The Conflicted Conservative Environmentalist

The label "moderate," when used to describe political or philosophical leanings, is just another word for "conflicted." I am having a harder and harder time reconciling my own personal values when I find them so often in conflict with each other. Most often, it is my business education which so violently butts heads with my, um, (for lack of a better word), hippie childhood. Cost vs. value, efficiency vs. sustainability, and so on.

Disturbingly, it was when I had more money and had a Real Job that I was able to afford such luxuries as organic food and locally-owned/produced commodities. It is the ultimate contradiction in terms that you have to be rich to be a hippie these days. When we made the decision to become self-employed (because we crave autonomy) and to move out to the country (because we also crave solitude and fresh air), my husband and I found life got much more expensive. So we had to start cutting back on, shall we say, frivolities, such as buying clothing and other items from locally-owned stores. It is no secret that clothing from Old Navy, for instance, is much less-expensive than clothing purchased at small local boutiques. When we then decided to get pregnant and subsequently made the choice for me to cut back severely on my workload so that I could be a full-time mom, we had to think in terms of buying groceries, pet food, and any other possible items from (everyone take a collective gasp here) Wal-mart.

So, to be able to live closer to the land, and to be able to afford to focus on my child's well-being, I had to compromise a few other values. After all, which is more important, to support locally-owned businesses and farmers who treat the environment well, or to stay home with my child and give him the love, the patience, and constant attention of a stay-at-home/work-at-home full-time mom? Well, obviously, my child comes first. But then I still had the issue of my child's health. Once he was old enough to move from the breast to a sippy cup, I just couldn't bring myself to buy regular grocery store milk, knowing the growth hormones given to the cows would be entering my child's body. I debated the added cost of organic milk for about 4 seconds before I made the again obvious choice. After all, my child comes first. If I have to stay up a little later at night to get more work done once my child is asleep, just to be able to make enough more money to be able to afford organic milk, then so be it. Because, again, what is more important, a little more free time to myself, or working an extra 30 minutes a week to have enough money to buy more healthy groceries for my growing child? Imagine my utter glee when Wal-mart began carrying organic milk ($1.00 a gallon cheaper than at the more elite grocery stores that carried organic foods).

My ultra-conservative carnivorous husband tolerates my more liberal leanings. He goes to the extra trouble of taking our recyclables to the county recycling drop because he knows that reducing our impact on the landfills is a non-negotiable for me. When I stressed the importance of composting our kitchen scraps, he sighed for less than a minute before building me a better mulch bed. With only a little grumbling, he agreed to not use fertilizers in our gardens when I flapped my arms and acted like Chicken Little about what those fertilizers do to our drinking water and our own vegetable garden. Knowing that I contribute some small (albeit fairly paltry) amount of the income in our family, he shrugged his shoulders and let me have my way with the added expense of organic milk. He occasionally makes fun of my residual hippieness, but since I'm moderate about it and don't insist on, say, trading in the car for a bicycle, or listening only to reggae or folk music, he's pretty good-natured about the whole thing.

So for the past two years, other than the organic milk, I have sucked it up and purchased cheaply-produced, chemically-treated groceries in the interest of living within our more meager means. I still eschewed packaged, processed goods in the interest of healthfulness, but since it is usually cheaper to make foods from scratch, I didn't have to make compromises there.

Then mom called last week and read out loud to me from a Mother Earth News article about olive oil, and the fact that it takes a whopping 12 pounds of olives to produce one quart of olive oil. Argh. That's a lot of pesticide and fertilizer being squeezed into my olive oil. I mean, its one thing to worry about organically-grown bananas. After all, the peel is so thick I just don’t feel like paying a premium for something in which only a minute amount of chemicals make it to the part I actually eat. But with olive oil, well, it seems to me that when you squeeze the oil out of the olives, you would also be squeezing the chemicals out. And that’s just nasty.

After a few days of mom and I grumbling amongst ourselves about the olive oil situation, we finally grabbed a rare opportunity to go to Earth Fare together, where I made a beeline for the olive oil section. After a little head-scratching, a lot of label reading, and some mental cost calculations, I figured that buying organic would cost only an additional dollar or two per week in this instance. An on the spot cost-benefit analysis (seriously, I CANNOT put a lid on the business degree) yielded the decision to buy only organic olive oil from now on. Mom and I met back up a few aisles over, both clutching our respective bottles of organic olive oil, where I gave her the results of my mental calculations. We nodded in agreement and went our separate ways again. I grabbed a few more items that aren't available at Walmart (and which necessitate a visit to Earth Fare once a month or so): organic whole-grain pastry flour, sesame tahini paste, etc.

