Recipes for a Postmodern Planet

Opposite Ends of my Kitchen

2012-02-11T20:52:00.000-05:00

I am participating in an online workshop right now, a little something that felt so right to me when I was deciding how to allocate money received at Christmastime. Whole Foods Kitchen is just the sort of intentional use of my free time that centers me, especially at a time of year when my work schedule and its associated tax deadlines threaten to spin my brain into a knot.

It is times like this when I wonder why on earth I am focusing my energies on the Registered Tax Return Preparer Competency Test (yawn) when what has lately been occupying my thoughts and dreams is pursuing certification in holistic nutrition.

And while I immerse myself in research on distance learning programs for holistic health certifications, along with lively online workshop discussions of healthy foods, my children are busy picking out just the right sticks with which to roast marshmallows in our fireplace.

Do you see the sticky, white, gelatinous substance at the top of that stick on the far right?

Marshmallows (insert interrobang here). Oh, the irony.

When the Morning Comes

2012-02-06T20:37:00.000-05:00

It is impossible to be in a bad mood after watching this video. I dare you not to smile in the first 30 seconds. What's even better, is that after you have seen this a few times, forever after it will only take the first few opening beats of the song to make you happy.

Not just a little bit happy. A lot happy. It is my Monday gift to you.

It was a day filled with goodness. A good song. Good news about a friend. There are daffodils blooming in the front yard, the side yard, the back yard, everywhere. There was plenty of quiet time this morning to exercise, to read scripture, and to read my favorite daily moment of beauty. Nobody cried during learning time today. (Not even me).

I didn't have the heart to tell her she had jam all over her face. She said, "Mama, was I pretty in the picture?" I said, "Baby, you were beautiful in the picture."

Fresh Pear and Blue Cheese Salad

2012-02-04T21:01:00.000-05:00

The busier things have gotten around here lately, the more I find myself creating new, necessary rhythms to see us through our days. It helps to set some things on auto-pilot so that there are fewer tasks to remember, and less details to tend to. Less things to forget. Less items to cause stress.

~~ Groceries are picked up on the way home from meetings with clients on Thursdays.

~~ Laundry is done on specific days. Showers on alternate days.

~~ The coffee maker is reloaded every evening when the dinner dishes are washed.

~~ The bread machine is set up every Friday afternoon to make pizza dough for dinner.

~~ Lessons are planned a week in advance, with worksheets copied and books obtained (ahead of time) from the library.

~~ Soup, salad, and baguette are the standard for Saturday night dinners.

~~ Extra dark chocolate is purchased and hidden in the cabinet for emergencies.

Oh, the humdrum of the routine can be thrown out at a moment's notice to take advantage of a friend's perfect idea to combine families for an evening of chaos and stove-sharing and laughter, and nothing ever has to be set in stone, but knowing that there is grace in this weekly rhythm is comforting, grounding even, when schedules start spinning out of control.

Grace is good.

I have already prattled on enough about my love for the Moosewood Restaurant Daily Special, but it has been such an ideal winter cookbook these past weeks, keeping our Saturday evenings warm with nourishing soups, and providing a welcome rhythm in knowing I will naturally reach there for my inspiration for new soup & salad recipes and pairings.

There have been hits and misses, of course. Tonight's soup was perfectly dull and disappointing. Last Saturday's salad was head-scratchingly odd. But the winners have been divine, and tonight's salad of arugula, pears, blue cheese, and a bracingly acidic vinaigrette was downright stunning. Gorgeous to look at, and worth fighting each other for the last few bites.

It was so simple to make, and the lack of extra ingredients in the recipe allowed each individual flavor to shine brilliantly. The arugula was sharp and bitter, the pear slices were firm and sweet, the blue cheese was meltingly rich and savory, all of it drizzled over with a bright, tart vinaigrette. I have known good salads, but this was one of the very best. No extraneous textures, no flavors thrown in for complexity's sake. Just four perfect notes.

As suited as it was for a first course followed by soup and bread (the bread all the better for mopping up the leftover bits of blue cheese swimming in vinaigrette), it would be extra winsome served alongside a good, fatty fish like salmon, or with a rich omelette topped with sauteed mushrooms, really anything full-bodied or creamy enough to act as a foil to the bright, clean flavors and crisp textures of the salad.

I live for salads like this. And given the squabbling at the table over the last few bites, so do The Carnivore and The Boy Wonder.

*****

FRESH PEAR AND BLUE CHEESE SALAD, serves 4 as a side dish
(adapted from Moosewood Restaurant Daily Special)

4 cups arugula (or other salad greens if you are averse to the assertive flavors of arugula)
1 large firm Bosc, Bartlett, or red D'Anjou pear
3 Tbs fresh orange juice
2 Tbs fresh lemon juice
2 Tbs olive oil
2 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 cup (or more, to taste) crumbled blue cheese

On a large platter, arrange the greens.
Core the pear, slice it thinly, and lay the slices atop the greens.
In a small bowl, whisk together the orange juice, lemon juice, olive oil, garlic, and salt.
Immediately before serving, drizzle the dressing over the platter of greens & pear slices.
Sprinkle the crumbled blue cheese on top.

Beauty is only Fork Deep

2012-02-02T21:01:00.001-05:00

Have you ever been excited about a recipe you just couldn't wait to try? So excited that you wanted to run right out and get the ingredients you would need?

And then it turned out to be really rather easy to make, and it was absolutely stunning to look at?

But it tasted, uhhh, you know, meh?

Or you make the perfect souffle, suffering through the agonizing oven time, watch as it deflates slightly around the edges, but still looks handsome, and then you can't quite get past the distracting fact that it has the texture of baby food?

Happens to me all the time. And every time it happens, I wilt with disappointment. I calculate the cost of the ingredients, I look with distrust upon the source of the recipe, and I leave the table still a little bit hungry.

Especially when it wastes one of my favorite ingredients.

{sigh} There should be a special graveyard for food photographs that are yummier than their recipes.

Warm Lemon/Lime Gingerade

2012-01-30T21:50:00.001-05:00

I try to make it a regular practice to blow my kids' minds. It is a necessity in our sort of household, I think. A household in which TV time is strictly limited, video games are even more limited, candy is rare, and high-fructose corn syrup is viewed as suspiciously as if it were poison.

Being my child cannot be easy. Too much 'no' zaps the fun out of life, so we actively seek out the yeses.

Stove-top popcorn, hot cocoa made with real cocoa and raw sugar, spicy roasted chickpeas, crispy kale chips: these are the sorts of things that thrill both the kids and mama. Addictive, fun snacks do not have to be either unhealthy or highly-processed. And there is a time and place for everything, of course, with sweets free-for-alls around birthdays and holidays, and kids' movies from the library for lazy Sunday afternoons spent lounging on the couch.

It is a delicate balance.

Hence, the great fun we have when mind-blowing moments arise. The first time the kids had kale chips? Minds successfully blown. The occasional batch of homemade vanilla ice cream? Epic blowing of the mind. A tea party with a warm, sweetened lemon-lime ginger drink that mama views as actually healthy? Hip, hip hooray to a brand-new mind blowing.

Oh, truth be told, I wasn't even sure the kids would enjoy this concoction. I made it for myself, as part of my usual wintertime quest for restorative foods and drinks, and I thought it would be lovely for those days around the learning table when I am feeling frustrated and chilled and out-of-sorts. It was, of course, lovely for all those reasons.

I found the recipe at Beauty That Moves, and her description - 'please fix what ails me beverage' - was exactly the sort of turn of a phrase that calls my name. So I quickly made a batch, knowing a friend was on her way over, and she and I could tuck into a small pot of this in no time. It was a beautiful kind of perfect. Barely sweet, just a wee bit tart, and slightly spicy from the fresh ginger. It was calming and warming, clean-tasting and bright, and if it were a perfume, I would dab it behind my ears.

I made the first batch using honey, as called for in the original recipe, but when I made it again the next day, I used agave nectar, and I liked it even more. Agave nectar is a thing of wonder, if you are not familiar with it. Often used in place of honey, with a similar but slightly more neutral taste, agave nectar has a low glycemic index, thus having less of an effect on blood sugar than many other sweeteners. It is also vegan and unrefined, making it a fabulous ingredient to keep on hand in a natural foods pantry.

It also helps that I do not feel terribly guilty letting my children guzzle down a drink sweetened with a just a wee bit of agave nectar. Which is good, because once they tried this drink, they were hooked. With vitamin C from the lemons and limes, and the anti-inflammatory effects (amongst other health benefits) of ginger, I can make this for them almost as often as they want, and we can all feel good about it.

I think natural sodas might be next on the child-mind-blowing agenda. Stay tuned, kids.

*****

WARM LEMON-LIME GINGERADE (adapted from Beauty That Moves), serves 4

4 cups water
1-inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled and grated fine
juice of 1 lemon
juice of 1 lime
2 to 3 Tbs agave nectar, or 1/4 cup honey, sweetened to taste

Pour water into saucepan, and bring to a boil.
Add grated ginger, reduce heat, and simmer for 5 minutes.
Turn off heat, add lemon and lime juice, and the sweetener, and cover the pan. Let steep for 10 minutes.
Strain if desired (I do not bother - we rather enjoy the tiny wisps of ginger left in the mixture). Serve hot, warm, or cold. It is delicious at every temperature.

~ Yes ~

2012-01-28T21:22:00.000-05:00

It was a trying week. Full of the sort of days in which I question the sanity of homeschooling, when I wonder if I will ever have the time to do all of the work on my desk, and when I fear I will never have time to sit and chat with my girlfriends again.

So silly, I know. Because of course everything in life comes in phases, and these days will change into new challenges and new hurdles, and it is all good. Even the bad days are not really all that bad.

I gave up on the never ending list of Things That Must Be Done yesterday, and I said no to my desk and the housework, and yes to a friend. Yes is really the only thing I ever want to say to my friends. Yes to an afternoon watching our kids play (and fight) in the sandbox. Yes to a batch of cookies. Yes to a cup of tea. Yes to time spent with one of my very favorite people.

Yes is such a lovely word.

Yes, children. You can let your pet lizards run all over the table while I work on lesson plans for next week. Yes, I will make you some more of that yummy warm lemon/limeade that I made yesterday. Yes, then let's go through the woods to my sister's house and spend time with a whole lot of our family around a gorgeous bonfire. And yes, little brother, let's play with all the settings on my camera together until we find the one that takes the best photographs of a fire at night.

(ISO 3200, in case you were wondering).

Yes, dear son who took five hours to clean his room today and who really shouldn't be kept up past his bedtime when we must get up early tomorrow, you may eat a hot dog. And some potato chips. And a few marshmallows. Yes to lemonade. And yes to hot chocolate. Whoops. Yes, that is my big bloodhound in your house, dear sister (sorry about that).

Yes, this is a lovely way to spend a weekend in January. What else should we say yes to in the coming days?

Roasted Red Pepper and Cauliflower Salad

2012-01-26T21:10:00.000-05:00

Rain has been rare around here for so long, that we do not complain when it comes. Even when it arrives and stays for days and days, bringing with it fog and thunder (in January, no less). Even when it then brightens up for a day or two, and begins to rain again.

We'll take it.

To be sure, rain in the winter just kind of works for me. The trees are already bare and gray, and we are mostly inside anyway, so days of rain make me want to cozy up in my yoga pants, living on soup and hot tea and the dreary, yet ethereally beautiful, view through my windows.

Glorious, isn't it? Misty mornings, foggy views, and the pitter-pattering sound of the rain on the tin roof. It's no wonder I'm digging the Moosewood Restaurant Daily Special cookbook right now. Soups and salads and good, crusty bread are just perfect for warming the belly and soothing the tired mind at the end of the day.

This past weekend, after a full day of heavy rain and busy little projects around the house, I made Moosewood's Celery Roquefort Soup, and served it with a companion dish from the same cookbook, Roasted Red Pepper and Cauliflower Salad. The pairing was sublime, marrying the rich, velvety soup with the vibrant flavors and varying textures of the salad.

And such a salad it is. The pepper is roasted, peeled, and then sliced; and the cauliflower and potatoes are tossed with olive oil, salt and pepper and roasted just until tender. The roasted vegetables are then spooned atop a mixture of crisp, fresh lettuces, and the whole shebang is drizzled with a homemade, just-tart-enough, vinaigrette.

I adore salads with unexpected elements, like roasted vegetables served over crisp lettuce, everything tangy with vinaigrette. This recipe called for fennel, which wasn't suiting my mellow mood at the moment, so I made it with a mixture of rosemary, parsley, thyme, and basil, but you can do whatever you wish there - I don't think it would hurt to use a gentler hand with the herbs altogether. There is a lot going on in this salad, with the sweet, silky roasted peppers contrasting nicely with the savory flavor of the roasted potatoes and cauliflower, and the pure flavors do not need to be smothered with a lot of extras.

So perfect. And so easy on the eyes. Composed salads with warm vegetables and cold greens are my idea of heavenly, you see, and even The Carnivore ate a double helping. This sort of salad is decidedly not the sort of thing that keeps well, so plan on eating the whole thing at once. And it does not require a soup alongside. It would do just as well served with baked salmon, or even as a main-course lunch if topped with a crumbled feta or blue cheese, and served with a good rustic bread.

I felt a sublime sort of love for our first meal from this cookbook, and I plan to make the Creamy Onion and Fontina Soup with the Wilted Spinach and Sauteed Portobello Mushroom Salad this weekend. I do hope it rains again.

*****

ROASTED RED PEPPER AND CAULIFLOWER SALAD, serves 4
(adapted from Moosewood Daily Specials)

1 red bell pepper
1 small head cauliflower, cut into bite-size florets (about 4 cups)
1 large russet potato, sliced into 1/4-inch-thick rounds
6 Tbs olive oil, divided
salt & pepper
1 Tbs fresh lemon juice
1 Tbs apple cider vinegar
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 scant tsp dried herbs (mix of rosemary, thyme, fennel, basil, and/or parsley)
4 cups torn leaf lettuce - butter lettuce worked beautifully here

To roast the pepper, you can place it over the flame on a gas stove, turning until it is blackened on most of it's surface. Or, you can put in the oven, on broil, turning it every minute or so until most of it is blackened and charred. Remove it from the heat, wrap it in a kitchen towel, and leave alone for 5 or 10 minutes. Unwrap the pepper, peel off and discard the skin. Cut in half and discard the seeds and membrane. Slice lengthwise into thin strips and set aside.
On a large rimmed baking sheet, toss the cauliflower florets and potato slices in 2 Tbs olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and arrange in a single layer. Roast at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes, until tender but not falling apart, and the cauliflower is browned and getting crispy on the edges. Give the pan a stir every 5 minutes or so during roasting.
To make the dressing, whisk together the remaining 4 Tbs olive oil, lemon juice, cider vinegar, garlic cloves, herbs, and a sprinkle of salt and pepper. Set aside.
Lay the greens on a large platter or in the bottom of a large, wide bowl. Arrange the roasted cauliflower and potatoes on the greens, and top with the red pepper strips. Drizzle with the dressing. Serve immediately.

The Looming

2012-01-24T21:21:00.000-05:00

Do you see that ladybug on the wall in the lamplight? We are currently enjoying our annual ladybug invasion. They are everywhere in the house, marching across the sunny windows, holding meetings in the laundry room, congregating on the ceiling in The Boy Wonder's room, and lolling about on the houseplants. Princess Hazelnut likes to sing songs to them. It's ridiculous. The sort of cuteness overload that makes your heart hurt.

I have a silly amount of recipes I have been stockpiling to share here when time allows. Alas, there are only so many hours in the day, and only so many neurons continuing to fire properly in my (scatter)brain by the time the kids are in bed, the lights are turned off in my office, and I find my way to my favorite corner of the living room. Or the bedroom. God bless that warm, comfortable bed.

This weekend, I finally cooked from Moosewood Daily Special, and I think I might have fallen in love with the cookbook. A few months ago, I ran across an entire box of incredible vegetarian cookbooks at a yard sale, and this was one of my finds from that day, but as with so many of the finer things in life, it got put on the back burner while the rest of life swirled around in its busy way.

It is a lovely cookbook, full of the soups and salads that Moosewood Restaurant would have as their popular - wait for it - daily specials. So you turn to a page for a Creamy Onion Soup (be still my beating heart), for instance, and at the bottom of the page, it lists three or four of the salads that marry well with it. Menu planning at its absolute best. When I simply cannot bear to take the time to think through multiple components for a meal, I can turn here and know that all I will need to add is some fresh focaccia bread or a baguette from the bakery I am so blessed to have as a client.

Don't hate me because I have beautiful clients. With offices in perfectly wonderful locations. And more work than I know what to do with at the moment.

And tonight's dinner - oh my - of blue cheese ravioli made with wonton wrappers (because I barely had the time to be stuffing the wrappers much less time to make pasta dough from scratch this afternoon). So delicious. I really, truly should have been in my office rather than carefully sealing those ravioli, but a girl must have her priorities.

Recipes to come. All in due time. With pictures and descriptions and my usual absurdities. And my newest and best-yet recipe for natural deodorant. For now, I leave you with my new favorite album to listen to online - perfect for a rainy day indoors (I would know, we just had four days of grey skies and rain - it was a minor miracle and we loved every soggy minute of it). If you need me, I will be in my office, madly and hilariously attempting to finish these infernal W2s and 1099s before that looming IRS deadline.

Honey Facial Wash

2012-01-23T20:54:00.000-05:00

Honey is such a miracle product. I love to purchase raw honey from local farmers, using it to sweeten the kids' oatmeal, to soothe sore throats and coughs, to dab on tiny boo-boos, to drizzle on homemade biscuits slathered with butter, and to make granola. Such a simple, pure, amazing product.

Studying bees during The Boy Wonder's science lessons only added to the honey idolatry around these parts. It's just good, good stuff. And honeybees are perfectly amazing creatures.

Honey has antibacterial and antimicrobial properties, and because local flowers are used by the honeybees, it is thought (but unproven) that the consumption of local honey can help with allergies. The fact that it tastes like heaven doesn't hurt.

Last summer, Crunchy Betty wrote a detailed series of posts on using honey as a face wash, and I was stunned by the idea. I had never even heard of it, and here she was suggesting that honey was good for acne, for aging skin, for dry skin or oily skin, for sensitive skin and for normal skin, and it was healing to boot, and would even help heal acne scars.

See, I have bad skin. For many, many years I fought a losing battle with cystic acne that cost absurd amounts of money, wreaked havoc on my self-esteem, and resulted in scars over most of my face. It has only been in the past seven years that I have found a cocktail of cleansers and creams that do not aggravate my skin, but I have long been uncomfortable with the amount of chemicals in these products. And it has occurred to me more than once that all these drying products would possibly exacerbate the onset of wrinkles as I age.

There is no end to the injustice.

I do not care to speak about this usually, for even as the intervening years have softened the blow of that decade in which I wore heavy makeup to cover my blemishes, I get a little nervous still about the thought of changing my cleansing routine and possibly causing problems to resurface.

But this honey face wash had my interest piqued. So I went for it. And I haven't looked back in months now.

Using raw honey is important (Crunchy Betty explains the reasons here), and I have easy access in my area to local, raw honey, but you can find raw, truly unheated honey at most health food stores as well. I have also used regular old store-bought honey in a pinch, and found it worked just fine.

I follow Crunchy Betty's routine almost completely. In the mornings, when there is no makeup to be removed, I simply wet my face with warm water, rub about 1/2 tsp of honey onto my face, and then rinse off. I follow that with a tinted moisturizer that contains sunscreen, and some loose powder, and I'm good to go. No need for toners or acne creams or anything else. {Well, there is usually mascara and eyeliner involved, but that has more to do with vanity than with skin, so we'll skip the boring parts about how I do my eye makeup}.

At night, to make sure I have completely removed my makeup, I again follow one of Crunchy Betty's routines: I wet my face, squeeze about 1/2 tsp of honey into my palm, and then add about 1/2 tsp of baking soda to the honey, mixing it up with my finger. I apply the scrub to my face, and rinse with warm water. Following that, to rebalance the pH of my skin - because the baking soda will alter the balance somewhat - I use a homemade toner comprised of 50% water and 50% apple cider vinegar. I then apply a little bit of tea tree oil and jojoba oil to my face for moisturizing and blemish-preventing protection.

I've followed this cleansing routine for the past six months now, and I cannot help but think it's a whole lot of fabulousness. Facial cleanser is one more item crossed off the shopping list, and yet another notch that can be added to the belt of consumer anarchy.

Gah. That might be my worst metaphor yet.

Homemade Almond Milk

2012-01-21T15:26:00.002-05:00

Sometimes, when I find out how easy it is to make something that I never thought twice about purchasing at the store, I feel like a Class-A dummy for not having figured it out sooner. Did you know all it takes to make your own almond milk is a few almonds, some water, and a wee bit of vanilla extract?

This, my friends, is another feather in the hat of consumer anarchy.

Or something like that. My metaphors rarely make sense.

Almond milk is silly good stuff, as creamy as whole milk, but much lower in fat and calories, and loaded with a variety of vitamins and minerals. I stopped using regular milk in my cereal a few years back, partly because I was mildly alarmed at the processing involved in creating skim milk, and also because cow's milk simply stopped tasting good to me.

For a while, I used soy milk, and then I switched to rice milk or almond milk, but I wasn't big on the over-processing or the stabilizers that were used, so I did what I generally do when presented with options I'm not crazy about: I walked away and said "Aw, just forget it." I say that more often than I would like.

Hence the water in my oatmeal, and the lack of granola in my diet lately.

Then I overheard someone talking about making their own almond milk.

Well, good grief. That had not even occurred to me. You take some almonds and soak them overnight in a bowl of water. Then you drain the almonds, put them in a blender with water, add a little vanilla extract and some sweetener if you need it, and voila. You have almond milk. Thick, creamy, fresh, almond milk with the purest flavor imaginable.

Want to blow your kids' minds? Get them to help make it. And then serve it with their cereal instead of regular milk. Princess Hazelnut actually cried this morning when she found out I had not soaked some almonds overnight to make more almond milk for her breakfast.

There are solids left over after making the almond milk, and I could not bear the thought of throwing them away, so I put them in a jar in the fridge for a day or so and did a little searching. There are, as should be expected, some wacko ideas online for what to do with the leftover paste, but my favorite, by far, suggested laying the solids out on a cookie sheet and baking it for about an hour until it is dried out and it becomes - Ta Da - almond meal.

See that little jar of clumpy almond solids up there? Yeah, that's going straight into the oven now. I have big plans for the resulting almond meal. Cookies, I think...

*****

ALMOND MILK (yields 3 cups)

1 cup raw almonds
3 cups water (in addition to the water used to soak the almonds)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract, optional
2 pitted dates or 2 tsp agave syrup, optional

Soak the almonds in water for six hours or longer.
Drain the almonds, discarding the soaking water.
Place the almonds, 3 cups water, vanilla extract and dates or agave syrup (if using) in a blender and blend until almost smooth.
Pour through a strainer to remove the solids (and save the solids for other uses).
The almond milk will keep in the fridge for 3 or 4 days. Shake before using.

Space Held for The Morning

2012-01-19T21:09:00.000-05:00

I have overbooked myself again, taking on another new client slightly in advance of the end of a large project with another client, and I feel our family's pace picking back up now, just as The Carnivore has entered his busiest period in months. The good news always seems to be that the busier we are, the more we are able to accomplish. Tasks constrict or grow to fill the space they are given, I think, so when I attempt to cram a growing pile of clients into a day already filled with the children's learning time, pressing household duties, and a couple of personal pursuits as well, I find that efficiency can go through the roof. In a good way.

But then again, my ability to take this all in stride might have more to do with recent enhancements to my morning routine than with any sort of brilliant insights into competency that I may have to offer.

Waking myself up, it turns out, is far preferable to that jarring feeling of being shaken awake by a child who already has a list of demands that need to be met.

I just don't work well under those circumstances. This new habit of being the first one up (on purpose, no less) has been nearly perfect. And I recently took away the kids' morning cartoons during the week, so the absence of advertising and bright colors and loud noises has had a positive effect on the overall tone of the morning as well.

I should have done this a year ago, but I had grown so fond of the electronic babysitter handling the first few minutes of the day that I sunk into a rut without giving it much thought.

The days are beginning to flow a little more smoothly now. I arise at seven, and I practice yoga, get myself dressed and ready for the day, get some quiet time, and then, at eight, I wake up the kids, snuggling and playing with them for a few minutes before racing them to the breakfast table and getting some protein and fiber in them first thing - before they have a chance to let hunger affect their delicate temperaments.

I do not say that disparagingly, mind you. When I have not eaten enough protein, I feel weak and a little bit dumb. When I haven't consumed enough fresh fruits and vegetables, I feel sluggish. A lack of whole-grain fiber makes me moody. Have you ever kept a food diary and tracked the way your moods and energy levels change according to the types of food you eat? I highly recommend it (and it beats blindly trusting the FDA or a faddish diet book for generic nutrition advice).

We listen to classical music during breakfast and lunch, and that too has been a pleasant addition to our daily rhythms. It calms the kids when they are getting feisty; it settles mama when I start feeling edgy. Our history lessons this year are focused on the Baroque period, so I chose Bach and Vivaldi for our composer studies, opting to fully immerse in only two composers rather than cramming in as many as we could. Such a lovely part of our day. Especially when we were listening to Vivaldi at dinner one night, and The Boy Wonder schooled The Carnivore and I on some facts he learned about Vivaldi in music class at his homeschool academy.

Homeschooling in our family is two parts frustrating, one part challenging, and one part rewarding. That moment landed solidly in the rewarding column. I need to keep a running list of those events as they happen. They do not occur as often as I originally assumed they would, but when they do, it is pure magic.

And so the mornings are beginning to improve. An earlier and less distracted start time allows us to move more deliberately and intentionally through breakfast and our lessons, which in turn keeps all of our moods in check so that the afternoon lies ahead of us with just a little bit more promise and a lot less frustration.

Deliberate. Intentional. Those are good goals for the day, I think.

When Homeschooling Is Not Lovely: Chaos and Space

2012-01-17T21:41:00.001-05:00

Homeschooling can be such good, good stuff. Getting to spend so much of our time together during these early years, attending classes at the nature center and the botanical gardens as a family, learning simultaneously with our children, enjoying dinner conversations about classical music and art and history.

It is a great life.

Except for when it's not.

Normally, when we hit a brick wall, I know well enough to step back and take a few days off from our lesson plans, to let the learning happen organically as we set aside the worksheets and the assignments and explore other interests, seeing where they take us.

