FOOD ON THE FOOD

Got Milkweed?

This is our vacation souvenir.  The 2nd Grader found a tiny monarch caterpillar on a milkweed leaf outside the New York lake house our friends generously shared with us.  By the end of our stay, the caterpillar, who occupied his own bunk in an empty peanut butter jar, had more than tripled in size, and my oldest was lobbying hard to bring it home.  We agreed.

After the five-hour car ride back, however, it seemed a little lethargic.  Later in the day, it climbed up on the stick propped up inside the jar as if it were ready to spin its cocoon, but Husband noted that it was still way too small.  It needed fattening up and I knew just the person for the job.  However, the caterpillar was completely uninterested in the spread I set out for him: chocolate cake, ice cream, pickle, Swiss cheese, salami, lollipop, cherry pie, sausage, cupcake, and watermelon.  It’s weird because I got the menu from a very reliable source!  They ought to write a non-fiction book entitled The Very Finicky Caterpillar.

Instead, Husband went on an emergency milkweed run.  Husband knows about monarch caterpillars: they like milkweed and that is all.  Now the caterpillar is happily munching away again.  It’s almost big enough to undergo its transformation and the kids are awaiting the event with much anticipation.  (They’ve seen this at school before, but it’s different with your own caterpillar!)

I just hope this particular butterfly doesn’t mind the extra 300 miles he’s going to have to tack on to his 2,000-mile migration to Mexico.  Have an extra tequila on me, Flutterby!

About Ground Cherries

Please bear with me—I’m trying desperately to maintain my vacation glow, and any demands, any demands at all, will restore me to my original pale, matte finish. 

In the interim, you can find me over at Culinate this week with an article on ground cherries (aka husk tomatoes, aka dwarf Cape gooseberries, not to be confused with tomatillos).  If you’ve ever seen them at the farmer's market and wondered what the heck those weirdo fruits are and what to do with them, now’s your chance to find out.  There’s also a recipe for a sweet and spicy relish to serve over grilled fish.  You know, if you like delicious things.

Now go away.  Shoo!!

Peach Ice Cream

According to my mother, the first words I learned to read were ‘ice cream.’  This makes all the sense in the world if you know me at all.  It may also explain the relish with which I learned to read additional words, only to discover that most of them were significantly less delicious than the first.  It was my earliest childhood disappointment, though I suppose literacy is a decent consolation prize.

As a kid, nothing brought me greater pleasure than going to an ice cream parlor and studying the flavors on display in the long, transparent cases, their muted, subtly different hues right there at eye-level.  It was like an edible artist’s palette, seemingly bottomless and filled with sweet promise.  Some had flecks of chocolate or nuts.  Bits of fruit.  Swirls of fudge.  I wanted to take a spoon, dip it into every pot, and paint the world with ice cream.

I loved to watch the people who worked there (the luckiest people on the face of the planet, in my young estimation) scooping out ice cream from the deep cylindrical tubs.  There is something about the texture of ice cream that still thrills me, the way the scoop digs and rolls across the surface.  How the resulting smooth crown and ruffled edges sit precariously atop the cone, defying (or not defying) gravity and clumsy children.  The way the frozen confection is both creamy and crystalline, temporarily suspended in a state somewhere between solid and liquid as you race to devour it before it seeps sloppily from the bottom of the cone.

It all began with strawberry.  What is it with little girls and pink?  But that flavor, to this day, represents all the pleasures and comfort of childhood.  Later I gravitated toward the artificial pale greens of pistachio and mint chocolate chip.  Strawberry ice cream was for babies, you see.  A cone of mint chocolate chip always required jimmies (Massachusetts-talk for chocolate sprinkles).  Brigham’s in the South Shore Plaza was a favorite source.  As I angled for adulthood, the teenage years brought an appreciation for coffee, maple walnut, butter pecan, and mocha in their frosty shades of beige.  I still favor them to this day.

It took years before I realized that the best and most versatile ice cream flavor of all was the white one in the corner with the barely-perceptible flecks of black.  It was hard, though, as a kid to choose Plain Jane vanilla when there were so many flashier options vying for attention, especially once Oreos and cookie dough entered the picture.  To this day, my least favorite ice cream flavor is chocolate.  Chocolate, which is one of my most favoritest things ever!  (Did I forget a superlative in there?)  What can I say, Chocolate Ice Cream, you’re a poor substitute for chocolate.  But the real thing is welcome to be poured, thick and fudge-like, over my vanilla ice cream anytime.

This history is why I’m compelled to make homemade ice cream even though we have about a million sources for quality ice cream in the Boston area, from old-school ice cream shops (J.P. Licks, Cabot’s), to inventive, boutique ice cream bars (Toscanini’s, Christina’s), to farm stands (Bedford Farms, Kimball Farm).  They’re hard to beat and thank goodness we don’t have to.  But for me, there will always be homemade ice cream in my freezer.  Peach ice cream.  Maple ice cream.  And other far more disgusting concoctions of which I have yet to conceive. 

Tammy + Ice Cream 4 Eva.

Peach Ice Cream

There’s nothing like peaches and cream in the summertime.  I kept the skins on this time and I liked it!

2 cups ripe peaches, washed, fuzz rubbed off under water, chopped
½ cup sugar, plus ¾ cup more (1¼ cup total)
Juice of ½ lemon
2 large eggs
2 cups heavy cream
1 cup milk

Combine peaches with ½ cup of the sugar, and stir in lemon juice.  Cover and refrigerate for 2 hours, stirring every half hour.  Pour peaches into a strainer fitted over a bowl and drain, reserving the peach juice.

Whisk the eggs in a large bowl until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes.  Whisk in the remaining ¾ cup sugar, a little at a time.  Pour in the cream, milk, and reserved peach juice, and whisk until sugar is dissolved.  Pour mixture into ice cream machine and freeze following the manufacturer’s instructions (usually spin for 25 minutes).  Add the peach pieces during the last 5 minutes of processing.  Spoon partially frozen mixture into a container, cover, and place in the freezer until firm. 

I tend to like it on the softer side rather than solid as a rock.  If it freezes too hard, let sit on the counter for five minutes before serving.

Source: Adapted from Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Ice Cream & Dessert Book by Ben Cohen, Jerry Greenfield, and Nancy J. Stevens.

Local Ingredients:
Peaches: Carver Hill Orchard, Stow, MA
Cream: High Lawn Farm, Lee, MA
Milk: Our Family Farms of Massachusetts, Greenfield, MA

Some Things Never Change

Lest you think that all this mushroom-growing and involvement in the school garden has miraculously turned my black thumbs green, I’m here to tell you that it’s business as usual on the plant-killing front.  My sage plant died almost instantly upon transfer of ownership.  My two heirloom tomato plants were dead by August.  The oregano isn’t far behind.  And while the rest of the herbs are hanging on, they’re clearly not thriving.  Even the mint has no intention of trying to outgrow its tiny pot. 

I know you’re going to ask me if I’ve been watering my plants and the answer is no.  Of course I haven’t.  I can barely keep my own self hydrated on a daily basis.  I count on a little rain falling once in a while, but so far this summer I think it’s only rained twice in two months.  Not a good situation when your so-called caretaker will only drag the hose out once a week to soak her mushroom logs.

Luckily, there are eight other families involved in the school garden, so the plants over there have been getting plenty of water and good care.  The proof is in the sungold tomatoes, which did not disappoint again this year.  So sweet and so many!  Everyone was buzzing about the bright orange sun-candy.  I have a feeling there won’t be any trouble getting garden volunteers next year.  I just hope none of them ever bear witness to the secret shame that is my own garden!

Shiitakes and Soup

Maybe it’s just the mushrooms talking, but that’s a lot of mushrooms! 

I harvested nearly a pound of shiitakes from one of my logs last week.  There was a little bit of slug damage, but they were remarkably bug-free.  Because the weather has been so dry lately, I had to trick my logs into thinking it was the rainy season by giving them a 24-hour soak in the kiddie pool (after the kids were done using it, of course).  Only one of the logs fell for the ruse with any enthusiasm.  Meanwhile, one of the other logs seems to have developed some kind of green mold on one side.  Which isn’t a good thing unless I’m planning on growing my own penicillin.  Apparently there’s a fine line between fungus and mold, and I’ll keep you posted on where exactly that line is.

Isn’t it weird how mushrooms grow out of logs like that?  They just grow right out of the logs!!

As I was slicing the shiitakes from the log, I accidentally dropped one of them into a pile of rotting leaves.  I quickly picked it up, fretting and wiping it off like an overprotective parent, until I realized my ridiculousness.  Protecting my precious fungal outgrowth, the fruit of boreal decomposition, from a little dirt and detritus?  There were slugs crawling all over it a minute ago!  It’ll be okay.

