Slowish Food

Rose's Heavenly Cakes Bake-Through: Cheater's Pumpkin Cake

noreply@blogger.com (Slowish Food) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 02:51:00 +0000

This week Rose's Heavenly Cakes Bake-Through featured Pumpkin Cake with Burnt Orange Silk Meringue Buttercream. No kidding. That's the name. Quite a handle. The cake itself is stunning -- baked in two round molds that are then forged together to create a pumpkin shape. Frosted in burnt orange silk meringue butter cream. Little marzipan pumpkin leaves and tendrils to complete the pumpkin ensemble. It's really spectacular.

I was debating whether to try it when I skimmed the following description two pages into the four pages of frosting instruction: "It will bubble up furiously." This sentence made me woozy. I am often called away from furiously bubbling pans to find the red Power Ranger or change a nasty diaper or replay Weird Al's "Eat It" on the iPod. I wrote off this recipe and decided I'd catch up with the bake-through next week for Baby Chocolate Oblivions.

But Rose's headnote started with, "Anyone who has tasted this cake has pronounced it the best non-chocolate cake ever." Would you feel you could miss this cake after that description? I know I didn't. Rose went on to state that a tube pan could be substituted for the round molds. So I decided to bake the cake and skip all the trimmings.

The cake itself comes together extremely simply. It's almost like a pumpkin walnut quick bread. The only extra step is toasting the walnuts, and that's so simple and quick and adds such flavor, I don't feel I can quibble. The cake itself is very basic: Dry ingredients mixed together, wet ingredients whirred up in a KitchenAid, dry ingredients added to the wet ingredients.

I frosted the cake with a simple buttercream frosting -- the kind of buttercream my mom would make to spread on graham crackers for a makeshift dessert. A little red and yellow food coloring to make it pretty and orange. Easy peasy.

I had only two challenges with this cake:

It calls for walnut oil. I stood in the oil section of my grocery store Friday night, Sylvia complaining about being contained in the shopping cart, staring and staring at the oils. Then I cursed Indiana for being so backward it didn't stock walnut oil. Then I debated whether to substitute flax seed or safflower oil. Then I noticed that the walnut oil was right in front of my face. Heh heh. My bad. Indiana is a lovely state in which to live.
It's taking every ounce of my depleted willpower to not just take a big wooden spoon to the cake and finish it off tonight. It's delicious. In fact, my now official Tasting Panel (Phil, Noah, and Holly, served during commercial breaks on Mad Men) all pronounced this one utterly delicious. We all had two pieces and thought of going for a third, but that would be excessive, right? This is definitely my favorite cake of the three I've baked so far.

Thinking of the trajectory of cakes, in fact, each has gotten better. The Barcelona Brownies were magnificent. The Apple Upside Down Cake was spectacular. This was even better. I'm fearful for next week's Baby Chocolate Oblivions during the Mad Men season finale. Individual molten chocolate cakes and Don Draper: How much wonderfulness can one person take at a time?

Tune in next week...

A Very Truant Rose's Heavenly Cakes Bake-Through

noreply@blogger.com (Slowish Food) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 01:25:00 +0000

I signed up for the Rose's Heavenly Cakes bake-through because I figured, really, how hard can it be to bake a cake every two weeks? And it's not hard at all. Two cakes into it, it's fun. But life has been messing with my ability to blog about the baking. Hence, I'm two days late writing this.

But let's back up three days to last Sunday. Max, Tommy, and I went to the Haunted House at the Children's Museum. Tommy was a little listless. At lunch, I looked over and was alarmed to find his face pale, and his lips as colorless as his face. We headed for home where he watched some Thomas movies quietly and, while Phil occupied the other kids, I baked the Apple Upside Down Cake on this week's schedule.

With the cake safely out of the oven, I took Tom to Immediate Care where they determined he might be in the early stages of H1N1 and prescribed Tamiflu. Back home, undeterred, I whipped up the bourbon whipped cream for the cake, and Noah and Holly came over for our weekly Mad Men date. All four of us agreed the cake was spectacular. The fact that Tommy cried out for me, delusional and extremely sick, midway through my piece and during a climax on the show isn't important. What's important is that this is a really really really good cake.

Being new to the upside down cake world, I thought the process went like this:

Cut up apples and put them in the pan.
Mix up cake batter and pour over.
Bake and enjoy.

This one's slightly more labor-intensive, although well worth the effort. It would have been a bit of a pain if Sylvie had been in the kitchen clinging to my legs, but Phil had her outside playing some form of toddler baseball, so I enjoyed my kitchen time. Here's what I did:

Peel and cut up the apples and let macerate in lemon juice and brown sugar for 30 to 90 minutes.
Melt some butter and pour some into the pan to grease the pan. To the remaining melted butter, add the juice from the macerating apples and more brown sugar, and bring to a boil. Then let this bubble and simmer for a while until it becomes a deep golden brown. Pour this into the pan.
Add the apples to the pan, trying to make a pretty and even pattern.
Mix up cake batter and pour over.
Bake and enjoy.

The final step before eating is to whir up some whipped cream with a tablespoon of bourbon to make a (we found) rather boozy foil for the sweet cake. The whole package really was magnificent.

A couple things to note:

I baked this in a silicone pan that was regifted to me. I'm beside myself in love with silicone now. A co-worker read my Barcelona Brownie entry and brought me some silicone pans she'd received as a gift that she felt were just cluttering her kitchen. If you haven't baked with silicone, run to your nearest Target and get some. Seriously. Nothing sticks to this. In fact, when I unmolded the cake I was slightly off-center on the serving plate and had no second chance to make it right as the cake slide right out immediately.
I eyeballed the bourbon going into the whipped cream, and might have overshot. The cream tasted extremely boozy. Next time I'll be measuring. Although I do have to say bourbony cream seems perfect for enjoying during Mad Men, even if most bourbon on that show is enjoyed liberally during the workday.
I used a cake tester to see if the cake was ready, but didn't stick it in the center of the cake. My bad. The center wasn't cooked through. In fact, after the first night, I scooped out the center so that it wouldn't go rancid and spoil the rest of the cake.
Rose suggests baking this in the pan on a pizza or baking stone to better caramelize the caramel sauce. I didn't, but I'm going to try this next time.
Tommy was very sick and delusional Sunday night, and when he called desperately for me mid-cake, I was a bad enough mom to weigh whether it seemed he needed me immediately, or if I could just finish my cake first. It's that good.

I never got a chance to have a second piece of this masterpiece; Phil ate big hunks of it the next couple nights until it was gone. Which just means I'm going to have to make another. Soon. I'm hoping this next time will be on a night when Tommy doesn't projectile vomit on me, as it delays my getting back to my cake. Just sayin'.