But then, during a failed attempt to find stone-ground grits, I stumbled upon the coffee section, where I looked longingly at the vast selection. Now, coffee is a whole different issue altogether. I used to subsist on Cafe Bustelo for my daily morning coffee, and more expensive varieties, such as Jamaican Blue Mountain, for our weekend lazy-day read-the-newspaper-and-do-the-crossword mornings. All that stopped when Odd Toddler joined our family. After some initial trial and error during the beginning days of reducing our monthly budget, I discovered that Eight O'Clock Bean French Roast, $3.12 per pound at Walmart, was a perfectly acceptable choice amongst the cheap varieties, and so we have used it without complaint for the past two years. While at Earth Fare though, I saw the sign for organic coffee, and using the same logic I have applied to bananas and olive oil, I visibly shuddered at the thought of all the pesticides and fertilizers I must be drinking each morning. Coffee, like olive oil, is one of those direct-process groceries in which my body would be ingesting all the chemicals used to keep prices down.

Now I had a whole new problem. I use approximately two pounds of coffee each week which, at a weekly cost of $6.24 at Walmart, is nothing to get my panties in a wad about. However, to buy organic coffee at Earth Fare would raise the weekly cost to $19.98, an unnacceptable increase of 220%. This brought on a few more days of grumbling. Yesterday, I checked Walmart and found they didn't carry any organic coffee yet. At Kroger, where the Eight O'Clock Bean coffee is $4.19 per pound (34% higher than at Walmart), the cheapest organic coffee was about $8.50 per pound, better than at Earth Fare but still too expensive. I conferred again with mom, the only other person I know who is as not only as health-conscious but as cost-conscious as I am, and we agreed it was still too expensive. We had talked last week about doing some internet searching for bulk orders of organic coffee in order to reduce the price per pound, so I jumped on the task this morning. With my own Odd Toddler, and my mother's two Even Odder Toddlers running in circles around me, I sat calmly down at the computer and began googling. After checking an absurd number of websites, and after consulting with my adding machine in order to consider the shipping costs and to make sure I was comparing apples to apples in each cost comparison, I found the best deal at www.freshcoffee.net, where they have an incredible variety of organic coffees to choose from. At this site, if coffee is bought in 5-pound bags, with a minimum order of 20 pounds in order to avoid shipping costs, the cost per pound, including a minimal handling charge, comes to $6.06, still nearly twice the cost as the cheap, but not organic, coffee at Walmart, but much cheaper than the organic coffee at either Earth Fare or Kroger. And once you consider the health costs and the environmental costs, it becomes a bit of a no-brainer. Besides, if I work an additional 10 minutes per week, I can cover the added cost to our budget. So, deal found; decision made.

Feeling virtuous for having made decisions that will positively affect both the health of my family and that of my planet, I clicked on the New York Times and went to their dining section (because, um, to avoid that $1.00 cost per week, I generally read the Times food section online), where I found an article about Walmart increasing their variety of organic foods, which will be priced at only 10% higher than their regular merchandise. I had read a blurb on this recently, though I can't remember which newspaper it was, in which the discussion focused on the hippie snobs (speaking of contradictions in terms) bemoaning the mainstreaming of organic foods. I suppose its hard to pat yourself on the back when even the lower-class can join in the efforts to have a positive impact on their health and the environment.

Elitism bothers me on a number of levels, not the least of which is that if the elite liberals had their way, evil old big-business Walmart would go out of business and less-priveleged people, like myself, would have to choose between eating well and staying home with our babies. But the Walmart debate is one I don't particularly like to get involved in, mostly because while I can see some of the points made by the liberals, I tend to err on the side of capitalism, and, well, I shop at Walmart myself because honestly, why would I pay $4.19 for something at Kroger when I can get the same thing for $3.12 at Walmart? And why do the elite attack Walmart, but they have no problem with Kroger which, after all, is also Big Business?