Speaking of slugs, I’ve never considered myself to be particularly fleet of foot, but I always fancied myself faster than a slug.  Apparently not.  I had to break up a mid-morning, slow-motion feeding frenzy by nudging a group of them off the logs with a stick and slingshotting them across the yard.  They may not be particularly fast, but they’re very determined.  As a secondary line of defense, I tried sprinkling a ring of salt around the log on the paver it was resting on.  That seemed to solve the problem, but maybe there's a more humane way to deal with slugs?

Anyway, these shiitakes went into a nice mushroom barley soup over the weekend. I chopped shallots, carrots, and garlic from Waltham Fields (as well as some limp celery I found) and sautéed them in a few tablespoons of Cabot butter until soft.  Then I added a bit more butter and my sliced shiitake caps, and cooked for five more minutes.  In went 6 cups of beef stock made from bones from Chestnut Farms last winter along with a few extra cups of water (but you could easily substitute vegetable broth and/or the tea left over from soaking dried mushrooms).  When it all came to a boil, I added ½ cup barley from Moraine Farm and let it simmer for about an hour.  I finished it off with a couple of tablespoons of cognac and a tablespoon of chopped fresh thyme.  Not exactly summer food, but think about it for the fall!

Tart Cherry Preserves

In the cookbook Put ‘Em Up that I raffled off last month, there is a recipe for preserved cherries, the intro to which says, “Cherry preserves are to strawberry jam what a red satin gown is to a puffy pink prom dress.”  That’s for sure.  Only the author forgot to mention the red lipstick.  Lipstick and cleavage.  This, my friends, is the Christina Hendricks of jams. 

If you’ve never cooked with sour cherries (and I hadn’t until this year), let’s just say that there’s a reason why everybody swoons over them.  Under no circumstances should you EVER pass them up.  And I know it’s cruel to mention sour cherries when their season is past, but now you have a whole year to nail down a local source and mark your calendars for late June/early July so you don’t miss their fleeting window.  Then you should set some of them aside to make this:

Classic Cherry Preserves

Original recipe was doubled.  I should have stuck with the original recipe.

1½ lbs. sour cherries (sometimes labeled tart cherries)
½ cup sugar
2 Tbsp. lemon juice

Stem and pit the cherries (they're so juicy you can just cut them in half and flick out the pit with the tip of a paring knife, no pitter required).  Combine the cherries with a splash of water in a medium nonreactive saucepan.  Bring to a boil, mashing with a potato masher to release the juice.  Add the sugar and lemon juice and stir to dissolve.  Continue to cook, stirring frequently, until the preserves reach the desired thickness, 15 to 20 minutes (stick a jam-coated spoon in the freezer for a minute to see if it gels).  Remove from heat and let rest for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Ladle into clean jars.  Cool, cover, label, and refrigerate for up to a month.  (Or, for longer lasting storage, can them using the boiling water method for 10 minutes).  Now just try to keep your hands off them!

Source: Adapted from Put ‘Em Up by Sherri Brooks Vinton.

Do-Over

Sometime last week (or maybe it was the week before), it was my wedding anniversary.  Remembering dates is not my strong suit.  Luckily, Husband’s not so good with them, either.  It is not uncommon for both of us to forget the date of our anniversary until several weeks later.  Perhaps this is why we’re still together.  Or maybe we both keep forgetting to file the divorce papers.  Either way.

But this year was our 10th anniversary.  Clearly this marriage thing is turning into some kind of a habit.  We didn’t forget the date altogether this time, but we were both unprepared for the day gift-wise.  Evidently, the appropriate etiquette gift for 10 years of marriage is something made out of aluminum.  That sounds, um, romantic.  Did we ever establish whether or not aluminum causes cancer?  I hope the gift suggestions get progressively better over time. 

Nevertheless, I did a quick aluminum gift brainstorm.  Aluminum siding?  Nah, I’m quite partial to our wooden shingles.  Aluminum pots?  But that would really be a gift to myself.  Plus, you can’t cook anything acidic in them, which is an annoying limitation in a pot.  Aluminum baseball bat?  But Husband already has one, and how many bats does one man need who isn’t on the Red Sox?  I mean, he thinks he’s on the Red Sox.  That much is clear.  But as far as I can tell, he is not actually on the Red Sox and do we really need to encourage the delusions? 

Instead, I decided to show up on our anniversary with a six-pack of beer and two giant steak bombs from Carl’s.  The steak bombs came wrapped in aluminum foil.  It was the best I could do on short notice.  Husband then presented me with a box of ricotta cannoli from Antoine’s Pastry Shop.  They contained no aluminum and I was very offended.  Then we proceeded to eat and eat and eat and eat until we made ourselves physically uncomfortable and the only sentiment verbalized the whole rest of the night was a wincing “Don’t touch me!”  Our moans were not of a sexual nature. 

Looking back over the evidence, it’s unclear who was trying to kill the other first on our anniversary.  It was almost a tie.  If I could do it all over again, I would have celebrated the event with the more anniversary-worthy meal I cooked three days later: grilled pork chops and peaches with balsamic vinegar. 

The locally raised chops were rubbed with basil, oregano, fennel seed, salt, pepper, and olive oil, and were grilled alongside the peaches.  The peaches are great this year, aren’t they?  Once the fruits were appropriately grill-marked, I splashed them with balsamic vinegar, orange juice, and a sprinkle of purple basil leaves.  Grilled pattypan squash and coleslaw on the side.  Sour cherry cobbler for dessert.

It was probably still too much food, but slightly less masochistic, don’t you think?

Local Sources:
Pork chops: Chestnut Farms, Hardwick, MA
Peaches: Carver Hill Orchard, Stow, MA
Squash, cabbage, onion, carrots: Waltham Fields, Waltham, MA
Cherries: Orbaker's Fruit Farm, Williamson, NY

Fun Guy

My mushroom garden is coming along.  Slowly.  In addition to the four shiitake logs from last year, I've inoculated three logs with oyster mushroom spawn and three more with maitake spawn (aka hen of the woods).  But then I ran out of logs.  Perhaps I was overly ambitious when I ordered 300 mushroom plugs.  Remind me not to buy my mushroom spawn on an empty stomach.

Since I still had 100 shiitake plugs left and I didn’t want to take down any trees unnecessarily, I’ve been trolling the mean streets of Waltham for additional logs.  I spotted some in the driveway of a house en route to the park.  One of the guys who lives there could often be seen making modifications to what looked to be a souped-up monster-truck-type vehicle.  Frequently, he could be found washing caked-on mud off of it after what I can only imagine was extreme off-roading.  He seemed like a nice enough guy, though, and who am I to judge other people’s hobbies.  I mean, I write stories about my food.  So, I decided to bite the bullet and knock on his door.

Monster Truck Dude answered.  I asked if he, perchance, had any plans for those logs.  He indicated they were slated for firewood.  I scowled as I looked over at the gigantic barricade of firewood he had already amassed between his house and his neighbor’s yard.  I mentioned my penchant for mushrooms and how those logs could probably grow some good ones.  Edible ones, I clarified.  He indicated that he liked mushrooms.  How many did I need?  I low-balled it at three.  Take four, he said, and you can bring mushrooms in exchange.  I explained that it takes a whole year for mushrooms to establish, but he said that was fine.  Then, I happily hauled four logs into my car and promised to return someday. 

Wow, it’s like this bartering thing actually works!  See, this is where having that extra boob comes in handy.  Perhaps this is the beginning of a high-risk, low yield mushroom CSA!  I imagine getting a permit for that is no problem at all!

Eggsistential Lunch

Here’s what the 4YO and I discussed over our egg salad today:

Him: Mommy, are you a grown-up?

Me: That’s a good question!!

Him: … (still waiting for the answer)

Me: Yes, I’m a grown-up.

Him: … (pondering this)

Me: Did you think I was a child?

Him: No.  I thought you were a teenager.

Hmmmmm.  I’m either very insulted or totally psyched!

Deliciduous Trees

Ever since I successfully identified a black walnut tree in the wild all by myself (which isn’t hard, it turns out, but this suburban girl demands kudos anyway), I’ve been studying up on nut trees in a crazed fashion.  Just ask Husband about my reading material during our Cape vacation: all nut-, berry-, and mushroom-related.  He fears for his life.

Anyway, I’ve been wondering about all these trees we have in our backyard and whether or not they’re anything good.  I mean, they’re trees so they’re automatically good regardless of whether or not they provide me with delicious nuts.  Calm down, Trees.  But what I mean to say is: in addition to oxygenating the air, furnishing a pleasant canopy of shade, and blocking out unattractive urban eyesores, wouldn’t they be even better if they provided me with delicious nuts? 