Tell Them That It's Human Nature

noreply@blogger.com (Slowish Food) — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 01:00:00 +0000

Lately I've noticed that moments of contentment come unexpectedly. With three kids, a sometimes demanding job, a house, a marriage, and other relationships I don't spend nearly enough time tending to, I often spend more time thinking of what didn't get done than what did. What I hadn't gotten to at work and should have. What quality time I'd half-assed with my kids because my mind was in a million places.

Michael Jackson's Thriller came out when I was in tenth grade. It defined my high school experience. My best friend Susan and I shared a locker in our conservative private Christian school, and were reprimanded for decorating the door in a montage of Jackson shots. I put a plastic "Thriller" jacket on layaway at Sears; not being particularly courageous in the fashion department, I ultimately only had the courage to wear it once or twice.

By this time I no longer shared a room with my sister, but the remnants of our time together remained. Years earlier we were allowed to choose how we wanted the room decorated, and at that moment Becky had been feeling purple. The result was purple carpet, purple walls, a purple ceiling, purple crushed velvet bedspreads on our twin beds. The room remained regal into my high school years, although I made throw pillows to tone down some of its royalty. So I spent hours in my purple room, playing Thriller over and over on my Emerson turntable. I loved every song on the album, but "Human Nature" had a special, eerie feel for me. It felt grown-up in the way the other songs didn't, and I heard it and thought of all the possibilities laying out before me. The road was wide open.

A few years later I was in college, and Michael Jackson was a joke. The Thriller jacket was loaned to a friend for a comedy bit in a college show and never returned. The album was long packed away. The ensuing years, with their tabloid drama and true or untrue allegations, were not kind to Michael. I gave Thriller and Off the Wall to Goodwill when Phil and I were downsizing for a move to Brooklyn.

When Michael died, though, I bought a copy of The Essential Michael Jackson, and the kids and I have been listening to it nonstop. Whenever a slow song comes on, the boys yell that they hate love songs, and I have to skip over, say, "I Just Can't Stop Loving You" so that we can get to "Leave Me Alone." They have no tolerance for "Human Nature," which is fine with me. The song has made me feel sad, seeing that the road is no longer wide open, and I prefer to listen to it alone, without their banter and squabbling. I've made life choices that have negated other life choices. My age now was inconceivably old to 16-year-old purpled-roomed Cindy. Had I let my mind wander to this age, I would have won an Oscar for best screenplay in between consulting with patients in my thriving New York psychology practice. I was not picturing the chaos that is my current life. The fact that the physical flaws I saw at 16 didn't disappear but only magnified as I grew older. I wouldn't have pictured myself schlepping to work in jeans and a hail-damaged Subaru.

Tonight Phil took the boys out to get their Halloween costumes, and Sylvia and I had a little girl time. She destroyed the living room while I loaded the iPod with some favorites I'm only able to listen to alone. When "Human Nature" came on, before I could get wistful, she came into the kitchen and started dancing and laughing. She appreciated the song. She didn't ask me to flip past the ballads. She has her whole life ahead of her, with all the promise and possibility that brings, and she was enjoying it.

Sylvia wasn't a planned-for or necessarily wanted baby. I was at the point that I was ready to move on from babies. When I learned I was pregnant, Phil and I spent a good deal of time hand-wringing before we settled into the inevitable. When I lost that baby, we were sad but also had some guilty relief. When I learned I was pregnant again a month after the miscarriage, I knew this baby wanted to be here. Watching her dance to "Human Nature," I listened to the song for the first time feeling the same excitement and potential I'd felt at 16. I hope she felt it, too.

Bake-Through Entry 1: Barcelona Brownies

noreply@blogger.com (Slowish Food) — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 02:34:00 +0000

Stardate Sunday morning. Sylvia's still asleep. The boys are plugged into Sponge Bob. The kitchen, with its new countertops and lovely new stainless steel sink is begging to be messed with, and I remember that I signed up for the Rose's Heavenly Cakes bake-through. So I roll up my sleeves and flip to the appropriate marked page.

Barcelona Brownies.

Normally, my favorite brownie recipe is the One-Pot Brownies from the out-of-print masterpiece Cook Something. Since I'm usually playing beat-the-clock in the kitchen these days, the idea of one pot and 10 minutes is perfect for me. But I signed up for the bake-through, I'm in the mood for chocolate, and Barcelona Brownies are on the docket.

Check and check.

A couple things to note about these brownies. They are baked, in the book, in a silicone financier mold that make individual brownies. Brilliant. Except that three calls the Friday before brought me to the conclusion Indianapolis is not long on your specialty baking items. I was excited to try the molds, however, so I bought a silicone mold featuring six hearts at Target, and figured I'd make the rest of the brownies in a muffin tin, as I was digging the idea of individual brownies.

Another thing to note is that they include optional ganache plugs of lovely gooey chocolate. I was on the fence about whether to go for the plugs. I ultimately decided against it because 1) I didn't know how much time I had before Sylvie would wake up and cling to my leg as I moved around the kitchen 2) I had forgotten to pick up heavy cream 3) I bought enough dark chocolate to make both the brownies and the plugs, but Tommy and I had snacked on it the day before, and now I only had enough for the brownies. So no plugs. So really 2 and 3 trumped 1, as I didn't have the ingredients to make the plugs. Next time.

The recipe has some great details: toasting the pecans so that they're more flavorful. Combining two kinds of chocolate -- sweetened bar and unsweetened powdered -- to get extra chocolate flavor. The addition of a couple ounces of cream cheese for extra creaminess. And Rose is right: The brownies pop right out the silicone molds. I don't know where these have been all my life.

So after toasting the pecans, melting the chocolate in a make-shift double-boiler (as mine is now part of the kitchen play equipment in the basement playroom), whirring everything in the Kitchenaid, spooning into individual molds, and waiting the allotted time, I was rewarded with some pretty fantastic brownies. I tried one to see how they were, hot hot hot from the silicone mold. Then I tried another just to be sure I could truly report on the taste. (Lovely.) Sylvia meanwhile woke up, had her breakfast, and then spied the brownies. She yelled and pointed until I let her try a piece, and then yelled "more" and pointed and kept getting bites until I distracted her with a walk to the drugstore. Our friend Holly was over Sunday night for our weekly date with she, her husband, and Don and Betty Draper, and tried one. She commented that they were extra chocalatey without being too sweet.

Phil, by the way, was thrown the next day by the muffin shape, thinking I'd made muffins. He ate two, apparently because one wasn't enough to realize they were rich brownies and not breakfast food, and then said he had to go lie down for a while.

Will I make them again? Heck, yeah. I'm even thinking of ordering the financier molds, which I found on Amazon. Next time I will make them at night so that I can make the ganache plugs without worrying that someone will be waking up and harshing my kitchen mellow. And I will go a little lighter on the chocolate; the bar I chose was 86% cocoa, and my powder was dark chocolate. Next time I'll do as Rose suggests and keep the chocolate in the 60s. And, eyeing the pots piled in my new stainless steel sink, I think I'd melt the chocolate and butter (very carefully) in the microwave. I won't skip toasting the pecans, though. They had a much more complex taste after toasting.

