)
1/2 to 1 cup of another vegetable you like, such as finely chopped broccoli or thinly sliced carrots
A generous handful of freshly shredded cheese, such as Organic Valley’s Wisconsin Raw Milk Cheese Jack Style

1) Prepare the walnuts and the croutons. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Place the chopped walnuts on a small cookie sheet. Rub the bread with a cut clove of garlic and then drizzle with some olive oil. Cut into bite-sized cubes and place on the baking sheet alongside the walnuts. Bake them for about 5 minutes until the walnuts are fragrant and lightly browned. Set aside to cool.
2) While the walnuts are toasting, wash and dry the lettuce thoroughly. Tear it into bite-sized pieces and place in a large bowl. Pour in a scant drizzle of olive oil and use your bare hands to toss the leaves with the oil. As Nigella says, “Toss it far longer than you’d believe possible.” If you think the leaves need more oil, add a smidgen more and toss again. The goal is to give each leaf just the barest sheen of oil. Squeeze a few drops of lemon juice over the leaves and toss again. Taste a leaf and decide if it needs more oil or lemon juice; adjust as needed.
3) Once the leaves are prepped and perky, tumble them onto a plate. Next scatter your other vegetable on top. Now finish with the croutons, toasted walnuts, and shredded cheese. Dig in!

In the State of Pure Pleasure

2009-05-26T11:43:00.000-07:00

It’s difficult to say anything new about California. Part of me doesn’t even want to try. I just want to sit here with my freshly made memories, enjoying the feelings without putting words to them. But the more I do that, the more I want to tell you about my trip and how it was so nice, how Matt made me feel so loved that I actually started crying with happiness. Normally I like to do my crying at the end of these trips, when I start to dread the part where we go our separate ways. But this time I had dry eyes when we said good-bye, and instead I left my tears behind on a pillowcase in Paso Robles.

The thing about California is that it really is as wonderful and magical as everyone says it is. It doesn’t matter if your trip fits all the California clichés—in fact, it’s almost better if it does. It means you’ve had the California Experience, a delightful combination of mountains and palm trees, sunshine and wine-drenched afternoons, enough walking to stretch your legs, and relaxation deep enough to turn you into a human-shaped blob of JELL-O®. So yes, like everyone else who has ever been there, I like California. I will sing its praises. I will believe that a few days in the wine country of Paso Robles is worth several hundred dollars in plane fare and a day’s worth of groggy jetlag. I will even offer a few helpful pointers, should you find yourself uncertain about what to do while in California. This is by no means a comprehensive list; I won’t even make any promises about its usefulness. But I think it’s good advice, and I don’t mind filing it away in this nice white space for the next time I head to southern California.

* Fret not that a day of cranky, jet-lagged, fuzzy-headedness means you are going to have a miserable time in California.

I was very, very happy to see Matt in the Los Angeles airport. But I was also very, very tired from my long journey, and we still had a long drive ahead of us. So I let him steer me out to the rental car, and I nodded when he told me I had to keep him awake during our drive up the coast. We creeped out of LA, then we drove and drove and drove. My butt fell asleep during the ride, but the rest of me stayed awake—just barely. There’s nothing more frustrating than being too tired to enjoy a long-anticipated vacation with one of your favorite people. Worrywart that I am, I actually started to wonder if this meant I didn’t really like Matt any more. His company was apparently no match for my exhaustion.

But then we stopped in a little town and got ice cream, and that made me feel better. Later we made it to San Luis Obispo, where we’d be spending one night before heading north to Paso Robles. I almost fell asleep in my plate of pasta at dinner, but somehow we made it back to the hotel without Matt throwing me over his shoulder and carrying me.

The next morning, after oatmeal and a shower, we hit the road again and I felt good as new.

* When hiking in Morro Bay State Park, try not to fall off the mountain.

I really love being outside with Matt. He’s good for walking or hiking or even just sitting. When he was planning this trip, Matt discovered that Morro Bay State Park wasn’t too far from our driving route, so we took a little detour into the park so that we could enjoy some nature together. The views in the park are spectacular. It sits on a mountainside that looks over and down into Morro Bay. Inside the bay is a mountain-shaped rock called Morro Rock. The rock likes to play a little game of striptease with the fog; sometimes you can see just its top when the bottom is shrouded in mist. Other times you see patches of the rock as fog creeps eerily around it. The effect is spooky and surreal.

Inside the park, Matt and I first hiked up to the top of the mountain. The hiking path led us up, up, up to a panoramic view of California: mountains, trees, coast, sea. There was even an estuary, and Lord knows you don’t see one of those every day. Then we hiked down, down, down to the bottom of the path and started walking along a much tougher path. This one was narrow and rocky, a ribbon of land carved out from the plants that threatened to claim it as their own once again. The path wasn’t the terrifying part. The terrifying part was the near-vertical dropoff that lay just a foot or two from the path; we were literally walking on the edge of the mountain. Matt walked ahead of me, picking his steps carefully, and I followed behind nervously, trying not to let my eyes linger downward too often. The farther we followed this path, the less it resembled a path until finally we hit a rocky incline—I think there was even a tree growing in the middle of the path here—and Matt said, “You know, I’m not even sure this is a hiking path. This might be some kind of goat trail.”

A goat trail! Damn, those goats must be tough. So we turned back—Matt leading the way again; I was way too scared by this point to be trusted not to fall off the mountain—and slowly made our way back to the car. Then I could breathe again.

* When you first meet the Pacific Ocean, take it with you.

Morro Bay is adjacent to the Pacific Ocean. I had never met this ocean, but I was pleased to make its acquaintance. After our hike, we stopped at a beach to say hello to the ocean. The day was cool and breezy, but the sun was warm and we were enjoying ourselves. The beach was crowded with pelicans, who eyed us curiously. We trudged toward the ocean, waves rolling toward us, until I broke into a trot and discovered that the Pacific Ocean is shockingly cold! I shrieked as the ocean soaked my sneakers and socks, leaving me drenched and sandy. I didn’t really mean to run into the ocean; it just sort of happened. So I squished around in my wet sneakers until we got to the Paso Robles Inn, where, thankfully, there was a pool and a hot tub waiting for us.

* When visiting California, don’t forget your bikini. Or if you do, be sure to buy a new one that makes you feel like a movie star.

It sounds silly, but it didn’t really occur to me that I should bring a swimsuit with me. Matt planned this trip; all I did was show up. I knew that we’d be visiting wineries and perhaps having dinner at a fancy restaurant, but I was not aware of any plans to sunbathe or relax poolside. I was embarrassed not to have anything appropriate for the pool, but what better place to buy a new bikini than California, land of sun, sand, and swimsuits?

We stopped by a little oceanside surf shop to peruse their swimwear. I love bikinis—they always come in such beautiful colors and patterns, and I love how free I feel when I put one on. There’s something extra-special about buying such sexy clothing with a man you like. Matt makes me feel good, and wearing a bikini with him around makes me feel even better.

My style when it comes to trying on clothes tends to be fast and brutal. Anything that doesn’t fit well: NO. Anything scandalously revealing: NO. Anything too baggy: NO. Anything too tight: NO. Luckily, bikinis, with all their adjustable straps, are rather friendly to women of many shapes and sizes. A woman just has to dig deep to find the courage to wear a bikini. In front of other people. In public. It’s a tall challenge, I know, but the more women who do it now, the more likely I’ll be able to do it when I’m old. In the hot tub, Matt and I saw an older woman—probably a grandmother, in fact—who wore a bikini without the slightest hint of self-consciousness. She was tan, Matt observed, which meant this wasn’t the first recent occasion she’d worn a bikini. Her body wasn’t beautiful according to our conventional ideals of beauty, but she wore that bikini with such joy that it made us both happy.

In the surf shop, a very nice clerk assisted me, fetching different sizes and even picking out a suit for me to try. She handed me this gorgeous blue and white suit with strings in all the right places; it looked so good that I had to take it home with me. It matched me, with my very white skin and my very blue eyes, and later Matt would tell me that it matched the hot tub too, which made me laugh. I put the suit to good use: Matt and I would spend the rest of our time in California rotating between the hot tub, the wineries, and a lovely restaurant in Paso Robles called Villa Creek.

* Be sure to try the almonds.

We found a cute little cheese shop in town that sells Marcona almonds. We came in for the cheese, but the shopkeeper's almonds won my heart. Big, buff-colored, buttery, and crunchy, these almonds are in a class of their own. I didn’t even know there were different kinds of almonds, but I sure am glad we found the Marconas. We ate them plain, and I had some for breakfast on the morning we left Paso Robles. I imagine they’d be good in any dessert that really showcases almonds, like a plain butter cookie studded with Marcona almond pieces, or a peaches ‘n’ cream parfait topped with chopped almonds. But I might like them best plain, eaten with Matt by my side.

*Even lightweights can enjoy winery tastings.

I will freely admit that I am a total lightweight when it comes to alcohol. I drink very little, mostly because I prefer dessert when left to my own devices. But whenever Matt and I hang out, I drink wine with him, and I like it. I was excited about visiting the wineries and tasting so many delicious wines, but I was also very nervous about my low tolerance. I knew I could taste and spit, like so many pourers in the tasting rooms do, but that felt uncouth to me. Instead, I tried to taste everything, but as I felt myself nearing my limit, I tasted in tiny sips, just enough to sample the wine, and I poured out the rest.

The tasting room visits were really, really fun, even for a wine novice like me. I learned that even after tasting lots of red wines, I still prefer whites. I learned that there are certain flavors that emerge consistently from a particular winemaker’s style. For example, almost all the wines we tasted at Barrel 27 were peppery and hot, which gives their wines a certain boldness that demands reckoning. At Eberle, most of their red wines had a smoky, complex flavor. I’m not sure I’d ever tasted smoke so clearly in wine prior to visiting Eberle. I think I liked it—it could be fantastically delicious with the right cheese or a richly flavored bean dish.

* Take the wine cellar tour at Eberle.

Every half hour or so, the kind folks at Eberle invite guests down into the wine cellar, where all the wine-making magic happens. Sitting twenty-five feet below ground, the cellar (also called a cave) is cool and quietly busy. You get the sense that something really important is going on down here. Our tour guide led us through the winemaking process, from grape-picking to fermentation to barrel-aging to bottling. It’s impressive, the amount of care that goes into a bottle of wine. My favorite factoid was about the sustainability of the cellar: four years after it was completed, the winery had saved enough money on electricity to pay for the cost of constructing the cellar. That little tidbit of information makes me want to raise a toast to Eberle!

* Let the beauty follow you home.

California is so visually stunning that it’s a little overwhelming. It seems that everywhere you turn, there’s another mountain, another hillside vineyard, another heartbreaking sunset. Sometimes the fog creeps in and obscures all that beauty, but maybe that’s necessary to prevent you from overdosing on pleasure.

I had been dreading the trip home even before I left for California, knowing that it was going to be a very long day. Saying good-bye to Matt is always hard for me. It’s very easy to say hello to him, but the good-byes do me in. I surprised myself that saying good-bye was so easy this time—not because I would miss him any less, but because I’m learning the rhythm of our relationship. I believe we will see each other again, and it will feel like slipping on my favorite pair of jeans—comfortable, natural, easy.

It was nice not to dissolve into a puddle of tears because traveling is exhausting. Traveling while sobbing into snotty tissues makes it worse. I did my best to enjoy the trip home. I reread my copy of Bon Appétit (excellent reading material while flying), mentally bookmarking the recipes for Chile and Cheese Tart, Blueberry Shortcakes with Lemon and Thyme Biscuits, and Asparagus Vichyssoise with Mint. I revised a manuscript that my advisor and I are planning to submit soon. I tried to sleep. I failed to ignore the sobbing child two rows back, the one who sounded like she was having the worst day of her life. And when night fell, and we drew closer to sweet home Chicago, I stared out the window at a dreamy sky layered with chocolate brown, shades of latte, and cream, then topped with a deep velvety blue, the color of which is used for fancy jewelry boxes. It had been a long day. California was far behind me, but I was returning home, where all adventures begin and end.

"I Just Keep Working": An Interview with Molly Wizenberg

2009-05-22T10:46:00.000-07:00

Molly Wizenberg is a very nice person. First she gave us Orangette, then a book, and now this fun interview. Two of those items she gave us absolutely free, which is awfully generous of her. The book ain’t a bad deal either: for the low, low price of $16.50 plus shipping, you can have it sent directly to your doorstep from Amazon. That’s what I did, and it’s the best $16.50 I ever spent. If you try it, I think you’ll agree.

I’m envious of anyone who was able to meet Molly during her book tour. Chicago was not one of her stops. I had convinced myself it would be—we are the most glamorous city in the Midwest, and everyone says we have great food—but alas, it wasn’t meant to be. As the news sunk in, I pouted for a while. I was bummed. Then I decided if Molly couldn’t make it to Chicago, that didn’t mean we couldn’t chat somewhere else, such as the electronic ether of cyberspace. So I asked nicely if she would do an interview with me, and Molly said yes right away. I was emboldened by her advice, “Stick your neck out. Definitely stick your neck out. And keep your fingers crossed.” Perhaps an interview such as this is small potatoes when it comes to taking chances, but I happen to like small potatoes. I also happen to think that one can do great things with the tiniest of steps.

I think this interview really exemplifies the spirit of life, love, and food—those words taken conceptually and this blog, which I continue to write because the process nourishes me. The opportunity to discuss life, love, and food with someone who has been such an inspiration to me was thrilling, and I’m very grateful. So thank you, Molly, and thank you, dear reader, for being here. I hope you all enjoy this treat as much as I did.

* * *

Rose-Anne: You ever have one of those lunches? You know, the kind where you just make an utter mess of your meal and yourself? I had one of those lunches at home the other day as I was wrestling with a hunk of week-old bread that was refusing to soften, despite being surrounded by a steamy bath of soup. Open in front of me was my copy of A Homemade Life. While I was wrestling, I managed to splatter soup all over the recipe for Blueberry-Raspberry Pound Cake, which is ironic because one, it’s now a cake recipe splattered with soup and two, it’s one of the recipes I’m most looking forward to making once we hit high berry season this year.

It’s easy to understand the appeal of cake, and there are a LOT of cake recipes in A Homemade Life—six dessert cakes and one savory corn cake (plus pancakes, if you want to be really technical). Molly, what is it about cake that you find so irresistible? If forced to choose between dessert options, do you usually go with cake?