Regardless, the Times article has had me chewing the inside of my cheek all morning because while I am positively beside myself over the prospect of less-expensive organic foods, and a wider variety at that, I also understand some of the valid concerns that are raised by the author, especially about the globalization of organic farming. Then again, I take everything I read with a grain of (kosher) salt, so I'm trying not to get too worked up over this. Of course, if I weren't already knotted up over it, I wouldn't have just prattled on endlessly for the past few paragraphs...

I Love Rock n Roll

One of my favorite pictures of myself as a child was taken in New Orleans when I was 7 years old. My stringy long blonde hair had been in braids for what must have been days, and they had just been taken out before the picture was taken. I am standing with my back against a door, my thumbs hooked in my jeans pockets, my hair huge and kinked into waves from the braids, and I'm wearing my favorite t-shirt with an "I Love Rock 'n Roll" glittery iron-on appliqued to the front. Best pre-adolescent groupie pic ever. Alas, we have no idea where that picture has gone to, so I've settled for the Odd Toddler playing the guitar in his underwear photo. Oh, that we could all play guitar with out toes.

Life in New Orleans came up again this weekend, when I made the New Orleans style Pralines recipe from the 1986 Southern Living cookbook. Making candy, which I remembered while fighting with the dangdest most annoying candy thermometer, is one of my least favorite activities in the kitchen. The Carnivore bought a candy thermometer for me during The Fudge Incident, and I have yet to figure out how to hold the bloody thing in the pan without either burning my hand or dropping it into the hot mixture and thus burning my hand anyway while I try to fish it back out.

I was afraid The Praline Project would be an expensive one, mostly due to the cost of pecans in the store, and the fact that my pecan trees haven't begun their annual carpeting of the yard. It took many tries and a plethora of recipes before I found a fudge recipe that sufficed for us, and I assumed the same thing would happen in this case. After all, with so many different praline recipes to choose from, what were the chances I would pick the right one on the first try?

The day had started badly enough. Odd Toddler was in a particularly cranky mood, and I had a list of annoying chores to accomplish, with a clingy, screaming 30-pounder on my hip, before I could get busy on the pralines. The Carnivore finally, sometime mid-afternoon, noticed my consternation and realized it was in his best interests to occupy the miniature terrorist so I could start cooking. I pulled out all the ingredients and pre-measured everything, nervous about the whole procedure. After accusing Odd Toddler of running off with the candy thermometer again, I finally found it and coaxed it into working.

The whole thing was easier than it seemed at the time. After the second time I dropped the thermometer into the EXTREMELY hot candy liquid, and scalded myself trying to retrieve it and clean the screen off, it stopped working and I completely flipped out. I could see The Carnivore on the porch and I waved out the window frantically, yelling desperately for help. The Carnivore looked askance at me, took the thing apart, and dragged it into the bathroom where I heard him drying out the wires with my hair dryer. After he lectured me fully on what happens to LCD screens when they get wet, and after I hollered about the piece of crap falling into the pot of its own accord, we popped the thermometer back in the pan just in time to see we had reached the right heat and it was time for the next step. I was frazzled over the thermometer issues, and the next step of the instructions had me really nervous.

Amazingly, the rest of this went off without a hitch. Apprehensive, I waited for the candies to harden, staring agitatedly at the too-small quantity. Finally, I picked a piece up and brought it to my mouth, afraid to get my hopes up. I took the first bite.

I nailed it. They were perfect. On the first try, no less. Maybe I'm finally getting the hang of this candy-making business. And now I know what everyone is getting for Christmas.

SOUTHERN LIVING'S NEW ORLEANS PRALINES (editorialized by Sarah)

• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 1 1/2 cups firmly packed brown sugar (I used light brown)
• 1 cup evaporated milk
• 1/4 cup butter or margarine (I used unsweetened real butter)
• 2 cups pecan halves (next time I will use slighly less than this so the candy can stand out a little bit more on its own)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract (please don't use imitation vanilla - yuck)

