FOOD ON THE FOOD

Grilled Vegetable Salad

There’s been shockingly little food on my food blog of late, which is disappointing I know.  I have been cooking, just not as much as usual since there are cabinet doors covering every square inch of my kitchen floor, and the new light fixture hasn’t arrived, yet, so it’s pitch black in there when the thunderstorms roll through.  And I keep reaching for drawers that aren't there.  Same as five seconds ago.  Back away from the non-existent drawers, Tammy.

Still, here’s something I put together quickly with leftover grilled summer squash, eggplant, and onions.  I cut the chilled remnants into cubes (except the onions, which I left as rings) and tossed them with just-picked sungold cherry tomatoes, ribbons of farmshare basil, and a simple vinaigrette.  (I snuck a little private moment with the cherry tomatoes and some fleur de sel while I was making dinner, and I think I’m getting over my tomato problem.) 

Husband thought the salad might be improved by a little goat cheese, but we were out.  It also crossed my mind that cubes of grilled bread wouldn’t hurt, either, panzanella-style.  But I hate when I start doing this.  Always trying to make something better when it’s perfectly lovely as it is.  That’s not the right spirit. 

So we ate.  And it was lovely.

Cookies Incoming

You’ve seen these before.  They’re seven-layer cookies, also known as magic bars.  I usually only make them around Christmastime because they seem too decadent otherwise, but I had another occasion come up this time. 

Susan over at She’s Becoming DoughMESStic has started Operation Baking GALS, where people can send baked goods to support and boost the morale of our troops abroad.  The first destination: Iraq.  The mission: to bombard our soldiers with deliciousness.  I can just hear you all saying, “Why do they need a morale boost?  Aren’t things going great in Iraq?”  The answer is no.  They are not.  Cookies probably won’t help, but it’s a start.

I come from a military family myself, and, in fact, represent the first generation that was too scared to join the armed forces (I like to take my jabs from a safe distance).  So this is my way of saying thanks.  I chose seven-layer cookies for three reasons: because they’re delicious, they travel well, and seemingly nothing can destroy them.  Not bombs.  Not anything.  Maybe if we build a very tall wall of seven-layer cookies around our troops, we won’t lose any more. 

I'm a little late getting these out since I was away last weekend, but something tells me we’ll still be over there.  Want to send your own package of goodies?  Find out how you can get involved here.

Name That Relative

I’m just back from a family reunion weekend, which included way more Italians than there should probably ever be in one place, and a ton of food, including eggplant parmesan, crescia, and sausage and peppers.

Things overheard at the gathering:

“Go get me some icebox cake.  I’m too drunk to get up.”

and

“What?  You put our family recipes on the INTERNET?” (drags finger menacingly across neck)

and graffiti in the bathroom:

Dora is my 90-year-old grandmother.  It’s no big mystery who could be responsible for this.  My dad.  I’d know that handwriting anywhere.

Peek in My Drawers

Crisper drawers, that is.  So you can see what I got in my farmshare this week:

2 heads of lettuce
a bunch of basil and dill
4 peppers
4 cucumbers
12 ears of corn

4 eggplants
a bunch of beets
4 summer squash
3 onions
an armful of fava beans
a bunch of carrots
8 potatoes

Exciting!  But I know a good half of you don't come here for the food, so...

***

It was beginning to look like my dreams of being trapped under the CSA tent with the Farmer during a thunderstorm would never come to fruition.  This despite the abundance of storminess this summer.  On the way to the pickup yesterday, mighty Zeus hurled lightening bolts in my direction and unleashed an urban tsunami like nothing I’ve ever seen (well, except for that storm two weeks ago, and then again the previous week, and then a couple of times the week before that). 

With the roads flooded at every turn, I rolled down the window and yelled up at the sky, face streaming with water: “You can’t keep me from going.  I won’t miss it two weeks in a row.”  Another flash of lightening and crack of thunder and I sputtered: “Is that the best you can do?  I laugh at your scary electricity.”  Then he hurled 15 more lightening bolts at me and an immediate explosion of sound that caused both kids and I to scream and soil ourselves simultaneously.  Unfortunately, only one of us was wearing a diaper.  Luckily, it was me.

All my detours around the washed-out roads landed me back at home and, seeing Husband’s car parked out front, I dropped off the traumatized kids and headed back out again, undeterred.  It was still raining when I got to the farm, but a more reasonable soaking rain.  The Farmer was manning the tent this time, Zeus having presumably chased him out of the open fields with his jagged javelins. 