But our Christmas break was only a few weeks ago, and I think some of our current problem may be that we are in need of more structure rather than less. The Boy Wonder would have seen it as a reward to go in a freer direction for a few days, and that was not the sort of message I wanted to send after the whining and foot-dragging that has been going on as of late.

Now, he is a boy, of course, and a seven-year-old at that. Being a slowpoke is in his job description, and even on the best of days, I have to say "Come ON, buddy," at least 57 times. Eating a sandwich takes 45 minutes. Brushing his teeth takes a minimum of 5 minutes. Feeding the dogs can take up to an hour, allowing for time to watch a lizard, to pee off the porch steps, and to completely forget what he is doing and head to the sandbox for a while. Luckily, he is able to focus when he is reading a book, but then the focus is so complete that he doesn't hear me calling him unless I use a megaphone.

Sometimes I understand why teachers are so quick to recommend Ritalin. A classroom full of distractible children does seem like it could get the tiniest bit frustrating, doesn't it?

Oh, of course I am kidding. Mostly.

I like structure, you see. Schedules, to-do lists, and the like. Where this gets dicey is when I don't notice that some tweaks need to happen to our routine and I just keep trying to force a square peg (The Boy Wonder) into a round hole (my schedule).

Before we had children, structure was so much less important, but as Life with Baby began to sink in, I realized the only way anything would ever get done again was if I paid attention to the baby's internal clock and scheduled all other responsibilities around it. It would work for short periods, and then he would shift his napping or nursing schedule, and I would put all my clients on hold for a few days until a new rhythm was established and then I would juggle the rest of our life around it and move on again.

Until a new schedule shift happened, at which time we would repeat the whole cycle. We were living on the edge, you understand.

The real issue right now, I think, is that we have been following this current routine for so long that it didn't occur to any of us that it wasn't working any longer until, lo and behold, it very much was not working at all.

Oy.

And I'm the one who keeps espousing a desire to be more present, yes?

So embarrassing.

Small changes have been happening on their own lately, with me recognizing the need to rise before everyone else and to make time for yoga and scripture reading before I wake the rest of the household; and then to end the day with a little bit more time for reading or writing once the kids have closed their eyes and have again begun to resemble the angels they can be.

It is those 12 hours in the middle that merit adjustment, and it is there that I have aimed nearly all of my attention in order to ferret out what must change. Heather from Beauty That Moves posted her household routine recently, and there was one thing she said that has been my overriding inspiration and comfort while I have contemplated shaking up my kids' (and my) previously set-in-stone routine. Her daily rhythm is set out in blocks of time, which is the same sort of way my own mind works when attempting to fulfill each of my roles on a daily basis. As she stated in her post, "Blocks of time are not meant to be filled to the very minute, rather they are space held for certain tasks or projects to be completed within."

Yes.

[Breathe in. Breathe out.]

It is a most lovely way to think about it. Somehow everything seems so much more doable when I think about space being held for each of the responsibilities of our day. I can hold space in the early morning for my quiet time. Space will be held at 5:30 for our family dinner time. The children's story- and bedtimes are less of a chore when I realize I have held space for that time in the late evening.

I simply need to rearrange our time blocks right now, until we find a way to work and learn during the best times of day for those things to occur for each of us. I must only hold the space for work, for learning time, for the children to play and run around. Out of chaos, I will hold space.

On the Nourishing

2012-01-16T21:53:00.002-05:00

Sometimes I can be terribly dense about recognizing ways to nourish myself. I can occasionally dredge up moments of intelligence, at least enough to realize that in the hot, muggy days of summer, I prefer cold, sometimes astringent foods. Marinated cucumbers, cottage cheese topped with fruit, granola stirred into yogurt, cold bean salads. And if that is the case, the idea that cold foods are best in the summer, then the inverse must also be true at the opposite time of year, yes?

In a perfect world, I would be aware of the correlation, but the truth is, even though I do begin craving hearty soups when the weather turns colder, I seldom remember to stick with warming foods throughout the season.

Inevitably, on a chilly afternoon, I will crave a coffee treat, and so I will shoot into the kitchen to whip up a coffee milkshake, only to find myself shivering and cranky an hour later. Or I will make a green smoothie for breakfast when it is 30 degrees outside and our hardwood floors feel like sheets of ice, and then I won't quite understand why my mood is so edgy and my stomach feels tense.

Self-awareness stumps me when I get too flighty to pay attention to my surroundings. This past fall, when I was a bit desperate to re-balance myself, and I embarked on a seven-day cleanse, I began to read up on Ayurvedic constitutions and its corresponding nutrition information, and I finally began to put a little more thought into the types of food I was consuming at this particular time of year.

I should point out that I do not fully subscribe to Ayurveda as a way of life, but I do think a lot can be learned by studying its holistic and preventive approach to health. If you are interested in reading just a little snippet on what it is all about, this is an easy-to-understand and very non-threatening primer on the subject.

My constitution, according to what I have read and understood thus far, is almost equally balanced between two of the types, so I find the nutritional advice a bit confusing and disjointed, but what I have gleaned is that at this time of year, when I have trouble getting warm, and focus is harder for me to come by, warm, moist foods are very important.

Knowing this, and following it relatively closely, has had an immeasurable difference in my energy levels and concentration for the past few months. At a time of year when I am often out of sorts and prone to very mild depressive tendencies, I have found myself calmer, less prickly, and much more inclined to think creatively.

This is nothing to sneeze at, my friends. Last winter was brutal. And it followed a very emotionally draining fall in which we lost my beloved grandfather and came dangerously close to losing The Carnivore as well. To have gone through such sadness and stress so quickly, immediately before the coldest months of the year, was a recipe for disaster, to be sure. This year was almost certainly going to be a walk in the park in comparison, but I was brooking no uncertainty this time around. Thus the focus on internal awareness, on being more present in each moment, on practicing yoga daily, and on altering my diet just enough to provide a more nourishing atmosphere.

And the difference is striking. Dinners include more chili, lentils, casseroles, and roasted or braised vegetables. In addition to my steel-cut oatmeal, I have experimented with other hot breakfast cereals, using barley or quinoa (as shown in the photo at top, with blueberries and bananas). Cinnamon and ginger find their way into each of the cereals, as do cooked fruits.

It is so simple, isn't it? Raw, cold foods in the summer. Hot, moist, stewed foods in the winter. Working with the weather to find a way to a proper place of nourishment. It is simple, yes, and also so very comforting.

Chocolate Vegan Death Cake

2012-01-15T14:59:00.001-05:00

I have lately taken to carrying my camera around in my purse again. For too long now, I have relied on my phone as my primary camera, and the result has been that I no longer remember to take daily photographs. Habits are important to me, little rituals to keep me focused; without them, I flounder around forgetting to do simple things like washing my hair, or going to the grocery store.

We had dinner at a friend's house last night, and I was so glad I remembered to bring my camera. The evening was lovely, and deserved to be commemorated. There was a scrumptious African sweet potato stew, a baby who charmed us with his gummy grin, and the only two pictures I have of myself and A.M. together were taken about 25 years apart. Last night would have been a great time to have taken another, and to have gotten a snapshot of that glorious stew.

If only I had remembered to take my camera out of my purse.

Gah.

At least the first part of the day was preserved for posterity's sake. After suffering through the excesses of Christmas, we have gone mostly dessert-free around here for the past few weeks, but I finally reached the end of my rope. I needed chocolate, you see, and I had one particular recipe in mind.

My friend B.S. (you have no idea how happy I am that those are her initials) has a little bit of cake magic in her, and she has been known to show up at tough times with magical foods. It will likely irritate her that I mention her inherent goodness in a public setting, but I don't really care.

She turned up at the hospital last year when my grandmother was having surgery, and put her hilarious pudgy baby into my anxious mother's arms. Then she reached into her purse and pulled out a few pieces of this cake, wordlessly handing them over to me. I nearly wept. Not because it meant so much to me that a friend would come to the hospital with goodies (even though that was weep-worthy), but because the cake itself was so ridiculously delicious.

I mean, it is a vegan cake. How good can it be, right? This cake is absurd, it's so good. So moist it is shocking that it even holds together, with a tender, chewy crumb, and a purity of flavor. There is no butter, which is normally the overarching taste in a cake (not that there is anything wrong with that). In this case, rather than butter, there is coffee and chocolate, melding together into a perfect simple essence.

Love songs should be written about cakes like this. The recipe is from my favorite vegetarian restaurant The Grit, which means it already has The Boy Wonder's stamp of approval - he has, after all, eaten his way across their entire dessert case and back, at least twice. As a matter of fact, this is probably the fourth of their cake recipes that I have now baked at home (although one or two of them had to be replicated to the best of my ability, because those recipes were not in their cookbook).

This one is in the cookbook, but because B.S. (best initials ever) serves it without the frosting, and that is therefore how I crave it now, I chose to go without the icing as well. Also, I did not want to trouble myself with running to the store to pick up some silken tofu.

Other than that, I changed very little about the recipe. I made it using raw sugar and homemade vanilla extract, and because I do not care for caffeinated children, I used decaf coffee in the recipe. Decaf does not have the freshest flavor though, so if you can hide the cake from your own ~~heathens~~ children, I strongly recommend using full-voltage coffee. I also added about 1/4 cup of cacao nibs to the batter, partly because I didn't have quite enough cocoa, but also because I have been trying to find a way to use these nibs. They gave great texture to the cake, adding a bit of crunch , but the nibs are intense in flavor, and if you don't dig extremely bitter chocolate, you will not want to even consider such a thing.

Also, since it's vegan, feel free to call this cake a health food (even though it is the farthest thing from it).

*****

CHOCOLATE VEGAN DEATH CAKE, adapted from The Grit

Note: I used a 10-inch, super deep springform pan for this cake. You can also use a Bundt pan, but do not fill more than 3/4 of the way - if there is leftover batter, just make a few cupcakes and freeze them (this cake freezes beautifully). If making a layer cake and frosting as well, bake this in three 9-inch round cake pans.

4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3 cups sugar
1 cup cocoa powder
1 Tbs baking soda
2 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups vegetable oil
2 Tbs pure vanilla extract
3 cups strong brewed coffee
1/4 cup cider vinegar

Grease and flour pans (see head note), and preheat oven to 350 degrees.
In the large bowl of your electric mixer, sift the dry ingredients together.
Add oil and vanilla extract.
On low speed, blend until fully combined.
Increase speed just a little, and gradually add coffee.
When mixture is smooth, reduce speed to lowest setting, and add vinegar, blending only until combined. Do not overmix.
Divide batter between pans, and bake for 20 to 30 minutes, just until a knife comes out clean when inserted into the middle.

The Accidental Vegan-'Til-Six

2012-01-13T21:28:00.001-05:00

I have long toyed with the idea of eating more vegan meals. Not going entirely vegan, mind you. I love cheese and eggs way too much for that sort of thing, and I do not believe in giving up anything I love unless the reason is compelling.

At a point though, It seemed to me that I was including unnecessary dairy in my meals, and so I switched out milk for soy or rice milk in my cereal a few years ago. Then I got a little cranky about the processing involved in packaged non-dairy drinks, and in lieu of learning how to make my own almond milk, I just began to avoid cereal altogether.

Maybe a year ago, I started leaning vegan for breakfast. Green smoothies, oatmeal, peanut butter toast, or baked apples and the like. I started feeling more energetic in the mornings.

Not much later, due to better dinner planning, leftovers became more scarce and I had to start re-thinking lunch as well. Without giving it much thought, I began falling back on my old staple of brown rice with beans and olive oil for lunch, or a big green salad topped with garbanzo or cannellini beans and a homemade vinaigrette.

Have you heard of Mark Bittman's habit of vegan before dinnertime? It is what he credited for his weight loss a few years ago, along with other improvements to his health, and I thought it was a great idea when I first read it, especially for someone like me who enjoys challenging the mindless eating habits that are so easy to fall into.

But of course I forgot about it rather quickly. Like so many other things I read.

A few days ago though, I realized I had gone the way of the part-time vegan myself. Breakfast and lunch just happened organically {snort}, but even my snacks had gone vegan as well. Instead of a piece of cheese or a small carton of yogurt, I found myself reaching for an apple or a handful of pumpkin seeds.

Huh. And it's been going on for a while apparently.

Well, except for that day last week when I had an hour to kill in between appointments and I found myself both childless and flush with cash. I snuck into a coffee shop with my computer and a wicked grin, and ordered a ginormous, completely ridiculous, overpriced and fully decadent, highly caffeinated drink. With full-fat dairy. And an extra shot of high fructose corn syrup.

And it was goooooooooood.

Spicy Cornbread

2012-01-12T21:22:00.002-05:00

I used to joke that I married The Carnivore for his cornbread. Even at the point when I took over all the cooking for our little family, cornbread was still his purview. He claimed to not have a recipe, you see, so I couldn't take it over. And I kind of liked it that way.

The only cornbread I recall having as a child was made from a box mix, or it had the unmistakable sweetness of sugar in it, and I just didn't care for any of that. Then I fell in love with The Carnivore, and he began cooking for me, and he kind of blew my mind with his cornbread. It was spicy rather than sweet, dense instead of fluffy, with a crisp crust and actual corn kernels inside.

Ridiculous yummy.

But we had two flaws in the system, the first being that The Carnivore never got home from work in time to make the cornbread when we needed it to go with lentils, or with Cuban black bean soup, or black eyed peas and collards. The other problem, and a crucial one, was the waste factor. We never managed to eat an entire batch in one sitting, and the leftovers didn't warm up well on the second day.

Waste makes me a little bit nuts.

Then I bought The Art of Simple Food with some birthday money a few years ago, and Alice's simple cornbread recipe started calling my name. I knew enough of The Carnivore's tricks (add cheese, onions and jalapenos to the batter; and preheat the pan with a little bit of fat) that I thought I could adapt the recipe from the book to suit our purposes, while adding a few touches of my own.

The crowning touch was that I finally got wise enough {slaps forehead} to realize if I baked half the batch in my smaller 5-inch cast iron skillet, then I could also avoid the waste problem. The other half of the batter could be refrigerated until the next day to go with the inevitable leftover beans. Eureka. Fresh cornbread two nights in a row. No waste.

I cannot believe it took that long to figure that out. Please, someone, anyone, act like this is the best advice you ever heard and that I am a genius for imparting my wisdom here. Pretty please. My ego is smarting.

I made quite a few changes to the original recipe in The Art of Simple Food - so many, in fact, that attribution is hardly necessary. But here is the beauty of that particular cookbook, the whole thing is written so that you can take the general outline of her ideas and then run with it to make it your own. She is lovely that way, you see, with her pure joy regarding food and the grace she allows for others to take her knowledge and change it all up a little.

I love that in a cookbook. When I open the pages, I want to be inspired, not overwhelmed by recipes that seem to complicated for home use. I want general advice, and cheeky little headnotes, techniques that make me excited to get into the kitchen. This cookbook is perfect that way. In fact, it is probably one of my handful of desert island cookbooks when it all comes down to it.

Which, by default, makes this my Desert Island Cornbread.

*****

SPICY CORNBREAD (inspired by The Art of Simple Food), makes 8 pieces

1 cup cornmeal (the coarser, the better)
3/4 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder (you can make your own)
1 1/2 tsp coarse salt
1 tsp olive oil
1/2 onion, diced
1 to 2 hot peppers, minced (or 1 to 2 tsp crushed red pepper), optional
1 cup grated sharp cheddar cheese
1 cup corn kernels
1 cup milk
1 egg
4 Tbs butter, melted (plus 1 Tbs butter for the pan)

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
For the crispiest crust, put a 9- to 10-inch cast iron skillet into the oven while it preheats, with 1 Tbs of butter in the skillet.
In a large bowl, add the cornmeal, flour, baking powder, and salt. Stir together.
In a small skillet, heat the olive oil over medium-low heat, then add the onion and peppers (if using) and saute until onion is translucent, about 3 to 5 minutes. Let cool for a minute or two.
Add the sauteed onion & pepper to the flour mixture, along with the cheese and corn kernels. Stir together.
Pour the milk into a small bowl, and whisk in the egg.
Add the milk & egg to the flour mixture, and stir until well-mixed.
Stir the 4 Tbs of melted butter into the batter.
Take the skillet out of the oven, tilt it to distribute the melted butter, and pour in the batter.
Bake for 20 minutes, until cornbread is nicely browned on top, and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

The Ritual of Morning

2012-01-11T21:59:00.000-05:00

There is nothing quite so peaceful as a gray early morning, cloudy and still, the air full with the promise of an impending storm. I awoke today to the loveliest heavy cloud cover, grateful to know the darkness would keep the kids in bed even longer than usual (bless the long silent minutes before the daily bloodshed begins).

As I have for the past few weeks, I began the day with yoga, so much better for me than my former habit of waiting until mid-morning to begin my practice. With the house completely quiet, and only a lamp on in the living room for muted light, the time is perfect. Just me and my mat, and the beautiful women of Namaste Yoga. And a touch of lightning this morning, which I found nearly intoxicating.

After yoga, I sip hot water with lemon, in my chair by the fireplace, where I also spend a few minutes with my Bible, which I am currently reading in chronological order for the first time. Have you ever read the Bible this way? Fascinating to put the spiritual realm into a more historical context. I wish I had tried it sooner.

Then comes coffee, a phone call to my mother, a little blog reading, and then (with a bang) comes the day. If I didn't stay up so late reading, I swear I would wake up at 5 am just to revel in that beloved early morning stillness. Today, though, with the bedroom still so dark, the children slept in and I didn't have the heart to wake them. Why rush the day, yes? The homeschool lessons, the nonstop Hobbit meal schedule, the work on my desk, the endless onslaught of emails.

No need to hurry, you see. Intentional living means enjoying this moment, this serene time before the clamoring begins. And so I took my coffee to the porch, in the welcome sixty-something degree January temperature, and I listened to the rain and the muted sound of distant thunder, and I watched the brilliant red cardinals fluff themselves up in the bare colorless trees. And it was perfect.

Tranquil.

Languid.

And now here it is, nearly ten o'clock at night, and I can still hear the heathens giggling in bed. It's a fine how-do-you-do, my friends.

As God is my witness, I will never let them sleep so late again.

The Thankful Game

2012-01-10T22:21:00.000-05:00

There are days in which this little view of the outside world is where I focus my gaze in order to quiet my mind. Days when there are just too many topics in my head vying for attention, when the world (of homeschooling these hooligans) seems too noisy for my taste, and my to-do list is filled with the monotony of the unimportant.

I have been reading snippets from Voluntary Simplicity here and there lately, and last night, having finished On Writing, but not wanting to start anything new since I had a hold to retrieve from the library, I picked it back up and started reading from where I left off a week or so ago.

Do you read two or three books at a time? In my younger days, I would never have dreamed of doing such a thing, but these days I often find myself in the middle of a tiny stack of books. It comes from my dependency on the library, I believe, because if a hold comes in from another library in the system, I must stop whatever else I am reading in order to return the non-renewable book in time. I kind of like it, actually, but since I am happiest when surrounded by ample reading material, this extra little quirk won't come as much of a surprise to anyone who knows me.

It was in last night's reading of Voluntary Simplicity that I found a succinct description of what I so often find frustrating in myself: "The crucial importance of penetrating behind our continuous stream of thought is stressed by every major consciousness tradition in the world: Buddhist, Taoist, Hindu, Sufi, Zen, and so on. Western cultures, however, have fostered the understanding that a state of continual mental distraction is in the natural order of things."

In a world where we are thought to be more successful or more productive if we have fifteen balls in the air at the same time, and where advertising and popular media surround us with impossible-to-ignore loud noises and flashing lights and bright colors, there seems to be little or no reward for learning to quiet our minds and focus our thoughts to a place of singular thought, a state of perfect calm.

In living such a fast-paced lifestyle, driven by the unconscious urge to consume, acquire, and accumulate, we fail to notice our children's need for attentive conversation, our own mental and emotional need for silence and communion with God, and our physical need to breathe more slowly.

Oh, of course there is a lot to do. There are dishes in the sink, and clothes in the dryer, lessons to plan, and piles of work on my desk. There are educational goals to strive towards with the children, different creative endeavors that each of us want to pursue, and always, always, a to-do list to attend to.

And I have no plans to take only what I can carry and move into a hermit cabin in the woods. I like the society I belong to. I am grateful for modern conveniences, for smartphones, for access to newspapers and radio stations from all around the world.

But that does not mean there are not ample moments during the day to put a stop to all of the competing interests ping-ponging in our own minds, to slow down the breathing, the rushing, and the disjointed thoughts competing for a corner of our awareness.

Tonight, when The Carnivore worked way past late, and I was terribly frustrated over not being able to get quickly to my desk, and the irritation I felt towards the children for being so emotionally whacked out today was threatening to make my brain explode, I gazed out my kitchen window for a few breaths, and then I carefully, and deliberately, set the table for three.

Princess Hazelnut said the blessing, "Dear God, thank you for the food, and our friends, and our family. In Jesus name, Amen."

Then both kids asked for a little bit of the red wine vinegar that I was sprinkling over my lentils, and a lively conversation was sparked about the nutritional aspects of vinegar, and about protein and high-fructose corn syrup and pumpkin seeds and packaged cereals and how vinegar could possibly be different from wine if they both came from grapes, and suddenly the work on my desk seemed less important.

The only thing that mattered was this time spent talking about food and nutrition with my curious children. For the first time all day, I was not in a hurry, The Boy Wonder was not on the verge of a temper tantrum, and Princess Hazelnut was not clamoring for attention.

Suddenly, the princess shouted, "Y'all! We forgot to do our thankfuls!" And so we went around the table, doing one of the only things we do correctly as a family, stating what we were thankful for that day.

The Boy Wonder, so innocent and still so present in each moment, said the most profound thing I had heard all day, "I am thankful for this talk we are having."

And me? I am thankful for a son who takes such great joy in dinner conversation, and for the reminder that what I was doing right at that moment, eating dinner with my children, was the only thing that mattered right then. Everything else could wait.

Steel Cut Oatmeal

2012-01-09T22:33:00.001-05:00

My cookbook collection, I am finally willing to admit, is here to inspire me on techniques rather than recipes. As much as I love flipping through the pages and admiring the pure fabulousness of the complicated recipes and the beauty of the photographs, I inevitably find that I take one tiny idea from each book and use it to tweak my own recipes.

It was not always this way. Six or seven years ago, when I was beginning to grasp the awesomeness of creating meals at home (meals that went beyond the ubiquitous black bean and brown rice burrito), I would follow recipes to the letter, schlepping myself to multiple stores in order to source every last ingredient, and then measuring carefully to ensure that I stayed within the lines.

But that gets a bit monotonous after a bit, wouldn't you say? And expensive. Too often, I would find myself purchasing herbs or spices that would lose their potency long before I ever used more than a teaspoon-full (Chinese Five Spice Powder, anyone?). It's just silly really. But the more I cooked, the more I learned to substitute and to re-interpret, to trust my own instincts for tweaking recipes to suit our family's tastes.

There are some general Beam Family rules of thumb that I have learned to keep in the forefront at all times: add an extra 1/4 tsp of salt to almost everything, use dark chocolate anytime the recipe calls for milk chocolate, add a few shakes of Crushed Red Pepper to any recipe with 'spicy' in the title. Most recipes involving flour (with the exception of cakes) can be altered to use 1/2 all purpose flour and 1/2 whole wheat pastry flour. Brown rice will win out over white rice every time (as long as you allow for the extra cooking time). If the recipe looks like it uses too much sugar, it probably does. Reduce it by 1/4 (unless it's a cake). One clove of garlic is never enough.

But I will never have enough technique in my arsenal, and I'm always a little bit shocked by the magnitude of difference the tiniest adaptation to execution can make in the finished dish. Sometimes, the difference cannot even be tasted - it may simply be a matter of time savings or even a reminder to freeze the leftover portion of an ingredient in which only a tiny portion is used.

Clearly, I still have a lot to learn. I hope to never stop learning, actually. Isn't that at the point in which you die, after all? Learn, woman, learn.

In the winter, namely December and January, or at least until fresh cranberries stop showing up at the stores, I eat oatmeal for breakfast. Oatmeal with walnuts, cranberries, and cinnamon, to be precise. It's almost a knee-jerk response to the change in the weather. Without even noticing, I will cease using steamed or baked apples in my oatmeal, and switch to cranberries until that season ends, then I (again without thinking about it much) will begin buying frozen pomegranate seeds until, all of a sudden, the weather warms up, and I start making granola again instead of oatmeal.

Most of the time, it doesn't even bother me that I'm such a creature of habit about breakfast. Whole wheat pancakes with blueberries & pecans on Saturdays, fried egg sandwiches when I feel like I'm running low on protein (and when I have local eggs in my fridge), oatmeal in the fall and winter, homemade granola in the spring and summer.

Recently though, I picked up some steel-cut oats instead of my usual rolled oats, and I wasn't totally thrilled when I followed the recipe on the box. The flavor seemed too one-note, it needed a little salt, a small kick of flavor. I tried adding a little salt on my own (I added way too much) and then I used the tiniest amount of vanilla extract (also not right). Honey made it too sweet. Even with the cranberries and walnuts, it seemed like gruel. Did it need a small amount of fat? A more elaborate array of spices?

My cookbook collection is relatively diverse, and I can often figure out rather quickly which book(s) to reach for when I need help. When the CSA gave me too much kale, I went to Moosewood and Mollie Katzen. When I needed a red velvet cake recipe for Princess Hazelnut's birthday, I had no doubt Southern Living would treat us right. And when someone gifted me a beautiful bag of rye flour, and when I ran into difficulty with a box of steel-cut oats, I went straight to Good to the Grain, a veritable treasure trove of whole-grain perfection.

And I wasn't disappointed. The index took me to a recipe for Steel-Cut Oatmeal, and right there, in the head notes at the top of the page was the instruction to toast the oats before cooking them. Well, of course {slaps forehead}. As Kim Boyce, the goddess of all things whole grain, states in the recipe, "...these oats are much more flavorful if you give them a quick toast in the pan before longer cooking. This brings out their natural sweet nuttiness and gives bite to the oats."

Good grief. What a revelation. The difference was profound, and now I'm hooked on steel-cut oats. The texture is so much more interesting than that of rolled oats, and the flavor is richer, nuttier, rounder.

I would be lost as a goose without these cookbooks.

*****

STEEL-CUT OATMEAL (serves 5)

In my house, I'm the only one who eats oatmeal. I make the full recipe on Monday morning each week, and refrigerate the leftovers, warming up a small bowl full each morning in the microwave (adding a little bit of water to keep it the right consistency), and then topping with the nuts. This would be terrific to make on the weekend so that you can warm it up in a hurry on rushed weekday mornings.

