Stuffing It

I have been so focused upon the question of raw milk (and my newfound uncontrollable desire to get my very own miniature cow) that I didn’t realize until slightly too late that I had run out of produce. This is not a common occurrence around here; between the farmer’s market, the Locally Grown co-op, and the offerings from the gardens of various friends, relatives and clients, we generally have overflowing crisper drawers and a kitchen counter virtually crawling with vegetables. Until today, that is.

I have been straying from my usual obsessive-compulsive menu-planning tendencies in favor of more spontaneous meals, mostly because I’ve had too much going on recently to be so anal about it all, but also due to the fact that it’s much easier to go with the flow during the late summer months when there are still so many fresh vegetables to play around with. After all, who wants to be all fussy about everything when you can so easily throw together a veggie plate and let the just-picked flavors shine on their own?

I had vaguely planned to do something with spaghetti squash today, but alas, my order from Athens Locally Grown yesterday was short both the crook-neck squash and the spaghetti squash. And somehow, some way, I had finally gotten to the bottom of my piles of potatoes, green beans, zucchini and tomatoes. I don’t know how that happened exactly.

Even the fridge was kind of bare for the first time in months. As usual, there was ample variety in the cheese drawer, and I was still up to my gills in fresh herbs, but other than those anomalies, I was mostly sitting on milk and soy milk, half a block of tofu, butter, flour, some frozen vegetables, a rock-hard hind end of a baguette, and an unexplainable big ole’ package of button mushrooms. After some initial head-scratching and a minor anxiety attack, brought on in no small part by the eleven-month-old who kept trying to dump over my mop bucket, I decided my only possible recourse was to stuff those mushrooms into submission (they were, after all, in MY fridge) and to serve them with a couple of simple tomato, mozzarella and basil pizzas. Never mind that I had to thaw and crush the tomatoes that I had just frozen last week in order to make it happen.

Eating tomatoes that were just frozen a week ago. The absurdity…

The stuffed mushrooms are one of my favorite cocktail-party appetizers. Not that I go to a lot of cocktail parties. Okay, not that I go to any parties. I really need to get out more.

Anyhow, about those stuffed mushrooms. When The Big Boy was 18 months old or so, I would sit in the snuggle chair with him after lunch every day to rock him to sleep for his nap, and I would often turn on The Food Network for a few minutes. It got to be our little routine, and he would ask me adorable questions about the food that was being featured or about the host of the show. Since we stuck to our schedule like glue, it turned out that we sat down just as Everyday Italian came on each day. The Big Boy (then better known as Odd Toddler) developed quite the crush on Giada De Laurentiis, and I ended up with a plethora of her recipes in my repertoire. I was still learning to cook (still am, actually) at the time and Giada became my mentor.

I kind of miss those days now that I think about it. I rarely watch cooking shows any more, and those days of The Big Boy nodding off to sleep with his sweet head on my shoulders are long gone.

Actually, that's not entirely true. He fell asleep with his head on my shoulder just last night, but we were both wedged into his little toddler bed at the time and I was spectacularly uncomfortable.

The stuffed mushroom recipe that I use to this day came from one of those Everyday Italian episodes. I remember wanting to jump through the TV when I first watched Giada make them, and I believe I ended up at the grocery store that very afternoon so that I could get the ingredients to cook them for the first time myself. The mushrooms become tender and rich as they cook, while still retaining that beautiful earthy flavor that makes them so addictive, and the filling is fabulously complex with contradictory textures (oh, those crispy breadcrumbs) and a sharp cheese that is balanced by fresh herbs. I love them.

*****

STUFFED MUSHROOMS (adapted from Giada De Laurentiis, makes about 25 mushrooms)

• 1/2 cup dried breadcrumbs (the perfect use for a rock-hard hind end of a forgotten baguette)
• 1/2 cup grated Pecorino Romano
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 Tbs chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
• 1 Tbs chopped fresh mint leaves
• salt and freshly ground pepper
• 4 to 5 Tbs olive oil, divided
• 25 or so large white mushrooms, stemmed

1. In a medium bowl, stir together the bread crumbs, Pecorino Romano, garlic, parsley, mint, a pinch of salt, a grind or two of pepper, and 2 Tbs olive oil. Taste and add more salt & pepper if needed.
2. Brush a large heavy baking sheet with a little bit of olive oil.
3. Spoon a little of the filling into the cavity of each of the mushrooms and arrange on the baking sheet.
4. Drizzle another Tbs or so of olive oil over the mushrooms (do not do this ahead of time or the mushrooms will become soggy and bland-tasting).
5. Bake at 400 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes, until mushrooms are heated through and the filling is crispy and golden.

Hey Now, Brown Cow

I wish I had paid more attention in science class back in high school. I should have known it would come to this eventually, of course. Midway through college I smacked my forehead for not ever fully comprehending math and then had to do some painful knuckling-down to make it all the way through blasted differential calculus for my major. And it worked. I get math now. I get all of it. The problem though, is that I am far more interested in nutrition than accounting now, and I’m coming at it with very little scientific knowledge.

See, the raw milk debate has hit my household, and this kind of conversation works best if you know what you’re talking about. And I’m afraid I don’t exactly.

Since The Big Boy began drinking cow’s milk on his first birthday, I have only purchased the organic whole milk for him from the supermarket. Conventional milk scares me (the hormones and antibiotics involved in its production just don’t have any place in my child’s diet), and I’m not crazy about the processing involved in low-fat milk either. Matter of fact, I avoid all low-fat dairy, finding even yogurt to be suspect. Have you noticed how many more ingredients seem to go into things that have had their fat content altered?

As The Big Boy gets older, I am sure I will start steering him away from cow’s milk. Already he prefers soy milk in his cereal, but for now he drinks about 16 ounces of whole cows’ milk every day, and I don’t have much of a problem with that. He needs the calcium, he needs the fat for proper brain development (and because he’s too doggone skinny), and milk is kind of a comfort thing for him. This is not an issue for me. And when Little Miss Piggy turns one next month, I fully intend to start offering her whole cow’s milk as well.