That’s where you come in.  Yes, you.  You get to help me identify my trees!  Won’t that be fun?  No?  Well, tough crap because I have all these tree pictures and nothing else prepared for today, so dig out your thinking caps and help me figure out what the hell these goddamned trees are.  There are only two for today.

Specimen #1:

Notice the unusual pattern of the bark.  So geometric.  The tree is so tall and shoulder-to-shoulder with maples and oaks competing for sunlight that I literally can’t even see the leaves.  I got out some binoculars to get a better (but still crappy) look, and I did find some fallen leaves that I think belong to the tree in question, so I’ve recreated the leaf pattern as best I could see it:

Alternate, pinnately compound, toothed leaflets, I believe.  The leaves still on the tree are green, by the way, not yellow.  Other potential clues: not a lot of vegetation growing around the trunk unlike the other nearby trees.  Also, high up on the trunk is this ominous-looking thing:

Any guesses as to what type of tree this could be?

Specimen #2:

This tree is still young and small, but, I think, promising.  Look at the leaf distribution.  Also alternate, toothed, and pinnately compound.  Leaflets are arranged in groups of five like fingers on a hand, except the larger trio of top leaves are joined together in the same spot and the two smaller leaves are joined lower on the stem in a separate spot, as if the leaf version of a thumb and pinky finger were growing out of its wrist.  (I would have made an awesome scientist, I just know it!)  Here’s the tiny trunk:

So, nature-loving people, what’s the verdict?  Will Husband be up to his nuts in nuts this fall?  If Specimen 1 is what I think it is, the good news will probably be flanked by bad news.  Perhaps the only thing I should count on come October is the usual ton of raking.

Don't Cry Over...

I’m on vacation at the moment, so I thought I’d leave you with a little something to do besides pine away for your favorite food blogger.  Okay, second favorite food blogger?  Third?

Anyway, you all know Molly Wizenberg, right?  The blogger behind Orangette, author of A Homemade Life, and Bon Appétit columnist.  And you know Matthew Amster-Burton, right?  The blogger behind Roots and Grubs and author of Hungry Monkey.  Well, they teamed up to do a food podcast called Spilled Milk and it’s pretty damned entertaining.  Like how I imagine a podcast co-starring yours truly would be if I had any social skills whatsoever.  I think you should have a listen.  Here’s their latest episode on sour cherries.  Or, if you prefer, the breakfast cereals of our youth.

See you next week!

Constructing Pavlova

So now that you know (or don’t know) the history of pavlova, let’s make a pavlova!

If your experience with meringue is mostly marked by indifference, this pavlova will change all that.  It’s not chalky and tasteless the way some structured meringues can be.  Long, slow baking forms a thin, crisp shell on the outside while the middle stays soft and marshmallowy—a billowy, free-form cloud in the palest, purest shade of pink, like brand-new pointe shoes.  That outer shell is fragile enough that if you pile your fruit too high, as I did, the middle collapses slightly.  I suspect that’s why the whipped cream was introduced in the first place.  To cover up the fissures and sinkholes that arise when one of your major ingredients is just air.  That’s my theory, anyway. 

But the combination of sweet meringue, not-to-sweet whipped cream, and sweet-tart berries, along with the contrasting textures of crisp and yielding is absolutely delightful.  Which is why I ate all of the leftovers at 11 p.m. that night.  You know, because they wouldn’t taste as fresh and wholesome the next day!  Best of all—and I hope you’re reading this, Mom—pavlovas are gluten-free.  So, if you’re allergic to wheat, then consider this a very worthy substitute for strawberry shortcake.

Pavlova

Save the unused egg yolks for lemon curd or pasta dough or whatever else you make that could benefit from some extra richness.

4 egg whites
Pinch salt
1 cup sugar, whizzed in a food processor (or super-fine sugar)
1½ tsp. cornstarch
1 tsp. vinegar
1 cup heavy cream
1 Tbsp. sugar (optional)
Splash of vanilla
1 quart strawberries, raspberries, black raspberries, or other seasonal fruit

Preheat oven to 250°F.  Line a sheet pan with parchment paper and trace an 8-inch circle on it in pencil using a cake pan or bowl as a guide.  Turn the parchment paper over so you don’t get pencil on your meringue (but make sure you can still see the circle you just drew).

Using an electric mixer, whip the egg whites with a pinch of salt in a large, clean bowl.  It’s very important that your bowl is grease-free and that you separated your eggs cleanly, with no broken yolks mixed in with the whites.  Any fat will interfere with the whipping process.  When soft peaks form, begin adding the sugar 1 tablespoonful at a time with the mixer running.  Continue beating on medium-high speed until stiff, glossy peaks form, about 5 minutes.  Rub some meringue on your fingers to make sure all the sugar has dissolved.  Lightly but thoroughly fold in the cornstarch and vinegar.  These ingredients are not optional.  They are necessary for that magical texture I described.

Gently mound the meringue in the center of the parchment and lightly spread it to fill the circle you traced.  With the back of a spoon, shape it so that it’s higher on the sides and dipped like a well in the middle.  Don’t fuss with it too much, though, or you’ll lose air.  It’s meant to look free-form.  Bake in the preheated oven for 1 hour and 15 minutes, until it’s just starting to take on some color and crack slightly (cracks are totally fine).  Then turn off the heat and let the meringue sit inside with the oven door ajar for 30 minutes.  Take out and let cool.

Assemble just before serving.  Whip the cream in a clean bowl with a splash of vanilla and perhaps a bit of sugar (though the meringue is sweet enough that you don’t need much) until soft peaks form.  Mound the cream in the well and top with seasonal fruit of your choosing. 

Local Ingredients:

Eggs: Chip-In Farm, Bedford, MA
Cream: High Lawn Farm, Lee, MA
Strawberries, raspberries, blueberries: Various local farms via Verrill Farm, Concord, MA

Deconstructing Pavlova

I made a pavlova for the 4th of July because that’s the kind of American I am.  The kind that doesn’t let patriotism veto her dessert choices.  No one at the table was exactly sure what a pavlova was or where it came from, but we had fun speculating nonetheless.  Names have been omitted to protect the innocent:

What’s a pavlova anyway?  A cake?

No, isn’t it more like a free-form soufflé with whipped cream and fruit piled on top?

Somebody described it one time and it sounded like an omelet.

An omelet?  For dessert?  Yuck!

It’s not an omelet, it’s a meringue.  You don’t fall in love with a Russian ballerina, create a dessert in her honor, and then unveil…an omelet.

Could happen.  Men are retards.           (<--this wasn’t me, by the way)

I didn’t know it was named after a Russian ballerina...

Yeah, Anna Pavlova. 

She must have been pretty hot.

I thought it was named after a singer.

What singer?  Luciano Pavlova?

(Somebody starts singing O sole mio in fake Russian.)

No, you idiots, it was named after Pavlov’s dog.  Remember?  Somebody rings a bell and you immediately take a bite of pavlova. 

That’s not how the story goes. 

Who would name a dessert after a dog anyway?

I would if my dog could dance in pointe shoes!

Shhhhhhh.  The Russian spies don’t take kindly to people insulting their national heroes. 

So then pavlova is a Russian dessert?

No, Australian.

I’m so confused.

The guy who fell in love with Pavlova and invented the dessert was Australian.  Maybe.

Did he own a dog?

There was no dog!!! 

Wikipedia says it was invented in New Zealand, not Australia.

Whatever.  All I know is if pavlova was invented somewhere down under and they were hell-bent on naming it after a dancing animal, I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t be a dog.  It would be a kangaroo.

No, a wallaby!

And to think I was once a fact-checker!  Coming soon: a recipe.

Secret Garden

Here’s a story for you.  Last summer amid my health woes, my teenaged niece came to visit from Hawaii.  Her stay was pretty much the only ray of sunshine that whole summer.  She babysat the kids, helped out around the house, and generally entertained us with her perky self for two weeks.

While the summer as a whole is a big black hole in my memory, I remember lots of things about her visit: watching food TV and enjoying her wisecracks during that paper-thin window of time between when the kids went to bed and my own eyes involuntarily clamped shut.  Fishing at Spy Pond (mostly fishing lures out of trees at Spy Pond).  Me setting a good example for said niece by getting pulled over by the cops for a traffic violation. And then there was the tomato-picking.

You may recall last year’s widespread tomato blight.  Every farm in the area was hit and even people’s backyard plants were doomed to the same terrible fate.  I didn’t see a ripe local heirloom tomato all summer, which was very depressing indeed.  Until.  Somebody snuck me some classified information.  Apparently there was a stand of sungold cherry tomatoes on public property within the Waltham city limits that was entirely free of blight and ready to be harvested.  The woman who told me this said it so casually, I almost didn’t believe her.  Didn’t she realize this was THE BEST NEWS EVER? 