If you want to try this recipe, Rose includes the recipe here on her blog. It's delicious.

Next up: Apple Upside Down Cake. I can hardly wait!

Dreaming of Marshmallows

noreply@blogger.com (Slowish Food) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 00:26:00 +0000

I love Facebook. Whatever you're into, there you are. A few weeks ago I saw that my neice became a fan of s'mores. I couldn't believe that the s'mores fan base was smaller than the fan base for, say, Barrack Obama, Hugh Jackman, or the Old Facebook. I mean, seriously, how controversial is that? Who doesn't like s'mores?

Which got me thinking we needed to have them this past holiday weekend. With dark chocolate and thick graham crackers from Trader Joe's, and homemade marshmallows. I was feeling that passionate about s'mores.

Max got sick and July 4 was so rainy here that Indianapolis downtown fireworks were postponed until July 5, so no marshmallows were made. But I'm thinking next week will be a do-over, complete with marshmallows.

I've only made them once -- last Christmas. Both Phil's and my families had decided to go easy this Christmas and just be together and not buy gifts. But I love gift-giving, so made each family a bag with hot cocoa mix, homemade marshmallows, and the stuffed bird ornament on the cover of one of my favorite quilting books:

The marshmallows are a little sticky to make and take several hours to set up, but if you're willing to put in the quality Kitchen-Aid time, I think they're worth it.

Bags of sticky goodness.

Max included a few on the assortment of treats he plated up for Santa. He's generally a scoffer, but suddenly got Santa religion on Christmas Eve, hedging his bets so he wouldn't get shafted. He wanted to give Santa something, so I suggested, with as straight a face as I could muster, that maybe Santa would really appreciate a picture of Max. The picture.

We were out of carrots, so told Max reindeer actually like celery better.

The recipe I followed is here; I have seen a million recipes online and in books for homemade marshmallows, but this was the most thorough for explaining in great detail all the steps in a kitchen process I found a little initimidating.

So happy birthday, America. We'll be pulling out the sparklers, Uncle Sam hats, and homemade s'mores on July 11. I can almost taste them now.

My New Favorite Bean Recipe

noreply@blogger.com (Slowish Food) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 01:53:00 +0000

Back when Phil and I lived in New York, the New York Times constantly ran a commercial that competed in dorkiness with the Chock-Full-of-Nuts Pinocchio commercial and any number of Mento's ads. Couples were relaxing and yakking about how getting the Times on the weekend has greatly enhanced their lives. A favorite line from a square looking husband went something like, "On Sunday we go for what we really like. I go head to the sports page while she goes straight for the magazine."

Much as I hate being a player in a candidate for worst ad copy ever ("the Sunday New York Times is 40 percent more wonderful than the Sunday Washington Post!"), we do get the Sunday Times and I do head for the magazine first thing. Often the little features -- "The Ethicist," "Consumed" -- are all the paper reading I get. Periodically I'm blessed with an in-depth article by Michael Pollan. And nearly every week there's a recipe or two with an accompanying write-up. While I miss Molly O'Neill from when we were new subscribers years ago, I like that the articles bounce between remembrance, history, technique, and expose. Although I have to admit that I can't stand when "Cooking with Dexter" is up about a persnickety "four-year-old foodie" who I find tedious, but that's another topic. (Boy, that kid works my last nerve.)

Yesterday's article gave a brief history of beans and rice in the five boroughs, followed by a Sunday beans recipe that I tried about 30 seconds after reading it. I was intrigued by stewing the beans in fruit juices as well as the unapologetic use of canned pinto beans, which I have a pantry full of thanks to chili season winding down and a fairly recent trip to Costco.

I didn't have everything on hand that was called for. My beans would be more savory and fatty if I had the chunk bacon called for, for example. But the sweet with beans is brilliant. Phil and I have about killed off the pot I made, with little help from the kids other than Sylvia -- who grabbed a fistful from my bowl while I was eating tonight.

The original recipe is here. And here's my close-enough improvisation.

My New Favorite Bean Recipe

2 Tbsp. or so olive oil
1 yellow onion, small chopped
1 shallot, fine chopped
2 Tbsp. ground cumin
1 Tbsp. ground coriander
1-1/2 cups orange juice
3 cans (15-1/2 oz.) pinto beans, drained with the juice reserved
Salt and pepper to taste

In a medium soup pot, heat up the olive oil. Add the onion and scallion and cook for about 5 minutes -- until they're nice and wilty. Add the cumin and coriander; stir around for a minute or so -- until your kitchen smells lovely. Add in the juice. Raise the heat until the juice starts to simmer, then lower and simmer until it's reduced by half. (The recipe says reduced to 1/4 its original volume, but Sylvie woke from her nap so adjustments had to be made.) Add the beans and enough of the reserved bean liquid to make it a nice sauce consistency. Let it bubble for another 20 or so minutes, adding more bean liquid if it gets at all dry. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Phil and I found it's good hot, cold, and at room temperature. We have yet to try it frozen on Popsicle sticks.

While I was saucing up new bean recipes, Phil was visiting folks back in the Big Apple. He stayed with our friends Amy and Dan, whose basement bar you might remember from this post several years ago. They're renovating their kitchen (and adding a half bath and growing the house), and Amy's getting a six-burner, two-oven stove out of the deal. We might have to stop being their friends.

Beano Tuesday: Saucy Cannellinis over Spinach

noreply@blogger.com (Slowish Food) — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 01:40:00 +0000

One week into Beano Monday and I miss posting. As Tommy and I often say, silly Mommy!

Anyhoo, tonight was fast food for the boys (Tom's "collecting" all the Night at the Museum 2 toys), so Phil and I were on our own for dinner. He cobbled together a meal from about five little containers of leftovers, while I guiltily made myself a dinner that's one of my favorites. My friend Katie, a favorite cook, made it for me one night and it's maddeningly simple and really delicious -- especially considering how few humble ingredients it contains.

Saucy Cannellinis over Spinach

2 or 3 tsp. nice olive oil
2 or so cloves of garlic, minced
2 or so tsp. anchovy paste (or a couple anchovies, if you like)
a few sprinkles crushed red pepper flakes
1 can (15 oz. or so) cannellini beans, drained but with the juice reserved
A generous handful of fresh baby spinach leaves
A Tbsp. or so grated Parmesan, if you like

Heat up the olive oil over medium heat in a little saucepan. Add the garlic, anchovy paste (or anchovies), and pepper flakes; stir until the garlic is nicely browned but not burned and the paste is mixed in nicely (or the anchovies disappear into the oil). Add the drained beans and then add back a little of the juice. Lower the heat a little and let it simmer, stirring every now and again. If tonight gauges your quiet time, you'll have time to read a few small features and a Fareed Zakaria (love that man!) article in the new Newsweek while the beans gently cook and get a little saucy. Add a bit more of the juice if they seem like they're drying out.