Molly: You know, I’ve never really thought about it! I’m just a cake person. Some people crave potato chips, and some go crazy for barbeque, but I like cake. I’m more of a sweets person than a salty one, and I like to have dessert after dinner almost every night. I love ice cream and brownies and straight-up bars of chocolate, but if cake--preferably homemade, and not too fancy--is an option, I will usually take it. To me, it’s the perfect sweet.

Have you considered writing a dessert cookbook? My mouth waters just thinking about it!

Well, no, not really, to tell you the truth! Desserts are my favorite thing to make, but there are lots of wonderful dessert books out there, and I’ve never felt a strong urge to write one of my own. I’m happy to rely on books from pastry greats like Dorie Greenspan and David Lebovitz.

Which recipe do you think is the sleeper hit of the book—the one that most people won’t make immediately but has sauntered its way into your heart?

I love the vanilla bean buttermilk cake. With or without glazed oranges.

I was a bit surprised to find that many pieces in your book were originally published on Orangette. To be fair, there is a lot of new material as well. How did you decide between using a piece you’d already published and writing something from scratch for the book?

The blog is very personal, and a lot of my life is recorded in it. At the time that I started writing it, I had no idea that I would write a memoir someday, so I wrote whatever I wanted to, without any thought of “saving” things for later. But then, when I was in the process of writing the book, I realized that the story that I was telling naturally included some moments that I had already written about on the blog. I could have left them out, I guess, because they were already “published,” but the book wouldn’t have hung together. There would have been big gaps and holes in it. In the end, about 60% of the book is new material.

A lot of my friends cook like your dad did, with spontaneity and without much of a recipe. But Burg did peruse the family cookbook collection. What were his favorite cookbooks, the ones he flipped through most often?

He loved The New York Times Cookbook. That was his go-to, I’d say.

You are big on seasonal cooking: using ingredients and techniques that are appropriate for a particular time of year. Which season inspires you the most in the kitchen? During which season are you at your peak?

Summer inspires me the most. But--and this is sort of contradictory–I actually do very little in the way of elaborate cooking in the summertime! Summer produce is so good that it often feels criminal to do anything to it. One of my favorite summer meals is just sliced tomatoes with fresh basil, some blanched corn on the cob, some slices of fresh mozzarella with good olive oil, and some bread. It takes almost no effort to make, but I feel inspired just thinking about it.

I’m afraid I would be a terrible recipe-tester because I find it almost impossible to make a recipe exactly as written the first time. So I loved your story about experimenting in the kitchen. I especially love the butternut squash soup recipe you developed. How are you doing these days with experimenting in the kitchen? Does it make you feel nervous or exhilarated?

I’m getting better at it! Brandon is a big help. He’s very good at balancing flavors and fixing dishes that aren’t quite working, and he teaches me a lot. I still like recipes, but I also like loosening up a bit. It’s empowering.

As you were testing and re-testing recipes for your book, how did you decide that a recipe was “done?” What was your most memorable recipe-testing experience?

That’s hard to answer. A recipe was “done” when it tasted right to me, and to Brandon. It was a subjective process. As far as memorable experiences, well, for a while there, we ate buckwheat pancakes seven weekends in a row. It sounds kind of fun, I know, but it felt like it would never end. And let me tell you, there’s nothing worse than testing a recipe in the morning, on an empty stomach. When it doesn’t go right, it’s doubly annoying, because you’re hungry.

A lot of people have said that your book made them cry. If that’s true, one can only imagine how much you cried while you were writing it! Which chapters made you feel most emotional? How did you manage to complete them in spite of the tears?

I was a basket case when I wrote the chapters about my father’s death. But it felt so good to write them, to get those stories down on paper and out of my head, that I never thought about stopping. I just sort of forced my way through. I also cried through several of the chapters about Brandon, thinking about how grateful I am for him. And I still tear up almost every time I read the acknowledgments.

You’re pretty strict in your recipe directions about not using low-fat or nonfat dairy products. Is that because of personal preference, or did you test all your recipes with various products one might consider using for, say, plain yogurt? (By the way, I disobeyed your instructions. I made your Banana Bread with Chocolate and Crystallized Ginger with low-fat yogurt and I thought it was excellent. Don’t hate me!)

I won’t hate you! Don’t worry. I call for full-fat dairy products because they generally make for baked goods that are moister and have a better texture than baked goods made from low-fat or nonfat products. Occasionally I’ll make some banana bread with low-fat yogurt, as you did, because it’s what I have in the house, or whatever, and it’s still totally delicious, but I do notice a little difference. And in savory cooking, it’s even more important. Sometimes I make an Indian-spiced eggplant dish, for example, and it gets some yogurt stirred into the skillet at the very end. I once made the mistake of using low-fat yogurt, and it curdled into a nasty mess. Whole milk yogurt wouldn’t have done that.

You write in the book that you used to be more shy about cream and its buttery cousins. When did you change your mind about them? Did your cooking change quickly, or was it more of a gradual transition?

It was a gradual transition. When I was growing up, my mother was an occasional dieter, very conscious of nutrition, and I went through a period in high school and college when I was into low-fat eating. For a long time, I thought that cream and butter were bad for you, period, and to be avoided. But living in France in my early twenties, in the home of a host family to whom the nightly cheese plate was very important, helped to loosen me up. Growing up helped too. It made me more flexible in my thinking. Today, I’m very much an everything-in-moderation eater. Food is about fueling our bodies, for sure, but it’s also about pleasure, and I tend to eat with equal attention to both.

When you’re writing recipes, how do you decide whether you want to use crème fraiche or sour cream?

I almost always use crème fraiche. I like its flavor. I’ve never been a big sour cream fan.

And just out of curiosity: do you ever have days when you feel “buttered out?” Days when you just crave, say, oatmeal for breakfast and a salad for lunch?

Of course! I don’t eat butter and cream all day long, I swear. My breakfast almost every morning is a wholegrain cereal mixed with homemade granola–with 1% milk on top–and I eat a ton of vegetables and salads. I tend to crave a little bit of everything. I like sweets, but I also like vegetable soup, and Brussels sprouts, and grapefruit.

You and your blog have been receiving a lot of attention for a long time. Now you are a published author with your name on a book! Does the attention ever make you feel a bit shy? How has the additional scrutiny affected your writing?

I’m kind of an introvert, but I wouldn’t say that any of this has made me feel shy–or no more shy than I am already! It’s the opposite, really. I like that the blog and the book have made my world feel bigger and more open. Because of them, I’ve gotten to meet a lot of amazing people. My life is so much richer, and I’m incredibly grateful for that. And as far as my writing goes, I don’t think the attention has affected it, or not that I can tell. Honestly, I don’t spend a lot of time sitting around thinking about the book or the blog or the publicity. I just keep working.

How has writing your own food memoir changed your feelings about the genre?

It hasn’t, really. I have always loved to read food memoirs, and I still do. I think it’s a wonderful genre, and I’m glad that it seems to be of increasing interest to people. And more than anything, I appreciate books–all kinds of books–even more now, knowing exactly what goes into their making.

Your book has received a lot of very positive praise, and I think it’s well-deserved. Do you plan to continue writing books? Do you worry about how people may compare your future work to A Homemade Life? It could be a tough act to follow, even for you!

You’re going to give me a complex! I hardly know how to answer that. But yes, I do want to continue writing books. Right now, I’m focused on opening a restaurant with my husband, so that’s my “baby” for the moment. But I would love to do another book. I loved the process of it, and the kind of total immersion that it required.

One final question. This one is perhaps a bit nosy, but I’m so curious: how did you and Brandon settle on Seattle instead of New York (or, for that matter, anywhere else)?

We thought about my moving to join him in New York. But he was applying to doctoral programs at the time that we were trying to make that decision, and ultimately, it made sense to let that decide where we would live. He applied to some schools in New York, some in California, and the University of Washington, in Seattle. The UW program was the best fit for him and his interests, and they accepted him, so he moved to Seattle.

Make Your Own Star and Cast It into the Sky

2009-05-14T10:02:00.000-07:00

Molly Wizenberg makes everything look so easy. It’s difficult not to be jealous of her, between her superstar status among bloggers, her impossibly romantic story of finding love through food and words, and the debut of her very first book. I admit it: I am jealous! But I’m also deeply inspired because I think that her path is not so different from my own. She’s a trailblazer for many of us, leading the way toward a life of good eating and good loving, of working hard and playing hard. And she’s terribly generous, sharing so much of herself and her life with us. Most of us are perfect strangers, but Molly opens her heart to us every week. I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve read an Orangette post and felt like I could just burst at the seams with happiness.

I finished reading Molly’s first book, A Homemade Life, a while ago. Her memoir left me so filled up with emotions and thoughts that I just couldn’t write about it. I had to let everything marinate for a few weeks. In the meantime, I read it again, and again, and again. It was just so soothing, so lovely, so very happy and so very sad. It resonated powerfully with me and with the way I want to live my life. Unlike Molly, I did not grow up eating dinner with a happy family. We would gather together for holiday meals, but that was about it for eating together. My mother cooked dinner every night, but rarely did we all eat it together. In fact, when I was in high school, my parents taught night classes, so they weren’t even home for dinner. My younger siblings and I were on our own for dinner, which in some ways was nice—we ate a lot of pizza rolls!—but I’ve always loved the idea of eating with loved ones. It’s probably one of the reasons I love it when Matt and I are together: we cook, eat, and clean up together. When he’s around, it doesn’t feel like work. It’s simply part of our routine.

But cooking for one can be wonderful, too. I found it endearing that Molly has such fond memories of cooking for herself while living in Paris, and even to this day, her solo culinary rituals continue. Cooking for one is my default setting. I’m constantly perplexed by this idea that cooking for one is ridiculously indulgent or a waste of time. So taking care of myself is indulgent? Enjoying my own kitchen and my own company is a waste of time? I think these attitudes are weird. I have no plans to cease my fun, with or without a partner in crime.

As a graduate student, I’ve spent plenty of time wondering if the career path I’m following will lead to happiness and success for me. I’m also deeply in love with food and cooking, to the point where I devote large swaths of time to my belly. So I get it when Molly realizes that she no longer wants to earn a PhD in anthropology. No one understands the anguish of a graduate student like a graduate student. The hope that has kept me in graduate school is that eventually, I will have more autonomy in my career. As the daughter of teachers, I have always felt that learning is a gift and a good teacher is a treasure. Perhaps it’s not surprising then that I want to put my scientific training to work in the classroom.

I am happy that things have worked out so well for Molly after she stepped off the well-worn paths of academia. It’s easy to romanticize quitting graduate school; perhaps it’s just as easy to romanticize the choice to finish one’s degree. In the end, it’s a crap-shoot. For me, it was a war of attrition: if I just kept my nose to the grindstone long enough, eventually my efforts would pay off in the form of three little letters. But I don’t know: if I had gone to Paris to do research, I too may have found myself more interested in gastronomy than anthropology! Either way, the nice thing about cooking is that everyone has to eat, PhDs included.

One of the things I love most about Molly’s writing is that her words create a sense of place. There’s magic to be found in A Homemade Life, and she gives you everything you need to conjure up some magic of your own. Take, for example, a simple story of breakfast in New York with her then-new boyfriend, Brandon. Molly writes,

“In New York, we had no schedule. He only had classes two days a week, so we had plenty of time, albeit not much money. He lived on West 123rd Street, not far from the enormous Fairway Market, and sometimes we would wake up late and walk to get a jug of orange juice, a bunch of radishes, a baguette, and some butter. Back at home, we ate lazily at the wobbly table with the window open, the box fan blowing, and my bare feet on his lap.”

That’s one of my very favorite passages from the book. I was so inspired by it, in fact, that I had to treat myself to a baguette, some butter, and a bunch of radishes. I can tell you now that the combination is superb—much better, even, than the sum of its parts.

I’ve had enough time now to try a handful of recipes from A Homemade Life, and with one, maybe two, exceptions, everything I’ve cooked has been marvelous. I’m particularly smitten with the Banana Bread with Chocolate and Crystallized Ginger and the Slow-Roasted Tomatoes with Coriander. The latter makes the best grilled-cheese sandwich addition, and if you’ve been following along, you know that I take my grilled cheese seriously. I did try Molly’s Tomato Soup with Two Fennels. I liked it, but I didn’t love it. I also tried the Butternut Soup with Pear, Cider, and Vanilla Bean, and I think something went wrong when I made it. It was okay, but mine seemed a bit too sweet, cloying even. So if you make that soup, make sure that your cider isn’t too sweet. I used apple juice because it’s all I could find, and that was definitely too sweet. I also added too much of it, so there you go. I could even go so far as to suggest that you just use water in place of the cider—I might do that next time because I think this soup has real potential. Then there are all the recipes from Orangette that Molly included in the book—the Bouchons au Thon and the Chana Masala are particularly tempting. I love my Bouchon-inspired Egg and Cheese Muffins. I made the Chana Masala so many times that I wore the recipe out. I plan to cook from A Homemade Life for a long, long time.

Because cooking is what I do. At the end of the day, it all comes back to food: food in my hands, food in my head. I think Molly said it best when she wrote,

“That’s why this book is called A Homemade Life. Because, in a sense, that’s what we’re building—you, me, all of us who like to stir and whisk—in the kitchen and at the table. In the simple acts of cooking and eating, we are creating and continuing the stories that are our lives.”

I could waste more time being jealous of Molly. We could all wish for ourselves the kind of success she’s experienced since she starting writing Orangette. Or we could take a step back and appreciate what she’s done. Molly isn’t just following her own star. She has made her own star and cast it into the sky. And when she follows it, she blazes a trail lined with radishes and tomatoes and cakes, all of which she invites us to eat. So no, I don’t want to spend any more time being jealous of her. I’m going to make my own star, and I invite you to do the same. I think Molly would approve.

* * *

Speaking of stars, I’m taking a vacation next week! Matt and I are meeting in California for some good eating and drinking in wine country, so you won’t hear from me on our regularly scheduled day. I am thrilled to pieces about this trip and about seeing Matt, so you can be sure that I’ll have lots to tell you when I return. As an extra treat when I return, Molly Wizenberg was gracious enough to do an interview with me. It was a lot of fun, and I even learned something new about cooking. So I invite you to join us next week for more discussion about A Homemade Life and the woman who wrote it. Until then, happy cooking and happy eating!

