Menus, December 10, 2013

Sleep, that knits the raveled sleeve of care.

Balm of hurt minds,

Chief nourisher in life's feast.

W. Shakespeare

Note to all  upwardly mobile type women considering giving your under-ambitious spouse an edge by giving his boss the business end of a dagger:

If your co-conspirator is the kind of person who has voices in his head that can, in a moment of crisis, rattle off eight morose lines in iambic pentameter, just stop right now.  Sure, you may score a few soul-stopping lines and achieve a sort of gruesome immortality, but on the whole, things are probably not going to turn out well. Sleep on it.

Things are bound to look a little less crazy in the morning.
Or maybe not.

When and how these few lines from MacBeth stitched their way into my memory is a mystery- perhaps it was in High School, when I was especially receptive to Important People who wrote nice things about sleeping. Perhaps it stuck because the great and mighty Shakespeare wrote as if he knew a thing or two about how things come undone-

and who gets out of High School without leaving
and unraveled sleeve or two behind?

You'd think that after an ice storm that brought most activities to absolute zero, we'd all have banked enough rest to speed us through December with more cheer than a Christmas party in a brewery. But that's the trouble with sleep. No matter how busily it knits all night,

It's a rare morning that doesn't hold
its share of hungry moths.

Which brings us to Christmas, the only season that can provide you with a real Christmas sweater

while it pulls the threads from your
metaphorical one.

Happily, there are at least two ways to keep from winding up a total tangled mess, and we all know what they are- try to get the rest you need (the real rest you need, not the rest you think you ought to need), and try to keep that metaphorical sleeve from snarling in the first place. 

Anyone who's ever kept company with a two year old knows that there is no non-chemical way to force the former, and besides,

midnight elfing is a powerful source of
Christmas magic.

And the latter? How to keep a busy season from raveling (or unraveling, as you prefer) into frenzy? Well, to stretch a metaphor completely out of shape, that's the knit one purl two of things.

or, the thing you're paying attention to,
when it looks like you're paying
attention to other things.

 Nutrition, speed, simplicity,economy. Feed yourself fast, feed yourself well, and don't go crazy. That's the mantra I muttered as I browsed through  the cheap, fast and easy department of the internet. Here's what was put in the bag for dinner:

Wednesday: Lemony pan-fried pork chops and shaved Brussels sprouts

Easy pork chops, and a way to get rid of all those Brussels sprouts we ended up not using at Thanksgiving.
Shredding those cute little cabbages is all the rage, and for good reason- we love whole roasted Brussels sprouts around here, but this is not the week for a meal that takes an hour of oven time. The food processor will make quick work of the slicing, and the little nutrition packed shreds will cook up faster that you can remember how to spell saute. Maybe even faster. If there's time, the pork chops will take a soak in a brine of salt, honey and rosemary. I'll be cooking an extra chop or two for tomorrow night.

Thursday: Pork and Broccoli Stirfry

Dinner doesn't get much faster than stirfry. Here's a trick to speed it up even more: once you've prepped the veg, either by bite-sizing it in your own kitchen or getting prepped veg from your fave produce department, put it in a bowl and cover it with boiling water. Now find that bag or box of rice you know you saw just yesterday in the pantry, or spend 5 minutes doing something else.
drain the veg, getting it as dry as you can. Now stir fry. The hot water will have speed-started the cooking process so things will flash fry without getting soggy. 
Martha's given us a very simple soy and cornstarch sauce here- if you want to go harder, try America's test Kitchen Teriyaki sauce., if you want to go easier, splash in some bottled sauce.

Friday: Baked Salmon and roasted potatoes and butternut squash

This may be the dinner of the week with the longest prep time, because I'll be using some of our pumpkin stash and that'll mean peeling and chopping.
If you can afford it, the cubes of butternut squash in the produce department are a fast way to put some super vegetables into dinner. The potatoes and squash will go in the oven first, then about 20 minutes before they're done, I'll boost the oven temperature and put in the fish. A few washed and unpeeled potatoes will cook along with everything else and turn into hash on Sunday.

Saturday: Carrot and chickpea tagine and rice

It seems that any time in the last two weeks that anyone went to the grocery store, they came home with a bag of carrots. I'm not sure why.
I'm not quite game enough this week to try carrot soup (if you've tried it, I'd appreciate knowing if it's better than my imagination tells me it is) but I do need to use carrots as a main dish, and take a meat break. I'll give a quick look for the exotic spice blend in the recipe, but if I don't find it, I have a few things on hand that'll do nicely.

Sunday: Kale and Potato hash with pan-roasted tomatoes and poached eggs

Thanks to my friends Elizabeth and DeAnna for showing me a new way to use these wonderful winter greens!
Look how easy! I'll have some leftover baked potato for the hash, and I'll use them instead of the frozen shreds. Undecided on whether or not to use a bag of prechopped kale, or get a bunch of the more labor intensive kind. Here's the deal (besides money). The bagged kale includes pieces of the tough center leaf rib thing- you know the bit I mean. And normally, we just chew our  way through that, but in this application, I think only having the tender leafy part is pretty important. Given that, I think that using the bunched greens may actually be a little more efficient than sorting the tough bits out of the bag. The tomatoes will caramelize themselves nicely in some olive oil and salt while the hash cooks. A fried or poached egg on top of the hash, and you've got a super healthy plate of breakfast for dinner.
And breakfast for dinner is just about the most comfortable and comforting food a day can offer. Breakfast for dinner is like...it's like...

it's like Mr. Roger's sweater,
but it's food. So you can wear
it in your tummy.

Though to even hope it is as crazy
as a mall on Black Friday,
I hope that this week you get the sleep you need,
or if not sleep, then a different sort of rest.
I hope that this week takes you by surprise
with it's unfrayed wholeness
and it's cozy warmth.
And I hope you find it easy to offer to those around you
 your own unfrazzled peace-
and that you find yourself, 
(maybe even to your own surprise)
covering this bleak mid-winter world

with a little bit of comfort and joy.