Pour the hot beans over the spinach greens, which will partially wilt. Lovely. Sprinkle with the Parmesan. Apologize to anyone eating scrounged leftovers that, sadly, this recipe really only comfortably serves one. Too bad.

In other food news, my friend Kitty recently introduced me to the idea of homemade Greek yogurt. I'd lost steam making my own yogurt because it always came out a bit runnier than I like. So we'd become big fans of a local dairy that makes the most amazing yogurt, which the kids devour, and Phil's become a fan of Greek yogurt. But with Kitty to encourage me, this weekend I made yogurt. When it was finished, I lined a strainer with a coffee filter (Kitty says you can also use a linen towel) and poured the yogurt in, letting it strain over a bowl overnight in the fridge. In the morning the bowl was full of whey, which looks not unlike what fills Sylvie's diapers several times a day. So although I understand you can bake with whey, in what seems like a sign of wanton consumerism in these tough economic times, I guiltily it threw out.

The resulting firm yogurt did need some whipping up with a whisk to make it creamy, but then it was delicious. And far less expensive than the $4.99 containers someone in our household keeps picking up at the Fresh Market. I smell a new staple in our house...

A Weekly Feature*, Featuring White Bean and Tuna Salad

noreply@blogger.com (Slowish Food) — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 01:35:00 +0000

* when I remember.

This weekend Sylvie and I made a mad trip to Michigan to hang out with the family. My sweet niece and nephew planned a surprise anniversary party for my sister and brother-in-law, and my brother and I made the trip to see the look on Becky's face. Which, I might add, was priceless.

Having been out of the house all weekend, I woke this morning realizing there weren't leftovers for my lunch. So I threw together one of my favorite pantry-staple, high-protein, South Beach-lovin' salads: White Bean and Tuna. And I realized that early last week I'd also posted a legume recipe, so welcome to

BEANO MONDAYS

I'm a huge lover of beans. Dried. Canned. Whatever. Even if you buy the designer variety, like Rancho Gordo, they're still very cheap next to most meats. And they look lovely in jars in the pantry, so I tend to go overboard at the bulk-foods store. If you have a great bean recipe, e-mail me at cindy_kitchel@yahoo.com, and I'll share it here -- or share it in the comments. I mean, really, who couldn't use another bean recipe in the repertoire?

Even if you aren't a bean lover, I think the Rancho Gordo packaging would win you over.

White Beans and Tuna Salad in a Flash

2 cans cannelini or similar beans, drained and lightly rinsed
2 small cans tuna in water, drained, or tuna in olive oil, undrained
1/2 red onion, sliced very thinly
6 or so Tbsp. red wine or similar vinegar
2 or 3 Tbsp. olive oil, if you used tuna packed in water
1/2 small jar capers, drained
Salt and pepper to taste

Combine the beans, tuna, and onion in a bowl. Add the vinegar and, if your tuna was packed in water, olive oil. Stir it around a bit, and then add the capers and salt and pepper to taste. Done and done.

In other food-related news, my sister-in-law just sent me a pair of onion glasses. You wear them when slicing onions to stay tear-free. I can't wait to try them! I have four cups of onions to slice for a dip I'm making later this week, so I'm going to put the glasses through their paces and will report back.

The Blog Post that Made Me Happiest Today

noreply@blogger.com (Slowish Food) — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 01:47:00 +0000

Most days I cycle through a blog roll, some for work, some that I just personally like.

One of my favorites is my co-worker Suzy's blog www.four-by-two.blogspot.com, in which she chronicled her pregnancy with quads and now life with quads. Yesterday's post was absolutely delightful. Check it out!

I Stand Corrected

noreply@blogger.com (Slowish Food) — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 17:04:00 +0000

Teensy issue in the last post. I forgot the number 1 rule of converting traditional recipes to slow-cooker recipes: You don't need so much liquid. In fact, generally speaking, you can cut liquids in half because they don't cook off in a slow cooker.

So use 1 quart of chicken stock, not 2. My bad. The soup was still delicious, but when I came home and realized the error of my ways, I cooked it down a bit to get to the consistency I wanted. I fixed the entry, but wanted to point out my goof.

Incidentally, if you're doing it on the stove, use the two quarts, bring everything to a boil, and then turn down to a gentle simmer for 45 or so minutes -- until the beans are soft.

Late Spring Meal: White Bean Soup and Homemade Croutons

noreply@blogger.com (Slowish Food) — Fri, 29 May 2009 16:17:00 +0000

Julia Child always said you should never apologize. I think she meant for the state of your home or the dinner you're serving, not if, say, you rear-ended another motorist. But I'm guessing it also applies to not updating a blog for, oh, almost three months. So I'll just move on.

Something comes over me when I go to Costco. Suddenly I'm stocking up a fallout shelter and really need two dozen kiwi. Last week I bought two huge loaves of multigrain La Brea Bakery bread. Then we went out of town. Consequently, even with me and Phil doing our best to gnaw our way through the enormous bag, I still found myself staring at one and a half drying loaves last night. Not in the mood for bread pudding, which I always associate with winter, I made croutons.

Homemade Croutons

They're easy. Just preheat the oven to 400 degrees, cut the bread into one-inch or so cubes, lay them on a rimmed cookie sheet, drizzle them lightly with olive oil, and stir around a bit to get them a teensy bit coated. Pop them in the oven for 10 minutes, stir around a bit more, and bake them for another 5 to 15 minutes, checking every 5 minutes. Once they're golden, they're ready. If you have a cheap and temperamental oven like mine, some might end up black while others are barely browned. Just chuck the black ones; no one deserves to eat burned croutons.

White Bean Soup

Staring at the Ziploc bag of croutons this morning, I decided to make a soothing white bean soup to go with. While I love stirring bean soup contemplatively, it's a workday, so I enlisted the help of my slow cooker. The recipe basically comes from The Barefoot Contessa, still one of my all-time favorite cookbooks.

Medium chop 2 or 3 yellow onions -- it's going to make 3 or 4 cups of chopped onion. In a skillet over medium-high heat, heat up a few good glugs of olive oil -- 3 or 4 tablespoons. Dump in the onions and let them cook until they're a little wilty and translucent. Now add in a couple minced cloves of garlic. Let that continue simmering for a few minutes. Pour everything into a slow cooker and add 1 quart of chicken stock, 2 cups of rinsed white beans (I never soak them), a bay leaf, and a nice branch of fresh rosemary. Set it to low and go to work.