I didn’t ask any questions.  With no time to lose, I took another hit of my anti-nausea meds and pointed my niece and kids in the appropriate direction.  My niece, who spent most of her formative years on an organic garden bursting forth from fertile, volcanic island soil, patiently indulged me.  When we got to the building in question and walked around back, I didn’t see the garden anywhere.  I’d been tricked!  What kind of a person lies about tomatoes to a cancer patient?  As we turned around to trudge back, my niece noticed what looked to be a patch of kale.  Yes, that was definitely kale.  Well done, adolescent human!  What more dost thou youthful eyes behold? 

And there they were.  High up on a terrace of a south-facing slope were the tomato plants, golden orbs shining like treasure.  No wonder nobody had found them—they were growing ten feet above our heads.  You had to pass underneath several retaining walls, then walk up the far side of the hill to access them or even see them.  The garden was completely encircled by a sprawling edifice on one side and conservation land on the other, and, beyond that, train tracks, a cemetery, and the Charles River.  A more protected tomato fortress I cannot imagine.

I felt exhilarated—thrilled to encounter this pristine patch of perfect tomatoes, completely disease-free against all odds.  We got to work filling up two pint-sized containers with the taut, sun-burnished fruits, popping some into our mouths as we went.  Finally, the janitors in the building overlooking the garden started banging trashcans against the windows to put a stop to our small-scale looting.  It worked!  We scuttled away giggling, mouths full, tomato juice dribbling down our chins.

I bring this up for three reasons: 1) I miss my niece; 2) I’ve developed a relationship with this particular garden (a healthy one—more on this later); and 3) Sometimes beautiful little acts of disobedience are the best medicine. 

Cute Chicks

The 4YO’s preschool class recently raised some chicks!  One of his teachers obtained some fertilized eggs from Codman Farm in Lincoln and kept them in an incubator in the classroom.  On each egg she penciled an X on one side and an O on the other.  The eggs needed to be rotated several times per day (including nights and weekends), and the markings helped ensure that none of them got missed.  The class kept a calendar and the children counted down the days until they hatched. 

Several weeks later, two little chicks emerged.  (There were more than two eggs, but it’s true what they say about not counting your chickens before they hatch.)  Still, they had each other, and the smaller, balder one cuddled up underneath the bigger, fluffier one for warmth.  All the kids were crazy about the chicks, but especially the 4YO (I may have mentioned his bird fixation).  He staked out a special spot next to the cage during his afternoon rest time, often falling asleep from the warmth of the heat lamp and their soft peeping.  I tried not to be too disgusted when I found wood shavings from the cage all over his naptime blankets.  (How soon I forget about animal-induced filth now that we’ve been a cat-free household for a year.)

Needless to say, the 4YO got pretty attached to the chicks, especially the fluffy one, which he declared to be his favorite.  I tried to make an argument against favoring the pretty ones over the runty, less attractive ones, but I gave up.  Let’s face it, you like who you like.  (Whom you like?  Grammar, sometimes you cramp my style.) 

But soon the chicks had to be returned to the farm where they would live out their chicken lives as egg-layers.  We presume.  The chickens at Codman have a pretty sweet life with their mobile coops and grassy pasture.  Still, I knew it would be a bittersweet goodbye.   The 4YO seemed okay at separation time, but then he was quieter than usual on the ride back home.  While we were sitting at a traffic light, I heard a soft voice from the back:

Him: Mommy, I love that chick.

Me: I know, honey. 

He didn’t say anything else the whole way home. 

The next week, I brought him to Codman to check up on his chick.  At least I think it was his chick.  Who can tell?  I just picked the fluffiest, yellowest puffball and declared it a reunion!  The chick was now fully immersed with dozens of other preschool-aged chicks in their own little pen right next to the pen with the emo teenaged chicks and some crossover ducklings.  It was pretty loud in there.  The 4YO joined the ruckus, squawking away happily in the hen house.

Phew.  His first chick-related heartbreak averted!  But it surely won’t be his last.

Are Those Mulberries on My Salad?

Why, yes.  Yes, they are.  I found some new mulberry trees in a secret location where the branches are low and the competing wildlife less voracious.  (Also, I noticed that the black raspberries are starting to come into their own, so keep your eye out for those, too.)

I love turning salad into dessert.  Because do you know how much salad I eat when it tastes like dessert?  Four times as much.  So much that having “a little salad” before my evening jog turns into “a lot of salad” before my evening jog such that I practically throw up halfway through my evening jog.  Add this to the list of totally preventable circumstances if only I could have helped myself.

The responsible salad was farmshare greens (lettuce, spinach, arugula, endive) with foraged mulberries, sliced red onion, goat cheese, and walnuts with a balsamic vinaigrette.  It was delicious next to rosemary and fennel-crusted pork chops.  (I might have eaten a little of those, too.)  (And a hunk of defrosted baguette.)

Anyway, I don’t need any lectures, Husband.  I’ve already learned my lesson about stuffing myself a half-hour before physical exertion.  And the lesson is that jogging is dumb!

Local Ingredient Sources:
Lettuce, spinach, arugula, endive: Waltham Fields, Waltham, MA
Mulberries: Waltham, MA
Goat cheese: Westfield Farm, Hubbardston, MA
Pork chops: Chestnut Farms, Hardwick, MA

The Easter Bunny Returns

I proclaimed today to be Mulberry-Picking Day.  Ready or not, here we come! 

I grabbed the 4YO, the now-traditional Easter basket, and some raincoats, and we headed back to the Charles River.  Some of the mulberries were nice and ripe, and those we picked.  Unfortunately, most of the best ones were out of arm's reach.  It seems I’m not the only one who knows about these berries (and, from what I can tell, they all have a good six inches on me).  I pulled the branches down as low as they would go, but the birds only mocked me more.  The berry-laden upper two-thirds of the trees are their domain, you see, and as much as I’d love to, I can’t be climbing trees.  I’ve spent enough time in hospitals.

Luckily, on our walk, we found the perfect grabber stick.  It was about 6 feet long, light but sturdy, with three short branch stumps sticking out like stick-figure fingers.   With that, I was able to make contact with high branches and shake them until the berries fell to the ground.  The 4YO thought that was the funniest thing—having berries rain down over our heads and shoulders.  The trick was then to try to tell which berries just fell and which ones had been down there for a while.  Most of what we collected got eaten.  The rest will be scattered over tonight’s salad.

On the walk back, we saw all kinds of different birds and a pair of turtles. 

A far-sighted great blue heron nearly knocked me over as we crossed a footbridge.  I didn’t even see him coming until we were face to face.  I could have touched him.  The 4YO, being 10 paces ahead, didn’t get to see him, which is too bad because he’s crazy about birds.  He practically has the Peterson guide memorized.  As for me, I know the obvious birds.  The ones with the most blatant colors and markings, like cardinals and goldfinches and Baltimore orioles.  I can identify the shit out of a red-winged blackbird.  It’s all the other brownish-grayish birds that are a little murky. 

We noticed a cute gray bird swooping down and catching insects in midair over the lily pads.  It was really fun to watch and the 4YO was giggling.  Then he yelled out, Eastern kingbird!  I thought he meant kingfisher, which it clearly wasn’t since I know those are blue and most likely eat fish, but I was encouraging anyway.  When we got home, we looked up the bird in the guidebook and I’ll be damned if it wasn’t an eastern kingbird! 

Here We Go ‘Round the Mulberry Bush

I’m on deadline today, so this post is going to be of the 10-minute variety.  But pay attention because this may be the only time I give you more than a week’s notice about anything.  My important announcement is this: the mulberries are almost ready.  In the Boston area, that is.  Don’t miss them!

On a jog earlier this week along the Charles with my friend K, I noticed a few mulberry-looking trees.  The berries looked like elongated black raspberries on bramble-less branches that had slightly shiny, heart-shaped leaves with serrated edges.  Some leaves had a notch out of one side that made them look like children’s mittens.  Since there wasn’t any oxygen getting to my brain, I shoved a few leaves into my pocket for later identification.  Turns out, they were indeed mulberry trees. 

So today I went back for another run.  Lacking anything more appropriate, I grabbed one of the kids’ Easter baskets from the top of a closet as I left.  I know I said I would never eat anything out of the disgusting Charles River, but these trees were only near the Charles.  On the other side of the path that runs along the Charles.  Also, finders-keepers.  I jogged along with my Easter basket in hand, tailing some goldfinches, and, holy crap, there are a shit-ton of mulberry bushes along the river.  I noticed at least 10 on my little bridge-to-bridge loop.  Some of them were giant.  Unfortunately, the berries were not ripe, yet.  Most of them were still white or pinkish-red.  There were some blackish ones, but when I got up close, I realized that they were just dark purple tinged with red and not quite ready.  And the really, really black ones were just bird poop.  You only make that mistake once.