This is an awful lot of buildup to get to the Farmer and I alone at last among the vegetables.  But, I’m afraid I can’t tell you what went on under that tent.  How am I ever going to have a normal relationship with this beautiful man if I keep on detailing our every interaction in my public diary?  How would I like it if someone were writing about me on his blog?  I would like it very much, actually.  IN THEORY.  I’m a girl, after all.  But probably not in practice.  Also because it wouldn’t be anyone good, I’m sure.  You never get to handpick your own stalkers.

So you’ll just have to use your imagination.  In the comment section.  Best ending to the story wins Uncle Oinker’s Savory Bacon Mints.

Tastes Like Chicken

The Toddler has developed his own code names for the two farms we frequent most.  Drumlin is the “Owl Farm,” for its rehabilitated birds on display that the Toddler is so fond of.  Codman is known as the “Donkey Farm” for reasons I think we’ve already covered.  The two farms are close to each other and have a lot of the same animals, not to mention a lot of the same letters in their names and the same number of syllables.  Frankly, I was getting them confused myself.  This makes it easier.

The Toddler was excited about going to the Owl Farm today, it being farmshare day and all, except he called it the “owlshare.” 

Mmmmmmm, owlshare.  What a great idea!  They offer three different varieties of owl, no less.  Hawk, too.  I wonder if it would be PYO?  If so, I would steer clear of the Great Horned Owl.  He doesn’t let you out of his sight for even one second.  (Aren’t you supposed to be sleeping?  It’s daytime.)  The tiny, napping Screech Owl would be easier to catch, although it’s going to be slim pickings when he gets divided up 45 ways. 

Owlshare.  If only.  Personally, I had my eye on the pheasant.

Vacation in a Nutshell

We had a really great time last week.  This is actually the second year we’ve had a good vacation, so I think the karmic debt owed to us after the Great Vacation Disaster of 2006 has been settled at long last. 

We rented a small cottage in Brewster, not far from where we got married, with just a short walk to the beach.  The weather was perfect the whole time, raining only at night, and we never ran out of things to do with the kids: fishing at Nickerson State Park, mini-golf, checking the lobster traps on Grandpa P’s boat.  And, of course, the beach.

Husband had fun building vast sandcastle compounds with serpentine waterways and canals.  This is not the most elaborate one he made.  The kids would then populate it with moon snails, hermit crabs, and little fish they found in the tidal pools.  I particularly enjoyed the spectacle that would occur when we threw an empty snail shell into the hermit crab pool and they would squabble over the new real estate.  As hermit crabs grow, they need bigger shells.  Once one wins the epic battle for the trophy house of his dreams, he switches.  Then, another shell becomes available and it’s chaos all over again.  It was recycling at its most hilarious.  Later, the tide would reclaim them all as it inched its way back in.

An oyster farm, only visible at low tide.  It seemed like the folks at family-run Brewster Oyster were out there every day tending their charges.  Oysters take about three years to reach market size.  They sell locally to restaurants like the Brewster Fish House, a favorite spot where we got to have dinner one night without the kids.

This place only has about a dozen tables, but we try to come here every year despite the wait.  Their lobster bisque is unlike any other: a little bit spicy, a little bit sweet, and chock full of meaty chunks of lobster instead of being puréed into oblivion.  Now I’m spoiled forever.  Thanks a lot, Brewster Fish House.

We caught frogs and polliwogs at Flax Pond at Nickerson.  We did not eat them.

In Eastham, we noticed a sign for fresh-picked corn from Log Cabin Farm.  Corn in Massachusetts in the second week of July?  I don’t think so.  I gave them the third degree despite my limited farm knowledge.  They weren’t lying, though.  Their farmer covers 15 acres of his corn with black plastic to create an outdoor greenhouse.  The woman running the stand said they had corn on July 4th weekend.

So, of course, I had to buy some.  What we didn’t eat that night, I stripped from the cob and made into a corn and bean salad to eat with grilled striper the next day.

The most successful meal of the vacation.  The kids loved it just as much as the adults.  Earlier that afternoon, I had made my way to Breakwater Fish & Lobster on what turned out to be only the second day of the commercial fishing season for striped bass.  The woman at the counter winked at me and asked, “What took you so long?”

I wonder how long it will be before this post-vacation glow disappears?

