Weekend Update May 11, 2014

"She thought of mothering, which was really another word for being present and caring what happened to someone."Joe Hill

Congratulations, you have  navigated the complicated  holiday other wise known as Mother's day and come out on the other side. Only Thanksgiving and Christmas seem to carry a bigger emotional load- you know this is true because only Thanksgiving and Christmas are featured in more movies. And if you consider how many Thanksgiving and Christmas movies could be subtitled "Crazy Holiday Moms and Their Crazy Craziness" Mother's Day may top all holidays in the emotional baggage per hour ratio.
 But by now the phone calls and/or gifts and/or cards you did or did not give or receive have or have not hit their mark-   

and hitting a bullseye on Mother's Day may have been
even more complicated than that sentence.

The instigator of Mother's Day Anna Jarvis, would have hoped that you avoided  commercialized, expensive demonstrations of  appreciation. She had a vision for a day filled with heart-felt words of love and gratitude- no pricey flowers, no high-pressure presents, just sweet and sincere sentiments. You know, like these:

Mom, you are destructive and out of control.
But really pretty
 in a concentric circles kind of way.

Mom, you are my favorite prison in the whole
wide world.

Or maybe your a mother,and today you  had the proverbial table turned on you. The breakfast table, to be specific- maybe today some one else made sure that you went off into the day with a good breakfast. Around here, there was a good breakfast on the table (nearly) every day of the week, and the very best part was, no one had to wake up from a night's pleasant rest to enjoy it. 

Ah, breakfast for dinner! So strangely comforting, so vaguely naughty, so incredibly cheap! 

And pretty yummy too. Here how a week of Mother's Day breakfasts for dinner worked out:

First up,Buttermilk Pancakes.  Okay. If you like pancakes, you will probably love this recipe. If you're used to using a boxed baking mix, just stir up the dry ingredients and zip them into a  plastic bag until pancakes minus 20 minutes, then combine the dry mixture with the eggs, butter and buttermilk. Easy Peasy. 

This recipe has been a go-to favorite for years in this kitchen and even works when you substitute half of the flour for either whole wheat flour or a gluten free flour blend. Grilled sausages and asparagus and pan-roasted tomatoes on the side, and the week was off to an easy and delicious start.

Next, the heretofore untasted Deep South Soul food wonder, chicken and waffles.  I had often wondered what it was about the (sort of strange) combination of chicken and waffles that could spawn entire restaurants. Well now I know. The leftover pancake batter was thinned down with a little more buttermilk waffled up and topped with shredded rotisserie chicken and an amazingly simple mustard sauce. A quick saute of mushrooms, bell peppers an onions while the waffle iron did its thing, and

Wow. just wow.
I love chicken. I love waffles.
I love chicken and waffles.

 And here's a neat discovery: Baked Huevos Rancheros. You know that half a bag of corn chips in the back of the pantry that no one's going to eat but you can't throw away? And that can of tomato sauce, jar of salsa or cup or two of red sauce leftover from lasagna? Toss it all together, top it with cheese and eggs and throw it in the oven for about not very much time and do you know what you'll get?

You've got dinner, you kitchen magician you!

Here's a sort of cross section- I made the mistake of baking it too long, so we didn't get the runny egg goodness that would have made it better, but still- this was a super fast, super easy dinner.

And that half bag of stale chips is gone!

It's a funny thing about breakfast for dinner. It feels so...nurturing. And maybe that's why making breakfast (or lunch or dinner) became the thing to do on Mother's Day.

 Because maybe what most mothers want on Mother's day is to feel, well, mothered. 

(Even if we know that we don't always mother all that well.) 

And I hope that this week once or twice, you feel well mothered.

Even if you're not a mom.

Even if you don't have a mom. 

I hope that this week you're close to people who love you.

 who know how to be present with you.

who care about what happens to you. 

who know how to make you feel safe

and how to help you be brave.

people who every once in a while

(even if it's ever so unlikely) 

 give you all the good mothering you need.

Menus, may 6, 2014

"Mothers are all slightly insane.” 

J.D. Salinger

By the time they're teenagers most children, though they may concede that their mothers were once normal female-type people would agree with Salinger, that all mothers, especially theirs, really are 

a little buggy. 

but really, it's no wonder. There you are, prowling around, queen of the jungle, then all of the sudden, you're a mother in the center of a three ring circus. And everywhere you look, there's another mommy hoop to jump through that you may or may not be able to clear, which might or might not matter,

depending which hoops are on fire and
could leave permanent scars.