My Mother, Kitchen Goddess

2009-05-11T15:57:00.000-07:00

I was an incredibly picky eater as a child. It’s hard to believe now, looking back, that I was just so scared of most food. There were many things to avoid! Tomatoes were filled with gross seeds, steak contained nubs of shudder-inducing chewy fat, and milk smelled strange—not sour, mind you, just…strange. I didn’t like my mother’s corned beef or her hamburgers, although everyone else in my family ate them hungrily, showing their approval with empty plates. My parents were deeply worried about my protein intake, given that most of my food hang-ups revolved around meat. Perhaps it’s not surprising now that I grew up to become a vegetarian, and that I’m always double-checking my meal plans to make sure they include a nice source of protein. I may have lost my chance to grow up tall, but I’m determined to be as strong as I can be!

Despite my aversion for most meat, I absolutely loved my mother’s tuna fish sandwiches. It’s so odd! I disliked beef, but I liked fish? Beef is so hearty, so satisfying, so rich. Tuna is…fishy. Its flavor is sharp, almost metallic, and after you eat it, you have tuna breath, which makes the cat unusually interested in your mouth. My mom knew just what to do with a can of tuna to make it sing with flavor. I think her version started as most versions do, with mayonnaise, and she dolled it up with chopped fresh celery. There may have been a bit of onion involved, and a few shakes of celery salt, and of course plenty of pepper. Whatever she did, it was marvelous served on toast, preferably gobbled down within minutes of mixing up the tuna sandwich spread. I never had any problems putting away tuna sandwiches.

My mom was a good sport about my odd eating habits. For the most part, she let me be, although my shockingly high sugar consumption did not go unnoticed. My mom let me eat what I thought tasted good, and it didn’t matter if it was totally bizarre. I used to eat hot dogs straight out of the package. I’d fold slices of American cheese into a little cheese stack and eat the stack, one tiny slice after another. I liked peanut butter off a spoon (come to think of it, I still like that) and lots of cinnamon toast. My mom used to make something she called “French toast,” which involved buttered, toasted white bread on which she’d pour some syrup and then plunk it down in front of me. It wasn’t real French toast, but it sure was tasty. And when we ate rice, we’d top it with a pat of margarine and douse it with soy sauce. That was exotic eating at its best in our house.

My eating habits today don’t bare much resemblance to those of my childhood. Sure, I still love cinnamon toast and I think few things smell nicer than a pot of cooking rice. But I’m no longer a junk-food addict, and dinner is likely to be something a little more substantial than a bowl of cereal. Learning to cook changed everything for me, and I credit my mom’s relaxed attitude for my own happiness in the kitchen. If I wanted to cook something, that was cool with her. I remember one time we set out to make a mocha cheesecake just because I wanted to. That day, the power went out while the cheesecake was baking, so we ended up with this weird sort of half-baked, half-raw creation. I think it tasted okay; I do remember eating a LOT of this ill-fated mocha cheesecake! I have yet to try that recipe again, but my guess is that it actually tastes pretty good when made properly.

I don’t think my mother was ever really rattled by my kitchen endeavors, and for that, I am very thankful. Because of her, I have a never-ending sense of optimism in the kitchen—cooking is always an adventure. I feel good about my ability to make good food, and I don’t spend much time thinking about what happens if my cooking turns out poorly that night. I’m not immune to kitchen disappointment, but it doesn’t permeate my sense of confidence. Cooking is the one area of my life that I can lean on for reassurance when everything else is falling apart. It is my rock, my beacon of hope, my comforter. Mom gave me life, and then she gave me the tools to take care of myself. It’s hard to ask for anything more.

I may no longer eat tuna fish, but I still love the flavor of tuna fish sandwiches. You can imagine how ecstatic I was when I discovered that vegetarians have their very own version of tuna fish, a surprisingly tasty mixture of mashed chickpeas, mayo, and an assortment of vegetables and herbs. I first made it with some skepticism, but after a single sandwich, I was won over. It’s a recipe I’ve written about before, and while the classic deserves its place in my recipe archives, last week I was introduced to a newcomer who ought to become a part of my summer rotation this year.

I call it “The Robin.” It’s Robin’s sandwich, really, she of Caviar and Codfish, a blog I don’t read nearly as often as I should. I don’t know of anyone who takes more gorgeous photos or who writes as lovingly as she does about eating locally produced food. She makes me want to move to the country, right now! While I remain city-bound, I’ll just stop by her blog for delicious food and even more delicious stories. Last week, Robin gave us a recipe for a dreamy tuna fish sandwich, one made with pesto, avocado, and radishes. Yum! I wanted one, too. So I went home and made an impressive vegetarian version. I was particularly pleased that I didn’t even have to stop by the grocery store, not because I’m opposed to that sort of thing, but rather because I seem to be spending more money than I should these days. Anyway, I thought you should know about this sandwich too, if you haven’t already heard about it. Pay Robin a visit, or contemplate a vegetarian version like the one I’ll give you now. And call your mother to tell her you love her, even though you were the pickiest eater out of her whole brood.

“The Robin,” or Vegetarian Tuna Fish Sandwich with Pesto and Avocado
Serves 1

This sandwich is outstanding: hearty, nutritious, and packed with interesting flavors. I didn’t have any radishes on hand when I made my sandwiches, so I’m going to list those as optional here. I do think they’d add a nice crunch though.

Note that the chickpea mash (the “tuna fish”) makes enough for 3-4 sandwiches. I like to eat this sandwich as an open-faced version on two slices of bread, so it’s sort of like two sandwiches in one.

For the vegetarian tuna fish:
Several tablespoons of plain yogurt (low-fat is okay) to taste
1 can chickpeas, rinsed and drained
Fresh lime juice to taste
Salt to taste
Freshly ground pepper to taste

For a sandwich:
2 slices of good sandwich bread
A few spoonfuls of excellent green pesto (I used Cibo Naturals Classic Basil Pesto)
A generous portion of vegetarian tuna fish (see above)
Half of an avocado, sliced into thick slices
A radish or two, thinly sliced (optional)
2 leaves of Romaine lettuce, chopped

1) To make the vegetarian tuna fish, line a mesh strainer with a clean (unused) coffee filter. Place the yogurt inside the coffee filter and place the strainer over a bowl. Let the yogurt drain for a few minutes to thicken it.
2) While the yogurt is draining, place the chickpeas in a large bowl. Use a potato masher to mash them coarsely. Add enough drained yogurt to moisten the chickpeas into a nice, spreadable mixture. Squeeze some lime juice into the mixture and season to taste with salt and pepper. Taste the chickpeas and decide if they need any more yogurt, lime juice, salt, or pepper. You might be inclined to season them with something else—go right ahead!
3) Assemble your sandwich. Toast the bread. Slather some pesto on top of each slice of bread. Top with a few spoonfuls of the chickpea mixture. Lay the avocado slices on top and finish with the radishes (if using) and a nice handful of chopped lettuce over the avocado. Serve immediately.

Spring, with Potatoes and Peanut Sauce

2009-05-04T11:27:00.000-07:00

Greetings, dear readers! This is Rose-Anne’s Kitchen, filling in for her. She’s been floating around on a cloud ever since her committee meeting the other day. Rose-Anne also has a wicked case of spring fever. The other night, she left my sink filled with dirty dishes so she could take a walk in that warm spring air. Normally, this sort of slovenliness does not sit well with me, but I figure that after a winter from hell, the poor dear deserves as much sunshine and fresh-grass smell as she can soak up.

Besides, I can’t complain. Things have been happily busy inside my walls. There’s been the usual, of course—plenty of soup and granola, with the occasional batch of cookies thrown in for good measure—but there have also been loaves of banana bread and lots of fresh oranges, some fun with radishes, and the first asparagus of the season. We’re both eagerly awaiting the opening of Evanston’s farmer’s market, but get this: Rose-Anne is going to be in frikkin’ California that day! The nerve of her! I mean seriously: how could she skip the market to go traipsing around wine country with Matt? It’s outrageous! I mean, I like Matt and all, I really do, but he’s a bad, bad influence on her. I’m not sure I can forgive him for this. The next time he’s here, he’d better watch for falling objects while he’s inside my walls.

To make up for this tragedy, Rose-Anne has been bringing me gifts. She gave me a new set of very thirsty towels, in gorgeous rainbow-hued colors, just perfect for drying the never-ending stream of dishes around here. She slipped a deep metal bowl into one of my cabinets, a necessary item for beating egg whites while making Orange Pudding Cake. She even bought me two avocadoes just because avocadoes are lovely. Wasn’t that nice of her?

But the best gift of all is one that Mother Nature has given me. I’m just flooded with sunlight these days as we get closer and closer to the summer solstice in June. My windows may be a bit dirty, but with the way my honey-colored floor glows, you won’t mind a bit of dirt. On the really nice days, Rose-Anne’s been opening the door that leads out of the kitchen onto the balcony. The warm air drifts inside, bringing with it the scent of fresh flowers and dirt and the sounds of children playing at the park. I just love spring.

This springtime madness has seeped into the cooking around here. Spring in Chicago can be a dodgy affair: a balmy 70 degrees one day, 40 degrees and rain the next. Some mornings it’s wool coat and scarf; other mornings it’s a light sweater, mostly because Rose-Anne likes her coat-ish sweaters. But the most obvious sign of the tussle between winter and spring is a funky, delicious salad that Rose-Anne has made multiple times in the last few weeks. It starts with a nice bed of crisp Romaine. A handful of broccoli slaw and thinly sliced radishes are next, topped by (this is the fun part) garlicky, spicy roasted potatoes. Finally a big spoonful of peanut sauce is dabbed strategically on top of the salad. Does it sound strange? It is, in a wonderful, perfectly satisfying way. Rose-Anne’s been eating it alongside a nice juicy orange and smiling in that smug, “I’m such a good cook” way of hers. I would drop something on her head just to wipe that obnoxious look off her face, but she did bring me two avocadoes, so maybe I’ll just leave her alone here.

In the meantime, dear reader, I hope your spring has been radiant and joyful. May your strawberries be fragrant and your greens crisp. And may your salads keep you satisfied, whether it feels more like spring or winter out there.

xo,
Rose-Anne’s Kitchen

Thai-Inspired Salad with Radishes and Roasted Potatoes
Inspired by Real Vegetarian Thai by Nancie McDermott

This salad was inspired by the recipe for Muslim-Style Salad with Peanut Dressing in Nancie McDermott’s charming Real Vegetarian Thai. I liked the idea of eating a green salad with crispy potatoes and a spicy peanut dressing—it sounded cool and fresh, crispy and creamy, with bites of warm potato and nutty-spicy dressing to heat things up. I love making salads—there’s something very energizing about preparing fresh, raw ingredients, just you, your knife, and a chopping board covered with vegetables. And there’s nothing like a salad to invite you to taste and tweak to your heart’s content. Salads are all about improvisation.

To make this salad, you need a bit of time, enough to roast some potatoes for about 45-50 minutes. While the potatoes are going, have a snack and make the peanut sauce. After the potatoes are done and cooling, prep the remaining salad vegetables and enjoy a very tasty dinner as a reward for all your hard work.

Note that you’ll have enough potatoes for 2-3 salads and enough peanut sauce for many salads—at least 6-8, I’d say. Normally I’d apologize for giving you such lumpy amounts of leftovers, but there are so many delicious things to do with leftover potatoes and peanut sauce that I won’t say I’m sorry. Instead, I’ll just suggest a few ideas. For the potatoes, try folding them into scrambled eggs or as the base for some Ugly Chili Fries. The potatoes can be reheated in the oven at 350 degrees F for a few minutes. Cover them with foil if they are getting too brown. For the peanut sauce, toss it with noodles or add to vegetable soup for body and peanut flavor. Or use it as a dip with vegetables!

For the potatoes:

4 waxy, not-too-starchy medium potatoes, such as red-skinned potatoes or Yukon golds
1 tbsp. garlic-infused olive oil
1/8-1/4 tsp. McCormick Grill Mates Spicy Montreal Steak seasoning, or to taste
Salt to taste
Cooking spray

1) Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
2) Rinse and dry the potatoes. Peel any funky spots. Remove any eyes, sprouts, or other unwanteds. Slice in half lengthwise, then slice into thin half-moon wedges.
3) Place potatoes in a bowl. Toss with garlic oil. Toss with steak seasoning and salt.
4) Spray a large baking sheet with cooking spray. Tumble the potatoes onto the baking sheet. Bake for 40-50 minutes, or until golden-brown and totally delicious-looking. After 20 minutes of baking, flip them over and move them around to help everything roast evenly.

For the peanut sauce:
Adapted from Nigella Express by Nigella Lawson
Makes a generous 1/2 cup

1 tbsp. sesame oil
1 tbsp. garlic-infused olive oil
1 tbsp. soy sauce
1 tsp. maple syrup
1/4 tsp. hot sauce, such as Tabasco
1/3 cup peanut butter
1 tsp. rice vinegar

1) Place all ingredients in a bowl. Whisk together until smooth. Taste and adjust the flavors as needed.

Finally, for the salad:

For one salad, I use the following:
2 large leaves of Romaine lettuce
1 broccoli stalk’s worth of broccoli slaw (prep directions are below)
2 radishes
A handful of warm roasted potatoes (recipe above)
1 tbsp. peanut sauce (recipe above)
1/2 tsp. rice vinegar
1/2 tsp. hot water

1) Tear the Romaine into bite-sized pieces and pile them onto a dinner plate.
2) To make the broccoli slaw, trim the rough outer layers of a broccoli stalk with vertical knife strokes down the stalk. Then use a box grater to grate the juicy inner stalk into shreds.
3) Trim the radishes and slice them into very thin rounds.
4) Pile the broccoli slaw and radishes onto the Romaine in alternating layers. Top with still-warm roasted potatoes.
5) Whisk the 1 tbsp. of peanut sauce with the rice vinegar and water. I do this to make a thinner sauce, which I think makes for a better salad dressing. Dab the peanut dressing in small blobs onto the salad in several places. Dig in!

I Heart Science

2009-04-27T16:59:00.000-07:00

On Thursday afternoon, I sent a pair of haiku to Matt. I love haiku.

Thesis committee
Liked my stuff and they want to
Let me write thesis

But still! So many
Flies to push and text to write
I am exhausted

And that pretty much sums up the results of my thesis committee meeting. Mission accomplished.

My committee is wonderful. Each time we’ve met, they have given me their full attention and treated our meeting as an opportunity to teach me new things. I love to learn. It is a little overwhelming to have four professors focused with laser-like precision on you—I was nervous before and during the meeting—but they have been generous and supportive of me, and that has made my journey through graduate school that much sweeter.