1 Tbs unsalted butter
1 cup steel-cut oats
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp kosher salt
4 cups water
1 cup whole, fresh cranberries
chopped walnuts
honey, to taste

In a 2 quart pot, melt the butter over medium heat.
Add the oats, the cinnamon and the salt, and cook for about 5 minutes, stirring very often.
Add the water and the cranberries, and adjust the heat to low. Simmer, uncovered, for about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Top with chopped walnuts, and a drizzle of honey. Serve hot.

Homemade Vanilla Extract

2012-01-08T15:26:00.002-05:00

Random Acts of Consumer Anarchy continue to occur around here, and they show no signs of abating (there are still so many more things I want to learn how to make myself - castile soap, I'm looking at you). In light of recent events though, maybe I should call this The Occupy Your Shopping List Project. The point is, after all, to whittle down the shopping list, to participate just a little less in the consumerist machine, to spend less money; to consume less, and to create more.

To date, the items we have removed from our shopping list include shampoo, baking powder, dishwasher detergent, laundry detergent, facial cleanser, body lotion, hot pepper sauce (recipe one and recipe two), play dough, glass cleaner, and now vanilla extract.

The vanilla extract is a biggie. Have you looked carefully at the cost of a good-quality organic pure vanilla extract? Pricey, I say. The less expensive brands of vanilla extract, even the ones that claim to be pure vanilla extract, often contain dubious ingredients, and even then, the cost per ounce is relatively high.

And I use A LOT of vanilla extract. Those tiny little bottles never lasted long around here, so I started looking into ordering an 8-oz bottle online. {Enter sticker shock}. Then I looked into making my own, and, well, eureka.

Making your own vanilla extract is really quite simple - just a matter of stuffing some split vanilla beans into a bottle of vodka and then letting it steep for two months. So, sure, the first batch takes a wee bit of patience, but you can make giant containers worth at a time, or you can make smaller batches, and always keep another batch going in a dark cupboard.

The price savings are intense, and the quality is excellent. So far, I have used vodka for my extract, since that was what I saw recommended most often in the recipe sites that I consulted for my initial batch, but I am curious about the difference when using bourbon. Next time, for sure...

*****

HOMEMADE VANILLA EXTRACT

When purchased in bulk, you can find organic vanilla beans for around $1/each right now. A year ago, when I made my first batch, I found organic vanilla beans in bulk for about half that price. My first batch came in at about $0.50/ounce, and my most recent batch was more expensive, at about $1.00/ounce (still a bargain compared to $2.00/ounce for the commercial organic vanilla extract).

750 ml bottle of vodka
12 vanilla beans

Remove about 1/2 cup of vodka from the bottle. What you do with it is totally up to you. I don't want to know. Unless you make a vodka sauce for pasta, and then I want your recipe.
Using a sharp knife, split the beans lengthwise along one entire side of the bean (this is to expose the pulp inside).
Stuff the vanilla beans into the bottle of vodka. Close tightly and shake.
Store the bottle in a dark pantry or cupboard for two months, shaking it weekly.
After two months, when the liquor has been fully infused, pour some of the extract into a smaller bottle (for ease of use), and stuff one or two of the beans into the smaller bottle as well. Use as you would commercial extract.

*****

This post was also featured on Frugally Sustainable and Natural Mothers Network.

Abhyanga and the Normal Girl

2012-01-07T19:20:00.000-05:00

In September, everything got a little unbalanced around here. We had just returned to our homeschooling lessons after a solid two months off for summer break, and at the same time, I picked up two big new clients. We went from the hot, slow-moving days of summer into the busiest time for our household in years.

I was off-kilter, which quite frankly, meant all of us ended up off-balance. Dinners became rushed affairs, the most oft-heard phrase from my lips became "Mama needs to work now, sweetheart," my yoga practice fell by the wayside, and I began to feel uncomfortable in my own skin. I woke up tired every morning, my muscles felt tense and rigid, and meals left me bloated.

It was ridiculous. I know better than to let stress get such a leg up on me. And the pressure of my workload, while not quite avoidable, was something that I knew would pass. The extra work would smooth out once I became accustomed to each of the new clients, and the learning curve wouldn't last forever. There was, to be sure, no need to panic.

But panic, I did, at least at first. Too much had been added to the schedule at once, and I wasn't slowing down enough to see that I needed to pull back at least a little bit in order to practice some much-needed self-care.

Self-care is such a loaded term, isn't it? The modern lifestyle just isn't conducive to taking the time out of our busy schedules in order to tend to our own needs, and so many women feel guilty about even thinking of putting their personal needs on the list of Things That Are Important. It seems self-indulgent, self-centered.

To that, I say Hogwash. It is none of those things. You know how being kind to someone with whom you have a testy relationship ends up improving the situation? And you find that extending a little grace to a difficult person results in you liking them more?

Try extending a little of that same grace to yourself. Show yourself a little kindness. It just might improve that antagonistic relationship you have with your own body, your skin, your hair, your emotions, your health.

Late in September, just as I was on the verge of contacting a naturopath for help with the insomnia and the bloating and the general feeling of discomfort in my body, I happened upon an article in Yoga Journal about their 7-day Fall Detox, and, after breathing a sigh of relief, I decided to postpone my impending breakdown and see if participating in the cleanse would help.

Oh, my stars, how it did help. It was a gentle detox, nothing dangerous or even all that difficult. I ate kitchari at every meal, drank spiced teas, followed the prescribed yoga practices, eschewed caffeine and sugar, and got just a little bit more sleep than I had been getting. Very little else changed. My schedule, with it's homeschooling and work commitments, was not altered. But I felt better almost immediately. The bloating I had been experiencing after meals disappeared, as did three pounds of apparently unnecessary weight. The quality of my sleep improved. I remembered to breathe deeply.

Part of the benefit of the detox was simply the end-product of having paid more careful attention to myself for seven days, because while I still needed to cook other meals for the rest of my family, there was a ritualistic quality in eating the kitchari for 21 straight meals, in simmering the spiced teas, in reading the daily email that came during the detox, in consciously paying attention to my cravings and what I was putting into my body.

Interestingly though, the most long-lasting impact of the detox was that I learned about the benefits of abhyanga, the practice of massaging the entire body with warmed oil before bathing. For quite some time now, I have used jojoba oil to massage my face and scalp, but adding the ritual of whole-body self-massage with warm sesame oil was a revelation indeed. The Banyan Botanicals website has a much more comprehensive article about the practice, some of which may seem like so much hooey to you skeptical types, but it would be hard to deny that taking five minutes out of one's day to rub warm oil into our tired muscles and dry skin before bathing is going to be in our best interests. Even if it doesn't actually turn us into Wonder Woman.

The idea is relatively simple. You take organic sesame oil, and warm it up (in the microwave, in a pan on the stove, immersed in a sinkful of hot water, however you like). Then you pour a little bit into your hands, and you massage it into your skin, using circular strokes on the joints, and firm, long strokes on your limbs. Rub your ears, your scalp, your temples, your jaw. Press a little more deeply in the areas you carry tension, the back of your neck, the tops of your shoulders, the top of your spine, the backs of your calves.

You will not need to wash the oil off of your skin with soap in the shower. The water will take away the greasiness, and sesame oil has cleansing properties on it's own. It would be a shame to wash off the lovely moisturizing qualities of the oil with soap, wouldn't it? And I have found that by gently patting myself dry after the shower, enough of the oil remains that I no longer need to use commercial body lotions to lock in the moisture. This small gesture of kindness to myself has become as integral to my physical well-being as my yoga practice and the attention I pay to my meals.

It only takes a few minutes, but that precious tiny amount of time spent paying attention to yourself and how you feel will stay with you all through whatever the day may bring.

Such a Full Week

2012-01-06T21:35:00.001-05:00

Many years ago, I lived on the street parallel to this one. I have walked every inch of it, many times over, always marveling at the way the trees seem to meet each other overhead. Even in the winter, when there is only the architectural element of the bare branches, it is still beautiful to me. But, oh, you should see it in the summertime when the world is so green. The temperature is always five degrees cooler in the shade of those lovely trees.

When I am in town, you can bet I have arranged my route so that I still get to meander down the boulevard, driving just a little bit slower so that I can smile at the houses I still have a crush on. I drove down it yesterday. And back up it again today.

This week was a challenging one. There were moments when I remembered to stay myself, to focus for as long as I could on the feelings of now, to just breathe. But I also knew that there was a door closing with one of my beloved clients, and the uncertainty kept making me want to rush ahead, to get more quickly to the end of the week when there would be more answers, a little more clarity on the situation as it progressed.

I am not terribly good at staying in the moment when parts of my work are consuming my thoughts. But I am getting better. It is easier to be present when my tiny ballerina is clad in her pink leotard, when I am on a date with my little boy, when I am slowly coasting down my favorite street.

It is perfectly sensible to me to have a road for a touchstone. There is a window in my kitchen that plays the same role. When I happen to glance out, and my eye lights upon that one tree that is a little left of center, my breathing slows down, and I stand and just look for a moment.

A quiet weekend at home is just what the doctor ordered, I believe. For where one door has closed, two more are already beginning to open, and I have faith that things are going in just the direction they are meant to.

Another Day in Our Homeschool

2012-01-05T21:47:00.001-05:00

The Boy Wonder is in second grade this year, and nearly every day, as we go about the silliness of our learning time, and while we feel our way forward in this homeschooling journey, I think back to my own memories of second grade.

I know, right? What kind of freak remembers what they were doing in second grade? It was thirty-one years ago for me (oh, how is that possible?), but I recall it with the fondest of memories. Second grade was the final year of my childhood foray into alternative education, and it was all plain old public school for me after that amazing and ridiculous year in New Orleans.

If we could afford to send our children to a Waldorf school, or Montessori, or even a tiny private religious school, I doubt we would be going the homeschool route. I thrived in the Montessori environment as a very young child, and had just as much fun, and felt just as much at home, in the Free School that I attended for the first part of second grade. They were lovely places, full of music and art and adults (so many of them) who encouraged us to follow our interests and to be ourselves and to find ways to express our thoughts.

It was kind of exactly the opposite of what public, standardized schooling has become.

Oh, I know many children do very well, even thrive, in the institutional setting of public schools. I actually did just fine once I acclimated myself to The Way Things Were Done there. My youngest child would probably also be perfectly happy in regular school, though I think it is too early to tell just yet.

The Boy Wonder would not do quite as well, of that I am sure. He is a quirky, funny child, and he is rather intelligent, but his learning style is not conducive to a classroom in which he would be one of 25 or more children, and where he would need to sit still for many hours at a stretch. He loves to read, logging a few hours a day with his nose in a book, and he enjoys delving deep into historical time periods (ask him questions about the Black Plague sometime, he'll talk your ear off). Science experiments fascinate him, and math really clicks when the curriculum is heavy on manipulatives. He prefers to stand up during much of his learning time, moving around naturally as he feels the need. Busywork would frustrate him.

Most days, he spends an hour or two outside after lunch, climbing trees, catching lizards, playing with leaves, drawing in the dirt with a stick, dreaming up complicated role-playing games for himself and his sister. Seven hours cooped up in a school building, with the windows shut, sitting quietly just isn't in his wheelhouse.

That time outside, and the time spent hiding behind a book are when he seems to process what he has learned that day. Take away those two processing periods, and he is prone to irritability and emotional fits. Kind of like most boys are, actually.

Occasionally, he uses his afternoon free time to play chess with his pet lizard, Godzilla. He is not short on imagination.

So our homeschool revolves around the individual needs of The Boy Wonder for now, though I am adding in little bits of Princess Hazelnut School now that she has begun to demand her own learning time.

I do not think preschool is necessary, but I would never dream of staunching her desire to have her very own designated learning time. Thus our school day now begins with about 30 minutes on the sofa, snuggling together and reading folk tales and nursery rhymes, learning the sounds of letters, and singing songs. It is quite ridiculous really, this Princess Hazelnut Preschool, and completely hilarious, because The Boy Wonder takes it very seriously and tries to help his sister "do school right."

She does not want his help, of course. Not one little bit.

Worksheets are the bomb, she thinks, and so she gets to do a page or two of Developing The Early Learner. The Boy Wonder loathed that sort of thing when he was her age. They are such different children, these two.

We do our level best to get all of our lessons done before lunchtime, just as we did last year, leaving the afternoons free for pleasure reading, Lego building, and nature study. Once a week, The Boy Wonder attends a homeschool academy, where he takes classes in history, art, music, and drama; and once a month, he and his sister take a science class at our local nature center. On the days we have these outside lessons, we do not do any formal learning at home.

On the other four days of the week, we do morning school on our sofa and at the kitchen table. Our focus this year is on strengthening his language arts skills and on building a solid foundation in math, so we start with those subjects, always beginning with math and then spending time daily on spelling, grammar, narration and dictation, and copywork. Once these are done, we can spend as long as we want on history - this year, we are focusing on the Baroque Period - or on science, alternating days on these subjects for now.

Literature waits until bedtime, when I snuggle under the covers with both of the kids, and we read a chapter or two from whatever classic we are working our way through. I like to use this time for a book that is above The Boy Wonder's reading ability, and which has complex enough language to enrich his vocabulary and spark discussion of various concepts and ideas. Right now, we are reading Black Beauty, a story that I worried would not hold his interest, but which has fascinated him from the start. He is an odd duck, my little boy.

And we talk. We talk, talk, talk all day long, which, if you know me at all, is a bit of a challenge for someone who would much rather spend long periods of time sitting very, very quietly. But there are so many life skills to impart to these children, so many manners to nag them about, so many natural opportunities for learning to expose them to. And so little time. The Boy Wonder turns eight next month (or two, depending on how one chooses to treat the Leap Day birthday problem) and we are almost at the halfway point of our time together.

It goes so fast. Yesterday, he was still a fat little baby who refused to sleep at night, and who didn't walk until he was 18 months old because he stubbornly refused to put his feet flat on the floor.

Slow down, time, sloooooow down. I do not want these years to go too quickly.

The January Reading List

2012-01-04T22:16:00.000-05:00

Oh, January, January, why are you in such a hurry to prove you are in charge? The New Year began with such lovely, mild weather, but these past three days of waking up to temperatures in the twenties have been anything but a subtle introduction to winter.

Gently, my dear cozy month, gently.

It is hard to go anywhere when it is this cold, and it's just pointless to fight it. And so I think we will begin our snuggly, cozy month right now. Piles of afghans and soft throw blankets are scattered about the living room, and books are stacking up on every surface. It is, after all, impractical to spend the afternoon climbing trees in this weather.

Cozy corners, for all of us, are in order during a month such as this, I think.

Even Princess Hazelnut has a reading area tucked away in the living room, filled to the brim with thrifted, perfectly sized furniture and secondhand well-loved children's books. And while she can't actually read yet, she doesn't see why that silly fact should prevent her from snuggling up with a book the way the rest of the family does.

This will be a good month for it, I believe. For lots of reading. The Boy Wonder is waiting on the eighth book in the How to Train Your Dragon series to come in at the library, and has, in the meantime, dived headfirst into the first book of The Guardians of Ga'Hoole.

Princess Hazelnut has memorized Kitty's New Doll, so she opens it and reads it out loud two or fifteen times a day, doing her level best to emulate her big brother, asking for definitions of words she pretends not to know.

The Carnivore's end table is groaning under a tower of books on religion and politics - currently there are bookmarks in Francis Chan's Erasing Hell and Mark Rutland's Launch Out Into the Deep.

I am in the middle of Voluntary Simplicity by Duane Elgin, though I seem to have set it briefly aside while I savor every single wickedly funny moment of Stephen King's On Writing.

Yes, indeed. This is the cozy month.

Mugs of steaming hot coffee or tea, bouillon, or hot water with lemon. Creamy oatmeal for breakfast. Soups and casseroles for dinner. And every reason to spend all the moments we can here, at home.

The Most Important Thing on My List

2012-01-03T21:28:00.000-05:00

Sometimes, when the littlest, most attention-stealing Beam is busy at her ballet lesson, it is best to not use that time to get some quick errands done.

The groceries can wait, after all.

There are always things to accomplish. Library books to return, emails to answer, clients' crises to tend to, lists to be made, lesson plans to map out. Not a minute to waste, after all. Life is short.

We are so busy.

That 45-minute once-a-week ballet lesson is prime time, you know. There have been weeks when I rush to take Princess Hazelnut to her lesson, help her with her ballet shoes, kiss her before she goes into the studio, and then run to the library to pick up a hold, dash into the grocery store to get a week's worth of food, and sail through the post office to pick up stamps, and still been able to get back in time to watch the last 10 minutes of the lesson through the one-way window. She never even knows I left.

It makes me tired just to type that.

Most of the time, The Boy Wonder is at his Homeschool P.E. class during the same time the princess is at ballet, but he has one more week yet before the winter session begins.

Yes, the grocery shopping can wait.

Taking this oldest child of mine on a spur of the moment date to a local coffee shop is, in fact, the very best use of my time today. Stealing a few brief minutes together, just the two of us, to share two ridiculous-yummy cupcakes, is the very last thing he would have expected me to do this afternoon.

Which is why it was the best thing I've done all week.

Getting Started with Yoga

2012-01-02T13:22:00.001-05:00

I began practicing yoga about three (four?) years ago, and it has been a regular part of my life since that first encounter. Simply put, it has changed everything about my life. I am more flexible, more toned, more able to find a place of calm in my mind, and I breathe better when under stress. I also have made peace with my body, with the cellulite that remains, with the effects of aging and pregnancy and childbirth.

I like myself better when I regularly practice yoga.

Maybe this post title should be changed to "How to get in shape, be happier, conquer stress and mild anxiety/depression, and learn to love yourself. For real, right? But the thing is, I'm not exaggerating when I say those things.

Oh, sure. Yoga isn't for everyone. My mother gave it the old college try after listening to me extol the virtues of yoga, and she loathed it. I could nag her more, irritate her until she gives it another chance, but I have known her for a long time. Yoga really isn't for her. She doesn't want to move that slowly, and so she does heavy yard work instead, and takes long, fast walks to relieve stress and to get physical activity.

But I don't think it is out of the realm of possibility that a large percentage of the population would love yoga if they gave it a chance. I took a series of yoga classes through our county recreation department this fall, and the wide variety of participants was jaw-droppingly fabulous. There were grandmothers, women of all races, and even a man in his late forties. And that was just at a tiny town, rural recreation department.

Oh, I know that the pictures you see in magazines make it look like yoga classes are filled with perfectly toned, incredibly gorgeous women in their twenties. Don't be intimidated by the way magazines portray life. They twist reality by photoshopping already lovely women. They are out to sell advertising. They don't care how they make you feel about yourself.

Yoga isn't like that. Yoga teachers, at least the ones I have come into contact with (in person, in class, in print, and online), are loving in their approach, gentle in their instruction, and authentic in spirit. Some of them have perfect bodies, most do not. But they all have the most beautiful smiles you have ever seen. The focus on breath, on flowing movement, on control over your body, on getting to know yourself and your physical limits, all conspire to develop a self-acceptance that we could all benefit from.

If you have the time and the money to attend yoga classes, I highly recommend it, if only for a short time. The teacher will help you get into poses with the proper form, they will suggest variations where appropriate, and they will bring you into a state of ethereal relaxation at the end that will blow your mind.

But here, in the real world, it isn't always practical to attend classes. You can practice yoga in the comfort of your own home, with little to no expense. When I started my practice, I did so at home, using videos for beginners that I obtained from the library, online from Yoga Journal, and on cable from the fitness channel. I already had yoga pants and tank tops, because those are my usual lounging clothes, and I had an old exercise mat that wasn't even the recommended sticky kind.

You do not have to spend any money. Try it first, see if you like yoga (you will), and then decide if you want to sign up for classes, if you want to purchase videos, and if you need any props.

I purchased all my videos from Goodwill and yard sales.
My sticky mat came from a yard sale, as did my favorite pair of yoga pants.
There are 13 episodes of Namaste Yoga saved on my DVR from when it used to air on FitTV. Namaste Yoga, by the way, is excellent for beginniners. It is very gentle, thoroughly non-intimidating, and the instruction is sound.

All told, I might have $14 invested in my yoga practice. I spend about 30 minutes per day doing yoga, attempting to practice six times per week, not because I am militant about how often I think I should do it, but because I miss it so much on the days I slack off. My kids often participate for a couple minutes, and this morning, even The Carnivore joined in. Family yoga is hilarious.

There are a myriad of poses that I cannot get into, many that I am not even close to being ready to attempt. This isn't the sort of thing I beat myself up about. Yoga is referred to as a 'practice' for a reason. But I get stronger, and more flexible, all the time. There are poses that kicked my butt a few months ago, but that now I am able to ease into, and hold, for longer than I would have thought possible. The key is not to push yourself too hard, to not do anything you feel uncomfortable with.

When I feel anxious or stressed out about virtually anything, I practice yoga. When I feel sad, I practice yoga. When I am irritable and I feel sure that the sky is falling, I practice yoga. When I feel achy, or premenstrual, or just plain knotted up, I practice yoga. When I find myself whining or complaining, I practice yoga.

And in every single case, by the time I roll up my mat, I feel calmer, happier, and physically, mentally, and psychologically restored. It's a beautiful thing.

Meatless Mondays

2012-01-01T14:33:00.001-05:00

As a general rule, I do not give much credence to mainstream nutritional guidance. The comical USDA Food Pyramid, and the ludicrous influence of corporate lobbyists on what makes it into the USDA recommendations are an absurd introduction to nutrition, yet when I was a child, it was precisely their misinformation that we were taught in school.

And that was essentially all we were taught about food. Granted, I made the feminist mistake of avoiding home economics classes, and I suppose it is possible that something worthwhile is taught there in regards to sound nutritional practices, but somehow I doubt it. Schools are government institutions, the USDA is a government entity, and politics are always at play in those arenas. Have you read Marion Nestle's Food Politics? Oh, it's just disheartening. Why on earth do we listen to politicians about anything? Most especially about matters related to our own health?

The tide does appear to be turning in that more information is readily available these days. Besides Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser, who write some of the most thought-provoking and in-depth books and articles on food matters today, but who may never be able to reach the general processed food buying public, we now have Jamie Oliver hitting prime-time television with sensible advice and graphic reality checks about the typical American diet. There does appear to be hope on the horizon, though it remains to be seen whether anyone is actually putting this advice into practice.

Mark Bittman, from his platform at The New York Times, is widely respected and his gospel of eating less meat is, I'm sure, far more palatable to the average Joe than listening to vegetarians like myself spout on about permanently giving up red meat and chicken and pork. And here's the thing, I'm not out to convert anyone. Just as the vegan diet seems too strict to me (cheese and eggs are essential parts of my own diet), I am fully aware that many of my own choices strike others as equally austere.

All that is well and good, of course, because we are all different people and dogmatic nutritional advice shuts down the conversation before we can even all get a place at the table. So I hang out in here, in my own tiny corner of these here interwebz, and I post recipes that exclude ham hocks and sausage and that sort of thing. And you are free to add those ingredients back to my recipes as you see fit.

See, I feed a mixed-diet family. The Carnivore eats meat, though not much of it, and not often. He would probably eat more meat if I actually cooked it, but after eleven years of marriage, the whole omnivore-marries-vegetarian thing is mostly a non-issue for us. He eats meat at lunchtime, and maybe once a week he will cook a little bit of meat to go with the dinner that I have prepared. And because of this dynamic, our children just rarely eat meat at all.

The truth of the matter is that I don't really care if you eat meat or not. I do think that the average American eats too much meat, and not enough fruits, vegetables and whole grains, and I would very much like to see that balance shift a little, which is why I think Mark Bittman's advice is so good: eat less meat. There are so many ways to adapt that advice to take it in whatever direction suits you best. Do like Bittman, and don't eat meat for breakfast and lunch. Or make meat your side dish, and let the vegetables and grains take over the entree position on your plate. Just make one small change.

Enter Meatless Monday, a non-profit movement that attempts to make the reduction of meat a community affair. Sometimes it's just more fun to do things as part of a group, isn't it? I have followed the Meatless Monday conversation on Twitter for the past year or so, and I kind of think it's great. Recipes are shared, a sense of community is built, and, maybe best of all, you get the constant reminder of the pledge: to just go one day a week without meat, or even just one meal.

For so many years, since I was a child actually, the most common question I have received about vegetarianism is "What on earth do you eat?" From my perspective, it was an odd question, because really, I eat the same things as everyone else. I just skip the meat. I can go to a potluck dinner and have a plate bulging with wonderful foods, and I leave just as satisfied as everyone else. I can even eat dinner at your house, and you can cook the same meal you would make any night of the week. If you serve pot roast, corn on the cob, rice and a salad, I will fill my plate with corn, rice, and salad. Same foods, just bigger helpings of vegetables on my plate than on yours. And no pot roast for me, please.

But of course there is more to it than that. I am careful about getting adequate protein, and when I know I will be in a situation where there will likely only be meat-based sources of protein, then you can bet I have a Tiger's Milk bar hidden in my purse, or a sandwich bag full of mixed nuts. And since I am responsible for meals in a house where I am the lone vegetarian, I am conscious of crafting meals that will appeal to a more carnivorous type than myself, because where I would be perfectly content with a dinner of brown rice and roasted broccoli, The Carnivore would not consider that to be a complete meal. So I would serve a frittata as the entree, and put wild rice into the frittata, and serve the roasted broccoli as a side dish alongside.

Ditto with lentils. Instead of just making a lentil soup, which would be a full-on hearty meal for myself, I will serve it over rice, with cornbread as a go-with.

It is that sort of thing, that sense of having a complete meal without meat, that initiatives like Meatless Monday can help with, especially for someone who is just beginning to open the door on the whole idea of reducing their meat consumption. And I know you guys are out there, wanting to eat more of your meals without meat, but a little lost on how to do so.

Have you seen Eating Well's 28-day Vegetarian Meal Plan? Genius. Go through their menu ideas, and pick one that sounds like it's right up your family's alley. The complete meal is already listed there, along with the accompanying recipes.

Give it a try, if it sounds interesting to you. And ask questions, if you have them. Everyone knows at least one vegetarian, right? Or join the Meatless Monday conversation on Facebook, and get ideas and support from fellow members.

Following are just a few of the more popular meals in my own repertoire for feeding carnivorous types.