A dairy-free diet isn’t really something I’m after for us. Cheese is entirely too important to all of us, and though I haven’t drunk (drank?) a glass of cow's milk myself in 20 years or so, I have found that soy products aren’t the most reliable substitute for dairy when, say, baking macaroni and cheese or pulling together an alfredo sauce. The soy milk is just too nutty, too off-flavored, too gritty-textured for use in some recipes. I’m pretty sure that milk will always have a place in my refrigerator.

For the past few months, as I have read more about the industrialization of organic dairy farms, and as I have tried to purchase as much of our foods locally as I can, milk has become kind of a hot button for me. Because though we are purchasing organically (at a whopping average of $6.50 per gallon, no less), suddenly that just hasn’t seemed like enough anymore. I still have no idea really where that milk is coming from, except for the disconcerting knowledge that it is coming from far away, and the processing is still a bit of an issue as well.

So, raw milk, right? It is the obvious next step. And it is readily available to us through Athens Locally Grown, from whom I have picked up three gallons now over the past few weeks. I have read a considerable amount about raw milk over the past year or so and have been somewhat flummoxed by the science behind it all, but if there is one thing I am clear on, it is that the loudest argument against raw milk is from the FDA and I just don’t see the government as being the most reliable source of nutritional information. Governmental bodies have given us the Farm Bill, the school lunch program, and the vast ethanol conspiracy amongst other travesties.

I am conflicted on this subject, and wish that I understood it all better so that I could not only feel totally confident with my decision to purchase raw milk, but also so that I could make an argument here for why others should do so too. My sister-in-law, a registered nurse and someone with whom I discuss most scientific questions with, has given me the green light for serving raw milk to The Big Boy, and she passed me a well-balanced article that has shed some light (though not quite enough for me to feel well-versed) on the subject. Just today, there was mention of raw milk in Bitten, the blog written by The New York Times’ food writer, Mark Bittman, which linked to some other articles as well.

And the thing is, The Big Boy truly loves the raw milk. I was a bit nervous when I poured him his first cup three weeks ago. The color is not quite so purely white, and the consistency is a little thicker, a bit more viscous; the taste a tad tangier. But he loved it. He saw the picture of some brown cows on the carton, and he gushed, “Brown cows make very yummy milk, mom. I really love brown cow milk.” And, lo and behold, it is less expensive than buying organic pasteurized milk at the supermarket, and if I need to, I can actually get in touch with the farmer in charge of the operation.

Today, when we got to the Locally Grown pick-up site, The Big Boy seemed more eager than usual, and I wasn’t totally sure why he was hopping around and craning his head while we waited for our bags, but the minute we got to the car, he handed me his empty big-boy cup and said, “Fill it up, mom! I can’t wait to have some more of that yummy brown cow milk.”

For now, we will stick with it. Could you dash the hopes of such a cute four-year-old? And I will keep reading up on the subject until I am a little more sure that I know what I’m doing. But will I serve it to Little Miss Piggy when she’s twelve months old? I don’t know. I think I’m leaning towards waiting until she is a little older, which means I may be buying two different milks for a few years here. I really, really wish I had paid more attention in science. Ms. Gallagher, wherever you are, I would like for you to know that it may have taken 18 years, but I’m finally willing to admit you may have been right. Science is something I will need in real life.

The Simple Life

I’ve had pole beans on the brain all day today. Sometimes it goes like that. As far as I know, I’d made it 30-something years without ever tasting a pole bean, much less giving them any thought whatsoever. And like all of us now, so far removed from where our food comes from, I had grown accustomed to the vague thought that for each particular vegetable, there are only a small handful of varieties. I mean, who knew there was a green bean that wasn't a regular old green bean, right?

It’s all a fallacy, of course, one of the great lies of corporate agriculture. For very clear and hard-to-fault economic reasons, over time the farmers that feed us (and the seed companies that essentially decide what will be grown) have winnowed down the selections until consumers got what they wanted. Now, when you go to the supermarket, all the strawberries are gi-normous and unblemished, the peaches are unnaturally firm, and the squash are exactly the same size. We asked for it. They delivered it. I recently read How to Pick a Peach: The Search for Flavor from Farm to Table and found the analysis of how we got to this place of homogenized produce to be endlessly fascinating. The book doesn’t only focus on the politics of food however; its true purpose is more to serve as a resource of information on individual fruits and vegetables, with hints on determining ripeness, instructions on how to store the bounty, and recipes for best flavor. I love that kind of thing. Love, love, love.

We are in our third year now of eating off the grid, of attempting to source as much as possible of our foodstuffs away from the confines of the supermarket, and I still spend most of my time in a clueless fog of carting home obscure (to us) items of produce that I have no idea how to cook and even less of an idea of where to put it when I get it into the kitchen.

It can be daunting - don’t ever let anyone tell you differently. But it doesn’t have to actually be difficult. I have gone to both my mother and grandmother with questions (especially the first time I found a bunch of beets in my CSA box), I have done internet searches just to find out what something is called (ever seen green garlic?), I have spent countless hours reading cooking magazines word-for-word, and I have had picked the brains of all the farmers I have purchased from.

The bright side is that it didn’t take long at all before I would purposely buy things that stumped me. Once I learned where to look for information, I wanted nothing more than to search out heirloom varieties of common veggies and to find uses for items I hadn’t even known existed. This has led to mis-steps, of course, but a good challenge never hurt anyone. Matter of fact, I’m still a little steamed that I wasted those stunning paprika peppers on a pasta dish earlier this evening that turned out so spectacularly un-spectacular. That was just no way to treat a pepper.

Live and learn.