I am very happy to see the finish line for my degree. It’s been a long road, full of twists and turns, dotted with some success and much failure. The journey has made me laugh and it’s made me cry. It’s also made me very, very crazy. Sometimes I can’t believe I get paid to do this work—I get paid to stumble my way through experiments and to write manuscripts. I get paid to think really, really hard. And even though science is my day job, it’s changed the way I think about everything. It’s no longer possible for me to accept anything as truth—as one blogger puts it, “Nothing is sacred.” The first of two very important things that science has taught me is this: prepare to fail. What the hell does that mean? “Prepare to fail?” It means that we should expect things to go wrong. Because they do, all the time. In fact, the morning of my committee meeting, my hair dryer caught on fire. Swear to God! I was blow-drying my hair, and the dryer sputtered. I pulled it back from my hair to look, and smoke and sparks starting shooting out the bottom. Ahhhh! I frantically clicked it off, yanked the plug out of the wall, and threw it away. Then I thought, Great. Now I’m going to have bad hair on this very important day. Then I fluffed my still-damp hair, thought, oh well, and finished getting ready. I just hoped it wasn’t an inauspicious sign of bad things to come.

The second thing that science has taught me is this: have a back-up plan. My back-up plan after my hair-dryer caught fire was to let my wild hair do its own thing. I got a haircut recently, and I told Matt I look like I have a permanent case of bedhead. I thought that description might appeal to him more than my first description, which was that I look like a shaggy dog right now. Too bad Matt’s a cat person!

From a more worldly perspective, this back-up plan idea is great because it keeps your mind open to other possibilities that you aren’t pursuing right now. I still dream of being a professional writer, but for now, it’s my backup plan. I’m going to take this science thing as far as I can, and I’ll see where I end up. Maybe some day I’ll be teaching your children that they, too, should prepare to fail. I’m sure that lesson will make me a very popular professor.

Many of you, dear readers, sent me good-luck wishes and other kind thoughts last week. For that, I cannot thank you enough. Some of you have known me for a long, long time. I can still remember having college breakfasts with JD, and during breakfast, he’d poke fun at my nerdy science schedule. After breakfast, I’d head off to Intro to Neuroscience as he’d mosey on over to his political science class. But here’s the truth: JD is just as big a nerd as I am. He’s always reading something interesting, adding new pieces to his mental jigsaw puzzle, making sense out of a nonsensical world. Because JD’s nerdiness differs from my nerdiness, our friendship has a certain color and richness that makes it very special to me. I’m so glad he’s NOT a scientist!

Others I’ve known for…uh, a week? Does it count as meeting if this person exists in your life as words on a computer screen? But oh my, what powerful words! I am so excited to have discovered Gena and her beautiful blog, Choosing Raw. I happened upon Gena through her poignant essay on her quitiversary, one year after she quit smoking. Reading her words, I thought to myself, This is a woman who gets it. This is someone who understands that we battle our demons in a series of tiny moments, a sequence of seemingly minor decisions that add up to something so much bigger than us. Gena fought her battle with cigarettes; I fight my battle with a wandering mind and a fidgety body. It seems so strange to say it this way, but the key to success may be letting yourself be uncomfortable for a while. Let yourself be cranky because it’s nighttime, and you used to smoke a cigarette after the dinner dishes were washed. Let yourself be grumpy because you’ve got data to analyze, and moving numbers around Excel spreadsheets is mind numbing. But do what you have to do to get the job done: for Gena, push-ups and reminding herself that she wants to be healthy; for me, an hour break for every hour of work. Repeat as needed.

As much as I try to focus on the process, in cooking and in the rest of my life, it occurs to me that some things are easier to accomplish if we set the process aside for a minute and focus on the goal. Nobody enjoys quitting the smokes. Likewise, it’s fair to say I have not enjoyed graduate school. But I think both are worthy endeavors, and for the latter, I can say that 90% of the time, I am glad I decided to pursue a PhD. At the end of the day, when all the experiments are done, the data crunched, the figures made, the manuscript written, the thesis submitted, the PhD earned, there’s one thing that will always be true: science starts and ends with ideas. We’ll never know “the truth.” All we ever get to see is a kaleidoscope of evidence in which the picture flows endlessly. Certainty slips through our fingers like grains of sand. But never you mind: there is always another experiment to be done.

From Here On Out

2009-04-20T15:31:00.000-07:00

On Thursday afternoon, I will stand up in front of my thesis committee and try to convince them that in August, they should give me a PhD.

This meeting is a Big Deal. It’s a game-changer. If the committee agrees with my timeline, then I’ll be sitting pretty: do experiments until June, write thesis in July, graduate and party in August. Done. If the committee does not agree, things could get ugly.

One of the things that is so scary about being a science PhD candidate is that there is no standard formula that tells you when you are finished. It is wholly unlike any other educational experience I’ve ever had. The uncertainty about finishing is fine if you are happy and like what you are doing, but I’m not always happy. There have been days, weeks, months when all I wanted was to GET OUT. I have gone through phases during which I wasn’t even sure I wanted to be a scientist. I have come up with alternative career plans in case this whole PhD thing didn’t work out. I have cried many, many times about graduate school. I even started this blog as a way of reclaiming my voice after feeling trampled by science. To say that I am relieved about the prospect of graduating is an understatement. I am relieved, elated, OVERJOYED by this prospect. Between that and spring, creeping up so slowly here in the Midwest, I am happier than I have been in months—maybe even years.

Yes, this meeting with my thesis committee is a Big Deal, but I’m not worried about it. I believe I have accomplished enough to warrant graduation. I’ve earned a grant, published papers, and most importantly, I’ve learned how to think like a scientist. I AM a scientist, inside and outside the lab. Whether or not they put three little letters after my name will not change way I think about the world. It will change the way the world thinks about me.

I have long thought of myself as a resilient person. I am also, however, a bit of a Chicken Little, always worried about what bad thing might happen next. Being a Chicken Little is exhausting. But as a scientist, I am a professional Chicken Little. It’s my job to think about what might go wrong with an experiment, and then I have to think about how to design my experiment to deal with that possibility. The longer I do science, the more at ease I am with this process. The fascinating part to me, though, is that the longer I do science, the more I realize how very little control we have over the things that matter most. Almost three years ago, I lost a beloved college professor to cancer. Medicine could not save him. Medicine couldn’t even predict how fast the cancer would take him down: they told him six months, he was dead after two. Losing Ned broke my heart. He wasn’t just my professor. He was my mentor, a father figure, a dear friend. He is the reason I’m earning a PhD in neuroscience. By extension, he’s the reason I met Matt, a man who reminds me of Ned so deeply that it’s hard not to think that we were meant to meet on one cold December evening in 2005. Matt and I met just six months before Ned died.

Ned’s death still haunts me. Life is fragile. But I think Ned lived his life knowing full well that someday he would die. Rather than being afraid of death, he loved every minute of his life. He bought a Harley and loved riding it around. He taught his students brilliantly; he loved us and he loved being a professor. He loved Albion College, and Albion loved him right back. Ned loved the idea of love; he told me that he and his wife had a phrase to describe how amazed they were at their relationship: “The reality is better than the fantasy.” Ned was a family man. He and his wife were crazy in love with each other, even after twenty years of marriage. Between the two of them, they had four children from previous marriages. Ned and his wife adored all the kids. I imagine that their home was a very happy place to be.

It is hard to believe that Ned’s really gone because I feel his presence so strongly in my life. My atheism, my compassion, my enthusiasm, my resilience—all of these things were sculpted by Ned. I was good starting material for him, no doubt, but I would not be the same person now if I hadn’t set foot in his Philosophy 101 class almost ten years ago. I think Ned and I recognized a kindred spirit in each other; we took a liking to one another almost right away, and we stuck together until he left this world. My world is greyer without him in it.

I like to think that Ned would be really proud of me, so close to finishing my PhD. He would laugh if I told him that I’m thinking about studying courtship behavior in flies after I graduate. When he was alive, he was greatly amused by my fly pimping. I spend much of my work life facilitating sex, albeit between insects, not people. I think he would have loved to learn more about what flies can teach us about ourselves, or at least our genes. Ned loved to learn.

Although finishing my PhD is a Big Deal, it feels like small potatoes compared to what I’ve already done. I’m ready to graduate. I wish I could share this time with Ned. I wish he could listen to my public thesis seminar in August, I wish we could share a Scotch afterward, I wish we could talk about motorcycles and Europe and love and sex. I wish he was still here. But he’s not. From here on out, it’s just me. And even though I don’t like it, I know I can do it. I just wish I didn’t have to do it without him.

* * *

Ned loved to cook. It was another thing I loved about him. He loved simple food and complex food. He loved pizza and beer, meat and seafood. He loved the heat of Indian and Cajun food. Ned taught me that tastebuds don’t live very long, probably because they stand a good chance of being killed by a toxin. Ned also gave me my first lesson about how spicy food releases all sorts of feel-good chemicals in our brains, so Cajun food might really be addictive—cayenne pepper could be a drug!

I love spicy food too. I’m about halfway through my very first bottle of red crushed chile peppers, a spice I’ve come to know and love in recent years. But cayenne pepper is good too, especially in a sweet-spicy chickpea stew that’s just perfect for serving over rice with a dollop of yogurt. I don’t know how Ned would feel about this dish—it’s one of those sweet meets savory combinations, and not everyone goes for that. But I do, and this dish gets bonus points for being an easy, middle-of-the-week dinner, something you can throw together while you nibble on an appetizer and unwind for a while.

I’m really bad about following recipes exactly as written, even the first time I make something. This stew is no different. But I think it’s fair to say that this recipe is forgiving because I haven’t made it the same way twice yet, but it’s treated me very well nonetheless. So I encourage you to follow your gut and your tastebuds—make this recipe your own. Ned would approve.

Moroccan Chickpea Stew with Carrots and Raisins
Adapted from Vegetarian Times
Serves 3-4

I love sweet-spicy-hot food. Thai food is a good example, and so is this Moroccan-inspired stew in which chickpeas, carrots, and raisins are simmered together in a broth rich with cinnamon, cayenne, and cumin. Oh, this is so good, much better than it deserves to be because it’s really a snap to make. I like to serve it over rice. Finally, don’t forget that spoonful of yogurt on top. Tangy yogurt complements the sweet heat of this stew; it seems to bring all the flavors together, like a conductor with his orchestra. It’s lovely.

For the stew:
2 tbsp. olive oil
1 onion, thinly sliced
3 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 tsp. ground tumeric
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 tsp. ground cumin
1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper
1 14.5-oz. can chickpeas, rinsed and drained
3 medium to large carrots, ends trimmed, peeled, and sliced into thin rounds
1/4 cup raisins
2 cups vegetable stock or water
Salt and pepper to taste
Handful of fresh cilantro leaves, coarsely chopped (optional but very tasty)

For serving:
Rice, such as basmati
Plain yogurt (I like the option of adding more yogurt to my portion as I eat my way down, so don’t be skimpy here. I’d recommend maybe 1/2 to 2/3 of a cup of yogurt to eat with the whole pot of stew.)

1) In a soup pot or Dutch oven, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the onion and sauté for a few minutes or until it has softened and has a bit of color. Add the garlic and sauté for another 30 seconds or so. Add the spices and sauté, stirring frequently, for another 30 seconds until fragrant and toasty.
2) Stir in the chickpeas, carrots, raisins, and vegetable stock or water. Cover and simmer for 20-25 minutes, or until the carrots have softened to tenderness. Stir occasionally while the stew is simmering.
3) Into each serving bowl, place a scoop or two of rice and then ladle the chickpea stew over the rice. Sprinkle with some fresh cilantro leaves. Serve a bowl of yogurt at the table to let eaters add yogurt on top if they’d like.

The Best Kind of Plate

2009-04-13T13:54:00.000-07:00

It’s probably time for me to face the truth: I am a bowl girl at heart. It’s not that I don’t eat things off of plates, because I do. Instead, it’s that recipes that end with phrases like “serve in deep bowls” just call to me. They sing, they chirp, they chant my name like a magical incantation. I love soup and cereal. I could live off those things, and with frequent spoonfuls of peanut or almond butter, I think I do. I’m not unhappy about the state of things. I’ve got lots of bowls in my kitchen, and they exist in a continual rotation of use-wash-dry-return to cabinet.

But plates have their place. I had a plate of excellent, excellent Japanese Pan Noodles at Noodles & Company on Friday night. That, along with a fruity yogurt and the new issue of Gourmet, was my reward for surviving another hectic week in the lab. I adore Japanese Pan Noodles. Every time I realize my work day is going to be extending into the 7 o’clock hour, I immediately think JAPANESE PAN NOODLES! Sweet and spicy, fat and chewy, with nubs of fried tofu and slivers of vegetables, pan noodles are just about the only thing that can make me happy I’m working late. How did I ever live without Japanese Pan Noodles?

Plenty of other good things are eaten off of plates. Several of you came through with shining colors when I asked for suggestions a few weeks ago. I owe you an apology for taking so long to put together a nice, neat list, but maybe if I promise you something really spectacular today, you’ll forgive me. I do thank you for not throwing a plate at me! I’ve ordered the recipes by meal just to give the list a sense of rhythm.

* For breakfast (or any time, really) Nick, our Peanut Butter Boy, has an amazing-sounding recipe for a Platecake, a plate-sized pancake. Every time I thought about this recipe, I kept calling it a “mancake,” which made me laugh. My only question is this: how ripe is too ripe for the bananas in this recipe? Because I’ve got some spotty bananas sitting on the table right now, but I just don’t know if they are past their platecake-prime.

* The recipe offered by ttfn300 seems like a Saturday lunch dish to me: Kale Skins, a riff on twice-baked potatoes that packs sauteed kale into cheesy mashed potatoes stuffed into sturdy potato skins. (As an aside, I love the name Kale Skins!)

* My dear friend Nicole sent me a link for one of her favorite workhorse casseroles, Polenta and Vegetable Bake from EatingWell. She writes, “I wouldn’t say it’s AMAZING, but it’s good comfort food that’s easy to prepare. I actually love casseroles, and this one is on the healthier end of casseroles. It has an Italian flare, with the tomato sauce and basil. The most time consuming part is chopping, and then it bakes for a while. It’s very flexible in terms of how much cheese and/or vegetables you include. I usually throw in more vegetables, because I chop a larger eggplant or something. It re-heats very well, which is a big plus for my meal-planning and expenses.” Thank you, Nicole!

* And finally, Laurie laughed at this whole plate thing and suggested I make a soupy bowl of vegetables and tofu. The only thing this recipe is missing is some noodles! There’s nothing better than slurping noodles, especially on a Friday night.