Baked Macaroni and Cheese, Crispy Roasted Broccoli, and a Salad
Black Bean Chili, Cornbread, and Tortilla Chips
Red Lentil Dal, Spicy Cornbread, Brown Rice
Frittata, Addictive Crispy, Flattened Roasted Potatoes, and Green Beans with Onion Vinaigrette

I would love to hear if you are joining Meatless Monday. Does your family even notice if there is one meal a week without meat?

The Rhythm of Our Family

2011-12-31T15:31:00.000-05:00

I have been thinking a lot about rhythms lately, about those tiny little habits in our schedules, the ways that we go about our days and weeks here at home. These years with young children can go by so fast, though the minutes often tick by more slowly than even seems possible. My fear has long been that we would fail to develop traditions of our own, in this great game of just getting through each individual day.

It is so easy, after all, to simply go through the motions, to waste our time mired down in the minutia of life, picking up groceries and making sure the bills are paid, trying in vain to conquer Mount Laundry, and yet finding there isn't enough time to squeeze in the things that really count. But, bedtime story doesn't have to be a chore to be ticked off at the end of the day - it can be a time to revel in the snuggles that will too soon be behind us. Holidays don't have to be only about the big events that we don't even want to be a part of - with the tiniest bit of planning and recognition, we can mark those seasons and those days before they rush on past us.

Amanda Soule writes one of my very favorite blogs, and I have long found inspiration in the way she and her family go slowly about their days, attempting to be fully present in each moment, living mindfully and intentionally. Each of her three books have spoken to me in turn, but this most recent book, The Rhythm of Family, is the first one that I have purchased, and have kept on my bedside table, reading it throughout the year to glean ways for my own family to find our very own rhythms.

Besides, routines work well for children. My kids prefer knowing what is happening each day, that we will do our lessons in the morning hours and then have the afternoons for playtime or errands, and they like the weekly schedule we have for going to the library, to church on Wednesdays and Sundays, to ballet, to PE and art lessons on Tuesdays and Thursdays; knowing that we will watch movies together on Sunday afternoons, and that we will find time to spend with our friends when we can.

They remember how we have celebrated various seasons and holidays and life events, no matter how silly or miniscule the ways we have developed to mark the passage of time.

We baked an apple cake for the autumnal equinox this past year, and I fully intend for that to be annual tradition. For the past three or four years, we have gone out for Happy Meals (I know, right?) on Christmas Eve and then eaten greasy french fries while driving around to look at Christmas lights. This year, we added the candlelight Christmas Eve service at church to our schedule, and that is something I would very much like to keep in our repertoire - it is one of my favorite memories of my own childhood, going to the candlelight service with my grandmother at her church in Virginia. And there are other events that we make sure to participate in every year, like corn mazes in October, our tiny town Christmas parade in the beginning of each December, going to a favorite Mexican restaurant for dinner following The Boy Wonder's end-of-the-year performance at his homeschool "school." Little traditions; small, happy habits.

Other of our rhythms need some tweaking though. I allow the children to each pick a cartoon to watch every morning, partly out of my own need to start the days slowly, and also because I am militant about the television being turned off for the rest of the day. But instead of using that time to read my Bible, to practice yoga, to cook a complex and leisurely breakfast, or even to take a shower and pull myself together, I have instead curled up on the sofa next to the kids and wiled away the time on Facebook or on reading blogs that I'm not even terribly interested in. It is wasted time, a 45-minute period that doesn't edify or relax, or do anything to set a positive tone for the day. It is just letting time pass. And that kind of makes me shudder.

This conscious effort I have made for the past six months or so to tend to our larger familial rhythms has been good for all of us. The children have benefited of course, but The Carnivore and I have possibly gained the most from it. He and I both have a tendency to forget about finding ways to make the days special, and if we didn't pay attention, holidays and even whole seasons would speed right on past us before we even noticed them. The simple fact is that most of the time, we would be content to live with our nose in a book. But neither of us wants to turn around one day and find that the kids are teenagers and that we are running out of time to spend all together as a family.

I want to extend this effort though, and that is my sole resolution for this New Year: to find ways to be just as present in the mundane moments as I have learned to be in the special, seasonal times. I want to be fully here, in this place, right now.

It isn't as lofty of a goal as it sounds, it is just the prosaic, ordinary moments that I am referring to, after all, but it is important enough to be my main focus for self-growth for the next twelve months. It takes a lot of focus and tight scheduling to get everything done around here, between homeschooling, running my little bookkeeping business, supporting The Carnivore in the running of his own company, keeping the household afloat with clean clothes and nutritious meals, and carving out deliberate time to tend to my own needs for physical activity, creative expression, and quiet time.

Guess which things are the first to fall by the wayside when the schedule gets out of whack?

Yeah, that needs to change. This week, while my workload has been lighter than usual, I have had the time to ensure a daily yoga practice, to carve out an hour for writing time each evening after dinner, and the effects on my well-being have been tremendous. In just a couple days though, we will jump back into our morning school time, and I will get much busier with work again. Then, the week after that, all of our outside-the-house activities return to our schedule, and if I am not careful, if I am not intentional about the way I spend my time, I will find the minutes gobbled up in ways that actually prevent us all from fully enjoying our days. And time will continue right on shooting past us while we just keep on keeping on.

That's no way to live.

Rather than trying some radical change to our entire schedule and way of life, and then failing miserably in the grand tradition of New Year's Resolutions, I plan to start small. For the past year, instead of coming up with a solution to the madness of my schedule, in which I am essentially running pell-mell from eight in the morning until nine at night, I have complained bitterly about how this tyrannical schedule has prevented me from practicing yoga as often as I like, and from writing during the hours when my brain is still fully operating.

So I shall start with the first part of the mornings. That is the biggest area of time that is dictated by habit rather than by rhythm, and so that is where I will begin. Yoga at 7:30 am, when I am already awake and generally just laying in bed or, worse, just sitting on the sofa with my nose in Twitter, will solve most of the problems of the entire day's schedule, I believe. Most days, I wait until after lunchtime to try to practice yoga, and it is terribly difficult for it to get done properly by that point, especially since either the kids are too noisy for me to focus, or we are in a giant hurry to get to ballet, or I am rushing to get started on the work that my clients have been emailing to me all morning.

The kids usually rise at eight o'clock, and by that time I will be finished with the thirty-minute daily practice that I prefer. While they then watch cartoons, I can drink coffee and wash my face, read the two or three blogs that I like to start my day with, and gather together the materials we will be using for the day's homeschool lessons.

And that is all for now. One little change at a time, I think. This one tiny tweak to the mornings will set the tone for the rest of the day for us all, thus allowing us to move easily into breakfast and our morning lessons, and then lunch. When I feel confident in this one change, when the early mornings have settled into a rhythm, I intend to inject a little creativity into our now-predictable breakfast repertoire. That, too, is a tiny change that I look forward to jumping into.

Picking resolutions that make us happy, that support our peace and the ease in our days, are resolutions worth keeping, I believe. Are there any new rhythms you wish to add to your family's days?

Black Bean and Corn Chilaquiles

2011-12-30T20:54:00.000-05:00

Does everyone love beans? I mean, really, truly, love and adore them? I get kind of excited about beans, you see, but I don't know if that should just be chalked up to my frugal, vegetarian upbringing - or the Hispanic majority in my mother's family - or if it is just another one of my quirks.

Roasted garbanzo beans make me giddy, and my favorite lunch of all time is nothing more than plain beans and brown rice, drizzled with olive oil and a little sprinkling of coarse sea salt. Given my druthers, I'd choose that simple meal over almost anything else at least 95% of the time.

Unless Golden Bowl is one of my choices. Then all bets are off.

Have you heard of Rancho Gordo's 'A Year of Beans' subscription program? It's completely out of our current price range, but it made me a little covetous. Can you imagine? Six pounds of incredible dried beans, delivered quarterly, along with a special treat and recipes? Am I the only one (besides my mother, that is) that thinks this is the greatest idea in the world?

I bought a pound of fresh field peas from one of the wonderfully sardonic farmers at our local farmer's market a few summers back, and then I went back the next weekend for another. And the weekend after that, too. Fresh beans are a revelation. It currently being the end of December though, I don't think I'll have any luck on that front for a while.

Plain old black beans found their way onto our dinner table tonight, old-fashioned, super-cheap, $0.99/pound, generic black beans. I love them, too. They may not be heirloom, organic, local, or special in any way, but they're the most affordable source of nutritious protein on the planet. And with the tiniest bit of planning ahead, the convenience can't be beat either.

Often, at the beginning of the week, I will put a big pan of beans on to cook while I'm going about the usual business of our day. A pound or two of beans will take a few hours of soaking, and another hour or so of cooking, but I have finally learned to then portion the cooked beans out into individual small canning jars and then pop them into the freezer so that I can pull them out one "can" at the time as needed for recipes.

They are much less expensive, lower in sodium, firmer-textured, and far more flavorful than the cans of beans available in the supermarket. Easy peasy.

Chilaquiles are one of those recipes that I lean on for simple dinners. It is rather a humble meal, but very tasty, and lots of fun to eat as a dip, scooped up with tortilla chips baked in the oven. This recipe is one I found in a back issue of Vegetarian Times, and I've made it countless times over the past few years, but it is so satisfying, and so very easy.

Also, The Carnivore (much as I hate to admit this) is able to cook a quick bit of sausage or other carnivorous substance to throw on top of his portion when he is going through one of his I'll-die-if-I-don't-get-animal-protein-RIGHT-NOW moods. {Silly man.} Though it is nice to have recipes like this, ones that please the vegetarian, but can be customized in a pinch to make the resident meat eater happy.

And the chips don't hurt the situation much. Have you ever taken corn tortillas, cut them into strips, tossed them with olive oil and salt, and then baked them in the oven for about 15 minutes? Friends, it's kind of mind-blowing. I recommend making about four times as many chips as you think you'll need. They have the oddest habit of disappearing as fast as one can pull them out of the oven.

*****

BLACK BEAN AND CORN CHILAQUILES (adapted from Vegetarian Times), serves 4 to 6

Note: You can buy small cans of chipotle chili peppers in adobo sauce in the Ethnic section of any major supermarket. Freeze any leftover peppers in an ice cube tray, with a little bit of the sauce in each cube, and then pop out the cubes and put them in a freezer bag for future use.

One small onion, cut into 8 wedges
2 lbs Roma tomatoes, halved
3 large cloves garlic, peeled
18 corn tortillas, cut into 1-inch wide strips
3 to 4 Tbs olive oil
2 chipotle chiles, with 1 Tbs adobo sauce
1 can black beans, rinsed & drained; or 1/2 cup dried black beans, cooked
2 cups corn kernels
1 small onion, diced
1 1/2 cups Mexican crumbling cheese, feta, or shredded Monterey Jack cheese (or whatever great melting cheese you happen to have around)
1 Tbs lime juice
cilantro leaves, for garnish
Sour cream, for serving

Place one small onion, cut into 8 wedges, the halved tomatoes, and the peeled garlic on a baking sheet, and cook in the oven at 400 degrees for 25 minutes.
At the same time, toss tortilla strips with oil and salt and arrange in single layers on baking sheets. Bake for about 15 minutes. Sprinkle with more salt as needed.
When roasted tomatoes, onions and garlic have cooled for a few minutes, put them in a food processor with the chipotles and adobo sauce, and about 1/2 tsp of salt. Puree until smooth, and add more salt as needed.
Spread thin layer of salsa in the bottom of a 1 1/2 quart baking dish. Top with a single layer of baked tortilla strips, and then add black beans, corn, diced onion, and cheese. Cover with more sauce, and bake 25 minutes, until bubbly.
Drizzle with lime juice, sprinkle with a little minced cilantro, and serve hot, with leftover sauce and baked tortilla chips. Top with sour cream.

Butternut Squash Puree

2011-12-29T19:16:00.002-05:00

If left to my own devices, I would probably eat butternut squash at every meal. I like it in soup (such a lovely color), I adore it baked, and, though I am the lone member of my household that feels this way, I think it is smashing when it is roasted in thin slices and laid atop a white pizza. And, oh, have you ever had butternut squash ravioli covered in a cream sauce?

Good night. So good, it's kind of ridiculous.

For unknown reasons, my fickle family is on an anti-butternut-squash bender right now, which attitude vexes me in myriad ways, but also allows for there to be more butternut squash for me.

I didn't want to share it anyway.

It wasn't always this way. There was a time when we would get it from our CSA, and when the CSA season was over, from our local market. At the time, The Boy Wonder would devour great heaping servings of it, straight from the oven, drizzled with a little olive oil and a tiny bit of salt. I thought that (1) I must be a great parent since my child was so open to trying new things, and (2) that my child must be that special sort who would always eat his vegetables.

Methinks I might have been wrong on both accounts. The new phase in the life of these heathen children is apparently one in which they will fight me tooth and nail on every single item I place on the kitchen table. But I will not concede this point easily. This fight is nowhere near over.

For now though, I alone eat butternut squash. And I'm okay with that, as long as everyone tries a bite of everything. Every night. All weeping aside.

Last night, with leftover frittata to serve for dinner, I searched the fridge and freezer looking for a vegetable to serve alongside. The only thing I could find was a tupperware full of cubed butternut squash in the freezer, and I came thisclose to calling The Carnivore and requesting a broccoli run on his way home from work, because honestly, pre-cubed and defrosted butternut squash does not lend well to many of the recipes I was running through in my mind.

Lately, given our current budgetary constraints, I have spent at least one week a month attempting to feed us from what we have on hand. This small challenge has done well for us financially, allowing that particular week to be one in which I stop at the store only for milk and coffee (and sometimes - cough, cough - for tortilla chips). This is one of those weeks, of course, and so far, so good, really.

We had Mozzarella-Stuffed Arancini tonight. Tomorrow, we shall have Chilaquiles, and, as I mentioned, we enjoyed a frittata for two nights - once with roasted potatoes on the side, and once with the butternut squash puree pictured above.

Before giving in to the temptation of falling on the grocery store as backup yesterday, I did what I usually do in a time of menu ennui. I reached for The Art of Simple Food, that fabulous Alice Waters book that would probably be my first recommendation to anyone wondering how to get started in the kitchen. As is often the case, I found just what I needed last night: a suggestion for a winter squash puree. There wasn't much to the little blurb in the book regarding this treatment. Just an idea for baking the squash, pureeing it, and then serving it with butter or oil, and a little salt. Simple, see. The whole luscious cookbook is like that. It is truly an essential part of my kitchen. Also, it is beautiful, which never hurts.

Since I was starting with frozen cubed squash, baking it seemed a messy, time-consuming idea, so I poured the cubes into a metal colander, set it over a pan with an inch of water, turned it to boil, covered the whole thing with a lid, and steamed it for about 15 minutes, until the squash was so tender it nearly fell apart when I poked it with a fork.

I dumped the whole lot of it into a food processor, added a couple pats of butter, a few pinches of salt and a couple grinds of black pepper, and then ran the processor until the squash was whipped and airy. And it was divine. Slightly vegetal in flavor, mellowed out and made a richer with butter, it was like mashed potatoes served in Wonderland. Creamy, without the starchiness of potatoes, beautiful in color, and so very flavorful.

Honestly, even the skeptical Carnivore ate more than I felt like sharing. It was truly a thing of beauty. I liked it just fine on its own, as an accompaniment to the frittata, and I may or may not have eaten two giant bowls full of it, but I have big plans for this recipe now.

Remember that butternut squash ravioli I mentioned above? My, my, my. It would only take a few more minutes to roll out a few sheets of pasta dough, and to cut it into squares and put tiny spoonfuls of this filling in the middle, to lay another square on top, and to press them together into luscious little pillows. Yes, I am certain that will be coming soon.

*****

BUTTERNUT SQUASH PUREE (adapted from The Art of Simple Food), serves 4 as a side dish

1 large or 2 small-ish butternut squash
Butter, approximately 2 Tbs
Salt & pepper, to taste

Peel the squash, cut it in half, and scoop out and discard the seeds and stringy bits. Cut into cubes, and steam, covered, for about 20 minutes, until very tender.
Or, alternately, leave on the peel, cut the squash in half, scoop out and discard the seeds and stringy bits. Place cut side down on an oiled baking sheet, and bake at 350 degrees for 30 to 45 minutes, or until very tender. Cool slightly, and then scoop the flesh from the peel.
Put steamed cubes (or baked flesh) into the bowl of a food processor, add a pinch or two of salt and a few grinds of black pepper, along with one tablespoon of unsalted butter, and puree until whipped and airy.
Taste, and add more butter and salt as needed.
Serve hot, or use as filling in ravioli.

Eat well. Be swell.

2011-12-28T19:14:00.000-05:00

The week between Christmas and New Year's is such a sacred time. Not in any sort of holy sense, of course, because really, the twelve days of Christmas should begin on December 14 and culminate on December 25, shouldn't they? There is absolutely no need to hear people on social media declaring this the fourth day of Christmas.

Christmas is over. I thought we were all in agreement on that point.

I have declared this a homeschool holiday week, freeing up so much time in my day that I have been able to appease my clients before dinnertime, squeeze in some bliss with my yoga mat before lunchtime, and find more time with my camera, and with words, throughout these slower-paced days.

The extra time to linger on the sofa with a cup of coffee (or four) in the morning infuses the rest of the day with a sense of time stretching out before us. And these children that we are raising take their cues from us, don't they? When the adults are moving too quickly, rushing to tick items from the to-do list, the kids feel it. In the absolute worst of ways. Unless I force myself to draw back a little, to find a way to calm rising emotions, behaviors spiral out of control, and we all end up edgy and uncomfortable.

Yesterday, I played music all afternoon, the sounds of Sarah McLachlan's soft, moody voice giving the house a restful vibe that carried over into a leisurely evening. Oh, to remember these little touches on the bad days. To know that the smallest turn of my own attention can bring everyone back to a place of ease. Even Princess Hazelnut was able to hone in on this tiny tactic this morning when she picked up on my own edginess and said, "Mama, maybe you should do yoga."

She was right. I found my breath slowing and deepening as I unrolled my mat. We anchor each other, this little family of mine.

Inhale. Exhale.

And so the day moved. Slowly. Purposefully. With time to join an old friend for lunch, to catch up on lives and spouses and mutual friends and jobs and stories of where we now live, time to watch him interact so easily with my own children. It is one of the greatest and yet the strangest of feelings to join our old lives with our current ones, to see these friends from different phases of our youth in the same space of time in which we are now parents. The Boy Wonder picks my brain for days after time spent with my old friends, his seven years on this planet not quite enough to properly comprehend relationships that span decades, despite a thousand miles or more of geographic distance.

That is, I think, one of the great lessons we can share with our children. That we are all woven together with those whom we have befriended throughout our lives. That time and space do not sever these connections.

And so we drove slowly home, going ever-so-slightly out of our way to travel down my favorite road in town, and I returned back to my desk, to see what I could get done while the kids played happily outside. The Carnivore came home early, looking askance at me as he casually deposited a book into my hand on his way through my office.

A cookbook. One that I had been coveting since months before it's autumn release. One that I had been just maybe the tiniest bit grumpy to not find under the tree earlier this week.

Somehow, knowing that The Carnivore stopped by the author's house today to get it signed make it just that much more magical, I think. Yes, this is a sacred week.

Eat well. Be swell.

Indeed.

Early Winter Daybook: December 27

2011-12-27T19:21:00.000-05:00

Time begins to slow down now. The busyness of Christmas is over, the shortest day of the year is behind us, and the weather here will turn mostly cold for the next four weeks or so. It is almost a shock to the system to realize my present-wrapping, stocking-filling, gift-baking, activity-planning detailed to-do list is no longer in control of my days.

Today, as The Carnivore returned to work early in the morning (after taking - ahem - one whole day off), I looked with disgust at the Christmas Tree from Hell, the one which dropped copious amounts of needles every day, and whose lower branches had begun to droop dismally towards the floor. I tried to ignore it at first. I took a shower, practiced yoga, followed up on some loose ends with a few clients, all the while thinking what a chore it would be to put Christmas away.

But then it wasn't. A chore, I mean. Christmas cards were unceremoniously tossed into the recycling bin, garlands and lights were wound back up, ornaments were packed carefully away, my childhood folk art creche was swept off the mantle and back into it's bag, and the tree was dragged out the door and tossed off the porch with zero fanfare, to be dragged into the woods on a less wet afternoon. It took longer to sweep the pine needles off the floor than it did to put Christmas back into a box for next year.

And just like that, I reclaimed this corner of my living room. The side table was brought back from its hallway exile, the loveseat slid back over into its rightful place, and we were ready for a new month, a new season in our family's rhythm.

It reminded me of the Christmas morning some 15 or so years ago, when I arrived late to my mother's house, only to find two of my brothers heading out the door with the already-bare Christmas tree balanced between them. "It's not even lunchtime yet," I cried. "Christmas was over a few hours ago," my mother answered flatly, looking up from her seed catalogs and her springtime planning list only long enough to hand me a highlighter so that I could circle the pepper plants I wanted her to grow.

January is just around the corner, and it is one of the only months of the year in which we do not have well-defined traditions to follow. There are no immediate family birthdays, or large holidays, no vacations. It is special that way. As the weather turns colder, the children will spend less time outside in the afternoons. The bikes will be put away. The sandbox toys will be tossed into a pile on the porch.

We will hunker down in our own little way. The curtains which are left open for ten months of the year will be closed against the chill, providing a small extra layer of insulation against the cold that seeps through our antique extra-thin windows. I will leave a trail of teacups behind me on every flat surface in the house as I try to warm myself with hot herbal teas. The children will snuggle together on the sofa, The Boy Wonder reading books about dragons as fast as he can get his hands on them, Princess Hazelnut sticking her own nose into books, trying her best to follow the lead of her brother. And her mother. And her father. Books are everywhere in our house, in our lives, in our hearts.

So much time is spent gearing up for the holiday season. I plan to spend twice as much time winding back down.

French Toast Casserole

2011-12-25T16:15:00.001-05:00

Oh, friends. I think I might finally be getting the hang of this whole Christmas thing. And while I'm sure no one will be very impressed by this - I am getting dangerously close to 40, after all, and this is my eighth Christmas as a parent - it is a monumental feat, nonetheless. See, I was raised by a Christmas heretic, so it's a wonder I can handle this holiday at all, much less without medication, and truth be told, I'm just not terribly good at traditions, at being fully present for entire holiday seasons, or at spending money unnecessarily. Which character faults pretty much preclude any sort of Yuletide success.

But I persevered, I'm telling you. For the sake of the kids (there are two of them now).

Our Christmas tree still looks a little bit like Charlie Brown decorated it, and even though I'll probably be sent straight to hell for saying it, I remain steadfastly in the Christmas-crafts-are-stupid-wastes-of-my-time camp, so, well, there is clearly some room for improvement here.

BUT...

I actually did do a few things right this year. Using a warped piece of foam board for a backing, a stack of sticky notes (so that I could change the activities to suit our schedule), and an old classroom bulletin board calendar set, I created an advent calendar of Christmas activities following the examples of much more talented ladies on Pinterest (mine looks NOTHING like the one in the picture on the link). The kids loved it. I may have gotten even more of it out it than they did though, because the daily attention to this seemingly silly idea kept me fully aware of the Christmas season. Every single day - even if only to take a minute to listen to a Christmas song or to sip a cup of cocoa. It was, I have to admit, rather lovely.

Really.

There were other tiny achievements as well. Candies and baked goods were made for family members, sugar cookies were baked for Santa (using dinosaur cookie cutters and pink icing - hey, we're homeschoolers, what do you expect?), and we made a Christmas budget and stayed well within it.

I screwed up more than I got right, of course. The number of times I played the I'm-calling-Santa card and made Princess Hazelnut cry and scream with fear is more than a little embarrassing, and, like I do every year, I ran out of sugar before I finished all my baking. I still couldn't get it together to send out Christmas cards. And then there was the matter of my sugar cookies tasting truly crappy after an entire day devoted to baking and decorating of said craptastic treats.

But let's not get hung up on the details, mm-kay?

When it was all said and done, this morning was my sort of perfect Christmas. We had a simple kind of celebration, with stockings for the kids, a very small number of well-chosen presents per person, no plans to leave the house, and lots of time to sit around in our pajamas and play with new toys, watch Christmas movies, and just be together.

Our big meal for the day was a late breakfast of Creamy, Dreamy Cheddar Grits (you would be shocked to hear how often we eat this particular recipe) and French Toast Casserole. God bless the French Toast Casserole, right? I had zero intention of standing at the stove this morning, flipping individual slices of toast in the skillet and missing out on the present-opening fun, and I was so grateful when I made this recipe a few weeks ago and the whole family enjoyed it.

My first attempt at french toast casserole was a few months prior, and it was a dud. A soggy, gooey, tasteless dud. The concept was appealing though, and I kept running across new recipes and hearing others rave about their favorite versions, so it stayed at the front of my mind for recipes to be on the lookout for.

This particular one - the one I made a few weeks ago, and that I subsequently baked again this morning - turned out just the way I wanted, crispy on top, eggy on the bottom, and soggy in the middle. Made with a dense cranberry-walnut bread, the bread cubes held their shape nicely, and baking it in a shallow dish allowed for more surface area to crisp up from the cinnamon-sugar topping. The wider dish also allowed for more control over how much of the casserole would get soggy, and the caramelization from the cinnamon sugar gave such a glorious toothsome texture to the top.

I kind of love it, you see, and The Boy Wonder, who eats like a bird, ended up devouring two giant platefuls. Such a perfect recipe, the sort of thing that can make a weekend morning feel special, the kind of special treat that goes hand in hand with lazy, happy holidays.

Oh, it isn't healthy. Not at all. So don't worry about that yet. December is a time of excess, a month in which sugar for breakfast is perfectly acceptable, and let's face it, nothing of any consequence is going to get done for the next week anyway. Let's keep the intemperance going for now. We can reconvene here in January, and talk then about cleanses, and anti-inflammatory diets, and the swearing off of processed foods. Until then, my friends, let the decadence continue.

*****

FRENCH TOAST CASSEROLE, adapted from allrecipes.com (serves 6)

Use the densest bread you can find. Most supermarket delis carry a breakfast bread, like cranberry-walnut, that will work wonderfully. I made mine in my bread machine, and left it out overnight to get stale and crusty. Stale is good in this case, and will help the bread cubes to hold together firmly.