For the most part, I do not find general Googling to be the best source for recipes when I drag in my farmer’s market finds - the results are entirely too vast and I wouldn't know who to trust nor what to do. Sure, I get plenty of recipes online from the food blogs that I devour on a daily basis, but those aren’t the first place I turn to when I’m dribbling around in bags of unknown beans and strangely-shaped peppers. During the summer, I have a small stack of cookbooks that I keep within easy reach at all times for both general information and for recipes: Chez Panisse Vegetables, a gorgeous fount of information with soul-soothing line drawings and recipes that range from the simple old-fashioned type to the only-in-the-Bay-Area-restaurant kind of thing; the afore-mentioned How to Pick a Peach, which is now my go-to for general information on selecting and storing fruits and vegetables; a couple of reliable Moosewood Restaurant and Mollie Katzen vegetarian cookbooks; and my absolute favorite, that funky, painfully-eighties, badly-photographed, but virtually indispensable Joy of Gardening Cookbook.

Look, you can dress a girl up and teach her how to cook. You can send her to college and let her spend some time traveling. You can buy her books that teach her big words, and you can hope she learns a little bit of culture from her single and carefree years spent catting about. But when it all comes down to it, you can take a girl out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the girl. Chez Panisse is just a little bit above my raising. The Joy of Gardening Cookbook is a little more working-class, a bit less sophisticated, a comfortably small-town, down-to-earth, back-to-basics cookbook for everyday use.

Frankly, it's right up my alley.

And when I found myself with a pound of Kentucky Wonder Pole Beans and no idea whatsoever about what I should do with them, when Alice Waters and Russ Parsons gave me nothing more than the sound of crickets in the night, I found what I needed in my trusty old Joy of Gardening Cookbook. In less than a minute, I learned that pole beans could be cooked and served in the same manner as all other snap beans, which meant I could have gone on to my other big-city cookbooks, but I felt right at home where I was and so I kept reading, even though I already knew good and well how to cook a snap bean.

I ended up going for the simple old-school preparation on these pole beans, partly because the fried rice dish I was serving alongside was going to have ample flavor on its own, but also because the information I read said that the pole beans had a nutty flavor and so I didn’t want to overshadow that with too much pomp and circumstance. As it turned out, plain and simple was the way to go. Pole beans are incredibly flavorful, much more so than regular old green beans, with a nice lumpy shape and a pronounced nuttiness. I loved them. They were wonderful for dinner, and just as satisfying warmed up for lunch today.

*****
POLE BEANS WITH BUTTER, HERBS AND BREADCRUMBS (serves 4 as a side dish)

• 1 tsp olive oil
• 1/3 cup fresh breadcrumbs
• 2 Tbs butter
• 1 pound fresh pole beans, washed and trimmed
• 1 tsp fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped
• salt and pepper, to taste

1. In a small skillet, heat olive oil over medium heat. Add breadcrumbs to pan and cook, stirring, for a minute or two, until breadcrumbs are crispy and have browned a little. Set aside.
2. In a steamer basket or metal colander set over a pan with an inch or so of boiling water, steam the beans, covered, for 3 to 4 minutes, until crisp-tender.
3. In a large skillet, heat the butter over medium heat. Add the beans and the parsley and cook, stirring constantly, for a couple of minutes, until heated through.
4. Season with a generous pinch of salt and a grind or two of black pepper. Taste and adjust seasoning if desired. Top with breadcrumbs and serve immediately.

The Ennui Shatterer

I was feeling a certain ennui regarding dinner this afternoon. I had planned to serve a pasta dish with a roasted red pepper and cream sauce, but we had pasta last night and then I had yet another leftover pasta dish for lunch today and, well, I just wasn’t feeling it, you know? There were plenty of vegetables around from Saturday morning’s rainy farmer’s market jaunt, and The Carnivore had a piece of meat in the fridge he needed to cook, so I decided to switch gears and throw together a vegetable plate instead.

That afore-mentioned ennui was still a problem though. I mean, I had potatoes and squash and some pole beans, but since we weren’t expecting many guests at the table tonight, I wanted to go easy and only cook as much as we would actually eat in one sitting, so three veggie dishes seemed like overkill. The thing was, I just couldn’t make up my mind what to make with any of my options. I knew I wanted to cook the pole beans, and when I bought them I had originally planned to make one of my usual green bean recipes with them, but frankly, I was sick to death of both of those dishes and wanted to try something new. This would be my first foray with pole beans anyhow, so I poked around in my cookbooks to get some details on what they actually were and how to prepare them. For this, I stuck with The Joy of Gardening Cookbook, a completely quirky and out-of-character-for-me tome from the early eighties with horrifyingly bad photography and hopelessly unfashionable recipes. As usual though, I got the information I was looking for about these beans and found enough general guidance on possible ways to cook them that I was able to wing it for myself.

I love that cookbook. My mom found it for me at a yard sale a few years ago, and I think I use it more often than any of the others in my embarassingly extensive collection. I would cry if I ever had to live without it. Matter of fact, I need to pencil that in on my desert island list…

The beans turned out deliciously, by the way, but they were completely overshadowed by the fried rice dish that I served with them. Just as I had been about to start peeling squash for the squash ribbon recipe that I like so much, I started getting hinky about not having any protein or starch on the menu and I remembered running across a recipe for vegetable fried rice when I was flipping through some recipe clippings over the weekend. Eureka, right? Oh sure, I had never actually made fried rice before, and it was going to involve scrambling an egg (another first for me - don't laugh) as well, not to mention that I was running low on time and would have to use WHITE (!) rice instead of brown, but my entire day thus far had been an exercise in futility so I was up for a little challenge.

And this recipe just looked like such fun. As with my favorite frittata recipe, this one too is essentially a framework by which you can use what you have on hand at any given time, and always come out with something a little different than before but equally delicious. I substituted like mad of course, since I didn’t have the oil called for in the original recipe, I had no intention of using bacon, and I didn’t have all the vegetables on the list either, but we’ve all had fried rice enough times to know that almost anything goes.