Things I Learned While on Vacation

• Life goes on without the Internet.  Seems impossible, but it’s true.  I swear I knew this prior to 2006, and yet, since then, the Internet has succeeded in luring me in with its promises of instant erections and weight loss that will finally render me invisible.  I was about as excited at the prospect of spending a week without an Internet connection as I would be about a week without oxygen.  There was a lot of hyperventilating and thrashing about, but once I got the hang of breathing without it, I did learn something.  That the Internet is bad.  Very bad.  It is the enemy of balance and moderation and all that is reasonable in this world.  It promotes excess and narcissism, self-indulgence and voyeurism, and as far as this freedom of speech thing is concerned, no good will ever come of it.  No more Internet for me.  (kisses keyboard with tongue: afgrugihdsdgnvasdiufhg)

• From now on, all of my showers will be taken in the great outdoors.  How cold could winter be, anyway?  There’s just something about the hot water and the cool breezes and the open skies above and, in a surprise twist this year, the lack of a door.  I’m afraid I may have to give up showering altogether if I’m going to be limited to a tiny, airless room.  I won't tell you how many outdoor showers I took over the course of one week, my green friends, but more than my share.  Many more than my share.

• I discovered that one of my sons is not mine.  At breakfast one morning, the younger one said something to the effect of: turn off the bacon, I can’t hear the birds singing.  Wha?

• Drying your clothes on a clothesline isn’t always the best choice for the environment.  Not when a midnight thunderstorm leaves your garments waterlogged, so you end up having to put them in the dryer in the morning anyway, but then you forget to take them out before you lock up at checkout time, and you only realize this after you’ve driven away.  And you have to make two round trips over many miles, over several hours, wasting countless gallons of expensive gas, in the hopes of catching the cleaning crew so you don’t have to spend even more money paying Chinese children to sew you some new ones.  Of course, you might not have this problem if you’re not a moron.

We’re not home yet, but en route.  Which means those cats better not still be there when we get back.  And do you know what I’m looking forward to most about returning home?  All those cabinets I have to finish.  Yaaaayyyyyy!!

The Kitchen is Not Done

But that’s not going to stop me from going on vacation tomorrow.  On the contrary, I can’t wait to get the hell out of here.  My deadline for finishing the kitchen was today, and the only thing I succeeded at was fooling myself into believing it was actually possible up until the very last minute.  In my next life, I will be a contractor.

The cabinet doors and drawers are all primed and ready for their final coat of paint when I get back.  Holes are already drilled for the hardware, so I’m very optimistic about an August deadline.  (P.S. The next time somebody tries to convince me that something like this would be a fun project, remind me to cover my ears and go “lalalalalalalalalalaaaaa.”)

Anyway, we’re going to the same place we always vacation because we’re boring.  I’ve found that being boring is the very best way to avoid “surprises” and “excitement,” two things I no longer aim for in a vacation.  It’s not foolproof, but it helps.  All I’m really shooting for are a few of those elusive moments of quiet that I treasure so much.  Oh, and fish.  I'll be eating fish, too.  I have my handy-dandy Monterey Bay Aquarium Sustainable Seafood Guide in my wallet to help me navigate the murky waters of responsible fish consumption.  I perused it quickly, and I fear seawater is our best bet.  We’ll be extra thirsty.

BTW, the same rules apply about breaking into our house as last year.  If you’re going to take all of our worthless stuff, at least take the cats, too. 

See you in a week.

Misunderstanding Michael Pollan: The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Chapter 6

It feels odd and somewhat wrong to be talking about surplus corn when half the state of Iowa was recently underwater.  But the fact is that the whole first section of this book was rooted in surplus corn, and so I’m afraid I’m constrained by the facts that were on the ground when the book was written.  Luckily, though, Michael Pollan is forward-thinking, and the message in this particular chapter applies whether it’s a bumper year for corn or not. 

I’m talking about hooch.

You see, recent events notwithstanding, it turns out that we Americans have seen excess corn before in our short but illustrious history.  In the early 1800s, we had a shitload of corn, too, and we had a very ingenious way of dealing with the situation.  We turned it into whiskey.  Pollan writes:

“As the historian W.J. Rorabaugh tells the story in The Alcoholic Republic, we drank the hard stuff at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, before work and after and very often during.  Employers were expected to supply spirits over the course of the workday; in fact, the modern coffee break began as a late-morning whiskey break called “the elevenses.”  (Just to pronounce it makes you sound tipsy.)  Except for a brief respite Sunday morning in church, Americans simply did not gather—whether for a barn raising or quilting bee, corn husking or political rally—without passing the whiskey jug."

That sounds freaking fantastic. So, let me get this straight.  We’ve wasted precious decades putting our surplus corn into soda when we could have been putting it into whiskey?  Why?  WHY WHY WHY?  I’m afraid the great taste of “lymon” will never hold a candle to bourbon straight up.  Who even cares about Pepsi versus Coke unless they’re mixed with the good stuff?  All I’m saying is if you have to choose a public health epidemic, obesity versus alcoholism, then I think the winner is clear.  (Though, I think we might be able to make room for both if we really apply ourselves.)