1. Combine sugar and milk in a Dutch oven (also known as a big, heavy pan); bring to a boil, stirring occasionally. Cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, until mixture reaches 228 degrees.
2. Add butter and pecans, and continue cooking, stirring constantly, until mixture reaches soft ball stage (236 degrees). {I can only tell what "stage" the candy is at by using a thermometer - I have no idea how to tell what "soft ball stage" is just by looking. More power to you if you can eyeball it on your own.}
3. Remove from heat, and stir in vanilla. Beat vigorously with a wooden spoon until mixture just begins to thicken. {This takes some serious muscling, and its important to beat long enough that the thickening has just barely begun, but not so long that it gets too thick to be quickly spooned out. I do wish the instructions in the cookbook had been a little more expansive on this point. And on the next one...}
4. Working rapidly {VERY RAPIDLY, I found}, drop by rounded tablespoonfuls onto greased waxed paper; let stand until firm. {Depending on the size, this will yield between one and three dozen. If storing, wrap individually in wax paper so the candies do not stick to each other.}

Try to not eat too many of these at once unless you have a very high tolerance for sugar. After I ate the first one, and made a flippant comment about how these weren't too sweet, I made the mistake of eating a second one. I nearly yakked. One of these at a time is more than enough for any sweet tooth.

Fiend for Sweets

I keep bars of dark chocolate around the house for when I have a sweet tooth. I can break off a small square and satisfy my cravings while keeping my health and weight both in check. By the fourth night out of town this past weekend, I was jonesing for my chocolate. I hadn't taken any with me, for fear of it melting during the trip, and there is a serious dearth of good food in Myrtle Beach. Then PMS hit, and I was feeling a tad desperate.

We looked in the phone book for local coffee houses and dessert shops, and had little luck with either (apparently, everthing in Myrtle Beach is a chain). On Sunday night though, I found myself in a Starbucks on Ocean Boulevard, where I got a cup of passable coffee and found two hapless clerks who gave us conflicting directions on where to find a chocolate shop. The more credible-sounding of the two sent us to Broadway at the Beach, a complicated maze of shops amidst a meandering parking lot. We drove in circles for about 10 minutes, steadfast in our resolve to leave only with chocolate in hand. Odd Toddler happily gurgled away in the backseat, having a conversation with himself about every car and truck in the surrounding vicinity while The Carnivore and I snarked at each other, squinting to read the names of all the shops. Finally there was a triumphant sound from the driver's seat, and we parked behind River Street Sweets, a chocolate shop from River Street in Savannah that I was familiar with from a trip long, long ago.

Odd Toddler, who was close to his bedtime and who did not, under any circumstances, need to be aware of what I was purchasing, went with The Carnivore to explore a lighthouse. I sailed into the store, wallet open, eager to get my fix. There was fudge, truffles, pralines, bear claws, vat after vat of sweet candies, and only ONE clerk on duty. I got stuck in line behind a pregnant lady (argh - leave some for me, darnit), where I shuffled impatiently from foot to foot, trying to pare down my list so that we wouldn't go broke. Finally at the front of the line, I exercised moderation, ordering two lonely pieces of fudge and two impossibly tiny truffles.

We went back to the condo, wrestled Odd Toddler to sleep and then opened the bag of chocolates just as the season finale of Desperate Housewives was coming on. I bit into the tiramisu truffle and heaven exploded on my tongue. For a split second there, I was sure life could get no better. An ocean breeze was coming in off the balcony, there was sand stuck between my happy toes, and I was the proud owner, if for only sixty brief seconds, of the most beautiful truffle on earth. Alas, the ecstasy was over far too soon. And disapointment soon overtook our little party. The fudge was, well, lousy. The texture was odd, the sweetness was overpowering and the aftertaste was cloying. I scrunched up my nose and pouted. Maybe I had turned into a dark chocolate freak, and everything else was too sweet for me now? Was I becoming a food snob? Heaven forbid.

On the way out of town the next morning, The Carnivore steered us back to River Street Sweets, determined to get a bear claw (apparently I should have been able to read his mind and known that he wanted one when he sent me into the store alone the night before with NO requests). This time, the whole family went in. Odd Toddler lit up when he saw the gumballs (no food snob is he), and since he was in the arms of The Carnivore, he ended up with a bag full of them. I narrowed my eyes, but Odd Toddler grinned at me and pointed to the gumballs he was clutching tight to his chest. "Big balls!" he chortled.