The best kind of plate, though, is the one that appears after the main course: the mixed dessert plate. When it comes to dessert, I’m firmly pro-plate. I do like the occasional bowl of ice cream, or a few spoonfuls of my Raspberry Cookie Pudding, but again and again, I come back to the same kind of dessert: cookies. I find them utterly charming: almost bite-sized, studded with dried fruit or chocolate chips, nubbly with nuts, cookies are what I fantasize about baking when I feel anxious or stressed. It’s funny: I don’t really fantasize about eating dozens of cookies, just baking them. Perhaps it’s because cookies remind me of simpler times and my younger self. The Tollhouse Chocolate Chip Cookie was the first recipe I really mastered. I’m a better baker now—for one thing, I use real butter and my cookies are only flat and thin when I want them to be—but cookie dough still has the ability to let me call upon the child I used to be. I will skip work-outs, stay up late, leave a mess in the kitchen, do whatever it takes to fulfill my cookie-baking needs. It’s a little obsessive, I know, but it makes me happy.

Cookies are the perfect item for the mixed dessert plate. The idea is this: by choosing several small items to eat for dessert, you create a mixed dessert plate that lets you have a taste of everything that sounds good. For example, sometimes I like a spoonful of Barney Butter for dessert. So I’ll have that, and because Barney Butter is pretty innocent as far as desserts go, I might have a square of peppermint bark (left over from Christmas) and a cookie. The key is to take portions that provide just a bite or three so that you don’t put yourself into a sugar coma.

Many cookies are quite rich, almost overwhelming with their buttery sweetness. These cookies can still work with the mixed dessert plate if they’re small, but I’ve got an even better idea for you: Walnut Wafers. These cookies, made from a most unusual set of ingredients, are sophisticated and irresistible. They’re a vegan oatmeal cookie that bakes into thin, chewy-crispy discs—wafers, if you will. They taste like walnuts, only better: sweet with a hint of cinnamon and the occasional chocolate chip, they’ve got a deep nutty flavor and a tiny edge of bitterness. These little treats are amazing, and I’m not the only one who thinks so. I loved them so much that I foisted them on every person I could find: Matt, Daphna, my friend Daine, and Daine’s wife, Amanda. Matt doesn’t even like nuts in his desserts, but sometimes I just won’t take no for an answer.

Daine is one of my newest friends, and he and I both love to cook. I was so eager for Daine to try these cookies that I filled a Ziploc baggie with Walnut Wafers and handed them off, instructing him to share with Amanda. He came back to me a few days later, telling me that Amanda loved them. “These are so good!” she’d say, dipping into their cookie supply. “I just can’t stop eating them!” Upon hearing this, I beamed—what bliss! But Daine wasn’t feeling the bliss. “Okay,” he’d say to Amanda. “I get it. You like the cookies.” And they’d repeat this routine, over and over, until finally, Daine brought out the big gun: key lime pie. You see, Daine is quite territorial about his cooking prowess, and he just wasn’t going to stand by helplessly while his wife fell in love with a dessert that someone else made. Key lime pie is her favorite, he told me, and only key lime pie would be powerful enough to break the spell of those damn Walnut Wafers.

I hooted and howled when Daine told me this story. I’m not territorial at all about my cooking or the people I love. I don’t know why—I’ve certainly gone green with envy in the past—but somehow in my ripe old age, I’ve mellowed. I don’t pout jealously. Instead, I share. And so it is that I’m sharing my Walnut Wafers with you. Add them to your mixed dessert plate. Just don’t try to eat them with key lime pie—you might induce a food fight.

Walnut Wafers
Adapted from Vegetarian Times
Makes ~40 cookies, plus or minus a few

I cannot believe how much Vegetarian Times undersold this recipe. These cookies are phenomenally good, possibly the most interesting and delicious thing I’ve eaten all year. The recipe was part of a VT feature on heart health, so these cookies were originally named “The Heart-Healthiest Chocolate Chip Cookies in the World.” VT did not tell me that these cookies would make me rethink my entire concept of what a vegan cookie is and can be. Instead, the magazine focused on the nutritional content of these cookies, which made me think that maybe this idea of healthy desserts gets taken too far sometimes.

I was very curious to see how this recipe would turn out, so I gave it a whirl. I tweaked the recipe a bit right off the bat, ditching the additional rolled oats in favor of a smoother texture. During my first round of baking, I found that big two-inch balls of cookie dough spread and spread and spread, which alone would have been okay, but the cookies are also very delicate. These giant cookies flopped off my flipper and collapsed through the gaps of my wire cooling racks. Gah—so frustrating!

To troubleshoot the recipe, I made the cookies smaller and thus arrived in cookie paradise. Small cookies were easy to handle, and their texture was wonderful: crisp edges, chewy middles, and melty chips of chocolate strewn throughout. Once I got my recipe perfected, I could not have cared less that these cookies are made with heart-healthy ingredients like walnuts and oatmeal. It is nice to take a break from the butter-eggs-white flour of traditional cookies, but Walnut Wafers are delicious enough that you don’t need to apologize for these “healthy” cookies. You can serve them to your friends and let them praise you profusely for your mad baking skills.

Oh, and one last thing. If you make these cookies with certified gluten-free oats, then the cookies are gluten-free in addition to being vegan. That means even more people can enjoy Walnut Wafers—bliss!

1 cup walnuts
1 1/2 tbsp. canola oil
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup water
1 tsp. vanilla
3/4 cup oat flour (you can make your own by whirling rolled oats in the blender until powdery. That’s what I do.)
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. ground cinnamon
3/4 cup bittersweet chocolate chips (vegans and gluten-free people, be sure to check your chocolate to make sure it meets your requirements)

1) Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a Silpat.
2) Blend the walnuts in a food processor for 30 seconds, or until they are ground into a fine meal. Add the canola oil and blend for 2-3 minutes to create a paste. Scrape the paste into a mixing bowl.
3) Combine the brown sugar and water in a small saucepan and bring the mixture to a boil. Pour the sugar water over the walnut paste, add the vanilla, and stir until smooth.
4) Stir together the oat flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon in a separate bowl. Combine the flour mixture with the walnut mixture. Cool for ten minutes. Fold in the chocolate chips.
5) Drop the cookie dough onto the prepared sheets in small spoonfuls. I like the texture of these cookies when they are rather small, so I’d recommend using 1-2 tsp. of dough per cookie. Bake for 8-10 minutes (my cookies need the full 10 minutes to achieve that lovely crispy edge). Cool on the baking sheet for 10 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

The Lucky One

2009-04-07T10:14:00.000-07:00

Greetings, dear readers! It’s time to announce the lucky winner of last week’s giveaway.

Technology is very useful in these situations. I used the Random Integer Generator at random.org to pick one very lucky reader, who is...

(Drumroll please while I present the data)

Random Integer Generator
Here are your random numbers:1
Timestamp: 2009-04-07 17:08:08 UTC

ttfn300! Congratulations, my dear. You were the first commenter on last week’s post, therefore 1 = you. We should get in touch by e-mail so that I can send your prize to the correct mailing address.

Thank you all for your comments last week and for continuing to stop by this little blog of mine. I hope I can brighten your days as much as you brighten mine.

Have a great week!

Three Secrets Worth Sharing

2009-04-06T13:22:00.001-07:00

As a human being, there is no greater compliment than being entrusted with someone’s secret. When someone shares a secret with me, I always feel this sense of honor and responsibility: it’s now my duty to guard the secret! It could be that because I have a big mouth and I talk a lot, people feel compelled to shush me by labeling their news as a secret. I’m okay with that. Secrets are wonderful. Sometimes the content of a secret is pretty amazing, but more than that, secrets are great because they contain privileged information. Even dull news acquires a sparkle when it’s a secret. I love that delicious thrill the moment before someone shares their secret with me. My ears grow a little wider as I hold my breath and lean in closer, the better to hear this important announcement. I’m practically giddy with anticipation! Occasionally the secret lives up to its promise, like the first time an old boyfriend told me he loved me. Now THAT was a good secret. But often, the secret is more mundane or it’s a sad secret, troubling or unhappy. It’s rare that I’m tempted to break my promise and spill a secret that doesn’t belong to me. That’s a tremendous relief. My brain would explode if I filled it up with information that threatened to spill out of my mouth every time I opened it.

Have you ever heard the phrase about money burning a hole in my pocket? Secrets feel like that to me when they involve food or cooking. That’s why I keep depositing my secrets here, every week. I love writing this site, if for no other reason than to have some sort of record of all the cool things I’ve learned and good foods I’ve cooked. Keeping your recipe collection on-line has another perk: when you’re organizing a cooking party, recipes can be shared with just a few clicks. It’s so easy! I also enjoy not harassing my friends with annoying e-mails about all the things I’m putting in my belly. Now they know that if they want to hear about that sort of thing, they can find it right here. I love it.

In the almost two years since I started writing Life, Love, and Food, I’ve started to undergo a transformation. I think I am slowly becoming a cook. Now, I’ve thought of myself as a person who cooks for a while now. I’ve always loved recipes—they’re like little word maps, marking the path to edible nirvana. But lately, I’m not as keen on following recipes. I still love them and use them, but I seem to be cooking more and more straight out of the fridge with no piece of paper serving as the middleman between me and dinner. Some might say this is a very positive step for me—Matt, for example, who tells me his brain is one giant cookbook. (It’s true, and he’s a great cook.) The interesting thing is that I’m accumulating my own little set of kitchen secrets, tricks I’m using these days to fill in the gaps that emerge when I’m cooking without a book. In fact, one of these secrets does find its origins in a book, and I’m sure the other two can be found in print somewhere. But right now, they feel like my secrets, and I’m just burnin’ up here, dying to share them with you.

Broccoli, eggs, garlic: these are rather mundane ingredients. By themselves, they aren’t showstoppers. They are building blocks, ingredients with which we build dinner. Because they are so ubiquitous, the smart cook has a hundred-and-one ways to use them. The frugal cook uses every last bit of her inventory. I want to be smart and frugal—mostly just to make up for all the times I’m dumb and wasteful—so let us start with broccoli, perhaps the least glamorous of the trio. I have been eating a lot of broccoli ever since I discovered how delicious Roasted Broccoli and Tofu is. I think it’s my favorite meal these days. But the dish only calls for broccoli florets, which, unless you only purchase florets, leaves a bunch of gnarly-looking stems for you to frown at. The best use of these gnarly-looking stems is Broccoli Slaw. It’s just shredded broccoli, but it’s really tasty—juicy, a little sweet with that earthy and distinctive broccoli tang. Broccoli Slaw is an excellent side dish and a very nice way to sneak another green vegetable into your diet. It can be tossed with a salad dressing or even other vegetables for a mixed slaw—I like shredded carrots and finely diced radishes.

Broccoli Slaw
Yield: Variable (I use 1-2 stalks to make a single serving.)

1 or more broccoli stalks

1) Using a sharp knife, chop off the ends of the broccoli stalks. Then hold the broccoli stalks upright with one hand and use your knife to slice away the rough outside layers. You might trim away a substantial portion of the stalk—that’s okay. The goal is to remove the more fibrous layers and leave the juicy inner stalk behind.
2) Once you have the smooth inner stalk, shred it using coarsely using a box grater. Broccoli stalks are pretty easy to shred—easier than carrots or even cheese, I find. Proceed with your plans for the Broccoli Slaw.

So we’ve got our green vegetable squared away. Now we need to think about protein. When I think about protein, I tend to have four ideas pop up at one time: beans, cheese, nuts, and eggs. All of these foods are excellent choices, and I eat them abundantly. Eggs, however, are my favorite last-minute meal-booster. An egg makes a meal out of leftovers. It’s a lovely option when you are cooking for one because they come in single-serving packages! The easiest egg recipe I’ve found is a recipe from Sunlight Café for baked eggs. When Grey’s Anatomy is calling my name, I crack an egg into my little white ramekin, pop it in the oven, set the timer, and disappear into the world of Seattle Grace Hospital for ten minutes or so. When the timer beeps, I check my egg. Sometimes I’ll add a handful of shredded cheddar, sometimes I just leave it plain and unadorned. I tuck the egg back into the oven for a few minutes and then it’s dinner time. The egg joins the rest of my meal—noodles, salad, or whatever other simple foods will make a nice living room floor picnic—and I eat, tired, happy, and probably crying over Izzie and her brain tumor.

Simple Baked Egg for One
Adapted from Mollie Katzen’s Sunlight Café
Yield: One serving to accompany other dishes for a dinner for one

This recipe is really bare bones. It makes a perfectly fine egg, especially if you don’t overcook it (the white can get a little rubbery if the egg is too well-cooked). I think it would be delicious to add a pat of butter or a small splash of heavy cream to the ramekin before adding the egg. You can also, as I describe above, sprinkle a handful of cheese over the egg at the ten-minute mark.

Nonstick cooking spray
1 large egg
Salt and pepper to taste

1) Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Spray an ovenproof ramekin with cooking spray and set on a baking tray. Crack the egg into the ramekin and season with salt and pepper.
2) Bake the egg for about ten to fifteen minutes until the yolk is cooked to your liking. I like my egg cooked in the thirteen to fifteen minute range, although one of these days I’m going to get daring and try it at twelve minutes. You can eat the egg straight from its ramekin or slide it on top of something else, like noodles or a nice piece of toast.

Speaking of toast, that brings me to my final kitchen secret. This one I’m almost certain you’ve heard of before, but it was new to me: the garlic-rubbed toast. My friend Cory told me about this—actually, bragged about it is more like it—when I was telling him about Daphna’s showstopping garlic bread recipe. To my mind, there is nothing in this world that can top D’s garlic bread, so when my friend Josh deviated from the recipe while making garlic bread for our fall equinox dinner, I was a little unnerved. One would think that after cooking with Matt, who doesn’t even use recipes most of the time, I woudn’t mind a little artistic expression from the garlic bread-maker. But that would be untrue. I did manage to bite my tongue because I enjoy Josh’s company and for goodness sake’s, it’s just garlic bread! I explained all of this to Cory, and he shared with me his super-easy, super-tasty trick: take a raw clove of garlic and rub it all over your toasted bread. Voila! Garlic toast. This trick is useful if your meal is already rather rich, and buttery garlic bread would put everyone into a food coma. It’s also a nice trick if you are topping the garlic toasts with something rich or melted, like a smushed Egg and Cheese Muffin. Maybe Cory deserves bragging rights here after all.