5 cups bread cubes (approximately 1 to 2-inches square), from a very dense breakfast bread
4 eggs
1 1/2 cups milk
1/4 cup sugar (brown, white, or raw), divided
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 Tbs butter
1 tsp ground cinnamon

Lightly butter an 8x10 (or slightly larger) casserole dish, and pour bread cubes into pan. Go ahead and let the bread cubes sit unevenly in the pan. There is no need to press them down and make them behave.
In a large bowl, beat together the eggs, milk, 2 Tablespoons of the sugar, salt and vanilla.
Pour egg mixture over bread, attempting to saturate most of the pieces of bread.
Cut the butter into tiny pieces and dot them over the top of the casserole.
In a small bowl, stir together the remaining 2 Tablespoons of sugar with the cinnamon, and sprinkle over the top of the casserole.
Bake at 350 degrees for 45 to 55 minutes, until top is golden.
Serve warm, topped with maple syrup.

Dark Chocolate Pistachio Bark

2011-11-20T15:54:00.000-05:00

Life has been busy and messy and full and exhausing and exhilirating and, well, a little bit hilarious around here lately.

I wouldn't change a thing.

Um, except that I desperately wish that there was such a thing as cleaning fairies. And laundry elves. And it would be awesome if the kids could learn their manners without me having to turn into the poster child for nagging. And I wish I had more pistachios in the pantry so that I could make another batch of this bark.

I have a soft spot for pistachios anyway, but a recipe that includes dark chocolate, pistaschios, and sea salt is nothing short of genie-style wish-granting. I saw a picture of this in Whole Living last month, and I flagged the page, but then the unfinished magazine found itself buried unceremoniously within a disorganized pile of other reading materials, and then I got behind on some work, and the dishes needed to be done, and Princess Hazelnut started taking ballet lessons, and we got busy with field trips and science projects and, well, the sad truth is I just forgot about it.

That's right. I forgot about a recipe for Dark Chocolate Pistachio Bark. I hardly recognize myself.

Lately though, we seem to be getting better settled into the current rhythm of our life. My new clients have become more familiar to me now, and I have reached some sort of truce with the household duties as to what is crucial (clean underwear) and what should be tolerated (popcorn and roasted garbanzos for dinner, anyone?).

Priorities are key, you understand, and by relaxing some of my more obsessive-compulsive standards, time was freed up last week for making a batch of this Dark Chocolate Pistachio Bark after the kids had finally, blessedly, gone to sleep. Trust me, all manner of shoddy housekeeping can be overlooked when this sort of obscene deliciousness is at your fingertips. The recipe only takes about 10 minutes to pull together, roughly the same amount of time you could spend, say, sweeping your living room or folding and putting away a load of clothes.

You tell me which will have the biggest impact on your happiness.

Since there are only three ingredients used, the beauty is in the purity and simplicity of the finished product. The richness of the chocolate, the texture of the individual flakes of sea salt, and the flavor of the nuts are all there is. And they are all you need to achieve a new standard of decadence. There is no added fat and no added sweetener to muddy the waters or to mask the individual flavors, and, if you look at it just right, that small detail makes it almost healthy.

You're welcome.

*****

DARK CHOCOLATE PISTACHIO BARK (adapted from Whole Living, serves 6 if you're lucky)

8 oz high-quality dark chocolate (70% cacao), melted
1/4 cup shelled pistachios, chopped (or whatever nut you prefer)
1/4 tsp coarse sea salt

Line an 8-inch pan with parchment or wax paper.
Pour melted chocolate into pan, and smooth with a spatula.
Sprinkled with pistachios and sea salt.
Chill in fridge until completely set, about 30 minutes.
Peel off paper, and break into pieces.

The Beautiful Imperfection

2011-06-19T15:13:00.001-04:00

It wasn't until I became a mother, and failed so miserably at achieving Standards of Perfection that I found myself fully able to accept myself as I am. The standards were mostly my own making, but they also came from the parenting magazines I pored over so studiously during pregnancy and from the usual societal pressures that we are all susceptible to.

See, one of the great glories of parenting is the honesty of the mirror that is reflected back at you by your own children. One's babies are nothing if not the ultimate members of the Hypocrisy Police, and I love them for that.

I am not perfect. I knew that already (though I didn't want to admit it) and you knew it too (though you were too nice to point it out), but the salient point is that both of my children are going to find out someday that they, too, are not perfect (even though I think they are), and when that happens, I want them to know that they are exactly as they should be.

Striving to be better at, well, anything is a valid goal; aiming to be perfect is not. Wanting to be perfect sets us up for a lifetime of insecurities and crushing disappointments, and most insidiously, it gets in the way of appreciating who we are, in all of our glorious and beautiful imperfections.

Your soulmate does not love you because your skin is perfect; he/she loves you because of your charming quirks. Your parents are not proud of you because you have the perfect job; they are proud of you because you found something you were good at and you started your own tiny business. Your friends do not come to your house because your living room is spotless and well-appointed; they come over because they want to sit on your dusty, squeaky porch swing and pass a little time chatting, laughing, and sometimes crying.

I get farther from perfect, and closer to the me I want to be, with every passing day. There is dog hair all over my living room rug, my cheeks are pock-marked with scars, there is cellulite on the back of my thighs, and I am pretty sure that we are going to have to slash our budget again before this month is over. But I have a stack of used books on my nightstand that I look forward to reading, an educational plan for next year's homeschooling that we are all kind of excited about, two secure and happy children, and a regular yoga practice that keeps me strong and toned.

These days, my idea of a perfect day is rife with imperfections. It does not include a perfect house, perfect hair, a perfect body, a perfect marriage, or perfect children. My perfect day would be full of laughter and love with friends and family, moments of goofiness and learning with the children, time spent reading and practicing yoga, successful completion of a project that will help a client's business run more smoothly, and time not wasted in self-criticism.

There is no need to measure ourselves against the lives portrayed in magazines, in television and in movies. The people that we are right now, and that we want to become, are interesting and lovely and imperfect, and therefore beautiful.

Ode to a Dress

2011-04-24T15:30:00.000-04:00

Sometime during the summer of 1997, shortly after I returned from a nearly spur of the moment trip to Venezuela, and not long before I accidentally fell in love with the man I would end up marrying, I spent a sweaty, slow-moving Sunday afternoon at the J&J Flea Market where I stumbled across a vintage homemade lace-covered dress in the oddest shade of lemon-lime-green(ish).

It was love at first sight, though the ladies who sold it to me refused to budge on their price, and I ended up paying somewhere close to $25 for the dress, if I remember correctly. A few months later, those same ladies gouged me out of $30 for a vintage hand-tooled red leather trench coat. For many years, I referred to them as The Sharks for the amount of money they managed to talk me out of, but since I still wear both items 14 years later, and the cost-per-wearing is somewhere close to the negative numbers now, I might be close to letting go of this grudge...

The dress gets trotted out every Easter, almost without fail (save for the year I was toting around a 6-week-old nursling along with an extra 20 pounds of post-pregnancy blubber), and there is a certain amount of remembering exactly Who I Am when I wear that dress, one of the few items of clothing that has accompanied me to so many places, for so long, to weddings and parties, to graduations and to church; from being single to married to becoming a mother. It has lasted through hair that has been pink, red, brown and blonde; hair that was cut into a pixie, and hair that is now nearly to my waist.

Sometimes the world just turns too fast, you know, and it is necessary to find a way to slow down the spin for a moment, to be the person you are right now, and still be the person you have always been.

{There is, of course, a little bit of consumer anarchy in wearing the same dress every single Easter, a holiday in which marketers have done such a spectacular job of convincing women and girls that they need an entire new outfit every year. Such an absurd and insidious concept.}

I am always elated to zip myself into that lovely time-machine dress, to dig around in the closet to pick out the shoes I will wear with it this year, to feel the heaviness of the fabric and the sturdiness of the construction, and to twirl around in front of the mirror, feeling like a princess.

A princess in a slightly too-large-in-the-bodice, beginning-to-fade, chartreuse lace dress, who is thumbing her nose at consumerism, but a princess nonetheless.

Sugar Body Scrub

2011-03-28T22:24:00.001-04:00

Small acts of consumer anarchy have increased in frequency around here lately; in direct correlation, as a matter of fact, to the element of financial necessity. Which reasoning may take some of the fun out of it, really - because it isn't much of a stretch to resort to homemade items when one's budget demands that sort of thing.

But still. A little fire under one's hindquarters can be a good thing in the ultimate name of Getting Something Accomplished.

And taking care of business, we are. In the past month alone, spurred on by minor (and some not-so-minor) financial setbacks, I have gotten back in the habit of hanging clothes outside to dry (thanks to the glorious change in the weather), gone an eight day stretch without spending a dime on anything (other than household utility usage), found countless ways to make do or to do without when it comes to menu planning, baked fresh bread no less than five times, and most importantly at the moment, learned the joys of homemade sugar body scrubs.

'Joy' may not be a strong enough word. 'Glee' has been co-opted (and capitalized). I'm going to have to work on my descriptives...

You know how lovely it feels when you've taken a few minutes to pamper yourself? And how rarely you actually do it because you (a) don't seem to have the time, (b) resent spending a handful of cash on an obviously over-priced body care product that is (c) filled with all manner of sulfates and parabens and other bizarre and unnecessary "ingredients," and (d) who wants another tub/jar/bottle of anything else in their bathrooms?

It is that lovely feeling that I am trying to recapture, and I think I've found a way around all those other pesky roadblocks to loveliness.

There is one major rule I have been following in my quest to consume less: avoid single-purpose consumables. There is just no need to buy shampoo, carpet/rug cleaning powder, scouring powder, odor eliminators, toilet bowl cleaner, facial masks, and heaven knows how many other products, when one giant box of negligible-cost baking soda will take care of all these things handily.

Similarly, I can avoid buying sandwich bread, pasta, baguettes, and numerous other items by making use of a bag of flour and, in the process, be more intentional and mindful in time spent kneading dough, rolling out pasta, and filling the house with the incomparable smell of freshly-baked bread.

But back to that afore-mentioned sugar scrub, yes? Oh, I wouldn't have really gone out and bought a body scrub (though I have nothing against buying a loofah), but it was high time, I decided, to do something that felt a bit decadent, and this scrub is nothing if not luxurious and guilty-pleasure resembling. And I could make it with items I already had on hand, multi-purpose items like sugar (hello, second most necessary product on our shopping list), olive oil, honey, and essential oil (which I use to scent cleaning products, vinegar hair rinse, failed experiments in homemade deodorant, and other tasks I can't bring to mind at the moment).

The recipe was one I ran across in a recent issue of Whole Living, and was so simple as to not even register at first. I think I ran right past the page without a second glance, but then I remembered Sarah H. mentioning that she had made a sugar scrub that was (and I paraphrase here) life-altering. I flipped back to the page and set the recipe aside for future inspiration and, as I am wont to do, promptly forgot about it for a while.

Then the day came when I needed a pick-me-up. I craved a guilty pleasure moment, something I could do to center myself in the midst of chaos, just a few minutes of pampering. You know the sort of something I mean, right? I wasn't looking for a weekend yoga retreat in Arizona (though that would be nice - don't get me wrong) or even a girls' night out (though that also, of course, would be *nice*).

So I pulled out that little recipe and, in less than two minutes, had a homemade sugar scrub tucked away in the shower for, ahem, such a time as I might find to actually luxuriate in a shower. Without the children. Especially that slightly annoying three-year-old that never misses a chance to shed her clothes and play in water.

I scented the scrub with a mixture of sweet orange and grapefruit essential oils, because I'm still finding myself tangled loosely in those murky end-of-winter doldrums, and nothing works quite as well as the smell of citrus to help slow my breathing and bring an unexpected sense of brightness.

And, oh, the scrub turned out to be pure loveliness in a jar. It is such a simple thing and yet so richly layered in its ability to transform: to transform a mundane moment into a guilty pleasure moment; to transform minor depressive feelings into a tiny puff of light and joy; and to transform the body physically, of course.

The sugar exfoliates as well as any other product I have used, better even than using a loofah, and the oil clings so well to the skin as to make after-bath moisturizing unnecessary (goodbye plastic bottle of lotion with too many unpronounceable ingredients). The Carnivore and I have both been using the scrub for a few weeks now, and I find I like it even better as time passes and the coarser grains of sugar mellow out a bit in their rough edges. Even better, as the sugar is used and excess oil is left in the jar, more sugar can be added and stirred in so that there is never any waste at the bottom. And a little goes a long way. It only take a couple teaspoons to do my whole body, and with only a brief pat down with a towel when I get out of the shower, the lightly-scented oil stays on my skin, leaving a silky soft feeling behind.

I am a little bit in love with this, you see. And I think you will be, too.

*****

SUGAR BODY SCRUB (adapted from Whole Living magazine)

1 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup light olive oil
1 tsp honey
5 to 10 drops essential oils, or 2 tsp fresh citrus zest

Stir until well-mixed. Store in a jar or other canister.

On the Vernal Equinox

2011-03-20T17:32:00.000-04:00

The lettuce got planted this week, and just like that, I started to wake up from the long-running winter lull that had taken over in its usual and truly oppressive fashion. I opened the pantry door, and noticed the jar of homemade vanilla extract that I started back at the end of December, and that will be ready in another week or so. And then I walked outside to hang the laundry out to dry (reason enough to appreciate the change of seasons) and I saw the buds starting to burst out on the wisteria vines.

We can finally breathe a sigh of relief. Winter is over.

Crafty projects are beginning again, which means hits and misses are everywhere. An attempt to make my own sugar body scrub turned out beautifully earlier this week, and I find myself craving time to take a shower so I can slough off a little more of the winter dullness and revel further in the glorious silkiness that the oils leave on my skin. Two different recipes for baguettes - God bless crusty, chewy bread - turned out mostly decently but still need more practice. This afternoon's frozen mocha drink recipe reminded me that Frappuccinos are just too sweet and all I really wanted was a big steaming mug of hot, black coffee anyway.

The idea is to try new things, not for every new thing to be exquisite.

My list for this Spring keeps growing, in the best of ways, and I hope to keep this momentum going before the midsummer heat sets in and everything begins to slow down again - including my sluggish extreme-temperature-sensitive brain.

And so, a few short hours before the Equinox, while the temperatures are temperate, and on a day when the hours of daylight will perfectly balance the hours of nighttime, I plan the projects for this welcome new season.

It is my own brand of bucket list, you see, only much less grand in scope, and far more achievable.

Spring is a time of gentle new beginnings, and so is my list:

Learn how to bake a perfect baguette (at least once)
Make my own liquid dishwashing soap, for hand-washing purposes (the Dishwasher soap recipe is still working beautifully)
Make my own laundry detergent
Rig up a pulley clothesline system from the back stoop
Attempt proper succession planting to extend the luscious and lovely salad greens season
Read Love Wins and come to my own conclusions regarding eternal torment
Hold Crane Pose for longer than 2.4 seconds (without falling on my nose again)
Craft a family mission statement that all four of us can get on board with (without rolling our eyes)
And most importantly, accept that this season may come to an end before all of the items on this list have been successfully crossed off

Happy Equinox, my friends.

Intentional Faith

2011-02-27T13:50:00.000-05:00

It is the ongoing quest to live more intentionally that led to my minor obsession with food. After all, if I were going to cook dinner every day, I knew I must fully embrace the task in order to rise above the inevitable drudgery that would accompany such a potentially mundane chore. And it worked. My virtual immersion in food politics and cooking science elevated the whole kit and kaboodle to a height by which I felt less like the housewife I had become than the hobbyist I would rather view myself as.

Finding enjoyment and purpose in the daily humdrum becomes an end in itself at a certain point, turning what could drag me down into a full source of satisfaction in the minutia of the everyday. It also, I have found, means that I tend to question everything. Every. Little. Bitty. Thing.

Intentional living, as I see it, nay, as I try to live it, is a mash-up of my twisted brand of consumer anarchism and my own little way of deriving meaning and joy from the moments of day-to-day life that don't, ummm, feed my soul, if you know what I mean.

So I've gone all zen on the chores. Mopping as practice in meditation. Grocery shopping as an exercise in ethical consumption. The putting away of laundry as a means of providing order and harmony.

Where it all begins to fall apart though is when I suddenly realize I've found beauty in housework, but have managed to turn the rituals of my spiritual life into a mere habit of going through the motions.

Oh, the irony.

When we all slept later than planned this morning, and when I realized I simply did not have it in me to fight the good fight to get us all to church, my first instinct was to push through it anyway, to yell until everyone pulled it together, to force the whole thing, because going to church on Sunday morning is what we do, by golly. And then it began to dawn on me how utterly absurd that was. What was my concern exactly? That we would miss worship? That we would not have the rejuvenating experience of focusing on God? Or that we weren't doing what we were supposed to do?

At the point at which I have figured out how to clean intentionally, to cook intentionally, and to sometimes even, ahem, parent intentionally, and yet I do not go to church intentionally, I think I might be missing the whole stinking point.

This isn't a revelation that just came upon me of a sudden this morning, of course. It is something that has been building for some time now, and which led me to recently step down from a volunteer position that I have held at church for the past five years, because if the focus is to be on God, then my intentions have fallen far short. I do not wish for church to be something that I just do. What I most desire is to further experience, and extend, grace.

We did stay home this morning, lounging about in our pajamas, drinking coffee, and snuggling with the kids. And amazingly, not because we did not go to church, but despite it, I found that elusive missing intentionality in the glory of a pure Springtime day, in the singing of the birds that have been quiet for so long, and in the peace of a few stolen moments in thankful prayer.

Roasted Chickpeas

2011-01-30T18:24:00.001-05:00

I feel like a pusher, bringing this highly addictive snack out to share, but since I'm crazy late to the Roasted Chickpea Adoration Party, I think I can fall back on the easy "everyone else was doing it" defense.

Recipes for these crunchy, salty little munchers were everywhere a year or so ago, but at the time I was suffering from garbanzo overload. And I was a little skeptical that they were really All That. It is one of my neuroses, you see, that if everyone likes something, I stand back and steadfastly refuse to take a gander of my own. It makes no sense, I know, and that is why I refer to it as a 'neurosis,' you see.

If everyone likes something, especially if that everyone includes a fair cross-section of different tastes, then one would generally, and rightly, assume that what you have here is a fair bet. But it doesn't work that way for me. Even if, say, when I finally get on board, I end up agreeing with the masses. Every single time.

This was the case with Forrest Gump, Hey Ya, Eat, Pray, Love (the book, not the movie), Glee, and flat boots.

The kiss of death is widespread approval. File under: Neurotic Tendencies of Sarah #736.

The thing is, though, I had to know that I would get on the chickpea roasting train at some point, just as I finally saw Forrest Gump and laughed and cried and loved it so much it hurt. And how I eventually streamed Hey Ya, which remains wedged firmly in my head and which still makes me want to get up and dance anytime I hear it...

Yesterday, after not having given a spare thought to roasting beans in many months, I ran across a recipe while I was, ahem, reading magazines for free in those comfortable chairs at the bookstore, and I came straight home, grabbed some cooked chickpeas from the freezer, and commenced to searching the internet for spice combinations and techniques.

I felt silly. What exactly is it that I think I am accomplishing by not jumping on bandwagons until they have passed me by?

Silly or not, though, I needed a salty snack, and I have finally resumed my yoga practice after a long, stress-filled hiatus, so said salty snack needed to be healthy, but was required to still have that addictive quality that makes Mrs. Vickie's chips so dangerous. Roasted chickpeas fit the bill. And I knew without a doubt that they would fit that bill because everyone and their mother posted a variation on the recipe six or seven seasons back.

It was quite amazing though, what happened to the beans. Even after reading so much about how they morph into super-crunchy little balls of flavor, I was still dumbfounded when it actually happened. I went with the dry-roasting technique recommended by The Kitchn, and toasted my spices in a dry skillet for a bit before mixing the spices with olive oil, and it was all super easy and angst-free (except for this public admission of how hopelessly behind-the-times I am).

I tried not to eat too many when they were done, but it was a lost cause from the get-go. You know how opening up a box of Thin Mints to get a cookie or two always ends in disaster? Same goes here (save for the not-so-small feature that there are no trans fats to contend with in this particular situation). I ate them straight out of the oven, I snacked on them while I finished making dinner, I had another handful while washing dishes, and then I upended the leftover container into my mouth before lunch today.

Crazy good. (Just like everyone said they were).

*****

ROASTED CHICKPEAS (makes about 3 cups)

3 cups cooked chickpeas (or 2 cans chickpeas, rinsed and drained)
2 Tbs olive oil
1 Tbs coarse sea salt
4-ish tsp mixed herbs and spices (I used one tsp each of cinnamon, cumin, chipotle powder, and smoked paprika - for other ideas, see the blogroll on The Kitchn)

Pat chickpeas dry with a clean kitchen towel, and spread on a jelly-roll pan (or other heavy cookie sheet).
Bake in a 400 degree oven (or 325 degrees, if using convection) for about 40 minutes, stirring at least every 10 minutes, until beans have turned a deep golden brown and are dry and crunchy. Take care not to let them burn.
While beans are in the oven, toast the spices in a dry skillet over medium-low heat for just a minute or two, stirring often, until warm and fragrant. Remove spices from heat, and add the olive oil, stirring to combine.
When beans are done cooking, toss them immediately with the spiced oil, and then sprinkle with the sea salt. Taste, and add more oil and salt if desired.
Serve immediately. Leftovers can be stored in a tightly-closed container, but they lose just a wee bit of their crunchiness.

A Day in Our Homeschool

2011-01-12T19:14:00.001-05:00

While obsessively watching the list of school closings during our recent Snowmageddon, I saw there was a daycare or preschool or some such young child corral called the Love Bug Learning Center.

I wish I had thought of it first. It would be the perfect name for our home school. I'm kind of tempted to co-opt it anyway, and to print up a sign and post it above our kitchen table (where much of our learning time is spent).

When The Boy Wonder was four-and-a-half years old, we began to think of ourselves as a homeschooling family. We had long known that we would not be sending him to Pre-K, though a big emphasis is placed on the pre-kindergarten year in Georgia, where the lottery has been used to fund a public Pre-K program that now means most children enter full-day schooling at age four, and so I chose that year as a beginning point for our homeschool journey.

I started small, very small really, and used that first year to carve out an hour or two every day in which we sat together and did crafts, sang songs, and read poems and folk tales together during Princess Hazelnut's nap. It was a precious time, just for the two of us, and though I stuck pretty closely to the Sonlight P4/5 book list and referred to this as "Learning Time," it was very easy-going and snuggle-filled. We also joined a local homeschooling co-op that year, and met some other families and gingerly felt our way along.

For kindergarten, we used much of the Sonlight kindergarten curriculum, and expanded our Learning Time to two-to-three hours per day. Things got a big dicier that year, as I at first tried to force some of the materials even when they stressed out The Boy Wonder, but we found an easier rhythm as I gained confidence and learned to take cues from my son. We added a weekly homeschool P.E. class to our schedule, along with a weekly homeschool academy that offers drama, art, music and history; took advantage of classes for home schoolers at the Nature Center and the Botanical Gardens, and joined with other local groups on various field trips.

This year is First Grade for The Boy Wonder, and though there are still days when I threaten to enroll him in public school (because sometimes I think we have all lost our mind, and if we haven't yet, homeschooling will surely cause us to do so), we have finally settled into what seems to be a comfortable and lovely pattern to our days:

8am Both of my children tend to sleep until 7:30 or 8:00, and it takes us a little while to pull ourselves together, so we start our day with a cartoon while we all snuggle on the sofa and I get some time to sip coffee, check the calendar and my to-do list, and generally get all of my neurons firing.

9am The kids and I gather at the table for a hot breakfast and spend some time chatting about nonsense and about the day to come. We do not rush. My children will not be rushed. It can be maddening, but I am letting them teach me the value of intentional living.

10am - noon We do the bulk of our Learning Time during these morning hours, while Princess Hazelnut (our resident temperamental three-year-old) either sits at the table drawing & coloring, causing general chaos, or participating as she sees fit. I start by reading a Bible story from one of our children's Bible storybooks or a devotion from Adventures in Odyssey, and then we spend a few minutes on a memory verse and reciting our phone number and address. We follow this with Science (Sonlight) and then with a few minutes of math (usually a worksheet from education.com or from Comprehensive Curriculum). Then we spend about an hour on Spelling, Reading and Handwriting, using a mixture of Sonlight, Comprehensive Curriculum, and good old-fashioned creative expression. Reading is really clicking now with The Boy Wonder after more than a few fitful starts and tearful meltdowns (from both mom & child), and I feel we are finally getting to have fun with Language Arts.

Noon We push the Learning Materials out of the way and eat a long, leisurely lunch. Sometimes we talk more about something we learned during the morning, or some new topic that The Boy Wonder wants to learn more about, or we plan out our afternoon.

1pm Our afternoons vary. On Tuesdays, The Boy Wonder goes to P.E. for an hour, and then we go play with our friends until dinnertime (this is as much for me as it is for them). Thursday afternoons are spent at Master's Academy, where he has drama, music, art and history (on those days, we do not do morning Learning Time). Friday afternoons are spent at a local gymnastics center where the kids learn Spanish and Sign Language, and get plenty of time to jump around on the equipment, followed by some quiet time at the library. On Mondays and Wednesdays, I try to let the kids lead the afternoons. We might do a science project or a craft, but just as often, the kids go off and play with Legos or walk around the yard or organize themselves into some other sort of mischief.

5pm We eat an early dinner together, usually by 5:00, and as this tends to be the only time of the day that all four of us are together, it can be fairly boisterous while we all try to talk about our day, and what we learned, and who we saw...

6pm - 7:30pm I head off to my home office to work while I can, and my husband spends time with the kids. The Boy Wonder generally spends another 15 minutes or so reading to my husband to strengthen his reading skills, and then Princess Hazelnut sits down with a stack of books she wants to have read to her, and then they all snuggle up on the sofa and watch a cartoon together.

7:30pm I take Princess Hazelnut and snuggle her down to sleep.

8pm The Boy Wonder and I snuggle up in bed for storytime. Right now I am reading The Chronicles of Narnia to him, and so we also spend some time defining new words and discussing our thoughts on the story. This, also, is as much for me as it is for him. Such a precious time.

9pm Both kids are asleep. Finally, blessedly, asleep and quiet. Sometimes I have to return to my office to wrap up some work, but usually my husband and I read together on the sofa or watch a TV show after we get some time to decompress and talk.

Some days are frustrating, some are fulfilling, most are a combination of the two. And while it can be a challenge to juggle it all sometimes, it is at the end of the day that I can look with some perspective on all the learning and loving and living that was done throughout the long, busy day and can rest assured that, for now at least, we are doing exactly what we should be doing.

Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies

2011-01-09T14:23:00.000-05:00

I am thinking pretty seriously about changing the title of this blog to 'Recipes for a Postmodern Cookie.' Or, if tonight's epic snow event lives up to the great expectations of our weather forecasters, maybe I shall change it to 'Recipes for a Post-Apocalyptic Cookie.'