Long story short, I had to jog back empty-handed.  Well, except for the basket.  Now if you’re jogging with a big basket full of ripe, juicy berries, you might be considered a hero by a select few, like the old Russian ladies with babushkas who nod knowingly as you pass or some young person with wildish hair, but, let me tell you something.  If you’re tripping down the path with a brightly colored, plastic Easter basket that’s completely empty, accidentally humming nursery rhymes, you just look like an all-purpose moron.

Rhubarb Pie

Oh, my god, you guys, I am obsessed with rhubarb pie.  Obsessed!  Do you know how many rhubarb pies I’ve made in the past two weeks?  Three.  Three pies and nary a strawberry to be found in any of them.  Strawberries have their time and place, don’t get me wrong, but that time is when they’re raw and right out of the garden, and that place is far away from my rhubarb pies. 

This recipe comes from my friend, Cathy, whom I stalked until she gave it to me.  Yes, I’m back to my stalking ways.  Get it?  Rhubarb?  Stalks?  Shut up.  Her recipe is tart, the way I like my rhubarb, with a touch of cream, which is how I like pretty much everything.  I had to add a little more sugar to appease Husband, and double the flour because my particular rhubarb seemed to have a high water content.  I also added a lattice crust so you wouldn’t be subjected to a photo of a pie that looked like someone just vomited into a pie shell.  Now it looks like someone vomited into a pie shell and I added a decorative lattice crust!  But you know I never discriminate against ugly food on this blog.  Ugly food is the best food.

Make this pie.  Make it early and often.  And I know one of you is going to ask me if you can leave out the cream, and my answer, as always, is that you could, but why would you want to do a silly thing like that?

Rhubarb Pie

Yes, you can use a premade crust, but I won’t stop nagging you to make your own at least once.  Below is a recipe for a homemade butter crust.  Using half butter, half shortening will give you extra flakiness (the tradeoff is transfats).  Or you could make a lard crust.

Crust
2 cups flour
12 Tbsp. cold butter, cut into pieces
1 Tbsp. sugar
1 tsp. salt
8-10 Tbsp. ice water (or more)

Filling
1 lb. rhubarb, cut into 3/4-inch pieces (3½-4 cups)
¾ cup sugar
¼ cup flour
¼ tsp. salt
½ cup heavy cream
1 Tbsp. lemon juice

For the crust, mix flour, sugar, and salt in food processor.  Add cold butter and pulse in 1-second beats until butter is the size of small peas (around 20 pulses).  Dump mixture into a large bowl and add ice water, a few tablespoons at a time, fluffing with a fork until gently absorbed.  You don’t want it wet and sticky, but if there’s too much dry flour, the dough won’t come together right.  It should just hold together when you press on it.  Don’t knead or it will become too tough.  Tear off two pieces of plastic wrap.  Dump a little over half of the dough mixture in the middle of one, and the rest in the middle of the other.  Folding over the sides of the plastic wrap, flatten the mixture into disks about an inch thick, then wrap them up, and refrigerate at least an hour or until ready to use.

Preheat oven to 450°F.  Have your 9-inch pie plate at the ready.  In a large bowl, toss rhubarb with sugar, flour, and salt.  In a small bowl, whisk together cream and lemon juice and set aside.  Retrieve your pie dough from the fridge.  Flour your counter and rolling pin well.  The dough shouldn’t stick at all.  Take the larger disk and roll it out about ¼-inch thick, about a foot in diameter.  Roll from the middle out in all directions.  Don’t grind the dough down into the counter—push it out to the sides.  If the dough sticks, sprinkle more flour.  Transfer to your pie dish by lifting the edge of the dough over the top of the rolling pin.  Gently lift and push until the dough is draped over the rolling pin (a bench scraper or even a spatula under the dough really helps).  Align dough over pie plate and gently unfurl.

Dump rhubarb mixture into pie shell.  There will be a small pile of sugar and flour in the middle.  Redistribute evenly.  Pour cream mixture over the top evenly.  Roll out the second pie crust the same way as the first, only slightly smaller.  Using a pastry wheel or sharp knife, cut thin strips for a lattice topping.  Arrange strips like so.  Fold over edges of bottom crust and crimp however you like.   Place in oven on top shelf with a baking sheet on the bottom shelf to catch any drips.  Bake 20 minutes.  Reduce heat to 350°F and bake until bubbly, puffed, and crust is richly caramelized, about 45 minutes more.  Keep an eye on the crust—if it starts to brown too much, cover with foil.

Let cool.  Serve with vanilla bean ice cream.

Local Sources:
Rhubarb: Verrill Farm, Concord, MA
Butter: Cabot, Cabot, VT
Cream: High Lawn Farm, Lee, MA

We Interrupt These Cookies

If you’re expecting a good post today, you can forget it.  I’ve already eaten all of my cookies, and now I’ve moved on to decimating one or more rhubarb pies, so I’m not to be disturbed.  Still, I wanted to say thanks for all of your nice comments.  Don’t tell the others, but you guys are my favorites!

One thing I’ll mention is that the food fable anthology I was telling you about, the one in which I take colonial American history into my own hands, is available for pre-order through Amazon.  Sometimes I think that pre-ordering a book that hasn’t been released yet can smack of desperation, so if you need to wait three days before placing your order, I’ll understand.  Or just buy it when it’s actually on sale, whenever that's going to be.  I’ll put a link over there in the sidebar so you don’t forget.  Because sometimes, if books sell well, and people like them, they let you write one all by yourself! 

Hope you’re having a nice Memorial Day weekend!

And I'm Going to Eat As Many Cookies As I Want

Maybe you already heard my megaphone announcement yesterday, but the results of my MRI came back with an A++ circled in red ink.  I know they typically grade these tests pass/fail, but since “pass” doesn’t even begin to convey my feelings on the matter, I went ahead and assigned an appropriate letter grade that corresponded to my emotional state, then handed it back to them for them to hand back to me.  “Pass,” you see, implies a potentially small margin of victory, and I prefer to think of it as a more definitive blowout. 

It’s one thing to go through cancer treatment on blind faith, just assuming that it's all going along just fine.  It’s another thing entirely to have hypersensitive imaging confirm it.  It feels like they’re letting me out of prison, finally, and giving me back all of my personal belongings, and right there next to my keys and pocket lint is a little thing called my life.  Here’s your life back, Ms. Donroe.  Don’t fuck it up.

The other milestone I reached this month is that reconstruction is done.  The cherry on top, if you will.  Things are still looking a little brutalized, but I’m told everything will heal up just fine.  I can’t feel anything over there, so it’s not really a problem.  I still have three more months of intravenous Herceptin and then they can take this port out of my neck and chest.  Then, I’ll really be done.  But the hard part is over, so I’m calling it done.

I should tell you that I wear the “survivor” badge cautiously.  I am aware that the cancer could come back.  I am aware that this is a possibility and, in fact, given my young age, it’s likely that someday it will.  But a stretch of time has been presented to me during which I don’t need to worry about that.  A one-year furlough from the anxiety of all of the end-of-life-related issues, fears, and logistics—subjects you can’t easily talk about at a dinner party or a casual morning coffee with your friend if you don’t want her going off and killing herself before work.  But these morbid thoughts are a mandatory part of coming to terms with the whole experience.  And that burden was much bigger than I realized it was.  Like driving around for a whole year with the gas light on. 

Now that it’s off my shoulders, I feel so light and airy.  Should I start jogging again?  I think I should start jogging again.  Swimming?  Yeah, definitely swimming.  Lacrosse?  YES!  I’m going to do all the sports!!!

I give it a month.

[Since cookies have defined this whole ordeal, let’s close it out with more cookies.  Check out the recipe for peanut butter pretzel cookies by Hilary Koloski of Cow and Crumb Baking up at How2Heroes.  Salty and sweet, soft with crunchy bits, yin and yang.  Delicious, like life.]

While Everyone Else Was At Church

On Sunday morning, I had the urge to open all of the windows and clean the kitchen.  My manic cleaning binges are few and far between, so it’s best just to give me a box of steel wool and stay the hell out of my way for a few hours.  As I was organizing the out-of-control recycling situation, Husband dared to walk in:

Me: Hey, let’s concentrate all of the empty beer bottles over here instead of piled up on the windowsill like we’re a couple of college kids.

Him: (No response.)

Me: Is that a yes?

Him: (Clasps hands together, squeezing, to make an unmistakable farting sound)

Me: What was that?