It occurs to me now that I have just given you the fixings for almost an entire meal: vegetable, egg, bread. If I had a nice big salad to accompany my broccoli slaw, baked egg, and garlic toast, I’d be one happy home cook. Little fuss, no leftovers, full belly. My mother ought to be very proud of me.

* * *

There’s still time for you to win a copy of Ammie’s awesome cookbook, Clove-Minded: A Valentine Cookbook! Leave a comment about your romantic adventures in the kitchen here, and tomorrow I’ll draw one winner out of the entries. Right now, each contestant has a 33% chance of winning, so the odds are good! (But, as the saying goes, the goods are odd. So it goes around here.)

Sexy, Messy, Homespun Love

2009-03-30T13:19:00.000-07:00

I feel very blessed that my favorite guy likes to cook. I’m even more blessed that he knows more about cooking than I do, so he’s got stuff to teach me. The playing field levels out ever so slightly because I’m a vegetarian cook. As such, I’m inspired to try all sorts of things that Matt might never make at home. It amazes me that we get along well in the kitchen—no food fights, just nibbles of cheese and sips of wine and taste-testing to check the progress of caramelizing onions. He is the first man with whom I have felt comfortable cooking. Matt is pretty amazing, but I wonder if the sensuality of cooking might encourage other couples to inhabit the kitchen at the same time, hands in the food, hearts wide open to romance. To my mind, there is nothing sexier than a man who can cook—nothing except a man who will cook, and who will cook with me. The snag is really that last part: how do two people form a kitchen partnership? How is one couple able to put dinner together without ever wanting to use wooden spoons to knock each other over the head, while another couple stays in separate rooms when someone is cooking? What is it about kitchen chemistry that can make cooking together foreplay or a disaster?

Despite my scientific credentials, I have only some thoughts and observations about romantic kitchen affairs. My own love affair came to life in part because of a shared love for cooking. Through a rather pleasurable process, Matt and I have learned how to cook together happily, and I’d like to think there are some nuggets of wisdom I can glean from our experience. I have also dated men who were not nearly as much fun in the kitchen, and there is definitely something to be learned from the failures. My friends, who inspired me to write this post, have offered their two cents on the topic. They also tell me fun stories of cooking with their sweeties; heaven knows I adore a love story, especially one that involves food. Today, let us explore the delicate process of making sexy, messy, homespun love in the kitchen—the very best kind of love we can make while fully clothed.

* First of all, relax. Cooking together should be fun, not stressful. So take a few deep breaths, remember why you love your special someone, and let go of any gourmet expectations here. Also, a glass of wine may help with this step.

* Embrace imperfection and set a low threshold. Mistakes will be made—try not to fret about it. I’d say that edibility is a reasonably low threshold. If the meal isn’t edible, I think you are entitled to feel disappointed. Case in point: last summer Naperville Dude and I had a picnic, and he’d brought these baked tomatoes, whole tomatoes, with melted cheese on top. They were still warm from the oven when we ate (and it was so hot that day), and I do not exaggerate when I say they were inedible. They were awful. I gagged when I tried to take a bite, and we ended up throwing all of them away. I admit that I was very diasppointed; I remember thinking to myself, Can’t this guy even bring a decent vegetable to a picnic? I had been imagining a salad, maybe a green bean one with shallots and some sort of mustardy dressing…but silly me, I had a whole food fantasy in my head, but I didn’t say a word out loud. I wanted to trust that Naperville Dude could handle a vegetable dish, but I was wrong. We broke up shortly thereafter. We didn’t break up over tomatoes, but perhaps they were a contributing factor.

I digress. My point is that cooking offers so many sensual rewards that it’s worth it to try cooking together. Take it easy on each other and have fun with it.

* Be gentle with each other. In cooking, as in life, sometimes it’s necessary to offer some correcting advice. The trick is all in the delivery. There are times when I would like Matt to do something a little differently, or vice versa—maybe the potato chunks are too large, or the chickpeas haven’t been simmered to tender perfection. In these cases, we’re both open to the other person’s opinion, but that opinion is always offered gently and lovingly. This is really important to me. I cannot tell you how many friends of mine have barked criticism at me as though I were an inept line cook who can’t chop tomatoes. Oh, alright, maybe they weren’t quite that rough with me, but I’m a sensitive creature. I like my criticism sweetened with sugar and dolloped with whipped cream. Think about this: what is more important to you, your partner’s feelings or that the pasta is cooked perfectly al dente?

Be gentle, encouraging, and kind. Use a soft tone. Ask, don’t bark. Nobody likes it when someone else makes them feel bad about their work.

* I realize that not everybody feels at home in the kitchen. If this description fits you, I have just one word: TRY. Your efforts will mean so much to your partner that they will overshadow the results. My other piece of advice would be to cook from a reputable source if you are nervous and uncertain. Try a classic cookbook before you try recipes from other print sources or the internet. A classic cookbook, especially one that’s been updated and reissued, is likely to provide good, solid instructions and good, solid recipes. The contents have been tested and re-tested by lots of cooks, so you can feel more confident about reproducibility. Reproducibility = Edibility.

* Embrace the mess. Cooking is messy—there’s just no way around this simple truth. Personally, I rather enjoy the mess—it makes me feel vibrantly alive to see a kitchen filled with people and food and the messy clutter of people working with food. When I’m cooking, I’d rather be focused on the food—the tastes, the smells, the process—than be obsessed with maintaining a spotless kitchen. I clean up as I go, but only as my cooking times allow, or when a dirty dish must be made clean for the next step in the recipe. I won’t sacrifice my cooking time on the altar of godly cleanliness.

It makes me very happy that Matt and I cook together and we clean up together. I think cleaning up together is an ideal solution to the mess. This problem is tricky, though, because couples don’t always agree on how to do the clean-up. I encourage you to talk to your partner. Try to find a compromise that gets the job done faster for everyone, which leaves you more time for dessert and cuddling on the couch. Dessert + cuddling = Happy ending.

* Simmer your affections. I confess: I have a one-track mind, and it’s often, but not always, thinking sexy thoughts. When I’m cooking, though, I’m thinking about the food. I don’t want to be distracted by other things, including a groping, horny man. Cooking with Matt is very sexy, and one of the reasons is that we tend to watch each other without touching. I get to study the way he moves, the way he handles a knife, the way he mixes with his hands and then licks his fingers. There’s a certain tension that builds when we cook together. It’s delicious. The whole thing gives me shivers of pleasure.

But I am grateful that we don’t do much touching of anything but the food. For one thing, if we’re putting a whole meal together, there might be a lot going on—multiple burners going, sharp knives in motion, food spread out. We’ve got to keep track of what we’re doing! The other thing is that I am horribly klutzy, constantly dropping things and banging into walls. I’d prefer not to cut my finger—yet again!—if Matt decides to get frisky while I’m prepping vegetables. There is plenty of time to get frisky before or after dinner. I’m okay with both.

Of course not everyone feels the same way. The important thing is to honor each person’s desires. For some people, cooking together might be the perfect excuse to get frisky, in which case, might I recommend you take care to turn off the burners before something catches on fire? Maybe frisky cooks should stick to salads?

* Measuring spoons are optional. Matt, like many of my friends, cooks a lot by feel. He’s not big on measuring things. He trusts his instincts and his palate. And I trust Matt, so even though I like measuring things, I don’t mind that he doesn’t love it as much as I do. During his last visit, we were making my much-loved Roasted Broccoli and Tofu, and I asked Matt if he’d like to prep the tofu. (That’s another thing I love about Matt: he’ll eat tofu with me. And he actually likes it!) The chopped tofu was sitting in a mixing bowl. I stood in front of Matt, a bottle of olive oil in one hand and a tablespoon in the other. “The tofu needs two tablespoons of oil,” I said. Matt reached for the olive oil, leaving my other hand dangling in the air attached to a tablespoon. He uncapped the bottle, poured a healthy splash of oil over the tofu, and, with his bare hands, mixed the tofu until it was glossy and aromatic with oil. I laughed at us—me with the tablespoon still in my hand, Matt with his hands coated in olive oil—and set the spoon on the counter. Clearly he would not be needing it.

Everybody who cooks has his own style. It’s one of the things that makes home-cooking so lovely and unique. If you are cooking as one member of a pair, I say embrace the uniqueness! Leave the measuring spoons on the counter! Let the olive oil flow! If this feels a bit devil-may-care for you, try doing what I do whenever Matt and I are on together: let yourself be on vacation, even if it’s just for an evening. Have fun, be spontaneous, and enjoy the magic.

* Delegate…as it pleases you. My friend Nicole tells me she and her husband, Andy, used to have minor disagreements about things like how carefully spices ought to be measured. Their solution? She (or he) who opens the spice jar gets to season as she sees fit. Nicole and Andy are also very gentle with each other when they offer corrections. By the way, they love to cook together.

A delegation strategy can be employed in lots of ways. Matt and I do this from time to time, especially when fresh mozzarella is involved. Matt makes an amazing caprese salad, and he likes to make it when it’s high tomato season. He’ll make his salad as an appetizer for us to nibble while I get our soup started.

As a cook who spends most of her time in the kitchen alone, I must confess that I love having a partner in crime, someone with whom to split the onion-chopping and potato-washing. Ever since we met, I knew that there was something special about Matt, but I had no idea that we would come to share so many mundane moments made magical. With Matt, everything is more fun.

* * *

I have a special treat for you today. My dear friend Ammie just published her latest cooking magazine (or “cookzine,” as she likes to call it), Clove-Minded: A Valentine Cookbook. Last weekend I got to curl up with my copy. I was utterly charmed by the illustrations, including a racy one that you’ve got to see to believe. Clove-Minded is a little piece of the cooking history that Ammie and I have shared—she’s included a few of her favorite recipes from Life, Love, and Food—but it also features lots of shiny new recipes that I can’t wait to try, including her Apple-Cheddar Cheese Pie (accompanied by a very useful Apple Chart!), Crème Andalouse, Chicago Diner Scones, and Goat Cheese-Olive Empanadas. And her Soy Chorizo-Potato Pastries are not to be missed—they are amazing. Spicy, rich, and quite impressive as they bake up into big shiny bronze pillows, I love these things.

You deserve Soy Chorizo-Potato Pastries and a chance to enjoy Ammie’s funny prose and adorable Apple Chart. For just six dollars, you can purchase your own copy here, or you can try to win a copy right now! Leave a comment about your own sexy, messy adventures in the kitchen, and one randomly chosen reader will win a copy of Clove-Minded. As an extra treat, I’ll include a special baked something, fresh from my kitchen. The deadline for the drawing is a week from today, Monday, April 6, 2009. I’ll announce the winner the next day.

Good luck, and happy cooking!

Blaze of Glory

2009-03-23T12:05:00.000-07:00

I may have to apologize to the month of March for my remarks last week.

Was I too mean? I said I hated March. Which is true, at least part of the time. As I was editing that post, I deleted this little gem, after declaring that I hated March: “but I secretly love March.” Is that true? Do I secretly love March? Maybe. I’ve been known to savor secret loves, such as the realization one summer night, after staying up way too late talking on the phone with him, that I loved Matt. Nothing had changed between us that night, but inside me, some switch had been flipped. I walked around for the next few months in a state of dazed wonder, unable to imagine what this meant. I couldn’t say it too loudly for fear of what came next. It was my secret, and I kept it safely stowed away in the depths of my heart.

That was one delicious little secret.

March, however, is harder to love than Matt. March is the gateway to spring, but March is brutal and mean, holding spring hostage while winter runs rampant, spreading cold and misery everywhere it howls. March leaves me exhausted, lacking both energy and any decent clothes to wear. My sweaters sigh with resignation—they are ready for some time off, ready to hibernate for a few months as my fun summer clothes take center stage. I want more t-shirts and fewer turtlenecks, more breezy warmth and less goose-bumpy cold.

But oh, how beautiful March is! I have seen the most spectacular sunsets this month, the sun a blazing orange globe, sinking into the west, the skies streaked with pink and blue. The light is phenomenal. I leave work just in time each day to catch the sunset on my walk home, and it catches me by surprise every time with its shimmering, fiery beauty. I can’t hate anything in those moments, not even March.

Last week I was especially spoiled by the weather. The most glorious day of the week was Tuesday—it was downright balmy outside! I had all sorts of excuses to be outside that day. In the morning, I sauntered across campus to my therapy session, which went splendidly. (As an aside, may I add that I find it amusing that my therapist thinks I don’t cry enough during our sessions? She just doesn’t believe me that I’m practically a fountain of tears on any given day.) In the afternoon, I met my best grad school friend for tea, which we immediately agreed would be better drunk outside in the sunshine. I know I’d rather be drunk in the sunshine. Aaron just finished his PhD, and I couldn’t be happier or prouder of him. Graduations always make me feel elated, but this one is uniquely special. Aaron and I have been buddies since we started this crazy ride to PhDness, and to see someone so close to me finish what has been a hard adventure…it’s just amazing. Kudos to Aaron!

But what amazes me even more about Aaron is how many encouraging words he had for me that day. That’s the kind of person Aaron is: he cares so deeply about other people that he gives out love and affection like they’re water. Aaron’s presence is sunshine—I always feel better when he’s around. Am I gushing? I can’t help it! Aaron is one of my favorite people, and he likes turtles as much as I do. Turtles, and the frosted sugar cookies sold by Al’s Deli, the kind of cookies of which legends are made. Mmm, sugar.

That night, after another amazing sunset, I arrived home tired but happy. I was even happier knowing that I had some leftover Egg and Cheese Muffins, perfect for heating up in the oven and then squishing onto ciabatta bread, the whole thing all gooey and warm and chewy. I’ve been tinkering with my recipe for Egg and Cheese Muffins for a while, ever since I saw these Bouchons au Thon, a rich, French-style egg muffin made with tuna, crème fraiche, and lots of gruyère cheese. I immediately lusted for a vegetarian version. Though they aren’t remotely similar to tuna, my first idea was canned white beans and glory be, I was right! White beans work beautifully in place of tuna. But I didn’t stop there. No, to be honest, I never really made the original recipe; I just used it as a template for my own eggy ambitions. I did make something kinda similar, and it was fine and tasty, but I quickly realized that I was searching for something less French and more American. It was a breeze to run through lots of versions of these little “muffins” because they are so easy to make and even easier to eat.