Like I said, this is my kind of recipe. And okay, I was just a wee bit nervous about the whole thing, especially that egg-scrambling business, but the recipe is truly foolproof. No experience required, you know? Best of all, we all loved it, even The Semi-Permanent Houseguest who doesn’t usually eat vegetables, but who ate every bite of this. Next time, I intend to use brown rice, for sure, though I’m not entirely positive the results will be as delightful since I have always read that white rice is best for this type of dish, but this recipe is most certainly going to be put into heavy rotation around here.

*****

VEGETABLE FRIED RICE (serves 2 as a meatless main dish, or 4 as a side dish)
This is the perfect seasonal recipe: just use whatever vegetables you have on hand. Serve with additional soy sauce at the table so diners can adjust the flavor to their liking.

• 2 Tbs sesame oil
• 2 large eggs, beaten
• 1 medium yellow onion, coarsely chopped
• 1 or 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 medium yellow squash, cut into 1/2-inch dice (don't get out your ruler - this isn't rocket science, and a little unpredictability never hurt anyone)
• 1 bell pepper, cut into 1/2-inch dice
• 1/2 tsp smoked paprika (my new favorite jar in the spice cabinet)
• 2 cups cold cooked long-grain rice (this is a wonderful use for leftover rice)
• 1 tsp chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
• 2 Tbs soy sauce, plus more to taste

1. In a large skillet, heat 1 Tbs oil over high heat. Add eggs and cook, stirring constantly, until scrambled and a little toasted looking, breaking up the egg into small pieces as you stir. Transfer to a plate and set aside.
2. Add the remaining tablespoon oil to the pan.
3. Add the onion to the pan and cook, stirring constantly, for about 2 minutes, until soft.
4. Add the garlic to the pan and cook for another 30 seconds, stirring constantly.
5. Add the squash, the bell pepper and the smoked paprika to the pan. Cook for about 5 minutes, stirring constantly, until the vegetables have softened.
6. Add the rice to the pan and cook, stirring constantly, for 3 minutes or so, until rice is heated through.
7. Add the scrambled eggs, the parsley, and the soy sauce to the pan. Cook, stirring constantly yet again, for a couple of minutes, until hot.

In Case of Emergency

An emergency roster of quick pantry meals is a necessity around our house. While I generally work from a weekly menu, and I do not mind spending two hours leisurely putting together a complex dinner, sometimes other factors work against me (not the least of which is the presence of two small and unpredictable children in the household). And frankly, I just don’t think it hurts to have a couple tricks up my sleeve so that we can avoid last minute take-out meals, which are expensive and hardly imaginative.

Of course, when we ran out of water for about six hours on Saturday (ironically during a rainstorm) we did pick up pizzas. There is a time and a place for everything, after all.

For the most though, I try to be flexible. Sometimes extra people show up for dinner at the last minute, The Carnivore doesn’t come home from work until an insanely hour, time gets away from me, or a kid goes down sick and precipitates scrapping a trip to the supermarket (or co-op, farm, or farmer’s market, as the case may be). It is for those times that I make sure we always have staples on hand for what I call pantry meals. Bags of broccoli and Brussels sprouts are stashed in the freezer, along with tomatoes, whole-wheat pizza crusts, tortillas, and batches of pesto and marinara sauce. I keep unnaturally large quantities of brown rice, whole-wheat orzo and whole-wheat pasta in the pantry, and I make sure to never, ever, not-even-in-a-snowstorm run out of eggs, specialty cheeses, lemons, onions, garlic, canned beans (because you don’t exactly have time to soak dried beans overnight in desperate situations) and olive oil. And of course, in the summer, it would be truly rare for me to not find an array of peppers in the crisper, along with green beans and squash.

With those ingredients, a handful of choices exist at any given time for emergency meals, and many of the options can be stretched so that I can feed up to 10 people without breaking a sweat. I’m proud of this accomplishment; it was a long time coming.

And now with soccer season beginning, every Monday is going to be an emergency for the next couple of months. We will struggle – partly because neither The Carnivore nor I think soccer is a real sport – to have us all at the fields by six pm; and since bedtime will come right on the heels of our returning home, dinner will have to be cooked, eaten and cleaned up from before we leave the house at 5:45.

We will be in crisis mode, I tell you, especially since The Carnivore doesn’t exactly get home in time to help. And since not everyone keeps a library of these types of meals in their head, I think it is only fair that I share mine here while I limp through the next eight weeks or so of this not-a-sport-season.

This evening I will serve Rainbow Penne Pasta (made with peppers and garlic that I bought at the farmer’s market this past Saturday), topped with crumbled feta (purchased from Athens Locally Grown), and served with lemon-parsley bruschetta (using a baguette also picked up at the farmer’s market). And if, per chance, any extra guests show up at the dinner table, this recipe is easily doubled; plus, leftovers are scrumptious for lunches.

Let the games begin.

Basil Perfume

Eating locally and organically can be an expensive proposition. Since we must eat though, cooking is at least the kind of hobby that can be justified relatively easily. I do try to be aware of the costs involved, and spend an inordinate amount of time weighing the warring merits of buying sustainably-grown/produced items with our attempts to stick to a budget. As long as the kids are still at home and I am contributing very little to the household economy, scrimping will be part of my lifestyle.

Truth be told, I’ve always been a scrimper. That will probably never change.

So I do my best. When my mother or grandmother, or The Carnivore’s clients, offer up the bounty from their gardens, I am elated. Organically-grown local produce for free? Yes, yes, and yes. And if it is more than we can eat right away, so much the better. Then I am able to freeze these summer treats for use in January when I’ve grown desperate. My next goal is to learn how to can, so I will be able to ‘put up’ jars of tomatoes and such in the pantry, but I believe that project may need to wait until Little Miss Piggy has detached herself from her perch on my hip. Maybe by next summer…

In recent years, even if I have planted nothing else, I have tried to keep a couple or three basil plants around during the summer. Organic basil from the supermarket is outrageously expensive, especially considering how prolifically I use it, so I have long attempted my own little patch of it. Alas, I always ended up with spindly, pitiful little plants that would give up the ghost long before summer was over and which never provided me with enough leaves at any one time to make pesto (which is kind of the point of growing basil, really).