And one of the good mother hoops is to teach those you love how to jump through all the right hoops too.  Take for instance, the traditions of Mother's Day. Look at this woman and ask yourself "Is this a woman who fell asleep hoping for a surprise breakfast in bed?":

Nope.

Breakfast in bed. It's certainly one way to say "I love you" in  Mother's Day Speak. But what if speaking the language in the way tradition says it has to be spoken means that everyone gets up earlier than they want to so that Mother (see sleep-addled woman above) can have a breakfast she doesn't want (with only a very tiny slice of no time at all to get that look of dismay off of her face)? Sometimes it seems that on Holidays like Mother's day, the whole world conspires to say:

Love means
jumping through hoops you don't want to,
for people who don't really want you to.

It's not that I mean to disparage a venerable tradition. In fact, when you reduce the breakfast in bed tradition down to its basic elements, it's pretty awesome! You have....let's see. Love. A very big deal...Gratitude. Also awesome. And, well....breakfast.

Love, Gratitude and breakfast. Now, that's a beautiful Holiday tradition triad. And though Love and Gratitude are wonderful served anytime, I (and a few other people I know of the female persuasion) enjoy breakfast much more if it happens after morning. 

That's why for the second year in a row, Mother's Day in this house will be celebrated with breakfast for dinner all week long. It's going to be Matritastic! Momerrific! 

Or at least I hope so.

Here's what I've planned:

Wednesday: Buttermilk Pancakes with Sausage and asparagus

The picture you see at the left is from what is perhaps the best buttermilk pancake recipe I've ever found. So amazing that I did it the courtesy of linking with the picture the recipe actually uses. If you could please, with the tweezers of your imagination, pluck out those blueberries,and fry up or grill some sausages, you'll have just the sort of easy and comforting meal that's going to fill this whole week. If you have more pancake batter than you need, save it for tomorrow's waffles.

Thursday: Roast Chicken and Waffles

We'll have glutenated last night, so I'll be trying these gluten-free potato waffles, and roasting an extra chicken breast for

Saturday's hash. If you're using leftover pancake batter for waffles, just thin it down a little with some milk or buttermilk.

Friday: Baked Huevos rancheros

 I waited two whole days before including my favorite breakfast main course, eggs! We'll be pairing these with salsa and maybe some grilled or pan-roasted tomatoes.

Saturday: Chicken hash and eggs

Any leftover chicken makes it's way into this hash- it's a complete meal in one, but if you want to up the protein count, a pork chop would be great. If you want to tinker with the veggie ration, throw in a handful of baby spinach, or substitute sweet potatoes or butternut squash for the white potatoes.

Sunday: Breakfast tacos with bacon and kale

Breakfast burritos!!!  Such a versatile treat. Corn tortillas will reduce the gluten, and this is a great chance to use up any leftover salsa or vegetables from earlier in the week. *note to self*  Try to remember to buy avocados on Wednesday, so they'll be ready by Sunday, ok?






Well, that's our week, and I'm trying to figure out why it feels so....naughty.
because it does, doesn't it?
It feels like breaking the rules- which is extra fun on a day that's all about mothering.
I hope this week you have a little fun 
bending a few rules too.
Nothing too harmful.
Just the sort of rules that regulate
how and why and when 
you're supposed to love the people you love.
I hope this week bends rules right around
until there's comfort where the tired usually goes.
and that the only hoops you have to jump through

are the ones that feel like play.

Menus, April 22, 2014

“April hath put a spirit of youth in everything.” 

William Shakespeare

Perhaps you thought that because we didn't eat our way around Easter last week that I'd forgotten all about it.
 Not a chance! Sweet memories pack this holiday like eggs fill an Easter basket. It's of deep significance historically, culturally, religiously, there's chocolate every where, excuses galore to buy cute things for the people you love,  and it's second only to Christmas

in its creepitude capacity.
(creepitude capacity is a real thing. It's the
ratio of time exposed to a spooky stimulus to
the duration and number of nightmares afterward.
I am not making this up.)

 Though individual traditions range from the quirky to the staid, Easter is the biggest holiday til the holidays, and I've always appreciated the fact that it falls, in the Northern Hemisphere (where most of the holidays significant to my own culture-of-origin originated) during Spring.  Passover, Easter, Persian New Year, May day- this week I learned that just as people all over the world celebrate harvest and midwinter, the whole globe, in one way or another, celebrates Spring. 
It's just that spring is a whole lot more fun. 
Because in many of the festivals of Spring, grown ups get to do what young people do, and young people get to do what young people do,

and nobody gets in trouble for it.