Only time will tell, really. Though I'm kind of leaning towards the former.

It is just that I like cookies, you see. My grandmother likes cookies. My children like cookies. We all like cookies.

And I make a lot of cookies. I use the old-fashioned Toll House recipe, or I bake Deep Dark Chocolate Cookies or White Chocolate, Strawberry and Oatmeal Cookies. When ingredients are low, I might bake the Easiest Peanut Butter Cookies In the World. And when I am trying in vain to take a photo of a cookie, I sometimes bake multiple batches of those lovely Hazelnut Espresso Cookies.

It is as if I had a problem.

This weekend, in preparation of our impending Snow Event of Mythic Proportions, I did what I always do in a time of crisis. I baked cookies. First, of course, I made sure we were stocked on firewood and candles and ground up coffee beans and other basic necessities.

Of course.

But for the sake of this conversation, the most important of all of my storm preparations was the baking of these cookies. I finally, finally and at long last, had gotten my hands on Good to the Grain, a cookbook I have a stalker-like crush on for an absurdly long time. Orangette wrote about it, as did 101 Cookbooks, The Wednesday Chef, and a handful of others. And I coveted it. A whole cookbook on baking with whole grains? With beautiful photos, raving reviews, and a long list of recipes I couldn't wait to try?

It was painful for me. My local libraries did not have a copy. It wasn't going to show up at yard sales anytime soon. Hints that were dropped around important holidays fell on obtuse ears. Used copies weren't showing up on Amazon. I practiced patience. Patience and long-suffering. You might think I would have attempted one of the recipes posted by other bloggers, but, in some sort of pique to further my separation from what I was sure would be the greatest cookbook of all time, I held out. I self-punish well, you see.

I held out for close to forever, and then I figured out how to put holds on books from anywhere within our library system, and after a few more weeks or so, I finally got the notice that The Idolized Cookbook was in. I may or may not have thrown my pajama-clad kids in the car so we could run to the library right away to pick it up. Fresh from some vague town in middle Georgia.

And while I had sort of hoped that there would only be one or two recipes that I wanted to try (as is so often the case for me), because then I could just make copies of them and forget about the cookbook altogether, right before I had to return the book to the library, I had no fewer than 20 bookmarks sticking up from the spine like so many crumpled petals on a flower.

I can think of more than one college textbook that had received less page-saving notations than this single book.

The wealth of Kim Boyce's knowledge regarding different grains and their individual quirks and flavors was nothing short of amazing. I didn't see any way I could survive without having Good to the Grain on my menu desk as a source of ongoing reference.

I gave in to temptation. I found a used copy and ordered it before returning the library copy. And I don't think I have ever been so happy to own a single cookbook.

But back to the cookies, yes? We cannot possibly survive Snowmageddon '11 without a fresh batch of cookies on hand, so I set to work. After hearing so much about her whole wheat chocolate chip cookie recipe, and the not-so-small fact that I already had whole-wheat flour on hand, this one was a no-brainer.

It seemed a bit like cheating, though, since I tend to be fairly die-hard about the Toll House recipe when it comes to chocolate chip cookies, and I had already doctored up that particular recipe with the substitution of whole-wheat pastry flour and dark chocolate chips. So truly, would this one be that different? And would it be worth the use of whole-wheat flour when it is common knowledge that nothing can kill a perfectly good baked good quite as easily as using 100% whole wheat flour?

It was, of course, that different and that good. Whole-wheat flour has a lovely taste, kind of a nutty taste really - not nutty in the odd sense, but in the tastes-like-a-nut sense, you understand - and these cookies fairly embody that flavor. They also, amazingly, make perfect use of the nubby texture, giving the cookies a sort of crackly, to-the-tooth bite that takes everything a good chocolate chip cookie should be, and makes it better.

The first bite, of a warm, oozy cookie straight from the oven was, in all honesty, a disappointment, and I was fully prepared to admit defeat on this recipe without holding it against Boyce, but then I followed Orangette's advice and waited until they cooled to try again.

And that was when I fell in love. They more than rock. See, there may be whole wheat flour in these cookies, but there is also a whole lot of sugar, some dark chocolate, a perfect amount of coarse salt, and two hypnotic sticks of luscious, God save us all, buttah. So what you end up with is a big cookie that is crisp on the outside, chewy on the inside, both salty and sweet, rich with butter, and bursting with the absolute best kind of whole wheat flavor.

Trust me on this. I am an expert on bad, brick-like whole-grain baked goods (I was a child of the seventies, after all) and I know of which I speak here when I say this is what I have always wanted in a cookie. Cross my heart. And this is not just because I was raised by hippies.

These cookies are the bomb. And when the world as we know it ends tonight during The Ice Storm of the Century, I can be relatively sure of our chances of survival since we will be well-stocked with a platter of cookies that are both sweet and, if you can overlook the sugar and the butter, are actually healthy, too.

Well, sort of healthy.

Actually, not really healthy at all, but they do have fiber. And that has to account for something.

*****

WHOLE WHEAT CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES, adapted from Kim Boyce (makes 20-40 cookies, depending on size, see note below)

Note: cookies made from about 1 Tbs (using a big rounded teaspoon) of dough make thin, wafer-like, very crispy cookies. Cookies made with about 3 Tbs of dough (using 1/4-cup measuring cup) yield large, crisp on the outside, chewy on the inside, more traditionally-textured cookies. I loved them both ways and can't pick a favorite.

3 cups whole wheat flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder (try making your own)
1 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp kosher salt
2 sticks unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
1 cup lightly packed brown sugar
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
8 oz bittersweet chocolate, roughly chopped into 1/4- to 1/2-inch pieces, or use bittersweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees, or 325 degrees if cooking with convection heat, and butter two baking sheets.
In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
In a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, mix the butter and sugar on low speed until blended, about two minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl.
Add eggs to bowl of stand mixer, one at a time, beating well after each addition.
In three or four batches, add the flour mixture to the wet mixture, mixing on low speed just until blended.
Add the chocolate, mixing on low speed, just until evenly combined.
Remove bowl from mixer, and use your hand to turn and gently massage the dough, making sure all the flour has been incorporated into the mix (especially that little dusty puddle that always gets stuck in the bottom of the mixing bowl).
Scoop mounds of dough onto the baking sheet (read note above about size - 1 to 3 Tbs-sized scoops).
Bake the cookies on the top and bottom racks of the oven, for about 16 to 20 minutes, rotating the sheet halfway through, until cookies are evenly browned.
Repeat with remaining dough, or refrigerate (or freeze) the remaining dough for later use.
Cool completely before eating. These taste best when fully cooled.

Consumer Anarchy: Dishwasher Soap Edition

2011-01-02T14:00:00.001-05:00

I have been drawn to a lot of minimalist blogs lately, not due to the minimalist aesthetic per se (my own decorating strategy leans more towards the Howard Finster school of thought), but because of the anti-consumerist tendencies that define the movement. Goals like the 100-Thing Challenge may go beyond the scope of what I'm aiming for with our little family, but the concept, along with that of Project 333 (which I am participating in), are fairly life-affirming in their affront to consumerism, especially in this recent season of general societal over-consumption.

For us, this has been the Year of the Dwindling Shopping List. Late last spring, the kids and I stopped using commercial shampoo and conditioner with rather lovely results, and that has provided much of the impetus for searching out other homemade alternatives to common products. Homemade deodorant was a dismal failure (painful rashes are deal-breakers), so it hasn't all been successes and fragrant roses around these parts, but we were easily able to replace toilet bowl cleaner, scouring powder, and glass cleaner with various solutions of vinegar and baking soda.

Long live vinegar and baking soda. By themselves, those two inexpensive, simple and safe items (which were already on our shopping list for food purposes) have eliminated five other products with complex lists of ingredients.

The items that cause me the most grief are the ones that are never questioned in their necessity. As with shampoo, there are countless other products that we all add to our shopping list without stopping to wonder whether or not there are alternatives. The latest item on the shopping list chopping block: dishwasher soap.

This one has long plagued me. I was thirty before I got my first (and thus far, only) dishwasher and there has been a learning curve. I realize most people have the ability to properly comprehend a dishwasher and it's accompanying decisions, but I've been a bit slow on the uptick. To wit, during The Great Drought a few years back, I was sure the dishwasher was using too much water and so I resorted to hand-washing dishes for a few days before someone set me straight and I subsequently did the research to find out that, in fact, the dishwasher is far more water-efficient than any hand-washing techniques will ever be.

I followed that particular conundrum with questions over which soap would be the safest for our septic field. See, out here in rural-ville, anything that goes down our drain ends up in the ground not far from our house. One must take a little ownership of one's own actions when one's own waste ends up in one's own yard, yes?

I tried a leading, high-cost, environmentally-named, low-impact dishwasher soap, but alas, found that I had spent a pretty penny on a product that did not actually get my dishes clean. 'Twas an expensive and grump-inducing lesson. Finally, I settled on a mass-market dishwasher soap that had a conscience-soothing greenwashing environmental word in it's name, and while it was affordable and phosphate-free and actually got the dishes clean, it still had a distinct, bleach-like odor, and I found that disconcerting at best.

Enter Crunchy Betty, a blog I stumbled upon while searching for bath product recipes. And took a gander at her free online recipe cards for everything from facial scrubs to - wait for it - homemade dishwasher detergent.

I heard angels singing. It hadn't even occurred to me that I could make my own dishwasher soap. And did you know you can do it with only three ingredients? One of which I keep on hand anyway (the castile soap, for bathing purposes) and the other two of which I had planned to buy for making my own laundry detergent (in another 10 years or so, when I somehow finish this 900-gallon sized laundry detergent that was gifted upon us a few millennia ago).

After a little more internet searching, I ran across a few fairly similar permutations of Crunchy Betty's recipe, and then, of course, I did a little experimenting on my own to see if I could simplify the recipe. I did simplify it, of course, by eliminating the fourth ingredient in her recipe (the essential oil), but found that the recipe does not work if the castile soap is skipped (as was done in many of the other recipes I ran across).

So the recipe ends up being a simple mixture of borax and washing soda, both easily found at any grocery store, and the castile soap that can be found at health food stores, most supermarkets, and very inexpensively at Trader Joe's. We have been washing our dishes with this concoction for about a month now, and I love it. Love/adore/covet it. The ingredients are safe for my yard, the only smell is the peppermint from the pure castile soap, the expense is virtually negligible in comparison to commercial dishwasher soap, and the dishes are clean. Super clean.

I have also learned a few useful tips in regards to the previously-flummoxing dishwasher machine. First, according to an appliance repair guy who blew my mind with this little tidbit, you need to make sure the water in the dishwasher is hot. Since dishwashers are so water-efficient, the water does not have time to heat up once the machine has been started, and so you often end up washing the dishes in barely warm water. To fix this, simply run the hot water tap in the kitchen sink until the water is hot, then turn off the tap and start the machine.

Also, the automatic heat-drying cycle on the machine is an energy-waster. Did you know you can turn off the heat-drying with the simple push of a button? Until I read the manual, um, seven years after I began using the machine, I had no idea. Now I turn off the heat drying and just leave the door open for a while after the machine is done and let the dishes air-dry.

Last, if your glasses tend to come out a bit cloudy (and if that actually bothers you), a bit of distilled white vinegar added to the rinse aid well (where it is dispensed slowly and is used for countless loads before being fully depleted), should solve this problem completely, without imparting any sort of vinegar smell.

I made a new batch of this soap today, and will be filing this recipe under Random Acts of Consumer Anarchy.

*****

HOMEMADE PEPPERMINT DISHWASHER DETERGENT (adapted from Crunchy Betty, makes enough for about 40 loads)

Note: borax is a naturally occurring mineral, and is non-toxic when used in recommended amounts, but it is officially classified as a poison and is also used as a "safe" pesticide, and thus should be kept out of reach of children. Washing soda is also naturally occurring and is non-toxic.

2 cups borax
2 cups washing soda
1 cup finely grated castile soap (such as Dr. Bronner's Peppermint Organic Bar Soap)

Mix ingredients in a heavy storage container with a tight-fitting lid.
Use scant 1/8-cup per load.

Peppermint Bark

2010-12-26T18:31:00.001-05:00

I hesitated to come in here with this, comically late with such an obvious Christmas treat, and especially after my long absence in this space, but since I am loathe to let this holiday end, here I am.

Late.

With a Christmas recipe.

Holidays this autumn were a bit sketchy, you see. Over the past three months, we have celebrated Princess Hazelnut's third birthday, our tenth wedding anniversary, and my own, um, (let's see, I was born in 1973...) 37th birthday, but there was also a funeral, a frightening and unexpected vacation in ICU for The Carnivore, and the general mayhem that goes along with such life-pausing events (a few of which happened concurrently).

So it was with great relief and pure delight that our Christmas was cozy, warm, simple, full of light and love, and devoid of illness and stress. There were handmade and secondhand gifts under the tree and homemade treats shared with family and friends. We did not travel, we did not shop at the mall, we did not spend very much money, and we enjoyed every easy, lovely minute of the season.

And there was snow. In Georgia! On Christmas!

But most importantly, there was Peppermint Bark.

This treat is new only to me, I suppose, since everyone I know seems to have heard of some permutation or another of bark candies, but it was a revelation to me. I had never had Peppermint Bark before, not in any form, and it rocked my world in the way that Pain au Chocolat does the first time one bites into it while walking down the street on a first visit to Paris, or the way, from what I hear, one feels when they skydive for the first time.

Not that I would ever jump out of a plane. For any reason.

This Peppermint Bark recipe came from a nearly-vintage issue of Bon Appetit, but found it's way to me via Orangette (even though I paid little attention at the time) and Soule Mama (who had to write about it two years in a row before I sat up and took notice). I might have even passed over it again, but I was on the lookout for a gift that would travel well through the mail, would not run counter to various dietary restrictions, and would not weigh much.

That's right. I was worried about shipping weight, but not about the weight the recipients might adorn themselves with after, ahem, scarfing down a few handfuls of decadence cut neatly into triangular shapes. It is Christmas, after all, or at least it was Christmas, and everyone knows you're supposed to go overboard in some way or another during the holiday season. And as I kept the spending under tight control, I felt the calories should have free rein to run amok.

I made two batches of this bark on the first attempt, something I am generally loathe to do, but this recipe came well-pedigreed, so even though peppermint is not usually my flavor of choice, I felt certain I could trust this would make a good gift (and that I would want a little extra to keep around for personal snacking purposes). As it was, the recipients should consider themselves lucky to have gotten any at all. It was truly that good. So good, in fact, that I am highly tempted to buy more ingredients for another batch when the world thaws out tomorrow.

Either that, or I will not have the self-control to avoid dipping into the two containers I am holding onto for the lame friends who were unable to get together to play last week.

This candy is what love would taste like if I were in charge of assigning specific flavors to emotions. Though white chocolate can be cloying at times, the layer of dark chocolate ganache in the center of the candy tempers the overall sweetness, and the level of mint flavor is spot-on. I kept the finished candy refrigerated, for textural reasons mostly (I prefer for my chocolate to not get too soft), and I loved the way the warmth of the mint played off the chilled chocolate.

The bark was not terribly difficult to make, despite the layering, the un-sanctioned use of candy thermometers and the awe-inspiring beauty of the finished product, so I feel a little silly that I was so intimidated by the recipe initially. The whole thing came together in the latter part of an afternoon, and with the exception of the mess that I made when crushing the peppermint candies, there was next-to-no hand-wringing involved.

Christmas may be officially over, but I do not intend to stop celebrating yet. More bark is coming, of that I can be certain.

*****

PEPPERMINT BARK (adapted from Bon Appetit), makes 36 pieces

17 oz good-quality white chocolate (make sure cocoa butter is in the ingredients), finely chopped
30 red-and-white striped hard peppermint candies (about 60 candies), coarsely crushed (ideally, there will be large and small pieces, and plenty of peppermint dust as well)
7 oz bittersweet chocolate, chopped
6 Tbs heavy cream
3/4 tsp pure peppermint extract

Turn large baking sheet upside down and cover with foil. Mark 12x9-inch rectangle on the foil (perfection not required).
Put white chocolate in double-boiler or in a heat-safe bowl set over saucepan of barely simmering water (bowl should not touch water in pan). Stir until chocolate is melted and smooth and candy thermometer registers about 110 degrees F.
Pour 2/3 cup melted white chocolate onto foil. Using offset spatula, spread chocolate to fill rectangle (imperfection at the edges should not be cause for alarm).
Sprinkle with 1/4 cup crushed peppermints.
Chill until set, about 15 minutes.
Stir bittersweet chocolate, cream and peppermint extract in heavy saucepan over medium-low heat until just melted and smooth. Cool for about 5 minutes, until barely lukewarm, and then pour it in long lines over the white chocolate. Quickly spread it in even layer over the white chocolate, and then chill until cold and firm, about 25 minutes.
Re-warm the remaining white chocolate to about 110 degrees F again. Quickly pour atop bittersweet chocolate layer and spread to cover (a little swirling will occur here and, again, panic is not necessary). Sprinkle with remaining crushed peppermints.
Chill just until firm, about 20 minutes.
Cut bark crosswise into 2-inch wide strips, and then remove foil (if you don't take it off now, it can be difficult to peel it off the individual pieces). Cut each strip crosswise into 3 sections, and then cut each piece diagonally into 2 triangles. If these directions seem constricting, feel free to cut in whatever fashion you prefer.

Project Food Blog

2010-09-19T17:22:00.000-04:00

The following post is an entry in the first challenge of Project Food Blog. My profile can be viewed here.

There have been moments recently in which I have found myself in a position to define myself, namely in the realm of food, and it has been simultaneously challenging and focus-sharpening. Difficult because I am not concise and I often contradict myself, but centering in that I have now had a chance to think a little more carefully about where I stand on the issue of food politics.

To wit: I have obsessed and run these things over in my head until I felt I could finally state my case.

Two weeks ago, while standing in line at Athens Locally Grown to pick up my market order, a young journalism student from The Red and Black approached me to ask some questions for an article she was writing on local food. If you know me well at all, then it should come as no surprise that I stared at her like a deer in the headlights and began to panic. I am socially challenged on a good day, and that fact, coupled with the knowledge that she would ask me questions like, "Why do you think it is important to buy locally-grown food," and knowing full well that I would be unable to express myself succinctly without writing my thoughts down first, were enough to put me in full freeze mode.

She took pity on me, in her blessed innocent inexperience, and said shyly, "You can say 'no' if you want," and I, with immense relief, finally exhaled and thanked her and sent her on her way.

This is Exhibit One on why I write rather than speak publicly.

It was on the drive home from the market that day, that I began to give more thought to my personal reasons for eating locally. A few years ago, my premise was entirely different from where I stand currently, and much resembled the tenets set out by Michael Pollan in The Omnivore's Dilemma and by Barbara Kingsolver in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, books that influenced me greatly in the decisions I now make regarding the food I purchase.

Like many others, I was disillusioned with industrialized agriculture, and by the environmental and public health effects of the mainstream food market, but was overwhelmed by the ethical decisions I seemed to face in every single food purchase from that point of awakening. Thankfully, my feelings have clarified a bit over time to where I am now able to state my case with a single bullet point.

My goal, in food purchasing, in gardening, in cooking, and in writing about food, is to educate my children on where food really comes from, and to instill a sense of pleasure in real food.

Vegetables do not come from Wal-Mart. Cakes and brownies do not come out a box with a picture of the finished product on the front. Beans and fruit and soups do not come out of cans, and salsa does not come from a bottle. Cookie dough is not unwrapped.

"Eggs" that can be purchased as a liquid in a cardboard milk carton are inessential. Chickens running around on a small farm, pecking and scratching at the ground, are not.

Milk comes from a cow, and butter, yogurt and cheese are made from milk. Flour is made from wheat, and that flour is used to make bread, brownies, cakes, and cookies. Farms are beautiful places, and farmers are some of the most intelligent and interesting people I have met.

Children should know the pleasure and the joy of going to the farm to pick up a box of vegetables and to pet the llamas and smell the flowers while we are there.

Children, I maintain, should know what a butternut squash looks like, should know the joy of eating blueberries straight from the bush, and should know that if mama has butter and flour and sugar on the counter, then something good is about to happen in the kitchen.

When Grandma brings us a bag of cucumbers from her garden, we can make our own pickles.

We can go into the front yard and pick blackberries in the morning, and have homemade jam by lunchtime.

I want my children to know that one goes to the store to buy ingredients, not meals. Dinner does not come from a box.

I want everyone to know this, and this is why I blog.

Homeschool Jungle Freaks

2010-08-29T21:42:00.000-04:00

For a time now, I have wanted to put into words the reason why our family has chosen to homeschool. It is a troublesome task though, developing a creed such as this one, because my reasons change daily.

On the first day of the local school year, my first grader slept in until 8:30 and finally straggled out to the living room in his underwear to watch a morning cartoon and then eat a leisurely breakfast. On that particular day, when I said my oft-repeated phrase, "This is why I homeschool," it was because I felt gratified that I could let The Boy Wonder have a relaxing morning instead of the stressful one we would have suffered through if he had needed to be at school, already fed and alert, at 7:30. I want to cuddle and play with him in the mornings, not yell at him to hurry up.

Last week, when we finished reading Charlotte's Web, I checked the movie out of the library, made buttered popcorn on the stove, and snuggled up with the kids amidst a pile of pillows on the living room floor to watch the movie and discuss the differences between the two mediums. On that day, THAT was why we were homeschoolers.

Friday evening, as we curled up at bedtime to read and then compare and contrast two very similar folk tales from Japan and Germany (Issun Boshi and Tom Thumb), and The Boy Wonder wanted to get out of bed to find the countries on the globe, THAT was why I was grateful to be homeschooling.

I homeschool because I do not see the benefit in a 6.5-hour school day when the state requires only 4.5 hours of instruction time. I teach my children at home, for now at least, because many of the curriculum standards that are adhered to in the early grammar school years are things mama is more than qualified to teach. We have chosen to do our learning at home, at the zoo, at the park, at the nature center, at the botanical gardens, in our kitchen, on the front porch, at church, and at art classes because I want to curate the curriculum according to my own peculiar child's individual interests, needs, strengths, and weaknesses.

I desire to teach my children a love of learning, an appreciation for the natural world, the hunger for knowledge and the ability to seek out the answers to their many questions. I hope to give them the time and the space to discover who they wish to become, and to give them the opportunities to acquire the skills they will need to get to where they wish to go.

Childhood is a time for play, for exploration, and for learning. Learning so much about so many things. If my six-year-old wants to immerse himself in everything to do with outer space, we can create unit studies to weave in math and handwriting and reading and crafts and creative thinking that revolve solely around outer space. When we are driving down the highway and we pass a horse trailer with a camel on board, we can come home and spend the afternoon on the computer finding out as many ridiculous camel facts as we wish to know. We can learn anything we want, and we can spend as much time as we want on any given subject without having to adhere to a constrictive, arbitrary schedule.

And childhood is short. So very short. If the weather is beautiful and there are frogs sitting on the lily pads in our pond, handwriting practice can wait. If math worksheets have grown tedious and sitting at a table is becoming torturous for all of us, taking a walk or a bike ride is an option we have. If no one has had enough sleep and grouchiness is making the beginning reader feel frustrated enough to cry, an impromptu trip to the library to pick out storybooks for mama to read aloud can be the best solution.

We can take a Tuesday off from school to make ice cream and play with Legos. We can do lessons in our pajamas. We can spend six days in a row on nothing but science experiments.

We are fortunate to have this opportunity, and we intend to make the best of it.

When it comes down to it though, my reasons for homeschooling are stated nowhere near as articulately and as eloquently as in the now-viral graduation speech from the valedictorian of Coxsackle-Athens High School. And during those times, those all-too frequent times, in which I think this whole homeschooling thing just might kill me, I read that speech again and remind myself that I felt much the same way as I completed a senior year that could have been better spent pretty much anywhere other than within the four walls that held me hostage while I finished one remaining real high school credit amongst a padded schedule of mostly pointless electives that filled up the extra required time needed of a student who had already fulfilled all the other college-prep requirements. And I recall clearly how absurd it seemed when I achieved honor graduate status after a year of goofing off and showing up only when I was sure I would get busted if I were not there.

Simply put, my goals for my children are not the same as the goals of the American public education system. I have no need to normalize my children, to create middle-management worker bees, or to uphold the societal status quo. And that, I think, is the most compelling reason I can think of to homeschool my children for as long as we are able.

The Pesky Trees

2010-08-21T21:01:00.000-04:00

Lately, I haven't been able to see the forest for the trees. All the little things begin to pile up, and then the feeling of being overwhelmed entrenches itself firmly, and then, finally, I go to pour another cup of coffee, but find the carafe is empty, and the thought of having one more thing to do, of having to do nothing more than make another pot of coffee, is enough to make me want to curl up in a ball and watch bad television.

And the fact that making more coffee will probably take only a minute or two is So Not The Point. Because truly, since I became a parent, nothing gets done in the amount of time specified in the sense of normal reality. I will have to stop what I am doing because the 2-year-old needs to use the potty and we all must run pell-mell towards the bathroom together so that the proper pomp and circumstance are paid to the occasion. Most likely, even after that has been dealt with, there is a better than average chance that a fight could break out between the 2-year-old and her brother on the way back to the kitchen. And if I open the coffee canister, almost certainly I will find that I need to grind more beans, which will involve opening up the dishwasher (which I have not yet emptied) to get out the grinder (which will still be wet and will need to be dried). But of course the kitchen towel won't be where I left it, or it will be crumpled in a heap on the floor, sticky with an indeterminate substance, so I will take the dirty towel to the laundry room where I will promptly notice that I need to hang out to dry the load that is festering in the washing machine. Before I can hang out that load though, I must bring in and fold the load that is already hanging outside, which is still wet because I forgot to bring it in before it rained...

And if I don't get another cup of coffee REALLY STINKING SOON, I might just lose it for good.

Then, as these sorts of things go, it all starts to come together finally. We finish The Boy Wonder's lessons for the day, the most urgent household tasks somehow get accomplished in a good enough fashion, dinner gets prepped, and the kids play quietly in another room while I sit, alone, with that blessed cup of coffee and a little blog reading.

It is there that I gain sight of the forest again. On Beauty Everday, I see this quietly glorious photograph, and I smile, and consider it for a few moments. Then I turn to look at that bouquet of zinnias from Farmer Boo that has begun to look rather dismal and which I had just been thinking of composting, and I stand on a chair and reach up high on top of the cabinets and pull down some of our vintage glass bottles, and I take apart the bouquet, and trim the stems of the flowers, and recreate the lovely image from my computer screen.