Today I bring you my current working recipe for Egg and Cheese Muffins, a delectably fast weeknight dinner. They are rich but not heavy and rather wholesome, made almost entirely of whole foods, including a scattering of vegetables in the form of winter squash and onions. The overall flavor is Italian-American, a bit like scrambled eggs crossed with pizza. I really love these things. As they bake, they rise up, soufflé-like and beautiful, but as they cool, they deflate and a lacework of tiny craters forms along their surfaces. It’s a blaze of glory, lasting but a few minutes. The flavor, however, will last until there are no leftovers—that is, assuming you are lucky enough to have any leftovers in the first place!

Happy spring, dear reader.

Egg and Cheese Muffins
Adapted from this recipe for Bouchons au Thon
Makes 7 muffins, enough for 2-3 people as part of a component meal

I invite you to tinker with this recipe, as it is very amenable to new flavors and variations. When I have fresh sage in the fridge, I like to snip up a few leaves and throw them in the batter. Here I use a bit of dried oregano and basil for some herbal flavor. Other savory Mediterranean herbs (thyme, tarragon, rosemary, parsley) could probably be used with good effect. I’d start with just a pinch to see if you like it before scaling up.

I eat these muffins mostly for dinner, but they’re great for any meal. If you have leftovers, I do recommend that you warm them up, either in the microwave or the oven because they aren’t very good cold—you lose that nice melted cheese texture and the soft bounce of warm eggs. I feel deprived when I’m forced to eat them cold.

Cooking spray
1 cup of cooked white beans (I use canned beans; just drain, rinse, and measure.)
3 large eggs
1/4 cup winter squash purée, such as pumpkin or butternut
2 tbsp. tasty marinara sauce (Use a commercial one you like if you’re lazy like me.)
1/4 tsp. dried basil
1/4 tsp. dried oregano
1/2 cup cubed cheese, such as a sharp cheddar or monterey jack
1/4 cup finely chopped onion
Plenty of salt (to taste)
A few good grinds of black pepper (to taste)

1) Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Spray seven wells of a regular muffin tin with cooking spray. Set aside.
2) Place the white beans in a large mixing bowl. Using a potato masher, mash the beans into a chunky paste.
3) Whisk the eggs into the beans. Add the remaining ingredients, stirring to mix everything thoroughly. If you aren’t terrified of salmonella, taste the batter and if it tastes bland, add a little more salt until it tastes good. Feel free to adjust the other seasonings if you think it’s too bland, but be aware that the cheese will add a lot of flavor once these muffins are baked. My goal with these seasonings is balance so that all the flavors shine through and nothing gets lost in the shuffle.
4) Spoon the batter into the greased muffin wells, filling them almost, but not quite, to the top. Tuck them in the oven and bake for 20-25 minutes or until the muffins are set and don’t wiggle wildly when you shake the muffin tin. Remove from the oven and allow them to cool for 5-10 minutes. The muffins are fairly molten when they first come out of the oven, but they become more solid and much easier to handle after they’ve cooled for a bit. After 5-10 minutes, you can remove them from the tin and eat them, or if you want, you can let them cool completely in the tin and then remove them. To get them out of the pan, I run a knife around the edges to loosen them, and then I use the knife to gently lift the muffins out of the pan. These muffins are more delicate than flour-based muffins, so take care and be patient when it comes time to handle them post-baking.

* * *

It seems I receive statements about my stock investments every day, and I just want to scream or cry at the sheer volume of crap that arrives in my mailbox. It’s such a waste of paper, as it goes almost straight from my mailbox to the recycling bag. It would be a part-time job just to keep up with the mailed literature. What I really need is a basic primer in finance: what are the terms? How do these financial systems work? Is my money being properly guarded by goblins in Gringotts Wizarding Bank?

To answer these burning questions and much more, my friend Andy has started a new blog, Grokking Finance. Andy has a knack for taking complicated financial stuff and simplifying it down to its bare bones. He’s a great story-teller, too; his examples feel less like men in suits and more like friends gathered for happy hour. I like that. I’ll be checking in with Andy regularly so that I’ll feel like less of a nincompoop about money. (As an aside, did you know that nincompoopery is a word, according to dictionary.com? Fascinating!)

Somewhere in Between

2009-03-15T10:23:00.000-07:00

“Graduate school!” the stranger exclaimed, his voice coated with amusement and disbelief. “When are you going to join us in the real world?”

“Well, I’ll be unemployed in September. That seems like the real world to me,” I replied.

“Wait, how old are you? You look like a kid.” His stream of questions was endless. I couldn’t decide if I should be creeped out by this man who I’d met about five minutes earlier when we both sat down on the train, the cheerfully named Skokie Swift that runs along the Yellow Line between Skokie and Chicago.

“I’m twenty-seven,” I said. I started to think this man was equal parts friendly and nosy.

“You married?”

I laughed. “No.”

“What, you have trouble meeting men?”

“No, I’m in a serious relationship.” I immediately resented that I felt compelled to defend my not-married status, as though being single and unattached were a very bad thing, a label to be avoided at all costs.

“You think he’ll propose?”

Okay, I thought to myself. This is just getting ridiculous. “No, I don’t think he’ll propose.”

“Why not?”

“Because we’re happy the way things are now.”

The stranger, this friendly, nosy, 48-year-old man stopped for a moment, perhaps stumped by my answer. I’m glad the “we’re happy” argument works like a charm—it’s hard to push someone about her relationship when she says calmly, with an even voice and unruffled feathers, “Because we’re happy.”

I really love Chicago, even these bizarre conversations that occur because one person’s path crosses another’s for a brief moment in time. I am, in all honesty, deeply ambivalent about leaving this city that has become home to me. This city of skyscrapers and fancy hotels; of lakeside sunrises and food from every corner of the globe; of three kinds of trains; of busses that crisscross the streets in a checkerboard pattern; of the Orange Line that zips me out to Midway airport en route to places like Michigan and Arizona—the very same Orange Line that rushes Matt into Chicago and into my arms…I am deeply attached to this city, the first place where I had to spend my hard-earned money on things like toilet paper and electric bills. I feel like I grew up here, in the sense that I came to Chicago young and fresh-faced and childlike in my 21-year-old innocence, and here I am now, old and wizened, one foot out the door on my way to the real world.

“When are you going to join us in the real world?” I have always wondered about this idea that graduate school is not the real world. Who started this rumor? It sure as hell feels real to me, what with the deadlines and pressures to produce, perform, succeed. My advisor sure acts like a boss, telling me what to do and expressing displeasure when it isn’t done on time. My paycheck is real, and I spend it at a real grocery store, buying real food. Does graduate school seem less real because everyone knows I won’t be a graduate student forever? To that, I say, “Thank goodness!” Who wants to be a grad student forever? The idea that in five and a half months—169 days, assuming I graduate by the end of August—I will be starting a new phase in my career, with the pressure and pain of graduate school fading into the distance…well, I can hardly wait. Even with my uncertain job prospects, I’m still thrilled to pieces about finishing what I started six years ago. Once those three little letters are behind my name, nobody can take my degree away from me. That’s a very sweet finish indeed.

But for now, I remain somewhere in between the beginning and the end. I feel like the month of March, dismal and grey, with the occasional ray of sunshine that peaks out from behind my cynical exterior. I hate March. March is somewhere in between winter and spring, a month that lasts far too long, and yet, when the green lushness of warm spring days finally settles into regular rotation, I realize that the earth needs March in order to wake up. Likewise, I need this time during which I’m still in school, working, earning a paycheck, and preparing for my springtime. I am waking up, opening my eyes, and getting ready for what’s next. All of a sudden, I have newfound respect for March.

These almost-spring days can be rather confusing in the kitchen. The sunlight lingers into the evening hours, but the wind is fierce and the nights are cold. We need good, sturdy food in our bellies, the kind that can sustain us until the farmer’s market returns and we trade our sweaters for short sleeves. But we also need food that whispers sweet nothings about picnics and sunshine, bare skin and iced tea. We need strawberries, paradoxically tart and sweet, their perfume the very essence of spring. We need asparagus, blitzed in the oven and eaten straightaway, its flavor the taste of new green life. We need maple syrup to remind us that spring will give to us a sweetness that lasts all year long.

I like to have a few recipes on hand to bridge the gap between winter and spring. Today’s recipe is one such example. It is, admittedly, inspired by at least four different sources: Nicole’s pumpkin pancake topping which I adapted to make this French toast topping, my (lame) attempt to make a healthy Nutty Buddy bar, Kath’s oatmeal made with pumpkin and eaten with spoonfuls of peanut butter, and The Peanut Butter Boy himself. That’s as many sources as ingredients in the recipe! I didn’t really set out to find this recipe; the recipe found me. That is, I made it on a whim and decided that it ought to be added to my permanent rotation. I had some leftover pumpkin-maple topping, and to make it a more substantial item in my lunch, I added a few spoonfuls of peanut butter. I’m rather pleased with my thriftiness, and I think you’ll be pleased with this sweet, creamy, unusual treat. Between the wintry pumpkin and early-spring maple syrup, it seems just right for these long, cool March days, a tasty reminder that warmer weather is on the way.

Crispy Crackers with Pumpkin-Maple-Peanut Butter Topping
Serve 2 as a snack; the topping makes ~1/3 cup.

I might be stretching the definition of “sandwich,” but this recipe is my contribution to The Great Peanut Butter Exhibition featuring all manner of sandwiches and sandwich-like things. To me, sandwich says two things: bread and lunch. Crackers are bread’s crispiest relative, and a cracker topped with jazzed-up peanut butter is a sweet ending to lunch. I think they taste best after a light main course, such as a bowl of soup or a salad. I had carbohydrate overload when I ate them after pasta. So plan your lunch accordingly!

You can pack the topping in one of those little Glad containers and it should be fine left out at room temperature for a few hours until lunch. Pack the crackers separately, and when you are ready to eat, assemble and devour.

1/4 cup pumpkin
1-2 tbsp. maple syrup
2 tbsp. peanut butter
4-6 Wasa brand crispbreads, such as sourdough flavor

1) Mix together the pumpkin, maple syrup, and peanut butter in a small bowl. Taste and adjust the topping as you like (i.e., add more of any ingredient).
2) When you are ready to eat, top the crispbreads with as much topping as you like and eat.

On Brains, Good Behavior, and the Need for Treats

2009-03-09T16:50:00.000-07:00

Never in a million years would I have predicted this but it’s true: I get along really well with two-year-olds. I think it’s because deep down inside, my brain is like a two-year-old, so I understand people who really are two years old. I have a soft spot for them these days because my niece Lydia is about two and half now, and my goodness, she just keeps getting cuter and cuter. Anyone who reminds me of Lydia grabs my heartstrings. I can’t resist them!

There were a few two-year-old sightings this weekend. I had such a great weekend, which I would not have expected to say, since I spent great swaths of it in front of Excel spreadsheets and yards of data. But in between my fancy intellectual pursuits, I let my two-year-old brain decide what it wanted to do. You can see that I’m not above bribery, even if the person I’m bribing is me. I’d work for an hour or two, then take a shower. I’d work for another hour, then eat lunch. I’d work for an hour, then bake granola. It’s not a bad way to climb a mountain of data, especially one that had been threatening to crush me for months. When you work in a research lab, sometimes it’s easier to generate data than it is to analyze it and make sense of it. It’s not unlike a big rock sitting on top of a hill: it’s hard to get the rock moving, but once it’s going, you’d better stand clear because otherwise it will flatten you. My work life is like a series of this big rocks: once they are in motion, I just want to let them roll until they come to a stop and then I can assess the damage—er, data. My advisor is not a fan of this tendency of mine to let data pile up. He turned up the heat under my behind to get me moving and voila! A mountain of data has been reduced to a handful of powerpoint slides. Amazing.

The bribing of my brain began on Friday evening when my lab-mate Laurie and I snuck out for some gelato at the shop down the street. That morning, the weather had been heartstoppingly beautiful: warm, sunny, a little breezy. I was buzzing with happiness, so euphoric that I didn’t even mind that I had to go to work that day. The warmth faded as the day grew older, but by that time I was convinced that I absolutely must have gelato today. Laurie, never one to say no to gelato, strolled down the street with me and we got double-scoop cones at Linz and Vail, just west of the train stop on Noyes Street. We licked our gelato happily, and Laurie made a mess as it dripped on her jeans, but I thought it was a good look for her. As we ate, a distraught two-year-old fussed in her mom’s arms outside the shop, so I made funny faces at her through the window until she smiled. Then we played peek-a-boo and her face glowed with delight. Her mother escorted her into the shop so we could have proper introduction, where the two-year-old waved at me shyly and I smiled and said hello. After introductions, my new friend and her mom left, and Laurie and I finished our cones. I don’t know what was more fun that evening: sneaking out for gelato or impromptu games with a toddler. Maybe we’ll just call it a tie.

On Saturday, Ammie gave me an excuse to ignore my work for a few hours when she came over for tea and gossip. I made us a batch of baked oatmeal and she showed me the manuscript for her new cookbook. It was all I could do not to run off with her book so I could devour it in one sitting. Ammie’s a self-publishing writer—she’s even got a giant stapler ready and waiting for fresh copies of the book—and I’m so excited to read it and cook out of it I can barely keep my wooden spoons in their drawer. Then, as though the manuscript wasn’t enough, she played a song for me on her viola, an Irish folksong number that she was rehearsing for a fundraiser event later that evening. It was beautiful, haunting and evocative of lost love.

On Sunday, I worked diligently, copying and pasting and calculating and thinking thinking thinking. My brain was very well-behaved. It rained all morning, thick sheets of raindrops. I clicked away on my computer; the rain clicked away on my windowpanes. In the late afternoon, I decided to take a short rain-walk, which turned into a long walk, and it was just perfect. I adore rain-walks, those slow strolls through the downpour, with an umbrella held overhead to deflect the worst of the showers. The rain was sputtering, apparently down to its last drops, and the temperature was mild—cool but not cold. Clouds floated along, and the sun even came out to say hello. I sauntered along, slow as molasses, taking deep breaths and enjoying the fresh air in my lungs. I felt peaceful and happy, almost surprisingly relaxed given the amount of work that was still waiting for me at home. I wonder if I might be turning over a new leaf, learning to accept my work habits as my habits. Good or bad, they’ve gotten me all the way to the brink of PhD-ness, which is not too shabby, really. Maybe it’s okay that I need to bribe myself and that I take frequent breaks. Maybe it’s okay that my best thinking tends to happen while I’m chopping onions or brushing my teeth. Maybe it’s okay that I’m really rather ordinary among scientists, that I don’t live for science. My brain thrives on pleasure, and for me, science is ~95% work, 5% pleasure. So to make up for all that work, I’ve got to find other pleasures, which is really easy, because I find pleasure and beauty all around me.