Case in point, the celebration pictured above- the amazing two day public water fight otherwise known as the Thai festival of Songkran, when the streets and everyone in them are awash with the cleansing waters of a fresh new year.  In India, Holi also celebrates the return of life and color to the world in a way that gets everyone covered.

Just not in water.

This week we'll be eating our way around this beautiful planet again, and in honor of Earth Day, we'll hanging around the bottom of the food chain, eating a whole lot of the good stuff that springs from the ground. 

Let's start in Bosnia! 

Wednesday: Scrambled Eggs, tomatoes and bacon

Eggs are a nearly universal symbol of  the life stored up and let loose in Spring, and you may have the spilled Easter egg stains on your floor to prove it. Boiled and colored eggs here, but in Bosnia, 1,500 eggs get cracking to celebrate the first day of spring. A whole town gathering by the edge of a river for a scrambled egg breakfast on the first day of Spring. 

We can't do that, but we can still have breakfast for dinner and wish for a river. We'll thrown in some nutrient rich tomatoes and probably a nice slice or two of bacon as well



Thursday: Navratan Korma

It's Holi, the Hindu festival of colors that is celebrated in India this time of year- friends, family and strangers alike pelting each other with handfuls of powdered colors. These super fun festivals are catching on in the U.S., and you might be able to find one near you.  If you can't, you can still have a nice curry for dinner, and Korma is one of the traditional varieties of the festival.  This recipe is for the real deal, and it's long and complicated and full of love. A jar of korma sauce can be full of love too, and I'll probably use that. And premixed garam masala.   Because it's Spring, and I'd rather be outside than in the kitchen, wouldn't you?







Friday: Pan fried white fish and Papaya salad

Along with eggs and vegetables, many Spring celebrations feature fish as a symbol of life and abundance. In a crazy cultural mash-up, we're going to try the sort of fried fish that sees in the Persian New Year together with a Thai salad. There is no deep symbolic meaning to the mash-up; the fish, with its hour long soak in an egg marinade really interests me, and the salad was enthusiastically recommended by a new friend who grew up loving the food of her Taiwanese mother. You'll notice in the fish recipe a step-by-step-by 19 more steps recipe for Persian rice with herbs. We love rice, and all things (well, most things) green, so I may try it. But probably not.


Saturday: Cob Salad 

Back to my beloved homeland, and the dozen or so leftover hard boiled eggs that most of us have loitering about in our refrigerators. We'll be slicing a few onto a simple Cobb salad, but if you've got baskets of em, Real Simple has a few more ideas on how to use them before they smell up the house. The recipe I've linked is a vegetarian version of this classic salad, but a slice of leftover Easter Ham or a grilled chicken breast would be great.



Sunday: Pad See Ew

I have confirmation from a reliable source (other than the always reliable, never nonfactual internet) that Songkran really is a thing. Thailand is one among many cultures that begins the year in Spring, and it really is true that for 2 days, the celebration of the New Year creates one big happy gigantic water fight. Water festivals are showing up in cities all over America, but we might have to settle for a homemade version of one of my all time Thai favorites. 

It's a funny thing that cooking through celebrations, even celebrations that are foreign to me, feels like a week long dinner party. 

And not the boring kind.

And whether or not you find a festival,
I hope your week refreshes you
like a water fight on a hot day.
I hope that as this old earth
grows young again
it drenches you in life and color.
and I hope you're able to catch that joy
throw it up into the air
and love whoever it lands on.
Even (especially) if some of it
lands again

on you.

Menus and grocery lists, November 20, 2013

Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,

Guilty of dust and sin.

But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack

From my first entrance in,

Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning

If I lacked anything.

George Herbert

It was a great good fortune to come of party-hosting age when and where I did. I was in my twenties, and Martha Stewart was a model turned caterer who had published little book that was as visible to me as the ghost writer who penned it :

Yep, that long ago.

This cultural icon-to-be had just landed on the bookstore shelves when we loaded up the kids and moved to a beautiful land where the perfect hostess was any woman who could open the front door and smile at the same time:

And yes, once or twice we did invite
a kangaroo over for dinner.
They are very tasty. 

When, after a few formative years we returned to the Great State of Texas, the first stanza of George Herbert's lovely poem on love was painted (by yours truly, determined to never outgrow the scribbling on stuff phase)  in blue script at the entrance of our kitchen.

 And so it was that as I passed a hundred times a day by these words of grace and welcome, George Herbert (who hadn't partied since 1633) was silently mentoring me in the art hospitality, even though these:

were the only chargers I'd ever heard of.