When I come home tonight, I'll strip the rosemary leaves from the branch, throw away the branch, and then puree the soup using an immersion blender. You can add some salt and pepper to taste here.

In a shallow bowl topped with a couple drops of olive oil, maybe a little bit of fresh minced rosemary, and a small handful of croutons, this soup's going to make one nice dinner after a crazy-hectic week.

I love this soup. It's so much more than the sum of its parts. I used to make lots of bean soups when I was following that crazy Susan Powter's low-fat plan in the early 90s. The soups were functional and cheap, but not delicious. As with everything, I find that bean soups really need some fat to make them not taste like something out of Oliver Twist.

Meanwhile, if anyone has any ideas for the bowlful of limes I bought last week, I'm all ears.

Whoo-hoo! Guess Who's One Year Old?

noreply@blogger.com (Slowish Food) — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 01:32:00 +0000

Yeah for me!

It's hard to believe. Monday Sylvie hit her first birthday.

This weekend both sets of grandparents came to celebrate.

I whipped up some applesauce cupcakes that I've made many times from The Buttercup Bake Shop Cookbook. Something went terribly awry (the powdered egg substitute, perhaps?), however, and they collapsed like deflated basketballs. The lemon and strawberry numbers that Phil picked up from The Flying Cupcake were much, much more appropriate for such a momentous occasion.

Sylvie got some presents: Tasha Tudor books from Grandma and Grandpa Morrow, cute little girl clothes including the cutest, flounciest dress I've ever seen from Grandma and Grandpa Kitchel, a talking My Pretty Purse, which Tom and Max kept usurping to "show Sylvia how to use it."

How cool is it that the little girl's name in the story is Sylvie Anne?

Sylvie dove into her first cupcake with the kind of respectful gusto one might expect.

And then it was time for the ritualistic post-cupcake hose-down.

I can't believe you're 1, birthday girl!

Slow Cooking the Crazed Kitchen Way

noreply@blogger.com (Slowish Food) — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 14:23:00 +0000

My college roommate Julia has a wonderful blog called Hooked On Houses that tracks decorating trends, celebrity houses, Home-a-ramas -- basically anything involved with the housing market. I see the spacious, clutter-free homes on her site, and go away to a world that does not entail a small Cape Cod filled with the toys of three kids and the overwhelming book stacks of two ratpack adults. Some day, I tell myself.

This is a great parallel to our food life. Things have been more hectic than normal lately, with my work travel increasing and Sylvia getting more mobile and feisty, and I find I'm spending my time thumbing through cookbooks that celebrate slow, unfettered kitchen time; long meals stretching long into the night; and an insistence on ingredients of only the best quality. A favorite line I recently read, "If you've ever been to Barcelona, you know some of the best anchovies in the world are found there." I'm dreaming of a time when I can not only travel to Barcelona, but have the clarity of mind to recognize the superiority of its anchovies.

Meanwhile, I'm letting the books take me away, like a Calgon bath. My two favorites for these armchair cooking trips recently have been David Tanis's A Platter of Figs (and Other Recipes) and Paula Wolfert's The Slow Mediterranean Kitchen: Recipes for the Passionate Cook.

The reality is that these days on those nights when we don't have take-out or "silly supper" (i.e., breakfast for supper, which is usually cereal) or warmed-up frozen corndogs, my best friend has become my slow cooker. I'm always of two minds on the slow cooker because it seems things either come out breathtakingly wonderful, or are a one-color brown mess that I picture being served in a cut-rate nursing home. And cooking in our slow-cooker always means we'll have enough food to feed the block, so it's not a tool I pull out daily.

A recent boon to my slow-cooker repertoire has been the discovery of A Year of CrockPotting, an amazing blog in which writer and slow-cooker addict Stephanie chronicled her successful attempt to cook with her trio of slow cookers every day for a year. I can't even imagine how much food this would produce, but I love the blog nonetheless.

Two recent recipes I've tried and loved are the rib recipe Nikki Royer included in her interview a couple years ago (even my picky boys love ribs) and a slightly modified version of the Taco Soup recipe from A Year of Crockpotting. (Stephanie's original recipe is here.)

Stephanie raved about the recipe, and I have to admit when I initially made it, I was somewhat "meh" on the first night we had it. But it made a ton of soup, so I ate it for lunch for a week, and every day it got better until by Friday I was thinking about it all morning and ripping into my lunch at 11:20. If I were making it for a crowd, like for a Super Bowl party, I'd be inclined to make it a couple days early, refrigerate it to let the flavors all meld together, and reheat it before the guests came. I'd also serve it with sour cream, shredded cheese, shredded lettuce, chopped tomatoes... you get the idea. I also liked that this helped clear out my pantry; I tend to stock up on canned food like I'm preparing for the apocalypse.

Be sure to have your recycling bin cleared out before you start this. You'll be filling it!

Slightly Modified Taco Soup

1 pound ground meat
1 packet taco seasoning
1 packet ranch dressing mix
2 cans of kidney beans, drained
2 cans of black beans, drained
2 cans of corn, drained
1 large can of diced tomatoes, undrained
1 can mild chopped chiles, undrained
About half a can (use one of the bean cans) of water

Brown and drain the meat. Put the meat in the slow cooker. Sprinkle the seasoning mixes on top. Dump everything else on top of that, and cook on low for about 8 hours. While eating, surrounded by your fighting boys and yelling baby girl, take a moment to dream of the superior anchovies in Barcelona.

New Year's Roast

noreply@blogger.com (Slowish Food) — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 00:12:00 +0000

I bought some black-eyed peas and cabbage, but somehow couldn't bring myself to make it tonight, knowing the boys won't eat either. So I'll subject them to this traditional holiday meal some time this weekend. Instead, we welcomed in the new year with my new favorite roast.

I think the secret ingredient here (besides, you know, a good cut of beef) is coffee. My friend David, a magnificent cook, once explained to me that he uses coffee in all of his marinades because it opens up the meat cells so it stays tender, or some such thing that is now a blur thanks to his partner's magnificent Cosmopolitans. But my vague remembrance of the conversation is coffee + meat = good.

Unlike other recipes I've tried in the past, this one really does produce a juicy, delicious roast. Tommy, who often subsists on three pretzels and a spoonful of yogurt, asked for seconds before I had finished cutting Sylvia's beets into tiny pieces.

The basic recipe comes from a cookbook I found at my mom's house: Cooking from Quilt Country, which the good people at Amazon tell me is now out of print but available pretty cheaply used. The author, Marcia Adams, notes that the frugal and clever Amish found a good use for leftover morning coffee. I generally find a use for this extra coffee, as well, but it usually involves some half-and-half and a fourth cup. But that's another post.