Him: This is how I say ‘yes’ from now on.  (Repeats farting sound)

Me: …

Him: One for yes, two for no. (Demonstrates the two-fart signal)

Me: I’m sorry, but I’m not going to agree to a fart-based communication system.

Him: Why not?

Me: Do I even need to answer that?

Him: I don’t like that you don’t respect my way of expressing myself.

Me: Can we pleeeeaaase act like adults?

Him: (fart! fart!)

Of course we can’t.

Motherload

I recently harvested a half-pound of shiitake mushrooms from my logs!  I sautéed them with butter, shallots, garlic, basil, parsley, chives, and cream, and served them over fettuccine.  They tasted divine.  Divine, I tell you.  Like a gift from the God of Fungus, whoever he might be.  Mycelius, maybe?  

I was going to ask you to guess what my family got me for Mother’s Day since I thought you were good at guessing games.  After all, you were right about the cold cellar.  But then you failed your last test across the board.  (For the correct answer to the Cabot’s ice cream quiz, scroll to the bottom of the comments on that post.)  So maybe I’ll just come right out and tell you what I got for Mother's Day. 

I got more mushroom spawn!! 

Most mothers prefer flowers for Mother’s Day, but I can’t cook with flowers.  At least not well.  Also, did you know that many types of mushrooms have amazing cancer-fighting health benefits?  I sure didn’t know this nor care at the time I inoculated my logs last spring, but now, exactly one year after my surprise cancer diagnosis, I care very much.  That combined with the fact that a couple of trees had to come down around our house, means it just makes good sense.  The birch logs will be recycled with oyster mushrooms.  And our next-door neighbors are donating some oak logs for additional shiitakes as well as maitake (hen of the woods).  And my four existing shiitake logs, two of which have started producing, should continue to fruit for several more years.

So it’s settled.  I’m building a mushroom garden! 

Mysterious Wisteria

Let me tell you something about wisteria.  Yes, it’s gorgeous, smells amazing, has seduced many a hopeless romantic into buying wicker furniture, but if given half a chance, it will fuck you over something awful.

When we bought our current dwelling eight years ago, it came with a gigantic front porch.  Attached to that porch was a huge wisteria vine.  And I really do mean huge.  Someone with a serious knowledge of plants had taken great care to train the unruly vine into a trunk that twisted and curved gracefully eight feet up off the ground and spun a tangled weft of branches from one end of the porch to the other in a loose, leafy basket-weave.  Like an arbor, but without the arbor.  The main trunk was at least four inches in diameter.  I don’t know how many years it took to get it to grow like that, but I have to think at least 15.  Fifteen years of full-time, dedicated wisteria patrol.

I was newly pregnant with the First Grader the spring we moved in.  That was when we witnessed the wisteria vine explode into an unbelievable display: dozens and dozens of fat, dewy blossoms hanging down like ripe bunches of grapes across the entire front of the house.  It was amazing to see, but what was even more amazing was the smell.  Like floral, purple-scented vanilla.  I would have spent a lot more time on the porch that spring if it weren’t for the first trimester nausea. 

Anyway, years went by and the vine grew more and more out of control.  I tried my hand at trimming it back, but only succeeded in causing it to stop blooming altogether, while in no way impeding its westward progress across the neighborhood.  I climbed up onto the roof to get a closer look, me with my comically tiny pruning shears.  I already knew that the woody vines had anchored themselves around the porch’s beams and had just begun ripping the screens out of their frames, but from my higher vantage point, I could also see that the shoots had infiltrated all the gutters and had even forced themselves up through the roof.  The house wasn’t holding up the wisteria.  The wisteria was holding up the house!

Rebuilding the porch was always part of our plan.  When me moved in, the floor was covered entirely in green Astroturf (mini-golf, anyone?), and underneath was 50% wood rot/50% carpenter ants.  It was a safety hazard even without the wisteria.  But when we were accepting contractor bids, nobody would agree to do the work unless we agreed to chop down the wisteria.  It weighed an incredible amount and would undermine the structural integrity of the new porch, as well as contribute to another wood root problem, not to mention that wisteria has been known to lift whole houses up off their foundations.  I knew it had to be done, but we were talking about a living creature much stronger than ourselves.  I couldn’t be there when they did it.

Long story short, they cut it down and ground up the stump for good measure.  We got a nice new porch in return, which is where I like to spend most of the summer.  Two years later, the wisteria grew back.  A shoot here, a shoot there, then about fifty of them.  A part of me, the romantic part, hoped it would grow back, but now that it has, the wisteria and I are engaged in a bitter death struggle which is best viewed using time-lapse photography and looks something like this: me, dressed up like a ninja, rusty lopper in hand, stealthily creeping out the back door to approach it from behind.  Like a fox, I trip over the 4-year-old’s baseball tee and awkwardly face plant while the lopper goes flying.  Before I can recover, several wisteria runners creep over and slip around each of my wrists and ankles, pinning me to the ground while another stuffs my mouth full of blossoms to silence the shrieking.  Once I stop struggling, the wisteria winds me up into a woody cocoon suspended up near the roofline.  Until Husband comes home from work and cuts me free.  Again.

Well.  I had in mind that this post would be about a delicious wisteria ice cream I made from the fragrant blossoms, but words simply cannot express how truly awful my wisteria ice cream came out.  Like being trapped in a humid, airless room with an entire wisteria plant rammed down my throat.  How can something that smells so right be so wrong?  Maybe I’m too colored by my own personal relationship with wisteria to be objective, but I wouldn’t recommend it for Mother’s Day or anything else.  Not if you actually like your mother.  Maybe just pick some flowers instead.  Bring protection.

H2O

Did you hear that Boston was without clean water for a few days?  It’s hardly as disastrous as the oil spill in the Gulf, but, boy, it really makes you realize how lucky we are to: a) have water; b) have clean water; and c) have it enter our homes through actual pipes in the walls, not holes in our basements.

The short version of the story is that there was a rupture in the 10-foot-wide water pipe that carries clean water from the Quabbin Reservoir in central Massachusetts to the Boston area.  The leak, which occurred about a mile from our house, cut off the eastward flow at Weston, leaving all of Boston, Waltham, and 27 other cities and towns without clean water (but not Cambridge, which has its own water supply).  Water was rerouted from several other area reservoirs, but a percentage of that water was untreated and potentially unsafe, so a boil order was issued mid-day on Saturday to minimize any public health implications from possible bacterial contamination.  The order was lifted today, Tuesday, after the pipe was repaired and water safety testing was completed.

So, two and a half days without clean water.  No big deal, right?  Just boil it.  Buy a few jugs of spring water (if you can find any on the empty shelves).  Except, do you have any idea how much water one uses on a daily basis?  Water that just happens to be mostly free of bacteria and parasites and random floating debris and is delivered promptly to multiple faucets in convenient locations inside one’s home?  It’s a lot.  Trust me.  Because it’s not just drinking water that needs to be clean, but also water to wash your hands, water to wash your food, water to cook the food, water to wash the dishes after you eat the food, water to brush your teeth after you eat the food.  Point is, it ends up being a lot of water.  And if you’re not prepared, you might find yourself with nothing to drink but scalding hot water like I did on Saturday night when we got home to the news and an empty refrigerator and a suddenly unquenchable thirst.  (Okay, fine, I dumped a tray of ice cubes into the recently boiled water.  Why do you always have to ruin my dramatic stories?)

While I can’t deny the inconvenience of the boil order, I guess it wasn’t that bad all in all.  I taped off the refrigerator’s water dispenser and kept jugs of boiled water in the fridge as well as some bottles of spring water that Husband scored out in Framingham.  We used these for drinking and food prep.  I covered the two bathroom faucets with a dishtowel rubber-banded over them to keep us (okay, me) from turning them on out of sheer mindless habit.  Next to each sink was a pitcher of boiled and cooled water for hand-washing and tooth-brushing, which I had to keep a close eye on lest the children cross-contaminate it with something far worse than what it originally contained.  I also had to micro-manage the specifics of hand-washing since my kids seem to like to work the soap into a thick and sickening paste on their hands, which would take an entire pot of water to wash off, and then they start rubbing their hands together again, which whips the remaining soap molecules into another hopeful lather, and for god’s sakes, kids, stop rubbing your hands together when I’m rinsing.  I’ll be boiling water all day.

We kept the kitchen sink open for pot-filling and the dish-sterilization procedure that involved soaking the dishes in a dilute bleach solution in batches and then letting them air dry.  I was not fond of this additional dishwashing step.  Not at all.  If the boil order had continued for another week, I think we’d be looking at the elimination of this step, replaced, perhaps, by preventative post-dinner shots of vodka. 

But, luckily, the water situation was just temporary.  Now I’m looking at my faucets in a whole new light.  Oh, who am I kidding, no I’m not.  I’m back to taking refreshing, potable water for granted again just like I did during the good old days of last week.  It took all of 10 seconds after the boil order was lifted and I finished flushing the bad water out of our pipes in what, to an uninformed observer, must have looked like symbolically wasteful fashion.  The moral of this story is: MWRA, please take good care of our water supply!

Love,

Tammy

No Ice Cream Left Behind

Last week, during the First Grader’s school vacation, my dad took us out for some good, old-fashioned ice cream sundaes at Cabot’s in Newton.  Because my dad was paying, I ordered the biggest thing on the menu: The Brazilian Combo. 

The Brazilian Combo consists of four scoops of my favorite ice creams (coffee, butter pecan, maple walnut, and vanilla) topped with four different sauces (something chocolatey, something caramely, something mapley, and something with rum) and enough whipped cream to give several Brazilians a close shave. 

The waitress warned me of its ridiculous size.  I knew this—I’ve been there before—but, feeling a few pangs of guilt, I asked if they could make it smaller, maybe half the size, but with all the variety.  She said they could, but they’d still have to charge me full price (just shy of $8!). 

So, what do you think, readers?  You know me pretty well.  Did I:

(a) Accept the half-sized, full-priced sundae because: 1) my dad was paying, so who cares; and 2) we should be mindful of not wasting our precious ice cream resources.

(b) Change my mind and get a small hot-fudge sundae instead.  One that doesn’t cost as much as dinner for four in our house.

(c) Demand to know what kind of a fool she thought I was, order the full-sized, full-priced sundae in all its glory, eat half of it, have the waitress wrap the remaining puddle to go, peel out onto Washington St. and rush home to put it in the freezer, then devour the rest of it standing at my counter at 10 o’clock at night despite its compromised refrozen texture and unappetizing appearance, feeling something akin to shame but I won’t admit it and you can’t make me.

(d) All of the above.

And, yes, you will be graded on this.  Be sure to fill in the circles completely with a No. 2 pencil.

Toast: An Excerpt

So about that food anthology I’m in, Primal Picnics, which is being released by Whole World Press this spring, I thought you might be interested in sampling one more essay.  Barry Foy, author of The Devil’s Food Dictionary: A Pioneering Culinary Reference Work Consisting Entirely of Lies, generously offered to share an excerpt from his piece on toast.  I think you’ll find it to be far less idiotic than my Indian pudding contribution!

BARRY FOY 

An excerpt from
“Pioneering the ‘Spread on Toast’ Concept:
A Conversation with Louis-Émile Tartine”

Good afternoon, Monsieur Tartine.
Good afternoon. Is that chair comfortable enough?
It’s perfect, thank you.
May I offer you a drink?
I wouldn’t turn it down!
I’m in the mood for a Campari-soda myself. How does that sound?
Make it two.
Here. I hope that’s strong enough.
I’m sure it’s just right. Say, how about a “toast”?
I beg your pardon? Oh, yes, “toast,” I see. Haha, very droll. You Americans! Cheers, then.
Cheers! Well, should we start?
Whenever you’re ready.
All right. Unesco has declared 2008 “The International Year of Toast.” But frankly, I don’t see what all the fuss is about. I mean, it’s only toast.
Get out of my house!

[Unfortunately, M. Tartine abruptly terminated our interview at this point, and within a month he was dead. The following is the conversation as I imagine it, had things worked out as planned. It combines questions I intended to ask with answers that, based on my reading of various other interviews, I feel confident M. Tartine may well have provided.]

Hello again.
Oh, it’s you.
What a handsome ascot! Where did you get it?
I don’t know. Something my wife picked out. She chooses all my clothes.
I see. Well, where should we start? Maybe you could begin by describing the toast of your childhood.
Certainly; I remember it as if it were yesterday. In those days, bear in mind, the word “toast” referred merely to plain, roasted bread.
Any particular type of bread?
It varied. Given a choice, obviously, everyone would have eaten fine white loaves, but in reality only the upper classes could afford them. Working families such as mine ate darker, heavier breads made of rye and other coarse flours.
Was it always eaten toasted?
Oh, my, no! Who would have had time for that?
I don’t follow you.
Don’t forget that this was long before the home kitchen was a showroom for all manner of gadget and appliance, as it is now. When I was young, only the rich had a ready means of toasting bread at home.
So how did you do it?
We didn’t. That was the baker’s job. His oven was the only reliable source of heat in town.
You mean you bought the bread already toasted?
No. It worked like this: You’d buy a loaf from the baker and take it home. Then, when you wanted toast, you’d cut off the desired number of pieces and take them back to him to be toasted. Being the youngest child, I was usually assigned this errand. As the bread toasted, I and dozens of other children waited in a cluster outside the bakery door.
So then you’d take the toast home?
Yes. But one had to run as fast as possible, before it could cool. Unluckily for me, I wasn’t a particularly fast runner, and I received many brutal beatings from my father for bringing him lukewarm toast. My father was a remarkable man.
Tell me more about your father.
Get out of my house!

[TWO DAYS LATER]

Hello.
I’m sorry—have we met?
Yes, I was here two days ago. You were telling me about bringing toast from the bakery as a child.
I’ll take your word for it.
I’m curious as to why people wanted their bread toasted in the first place.
Why? Goodness knows. I’ve never given it any thought.
Were the breads of that era more flavorful toasted, maybe?
Not really. In fact, they were far tastier fresh. Come to think of it, I suppose it was a matter of texture.
Texture?
Good toast has a very pleasing crunchiness about it, wouldn’t you agree?
I guess so, but...
People today have no idea how rare crunchiness used to be! It seems as if everything’s crunchy now: potato chips, cookies, candy bars. There’s crunch everywhere you look. But in those days, yes, we had crispness, plenty of crispness—celery, apples, that sort of thing—but real crunch was a scarce commodity, and toast was about the only affordable source of it for the common man. It was one of our few real pleasures in life. That and worshiping Satan.
Huh?
Haha, my little joke!
I see.
I had you there, didn’t I?
For a moment, I guess...
Hahaha. You Americans!
May we continue?
Be my guest.
So, with your discerning palate, I gather the toast struck you as quite bland.
Not really.
I picture you thinking, “Something’s missing here. Surely there’s a way to make this more flavorful.”
I can’t say that occurred to me, no.
But such drab food...
Good Lord, man, it was only roasted bread! How delicious was it supposed to be? Let’s not get carried away.
Well, then...
Yes? Spit it out!
What about the innovation you’re internationally famous for?
Which one?
You know, spreading stuff on toast.
What about it?
It wasn’t for the sake of flavor?
It had nothing to do with flavor—it happened by accident!
It did?
You Americans!
With all due respect, Monsieur, I’d appreciate it if you’d stop insulting my nationality.
What?! Get out of my house!

***

To read the rest, well, you’ll just have to buy the book!

Indian Pudding: A Recipe

It seems cruel to post a story about Indian pudding with no recipe, so here it is, the best Indian pudding in the world. 

I adapted this classic Yankee recipe from The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book by Fannie Merritt Farmer (originally published in 1896).  I think it’s even better than Durgin-Park’s famed Indian pudding, but don’t say anything because I don’t want to get yelled at.  (Do they still yell at people over there anymore?)  My version uses a combination of molasses and maple syrup as well as ginger, cinnamon, and nutmeg.  The consistency is very soft and is meant to whey a bit (meaning some liquid separates from the pudding—or, as I like to call it: sauce).  Serve warm with vanilla bean ice cream melting all over it in shallow, milky pools.  Dreamy!

Indian Pudding

No Indians were harmed in the making of this pudding.

4 cups milk
½ cup cornmeal
2 Tbsp. butter
½ cup molasses
½ cup maple syrup (preferably Grade B)
1 tsp. salt
½ tsp. cinnamon
½ tsp. ginger
Pinch nutmeg
2 eggs, well beaten

Preheat oven to 325°F.  Butter a 2-quart casserole dish.

In a medium pot, bring milk to a gentle simmer.  Very slowly whisk in cornmeal briskly to prevent clumping.  Cook for 20 minutes, adjusting heat to maintain a gentle simmer, until mixture has thickened and coats the back of a spoon well.  Remove from heat.  Stir in the butter, molasses, maple syrup, salt, and spices until well blended.  Temper the eggs, meaning slowly whisk in about ¼ cup of the hot pudding mixture to the beaten eggs, then return tempered mixture to the pot.  This prevents the eggs from scrambling.

Pour mixture into a buttered casserole dish and bake about 1½ hours, until center is set (the center will still be soft, but you don’t want it to look liquidy).  Some recipes call for a water bath (i.e., set the casserole dish in a larger pan, then pour boiling water into the outer pan until it reaches halfway up the sides of the pudding dish), but I’ll be honest, I don’t bother.  This right here is the Indian pudding of my childhood.  Let sit at least 20 minutes.  Serve warm with vanilla bean ice cream.