I had planned to only get a couple more truffles, and The Carnivore claimed to only want a bear claw, but the geniuses of marketing were too smart for us. Samples abounded. The lady by the window who was making candy on site smiled and offered us a taste of pralines. I reached out nonchalantly, sure I would be even less impressed than I had been with the taste of pecan log that I received coming in the door. But then I popped the nondescript beige nugget of fresh praline, still warm from the oven, into my mouth and I almost fainted with pleasure. It dissolved on my tongue, the taste sending me hurtling back through time 25 years until I was in elementary school again, standing in The French Quarter in New Orleans, begging my cash-strapped mother for another "praw-leen." The word itself must be drawled, not clipped off, and never, ever, pronounced "pray-leen," unless, of course, it doesn't taste quite right.

And so we spent more money than we should have, although I will dismiss the expense in the interest of research. After all, I must taste-test so I get ideas on what recipes to tackle next. Six hours later, we were back home and I was climbing my stepladder to get the 1979-1996 Index of Southern Living recipes, paging madly to get to the praline recipe list. I ended up in my chair last night, weighted down by 15 years of Southern Living Annual Recipe books, reading each and discarding the books one by one until I had narrowed it down to the New Orleans Praline recipe from the 1986 collection. I know what project I'll be working on this weekend...

Blech

Seriously. Tonight's side dish was nasty. So bad that I took one bite, scrunched my face up, took another bite, and then got up from the table and scraped the whole thing into the compost bin. Blech. It was a baked couscous with squash and summer herbs recipe from Cooking Light magazine, a recipe I had been wanting to try for a while. And, honestly, 'twasn't my fault that it sucked. But suck it did.

You know that taste you conjur up when you think of misguided health food from the seventies? That's how this tasted. Bland, weirdly textured, oddly colored, and vaguely nasty.

Sort of what you would expect if you went to the health food store and bought one of those organic, all natural "convenience dinners" where you just add water and then, surprise, it tastes just as bad as any other TV dinner, only more virtuous.

Yuck. What a disappointment. One ought not to sacrifice taste and decadence just for the sake of healthfulness. That's just missing the point altogether.

The Power of Color

Odd Toddler knows that you're not really naked as long as you're wearing a hat.

We've been having a cool spell around here lately, a strange occurence for May in Georgia, but since I know the deathly hot days are just around the corner, I have held my tongue back on any complaints. This will be the first summer since 2002 that I am able to concentrate on a garden, and I'm excited about what that means for our table. During the four easy years I lived in the little pink house on Nantahala, The Carnivore and I cultivated the postage stamp front yard into the best looking garden in the neighborhood. We lined the beds with large rocks that we saved from a dumping site down near the railroad tracks, and over the course of a few summers we transformed a gravel-packed driveway into a work of horticulture art. I loved it. Neighbors would stop to see what we had done, and our friends would come by after work to sit on the tiny little front porch and chat amongst the greenery. I still miss that yard.

We moved in the summer of 2003. I was pregnant with Odd Toddler, and The Carnivore was beginning the restoration of the old, falling-down wrecks (not just one, but two of them) that we now proudly call home. Friends helped us to dig up our Nantahala plants and move them to the new property, where we slapped them willy-nilly into the ground and hoped for the best. The house was the focus at the time, not the yard. The Carnivore spent the next nine months working 10 hours a day, seven days a week working on the renovation project. It was a very trying time for us.

In the spring and summer of 2004, I was busy trying to figure out how to take care of a newborn and wondering if I would EVER get to do anything else again. By fall of 2004, I managed to get outside for a couple hours to plant a few hundred tulip, hyacinth, lily, crocus and daffodil bulbs. I knew the bulbs could take care of themselves, so I set my sights on a future vegetable garden, something that sounded more feasible now that Odd Toddler no longer nursed every fifteen minutes.

Finally, I am really getting somewhere. I now have 10 tomato plants in the ground, along with four basil plants (which I just realized yesterday will not be enough), two parsley plants, one rosemary and one bell pepper (also not enough). The object, during the dog day heat of the summers around here, is to eat only cold, fresh foods. I spent too many years without air conditioning to change this tradition now, so this time of year I am always on the search for recipes that will both be refreshing and cool, and will use the fresh bounty of the garden. There is, after all, nothing like a sun-warmed, fresh-picked piece of produce from your own yard. Even if I have now joined the middle-class and have an air-conditioned house.