Tommy's Favorite Roast

A roast (Marcia suggests a 3-pounder, but our local farmer usually puts them in about 1.5 pound lots)
1 Tbsp. olive oil
1/4 cup soy sauce
1 cup coffee
2 crumbled bay leaves
A couple garlic cloves, minced
About 1/2 tsp. dried herbs (I used Dean & Deluca's Herbs for Meat)
2 sliced onions

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees.

In a Dutch oven, heat the oil over medium heat and brown the meat. (Here's the Dutch oven I've pledged my love to 'til death do us part.) Set the meat on a platter for a second.

Mix up everything else except one of the onions and pour it into the Dutch oven. Set the meat on top. Top with the other sliced onion. Cover and bake for anywhere from 2-1/2 to 4 hours, depending on the size of the roast, marinating every hour or so. My 1.5-pounder took around 2-1/2 hours. The roast should be in quite a bit of liquid, so if it dries out while it's baking, pour in another cup of coffee and a generous splash of soy sauce.

To serve it, I move the roast on a platter, put the onions in a separate bowl (the boys won't eat them and turn into drama queens if any appear on the roast), and pour a spoonful or so of the liquid on the roast.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

noreply@blogger.com (Slowish Food) — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 02:28:00 +0000

It's 9:28 p.m. on December 31. I was supposed to be at a party, with kids, but Tommy turned into such a pistol today that Phil and I changed plans pre-party. He went to the party with Max, and I put Tommy and Sylvia to bed. At some point, Phil will bring Max home, drunk on bubbly apple juice and too many cookies, and Phil might or might not return to the party. On paper, it seems like I'm getting the raw end of the deal, but I don't mind a little time to myself to settle in, maybe read some, maybe have a glass of wine, and reflect quietly.

Today I thought about what a year it's been. Like many people, the precarious economy has had me pessimistic much of this year. When 2008 began, I knew we weren't in a bull market, but I never would have guessed the year would close with Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, IndyMac, and Washington Mutual all effectively dissolved. Or that the Detroit auto makers that comprised my reality growing up -- I was about the only kid I knew who didn't have at least one parent working in the plants -- would be on the edge of collapse. I wouldn't have guessed that unemployment and foreclosures would be at record highs while retail sales would be at record lows. There's much to be pessimistic about.

There's also reason for a lot of hope. I would not want to be in Barrack Obama's shoes right now (although I wouldn't mind wearing some of Michelle's cute numbers), but I feel like more than any other presidential candidate this year, he understands the gravity of the mess he's walking into. We'll all have criticisms of what he's doing and how it's getting done, but I feel that I can trust him to make sound and reasoned decisions. Foremost, I feel he's a strong leader in a country that needs strong leadership. Secondarily, however, it gives me great hope that America elected its first African American president and that we collectively judged the incoming president on the content of his character and not the color of his skin.

Personally, I have so much to be thankful for. While I cringe every time a financial statement comes, and have finally taken Phil's advice to quit opening them for a while, we're doing well. So far Phil and I, and our family and friends, have held onto jobs. We aren't in danger of our home being foreclosed. We don't have to decide whether to feed our children or put gas in the car to get to work. I know that many people in this country are not in that situation, and am humbled by our good fortune.

And I am thankful every day for Max and Tommy and Sylvia. We started the year with two kids and some trepidation about having an unexpected third so late in life. But from the moment I met Sylvie last March, I can't imagine our family without her. Nine months later, she's an expert crawler, a lover of baths, a nonstop chatterer, and a strong-minded female who will work and work for what she wants -- like, say, a handful of the cat's food.

I hope you all have whatever New Year's Eve you're hoping for -- whether that means you'll fall asleep with a book or dance Mambo #9 with a lampshade on your head.

Peace.

Imagine Last Week's Picture...

noreply@blogger.com (Slowish Food) — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 19:09:00 +0000

With a big black hole in the front of the pained smile.

Max was more than a year before he got any teeth. His 10-month pictures boast a big gummy grin. Then about a week after his first birthday his mouth exploded like a bag of microwave popcorn and he got four teeth in about ten days.

Which appears to be the way he's going to lose them. All of his friends have had Tooth Fairy visits a'plenty, and he's been stuck on the sidelines, fruitlessly wiggling his very solid teeth and praying for a miracle.

But in the last two weeks he's lost both his bottom front teeth and his right top front tooth. It's really something to watch him struggling with an apple.

Meanwhile, the Tooth Fairy is more seriously eyeing those e-mail solicitations to unlock the equity in her home.

By the way, I loved the comments about Max's photo. I'm still giggling over the thought of Photoshopping on a big gold clock, Flavor of Love style. And, offline, my friend Kim said he looked like Napoleon Dynamite's brother Kip after he got all gangsta'd out.

Enjoy Them Today... And for a Lifetime!

noreply@blogger.com (Slowish Food) — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 01:40:00 +0000

Max had picture day a couple weeks ago. His school does picture day old style: Your parents pick and pay for the package they want, the photographer gives everyone a 10-cent black comb, one picture is snapped, and two weeks later a raft of those pictures are sent home.

And yes, Max, who has the most beautiful smile and infectious laugh in the world, freezes up horribly when he's told to smile for the camera. And yes, he and Tommy have been going through my old jewelry from the 80s and 90s and wearing it around the house. And yes, Max was overdue for a haircut. And yes, he recently got a silver cap as the result of our being negligent in the flossing arena. All of this I knew.

And yet nothing prepared me for the 8 X 10 glossy that greeted me when I opened his homework folder:

"Tell us what you think!" states the envelop containing 25 -- 25! -- of these photos. "We'd love to know what you think of your school portraits."

And I'd love to tell you. Darn tootin'.

Knitter's Weekend 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Slowish Food) — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 02:09:00 +0000

Good times.

Protecting Our Food Borders

noreply@blogger.com (Slowish Food) — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 16:35:00 +0000

Through the years I've harbored crushes on men who were never to be mine. Take my fifth-grade love for Andy Gibb (dead). Or my late-high-school affection for George Michael (surprisingly, not playing for my team). These days, my crushes are centered on Don Draper (the character, not Jon Hamm who plays him), Stanley Tucci, and Michael Pollan. So there were schoolgirl screeches this weekend when we got the New York Times and found that the entire Sunday magazine was devoted to food, with a very large article contributed by Mr. Pollan. Be still my heart.

For those who haven't heard my blathering on about Michael Pollan, he's a journalist and food activist who is known for his wit, balance, and ability to boil down complex topics into readable prose. He spoke here in Indy last winter, and I waddled my nine-months'-pregnant self into Butler University to bask in his glory and giddily ask him to sign my copy of The Omnivore's Dilemma. I still get chills thinking of his discussing the difference between Food and "food," how we can turn around the current unhealthy eating situation in America, and sustainable agricultural practices. The stuff of dreams.