Through various embarrassments, I have since learned that a charger is the big plate on the bottom that does what a placemat used to do and that you are not supposed to put food on, that it's a good idea to disable  smoke detectors before cooking a big meal (hey wait. Did I able those back on after last Thanksgiving?)  and like this clever hostess,

I've learned that if things start going awkward,
it's best to paste on a smile, and offer a colorful beverage.

Thanksgiving arrives on a silver platter in 9 short days. That's 216 hours, for those of you who have learned how to live without sleep. 

Since these sorts of occasions ladle a full helping of insecurity gravy right on top of my personal mash of excitement and enthusiasm, I decided (in a moment of crazy) to ask the internet how to be a perfect Thanksgiving hostess. News flash: this did not help. Corollary news flash: the modern American perfect hostess turns out to be someone I think I cannot be, and maybe don't even want to be around.

So, if the person the modern world calls a perfect hostess is a woman not many of us could happily feast with, what's a bad hostess? I asked the internet that too, and found out that a whole lot of people

Are really mad at Hostess
 for trashing their favorite snack food.

 In the end, George Herbert's four hundred year old lesson in hospitality came again to the rescue.

G.H.: "Take THAT, you meaningless measures of  societal perfection!
Me:"Oh George! My Hero! Come inside, you look like you could use a cookie."

The bottom line (after perusing a webful of horrible/hilarious  bad host/bad guest stories) seems to be this: a good hostess cares about whether or not her guests feel cared for, while the maybe not-so-good hostess gets crabby if she feels like her guests aren't taking good enough care of her.

Which means, I suppose, that in the busy 200 or so hours before a big day, it's a worthy goal for the host (and guest, I guess) to try to sleep well, work well and dine well, crushing some of those crabby feelings before they hatch.  And dining well in a busy week means finding food that is quick and easy to make and nourishing and comforting to eat. 

Maybe like this:

Wednesday:  Bacon and egg potatoes with spinach

There are a few pounds of potatoes in the pantry that would love their turn at the dinner table, so I asked the internet to tell me how to turn them into more than a side dish. I've linked you to the best result, a list of 10 fun potatoes-for-dinner ideas. This one sounded easy and yummy. I'll saute a bag of spinach for a quick vegetable side, and cooking one or two extra potatoes to speed up tomorrow's salmon. Save yourself some time by frying up a little zip bag of bacon for Friday night. 

Thursday: Salmon, potatoes and green beans en papillote

Hard to pronounce, easy to make and fun to eat. The portions of salmon available (by which I mean affordable) at our local grocery are pretty small. So small that they would overcook before the potatoes in this recipe were done. Solution? Cubes or slices of last night's baked potatoes. Asparagus is nearly as expensive per pound this month as salmon, so I'll be using green beans instead. Here's a thing to love about cooking in parchment- you can put these little parcels together in whatever random 20 minutes you can carve out during the day, and they'll be ready and waiting to be thrown in the oven about 20 minutes before dinner time. And at dinner time? They make dinner feel like opening a present.

Friday: Cheddar cheese soup with bacon and tomatoes

Another quick and easy dinner for a cool Autumn night- I wondered and wondered what nice veg would be nice with this soup, and then noticed the tomato and bacon in the picture. Hey presto, soup with tomatoes and bacon on the side. Any last bits of leftover potato can jump in to the soup bowl too.

Saturday: Chicken with sweet potatoes and greens

Two nutritional superfoods on one plate, and for protein a (gasp) store bought rotisserie chicken. I realize that there are some people out there who hold a strong antipathy toward rotisserie chicken, and it has not escaped my notice that these people are rarely the ones responsible for preparing an alternative. Those of us who hope to bake a batch of cookies, make some candle holders, find the candles, buy some candles when we can't find the candles, hang a garland or two and tidy the house this afternoon love these store-roasted birds nearly as much as home delivery pizza.

Sunday: Chicken and Dumplings

ok. See all that complicated chicken and vegetable prep in this recipe? If you have the time and wish to do that, it looks mighty delicious, so go ahead. But I'll be using the leftover rotisserie chicken and a bag of frozen soup vegetables. So why, you may well ask, have I linked to a recipe that I don't plan on using? Because of the dumplings. Just look at that dumpling recipe! It looks perfect! Besides, I always forget whether to leave the dumplings covered or uncovered while they cook, and this recipe spells that out clearly.

and in the next week or so, as you prepare to guest, or host, or both,

 I think it's important for you to know

That picture perfect only exists inside a camera

and is gone before the shutter closes.

That the way you love the world around you

is the end and the beginning of the feast.