Every year I would try again. And every year, I would stalk around the yard, flailing my arms about and railing against the injustice of it all when I would never find more than two or three half-inch-sized leaves to take inside and use as a garnish. A garnish! Oh, the humanity.

Finally I realized I was planting the wrong variety. And then I felt particularly ridiculous.

Sometime late this past winter, when I was lolling about on my mother’s sofa with a sleeping baby draped across me, Mom tossed me a seed catalog to keep me busy. I read it word-for-word, cover-to-cover, and then I started back at the beginning. It was the Seeds of Change catalog no less, and there were profiles of chefs who source their ingredients locally, and all sorts of fascinating information about heirloom varieties of tomatoes and such. I fawned over the pages of basil plants and discussed the different varieties with Mom (or whichever sibling walked through the room) until Mom handed me her seed order and told me to write down the basil variety I wanted.

I love her. And the lettuce leaf basil that I chose. She ended up with forty-eight (48!) plants and we are now up to our eyeballs in basil. Mom sends plastic grocery bags full of basil leaves home with any adult who comes to her house. It has gotten to the point where she’ll drive up and throw bags of it at me before peeling back out of my driveway. I have even threatened to leave some of it on the hoods of the cars at the farmer’s market on Saturday mornings.

But, oh, it is so utterly delicious. The flavor is strong and spicy, with hints of pepper, and the leaves are mongo-sized and crisp. I have even (I can’t believe I’m going to admit to this) rubbed the leaves on my neck as perfume. Basil just sings my song.

The harvest has been so plentiful that I have experimented with different ways of preserving it, but none has come close to the splendor of pesto. I have attempted freezing individual leaves for use in the winter with awful results. Preserving it in the fridge in a container full of salt worked okay, but the leaves lost their crispness and thus some of their appeal; and drying it destroys too much of the flavor. So I keep blending batches of pesto and freezing them in little containers. I'm going to need to get another freezer, for sure.

I have tried numerous pesto recipes over the past few years, using different cheeses, different nuts, with and without lemon juice, and with varying amounts of basil, but in the end, it was the simplest recipe that won out. Using too many ingredients muddies the flavor, and frankly the added expense of using nuts never really added enough to either the flavor or the texture to make it worthwhile (especially when making and freezing multiple batches at a time). Interestingly, the quality of the olive oil and the parmesan cheese is irrelevant, which helps considerably while I’m buying both in bulk right now.

The best part? The pesto freezes perfectly without compromising the quality, and can make even the dreariest winter day seem brighter and much more bearable. Not to mention, keeping batches of pesto on hand means dinner is ready in the time it takes to boil a pot of pasta.

*****

BASIL PESTO (adapted from Everyday Italian, makes enough to serve with one pound of pasta)

• 2 cups packed fresh basil leaves
• 1 garlic clove, peeled
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese
• 1/2 tsp coarse salt
• 1/4 tsp ground black pepper

1. In a food processor, blend the basil and garlic until finely chopped.
2. With machine running, gradually add the oil, processing until well-blended.
3. Transfer to small bowl, and stir in the parmesan, salt and pepper.

Green Bean Fries (for pity's sake)

Feeding small children is an activity rife with more complications than raising a baby elephant in a ninth floor walk-up in a big city. I speak from experience – well, in the feeding kids thing, not the elephant in an apartment thing. Obviously.

I just never realized how much creativity would be involved in meal-planning when children entered the picture. Assuming that your kids will enjoy the same things you yourself like is one of life’s biggest fallacies. And while I’m willing to admit we all need to accept the differences in each other, I am not only not at all willing to cook separate dinners for everyone, but I also have some nutritional laws in our household on which I am not going to budge.

These tenets include, but are by no means limited to: children will eat foods that come in colors other than beige, high-fructose corn syrup is not a food group, a variety of foods will be consumed over the period of a week, candy will not be kept around the house, the majority of desserts shall be completely homemade so as to control preservatives and other chemical nonsense, and if a child chooses to eat meat, that is his prerogative, but he will have to endure mom sitting at the other end of the table mimicking the animal’s natural cute sounds while said animal is being eaten. Hey, it’s my table. I will moo if I want to.

Suffice to say, I have faced some challenges since these children have come into my life. And some wins have been easier achieved than others. Here are a few of the highlights:

The Big Boy, who as a younger toddler would have lived on fruit, hit a stubborn streak for a year or so in which he began to turn down every fruit offered. No bananas, no apples, no pears, no berries, nothing. I tried re-naming things, like calling blueberries ‘dinosaur eggs,’ but that victory was a short-lived one. So we started having daily smoothies, and The Big Boy was allowed to press the buttons on the blender. Fruit? Check. Protein? Check.

But then vegetables went by the wayside as well. See, when The Big Boy was a one-year-old, he would eat anything I put before him. He loved Brussels sprouts and broccoli and carrots. Even spinach and lettuce didn’t faze him. And you know what I did? I patted myself on the back, thought I must be the greatest mother ever (with the obvious exception of my own mother, of course), and wondered when I could expect to receive my gold medal. I'm sure you can guess what happened next though. The higher one thinks of herself, the harder she will fall. When The Big Boy clamped his mouth tightly shut and violently shook his head over virtually anything other than grits or pasta, I was shocked and dismayed. So I got creative. Again. And I started serving green beans with a big ole’ blob of ketchup (organic so as to avoid the high-fructose corn syrup) and deemed them ‘green bean fries.’ Ketchup has high levels of lycopene, as well as counting as a serving of either vegetables or fruit (depending on how OCD you want to be about it). Two years later, that trick still works.