It is for these reasons that I have been so in awe of this Fine Cooking Fresh magazine that Ms. Carr gave to me. The fresh flavors, the crisp textures, and the variety of colors in each recipe remind me of the joys of gardening and of the beauty and healthfulness in cooking with what is growing right outside my window. Thus far, I have only tried two recipes from this magazine, but they have both knocked me over with their flavorful impact.

This week, in preparation for the hot days ahead, I was happy to try a pasta salad recipe from the magazine. This has always been one of my favorite summer dishes anyway, because you can make a big batch and keep it in the fridge for days, grabbing forkfuls when you come in from the garden for a few minutes. Pasta salad was The Carnivore's domain until now, but I think he was happy to pass the torch, especially after we ate this particular recipe for dinner on Tuesday night and were amazed at how exquisite it was. It not only looked spectacularly beautiful, but the multi-layered flavors of the vinaigrette, the cheese, and the herbs was divine.

FINE COOKING FRESH'S PASTA SALAD

• 1/3 cup fresh lemon juice
• 1 Tbs whole-grain mustard (I used Grey Poupon dijon)
• 1 Tbs finely chopped shallot
• 1 1/2 tsp honey
• 1 tsp finely grated lemon zest
• 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 2 Tbs chopped fresh dill (I substituted 1 Tbs dried dill)
• 2 Tbs chopped fresh chives
• 3/4 tsp kosher salt
• Freshly ground black pepper
• 1 cup fresh corn kernels
• 1/2 lb short, curved pasta (I used bow-tie pasta, which only made the finished product even more beautiful)
• 1 Tbs olive oil
• 3 oz baby spinach leaves, washed and dried
• 1 red bell pepper, stemmed, seeded, and very thinly sliced
• 1/2 small red onion, very thinly sliced
• 4 oz crumbled feta cheese (I used a mixture of goat cheese and tomato-basil feta cheese)

1. Combine the lemon juice, mustard, shallot, honey and zest in a medium bowl and set aside for 5 minutes. Whisk in the oil. Stir in the herbs and season with the salt and pepper to taste. Set aside.
2. Bring a large pot of well-salted water to a boil. Cook the corn until crisp-tender, 2 to 3 minutes. Remove the corn and rinse under cold water to stop the cooking, drain well, and blot dry.
3. Bring the same water back to a boil; add the pasta and cook until al dente. Drain thoroughly and immediately pour onto a rimmed baking sheet to cool. Toss with 1 Tbs olive oil to prevent sticking.
4. In large serving bowl, toss the pasta, corn, spinach, and bell pepper. Add enough of the vinaigrette to moisten the pasta. Add cheese and red onion. Let stand for 10 to 15 minutes. Taste and add more of the vinaigrette, salt or pepper as needed.

This was so good I'm gonna make a double-batch next time.

Everything Revolves Around Food

It all comes down to the food. I have tried to come up with a list of hobbies and interests that do not revolve around food, but it didn't work out the way I expected.

1. I like to garden. Of course, the gardening I did this weekend included preparing and planting 10 tomato plants so that I could can salsa this summer to get us through the winter when we won't have fresh tomatoes.
2. I like to play with my son. But we have the most fun when we cook together. When I turned on the mixer on Sunday (while making peanut butter brownies), Odd Toddler perked up, ran to the kitchen utensil drawer, grabbed a plastic spatula and scooted hopefully over to me, waiting impatiently for a taste.
3. I also enjoy reading. Then again, the book I am reading right now is Tender at the Bone, a food writer's memoirs about, you guessed it, food. This book, by the way, is hilarious. I was laughing so hard last night when I was reading about the author's cooking-challenged mother (yes, there are similarities in her life and mine) that The Carnivore told me to hush. More than once.
4. And of course, I like to write. But its probably obvious, since you are reading this blog about cooking, that the thing I write about is, well, food.

The only shopping I like to do is at the book store, where I am most likely looking at new cookbooks, or at the grocery store or farmers market, where I try to look for new ingredients. Yard sales can be fun, but only so that I can look for kitchen implements and cookbooks. And my favorite TV show is on The Food Network. This is absurd.

Boycott the Gringo

My salsa problem has finally been solved. I should have known to go to my sister Cristy in the first place. Mom has been singing the praise of her salsa for years, but I never managed to get to mom's house fast enough to eat any of it, due mainly to the fact that mom never told me about it until AFTER it was all gone.