And it's important for you to know

that somehow-

not in spite of,

not because of,

but right in the middle of

all your beautiful imperfections,

you are welcomed.
and you are not alone.

Weekend update, October 14, 2013

I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures.

Lao Tzu

It was a week of simple pleasures - time, in person and by phone, with the beloveds, friendly weather,  a perfect burger at one of our local houses of awesome Bin 303 , and simple dinners that while maybe not crazy easy, were (almost all)

crazy satisfying.

Almost all.

Let's get the report on the simple-though-tricky, not-so-tasty out of the way, shall we?

Here is, the salmon that was supposed to be tuna that was baked when it should have been seared and the roasted broccoli with almonds that were supposed to be pine nuts.

The winner here was the broccoli, or rather, the lemon/basil/olive oil/toasted nut dressing on the broccoli. This mix is as yummy and versatile as pesto or the summer's fantastic discovery, rodrigo sauce.  We were counting up it's possible uses: as a dressing for greens, brussel sprouts, salads, fish....

The salmon? 
Well, it's just that I couldn't find affordable tuna steaks, and there were a few cheap salmon fillets left in the freezer, and the dishwasher was broken, and the idea of scrubbing seared salmon skin out of the frying pan was more than I could face. 
So, notch up another user error in the quest to perfectly not deep fry a simple piece of pescado. 
Ah well.

While it's true that the source of sophistication is simplicity,

the source of comedy is chaos.
And ours is sometimes a very funny kitchen.

Next up, scrambled eggs and pot roast, both recipes that are totally worthy of a full on kitchen crush. A few things they have in common: 
They both reward you for caring about perfection.
They both forgive you if you don't. 
They both have many, many versions of the best, most perfect, simplest way to get it right.
For instance, this is the Gordon Ramsay technique that enthralled me last week, here's Alton Brown's method, the method that Julia Child learned in France, scrambled eggs a la the kitchn, and from About.com's culinary art's page. All of them an improvement over the eggs I've been scrambling for the last few decades. I know because I tried them, and learned at least two things:
1.

The only wrong way is the way that leaves you
wishing you'd skipped the cholesterol and
gone for the muesli with skim milk.

2.

We are getting a non-stickier non-stick pan.
By the time I'd pried this clean, I'd forgotten
how good the eggs were.

3. Gordon's method with a little cream cheese is my personal favorite, though two of my taste testers would've preferred the curds a little larger and drier.
Here's this morning's batch of the About.com version. This is a recipe that requires lots of whisking and/or a go round with an electric mixer before cooking, and they were (to me) noticeably less tender than the eggs produced by the other methods.

That's them with pan roasted tomatoes, bacon and a loaf of
lazier than no knead bread.

Like the eggs, the Pioneer woman pot roast recipe linked to last Tuesday was only one of a dozen "perfect pot roast" recipes available. I could've chosen this mushroom soup spin from Paula Deen,  this crock pot version, or this one that calls itself a classic.

I've cooked some pretty dismal pot roasts in the past- slabs of lovingly prepared beef that were so tough and stringy that you could eat dinner and floss your teeth at the same time. 

Not so great for dinner, but maybe they prevented
a trip or two to the dentist.

But the Pioneer woman recipe was amazing! Limiting the vegetables to deliciously browned onions and carrots, the slow oven roasting, the deglazing with red wine....wow. The real wonder of this gem though is it's flexibility- at the last minute, I realized that I'd forgotten to get beef broth! I hunted through the fridge and pantry, chanting "I need an interesting liquid, I need an interesting liquid..." and eventually decided to take a chance with  beer. And it was really good:

The super tender leftover beef and amazing gravy turned into this the very next day.

Chicken broth from the freezer, mushrooms, more carrots,
celery and a can of diced tomatoes.
It felt like I was committing magic.

And there were even enough mashed potatoes and chicken broth to do this:

leftover mashed potatoes, chicken broth, the last of the crema mexicana,
broccoli, carrots and the last of a bag of shredded sharp cheddar.
Hah! take that, other simple things. I'll conquer you yet!

Even if they weren't exactly effortless- even if browning onions and stirring eggs is a little more effort- in the end, the simple goodness of scrambled eggs on a weekend morning and pot roast on a rainy night was reward enough for the effort. 

And I hope that very thing for you this week.

I hope for simplicity.

And patience when simplicity gives way to chaos.

And compassion in the face of failure.

(your own and everyone else's)

Because what you 

(and most of the rest of us)

are doing is simply trying

(and maybe not always trying our best, but trying)

to do our work,

and bring the people we love the things that they need.

and that 

is simply beautiful.