And all is again, indeed, quite well.

Green Beans with Onion Vinaigrette

2010-07-25T20:48:00.001-04:00

I fear there aren't that many green bean fanatics in the world, and that this post will serve as no more than a recipe archive for my own personal files, but this easy little recipe just has me so very excited. Seriously excited. I mean sure, they are just green beans, hardly the sexiest veggie in the world, but who can blame me? They are one of those ingredients that can only be enjoyed in season, before they get smushed up and muddled by any sort of freezing or canning sub-par method of preservation.

They just don't store well. I advocate freezing and canning where appropriate, and have gone a wee bit mad this past week with adventures and experiments in freezing pesto and salsa, roasting and freezing peppers, and canning Burn Sauce and pear preserves, but green beans just don't take to that sort of treatment.

It is with that knowledge that I go a little nuts about green beans every summer, when they can be found fresh-picked at the farmer's market and in the CSA box, crisp yet delicate, with pretty little curved tips and a sweet green scent. My favorite beans are always a bit on the slender side - the ones that cook the fastest and cry out for the least adornment, though a few of our regular recipes can tend towards the assertive side when additional flavors are added to the dishes (as with Italian Dijon Green Beans or Green Beans with Garlic and Shallots).

I prefer to cook the first ones of the season as lightly as possible, and I love, love, love to serve them a little chilled, if you can believe it, so it was with no small amount of glee that I clipped a recipe for Green Beans with Sweet Onion Vinaigrette from one of those sadly final issues of Gourmet magazine last summer.

And boy, do I miss that lovely, thoughtful magazine with the sensual photographs and real reporting and poignant stories that could bring a tear to the eye. A thousand and one curses on the heads of the decision-makers at Conde Nast.

Onions figure fairly heavily in our dishes, especially when Vidalias are in season, and this recipe just sounded so utterly perfect for the sweltering heat wave we have been mired in so thickly for the past few weeks. The flavors are supremely evocative of summer, and the idea of a cold side dish (now that salad greens have no chance of surviving our brutal temperatures and have long since left the garden) - well, it is just spot on, if you know what I mean.

These beans are nearly addictive, with the bright flavor of red wine vinegar and the simple but lively herbal quality of fresh flat-leaf parsley. I like these perfect, crisp little beans served alongside a cheesy, creamy omelette or frittata, but I imagine they would do just as well paired with spicy grilled fish (or meat, if you swing that way). Sweet onions lend a delicate piquancy to the dish, but I have used regular old white onions in a pinch and been just as happy with the finished balance of flavor.

*****

GREEN BEANS WITH ONION VINAIGRETTE (adapted from Gourmet, serves 8)

1 cup finely chopped sweet onion, such as Vidalia, or white onion
1 Tbs red-wine vinegar
1 Tbs whole-grain Dijon mustard
2 1/2 lbs green beans, stem end trimmed
2 Tbs extra-virgin olive oil
1/3 cup finely chopped flat-leaf parsley
coarse salt & freshly-ground pepper

In a large serving bowl, stir together the onion, vinegar, mustard, 3/4 tsp salt, and 1/2 tsp pepper. Marinate for at least 10 minutes.
Cook beans in large pot of well-salted boiling water, uncovered, until crisp-tender, about 4 to 6 minutes, depending on size of beans.
Transfer beans to an ice bath to stop the cooking. Drain, and pat dry.
Whisk oil & parsley into the onion mixture, then add the beans and toss to coat.
Taste & adjust for salt.

From the Garden: Fresh Salsa

2010-07-18T21:10:00.001-04:00

Honestly, I feel as if I have been waiting an entire year for tomato season to arrive. And though I see the ever-so-slight absurdity of that statement, after making the first batch of fresh tomato sauce this past week, and then whipping up our first giant bowl of salsa today, it seemed as if it had been years since we had last feasted on these seasonal delicacies.

I know most people salivate over their first tomato sandwich, or even just their first sliced tomato of the summer, but we are a little weird in our tomato-loving ways. Neither I nor The Carnivore really get into fresh tomatoes on their own. I mean, we'll go utterly nutso over tomatoes in many dishes, but solo and unadorned? Not so much.

If I see quartered tomatoes in my salad at a restaurant, I generally push them to the side, though to be fair, those tomatoes tend to be out-of-season and therefore not really tomatoes at all, if you know what I mean. The same fate befalls tomato slices in my sandwich at a deli - unceremoniously pulled out and left forgotten on the plate.

But fresh salsa? Be still my beating heart.

We have tweaked our favorite recipe over the past few summers, finally settling on an entirely raw recipe that incorporates the tomato peel. The peel is incredibly nutritious, you see, and I was raised on a fairly strict waste-not, want-not philosophy so it distressed me to discard it, as is done for aesthetic reasons in so many recipes.

I also go pretty heavy on the onions and cilantro in our recipe, and add just enough jalapeno peppers (seeds and all) to give just enough heat to nearly bring a tear to your eye, but to stop short of actually making one cry. The flavor is quite lovely really, with a bit of salt and lime juice to brighten it all up. It tastes fresh, spicy, and best of all, very summery.

It is a fine line, I believe, to achieve that elusive balance of acidity, heat, and tang, but I have provided some loose generalizations in the following recipe because everyone's tolerance and balance is a little different. Now that we have found ours, I have sworn off any further tinkering. This is our favorite recipe, and it has been for a few summers now so I have taken an oath to Hereby Leave It Alone.

My dream is to fill a pantry shelf with jars of salsa come August some year, but since we have been known to dispose of an entire quart in just one day, I'm not getting my hopes up just yet.

*****

FRESH TOMATO SALSA (makes about 2 quarts)

2 lbs tomatoes, quartered (for chunkier texture, squeeze out and discard excess seeds and juice)
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground cayenne pepper
1 1/2 tsp coarse salt
3 jalapeno peppers, minced (for less heat, discard the seeds)
1 medium onion, diced
1 bunch cilantro, chopped, about 1 cup (or use less, to taste)
juice of 2 limes (use more or less, to taste)

Combine the tomatoes, garlic cloves, cumin, cayenne, salt, and jalapenos in a food processor, pulsing until desired texture is achieved. We prefer ours fairly thin, as you can see from the photo. If end result is too watery, strain out and discard a little of the liquid.
Stir in the onion, cilantro and lime juice. Taste and adjust for salt.

Homemade Hair Care Products

2010-07-10T11:34:00.003-04:00

I am totally uncomfortable with this post, mostly because it feels dangerously akin to my dispensing beauty advice.

If you know me well at all, you recognize how comical that would be. Especially since this post is about hair care, and for the most part, I walk around either with pigtails or looking like I styled my hair with a fork.

That said though, I have alluded more than once here recently to removing myself from the shampoo/conditioner/styling product machine, and I'm deriving such gratification from this tiny bit of consumer anarchy that I decided to suck it up, take a couple of photographs of my hair, and learn how to put this into my own words.

Disclaimer: this is not beauty advice. This is just a little more discord sown into your shopping list by the self-styled shopping list whittler.

The upshot is that commercially-produced shampoo and conditioner are unnecessary, and there is more than ample evidence that sulfates and silicone-derivatives are harmful. One Green Generation is, I believe, where I first read (in recent, less-hippie years, that is) about the baking soda and vinegar hair care revolution, and from there I followed links all over the internet, more than a little surprised at how mainstream the concept had become.

I was skeptical about trying it myself. Vanity is a construct of letters fairly well ingrained in my vocabulary, and besides, I have long hair. Years ago, when my hair was short and platinum blonde, I went a year without using shampoo, and no one even noticed. With long hair though, and a lifestyle that is a little more socially-acceptable than it once was, along with family members who wrinkled their nose at me when I first suggested my interest in going no-poo, I went back and forth on this subject for months before trying it.

And I continued to buy crazy-cheap, relatively safe shampoos and conditioners from big box stores. If, after all, I had so little money invested in this anyway, and it wasn't that difficult to find sulfate-free shampoo even in mainstream stores, well, there just wasn't much impetus to change my ways.

But here's the rub for me: after way too many years in journalism- and business-school, where I concentrated heavily in classes in economics, marketing, advertising, public relations, management case studies, and the like, I recognize all too well that much of what we do in this current climate is a direct result of what we are told to do by Those In Charge. Essentially, advertising dictates what we buy, and our shopping lists are abysmally cumbersome.

To wit: we buy educations for three-, four-, and five-year-olds, because it has been ingrained that others will do a better job than we will at raising and teaching our own children. We buy clothes dryers because subdivision covenants disallow clotheslines, we buy cake/brownie/pancake mixes because we think it's too much trouble to measure and mix ingredients, we buy paper napkins/towels/tissues in order to avoid having to wash something, and the list goes on. And on. And on. From the simplest item, see baking powder, to much more culturally complex decisions, like how many vehicles a small family really needs to own, we have ceded personal decision-making to large businesses whose sole purpose is to make money.

Let me be clear that I have nothing against profit-generation, and I do not subscribe to the belief that Big Corporations are inherently evil. In the same vein though, I also do not subscribe to the theory that these Companies In Charge have my best interests at heart.

Johnson & Johnson is not selling shampoo and conditioner as a matter of public health. Bisquick was not invented to provide superior nutrition. Ford does not manufacture vehicles the size of small living rooms because safety is their first priority.

I am unplugging myself from the matrix.

I am Keanu Reeves.

(snort)

What I am really doing is continuing to shorten my shopping list. And, well, let's be honest, it just so happened that I have never been happier with my hair since I gave up shampoo and conditioner, and that's really what this is all about. If I had hated the baking soda and vinegar routine, I would have kept on keeping on (read: buying shampoo and conditioner from the store).

A short time back, Jessi wrote about going no-poo, and that was what it finally took for me to take the leap. Jessi is someone I like a lot, someone I actually know, and someone who is (oh, she's gonna LOVE this) fairly normal. "See," I said to my mother who had looked at me rather askance the first time I mentioned wanting to give up commercial shampoo, "Even Jessi has given up shampoo."

So I did, too, and though it took a week or so to adapt to the new routine, I found almost immediately that my hair texture improved, my ends ceased looking so frazzly, my hair was shinier overall, and my hair was just as clean and went just as long between cleanings as when I used commercial products. And in a completely unexpected twist, styling products became unnecessary.

Crazy, right?

Here's the routine: Every couple of weeks, I mix up a solution (see below) of baking soda and water, and another solution (again, see below) of vinegar and water and a few drops of essential oil, and keep them in the shower in plastic bottles. Some people make only as much as they need for a single use, but I find that insensible. These solutions keep just fine, so I like to keep enough in the shower to last a few weeks at a time. Easy peasy.

Following the advice I got 10 years or so ago from a hairstylist friend, I cleanse only my scalp (not the ends), and condition only from the nape of the neck down through the ends (not the scalp). I wash no more often than every other day, and when I get out of the shower, I use the tiniest amount of coconut oil, smaller than a pea-sized amount, as a styling product.

Have you looked at the ingredient list on bottles of commercial shampoo and conditioner? Mind-boggling, it is. The shampoo strips your hair of natural oils, the conditioner adds synthetic products back in, which then build up and make the hair dirty, which requires the use of shampoo to remove. 'Tis a silly cycle.

Two months in, and I have now eliminated the following products from our household shopping list: shampoo, conditioner, shine spray, and styling cream. And though I have added coconut oil to the list, I have found that it, in turn, also replaces eye cream, lip balm, The Carnivore's pomade, and first aid ointment, thus removing those four items from the shopping list as well.

'Consumer anarchy' sounds so much more palatable than 'Going the way of the hippie,' yes?

*****

HAIR CLEANSER

1 part baking soda
3 parts water

Shake well before each use.
Massage mixture onto dry scalp, concentrating on hairline and part.
Leave in for one minute.
Rinse.

HAIR DETANGLER AND MAKE-SHINIER

1 part white or apple cider vinegar
4 parts water
5 to 10 drops essential oil (vanilla, peppermint, lavender, whatever) per cup of solution

Shake well before each use.
Massage into hair from nape of neck down to ends.
Leave in for a minute or so.
Rinse.

In Our Kitchen

2010-07-06T08:00:00.003-04:00

Our kitchen is always a busy place. It is where the whole family gathers together at least once a day for a meal around the table, where the kids and I linger every morning over breakfast, where the children color and paint, and where I get a chance to play. Days begin and end in this room, with children sitting on counters to help roll out pasta dough or press buttons on the food processor, with mama perched at the menu desk, poring over cookbooks and sipping coffee, and with all of us just sitting at the table and watching the birds outside the bay window. More time than usual was spent at home last week, and most of those hours were passed in this cheerful red room of ours.

:: Granola was made early one morning, using dried dates and local pecans, and resulting in our favorite batch yet.
:: There were three blueberry-picking excursions resulting in some 14 pounds of berries being consumed.
:: Basil was picked and made into pesto.
:: New cookie recipes were baked.
:: We made our first batch of cold-brewed coffee for Iced Coffee Concentrate.
:: More and more Dark Chocolate Cashew Clusters were made and devoured.
:: Vegetables from the individual gardens of three generations of women in my family were assembled into a dinner of Summer Vegetable Fried Rice.
:: Homemade play dough was formed by little hands into pretend cookies and cakes.
:: Kisses were exchanged, flowers were arranged, music was played, and time was shared.

This is my favorite room in our house.

From The Garden: Fresh Basil Pesto

2010-07-03T21:35:00.000-04:00

The first wave of harvests from the garden ended with a bit of a whimper. My onion plants were all ripped right out of the ground by thieving wild animals, and the snow peas collapsed in a miserable, shriveled up heap before they really gave us anything.

The radishes did well, and the lettuces did splendidly for about six weeks, but the very last salad, the harvest that I had let build up for a few days so that our final salad would be a spectacular one, was nothing short of heartbreaking. On that fateful afternoon about a month ago, when I traipsed outside with a colander and an appetite and my heart on my sleeve, I stood in horror as I surveyed the completely barren garden bed where the lettuce had been. There was nothing there. Not even the base of the stems. Rabbits had come in and mown the whole bed clean.

I have never felt quite so murderous towards another living being. Those rabbits will be sorry. Maybe not those exact rabbits per se, but at least their offspring. The sins of the fathers will be visited upon their sons. I will exact my revenge.

My first set of tomato plants disappeared mysteriously one night, ripped out by their roots (not sure whether to blame the rabbits again, or deer), but now that there are tomato cages over the second planting, they seem to be doing well so far. I am cautiously optimistic about those tomatoes, along with the pepper plants, the watermelon, and the butternut squash, but only time will tell.

As far as I am concerned though, the second harvest has commenced. While I have been pinching small sprigs of basil and flat-leaf parsley for the past two months, and bringing them in to use in small amounts at dinner, in dishes such as grilled potato salad, lemon-herb bruschetta, and other sundry recipes, it was only this week that I went outside and found the basil plants had literally exploded.

Exploded in a good way, that is. I brought a little more than a pound inside one evening, and rather excitedly whipped up three batches of fresh pesto.

We love pesto. Every year, whether from plants in my own garden or that of my mother, or even from our former beloved CSA, we enjoy at least a few dinners of pasta with fresh basil pesto (there has even been arugula pesto on our menu in seasons past), and there have been years in which I have managed to freeze enough batches to see us through the winter.

There is nothing, it would seem, that can evoke summer in January so well as the bright, sharp peppery flavor of pesto made from fresh basil. And to our utter delight, pesto that is frozen keeps its fresh flavor in a way unlike any other herb preservation technique.

I find pesto is best served over a substantial pasta. The light, slippery sauce is a bit lost on angel hair, and it can be a bit clumpy when used as an accompaniment to orecchiette or penne, where it can lodge itself into the crevices and make a nuisance out of itself, so we tend towards homemade whole-wheat fettucine. The heft of the whole-wheat makes for a more filling meal, and the width of the fettucine noodles provides a nice foil to the delicate sauce.

And I love making fresh pasta. Rolled out thinly enough, the ribbons of pasta get an almost silky texture that will spoil you in a hurry.

We have tried countless variations on basil pesto, sometimes using nuts, other times omitting them, occasionally varying the ratio of olive oil to basil, and employing different cheeses as we see fit. This time I went with a recipe from How to Cook Everything, and we were crazy about it. A small amount of toasted nuts were included, which added a little richness to the texture and provided a welcome ever-so-slightly smoky flavor. The flavor of the basil was still bright and clear though, allowing the fresh herb to shine in the best of ways.

This will be our new go-to version for sure. One pound of basil, weighed while still on the stem, was enough to make three batches of the sauce, two of which were frozen for future use, and now, only three or four days later, the plants have already leafed out again. I decree this a perfect year for herbs. And for pesto.

Especially if I take up rabbit hunting...

*****

BASIL PESTO (adapted from How to Cook Everything), makes enough to serve with one pound of pasta

Note: if freezing, omit the Parmesan for now and stir in after thawing.

2 cups packed fresh basil leaves, stems discarded
pinch of kosher salt
1 to 2 cloves garlic, crushed
2 Tbs walnuts or pecans, lightly toasted in a dry skillet
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil, more if needed
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan, plus more to grate on top of the finished dish
Freshly ground black pepper

In a food processor or blender, combine the basil, salt, garlic, nuts and oil, and process until basil is finely chopped. More oil can be added if you prefer the sauce to be thinner (or an extra drizzle of olive oil can be added to the finished dish).
Stir the Parmesan in by hand.
Toss with cooked and drained pasta, finishing the dish with a drizzle of olive oil and a sprinkle of Parmesan, and adding a couple grinds of black pepper if desired.

Dark Chocolate Cashew Clusters

2010-06-30T10:45:00.001-04:00

The simplest solution is not always the best one, and complexity ought not to be feared as a general rule, but there are times in which life just seems so messy, so convoluted, so arduous, that I lean full-on into searching for ways to strip away the excesses and find the center.

Summertime tends to be conducive to that sort of thing, of course. Afternoons at the pool have supplanted homeschool lessons and chores and the like, and dinners constructed from fresh-picked vegetables are the norm. It just seems right to lighten the load a little. Less time spent taming the hair with a blow dryer, smaller mountains of laundry to conquer, fewer errands and activities on the schedule.

Less can be more, after all, and as much as I tend to shy away from corny truisms such as that one, it has been Just. So. Hot. lately that I can't help but appreciate the thought of sitting by a fan, putting my feet up, and sipping an iced coffee while pretending to be genteel and unencumbered by the demands of life and parenthood and all that.

You can picture it, right? Me perched on the porch in a white dress, the Spanish moss dripping from the massive old oak trees, a ceiling fan spinning languidly overhead, and perfect peace and quiet whilst my immaculately-dressed, well-mannered children play a game of croquet together on the manicured lawn?

It could happen.

Until then, though, I will search for simplicity in more realistic places. Like dessert.

And we have discovered the mother of all completely simple, utterly perfect desserts. Even better, and easier and faster, than those beloved Peanut Butter Cookies. Two ingredients. Less than five minutes. No oven heating up the house. Total Perfection.

Honest.

When I asked The Carnivore what he might want us to make for him for Father's Day, I was prepared for a complicated answer. Something along the lines of Pralines or Blue Cheese Meatballs. Instead, he suggested I make use of the copious amounts of cashews stashed away in our pantry and the dark chocolate chips that he knows I keep no-longer-hidden in the back of the fridge. "Like turtles," he said, "Except without the caramel."

"Like nut clusters?" I asked suspiciously.

I thought the idea was a little loopy at first. It just didn't seem quite right that I could melt a bit of chocolate and stir in some nuts and end up with nice little nut clusters. Corn syrup seemed like a necessary ingredient, or possibly a candy thermometer would be required. It just had to be more complicated than he was thinking. So I did a little recipe research (partly to prove him wrong) and found countless recipes that included excessive quantities of ingredients and overly-cumbersome techniques, but then I came across an utterly simple one and with a little bit of tweaking, we have found our new go-to candy.

By the second batch, I had the nuts-to-chocolate ratio spot-on, and we were head over heels in love, these clusters and The Carnivore and I. We are partial to cashews around here, and I love and adore any combination that marries salt with dark chocolate, so this kind of thing is right up my alley really.

The simplicity is nearly overwhelming (contradiction in terms notwithstanding). The recipe goes like this: melt dark chocolate chips in the microwave or on the stove, stir in nuts, drop by spoonful onto wax paper, refrigerate until hardened.

Crazy, right? These little drops of heaven are mainstays for us now, and we haven't gone a day without a batch in the fridge for going on two weeks. When we start running low, The Carnivore looks a bit worried for a moment, and then I throw another batch together while doing the dinner dishes. They're THAT easy.

We like them very heavy on the nuts, with just enough chocolate to hold them together, and I'm not above using even the salty nut dust in the bottom of the cashew canister to make them even more dense. I prefer them a bit on the thin and flat side, so that they are easier to bite into, and so that the edges are a bit more delicate to the tooth, but they are just as delicious when piled high and messy-looking.

The salty-and-bittersweet taste is utterly pure, which is easy to imagine given the short ingredient list, and can be a bit addictive, but since they are so easy and so quick to assemble, and the ingredients can be kept on hand at all times, addiction is nothing to fear in this case.

*****

DARK CHOCOLATE CASHEW CLUSTERS, adapted from Cooks.com (makes about 20)

11.5 oz package dark chocolate chips (I love the Ghirardelli 60% cacao)
1 1/2 cups cashew halves (or the less expensive halves-and-pieces mix)

In a medium-size mixing bowl, melt the chocolate chips in the microwave (about 2 minutes). Or, melt the chips in a small pan set over low heat on the stove, stirring almost constantly.
Stir nuts into the melted chocolate.
Drop by small spoonful onto waxed paper, and put in refrigerator until hardened.

Fire Hot Pepper Sauce

2010-06-26T18:27:00.001-04:00

Methinks I may have become a little obsessed with removing myself from consumer culture. Anybody could have seen this coming, I suppose, with my recent adventures in making hot sauce and homemade baking powder and blackberry jam and, um, homeschooling my kids, but lately I've gone a bit cuckoo with it all.

I quit using commercial shampoo, conditioner and styling products about a month ago, and have mostly loved the results. This is not a new concept, mind you, and there is ample anecdotal evidence to be found on using baking soda, vinegar & coconut oil for hair care, but I suspected I would be falling down the rabbit hole if I got started on this myself.

And I did. Fall down the rabbit hole, that is. It turns out that the avoidance of commercial products can become a bit addictive. In a good way, of course, because, as it turns out, my decidedly not-a-hippie hairstylist is so excited about the state of my hair now that she wants to help me spread the word about avoiding sulfates and silicone-derivates. And, bless her pretty little heart, she even barters with me so that money rarely changes hands between us.

I consider it a good week indeed when I can bathe using all homemade products, trade out some financial services for a haircut & highlights, buy milk & cheese from a nearby farm, help my mother preserve 300 ears of corn and get sent home with ample amounts to last my family through the next winter, pick blueberries for free on a neighbor's property, wear clothing passed down from friends or purchased at a consignment shop, educate my children using books purchased for next-to-nothing at yard sales, and construct dinner almost entirely out of ingredients from my garden and my mother's and grandmother's gardens as well.

It all sounds a bit cult-like, doesn't it? I would be urging everyone else to drink the Kool-Aid, too, except that none of this is anything new. American life existed much this way until the pseudo-modern age of the past 50 years, and I am certainly not a pioneer in the movement to recapture some of that way of life. But it is fun nonetheless, and I do love that self-satisfying, sock-it-to-the-man feeling of finding ways to live outside of corporate culture.

That, and I'm reading Radical Homemakers right now, which is only encouraging my Laura Ingalls Wilder behaviors. Now if only I could wean myself off central air conditioning and cable television...

I blame my mother for much of this. She was a child of the sixties, and was rather young when she had me, so some of these hippie-ish tendencies just came pre-installed on my model, if you know what I mean. And since I have spent the past thirty-something years following her around her gardens and giving her shopping lists for her yard-sale forays, I benefit from her self-sufficiency largesse.

Yes, there is such a thing.

Last week, when her hot peppers started coming in, and she made her first batch of Fire Hot Pepper Sauce of the season, she sent me home with a quart-full just in time to placate The Carnivore's urgent request for hot sauce (it has, after all, been entirely too long since I whipped up a batch of my Burn Sauce). Big Mama's Fire Hot Pepper Sauce is a true hot sauce, and is not vinegar-based like Tabasco or the other commercial bottled brands. She makes hers almost entirely from jalapeno peppers, though a few Anaheims made their way into this last batch, and she and her kids go through gallons of the stuff every year.

Note: it is called 'Fire Hot' for a reason. This isn't the kind of thing a normal person might douse their eggs with, and caution is in order. Depending on rainfall, heat, and other factors, hot peppers vary in intensity, and every batch of this sauce is ever-so-slightly different. I don't think I have ever dumped a spoonful of pepper sauce on a taco without first dipping a finger in to test for palate-burning capacity. A little can go a long way.

I finally slowed Mom down yesterday, and got her to focus on one task (and one task only) for a couple minutes so I could write down her formula for making this sauce. Enough of her readers have requested it now that it would only be fair to share, after all. You can thank me later, if you haven't burned a hole in your tongue, that is.

*****

FIRE HOT PEPPER SAUCE, from Big Mama (makes about 1 quart)

Disclaimer: a mixture of peppers could be used, and vinegar could be added (1 Tbs at a time) to add tanginess if so desired, but then it would not be Big Mama's recipe any longer, and she would disapprove, and she would not be afraid to express said disapproval, even in public.

4 cups whole jalapeno peppers
salt

In a medium saucepan, add the peppers and enough water to cover.
Bring to a boil, and continue boiling for about 5 minutes, until peppers can be easily pierced with a fork.
Drain peppers, reserving the cooking water.
Remove and discard the stems, leaving the seeds and ribs intact.
Place stemmed peppers in a food processor or blender, and add about 1 cup of the cooking water along with a generous pinch of salt.
Pulse mixture until peppers are minced or fully pulverized, depending on how you prefer, adding more water if needed to achieve desired consistency.
Taste and adjust salt if needed.

Wild Blackberry Jam

2010-06-16T14:38:00.000-04:00

One of the great joys of our property has been the blackberry vines that grow alongside our long driveway. The Carnivore and The Boy Wonder pick a few giant bowlfuls each year, generally providing enough for a cobbler or two, along with a plentiful supply for snacking out of hand. The nasty drought that we suffered through over the past few summers was tough on these old berries though, and it has been years since the vines have been full with the kind of plump, sweet blackberries that we most adore.

