The Blessings Just Keep on Coming

The last few days have been tough, and yesterday was one of the longest days of my life as we waited until nearly seven o'clock at night to find out the results of mom's CT scan. I had worked so hard to hold it together over the previous week, and most of all to not obsess, that I don't think I realized the stress I had been under until I got home last night and just collapsed on the sofa. I was so wiped out that The Carnivore and I ended up eating a late night dinner of nachos. Um-hum. Cooked in the microwave, no less. 'Twas a new low. But the news from mom was so good that I felt it canceled out the nachos.

So I kicked into high gear this morning, made the menu for the next week, planned a casserole that I could make for The Carnivore so that he doesn't starve while I spend the weekend at mom's, got the grocery shopping done, picked up work, went to the bank, took a deep breath. Etc.

And then I loaded up my briefcase and set up at mom's house to get some work done today. First thing: open the mail that had been wallowing in my bag for the past four days. I sorted the stack into smaller piles, opened the junk mail to shred the sensitive stuff, separated the recyclable paper from that which needed to be filed, and then looked askance at an unexpected envelope from Fine Cooking. The outside said something about a free gift, but I had my doubts.

Fine Cooking is one of the greatest publications of all time. I love it. Ms. Carr has brought me a few issues over the past year, and mom even bought one for me one day to thank me for doing something. Really, I love it. I read every word, cover to cover (even the articles on meat!), and I've gotten some of our favorite recipes from this magazine. In line at the grocery store, I will look longingly at new issues and try to read a quick article, praying that the person in front of me will write a check or do something equally slow that will cause the line to be held up.

So here I was this morning, breathing audible sighs of relief that mom had gotten such good news from the doctor, glaring at the pile of work that I've been ignoring for the past couple of days, and basically just feeling out of sorts from the tension of the last week. And then I opened the envelope from Fine Cooking, scornfully of course, expecting yet another piece of junk mail.

I was wrong.

The tiny piece of paper inside said, "A gift of a 2 year subscription to Fine Cooking is on its way to you from Paula in Minnesota."

I am humbled. Deeply humbled. I am continually surprised and grateful for the support that mom receives from her online network of adoptive families, but I am humbled to my core that a woman I have never even met, the mother of 20-something children, would bless ME in such a thoughtful and huge way.

Then again, since she is also the wonderful woman who passed on her incredible blackberry vinaigrette recipe, I should have already known how cool she is.

I'm sure this post is going to embarass the heck out of Paula, and I bet she would have preferred that I not even mention this publicly, but since many of the recipes that I will be blogging in the near future will be thanks to her, then I think it is only fitting that she get public credit.

Thank you, Paula. You rock.

Contentment

Thanks to my mother's influence, I rarely dwell on the negative aspects of life. Even now, with my extended family facing some daunting challenges, I cope by mentally listing the things I am grateful for. I do this daily. I've always thought its nice on Thanksgiving to focus on the things you are thankful for, but there is just no need to leave this for a once-a-year occurrence. Ongoing happiness, at least in my mind, comes from the daily acknowledgment of one's blessings.

This past year has been vastly different from what I envisioned back in early January. I started the year pregnant with our second child, and instead we faced a second-trimester stillbirth and a subsequent first trimester miscarriage within the first seven months of the year. I dealt with these incredible, seemingly insurmountable, setbacks by focusing on that which I could actually control. This isn't always as easy as it looks. Shortly after I lost Bailey, my Sunday School teacher, I woman I have admired since I was a child, emailed me to say that when she had suffered a similar situation, she got over it when she CHOSE to get over it. At the time, I was a little perturbed over the advice. It seemed almost heartless. But she was right. I got better and moved on when I DECIDED it was time to do so.

You can't always control what happens to you, but you CAN control your response. And your attitude. When its all said and done, happiness and contentment come down to attitude. Sometimes it takes a lot of effort to control my attitude, but a good challenge never hurt anyone. Our pastor preached a rousing sermon on contentment a couple of months ago, and that particular sermon has stuck with me better than most. He said the usual stuff you might expect: that contentment doesn't come from material things, that God must be at the source of your focus, etc. I've heard most of it before; after all, my own mother preaches that sermon daily. I didn't even think I NEEDED to hear that sermon. But apparently I did.

Material possessions have never been my driving force, but of course I enjoy having nice things. And after our long financial drought of the last few years, we were kind of looking forward to spending the money that was finally coming in. I had even seriously entertained the thought of buying a nicer car. I drive an Isuzu, for pity's sake. We did all the research, weighed all our options, compared prices, picked a reasonably-priced, two-year-old vehicle that I have liked for a while, worked out the financing in our heads to make sure we could pay it off within three years (my hard-and-fast rule of auto financing), and were poised to take the plunge.

And the very next day, the pastor preached a sermon on contentment. Ten minutes into the sermon, I leaned over to The Carnivore and whispered, "There goes my new car." Neither The Carnivore nor my mother (who I had said the same thing to when I talked to her after church) at first understood how I got that advice from the sermon. But I heard it loud and clear, like that deep voice you hope to hear from Heaven, "This is The Lord speaking..."

The thing was, I suddenly couldn't think of a good enough reason to spend the money on a new car. My current POS still runs fine, and its plenty big enough for my family. And, most importantly, it will be completely paid for in only a couple of months from now. Was I thinking of getting a nicer car just because everyone else has nice cars? Was it so people would know I could afford it? Was it to justify my own need for nice things?

Not good enough reasons. I didn't know for sure if any of those self-serving thoughts were at the core of my desire for a new car. Who really knows their own motivations all the time? Regardless, my motivation seemed suspect to myself, so I scrapped the idea immediately. And I was more than content with it (thank you, pastor).

So instead of spending money on a depreciable asset, I went back to my roots (thank you, mom) and decided to re-focus our financial goals on long-term investments. Expanding my empire, if you will. Since we acquired the land our house sits on now, I have stared with narrowed eyes over the driveway at the field across from my front porch, and have wanted it. And I mean capital letters, WANTED IT. Truth be told, I wanted it because I want my son (and our future child) to build a house on family land like I did. Obviously, I can't control whether or not they will do just that, but I hope I can show them how much it means to me to live on family land, in walking distance from my own mother.

And so the decision was made. Instead of buying that car I've had my eye on for the past year, we more than doubled our original acreage. Contentment for me comes from my faith, my love for my family, and from living in my dream house on more land than I ever thought I would own.

This can still be a daily challenge, being content. And it takes practice. But when I find myself bemoaning the loss of the last two pregnancies, I concentrate on Odd Toddler, appreciating how handsome he is and how fascinating it is to see life through his eyes. When I get cranky that we don't have the time to take a vacation, I look around myself at our house and our land, and remind myself that there is no place I would rather be than right here. And when issues come up that I cannot control, like the current ones facing my extended family, then I think of The Serenity Prayer. I used to think it was just cheesy (I'm not big on platitudes), but hey, if its good enough for millions of alcoholics to recite every day, then its certainly good enough for me.

The sheer force of my own will cannot give me an immediate healthy pregnancy, it cannot immediately emotionally heal my mother's children, and it cannot virtually erase our current concerns. But I can find contentment and even true happiness in not dwelling on these things today. I will not focus on the worries of the future, and I will not dwell on the awful things I hear on the nightly news. Today, I will hang out with my adoring husband, I will play with my quirky son, I will clean my house and set up my new (used) Potter's House bookshelf, and I will cook. You knew that was coming, right? Of course I will cook. Despite, or maybe because of, everything that is out of my realm of influence, I will try to make my own little world a more beautiful place for a couple of hours with a batch of fresh salsa, a few platters of stuffed mushrooms, and a couple of pizzas alla margherita.

You've Come a Long Way, Baby

I have the life I’ve always wanted, though I didn’t always know that THIS was precisely what I ultimately wanted. My twenties were spent chasing a fun social life, a seemingly elusive degree (in what, I didn’t know for the longest time), building a career and getting to know myself. Typical pursuits for most twenty-somethings, especially in a college town.

Even once I got married and finished college, I still wandered about aimlessly for a while. I tried the corporate life for about six months before I nearly self-destructed in the stifling atmosphere that Office Work entailed. ‘Twas a good job, a safe job. The pay was nice, the benefits were great, job security was ensured, but I’m not a good worker bee. Working 9-to-5, wearing a suit, having a nice office (with a great view overlooking College Square) – these weren’t the things that fulfilled me. I don’t mean to imply that I don’t respect those who are suited for this sort of life. I just know myself better than to think this was the end-all for me. This is what I had worked so hard for in college, and it was what I had thought that I wanted. I was wrong.

So I moved on. Still happily married, blissfully ensconced in a cute house in a hip neighborhood, I embarked on a better challenge. I took advantage of an endless supply of vacation days from The Firm, and I hopped a plane to go to Montana, where I’d never been, to meet a guy with a job offer that promised no security whatsoever. A week later, I turned in my notice at The Firm, shocking most people who knew me, and started work running the financial side of an international wholesale vintage clothing company. I set up an office in my little rental house, put my suits and pantyhose in permanent storage (where they remain to this day) and began a Whole New Life. Two weeks later I went to Miami for a week, returned home for a few days, headed back to the airport for a week in California, and then came home long enough to push some paper around in my office and repack my suitcase for a long weekend in Vegas.

The constant travel didn’t last, but for the next six months or so, I spent a week each month in South Beach, where the company had an apartment and where I got the necessary face time with a boss who didn’t live or work anywhere near my home. My mornings in Miami would be spent meeting with The Boss, and my days would revolve around the beach and my exploration of the city that slowly became my second home. I made friends there, began leaving clothes at the apartment so that I would be able to pack as lightly as possible on the next trips, essentially starting a second, parallel, life. It wasn’t long before The Carnivore and I recognized the strain this was putting on our relationship. Only a year into our marriage, I was becoming even more independent than I was before we made a commitment to each other. Then September 11 happened, which made future travel more hassle than adventure, and in which, most importantly, I was away from home and stranded during the nationwide halt on air travel. I had already been on the road for four or five days when the tragedy happened, and was supposed to fly home on September 12, which, for obvious reasons, didn’t happen. Suddenly, Miami didn’t feel like home anymore. I felt isolated and lost, needing my husband and family desperately.

For the next few days, I ran up my cell phone bill to alarming levels, spending hours on the phone with The Carnivore and my mother, both worried sick about how to get me home where I belonged. Flights were grounded, rental cars were more than impossible to find, and I could have walked home faster than a bus could have gotten me there. For the first time, I realized how much I NEEDED my husband. Co-dependency has never been my strong suit. Sure, I married the man because I loved him intensely, because we were such a great team, and because I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him. But now, finally, I was able to accept that depending on a man for comfort, really NEEDING him, wasn’t a sign of weakness. It was a sign of strength. I finally made it home, four days later, and we clung to each other. It was time to make another change. I had found a job I loved, involving travel, which I especially loved, and this what I thought I had wanted. Again, I was wrong.

My long-term career goal had always been to eventually have my own business, to not have a boss at all, to work at home, with a client roster that I handpicked. So I speeded up my plans, and took the biggest risk yet. Over the next few months, I slowed down and then eventually stopped my travel schedule altogether, and went part-time with the vintage company, as a subcontractor. I incorporated myself, put the word out around town, and began slowly building my own accounting business. We started looking for a house to buy and restore, and within a year we decided, over a table at a Mexican restaurant (which, if you know my family, just figures), that we were ready to start a family. A house was found, a construction loan was obtained, I became pregnant and decided not to expand my business any further than it was at that point, and The Carnivore quit his safe job to work on the house and to begin his own business as well. Mrs. S-corp and Mr. LLC had found their niche.

Fast forward a few years, and now I find myself at a crossroads again. My life is exactly where I thought I wanted it. We have our dream house, an incredibly fascinating toddler, and two successful businesses. The Carnivore works more than full-time, and is expanding his business faster than we had thought possible; and I have a small handful of clients that I juggle so as to only work an hour or two a day. Instead of focusing on expanding my business, I have spent the past two years maintaining my client-load in order to keep my business small. This has been the hardest struggle of all, because I swear it is far easier to expand a business than to try and STOP it from expanding. And after all, THIS is what we had striven for.

But then I faced the newest and, surprisingly, the greatest challenge. I was contacted yesterday by a very successful Indie-rock PR firm who had (big ego-boost coming here…) heard multiple recommendations for my services and was very interested in giving me work. Maybe I’ve never said this out loud here, but I LOVE the music industry. I married a musician, most of my friends are musicians, and some of the most fun work I have done has been that which involved the music business. So here I am, at a brand new place in my life, and the greatest possible client has come to me, dropped into my lap unsolicited and on the basis of recommendations from others within the music business and within my own industry. I am flattered beyond belief, exhilarated by the opportunity, and utterly fascinated by the fun work that would be involved.

And I’m turning it down.

For the umpteenth time in my life, I have found myself in a position I had only dreamed of, and I’m walking away from it because of a shift in my priorities.

In the beginning of all this career-building, and through all the different changes in course, the core of The Dream remained the same: to have an office in my home, to have my choice of incredibly cool clients and businesses to choose from, to work hours that I picked, to be challenged by new angles from new industries, and to not be held back by or tied down to any of this because of financial needs. Because now, (dare I say it), it’s no longer about the money. The Carnivore’s business can support our family by itself. I no longer have to make business decisions or take on new clients in order to make more money. The work I still do is work that I choose to do because I’m just not capable of sitting still. I can’t even entertain the thought of not working at all, because I would get bored. Raising a toddler may be challenging, and it may be time-intensive, but it simply isn’t a full-time job. Odd Toddler plays for hours on end now, and I have free time, albeit in small and oft-interrupted chunks, in which to pursue additional challenges. Hey, I’m Big Mama’s daughter. What would you expect? For me to fill my free time reading gossip magazines and watching soap operas?

Regardless of my high standards for myself, The Carnivore and I have decided that rather than continuing to maintain my business at the level its at, I will now start dismantling my client-load, little by little. I worked hard to build this company, and then I worked hard to stop it from growing any further, and now I’m taking it apart. Because we want more children. And due to the growth of The Carnivore’s business, my workload needs to shift from doing other clients’ work to running the financial and human resources side of The Carnivore’s business. It would be bad ethics and extremely bad form for me to accept this fascinating new client, which I would have killed for just a few years ago, and to then (if the Good Lord willing and the river don’t rise) get pregnant next month and have to look at extricating myself from the new client nine short months later.

I’ve always known myself well, and I know The New Me even better. My priorities now center around expanding my family, not my business. So I will learn to trust and lean on my husband even more. For the first time since I was a child, I will be completely financially dependent on someone else, and will have to learn to not be so caught up in making sure that I'm carrying my own weight. If I have free time while Odd Toddler plays, instead of doing work for a client, I would rather spend that time running an errand for my husband’s business, or helping my siblings do their homework, or babysitting so mom can go to the grocery store without dragging 10 kids with her. I want to be the best wife I can be, the best mother I can be, and the best daughter and big sister that I can be. A few years ago, I added these goals to the original one of being the best accountant that I can be. Now I’m demoting the accountant position to the very bottom. I doubt I’ll ever slow down enough to quit working altogether, but I’m getting better at demanding less of myself.

And, after all, what free time REALLY means around here is that I try out more new recipes. And continue to refine our menu selections. It all comes down to having more time to obsess over my obsessions.

The biggest goal lately seems to have revolved around me not trying so dang hard to do everything so dang perfectly. In a perfect world, The Carnivore would come home at the end of the day to a spotless house, a clean and quiet child, a four-course gourmet dinner and a completely serene and happy wife. But life is not perfect. And The Carnivore has been repeating the same refrain over and over for the last few months which, in a nutshell, is "Stop trying to do everything, Sarah." The true reality is that The Carnivore's favorite thing to come home to is a slightly disheveled house, a dirty and rambunctious toddler, a tasty but not overly complicated dinner, and a wife with a smudge of sand on her nose and a smile on her face. And, as I've tried to shy away from dinners that take two solid hours of prep and cooking, I've found that we are all happier.

My standards are still pretty darn high, of course. Dinner must be yummy, creative and interesting, but must not, under any circumstances, stress me out. Time I spend stressing is time I don't get to spend enjoying my husband and child. So yesterday, instead of rushing Odd Toddler into the house so that I could cook, and instead of cooking the Creamy Cajun Shrimp Fettucine recipe that I wanted so badly to try, I shifted gears and sat on the edge of the sandbox to play with Odd Toddler a little longer. "Upside-down day," I shouted into the house at The Carnivore, which is code around here for breakfast food for dinner. And, to my utter delight, "Cool!" was his ecstatic response. I love that man. Then again, he knows that breakfast-for-dinner has absolutely nothing to do with eating cold cereal...

FANCY FRENCH TOAST (adapted from Joy of Cooking, serves two and a half)

• 1/3 cup soy milk (regular milk will also do fine, as will half-and-half)
• 2 large eggs
• 1 Tbs pure maple syrup
• 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
• pinch of kosher salt
• 5 slices artisan breakfast bread (I use the cranberry-walnut bread from the Publix bakery - hearty and intriguing without being sweet)
• 2 Tbs unsalted butter
• More pure maple syrup, for serving

1. In a shallow bowl, whisk the soy milk, eggs, syrup, vanilla and salt.
2. One at a time, add the bread, turning the slices in the egg mixture until thoroughly saturated but not falling apart.
3. In a skillet, melt the butter over low heat.
4. Add bread, one or two slices at a time, to the skillet and cook until golden brown on the underside. Flip bread over and cook until second side is golden.
5. Keep slices warm in a 200 degree oven while the rest is cooked.
6. Serve warm, drizzled with maple syrup.

CREAMY DREAMY WHITE CHEDDAR GRITS (adapted from The Flying Biscuit Cafe, originally blogged about here, complete with goofy picture of grit-covered Odd Toddler, serves three)

• 3 cups water
• 1 cup soy milk, regular milk, or half-and-half
• 1 and 1/2 tsp kosher salt
• 1/4 tsp white pepper
• 1 cup grits (stone-ground grits are lovely here)
• 1/2 cup grated extra-sharp white cheddar cheese
• 2 Tbs unsalted butter

1. In a saucepan, combine water, half-and-half, salt and white pepper and bring to a boil.
2. Slowly pour grits into boiling water while whisking the entire time.
3. Reduce to low heat and continue to whisk often, until thick and completely smooth, about 10 minutes (slightly less time for quick grits, slightly more time for stone-ground grits).
4. Add cheese and stir gently until cheese melts. Whisk again to combine.
5. Turn heat off and allow grits to rest 5 minutes.
6. Add butter and stir until completely smooth, silky and shiny.

Even the easy, unambitious dinners can be perfect. Served together, french toast and cheese grits can seem downright decadent.

Chickens Riding Shotgun

The Carnivore called me yesterday afternoon and said (honest to goodness), "I have a chicken riding shotgun." My brother works for The Carnivore now, and I automatically flinched, thinking, oh no, what has Little Brother done? But The Carnivore was not referring to him. He was instead referring to the actual chicken riding around with him in his truck. Apparently, there were chickens at a job site, and The Carnivore left his door open. After leaving the site and stopping at a few other places, a chicken walked out from under the passenger seat and climbed up to sit next to the gear shift. Unlike some men, my husband didn't just open the door and boot the chicken out onto the street. On the contrary, The Carnivore drove back clear across town, in the opposite direction of where he needed to be going, so that he could return the chicken to its family. He pulled into the driveway, opened the door, and the chicken just jumped right out and went back to its yard. Hours later, when The Carnivore got home and gathered his paperwork and coffee cup to bring inside, he found a little surprise in his floorboard. "Look what I found," he laughed, and handed me an egg.

If only groceries could materialize in his truck every day. Especially eggs.

I have still been on my quest for The Perfect Sunday Meal lately, and have tried my hand at huge Sunday lunches that require me to cook for two hours straight after church, but that allow me to then relax all afternoon and not have to cook supper. I've also dabbled with making a few double dishes for Saturday supper so that there are leftovers for Sunday, which means I only need to come up with a creative, quick and light lunch for after church. So far, this option is winning out for its ease and yum factor, for when else do I have a chance to try out some simple and small snack-like meals?

I lucked into an Everyday Italian episode on sandwiches a couple of Saturdays ago, and was tickled to find a recipe for an Italian Egg Sandwich. I'm a BIG FAN of fried egg sandwiches, but have grown mildly bored with the typical fried-egg-and-hot-sauce on whole wheat kind of thing. I was nearly gleeful over Giada's interpretation, involving marinara sauce and salty fresh Parmesan cheese. I'm beginning to think all my recipes need an Italian riff. The Carnivore and I loved this recipe, and his mother seemed to like it as well. I'll be putting this on heavy rotation.

The recipe used for the tomato sauce in this recipe is pretty stinking good as well, and can be frozen and used as the base for a more complicated spaghetti sauce with added herbs, chopped vegetables and/or meat (if you swing that way). In a time crunch though, any store-bought spaghetti sauce, Ragu or whatnot, can be used with decent enough results and will shorten the prep time considerably.

*****

ITALIAN EGG SANDWICH (adapted from Everyday Italian), makes one serving, which won't be nearly enough

• 2 tsp olive oil
• 1 large egg (freshly laid in the floorboard of your truck, or purchased at the store, whatever floats your particular boat)
• salt and pepper
• 1 slice rustic white bread, 1/2-inch thick (ciabatta works well)
• 1 garlic clove
• 1 Tbs grated Parmesan (freshly grated - not the stuff you buy in a canister)
• 1/4 cup warm tomato sauce, drained of excess liquid

1. Heat oil in heavy small skillet over medium heat.
2. Crack egg into skillet; sprinkle with salt and pepper.
3. Cook for 2 or 3 minutes per side, until white is firm and yolk is almost set.
4. Season again with a little more salt.
5. Toast the bread until golden brown, and rub the garlic over the toast.
6. Sprinkle Parmesan over toast. Spoon the drained marinara sauce over the Parmesan, and top with the egg. Serve open-faced.

The Ambien Cookbook

Courtesy of my fabulous uncle, here is the link for the first recipes that made me laugh until I cried.

Bittersweet Epiphany

Honestly, Odd Toddler is getting too skinny. I poke at his rib bones to see if there is any body fat left on my formerly Fat Baby, and all I get is giggles because apparently those pokes are in tickle spots. I will use him as my excuse for this ridiculous need of mine to ALWAYS have dessert on hand. I don't mind making weekly brownies anyhow, since they tend to last six or seven days at our house, and mostly since it allows me to try new brownie recipes every time I get an itch.

Seriously, We Love Brownies.

I wised up on Sunday last weekend and made a huge lunch so that we could get our big meal of the day over with, allowing me to relax for a few hours instead of spending all afternoon on supper. But things didn't work out exactly as planned. As usual.

I cleaned up the lunch dishes, put the leftovers away, and plopped down on the sofa next to Odd Toddler. He was occupied with some new wildlife books that his Nana brought to him, The Carnivore had his nose in the newspaper, and I had a long list of relaxing activities to tend to (most of which included reading cookbooks). I was pretty sure I had exhausted every brownie recipe that existed when I came across a short section on them in my favorite new reference book How to Cook Everything. There were only a small handful of brownie recipes, each of which was inordinately similar to the other ones I have tried, but (oh joy of all joys) there was also a little inset of variations to normal brownie recipes. And, be still my beating heart, one of the suggestions involved adding ESPRESSO POWDER to the batter.

Maybe I haven't stressed it often enough before, but The Carnivore and I are Coffee Freaks. Neither of us can get more than five minutes into our day without coffee, and I usually drink four of five cups. Just to start the day, that is. I have been known to French Press another cup or two in order to make it through the afternoon. And there was that time in a beautiful mountainous city in Venezuela when I stood my ground outside my hotel room and steadfastly refused to Do Anything, Take Another Step, or Say Another Word to Anybody unless my two doting travel companions went IMMEDIATELY in search of some coffee for me. In many Hispanic countries (and neighborhoods, if you find yourself in the small annexed "country" of Miami), you cannot get coffee in anything smaller than a thimble. I have long found this inordinately frustrating, because it meant I had to juggle 15 or so thimbles full of scalding Cuban coffee when I would stop at the market in the mornings in South Beach. But I digress.

Coffee is such a fixation that I cannot resist, under any circumstances, coffee desserts. There was a cappucino cheesecake in San Francisco that made me swoon a few years ago, and I love the coffee-flavored Italian dessert tiramisu so much that I took Odd Toddler into a (gasp) liquor store in order to get the coffee liqueur I needed to complete the recipe. And, oh my gosh, have you ever had dark chocolate covered espresso beans? Wow.

Even Odd Toddler has developed a taste for anything coffee. He has grown so accustomed to tasting everything I make that I have had to begin allowing him a tiny amount of Cheapaccino (diluted by large quanties of milk while he has his back turned, of course) when I whip up a batch for myself and The Carnivore on weekends. Odd Toddler will even stick his nose over my coffee cup in the mornings and breathe in the vapors, cooing "Yummy, mama's coffee."

So I felt safe in attempting an espresso-flavored brownie recipe. Actually, the variations also included adding 1/2 cup of chocolate chips to any brownie recipe, and since I have an equal fixation on dark chocolate...

With recipe in hand, in the time I had set aside to relax and NOT cook, I sprinted to the kitchen, chuckling gleefully. The Carnivore smiled at Odd Toddler, and said "Mama's up to something. This sounds like its gonna be good."

