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.

Dressing It Up

RECIPES FOR PUMPKIN

Crisp salads have appealed to me since I was a child. Summertime in Georgia can be hot as Hades, and for those of us that spent most of our lives without air conditioning, the quest for a decent meal in the three hottest months can often be a lost cause. I can recall loooooooong periods of time each year in which my daily menu consisted of cold cereal for breakfast (best when topped with fresh berries), a cheese and pickle sandwich for lunch, a juicy, runny, sticky, messy sweet-as-pie peach for a snack, and a gigantic salad for dinner. Matter of fact, this tradition, born when I was maybe eight years old, continued with only minor embellishments until I turned thirty. Now that I actually have air conditioning, it isn't too much of a stretch for me to eat a hot meal or two during the summer, but I still crave those salads...

Mom and I had two stainless steel bowls that we ate most meals out of. They were huge bowls, maybe quart-sized, and they were considered (by me, at least) to be our greatest treasures. You could have told me they were family silver, and I would have gladly believed you. As far as I was concerned, no other dish could then (or even still now, I think) have more significance in my life. For years, My Bowl (the other one belonged to mom, though we didn't delineate exactly which one belonged to the other) was my cereal bowl in the morning and my salad bowl at night. Those bowls are long gone now, as far as I know, and while I am content to eat my cereal out of any old receptacle these days, I still long to put my salad in a giant, stainless steel bowl.

The best salads of my childhood were picked straight from mom's garden, and they were simple, often no more than lettuce, alfalfa sprouts, and cheese, topped with sunflower seeds, wheat germ, and some salad dressing or another that I have no memory of. The salads tended to be gritty, as mom has never been known to wash the dirt or, um, the (shudder at the memory) manure off of her fresh-picked produce. To this day, anytime I grumble as I pick a clod of what I hope is only dirt out of my teeth, mom will flippantly say, with a mouth full of salad and without even looking up, "You know, people eat a peck of dirt in their lifetime."

I have no idea where she got that, er, nugget of information, and I suspect she doesn't even remember herself, but I stick by the reply I have always given her, that eating a peck of dirt is NOT a requirement. But as long as there were no bugs, which mom refers to as "protein," I never bothered to complain too much about my dirty salads.

My salads have changed a little over the years, and now are most often a mixture of romaine and baby spinach, topped with sliced red onion, a whoppingly large handful of garbanzo beans (I eat these things as a snack, too), some crumbled feta or goat cheese, and dressed with a fresh vinaigrette. I cannot, under any circumstances, abide by store-bought salad dressings any longer. I will occasionally deviate from the vinaigrette and try a new recipe for a green goddess dressing or a creamy gorgonzola dressing, but I always come back to my favorite, especially in the dog days of summer, those yummy oil and vinegar based dressings.

I have been experimenting with different vinaigrette recipes for the past year - I get on a bandwagon and can't seem to find a way to step off - and I have found there are more different approaches to vinaigrette than people who even eat salads. I have a couple of unswerving requirements: the only oil I will use is olive oil (and now it must be organic), and a ratio of equal parts oil to vinegar. Many people, including classic Italian chefs, prefer to overload on the oil and relegate the vinegar to the background, but I vehemently disagree. Sure, olive oil is the heart-healthy kind of fat, and sure its delicious as all get out, but I've always been a face-puckering vinegar lover. And now that I have filled my cabinets with a dizzying array of vinegars with which to choose from, I have been known to do impromptu vinegar tastings with Odd Toddler (sort of like wine tastings, and nearly as highbrow, but a more acceptable alternative for a two year old than, um, alcohol - though we all know where vinegar comes from...).

I have two current favorites for vinaigrette recipes, neither of which are original (my favorite original and very bold rendition appeared way back here).

MISTO SALAD DRESSING (Misto is an Atlanta restaurant from the guy who ran Burrito Art, my favorite now-defunct East Atlanta restaurant; this recipe was printed in the AJC Food Section). This is Pretty Girl's favorite, I think.

• 1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1/3 cup balsamic vinegar
• 1 Tbs freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 1/2 tsp whole-grain mustard
• 1/8 tsp chopped fresh garlic
• 1/8 tsp sea salt
• 1/8 tsp freshly ground black pepper
• 2 large fresh basil leaves, chopped
• 1/2 tsp Italian seasoning

1. In a blender or food processor, or in a bowl using a whisk, whip together the oil and vinegar.
2. Whip in the lemon juice.
3. Add the mustard, garlic, salt, pepper and basil.
4. Crush the Italian seasoning (or just throw it in, like I do), and add to the vinaigrette.
5. Whisk the dressing to emulsify.

FRESH HERB VINAIGRETTE (from the August 2005 issue of Better Homes and Gardens). This one if my newest obsession.

• 1/3 cup olive oil
• 1/3 cup white or red wine vinegar (I prefer the more mellow red wine vinegar to the white)
• 1 Tbs snipped fresh thyme, oregano, or basil (my current choice is basil, but I plan to try every fresh herb I can think of - I wonder how rosemary would do?)
• 1 tsp Dijon mustard
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1/8 tsp black pepper

1. Combine all ingredients in a screw-top jar (or one of those Good Seasons cruets - I am in luuuurve with those things) and shake well.

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...