This Spring has brought on the best crop since we moved here in the summer of 2003, and the blackberry season has gloriously stretched out longer than I generally remember it lasting. Best of all though, we discovered that those thorns we had been trying to eradicate from our front yard were actually more wild blackberry vines, and, after neglecting the yardwork for, oh let's just say a very long time, we suddenly found ourselves overrun with the sweetest, fattest, most beautiful berries I have seen since the days of my childhood spent foraging in the woods with my mom.

Note: I should take this opportunity to assert my superiority in the field of deferred gratification. My mother, no matter how many empty bowls she brought with her, has always been incapable of bringing berries home from a picking expedition. I, on the other hand, have long enjoyed a particular neurosis that allows me to plan ahead, and countless times was able to buy myself out of restrictions by bartering portions of my saved berries to a desperate mother. Children should take heed. I know of what I speak.

Here in present times, however, where I am finally able to make the rules, saved berries have little value and are eaten with impunity. My little family made it through the first week of blackberry season by gorging ourselves on the berries as fast as The Carnivore could pick them. Little Miss Hazelnut, a clear descendent of that aforementioned mother of mine, would plant her diaper-clad bottom in the middle of the blackberry patch and eat until her entire body was stained with the juice. It was cute. At first.

More than one cobbler was made and devoured, and then, two or three weeks into this madness, I returned home from yard sales on a Saturday morning to find another 16 cups of berries sitting in containers on the kitchen counter.

Something had to be done. And as much as we love and adore and pledge allegiance to our favorite cobbler recipe, I was just itching to try something new, and (wahoo!) there I was with a yard-sale canner and a giant box of small jars on hand . It was high time to dig through the beloved Southern Living cookbook collection.

I had a mind to try my hand at a jelly or jam or preserves kind of recipe, but was an utter neophyte and really had no idea what to expect, other than a vague tickle that I was going to have to get some pectin or some other such thing.

Really, I was clueless, so you can imagine my utter delight and excitement when I saw a recipe in the 1982 Southern Living for blackberry jam that had only two ingredients: berries and sugar. The instructions were simple, the time commitment was small, and God help us all, our personal berry supply was neverending.

I had no idea what to expect, and was more than a little nervous about how sweet the end product might be, but oh my stars, we ended up with manna from heaven. The jam was so good we were licking it off the wooden spoon and burning our tongue in the process. The texture was old-fashioned, with seeds and unevenly crushed berries, and the level of sweetness was spot on, more tart than sweet, really. Literally. Spot. On. And it tasted fresh and familiar, like the kind of thing you might have enjoyed at your grandmother's house in the middle of summer back when you were a kid, back before silly little things like seedless jam and citric acid became part of the vocabulary.

We were a little afraid that we had made too much at first, and since I wasn't really feeling up to driving to the store to pick up lids for the new-used jars, I chose to freeze some of the jam, keep some out to enjoy right away, and share the rest of the batch with my mother (as a proactive measure in case she threatens to ground me anytime soon), my grandparents, and my friend that had an upcoming birthday.

I shouldn't have worried, of course. I made slightly-burned, brick-like whole wheat biscuits the next morning, and our little family went through the first jar of jam in one sitting, ending with Little Miss Hazelnut sticking her entire hand in the jar to scrape out the remainder. Most surprisingly though, was that the portion that had been frozen and subsequently thawed still retained the fabulous texture of the original batch.

We are a little bit in love with this jam, and I went out today to purchase jar lids for the sole purpose of making a few more pints to put up before the season ends. Because as quickly as it begins, the abrupt end of blackberry season is always a bit of a shock, though we can always take heart that blueberry season comes right on it's heels...

*****

BLACKBERRY JAM (adapted from Southern Living, makes about 3 pints)

9 cups (about 4 lbs) crushed blackberries
6 cups sugar

Combine berries and sugar in a large, heavy pot, such as a Dutch oven.
Slowly bring the mixture to a boil, stirring occasionally until sugar dissolves.
Boil at a medium heat for 30 minutes to an hour, stirring frequently, until jam reaches desired consistency, taking care to avoid splatters (man, they hurt).
Freeze, can, or share as you see fit.

Fennel & Tart Apple Salad

2010-06-04T22:19:00.001-04:00

Summer snuck up on me this year, and it took a little longer than usual to decompress from the rush of The Boy Wonder's daily lessons and busy activity schedule. But this week, all of a moment really, I slowed down a bit and stopped pushing so hard at life.

It is June now, after all. Time for afternoons at the pool, Saturday mornings at the farmer's market, stolen moments in the garden, less complicated meals, and most of all, time for a little breather from our homeschool curriculum.

Time to finish up some of the loose ends from kindergarten, to dig around on Ebay for our first grade materials, and time to evaluate my own expectations. Truly, I think I learned as much from kindergarten as The Boy Wonder did. I can see the fascination of science through the eyes of a six-year-old now, and I am able to join in the wonder and suspense as a little boy hears The Story of Doctor Dolittle read aloud for the very first time.

It hasn't all been fun and games, of course. I also joined in the frustration of learning how to sound out words in which letters make different sounds than a young mind might expect, and we both had to dig down deep to come up with the necessary patience to learn how to coordinate pencil and paper to form letters and numbers when little hands would prefer to doodle.

But we did it. Together we made it here, to the other side of kindergarten, where The Boy Wonder can read, can swim without a life jacket, and can manipulate a fork and a butter knife to cut a pancake into manageable, polite bites.

We feel like superheroes. Superheroes on vacation, that is.

Like I said, it is summertime now, and we are splitting our time between the garden, the pool, and the craft table at home. There is much less time for slowly-simmered soups and very little desire for elaborate dinners. Our menus tend to follow the seasons and our little garden has cooperated nicely, providing beautiful, variegated lettuces for our salads and fresh herbs for our pasta; and as the variety of available produce has grown by leaps and bounds at Athens Locally Grown, we have started reintroducing a few sorely missed vegetables to our table.

God Bless the baby squash.

This year though, with the gaping void left by my ill-conceived decision to not rejoin our beloved CSA, I have been searching for new challenges in the kitchen and while there have been the predictable misses, there have also been a few pleasant surprises. This fennel and apple salad sits squarely atop our list of recent winners.

Fennel is an odd thing, really, a little too hip for my taste in some ways, and a bit too assertive in the first few recipes that I attempted, but a lovely herb when used properly. Fennel is often described as tasting of licorice, which can sound a bit off-putting really, but the crunchy texture and refreshing flavor of the bulb is perfect for summer. Besides, the word 'licorice' doesn't properly capture the flavor.

Of course I cannot describe it any better myself. The words 'clean' and 'crisp' comes to mind, but that falls a little short when trying to evoke a sense memory of a food. Suffice to say though, that fennel marries perfectly with tart apples and a simple, well-emulsified vinaigrette. This salad is really quite beautiful on the plate and pairs well with rich, velvety sauces and, my favorite, cheese plates.

Yesterday, when The Carnivore worked late, my desk was piled with time-sensitive work, it was hot and humid, and the kids and I were in town picking up our food order during the time we normally prepare dinner, this salad came to the rescue.

From the bags of food I brought home, I pulled out a fresh baguette to slice, toast and drizzle with olive oil. We already had creamy Brie on hand, along with an imposing hunk of strong, stinky blue cheese, and I was lacking only for something light, green, and, yes, crisp to temper the richness of the cheeses.

Voila. I had picked up a few bulbs of fennel with my order and it only took a couple minutes to slice some apples and the fennel, make the vinaigrette and toss it all together. We had the perfect summer dinner. Perfect even for a family of varying tastes, but the biggest surprise was how well The Boy Wonder took to this salad. He ate two or three servings for dinner, and asked for it again for breakfast.

Maybe I should add that to our list of kindergarten accomplishments: reading, swimming, and fennel appreciation.

*****

FENNEL AND TART APPLE SALAD, serves 8, adapted from Charlie Trotter Cooks at Home

1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
2 Tbs chopped fresh tarragon, or 1 tsp dried tarragon
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
salt & freshly ground black pepper, to taste
2 tart green apples (such as Granny Smith), sliced thinly
2 bulbs fennel (not the leafy part), sliced thinly

In a large bowl, add the lemon juice and tarragon. Slowly whisk in the olive oil in a steady stream, and add salt & pepper to taste.
Add the apple and fennel to the bowl, and toss well.
Best served at room temperature.

Hazelnut Espresso Cookies

2010-04-22T21:28:00.003-04:00

I have the most ridiculous confession to make regarding these cookies (and their lack of accompanying photograph). It should come as no surprise that we love and adore them. 'Espresso' is in the title, after all, which makes it a bit of a given that there is perfection involved. And really, the first time I read the recipe, I knew they would end up as family favorites. Truly, when I bit into the first one, I actually began planning their photo shoot.

Cookies this incredible demand photographic evidence, I would think.

Maybe I would pose them in a clean-lined stack, leaning against a mug of steaming coffee (which is how I imagined I would enjoy them if I had a bit more self-control). Then, as I bit into the ~~second~~ ninth cookie, I began planning a slightly different angle, something more befitting their classy, adult manner. I could use the good china, I thought, and take advantage of the next day's morning sunlight, staging the photo on the porch table, as if I were enjoying a coffee and cookie break outside in the quiet while the kids were otherwise occupied.

Well, that was a perfectly sensible idea, of course, so I put away the camera for the moment and, uh, grabbed another cookie on my way to my desk to get some work done. I would just plan to take the photo the following morning...

Except then I packed up a few cookies for my mom, and then another little container to take to my girlfriend who loves having cookies with her afternoon coffee. And then there were only two left on the cookie sheet, since I had chosen to freeze half the dough for a future cookie emergency.

They happen, you know. Cookie emergencies. When hormones are zinging around like crazed pinballs, when dinner is disappointing, when work is piled up on the desk, dustbunnies are congregating madly in the corners of every room and homeschooling begins to sound like the most ill-conceived idea I've ever had.

It is moments like that when one is grateful for the cookie dough that was lovingly wrapped in plastic wrap and tucked away in a covered container in the back of the freezer to be brought out for such a time as this. And it beats trying to talk The Husband into getting dressed and making a late-night run for Coffee Haagen Dazs.

Back to those two cookies on the baking sheet though... As it would happen, one of them disappeared while I was wrestling a child to sleep, which forced my hand, in a posture of pure self-preservation, so that I had no choice but to snag the last one for myself.

And just like that, all the cookies were gone. I had a recipe in hand that I just couldn't wait to share, but, alas, I had no photo. No proof they had ever existed at all.

So I waited. I waited for a cookie emergency. A cookie emergency that would come all too soon, at the end of One of Those Days just a couple weeks later, when I would shoot the stink eye towards my family and stalk to the laundry room, where I would carefully remove the Emergency Dough, divide it neatly in half so as to provide for the next emergency as well, and bake a single pan of cookies after the kids were already asleep so that we would not have to share.

Oh my stars. They were just as delicious as I remembered. Buttery and salty, only slightly sweet, with just the barest hint of coffee flavor. Crispy on the outside, yet as delicate and tender as an old-fashioned Toll House cookie on the inside. And since I had used whole-wheat pastry flour, they were healthy to boot.

Well, as healthy as something can be with that much butter involved, but healthier than the average cookie nonetheless. I would definately need to set aside a few cookies with which to take a photograph once I had natural light to work with...

The Carnivore and I polished off all twelve cookies within an hour. Still no picture.

Because obviously I needed a picture, I selflessly decided to bake the rest of the cookies just a few days later. Since the Emergency Dessert Clause had not been invoked on that go-round, we exhibited the kind of self-control that would make a monk proud, each of us devouring only a couple of cookies, and politely setting the rest aside for their next-morning appointment with the camera.

Morning came, a little too early for my taste, bringing with it a dismal gray overcast tint to the supposed-sunlight. The two-year-old woke up on the wrong side of the bed and endlessly terrorized her older brother, The Annoying Squirrel Pest got himself tangled up in my hair and bit me on the ear, and, as I emptied the last dish from the rack, I realized the dishwasher had failed to open the soap container and that nothing had gotten very clean.

Belligerently, I turned my back to the chaos and slowly ate the rest of the cookies, savoring each bite and then delicately licking my fingers to enjoy the very last crumb.

And then the heavens shone their light upon me and angels sang in the background. For real.

Like magic, everything went fine with the rest of the day. The kids hugged and made up, I threw The Annoying Squirrel Pest into a room and shut the door, and then I poured another cup of coffee and read a few chapters of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz to the now perfect children.

Valium would have been less effective. Not only are these cookies the most elegant and lovely bites of delicousness I have ever encountered in a cookie, but they are mood-altering as well. And healthy. Don't forget the whole-wheat flour. That makes them good for you.

If they were less divine, I might have possessed the wherewithall to have a photo to post with the recipe, but isn't my complete lack of restraint in the face of these cookies an even more compelling endorsement of their ultimate supremacy in the field of desserts?

*****

HAZELNUT ESPRESSO COOKIES (adapted from Leite's Culinaria, makes 36)

Note: this dough freezes well. Just wrap tightly in plastic wrap and enclose in a plastic container with a tight lid, and freeze. Thaw to room temperature before baking.

2 cups whole-wheat pastry dough (do not use regular whole-wheat flour as it is too dense)
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
2 eggs
3 Tbs instant espresso powder (like Cafe Bustelo; do not use instant coffee)
10 oz shelled hazelnuts, skins mostly removed, coarsely chopped

To remove the hazelnut skins: preheat the oven to 250 degrees, and place the shelled hazelnuts in a single layer on a rimmed baking sheet. Bake for about 20 minutes, until the skins crack. Quickly transfer the nuts to a clean kitchen towel and roll them up. Let steam in the towel for 5 minutes, and then rub the nuts with the towel until most of the skins have come off. Not all of the skins will come off, and this is perfectly fine. No panicking necessary.
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda and salt.
In an electric mixer at medium-high speed, cream the butter and both sugars together until fluffy.
One at a time, beat the eggs into the butter and sugar mixture.
Beat in the espresso powder.
Reduce the speed to low, and slowly add the flour mixture, beating just until incorporated.
Stir in the hazelnuts.
Drop heaping tablespoons of the dough onto baking sheets, about 1 and 1/2 inches apart.
Bake at 375 degrees for about 12 minutes, until cookies are golden but not browned around the edges.
Cool for two minutes and then loosen the cookies from the pan.

The Seven Wonders of the Week

2010-04-10T12:19:00.009-04:00

Spring arrived with a grand entrance this year, leaping out loudly from behind Winter's lingering back, and this year, she brought all her friends with her: singing birds, hilarious swirling clouds of pollen, fragrant and thick blooms of wisteria, warm breezes, and the usual sense of wonder.

All too often, moments of pure beauty pass by fleetingly, lost amidst busy schedules and children's bedtimes and desks piled with work.

This week, we reveled in the springtime bliss, breathing deeply, moving slowly, and living fully.

•••••

On Sunday afternoon, we opened all the doors and windows and did our best to blur the lines between inside and outside.

•••••

On Monday, we frolicked in the big creek.

•••••

In the glorious and welcome high heat of Tuesday afternoon, I weeded the salad garden while The Boy Wonder took care of the watering, Little Miss Hazelnut stripped off her clothes and ran amidst the wisteria, and Elvis the Bloodhound lolled about in the shade of the pear tree.

•••••

Wednesday brought a lunch date with my former housemate and his wife who were in town for a mere 24 hours. There was laughter, catching up, and a brief, but wondrous, sense of connection between the past and the present. Later in the day, while The Boy Wonder learned about pollination with his fellow homeschool Garden Earth Naturalists at The Botanical Gardens, Little Miss Hazelnut followed the yellow brick road to a surprise cup of lemonade at the cafe.

•••••

Thursday began with an excited search under the pillow to see what The Tooth Fairy brought on her magical first visit to our home.

•••••

On Friday afternoon, in the sun-dappled shade of the large tree in front of my mother's house, while the older kids played in the meadow, and the adults pulled chairs around to sit together in the warm sunlight, generations jumped boisterously on the trampoline amidst laughter and squabbling. It was childhood in action.

•••••

Saturday began peacefully, the air cool, the quiet morning softly decorated with the sound of birds, cartoons, and the click-clacking of my knitting needles; the little pond filling with the falling lavender petals of the wisteria as its blooming season draws all-too-quickly to a close.

•••••

I can't wait to see what next week brings...

A Mouthful of Candy

2010-04-01T08:33:00.006-04:00

There is a time for everything. A time to eat healthy, and a time to gorge on Easter candy. A time to avoid high-fructose corn syrup and artificial colors, and a time to throw out all the rules. A time to spend a day having a free-for-all with the candy proudly brought home from the hunt, and, later, a time to take Communion. A time to think about the Easter bunny, and a time to focus on The Cross.

Hoping your family enjoys the holiday weekend, in all of its silly excesses and its quiet, splendid glory. Happy Easter, friends.

Blueberry-Pecan Whole Grain Pancakes

2010-03-27T12:41:00.000-04:00

There once was a time, in a galaxy far, far away, when I slept late on Saturday mornings and then lounged around drinking coffee and reading the newspaper for, oh, hours if I felt like it.

Those days are over.

Saturdays begin a wee bit earlier now, and though the quiet and calm has been replaced with the sound of cartoons and squabbling children, my aim is still for a slow start to the busy that overtakes so much of our time these days.

Too much busy isn't good for anyone, and luckily, my little family seems to agree with me on this one small point. Yesterday, after three straight days of non-stop running around, the children and I had nowhere to be, nothing that had to get done, and no reason to look presentable to the rest of the world.

The Boy Wonder, usually game for any adventure, said wearily, "Mom, do we have to go anywhere today?" I shook my head and he brightened up instantly, saying, "Yay. Can I wear my pajamas all day?"

That's my boy.

And so it goes that there are mornings when we don't have to rush, when the cereal boxes get left on top of the refrigerator, and when we can all gather around the table and enjoy a leisurely homemade breakfast. In our pajamas, of course.

Pancakes are always a hit around here, and it is the breakfast I have the most fond childhood memories of myself. We have always been a whole-grain family. My mother raised me on oatmeal pancakes that, if followed with a glass of water, would swell in one's stomach and negate the need for another meal for the rest of the day (and sometimes the day after). These weren't the kind of thing that came from a box, but rather from the dog-eared, cover-held-on-with-a-rubber-band copy of Recipes for a Small Planet that lived on our kitchen counter through my entire childhood.

I love that cookbook. I do not cook from it these days (I am the only vegetarian, child-raised-by-a-hippie in the house, after all), and it has been out of print for many years, but the cover art is enough to send me back 30 years every time I see it.

The title of this silly blog is, naturally, a play on the title of that beloved old cookbook.

I have made variations on whole-wheat pancakes for some time now, tinkering here and there, and sometimes (shocker alert) going so far as to use a whole-wheat baking mix (!) in order to achieve the texture I was aiming for: something a little lighter than the usual brick-like substance that results when using 100% whole-wheat flour.

Actually, it isn't only pancakes that have given me a bit of trouble texture-wise. Bread, pizza dough, pasta, pancakes - anything made with 100% whole-wheat flour has been a bit too heavy for our taste, so I have tended to go with a mix of whole-wheat and unbleached all purpose flour when making any of these items.

It pained me to do so, to use all-purpose flour, and to have store-bought whole-wheat items surpass what I could make at home. A friend told me about vital wheat gluten, and said that it would help lighten the finished product, but I found that to be a rather intimidating prospect, though I cannot explain why.

It was only recently, when consulting Alice Water's The Art of Simple Food for something or another that I came across her recipe for pancakes. The answer to most of my problems was right there, and I felt a bit daft for not having thought of it myself: use 1/2 whole-wheat pastry flour and 1/2 regular whole-wheat flour in order to keep them light.

Whole-wheat pastry flour is ground very, very finely, and is quite lovely to use, as it turns out. I had a bag in the fridge already from a long-forgotten cookie recipe, but was, for some unexplainable reason, storing it for a special occasion I suppose. After reading the tip in The Art of Simple Food though, I pulled out the bag and went straight to work on it. Over the course of a few days, I have now elevated it to the same status as olive oil and kosher salt for items I would take to a desert island. It is crucial stuff, you see, and works magic on whole-grain foods. My pizza dough is now perfect (thin, crispy, and yet 100% whole-wheat) and the pancakes I made using this technique are, in my only slightly humble opinion, the best ones I have yet to eat.

And I've eaten a lot of pancakes.

Texture is key with pancakes, and not just in finding the middle ground between leaden hippie whole wheat pancakes and that spongy, tasteless fluff from a white flour baking mix. Something must break up the monotony of a single-texture meal, and in this case I use both fruit,frozen so it stays whole while mixing, and nuts.

I was a little late coming to the table where putting nuts in pancakes is concerned. As a matter of fact, and this pains me greatly to admit, it was at IHOP of all places that I first had a pancake with nuts. It was a revelation, I tell you, and it took me some experimentation at home, but when at last I got these pancakes right, I felt like I had reached the other side of my vision quest.

Everyone takes pancakes this seriously, right?

*****

BLUEBERRY-PECAN WHOLE GRAIN PANCAKES (serves 4, adapted from The Art of Simple Food)

3/4 cup whole-wheat pastry flour
3/4 cup whole-grain flour (any mixture or single choice of: whole wheat, spelt, cornmeal, rye or buckwheat)
1/2 cup coarsely chopped pecans
1 tsp baking powder (see recipe for homemade baking powder)
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
2 eggs, separated
1 3/4 cups buttermilk
6 Tbs butter, melted
1 cup blueberries, frozen

In a large bowl, mix together both flours, nuts, baking powder, baking soda, sugar and salt.
In a small bowl or large measuring cup, whisk the egg yolks into the buttermilk.
Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients, pour in the buttermilk mixture, and stir until just mixed.
Stir in the melted butter.
In a separate small bowl, beat the egg whites until the form soft peaks (this can be done by hand or in a mixer), then fold them into the batter.
Fold the blueberries into the batter.
On a preheated, lightly greased griddle (or skillet) over medium heat, drop 1/4-cup of batter and cook until lightly browned, about 1 to 2 minutes. Flip, and cook until the other side is lightly browned as well.
Keep warm on a cookie sheet in a 200 degree oven until all pancakes are cooked.
Serve with butter and pure maple syrup.

Life is Short, and the Winter was Long

2010-03-19T16:46:00.003-04:00

Life is too short to do formal lessons on a beautiful day when the sun is shining, the breeze is warm, the birds are singing, and the daffodils are blooming. The phonics can wait. So can the dishes, the laundry, and the paperwork.

Life is too short to worry about what people will think if I post pictures of my shirtless children playing outside. We live in the country, and they were too full of joy to care about clothes or to even notice where they dropped their shirts.

It should be noted that life is not so short that I did not make absolute certain that I collected all the discarded clothing and put it in the laundry room before Elvis the bloodhound could run off with them.

Life is too short to toss the dirty shirts into the washing machine on a day like this. Like I said, the laundry can wait.

Pasta with Clam Sauce

2010-03-18T21:16:00.004-04:00

There are days when so many things go wrong, when every well-laid plan is thwarted, when time spins out of control, when everything I touch seems to suffer the anti-Midas touch.

Yesterday was not one of those days.

Oh, things went wonky, of course. Things are always a little bit off around here (there is a two-year-old in the mix, after all), and every day seems to have its own detours and moments of hilarity, but serendipity herself came to visit yesterday, bringing little silver linings to each of the day's oddities.

After all was said and done for the long, rainy, chilly day, when all the members of our family had gathered back home for the short dinnertime respite between afternoon and evening activities, when it was time to breathe and to laugh and share time together, I surveyed our options for dinner and realized that my initial plan was never going to work in the time we had remaining. I scrambled around, a little unnerved at first, searching the pantry and the fridge for last-minute ideas, and that is when our old friend serendipity showed up.

Right there in the back corner of the fridge, was a giant batch of fresh whole-wheat pasta that I had rolled out and cut into fettuccine just a few days prior, and there is no meal that cannot be salvaged when fresh pasta is at hand. When time is short, dried pasta can almost always come through in a pinch, but fresh pasta? You could drizzle the stuff with olive oil and a sprinkle of grated Parmesan cheese and call it dessert if you wanted; no one would complain.

There are items I always keep around though, because moments like this happen so often, when time races away from me or when, (cough, cough) like today, I forget to soak the beans and have to scrap my original menu plan; items like flat-leaf parsley, lemons, shallots, and cans of chopped clams. Clam sauce is always easy, never fails to make the kids happy, and though it isn't so exquisite that the average person would write home about it, it can be a revelation when trotted out at a time that I might have needed to resort to fried egg sandwiches.

Not that there is anything wrong with fried-egg sandwiches, mind you.

Within 20 minutes, dinner was on the table, and the silky, fresh pasta elevated the clam sauce to its best day yet around here. I use chopped clams, rather than minced ones, for better texture, and use the clam juice as part of the sauce. It is a rare day that I am such a fan of food from a can, but in this case, I stand firmly behind the convenience, low-cost, and briny flavor. The fresh parsley and lemon zest brighten the dish and save it from being a Pantry Emergency Dinner, and a little pat of butter adds richness and heft to the sauce.

A quick, simple dinner can be such a thing of beauty.

*****

PASTA WITH CLAM SAUCE (serves 4)

Brush toasted baguette slices with a little bit of olive oil and lemon juice, and top with a smattering of the chopped parsley for an easy bruschetta to serve with the pasta.

1 pound dried spaghetti, linguine or fettuccine (or fresh pasta, if available)
1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
2 shallots, finely chopped (or 1/2 an onion if that's all you've got)
5 garlic cloves, finely chopped
2 cans chopped clams, juice of one can reserved (discard juice from other can)
1/2 cup dry white wine (cheap old cooking wine is adequate)
1/2 cup chopped flat-leaf parsley, divided
1/2 tsp kosher or sea salt
1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
2 Tbs unsalted butter
freshly grated zest of 1 lemon
freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese

Cook the pasta in heavily salted, boiling water until al dente. Drain, reserving about 1/2 cup of the pasta water to thin the sauce as needed.
While pasta cooks, heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat.
Add the shallots and saute until soft, about 3 minutes.
Add the garlic and saute for just a minute, taking care not to burn the garlic (burnt garlic can be unpleasantly bitter).
Add clams, reserved clam juice, wine, half the parsley, and the salt and pepper. Cover the pan, and simmer for 5 minutes.
Whisk in the butter, remove from heat, and toss the pasta with the sauce, adding the reserved pasta water (little by little) if needed to thin the sauce.
Plate the pasta, and sprinkle with remaining parsley, lemon zest, and freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese.