Weekend Update, Sunday June 8

“when ideas are shared, the result is always greater

 than than the sum of the parts” 

Rich Willis

Last week, dinner was served up vertically. More or less. That is, instead of friends, or the internet, or magazines, the inspiration for last week's dinner was received from family members who are my straight line (and sometimes straight arrow) descendants. True, that inspiration came from my children to me, which anthropologically speaking is a straight vertical line backwards. But really, in this kitchen,

backwards is often the only way forward.

There seems to be no end of things to learn about things to eat! And no end of ways to learn it! This week, in a mind-blowing meta conversation, my brain helped me conduct a conversation with another person's brain about the ways that people's brains have classified the ways that people's brains learn from other people's brains.

It was like this, but in my brain.
Otherwise you would have heard it.
With your brain.

You can learn from someone who teaches with a sort of direct authority- sort of like this:

note that instruction falls in a straight line that is
perpendicular to the pointy stick (aka the information reception device).
This is why the people in the front row learn more.

 Or you can learn horizontally- from peers or print or the internet:

 And horizontal learning
with a book is one of the nicest ways of learning that there is.

Or you can engage in the twisty-turny topsy-turvy mental jenga game known as brainstorming:

The thing is, most of what you know, you learned somehow from someone, whether you wanted to know it or not. Even when it feels like you learned something all on your own, chances are you took in something that you picked up somewhere and chewed it over and gave it room to expand.

Well, maybe not quite like that.

Or you learned something, and tried it, and adapted it to fit your needs. Or threw it on the useless information heap.  Sort of like this spicy whole roasted cauliflower, which I'd decided to try because my daughter suggested doing something Indian with cauliflower this week, and this looked fun.

Here's the recipe picture:

Yummy!

Here's what I learned from an actual attempt:

It looks like brains on a plate.
and not in a good way.

Despite more than an hour of baking at 400 degrees, it was still unpleasantly crunchy in the middle. But all of us have learned what to do in times like these: cut the thing up, toss it in olive oil and roast it like that's the way you meant it.

At this point the oven stopped working.

No matter. If there's one thing the internet has taught me, it's that grills are great for vegetables. So, a little more olive oil, and onto a grilling rack! Then, with what I thought was a rather melodramatic sigh, the propane tank threw its last flame and gave its last last fiery gasp to the cauliflower.
After which, some bit of knowledge embedded in the cook's collective unconscious murked its way to the front of my mind with a very helpful suggestion:

"Let's compost this stuff and go out."

Fortunately, not all of this week's trial and error learning leaned so heavily toward the error side. As an example, this:

my Mother's East Texas garden.

Though you may not have familial access to brambly vines heavy with blackberries, you probably have access to blackberries, abundant and cheap. If you do, you may want to learn the glories of this:

Salad with blackberries, spiced pecans and goat cheese.
One of the nicest salads I've had in a long time.
This goes into the summer salad hall of fame.

 This great healthification of a traditional Asian Cabbage Salad was a lesson worth learning too:

Perhaps you too were taught by a more experienced cook to always keep something fast and easy around the house-

No! Not that kind of fast and easy! 

THIS kind of fast and easy!

Well, it was good advice- a bag of frozen shrimp, nice fish sticks, even a frozen pizza- it's always a good idea to have something in the freezer for nights when take away is too expensive and the cereal's all gone. Potstickers fit the bill. Easy to cook, fun to eat and versatile. Ours came to dinner looking like a big deal next to the Asian Salad and two dipping sauces, but they would've been just as nice on their own, or with a little broccoli, or some leftover rice, or floating in a bowl of soup...You get the idea. Sometimes you learn about one simple thing, and suddenly the possibilities start multiplying and multiplying

like a band of bunnies!

. 

And while I would never wish on you banjo playing bunnies, I do hope that this week brings you knowledge.

I hope wherever it comes from,

and whatever form it takes

that this week you learn things

that thrill your mind

and sustain your soul

and nourish your body.

I hope that this week

you find no end to amazing,

and no end to knowledge

and no end to learning. 

Because wish you limitless learning

is eventually the same

as wishing for you

limitless love.

Weekend Update,

I will do my best to be

honest and fair, 

friendly and helpful, 

considerate and caring, 

courageous and strong, and 

responsible for what I say and do,

and to

respect myself and others, 

respect authority, 

use resources wisely, 

make the world a better place, and 

be a sister to every Girl Scout.

The Girl Scout Law

The funny thing is, I nearly edited the Girl Scout Law. That is, in order to quote a Girl Scout's oath to use resources wisely, I nearly offered an abridged version of the 52 word law- because the Girl Scout Law is so wordy! Contrast it to the 16 words of the Boy Scout Law, which aside from the sisterhood bit, says pretty much the same thing:

A Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, 

courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty,

brave, clean, and reverent.

Let's leave off wondering whether or not any of us have ever met anyone of any age who could abide or abide by either law, and let's leave off wondering what sort of jail girl or boy scout law breakers go to. 

Instead, let's delight in the fact that even when we're trying to come up with an easy-to-remember-and-stick-to code of behavior,

we still use more than three
times as many words!

 This is maybe why it's a good thing that God didn't bother to get in touch with His feminine side before issuing the Ten Commandments-  not only would they have been really hard to carry out, 

they would've been really, really hard to carry.

This week, our dinners did their best to make use of the food already on hand; they have been, in a single word, resourceful. 

"I", I thought, as I surveyed the menu line up, " am being resourceful. I would have made a great girl scout."

"If I hadn't dropped
out of Brownies"

Then, to find out whether indeed resourcefulness was a mark of a good Girl Scout, I read the Girl Scout law. And then the Boy Scout law. And then the dictionary. 

And resourceful may not be the right word. 

The right word might be frugal. Or thrifty. Or perhaps it's the sort of word that distinguishes the people who like you from the people who tolerate you: to the people who love you, you are resourceful. To those who merely tolerate you, 

you're a cheapskating miser.
(This is Hetty Green, who was once either
the most resourceful or the most
miserly woman in New York.)

Whether they were resourceful, or frugal, or thrifty, or cheap, there were a few dinners this week that were great, and  a few that were, well, maybe bad is not quite the right word.....

Here's what happened:

Stir fried rice was nothing unusual- a great stand-by idea for using leftover chicken  or shrimp or beef or, in this case, pork. the cool thing was finding a new way to like cabbage- this quick stir fried cabbage recipe would be great with Teriyaki chicken or ribs, or tempura anything, or...well, it's just good:

there it is, hiding behind the rice.

Next the risotto that set out to use up the tub of mascarpone that was wearing out its fridge time. It should have been fantastic, but you know what? 

It was just okay.
The mascarpone made the risotto creamier, but also
heavier.  Save the money on mascarpone and gruyere and risotto will
still feel like an indulgent treat.

the two nicest surprises?

This black-eyed pea salad- I had expected something like the once omnipresent Texas Caviar black-eyed pea salad, but this was much nicer- the chickpea dressing was fantastic! It's a substantial dressing that would be right at home on any kale or spinach salad. A great find! Here it is, made not with the canned black-eyed peas suggested in the recipe, but with peas from my (generous) mother's (generous) garden:

those are black-eyed pea fritters in the background.
I'm trying to forget those.
I think you should too.

And if you're a fan of butternut squash soup, and you wish there were something just as tasty and nutritious, but maybe easier and cheaper, here it is:\

carrot ginger soup
I am not kidding. This was great. Maybe even better
than butternut soup- and did I mention cheaper and easier?

Then the vast universe of great recipes available to all of us collided with my mind, which was (and is still ) pondering the shades of meaning that lie between the words resourceful and thrifty.
Cookies.
No matter what laws of character she may try to abide by, a girl scout, her friends and all her family abide by the laws of cookie. In fact, while I was considering the difference between being resourceful and using resources wisely, between thrift and frugality, a real girl scout in Oklahoma set a brand new Girl Scout Cookie selling record!  So, since in addition to an abundance of black eyed peas and carrots we had a surplus of butter and chocolate chips, I did the natural, frugal, resourceful, thrifty thing.

I made cookies

Salted Caramel Chocolate Chip cookies.   A very tasty way to use available resources. If next week you find yourself serendipitously faced with a half pound of butter, a bag of chocolate chips, and a bag of chocolate covered caramels, consider giving them a try.

 Frugality, as it turns out, is not about getting things on the cheap,but about being careful not to waste the good things that you have. To be resourceful, the dictionary says, has even less to do with with the spending or not spending of money-  a resourceful woman (or man)  is one who can deal "skillfully and promptly with new situations and difficulties".

And that's what I'm hoping for you this week-I'm hoping that your week is somehow filled with good thingsInside and out.I hope that you feel your wealth-all the way from the shoes on your feetto the food in your tummyto the love in your heartto the knowledge in your head.and that you use that wealth wiselyand thoughtfully make the most of your every natural resource.
So that even if your day crumbles your cookies

You'll gather the best of who you are and what you have

and deal with it.

Like the true scout you are.

                                           

Menus, March 26, 2014

"The greatest achievement of the human spirit

is to live up to one's opportunities 

and make the most of one's resources"

Marquis de Vauvenarques

Last week, there were an internal several of these-

that led to an internal one or two of these-

as a few beloved activities surrendered time to a few other just as beloved activities.

After a week of being immersed in innumerable bits of paper and tubes of paint, eating only when eating was more interesting than the project at hand, the need to resume a regular dinner schedule pulled me to the surface, blinking like a mole in the sun.

Just this blind and lost looking,
but probably not this cute.

Dinnertime?
I wasn't even sure it was daytime!

All at once, a dreadful certainty loomed: 

there was nothing in this house to eat.

Which, though it seemed true for a moment, was no more true in this kitchen that it is in most other American kitchens, and to prove it, I cleaned out the fridge and freezer....

and made a little inventory:

 Right off the proverbial bat, you can see two or three important things-
1. Blueberries are an awesome snack, the Sharpie was actually in drawer where it's supposed to be, my calendar is so cool that even the used page backs are fun to write on,  and
2. I did not have nothing to eat.
In fact, there is so much to eat that it may be possible to spend this week in places other than the grocery store. Nothing wrong with grocery stores, it's just that they're not often

as interesting as other places.

Although that could depend entirely on your grocery store.

This is a real grocery store in Moscow.
I am not making this up.

Here's the line up that (I hope) will make effective use of the resources on hand, giving me time to catch up on a few  things I've been neglecting.

Thursday:  Leftover pork fried rice and stirfried cabbage

Hiding in the freezer was a zip bag of cooked rice, a zip bag of leftover pork roast, and half a bag of frozen peas. Put that together with the broccoli and carrots that are in the fridge, and dinner's nearly done! 

There's a head of cabbage in the fridge too, and though the outside leaves have yellowed, but cabbage is pretty hard-headed, and I'll bet there's enough good stuff for a side dish side dish.

I wonder what to call a meal made of two side dishes...

I'll think of that while I slice up the leftover pork as thinly as I can- some for tonight's fried rice, and some for sandwiches tomorrow...

If you don't have leftover pork, think of using a couple of pork chops, or some rotisserie chicken or some shrimp.

Friday: Carrot ginger soup and Asian pork sandwiches

In this fridge, which at first glance held nothing dinner worthy, there are two very large bags of carrots. I do not know how or when this happened. But I do know that carrots deserve more main course roles than they're given- this soup looks like a good try for the last chilly days of spring. These sandwiches, which look so great, may not adapt well to cooked pork, but I'll be giving it a try anyway.

Saturday: Mascarpone Risotto and Pan fried Salmon

Pan fried salmon may seem pretty basic, but it's a thing I have yet to master, so we'll keep trying it until I do. The risotto will be the highlight of this meal though- risotto and mascarpone on their own are wonderful- the idea of combining them is very exciting. The mascarpone in the fridge was relatively inexpensive at Trader Joe's; if you want to try the recipe, and don't want to shop for affordable mascarpone, consider using ricotta or a mix of cream cheese and cream as a substitute. And since substitutions are almost always acceptable, I might use bacon instead of pancetta.

Sunday: Shepherd's pie

There's a zip bag of leftover lamb roast in the freezer that will combine with a few of the surplus carrots and the gotta-go potatoes in the pantry and make a pie. Ground beef or ground lamb would be a great substitute though- and isn't the idea of making shepherd's pie in serving size dishes fantastic? This is an Australian recipe, and so may require a little bit of translation- fir the purposes of this pie,

this is not tomato sauce.............................this is tomato sauce

Monday: Black eyed pea salad and blackeyed pea fritters

Thanks to my mother's generosity, and the prolific kindness of her garden, there are about 4 zip bags of frozen purple hull peas in the freezer. What a pity to have such an abundance, and cook them only one way! A wealth of resources makes for a freedom in experimentation, doesn't it? The salad looks like a sure winner- it's the fritters that are a bit of a gamble. And it may not be a good sign that the picture of them won't copy itself next to the picture of the salad. But fritters made from ground black-eyed peas are popular in lots of cultures and, well...crispy fried protein sounds like a good idea.