Local Sources:
Milk: Our Family Farms of Massachusetts, Greenfield, MA
Cornmeal: Winter Moon Organic Farm, Hadley, MA
Butter: Mendon Creamery, Mendon, MA
Maple syrup: Williams Farm Sugarhouse, Old Deerfield, MA
Eggs: Chip-In Farm, Bedford, MA

Pleasant News and Indian Pudding

Did you know that one of my essays is going to be in a book?  I know, I’m shocked, too!  The book is Primal Picnics by Whole World Press and it’s an anthology of completely made-up myths about food.  Also included is an essay by popular FotF guest poster Barry Foy of Devil’s Food Dictionary fame, as well as some other talented writers and poets.  Anyway, it should be a good read, so I’ll let you know when it hits shelves this spring so you can check it out.  In the meantime, here is a much-condensed, unedited taste of what to expect from my contribution, which is to say the usual foolishness. 

Indian Pudding: A History

It has long been assumed that Indian pudding is made from 100% pure Indians.  Not so.  In fact, the residents of New Delhi recently won a class-action lawsuit to strike their name from Yankee recipes and pudding-related literature (retroactive to the year 1620), since they have no idea how they ended up as the main ingredient in the first place. 

The origins of this sweet and sloppy corn-based dessert have been hotly disputed by modern food historians and chefs alike.  Most agree that it originated in America, not India.  The native peoples of the New World had been cultivating corn for thousands of years before the Europeans arrived, and anthropological evidence supports that they regularly supplemented their hunter/gatherer diet with some iteration of mushy maize.  But some give the credit for what we have come to know as Indian pudding to the British settlers, invoking its striking resemblance to English hasty pudding.  Except for the rather obvious presence of corn. 

In order to make pudding, you see, you need some kind of starch.  Lacking the traditional wheat and on the brink of starvation, the settlers, who believed corn to be food fit only for livestock, eventually had to “settle” for cornmeal (hence, their name).  Each night, the British solemnly prayed for deliverance from the evil pangs of hunger that drew them to loiter pathetically at the outskirts of the native villages, stomachs rumbling like drums.  The ever-patient Native Americans, sick and tired of finding their corn crop hacked to pieces in the night, finally decided to teach the colonists how to grow their own corn.

Native 1: Like that, okay.  Now, leave us alone.

Colonist 1: But, these plants take up so much space.  We’re going to need to cut some trees down.

Native 1: Keep the trees.  Don’t eat so much.

Colonist 1: But, I’m hungry.

Native 1: Eat other things.  One can’t live on corn alone.

Colonist 1: Not now, perhaps.  But maybe one fine day…

Armed with the secrets to corn cultivation (sun, water), the British got right to work on recipe development.  Step 1:  Mask the corn flavor.  Cinnamon and ginger were added with little Puritanical restraint, as well as imported molasses to sweeten things up (for the kids, they insisted).  The Native Americans, realizing their tactical error, got busy making some improvements of their own—namely, the addition of local, sustainably tapped maple syrup. 

A vicious game of one-upmanship ensued.  New toppings were rolled out.  Cook-offs were scheduled, then abruptly cancelled due to plagues/scalpings.  Mothers on both sides were hypothetically but very colorfully disrespected.  Finally, an emergency meeting was called to settle the most pressing issue: who would get the credit for inventing this distinctly American dish.  The honorable tribal leader, Weeps with Great Fury, spoke on behalf of the native peoples, with smooth-talking settler, Manny F. Destiny, representing the colonists’ interests. 

Manny: So, we want the pudding. 

(Loooong pause) 

Manny: That’s our final offer.

Weeps: Offer rejected.

Manny: Okay, okay.  Tell me what it would take for us to walk away with the pudding.

Weeps: That’s our corn you’re using.  You call it ‘Indian meal,’ though we call it ‘Divine Grain Graced to Us By the Earth in Times of Good Health and Providence.’

Manny: It’s not like you invented corn.  We can grow it, too.

Weeps: That’s not what you said last year. 

Manny: How about now?  Can we have the pudding now?

Weeps: You need to offer something in return. 

Manny: Fine.  How about some blankets?

Weeps: We’re not cold. 

Manny: Trinkets?

Weeps: They are very shiny.  But, not shiny enough for pudding.  You can have pemmican.

Manny: Pemmican?  What’s that?

Weeps: Dried meat and berries. 

Manny: …(dry heaves)

Weeps: It’s good for long journeys…

Manny: I think we might be here for a while.

It went back and forth like this for quite some time, and the two parties seemed to be at an impasse.  Finally, Manny offered up the following compromise:

Manny: How about this?  One of us gets this land, and the other gets the pudding.

Weeps: One cannot possess the land.  The land possesses us. 

Manny: So…if the earth decided to “possess” us and not you, then you would get the pudding.  And if the earth “possessed” you, then we would get the pudding.

Weeps: If you get the pudding, you will leave?

Manny: Yes.  But we retain all print and electronic rights to Indian pudding from now until infinity in all media yet to be invented. 

The natives consult briefly. 

Weeps: We accept.  The earth will decide.  She always chooses correctly.  And as a gesture of goodwill, we present you with pemmican for your travels.

Manny: Mmmmmm…(gagging).  Chewy.  And for you, some trinkets.  I’ll even wrap them up for you in this nice, warm blanket. 

The rest, as they say, is history.  The colonists stayed.  Never trust the earth.  At least the British kept their word and relinquished all claims of pudding authorship.  If only the U.S. copyright office had gotten the name right.

Salad Dressing Refresher

We haven't had a bottle of salad dressing in our refrigerator for more than 10 years.  True story.  Now, some of that time had to do with me not eating very much salad, I will confess.  I’ve always been more of a meat and potatoes and dessert kind of girl.  But, most of that time had to do with me not liking bottled salad dressing, and finding that I eat a lot more salad when I actually like the dressing. 

My younger, restaurant-going years were spent in part devouring wonderful tangles of micro-greens, tender lettuces, and pea tendrils and wondering how these little bistro salads could attain such a level of deliciousness while my own homemade lettuce piles remained so uninspired.  The thing to know about salads if you want to like them is that you need to use fresh vegetables.  Like really fresh.  Straight from the farm if you can get them.  They should talk back.

The second thing is to wash your greens and spin them dry, dry, dry if you want your dressing to cling to the leaves instead of sliding off into a puddle at the bottom of the salad bowl.  If you don’t have a salad spinner, toss them into an old pillowcase, then walk outside and whip your arm around real fast as if it were the sole windmill powering the entire Internet.  The people on the sidewalk might look at you funny.  Just aim the centrifugal stream of water at their faces and they’ll keep right on walking.  

Thirdly, you should make your own dressing.  Supermarket dressing sucks.  Most of it, anyway (if you have a favorite, you can put it in the comments).  I don’t even know what they put in those bottles half the time, but you don’t need more than five ingredients, which you probably already have.  Two, if you’re really short on time and patience.  It will only take 30 seconds to make your own and it makes everything go down so much better.

The final thing to remember about green salads is that you should never dress them ahead of time.  Do it approximately one second before you’re going to eat.  Everyone should already be sitting down and complaining about the fact that there's salad tonight.  Don't worry.  They'll shut up once they taste the dressing. 

30-Second Vinaigrette

Here’s my everyday vinaigrette technique.  There’s no recipe—just a basic ratio that you can scale up or down depending on how many people you’re feeding.  Store any extra in a jelly jar in the fridge.  The olive oil might congeal, but some time warming at room temperature and a brisk whisking will revive it.

1 part red wine vinegar, white wine vinegar, or apple cider vinegar
Touch of Dijon mustard (optional)
2-3 parts extra-virgin olive oil (I like my dressings tangy, so I use closer to 2)
Salt and pepper

Whisk together vinegar and mustard.  Add oil in a slow, steady stream until the mixture thickens and emulsifies.  Season with salt and pepper. 

To upgrade this to a 3-minute vinaigrette, juice a lemon instead of using vinegar, add the mustard along with some minced garlic or shallots and chopped herbs.  Then whisk in the oil, salt, and pepper.


Buttermilk Herb Dressing

When I get sick of vinaigrettes, here’s what I make instead.

2 parts buttermilk
2 parts mayonnaise
1 part minced shallots or onions
1 part chopped herbs like tarragon, parsley, and chives (but the seasonal variations are endless)
Salt and pepper

Whisk or shake together in a jar, adding more buttermilk if too thick, or more mayo if too thin.  Season with salt and pepper.  Store in the fridge.  Always shake before using.  This is also great for crudité platters.  Use extra mayo for a thicker consistency.