And so I put dried fruit in The Big Boy’s oatmeal, and make my own berry sauce for his pancakes. I steam vanilla soymilk for him in my espresso maker and call it a ‘Vanilla Steamer’ (a trick I ripped off from Jittery Joe’s). And if he can be convinced that frozen fruit is a dessert treat, then so be it. Motherhood is not easy.

The thing is, kids just don’t seem to eat very much, and so I worry about every bite he puts in his mouth. If he will only be eating three forkfuls of food for dinner, then I need for those bites to be relatively nutrient-rich. And it has certainly not escaped my attention that his behavior is adversely affected when he eats packaged foods. I cannot be certain if it is the preservatives, the high-fructose corn syrup or some other additive, but without fail, every single time he is given a ‘juice drink’ or a bag of sour candies, he turns into a terrorist. Regular sugar doesn’t seem to have the same negative results. Meal-planning, errand-running, and play dates are virtual minefields. One does what one can.

I am filled with gratitude that the nearly-11-month-old Little Miss Piggy is still eating every bite of each dish I put in front of her, but I’m simultaneously gearing up for the battles ahead. I will wear these stubborn little buggers down, if it takes every ounce of strength I’ve got. In the meantime, if anyone has any other proven ideas, I'm open for suggestion.

*****

GREEN BEANS WITH GARLIC AND SHALLOTS (serves four as a side dish)
This recipe is delightfully flavorful, and much more elegant than a typical green bean side. The Carnivore and I enjoy it as is, and serve it to the four-year-old with ketchup for dipping (which also serves to mask the assertiveness of the garlic, something which typically offends little children of a certain age).

• 1 1/2 pounds fresh green beans or haricots verts
• 3 Tbs butter
• 1/3 cup thinly sliced garlic
• 1/4 cup thinly sliced shallots
• 1/2 tsp dried rosemary or Italian seasoning (or 1 tsp fresh rosemary)
• 1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
• 1/2 tsp kosher salt
• ketchup for small children (argh)

1. In a steamer basket or metal colander covered with a lid and set over a large pot filled with about an inch of boiling water, steam the beans until crisp-tender. Drain.
2. In a large skillet over medium heat, melt the butter.
3. Add the garlic and shallots to the melted butter and cook for 3-5 minutes, stirring occasionally, until garlic is lightly browned.
4. To the pan, add the beans, herbs, salt and pepper, and saute for another 3-5 minutes, until heated through.

Five and Ten

It is a rare day indeed in which I eat a meal I have not cooked myself. Many factors converge to make this true, of course, not the least of which is the two small children at the dinner table who are not quite tamed enough to be taken to fancy restaurants. We are hermits these days. Years of being out and about all the time mostly satisfied our need for that sort of thing, and we are content for the most part to spend our free hours down our little dirt road with our children and our own thoughts. It should also be noted that I am a consummate penny pincher and as such, am not terribly fond of tossing money around. Eating at home promotes family bonding, sound financial discipline, and feeds into my own desires to be creative in the kitchen.

But even I have my moments.

The Carnivore and I have enjoyed the occasional meal out since the birth of our first child, but these were never romantic, candlelit dinners for the children have always joined us. And, for the most part, these are lunches at restaurants, not dinners. For Mother’s Day brunch, the family generally treats me to Farm 255, and we have had other few-and-far-between moments at other, café-like appropriate places to take children who will most likely drop more than a few crumbs under the table. At the point in which The Big Boy reached the relatively well-behaved stage, before Little Miss Piggy came into our lives, we even all went out for dinner a time or two at better-than-family-restaurants, but frankly our standards are high when it comes to evening meals. If we’ll be dropping serious bank at an establishment, then what we really want to be eating is food that I cannot cook at home on my own. And those are not the types of places you take children to.

Miraculously, we found ourselves in the position this week to go out by ourselves, dressed up like people who have not been married for eight years, with the ability to linger at the table as if we didn’t have two young children at home asleep in their beds and under the watchful eyes of my sister-in-law. See, when you leave your kids with a Registered Nurse who is a mother herself, well, worrying about the babysitter will be the furthest thing from your mind. I highly recommend it.

The Carnivore, bless him, suggested we go to the Five and Ten, an award-winning restaurant in Athens headed by a James Beard Award-nominated chef. We had eaten there twice before, maybe six or so years ago, when we celebrated a friend’s birthday over appetizers one evening, and again for Sunday brunch following another friend’s wedding. I was not nearly as aware of fine food back then, and neither occasion really lent itself to the kind of meal in which the restaurant is truly known for. So it was with great excitement that I donned earrings the baby would not be pulling out, and packed a tiny purse that was not stocked with matchbox cars and crayons for the preschooler. ‘Twas a strange feeling indeed, though not nearly so satisfying as the moment in which we walked into the restaurant and I pointed at a high chair by the hostess stand and said, rather emphatically, “We will NOT be needing that.”

The Five and Ten serves a seasonal menu with many locally-sourced ingredients and does an immaculate job of perfectly and simply preparing some of its fresh offerings. For an appetizer, I ordered one of the specials, a sculpturally-appealing salad of sliced heirloom tomatoes, baby arugula and fried okra. The tomatoes were a revelation, firm and meaty, with a fruity flavor that was very low in acidity and was balanced by the barest hint of a delicate dressing. There were four exquisite pieces of okra that we tried hard not fight for. The breading was thin, crispy and light and somehow the okra was still bright green and ever-so-slightly-cooked, with none of the stringiness that turns most people away from the humble little vegetable.

We also ordered a cheese plate with accompaniments of quince membrillo, roasted grapes, toasted pecans, paper-thin slices of tart apple, and bread. They offered three of the Sweet Grass Dairy cheeses, all of which I have been dying to try for the past year, and with our server’s help I settled on Sweet Grass’ Green Hill, a soft-ripened cow’s milk cheese that recently won top honors in the American Cheese Society competition. Its flavor was mild, with a texture similar to cheddar, and was delightful for nibbling though I think it might get lost if used as a supporting role in a recipe. I now can’t wait to try some of their other cheeses as well. The Carnivore also chose Point Reyes Blue cheese for our plate, which we both had a lot of fun tasting. Blue cheeses are strong, and this one, while not the strongest one offered on the menu, was plenty in-your-face with its flavor while still managing to not overpower the palate.

Entrees were a difficult decision indeed. I was torn between a hand-cut pasta dish and another for North Carolina trout. Our very attentive (and cute as a button in her sundress and snow boots) server adeptly steered me towards the seafood, for which I was most grateful. The skin of the fish was crispy and well-seasoned, and the flesh was as perfectly-cooked as I have ever had, with a melt-in-your-mouth texture and a bright hint of lemon. The Carnivore, of course, chose some such meat dish that meant nothing to me so he had his plate all to himself (he is no dummy).

The dessert choices stumped me again, and I waffled mightily between a chocolate trifle and fried peach turnovers with ginger ice cream. The server who up to now had no difficulty at all with being decisive hemmed and hawed for a moment when I told her my dilemma and ended up suggesting I order them both. Contrary to form, I refrained. Everything had been so delicious, so perfect, and the servings had been so sensibly-sized that I did not want to ruin it all now by gorging myself and returning home bloated and grumpy with no memory of the individual bites of such unrivaled food. I ordered the turnovers and was not disappointed. The plate arrived with two hardly-larger-than-bite-size crisp pastries filled with hot, firm chunks of fresh peach next to a small scoop of homemade ice cream spicy with ginger. When at first I wanted to turn my nose up at the overpowering flavor of the ice cream by itself, my taste buds were thrilled at the transcendent and beautifully-matched flavor when I took a bite that married the ice cream with the turnover. I meant to share the dessert with The Carnivore, but after the first couple of bites, I moved the plate much closer to myself and held out a fork as a weapon. He sat back in his chair and raised an eyebrow at me, but did not push the subject. Like I said, he’s no dummy.

It has been many years since I have had a meal so divine. I do hope it doesn’t take quite so long before we do this again. And I know just the restaurant whose doors I will want to darken…

With a Whimper

For seven days, I have committed to chronicling all of my meals here. This is Day Seven.

I would have liked to end this little project on a high note, maybe with a wondrously-cooked meal of tofu or seaweed, possibly with a complex recipe for sushi at-home or a vegetarian turducken. But who am I kidding? The seventh and final day, due to some poor advance planning, landed flatly on a Sunday, and as I very well know, Sundays are No-Cook Days at my house. So it is not with a bang, but a whimper, that this experiment finally ends.

It kind of goes without saying then that our most virtuous meals are not eaten on Sundays. In fact, I tend to graze all day long, eating pastries at church, followed by leftovers for lunch and then an absurd amount of snacks all afternoon long. On the best of days, I might melt some cheese on top of a plate of tortilla chips and call it nachos for dinner.

Don't get me wrong. This is how Sundays should be. We spend the afternoon in our pajamas, reading the newspaper, playing on the floor with the kids and watching G-rated movies or Planet Earth. Most weeks, I stock the fridge with homemade dips for our afternoon snacking, but I have been known to heat up some frozen, packaged vegetable egg rolls and serve it with prepared sweet and sour sauce (complete with high-fructose corn syrup). Rules are made to be broken, right?

Lucky for me, and your opinion of me, it was my week to bring food to Sunday School so on Saturday afternoon, I baked The Best Blueberry Coffeecake, one of my all-time favorites. It is a crowd-pleaser, to be sure, rich with cream cheese, topped with cinnamon and sugar, and virtually studded with an abundance of blueberries. I have made copies of this recipe for countless people now, and finally have the chance to share it here as well.

Anyhow, I said I would be completely honest, so here goes. Sunday's food diary follows:

BREAKFAST: 2 cups of Cafe Choco Andes coffee with organic vanilla soymilk; bowl of organic Heritage Heirloom Whole Grains cereal with unsweetened organic soymilk

MID-MORNING SNACK: one entirely too-small slice of The Best Blueberry Coffeecake (recipe below, made with organic, crazy-expensive ingredients); a few polite sips of a very feet-tasting homemade latte that my sixth-grade brother delivered to me at church (Mom, please take your espresso machine back to the store and explain to the clerk that it makes your lattes taste like feet - I'm sure they will understand)

LUNCH: finally, the last of that leftover Orzo with Tuna, Garbanzos and Herbs; a few slices of Marinated Cucumbers

EARLY AFTERNOON ADDICTION: very large, homemade cappuccino made with Cafe Choco Andes coffee and organic vanilla soymilk

MID-AFTERNOON MADNESS: slice of birthday cake baked by Tommy's mom

EARLY ABORTED DINNER: three very unsatisfying bites of cheese sandwich made with sprouted whole wheat bread, swiss cheese, whole grain Dijon, organic baby spinach trucked in from who-knows-where, and marinated cucumbers (before sandwich was tucked into a container in the refrigerator after realizing 'twas not at all what I was craving)

SECOND, MORE SUCCESSFUL, DINNER ATTEMPT: organic yellow corn tortilla chips topped with melted Monterey Jack cheese, lustily dipped into fresh salsa made with organic tomatoes given to us by The Carnivore's clients, jalopenos from my mother's garden, onions and garlic from the farmer's market and store-bought limes and cilantro

PREDICTABLE EVENING SNACK: stove-popped popcorn

EVEN MORE PREDICTABLE LATE EVENING ADDICTION: two Edy's Strawberry Fruit Bars

*****

THE BEST BLUEBERRY COFFEECAKE (serves 10 self-controlled people or 4 more realistic eaters, adapted from the AJC Food Section)

• 1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter, softened
• 4 oz cream cheese
• 1 cup plus 2 Tbs sugar, divided
• 1 egg
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 cups fresh or frozen (unthawed) blueberries
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon

1. Beat the butter and cream cheese together in an electric mixer on medium speed for a couple of minutes, until creamy.
2. To the mixer, gradually add 1 cup of sugar, beating well.
3. Add egg to the mixer, beating well.
4. In a small bowl, combine flour, baking powder and salt.
5. Add flour mixture to mixer, stirring just until incorporated.
6. Stir vanilla into mixture.
7. Carefully fold berries into mixture.
8. Pour batter into a greased 9-inch round cake pan or springform pan.
9. Combine remaining 2 Tbs sugar and cinnamon and sprinkle over batter.
10. Bake at 350 degrees for 55 minutes.