And a great way to use my available resources.

This week, I hope that if (and almost certainly when)

you find yourself up against 

a moment or a mountain you feel unequal to

you take a breath

and in the space of that breath

you make an inventory

of all the resources you hold.

Your strength, your soul, your heart, your mind.

The love within you and the love around you.

And I hope that as you exhale you know

 that what you have and who you are

right now
 is enough.

And just maybe, even more than enough.

Weekend Update January 13, 2014

“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. 

Dr. Seuss

I love Dr. Seuss. Really. Lines from his books, lodged in the brain after years of reading them aloud, still give me comfort and courage. Except.  Except here's a thing about making resolutions, choosing directions and  steering new courses. You write them down on ruled lines and plot them directly from point A to point B but after not very much time you realize that resolutions are like spaghetti- they start out straight and smooth and simple, but dunk them in hot water,

and they get a little tangley.

Take, as a teensy microcosmic example, this little blog. Last week, my mind was occupied with the phenomenon of resolution rebound. That is, the thing that happens when you try to shape your life around a negative

Surely you've seen it- someone spends the energies of her most energetic years determined to NOT, NEVER, NO WAY be like her mother, and one day she calls you to laugh or cry over the thing you already knew-

she is an awful lot like her mother.
Of course, if  her mom has loads of style,
this is may not be a horrifying revelation.
(I mean, pink with red hair in
the 50's! What a woman!)

Last week, the thought occurred that resolves get results when they're shaped around what you love. Which is not as easy as it sounds.

Because the world is filled with lots and lots of things to love.   What if, for instance, you love the things that a fit and healthy body can do for you,

but you never met a cookie you couldn't fall
in love with?

  Or, say you resolve to up the healthy eating around here with a positive plan for Meatless Mondays and  Fishy Fridays, but then things you love ever so much more than a plan come to town?

You flex the plan,
and direct yourself toward
the things you love best of all.

 Early in the week, dlife Cabbage Soup went off without a hitch,

super easy, super tasty

 Two notes:  1) My friend Ester was right- throwing a sliced  low fat sausage into this soup makes it even better.

2) The raisins! Weird as it seems, don't leave them out- they add a wonderful mellow sweetness to the soup, and plump up and sink out of sight to the bottom of the pot. Which is nice. Because, as it turns out, though raisins may make this soup taste good, they are even more unattractive waterlogged and bloated

than they are when they're
all shrively.

 Then the  arrival of our son and his girlfriend took the weekend in a happily different direction.  Suddenly a plain plank of baked salmon wasn't nearly fun enough, so our first fishy Friday slipped off the hook. But  this absolutely fantastic coconut soup and this great Pad Thai recipe came together and turned Fishy Friday into Thaiday Friday. 

Next came a night of plowing through the fridge for leftovers- let's call it Salvage Saturday.

Which meant no leftover chicken or fish for today.

So our fish tacos were made, for the first time ever, with firstover fish- turning today into a great Salmon Sunday!

What a great recipe! Here are the chunks of (very cheap frozen) salmon in a zip bag with cumin and chili powder:

And in the pan, after a very short (about 6 minutes) sear in a hot pan:

And on a tortilla with the last of my Mother's East Texas Cabbage, avocados, jack cheese and Rodrigo sauce

Upside: One week into the new year, and I have not yet totally busted the let's-have-fish-once-a-week plan.

Downside: These tacos were so good that tacos with leftover fish will from now on and forever seem not quite as good.

Meh.  As the downside of this week's foodventures, I can live with that.

I hope the downsides of your week are easy to live with-

And I hope that what you need more of

 lies within easy reach and

what you need less of 

falls away gently.

I hope all the things you wish for 

surrender graciously to all the things you love best.

And that the path 

down which your loves lead you

is full of happy adventure.