The article, which you can read here, is basically an open letter to the future president, explaining his thoughts on how government can help to take oil from food production and give the job of nurturing our food back to the sun, as it was intended.

Mike, as I like to call him, is a huge advocate of eating local where possible, something Phil and I have been trying to do more of in the last couple years. One argument he made, which I'd never thought of, however, is that it would be extremely easy for terrorists to attack through our centralized food supply. If your salad is coming from a mondo-farm in California that produces 20 million servings of salad a week, tainting that supply could quickly hit millions across the country in a way that tainting the supply of a weekend farmer at your local farmer's market couldn't.

Remember the big beef recall last winter? It affected 143 million pounds of beef that was distributed nationwide. Since Phil and I have started buying our antibiotic-free meat locally from a local farming family, our meat for an entire year has come from a single cow, and the packaging is labeled with our name (KITCHEL - BEEF STEW MEAT, it'll read). Should something go wrong, the source of the issue would be easy to trace and would be miles, not states, away.

While I don't see a terrorist around every corner and am as annoyed as the next air traveler about dispensing my toiletries into 3-ounce lots and collecting them in little baggies, it is something to think about. The current uber-farming system is bad for our health, it's bad for the environment, and it does make the possibility of hitting millions of people quickly relatively simple. Certainly, I'm guessing, more simple than building an on-board bomb from my hair conditioner.

Baby 1 / Cindy's Good Intentions Zip

noreply@blogger.com (Slowish Food) — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 01:29:00 +0000

Sylvia passed the six-month mark a couple weeks ago, and I've just started introducing her to food. It's very exciting. So far we've done rice cereal, which she gobbled up. Bananas, ditto. Pears, couldn't get enough. This weekend it was time to move to carrots. Whoo-hoo.

With each of the kids I've had the best intentions of making their baby food, but twice now I've bowed to the gods of Gerber. Third time's a charm, though, as just the thought of weighing down my Ecobags with dozens of little jars of food and then piling them willy-nilly in the pantry wore me out. So this weekend I made Sylvie some food.

First I toted my Ecobags to the store and bought organic apples and carrots and an ice cube tray. Then I peeled, cored, chopped, and cooked the apples with a couple tablespoons of water. I froze all of this in little applesauce cubes to use later in the week. Next I peeled, chopped, and steamed a few carrots, added some of steam water back in, and used a pureed her up a nice little dinner. The extra I froze in little carrot cubes for later in the week.

Come dinner, she got one taste of the carrots and gave me a betrayed look. She added insult to injury by shaking her head side to side a few times as if to clear her head, then screwing up her face as if she'd smelled something foul. I tried again. Oh, I couldn't, she seemed to say. I'm simply stuffed.

Feeling deflated by her lack of hunger, I picked up a plastic container of Gerber bananas. She kicked her feet vigorously, made the happy squeaky sound, and opened her mouth like a famished baby bird. Then proceeded to eat the whole thing container and part of another.

The next day I tried the carrots again. Same diva routine. More packaged bananas.

Meaning it might be time for a talk. While she was born at a lower birth weight than her brothers, she's heading in a different direction: She gained 20 percentile points on girth between her four-month and six-month checkups. If she's not willing to eat her vegetables, I'm not seeing her lose the one physical trait she clearly inherited from me: The Morrow thighs.

(For what it's worth, I'm consulting a great little book called Top 100 Baby Purees for making her baby food. Although I'm guessing Sylvie will have little interest in any of the recipes until we proceed to the dessert section.)

Antiquarian Cookbooks for Your Viewing Pleasure!

noreply@blogger.com (Slowish Food) — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 17:30:00 +0000

I discovered the coolest site via the Angry Chicken blog. The Michigan State University Library and MSU Museum has scanned several dozen antiquarian cookbooks from its collection. So you can check out 200-year-old recipes perfect for everything from the chocaholic to the convalescent. I'm loving the 1830 copy of The Frugal Housewife, as well as Fannie Farmer's Food and Cookery for the Sick and Convalescent.

If you have a huge chunk of time on your hands -- cuz trust me, it's a time-suck -- check out Feeding America.

Pre-Book Review: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

noreply@blogger.com (Slowish Food) — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 19:27:00 +0000

Why haven’t I read this book? I don’t know. It’s been on the bestseller lists, both in hard cover and paperback, since it published more than a year ago. And I love reading about food and sustainability and sticking it to the Processed Food Man.

When this book first came out, in Spring 2007, I was intrigued. In it, novelist and essayist Barbara Kingsolver and her family spend a year growing their own food or only eating local. The reviews I’d read were glowing, and the brief essays I’d read by Kingsolver in other publications, including a Mother Jones article about modern organic farming and the politics involved, were stellar. At the time it published, though, I was feeling too cheap to spring for the hardcover edition. So I held out.

And then a department assistant I adored announced she and her fiancé were moving to the West Coast. As a thank-you gift, she gave me this book, even though we’d never talked about it. So I started reading.

Almost immediately I found myself pregnant and sickly, and I truthfully couldn’t care less about eating local. So the book’s been sitting in my living room pile of unread books for a about a year. Recently I'd started eyeing it again.

Yesterday my mother-in-law called and in the conversation asked if I’d read this book. She'd read it and loved it, and thought I’d enjoy it as well. “Funny you should ask,” I said, relaying how I had a copy and had gotten sidelined.

Then last night I checked my high school alumni site and found that the sister of my best-friend- in-high-school had left me a message. Judy, my friend’s sister, was the type to screech like a school girl if she broke a nail. I remember one time when she stepped in dog mess and moaned and complained incessantly; I thought we might have to get her new shoes. So it was a surprise to learn that she’s now living on acreage, raising bees and selling honey at the local farmer’s market, and dreaming of moving her family to a true farm with working animals. After I read her profile and pulled myself off the floor, I sent her an article by my beloved Michael Pollan about what could be causing the decrease in honeybees. Since then, we've written back and forth a little about sustainability and food choices. Last night she sent a message asking if I’d read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and praising the zucchini chocolate chip cookie recipe.

So one random gifting and two unrelated recommendations in the same day lead me to believe that the sustainability gods are telling me I need to read this book. I picked it back up before bed and got through about four marvelous pages before konking out -- a result of Sylvia being up four times the night before, not a boring text. I can’t wait to get back to it tonight.

Has anyone read it? Thoughts? Any other food writing of note?

Random Musings on the Lost Art of the Cocktail Hour

noreply@blogger.com (Slowish Food) — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 01:16:00 +0000

I just finished re-reading Madeleine L'Engle's Two-Part Invention about her 40-year marriage to Hugh Franklin that ended with his death from cancer. I first discovered the book 15 years ago and consumed volumes of L'Engle after finding it. This copy is extra special to me because I had her sign it at a conference that she headlined. "For Cindy," reads the inscription, "Beautiful Inventions."