I moaned and groaned to Cristy one afternoon last week about my salsa failures, and it was only a day or so later that she showed up at my house with a copy of her recipe and a jar of her salsa. It was perfect, but I was nervous that I wouldn't be able to duplicate the results. I went to the store and picked up the ingredients the next day, but then eyed them warily for the next week, too apprehensive to even try, sure that Cristy's salsa was so good only because she had the magic touch.

I saw her on Thursday and she asked me how I liked the jar of salsa she had brought over. I gushed about it, but admitted I hadn't tried to make it myself yet. And I was distracted at the moment by the black and white shirt Cristy was wearing. I needed to wear black and white to an event on Saturday, and while I owned plenty of black clothing, there wasn't anything white in my wardrobe. I'm too clumsy to wear light colors, and I had thus far been unwilling and unable to part with any money to buy something. I sheepishly asked Cristy if I could borrow her shirt for Saturday and she didn't even blink an eye. She said "Let's trade right now," and pulled the shirt over her head and handed it to me. I was humbled.

The Carnivore requested a Snack Meal for dinner on Sunday, so I rummaged in the pantry and the fridge and decided to make black bean dip and to finally try out Cristy's salsa recipe. The recipe came out beautifully, and The Carnivore agreed it was the best batch I'd made yet. We FINALLY have a dependable salsa recipe. I should have known to trust Cristy from the beginning. This is, after all, the sister who will give me the shirt off her back.

CRISTY'S SALSA (makes 4 cups)

• 10 very ripe Roma tomatoes
• 2 tsp sea salt, divided
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp ground cayenne pepper
• 3 jalapenos, diced (most recipes tell you to seed the peppers - since this one didn't specify, I decided to leave the seeds in to spice up the salsa even more - a very good decision)
• 1 medium white onion, diced (I left the dice fairly large, and we loved the chunky onion bits in the final result)
• 1 cup fresh cilantro, chopped (love it)
• 1 lime

1. Boil the tomatoes and one tsp sea salt for 10 minutes, or until tomatoes start to crack and peel.
2. Under cold running water, peel and discard the skins from the tomatoes.
3. Chop and smash down tomatoes in a bowl.
4. Add cumin, cayenne pepper, and remaining tsp of salt to the tomatoes. Continue to smash down tomatoes until desired consistency is reached.
5. Add jalapenos, onion, cilantro and lime, and stir well.

Food Nerd

I just entered the 2nd Annual Cooking Light Recipe Contest, and I'm so nervous my heart is pounding. I am such a nerd.

Of course I would love to win the contest. Grand prize is $10,000 and a family vacation for four. Four other finalists win $5,000 each. Frankly though, I would be happy if someone just threw me a bone. I mean really, can't this be the kind of contest where losers get a Cooking Light apron or something? Anything? Mom said I would be satisfied with a free spatula. She's right.

This is technically my first recipe contest, unless you count that 4-H Peanut Butter Sandwich recipe contest back in fourth grade. Mom says I won, but I think that, um, it was one of those confidence-building things where we were all winners. Or something like that. After all, though we can't remember what my recipe was, I vaguely recall including alfalfa sprouts. It can't possible have tasted good. Maybe I got the Hippie Kid Award.

One of Those Days

Yesterday was one of those days. It started off rough and only got worse. By 4pm I'd already had an argument with one of my sisters, snapped at one of my clients, yelled at my cellphone provider, accomplished only half of the items on my to-do list, had two appointments cancelled at the last minute, and had cried twice. By the time I realized I had not yet made the menu for the week, nor gone grocery shopping, I was close to not even caring whether or not we had dinner. But then I remembered that cooking would actually make me feel better.

I knew without looking that the produce drawers in the refrigerator were getting dangerously close to empty, and I have been slowly purging our pantry shelves so as to further reduce our consumption of packaged foods. And since I almost always cook from a weekly menu that I make up on Sunday afternoons, I get a little whacked out when I have to come up with a spontaneous meal. So I reverted back to my old ways and headed for a box of spaghetti noodles. If all else failed, I had half a loaf of crusty whole wheat bread, a box of whole wheat spaghetti noodles, some olive oil, a few heads of garlic, and a container full of basil plants in the front yard. Surely something could be accomplished with a minimum of added hassle to an already dreadful day.