Burnout

For seven days, I have committed to chronicling all of my meals here. This is Day Six.

I'm suffering. It's all very melodramatic, really. This entire food diary experiment has caused some of this suffering of course (there's nothing quite like confessing one's sins publicly to keep one humble, you know), but truly the greatest source of pain and anguish has come in the form of an innocuous container of orzo. Remember on Monday when I made Orzo with Tuna, Garbanzos and Herbs? Well, I doubled the recipe since we had eight people at the dinner table that evening, but it turns out that was entirely unnecessary, and there were MONGO amounts of leftovers. While normally I love having leftovers around, because that gives us something to eat for lunches, I tend to get sick of any particular dish after eating it for, oh you know, every day for an entire stinking week.

It was Sunday afternoon before I finally ate the last of it. I hope to never see it again.

The thing is though, when I planned last week's menu, I assumed we would have no leftovers on Monday night, so it didn't strike me as a particularly bad idea when I penciled in Mediterranean Orzo for Saturday night's dinner. See, I hadn't anticipated reaching the third level of orzo salad burnout by then.

But reach it, I did. And now I have (oh, woe is me) leftovers from the second orzo dish in the fridge, just waiting for me to nibble on it for the next, I don't know, five or six days. This is what burnout looks like, my friends. And it ain't pretty.

Saturday's Food Diary:

BREAKFAST: 1 cup of Cafe Choco Andes coffee with organic vanilla soymilk (I was in such a hurry to get to the Saturday morning farmer's market that I failed to pour myself a second cup; more suffering ensued as a result); it should also be noted that I forgot to actually EAT breakfast on my way out the door - I'm telling you, the market rules my life

MID-MORNING REDEMPTION: big honking bowl of Banana Nut Rainforest Crisp cereal with organic unsweetened soymilk; homemade cappuccino made with Cafe Choco Andes coffee and organic vanilla soymilk

LUNCH: another dadgum bowl of that Orzo with Tuna, Garbanzos and Herbs (woe, I tell you, woe)

LATE AFTERNOON ADDICTION: my second homemade cappuccino of the day

DINNER: Roasted Pepper Panino made with peppers and basil from my mother's garden and onions from the farmer's market (recipe below); and the spectactularly badly-planned yet incredibly tasty and wonderfully-textured Mediterranean Orzo using locally-produced feta cheese that I obtained through Athens Locally Grown, and shallots from the farmer's market (recipe below)

EVENING SNACK: one of the yummy, chubby homemade dark chocolate chip and pecan cookies that my sister-in-law made

LATE EVENING ADDICTION: one measly Edy's Strawberry Fruit Bar (and now I have come to the indisputable conclusion that one is most assuredly not enough)

*****

HUMBLE ROASTED PEPPER PANINO (makes four sandwiches)
I developed this recipe for a contest, which I did not win - hence the word 'humble'

• Red bell pepper (1 large or 2 small)
• Poblano pepper (2 medium sized)
• 4 oz crumbled gorgonzola or feta cheese
• 1 Tbs butter, room temperature
• 1 Tbs Dijon mustard
• 8 slices rustic artisan bread (like Italian sandwich bread or ciabatta), sliced fairly thickly
• 1/2 white onion, sliced thickly
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh basil leaves
• approximately 1/3 cup olive oil

1. Roast the peppers over a gas stovetop flame or under the oven broiler until charred, turning so that peppers are blackened all over. Place in a bowl, cover with a kitchen towel, and let steam for about 10 minutes, until skin is loosened. Peel and discard charred skin, discard stem and seeds, and slice peppers into strips.
2. In a food processor, blend the cheese, butter and mustard until creamy and spreadable.
3. Spread the cheese mixture on each slice of bread (one side only).
4. Arrange the pepper strips, onion slices and basil leaves on half of the slices of bread, and top sandwiches with remaining bread slices (cheese sides facing in, of course).
5. Heat a skillet or grill pan over medium heat; brush one side of each sandwich with olive oil. Cook sandwiches, oiled side down, until golden brown and heated through, then brush other side with oil, flip sandwiches over, and cook until other side is golden brown.

*****

MEDITERRANEAN ORZO SALAD (serves 4 as a main-course salad, or 6 to 8 as a side dish, adapted from AJC Food Section)

• 1 cup uncooked orzo pasta (I prefer the whole-wheat kind)
• 1 large shallot, thinly sliced
• 2 cups packed baby spinach, chopped
• 16 oz cooked chickpeas (or one 15-oz can, rinsed and drained)
• 3/4 cup crumbled feta cheese
• 3/4 cup julienne sun-dried tomatoes (if not using oil-packed, then add a little extra olive oil to the salad)
• 1/2 cup chopped kalamata olives
• juice of 1 to 2 lemons, to taste
• 2 Tbs olive oil, or more to taste
• Salt and pepper, to taste

1. In a large pot of boiling, heavily salted water, cook the orzo for 8-10 minutes, until al dente.
2. While orzo is cooking, combine the sliced shallot and spinach and large bowl. When orzo has been drained, immediately toss with the shallot and spinach to wilt the vegetables.
3. Stir in the remaining ingredients, and add more lemon juice, olive oil, and salt and pepper if needed.