Maybe I’m finally learning the art of productivity. It’s ironic: as long as I have plenty of fun, I have no problems being productive. I think two-year-olds work the same way: make it fun and they’ll love it. It’s time for me to embrace my inner two-year-old. Today’s recipe ought to be a good starting place.

Yogurt with Sautéed Apples, Maple Syrup, and Brown Sugar
Serves 1 generously

This treat is deceptively delicious. Take a look at the ingredients and you might think, Well, that looks good but rather ordinary, right? And to that I say it’s very good, especially when eaten out of a big shallow mug while snuggled under your favorite blanket. The apple melts into soft, fragrant slices as it cooks in a mixture of butter and walnut oil, and then it is sweetened with maple syrup and brown sugar before being stirred into a cup of yogurt. The combination is rich and creamy with just a tiny bit of chew. Longtime readers of this site might remember the apple from this recipe. Sautéed apples are one of my favorite discoveries of recent years, and now I crave them regularly. This dessert is virtually instant, and its pudding-like quality makes me feel like a kid again. Yet somehow it seems a little sophisticated, perhaps because you do need to get out a skillet, something that two-year-olds ought to do only on their pretend stoves. You, however, should make this on your real stove.

Note that the brown sugar is optional. I prefer this treat with the extra sugar—it feels more treaty to me that way—but it’s pretty good with maple syrup as the only added sweetener.

1 large apple, such as a Golden Delicious, cored, peeled, and sliced into thin slices
1 tsp. butter
1 tsp. walnut oil
1 tbsp. maple syrup
1 tbsp. brown sugar (optional if you prefer the tartness of plain yogurt)
1 cup plain organic yogurt (whole milk or low-fat, your choice), such as Brown Cow

1) Melt the butter into the walnut oil in a skillet over medium-low heat. Add the apple slices, toss them with the hot fat, and cook for several minutes until the apples are soft and perhaps a little browned.
2) Spoon the apples into a small dish. Stir the maple syrup and brown sugar into the apples.
3) Place the yogurt in a bowl or large cup, such as one of those oversized coffee mugs. Top with the apple mixture, curl up under a blanket, eat with a soup spoon. Enjoy treating yourself to something homemade and indulgent.

From Inside a Bowl-Shaped Rut

2009-03-04T11:43:00.000-08:00

I’ve been simmering, stirring, and baking myself into a rut. Depending on the time of day, that rut is filled with either granola or soup, and it’s always bowl-shaped. Literally, my day looks like this: granola, soup, granola, soup. Breakfast, lunch, snack, dinner. Bowls alternating oatmeal or vegetables. It’s not too shabby as far as health goes, and I’m certainly getting my fiber. But I’m getting lonely inside my bowl-shaped rut. I long for meals that can be eaten on plates. I made Roasted Broccoli and Tofu four times last month because it’s delicious and because I couldn’t think of what else to make that wasn’t granola or soup. I think I need help.

To be fair, I do eat other things. They just don’t require much in the way of cooking. I love fruit, and I’ll often have raw carrots sticks with dinner (I like their snappy crunch). I drink plenty of coffee and tea brewed in my own kitchen, and I even made a batch of these cookies on Friday night. I’ve been playing around with flavors, and I came up with a new appetizer, Toasted Walnuts with Raw Milk Jack Cheese, which I plan to use today to enlist your help.

Dear readers, I’m calling on you and your bellies to help me climb out of this rut. I want to know what you’ve been eating lately that’s worthy of a gold star. I’m desperately in need of some new vegetarian entreés. It would be nice if the ingredients didn’t cost too much. It would also be nice if the cooking time didn’t run past my bedtime. I’ll give bonus points for recipes that include green vegetables, especially the powerhouse dark leafy greens like kale and spinach. If you’ve got a great dish that you gobbled up because it was so good, tell me about it. You can leave me a comment here, or you can e-mail me at lifeloveandfood [at] gmail [dot] com. If there is an exuberant flurry of recipe gossip, I’ll post a round-up next week for all to see.

While you are thinking about what you’ve eaten recently, let me offer you a recipe for something I’ve been savoring. “Recipe” is perhaps a strong word here; it’s more of an eating suggestion and it involves little more than toasting some walnuts and slicing some cheese. It’s a sophisticated combination that revealed itself to me when I was making this salad using a different cheese, Organic Valley’s Organic Wisconsin Raw Milk Cheese Jack Style. As I ate my salad, I thought to myself, This salad seems to get better every time I make it! Every bite of cheese and walnut was blissful: the cheese was smooth and rich, with just a hint of tanginess; the nuts were crunchy and still warm from the oven. The nuts made the cheese taste even richer and creamier, while the cheese made the nuts taste even toastier. Even chewing the cheese and nuts together was nice because the contrasting textures made each one lovelier: the gentle, chewy softness of the cheese would give way to the bold, confident crunch of warm nuts. I loved the combination so much that I started making it for myself as a pre-dinner appetizer, just a little something to nibble while I decompressed and got dinner started. It’s a little indulgent—that cheese!—but it’s made entirely of whole foods, which makes me feel pretty good about it. So good, in fact, that I’m passing the baton to you because you really need to try this for yourself. Then send me a new recipe and we’ll call it even.

Toasted Walnuts with Raw Milk Jack Cheese
Serves 1 (multiply to serve as many as you like)

Don’t mind my eyeball measurements here. As I said above, this is more of an eating suggestion than a recipe, but it’s definitely worth making. I like this little treat as a late-afternoon snack or an appetizer before dinner. In both cases, it takes the edge off my hunger in a most satisfying way.

A small handful of chopped walnuts (2 tbsp. perhaps?)
2-3 slices of Organic Valley’s Organic Wisconsin Raw Milk Cheese Jack Style, as thin or thick as you like

1) Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Place the walnuts on a small baking sheet and toast them for 3-5 minutes until hot and fragrant and a little toasty.
2) Place the toasted nuts and the cheese slices on a small plate and eat together. You can either smoosh the nuts into the cheese and use your fingers to place a few nuts on each bite of cheese. Or you can use a fork—whatever gives you the most pleasure!

Pantry Blessings

2009-03-02T09:32:00.000-08:00

Today I return to form, complete with a recipe! Even more exciting, I’m happy to report that my official medical status has been upgraded from worrisome to doctor-declared good. My mental health is also on the upswing. After years of contemplating it, I finally started short-term counseling through Northwestern University’s Counseling and Psychological Services and I must say, I love it. My therapist has been great and I already feel like we are making progress. I feel healthy again. “Healthy” is my favorite word. Dear reader, I hope you’ll accept my vague but happy update. I’m going to reserve some privacy because these issues are too personal to discuss in detail here. I’m also a little shy with acquaintances. But now that I’m glowing with health again, I’m ready to turn my attention back to the food. Are you ready? Let’s go!

Now is quite the moment in time to be entering the job market. The Current Economic Climate (or CEC, as Matt likes to call it) makes me want to hide in my pantry until this whole recession business gets tidied up. I’m not on the market yet; my graduation date is very tentatively scheduled for August 2009. I should be excited about graduating, and deep down inside maybe I am, but right around the corner from graduation is a much bigger rock to climb: unemployment. My (current and tentative) long-term plan is to complete a 3-4 year postdoctoral research fellowship and then hit the job market to find a teaching position at a school like Albion College, the place that nurtured me for four years. But I have yet to find a lab in which doing a postdoc sounds appealing; right now it sounds like prison, or maybe purgatory at best. Why is my postdoc job search coming up empty? Is it because I’m burned out on graduate school? Is it because I don’t really want to do a postdoc? I can’t tell the difference between those two possibilities. All I know is that deep winter is a bad time to make life decisions if you live in Chicago. So for now, I’ve decided to put the postdoc job search on hold for a little while and instead, I’m working on Plan B: work outside of academia for a while, maybe earn some cash, and spend some time staring at Lake Michigan while I figure out what’s really in my heart.

I’m not certain how that second part, the part about earning cash, is going to pan out. After all, the CEC is not favorable for cash-earning. The CEC is rather favorable for staying inside my kitchen and hiding in the pantry. I think I’m in good company here: if you weren’t poor before the stock market crashed, I bet you feel poor now! I know I do, and I wasn’t rich before the market crashed. So while cash-earning is still a priority (hello, exam-grading for $20 an hour!), I’m also attempting to trim my budget just a smidge. This is hard: my food indulgences are tied to my values, and I hardly see the worth in buying lower-quality food in which the true cost can’t be scanned by the price checker in Jewel. I believe in organic dairy and produce. I believe in fresh fruits and vegetables. I just can’t compromise when it comes to my groceries. How can I sell my future health for a few extra dollars in my pocket now? I just can’t do it, CEC be damned.

Are you also hiding from the CEC in your pantry? Yes? Wonderful! While you’re in there, can you pull out the ingredients for today’s recipe? You should be able to find most of them tucked inside, waiting patiently to be sautéed and stirred into the tastiest chili north of the Texas border. It takes a certain amount of cowgirl swagger to utter those words, but I stand by what I say. Remember what George Strait says about cowgirls?

How ‘bout them cowgirls?
Boys, ain’t they somethin’?
Sure are some proud girls
And you can’t tell them nothin’ (!)

I love George Strait. But he ain’t kiddin’ about his cowgirls, and shouldn’t every cowgirl have a kick-ass chili recipe up her sleeve? Even if her sleeve is neither flannel nor flecked with bits of hay?

Today’s recipe is a variation of Moosewood’s Red, Gold, Black, and Green Chili. I love this particular chili because it just gets everything right: the textures, the flavors, the spices, the heat. It also comes together quickly, so quick, in fact, that I can make it on a weeknight after work, which always feels like a small miracle to me. It also has a little twist to it: bulgur, cooked in the juices from a can of tomatoes. The bulgur adds a nice chewy texture, and it builds a whole grain right into the pot of chili. This recipe is also very flexible and therefore amenable to pantry-based substitutions. For example, I find it mind-boggling that chili, a quintessentially cold-weather dish, often calls for fresh bell peppers, an August vegetable if there ever was one. The fresh bell peppers I find now in the market have been grown in places like Mexico. Those peppers have traveled a long, long way from Mexico to Chicago to my chili pot, and after a summer of eating locally grown peppers, I feel kinda funny buying them now. I’m certainly not boycotting them, but I do wonder what I might do differently. The pantry offers us the perfect solution: jarred roasted red peppers. Isn’t the pantry awesome? Or you might even be able to pull your own roasted red peppers out of the freezer if you put some up before the bell peppers disappeared from the farmer’s market. (In which case, you get a gold star for kitchen achievement. Good job!)

So let us creep out of the pantry, canned goods and some onions in hand, ready to fire up the stove. Let us forget about the CEC for half an hour while we sauté, simmer, and breathe deep, spicy breaths filled with onion and garlic. Let us eat dinner on the cheap while we put a nice down payment on our happiness, counting our blessings alongside our pennies. If you are healthy and your life is interwoven with that of people you love and who love you, then you are one of the wealthiest people I know. There is room for you at my table. I’ll save you a seat and a bowl of chili.

Moosewood Chili
Adapted from Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home
Serves 4-6 as an entrée

My belly gets excited just thinking about this chili! I make many different chilis, and I find each one endearing, but this one is my current favorite. It’s fairly representative of vegetarian chilis in general, but I think it’s the most delicious chili I’ve ever made at home. In fact, I think this chili might be the one I use in a black bean chili cook-off that my friend Josh wants to organize as a friendly challenge. Let the trash-talking begin! I see the cook-off as an excuse to eat slices of cornbread and big steaming bowls of chili. Josh also has a granola recipe that is, I’m told, top-notch, and to that all I can say is this: BRING IT.

Feel free to use your favorite chili beans in this recipe. I’ve used any combination of black beans, small red beans, red kidney beans, or pinto beans with great success. For the black bean chili cook-off, I’ll probably use all black beans, and I might go so far as to use dried beans if time permits. But on weeknights, when I’m making this chili just for me, I use all canned beans and I have no qualms about doing so. Neither should you.

Finally, this chili is mildly spicy—perfect for a mellow Northerner like me. If you want to turn up the heat, you can add more chili powder, red crushed chile peppers, or your favorite hot sauce.

1/2 cup bulgur
1/2 cup hot water
1 28-oz. can whole peeled tomatoes
3 tbsp. olive oil
3 onions, chopped (about 3 cups of chopped onions)
3 cloves of garlic, minced or pressed
1 heaping tsp. ground cumin
1 heaping tsp. chili powder
1/4 tsp. red crushed chile peppers
2 fresh green bell peppers, chopped, or 2 jarred roasted red peppers, chopped
2 cups vegetable stock
2 cups frozen cut corn
1 14-oz. can black beans, rinsed and drained (1 1/2 cups beans)
1 14-oz. can small red beans, rinsed and drained (1 1/2 cups beans)
Salt and pepper to taste

1) In a small saucepan, mix together the bulgur, hot water, and 1 cup of the juice from the canned tomatoes. Bring to a boil and then cover and simmer gently on low heat.
2) In a large soup pot or a Dutch oven, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Sauté the onions for several minutes until soft and then stir in the garlic, cumin, chili powder, and chile pepper flakes. Sauté for another minute to make the spices fragrant and toasty. Add the bell peppers and cook for another 2-3 minutes.
3) Add the vegetable stock. Use a pair of kitchen scissors to cut the canned tomatoes into bite-sized pieces and add them to the chili pot. Bring the whole thing to a boil and then turn the heat down to a simmer. Add the corn and beans.
4) Taste the bulgur for chewiness. If the bulgur is chewy without being hard or tough, then it’s ready to be added to the chili. At that time, add the bulgur to the chili pot and let the chili simmer for a few mintes to let all the flavors blend together.
5) Taste the chili and adjust the seasonings with salt and pepper or anything else that sounds good (hot sauce, perhaps?). Serve the chili in deep bowls accompanied by your favorite chili toppings.

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I have a few tiny announcements today. The first is that today is Daphna’s birthday! Or at least I think it is, and I have a long and colorful history of misremembering birthday dates. Either way, I know it’s this month, so happy birthday, D! Your present is waiting ever so patiently for you to open it.

The second announcement is that I found a mistake in my recipe for Crunchy Breakfast Granola! Ah, I’m so embarrassed! The salt amount was listed as 1/2 tsp., but it should be 1/4 tsp. If you saved the recipe, please make sure you add this correction to your copy. I’m so sorry about this. I really hope I didn’t ruin anybody’s morning with salty granola.