I've since learned that much of what was written as fact in the book might have been fairly fictionalized, but it's still a striking book. I've enjoyed re-reading it. Even if I initially picked it up for a rather trite reason: I was trying to find her description of their family's evening ritual. (Turns out, I must have remembered that description from A Circle of Quiet, because it's not in this book.) Every evening when her and Hugh Franklin's three kids were old enough to be civil but young enough to live at home, the family would have quiet hour before dinner. Hugh and Madeleine would each have a martini and talk about the day or world events. If their children wanted to participate in adult conversation, they could join in. If they didn't, they could make themselves scarce.

With our kids being six, three, and zero, I spend most of my time with them being talked at incessantly about Webkinz and Power Rangers and what Santa's on tap to bring in four months. Sylvia is mute, but still manages to stir up a fuss if she's a mite peckish or is tired of the bouncy seat or is stuck in mid-rollover. It will be a long time before Phil and I can incorporate a civil cocktail hour into our day, but I do aspire to it. From my vantage point, a properly executed cocktail hour serves a purpose in shifting focus from work to family.

One of the most beautiful and articulate descriptions of cocktail hour I've found comes from Rachel Fudge in her essay "The Art and Science of Cocktail Hour," which is included in this great book of food writing. Rachel, whose parents enjoy a similar ritual to the Franklin-L'Engles, writes, "The underlying function of the cocktail hour is to create a smooth transition from work to relaxation, from hectic to tranquil." Who wouldn't love that? A quiet drink prepared thoughtfully and sipped meditatively is a far cry from what cocktail hour has evolved into: Happy Hour. That phrase fills me with thoughts of being trapped in the industrial windowless bar of a W Hotel, the beautiful people drinking layered or lime-green drinks, a television blaring sports, electronica playing too loudly to be comfortably talked over. The art of the cocktail has been hijacked in the past generation. Let's bring it back.

If I can continue my rant, when it comes to cocktails, size does matter. A "drink" is measured as 1-1/2 ounces. That's it. Like everything, however, cocktails have been supersized to the point of insult. I used to own a vintage set of cocktail glasses that held maybe 4 ounces; I got rid of them in the purge that preceded our move to Brooklyn. Ten years later, I still mourn those glasses at least once a month. Phil and I went on a quest to find remotely normal sized martini glasses several years ago, and the smallest we could find was 7 ounces. Or, for my poor math, the equivalent of four and a half drinks. It's obscene. A cocktail -- especially one that consists solely of alcohol -- should be like a perfect, cold little jewel, not a Big Gulp that has to be sloshed through and leaves its drinker feeling tipsy and bloated.

My cocktail of choice for a decade and a half has been the basic gin martini, not a drink to be taken lightly. I was first introduced to this classic by my friend Martha in a small Indiana bar called Syd's. Martha has always been mature for her age, and she ordered her drink, and then sat with her cardigan draped over her shoulders, chasing the air conditioner chill, and relaying the intricacies of a sketch she'd recently heard on A Prairie Home Companion. I figured what the hey and ordered a martini, too. It was a fun night, and we followed our martinis with Syd's famous burgers and fried pickles. I've never looked back.

For my money, I'm a purist when it comes to the martini. I agree with the sentiment that you can make a lovely drink with vodka and vermouth, but it's no martini. For me, it needs to consist of ice-cold gin, a smidgen of vermouth, perhaps a bit of olive juice, and a big olive skewered on one of various cocktail picks that seem to reproduce nightly in our dining room. Shaken, not stirred, and poured into the glass quickly before any of the ice in the shaker can melt.

While I love stories of extra-dry martini rituals, like FDR making his martinis by filling the shaker with gin and then glancing at the vermouth bottle across the room, I am not militant about the exact amount of vermouth to go in the glass. (I used to have a Smith and Hawken plant mister I used for misting the glass with vermouth, but I realized how effected it was. And the vermouth rusted out the workings, anyway, so it became unworkable.) I periodically like to skip the olive juice and trade in the olive for a lemon twist, but I think it's more because I like to show off now that I've learned to make the twist.

These days it's hard to believe that I'll ever be able to go to the bathroom alone, read an entire article in the Sunday morning paper without fielding half a dozen requests, or get a straight seven hours of sleep. And it's nearly inconceivable that Phil and I some day will be able to implement a quiet time before dinner when we can ease from hectic to tranquil. But I'm holding onto the dream.

Bottoms up.

I'm Ba-a-a-a-ack

noreply@blogger.com (Slowish Food) — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 19:39:00 +0000

I put this blog on hold about nine months ago due to you-know-who:

I'm finally well past both the pregnant sleepies and the new baby fog and starting to think about cooking again.

So let's get this party started.

Facing Reality, with Recipes

noreply@blogger.com (Slowish Food) — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 21:24:00 +0000

I've finally come to the conclusion that pending parenthood this third and unexpected time around is taking more out of me than I was admitting to, and some things are going to have to go. So SlowishFood is going on a sabbatical of indeterminate length. I'm hoping to get back to all things food, as my concerns about our food choices remain as passionate as when I began this blog, but I find right now I'm cooking and experimenting less, and just have a lot less to say -- even if I had the energy to sit down and write, which I'm finding I don't.

So I leave you with two recipes, one a new one and one that's been my favorite for years.

First, the new one. And pardon my being apparently the only person on the planet who didn't know this party trick. We recently went to our friends Bill and Toni's house for the weekend. They live in a small town outside Indianapolis. Their house is huge -- originally a very generous house on two lots that had been generously added to over the years. They have two kids, one slightly older and another slightly younger than M, and their home is a kid paradise: Goldfish pond out back, motorized cars, Thomas table with full setup, room for little boys to strip off their shoes and shirts and run around like English schoolboys in Lord of the Flies.

Toni made some wonderful meatballs when we were there, and I asked if she would have a chance to give me the recipe. She looked at me like I was making fun of her, which I wasn't. I was being sincere. They were delicious. Here's the recipe, which apparently everyone in the Western world but me knew:

Mix 1 large jar grape jelly and 1 equal-sized jar salsa in a slow cooker. Add however many frozen meatballs, bought in bulk, that you want. Cook on low for several hours until the meatballs are hot and ooey. These would be great on egg noodles, although we ate them just as they were.

And the second recipe, requiring slightly more effort and resources, comes from Zelda Fitzgerald from Zelda Fitzgerald: The Collected Writings, and is for "Breakfast":

See if there is any bacon, and if there is, ask the cook which pan to fry it in. Then ask if there are any eggs, and if so try and persuade the cook to poach two of them. It is better not to attempt toast, as it burns very easily. Also in the case of bacon, do not turn the fire too high, or you will have to get out of the house for a week. Serve preferably on china plates, though gold or wood will do if handy.

Peace.