But those poor Midwestern farmers.  Too much corn, and you’re screwed.  Not enough corn, and you’re screwed.  It seems to me that Michael Pollan’s message to Iowa farmers is this.  Start drinking.  Whether its purpose is to level a towering mountain of corn, or to erase the image of a giant lake where your land should be, drink up.  You’re going to need it.

Bok Choy: Suggestions Welcome

Bok choy is to my Summer CSA as squash was to my Winter CSA.  Not necessarily in terms of outrageous quantities (though that remains to be seen), but in how much I look forward to seeing it. 

Of all the new-to-me Asian vegetables I cooked last year, the only one that didn’t win me over was bok choy.  I made it a bunch of different ways (steamed, sautéed, slowly fermented in the bottom of my crisper drawer), but it never took. 

Recently, though, I overheard the Farmer say he likes bok choy.  He called it “delicious.”  That’s not the word I would have chosen.  Watery and bland with a bitter edge—that’s how I would describe it.  Like celery, but worse.  Still, I thought, maybe I should give it another try.  If anyone was going to get me to change my mind, it was the Farmer.

So at some point in the past week or two (hard to tell since I painted right over the calendar), I made a stir-fry.  I used pork from Stillman’s Farm, and snap peas, bok choy, and komatsuna (Japanese mustard spinach, which I LOVE) from Drumlin.  I was hoping that mixing the bok choy in with other, better stuff might help.  Also, in the past, I had always kept the bok choy leaves attached to the stalks, and I had a feeling that was what turned me off.  Since the leaves and stems cook at different rates, I found myself having to guess at some kind of unhappy medium.  This time, I separated the two parts and added them in at different times.  I liked the results much better.

I started by heating some canola oil until quite hot.  I added six or seven smashed garlic cloves until starting to brown, and then the pork, which was just 2 pork chops deboned and cut into ¼-inch-thick pieces.  I stirred that around for a bit, then poured in 3 Tbsp. fish sauce, 2 Tbsp. soy sauce, and 1½ Tbsp. sugar, pre-mixed.  Next, I added the bok choy stalks cut crosswise into boomerang- shaped pieces and the destrung snap peas.  A minute or two stirring, then in went the bok choy leaves, komatsuna, and black pepper, tossed until the pork was cooked through. 

The stalks stayed pleasantly crunchy while the leaves got all wilty.  So clean and crisp, it was a really excellent stir-fry.  How could I have been such a fool?

I always suspected that the Farmer knew his way around the kitchen, and now I’m convinced.  He acts all modest, but if he can make bok choy taste good without even trying, well that’s really saying something.  I have my work cut out for me if I want to get invited to dinner, though.  We should probably get to know each other a little better first.  As friends, I mean.  Or, you know, whatever.  Maybe someday when he doesn’t scare the living shit out of me.

Cake for Girls

That’s what my dad would call this rhubarb cake.  Girly.  Suitable only for tea parties and baby showers.  Nothing a real man would eat. 

And that’s why there shan’t be any left when he arrives.

A Pesto Poem

garlic scapes, of any amount, roughly chopped
a bunch of basil, stems removed, leaves fragrant
a handful of walnuts or pine nuts or such
quite a bit of grated Parmesan cheese
a sensible amount of salt, doubled
and some black pepper
in a food processor
with more olive oil than anything else.
presto
pesto

(This is why I’m not a poet.)

For Dessert: Cherries Over Ricotta

It was hard to justify doing anything to these cherries besides eating them out of hand, but it seemed even sillier not to make the dessert that inspired the whole trip in the first place.  Stupid’s more like it. 

So here it is:  2 cups of Port boiled down to a thick syrup (15 minutes or so).  Add the pitted cherries.  Let macerate for as long as you can stand it.  Spoon over the best ricotta you can find (Russo’s carries ricotta from Purity in Quincy and sometimes Gigi’s Mozzarella House in Everett).  A few generous cracks of black pepper made it 200% better, something I wish I had discovered before I snapped the photo.  Oh well. 

I loved this dessert, but I suspect that not everyone will.  You have to pick your crowd.  It tastes like actual cherries and wine, not cherry pie filling.  It comes nowhere near the sweetness level that most Americans have come to expect when cherries are on the menu.  Rather, it’s subtle in that beguiling way that leaves you wanting just a little bit more.  Just a little.