BITTERSWEET ESPRESSO BROWNIES (adapted from How to Cook Everything)

• 2 ounces unsweetened chocolate
• 8 Tbs (one stick) unsalted butter
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• pinch of kosher salt
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 Tbs instant espresso powder (Cafe Bustelo makes one that can be purchased in little jars at Publix)
• 1/2 cup dark chocolate chips (such as Hershey's Special Dark)

1. Combine the unsweetened chocolate and butter in a large glass bowl and microwave for a minute or so, stirring every 15 seconds. When the chocolate is nearly melted, stir until the mixture is smooth.
2. Stir in the sugar.
3. Beat in the eggs, one at a time.
4. Gently stir in the flour, salt, vanilla and espresso powder.
5. Fold in the chocolate chips.
6. Pour into a greased 8-inch square baking pan, and bake at 350 degrees for 20-30 minutes, or until just barely set in the middle (the longer you cook them, the drier they will be - I prefer mine to be so moist that you nearly need a fork to eat them).

This is, without a doubt, my new favorite brownie recipe. And Odd Toddler ate his weight in them.

Not Your Mama's Tuna Salad

Life with a child, I am learning, means that sticking to a schedule is vitally important. For a few months, that is. Then the schedule changes drastically before the new one is established and must, again, be stuck to verbatim for the next few months. It is I that gets knocked out of whack every time a new schedule change smacks me across the face. I had finally adapted to Odd Toddler's new summertime schedule when The Carnivore threw me for a loop and began working later every day. I don’t mind that he leaves for work at 6:30 in the morning, but is has taken some adjusting now that he usually doesn’t get home until 6:00 at night.

My more complicated and time-intensive dinner recipes are having to wait for the weekends now, which means I am having to develop a new repertoire of faster and simpler menus for weeknight meals. This is no easy feat for me. Though I absolutely love picking out new recipes, I seem to be drawn to the more complex menus. With The Carnivore working later, and with Odd Toddler falling asleep earlier, after hours in the pool every afternoon (and therefore needing cuddle time earlier), I find that I either can’t start dinner until The Carnivore gets home, or poor Odd Toddler falls asleep before dinner, or The Carnivore gets home to a very cranky and over-tired Odd Toddler who is stuffed after snacking while I cooked. ‘Tis frustrating, at the very best.

Needless to say, I am learning to adapt. Again. And even though I’m not a big fan of cookbooks that are geared toward “quick and easy recipes,” I’m finding that I have no choice but to simplify our weeknight menus. The upshot is that I’m learning an entire new way of approaching dinner. While I already have a few easy recipes left over from the days, many moons ago, when I still had a Full-Time Traditional Job, our tastes have changed since then (read: we have gotten pickier and more spoiled by the elaborate recipes that I've been cooking).

So, even though I have never been a fan of Rachel Ray and her annoying 30-Minute Meals television show, I swallowed my snide comments and bought her latest cookbook when I found it for $1.00. My low opinion of her approach to cooking was reinforced when I realized that out of 365 recipes, I was drawn to only two of them. The vast majority either revolve around meat, or are boring and overly common.

With low expectations, I tried the first of those two recipes last week, a fancy-sounding tuna sandwich stuffed baguette, and was extraordinarily surprised to find that not only did I absolutely love it, but The Carnivore and my mother raved about it as well. I’ve always been kind of a sandwich person, but since The Carnivore isn’t a big fan of cold sandwiches, I had my doubts with this recipe. And then I was a little worried about the whole tuna salad thing too, since before now I have never run across a tuna salad worth talking about. Or worth eating, for that matter. This particular recipe takes the cake though. Its fresh and bright tasting, without the smarminess of the usual mayo and pickle based tuna salads everyone remembers from bad family reunions.

The artichoke hearts, the sundried tomatoes and the capers add a full-flavored tang the dish, and the arugula lends a spicy, peppery bitterness as well. A couple of anchovies could be added, if you're so inclined (which I'm not), and the onions could be replaced by scallions if you, like Yolie, have an aversion to the assertive red onion philosophy that I so heartily subscribe to.

FANCY TUNA SALAD STUFFED BAGUETTE (adapted from 365:No Repeats)

• 1 crusty baguette (I used the chubby kind, those skinny Nicole Ritchie baguettes wouldn't work here)
• 2 small cans Italian tuna in oil, drained
• 15-oz can artichoke hearts, drained and chopped
• 1/2 cup marinated sun-dried tomatoes, drained and chopped
• handful of fresh Italian flat-leaf parsley, chopped (the flat-leaf has MUCH more flavor than the curly variety)
• handful of olives, chopped (I used a mixture of kalamata olives and pimento-stuffed green olives)
• 1/2 red onion, chopped
• 3 Tbs capers, drained and chopped
• 2 cups arugula, chopped
• 3 or 4 large basil leaves, chopped (or any other fresh herb that you're partial to)
• coarse ground black pepper to taste
• kosher salt to taste
• zest and juice of 1 lemon
• 3 Tbs extra-virgin olive oil

1. Crisp the bread in the oven. Remove, split in half, and hollow out some of the soft insides.
2. Place tuna in bowl and flake it with a fork. Add the artichoke hearts, tomatoes, parsley, olives, onion, capers, arugula and basil.
3. Dress salad with pepper, salt, lemon zest and juice, and olive oil. Work salad together.
4. Overfill the bottom of the loaf, mounding the salad. Set the top in place and press down to set the sandwich. Cut into quarters.

Yummy. Makes me want to whip up a big batch and eat it for lunch all week long.

The Fastest Way to a Toddler's Heart...

Feeding Odd Toddler has become more of a challenge than I had hoped. I had grown accustomed to him walking around with his mouth open all the time, which made it incredibly easy to offer the chubby little child a varied diet. In those days, I hardly batted an eye over any junk food, knowing it was counterbalanced by any number of healthier items over the course of the day. Not so, any longer. The little guy seems to subsist now on maybe fifteen bites of food per day. He is very active, and though I have seen this play out in plenty of other children, nothing seems scarier to me than watching a toddler slim down, especially when I can’t figure out how he gets by on so little food to begin with. Obviously now, every little bite counts.

Odd Toddler drinks organic whole milk all day long, supplemented by water and the occasional smoothie I whip up to increase his fruit intake. For now at least sodas and juice are fights I can postpone a little bit longer. And, of course, I have had him taking children’s multi-vitamins since he was weaned from the breast. Obviously he isn't wasting away, but I can't help but become hyper-vigilant about his diet.

Meal planning has become more creative, to say the least. Since I have such tiny bird-like meals in which to fit in his nutritive vegetable, fruit, and fiber needs, I am having to focus with a single-minded concentration that nearly sends me over the obsessive edge. To save my sanity, and to not become a Snack Nazi, my latest child-feeding goal has centered on making typical child-friendly foods in a more healthful manner. Like all red-blooded American children, Odd Toddler loves French fries more than life itself (and gummy candies, but that’s a different battlefield altogether). I realize there are snacks much more evil than oven-baked pre-packaged frozen French fries, but I’d be hard pressed to find something that I find more disgusting, and so it was time to improve upon them...

I needed a side dish for last night's meal anyhow, and had been waffling for a couple of days over the best counterpoint to a catfish Po-boy dinner, when I had one of those sweet “Eureka!” moments. I remembered a recipe for Spicy Potato Wedges that I’d been dragging around for a long while, waiting for the right opportunity, and so I dug around the kitchen until I got my hands on it early yesterday morning. Alas, the recipe involved grilling, and I wasn’t in the mood. I’ve read countless variations of the standard toss-potato-wedges-with-olive-oil-and-bake recipe, but I’m always wary to try something the first time without better guidelines than my faulty memory can provide. So I pulled out my trusty How to Cook Everything, and was disappointed to find only one French fry recipe, which sadly involved deep frying (which would, of course, defeat the whole purpose here).

So there I stood, hands on hips, sneering at the cookbook shelf for nearly fifteen minutes as I pulled down useless cookbook after useless cookbook, relatively embarassed that I had never attempted to make french fries from scratch before now. Finally, too frustrated to continue the manual search any longer, I fired up the laptop and went to the Cooking Light website where I was chagrined to find that a search for “French fries” yielded nothing. Nada. Not one single recipe. Out of possibly tens of thousands of recipes in their archives, I didn't get the first hit.

I scratched my head for a minute, fiddled with a pen, tapped my feet, mumbled, and typed “potato wedges” into the search. Unbelievablly, I received innumerable possible recipes in the results window. Figures. The first recipe I clicked on looked like a winner, and I already had all the herbs and spices on hand.

So last night, with Odd Toddler looking on hopefully, I rolled up my sleeves and tackled what I assumed would be the difficult task of carving two large potatoes into French-fry-looking shapes, but which turned out to actually be fun. After no more than 10 minutes of prep (including the time it took to admire a spider that Odd Toddler brought to me, unstick two of his stubborn Legos during a tower-building fit, and refill his sippy cup), the fries were in the oven and I was free to prep and assemble the rest of our dinner. So far, so good.

And less than an hour later,( the last few minutes of which were filled with Odd Toddler hopping around manically, constantly repeating the refrain “French fries, mom! French fries, mom! Me French fries, mom! Me, mom! French fries, mom!”), I hesitantly bit into an uber-hot French fry and was overjoyed. They were fabulous. I love French fries (who doesn't?), but have always considered them a guilty pleasure. In this recipe though, they're downright GOOD FOR YOU.

Odd Toddler ate two plates of them, and The Carnivore yummed himself through quite a few as well. I feel like I've won the lottery (or finally passed Remedial Cooking for Dummies).

TASTY-YET-HEALTHY FRENCH FRIES (adapted from Cooking Light), makes enough for 2.5 people

• 2 large (approx 12-oz each) baking potatoes
• 1 1/2 Tbs olive oil
• 1/2 tsp kosher salt
• 1/2 tsp dried thyme
• 1/2 tsp coarse ground black pepper
• 1/4 tsp dried marjoram
• 1/4 tsp dried tarragon
• 1/4 tsp dried rosemary

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Cut potatoes into fry-like pieces, leaving the skins on (for texture and for additional nutrients and fiber). Out of two large potatoes, I got 40-50 fries. The smaller the size, the crispier the fries.
3. Place fries in a large jelly-roll pan, in a single layer.
4. Drizzle fries with oil; toss well.
5. Combine salt and other herbs/spices; sprinkle over potatoes.
6. Bake at 400 degrees for 50 minutes, stirring/tossing once or twice during cooking.

Without a doubt, PMS (or pregnancy cravings) will now become easier to deal with.

Drooling Over This

There was an article in the AJC earlier this week about local organic food and a free guide that was published about organic and sustainable farms in Georgia.

So. Darn. Cool.

Egghead

Science was never my strong point (I can still distinctly recall the irritable relationship I had with my high school chemistry teacher - actually my mother can probably remember it as well). So when a recipe goes awry, I often don't have enough of a grasp of the basic concepts in order to right my wrongs. My issues are mainly with, but certainly not limited to, making anything bread-like.

The underlying problem is my new feeling of inadequacy. The last two foodie books I read (A Cook's Tour, by Anthony Bourdain, and Julia Child's My Life in France) have given me the inordinate desire to learn French so that I don't feel quite so stupid. It seems that all great chefs learned classical techniques from French chefs/schools, and everyone keeps bringing up recipes whose TITLES are even in French. Three years of Spanish in high school (see how I blame everything on high school?) mean that I cannot even pronounce half of these dishes, much less glean any clue as to what they refer to. Ugh. I cannot ABIDE with feeling stupid.

Which brings me to the next issue: I am not finished with higher education. It took me 9 years to get my undergrad degree because I dragged it out. For years, I couldn't think of a good reason to give up free bus passes, free use of the greatest college gym facilities in the South, reduced healthcare at the student clinic, and the (pseudo)-freedom to take any class that struck my ever-changing fancy. I have so many hours under my belt that my second-to-the-last advisor warned me they might just make up a degree to fit my hours if it would get me off their rolls. And sure, I happened into a major and thus into a career that has really fit my needs and has allowed me the freedom to create my own job. I fear though that I may have missed my calling.

But hey, Julia Child didn't find her own true calling until her late thirties. As a matter of fact, she didn't even start cooking school until she was forty. And I think she was in her fifties before she first got published. So I probably shouldn't be beating myself up too badly over how much I still have to learn. But I do have to make a new list of educational goals. No longer will the list include classes in Greek culture (I swear it this time, I am REALLY leaving Homer behind). Now my goals will include learning basic French, and the anal-retentive study of culinary school textbooks so as to learn the science behind cooking. I will have to do it all by independent study at this point, because there is no way that I can go back to school right now, not with a toddler to take care of and (hopefully) another baby on the way in the near future. Someone please remind me of these reasons every time I get the itch to start filling out college apps again.

Until recently, my self-education in cooking has been limited to reading anything I could get my cheap little hands on (Cooking Light magazine, the AJC Food section, the New York Times Dining section online, etc). And sure, I've tried an absurd number of recipes, and I've even gotten fairly adept at making ingredient substitutions, and because of all that I haven't taken my severe lack of real culinary knowledge too seriously since my main and probably only goal when I embarked on this hobby (read: obsession), in the beginning at least, was just to have a wide repertoire of dinner recipes with which to dazzle my hard-working husband every night. But I have never been one to leave well enough alone.

And so now I find myself attempting all manner of complex recipes, and spending entire afternoons in the kitchen trying to perfect some new technique or another. But I have increasingly become aware of my limitations. On Sunday I attempted a focaccia bread recipe, and though I could tell something was off before I even finished kneading my dough, I didn't know how to fix it (or even how to tell for sure that something was really wrong), so I sat on eggshells for an hour and a half, anxiously lifting the towel every fifteen minutes to see if my dough was rising properly. The dough did, in fact, rise, but it was a sticky, airy, gooey, useless mess that I had to chunk out. After a hissy fit (yes mom, it really WAS about the dough), I somehow managed to salvage our dinner plans, but in a peevish snit I grabbed the biggest cookbook off my shelf and skulked outside to the porch swing where I flipped to the very first word and began reading.

Mom called a few minutes later and I told her I was reading How to Cook Everything. "What book is that?" she asked innocently, assuming I was reading another foodie memoir. "It's a 900-plus-page cookbook," I grumbled," and I'm only on page xiv. "Hm," was her uncharacteristically short and un-opinionated response, apparently not wanting to push me when it was obvious I was so close to the edge. Because of course, this isn't JUST about the food. A lot of this is just about me. Sunday was the day my second son should have been born, but instead he was delivered, stillborn, five months too early. And though emotionally I have (mostly) healed, I have had no choice, in my own mind, but to throw myself headlong into self-improvement. It was either that or wallowing, and a mother doesn't have time to wallow.

Maybe this will pass, the self-education that is, but I doubt it. I'm more focused these days than I've ever been before (one of the many benefits of parenthood), and I actually tend to finish the things that I've started. So even though I haven't yet figured out the best way to go about learning French, I have begun a subscription to Cook's Illustrated, a dry and quirky black-and-white bimonthly ultimate food nerd magazine, and I have stomped around in Ebay, bidding on a couple of used Cordon Bleu textbooks. At least this particular hobby (again read: obsession) will be of great benefit to my household; I mean, its not like I've taken up ballroom dancing or golf.