I vaguely recalled seeing some overly simple pasta dishes in the Everday Italian cookbook, and I obviously had the makings for bruschetta, so I closed one eye, hoped for the best and flipped to the pasta section of the book. Amazingly, something finally went right. I found a recipe for Spaghetti with Garlic, Olive Oil and Red Pepper Flakes. And I had everything in the ingredient list, including fresh mint, something I never have on hand but bought recently for a reason I have already forgotten. Life was looking up. And since I was getting hungry, it wasn't a minute too soon.

SPAGHETTI WITH GARLIC, OLIVE OIL, AND RED PEPPER FLAKES

• Salt
• 1 pound dried spaghetti (PLEASE use whole-wheat pasta, white noodles are just nasty)
• 1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 5 garlic cloves, peeled
• 1 tsp dried crushed red pepper flakes, plus more to taste
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley (I only had curly parsley - it worked fine)
• 1 Tbs chopped fresh basil
• 1 Tbs chopped fresh mint

1. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the spaghetti and cook, stirring often, until tender but still firm to the bite.
2. Drain noodles, reserving 2 Tbs of the cooking liquid. Do not rinse the spaghetti. The natural starches help the sauce adhere to the noodles.
3. In a large saute pan, heat the oil over a medium flame. Add the garlic and saute until golden and fragrant, about 1 minute. Remove and discard the garlic. {This was interesting to me. I have always minced the garlic before using it to flavor oil, so I was surprised to see it done whole. And the directions specified to not overcook the garlic because that would make it bitter. I've never noticed bitter-tasting garlic, so whatever...}
4. Add the red pepper flakes to the oil and saute for one minute. Carefully stir in the reserved pasta liquid and 1/2 tsp of salt. {This particular instruction didn't go so well for me. When I added the liquid to the oil, there was a popping sound and then some very violent sizzling action that threw hot oil all over the stove, the counter, the open cookbook, and the floor. I'm wondering if maybe the liquid and the salt should be added after the next step so as to avoid THAT problem again.}
5. Immediately add the drained spaghetti and toss to coat well. Season with more salt and red pepper flakes to taste.
6. Transfer pasta to serving bowl and sprinkle with the fresh herbs.
7. Clean the stove, the cookbook, the counter, and mop the floor. Grumble loudly.

I loved the flavor of this recipe, slightly spicy from the red pepper, but fresh tasting from the mint. It made for a light dinner, perfect for a hot grumpy evening. And if I hadn't made such a mess with the oil, this would be ideal for those times when a quick meal is needed. I served it with bruschetta on the side, but next time I will serve a salad with it as well.

Your Cheatin' Tastebuds

The Carnivore came home on Tuesday and told me he had done a service call at Farm 255, probably the only restaurant in town that I would really like to eat at right now. The food is locally and organically grown, and only seasonal food is served at the restaurant. Whenever The Carnivore is over there, he picks up a copy of the menu for me so I can see the inventive dishes they have created from what is currently available from The Full Moon Co-Op, a local CSA research farm. The challenge of serving only the foods that are locally available this time of year really appeals to me. And after reading Joan Dye Gussow's This Organic Life last summer, I am hoping to someday follow the same philosophy with our own meals.

The Carnivore handed me the latest menu for my perusal, and said the chef had been making molten cakes while he was there (deep sigh from me).

"She let me lick the spatula," he said, knowing I would be jealous that I didn't get any of it.

I was unable to let this opportunity pass me by. I put my hands on my hips, and jutted out my chin. "You licked another woman's spatula?"

The Carnivore looked at me uncertainly, not sure whether I was serious or not. Finally, to hedge his bets I assume, he replied, "But you're the woman I come home to every night."

I picked up my one ancient, too short wooden spoon and waved it at him. "This is the only spoon you should be out lickin'!"

I must have laid it on pretty thick. The Carnivore, a man who has never bought me flowers and who rarely thinks to buy me gifts, came home on Wednesday with a bag from The Rolling Pin in his hands. Heh heh. I am now the proud owner of a heavy, perfectly shaped stainless steel set of measuring spoons (to replace the ones Odd Toddler has run off with) and a gorgeous long-handled wooden spoon.