Sticks Forks Fingers

Sourcing: Chocolove

2012-01-20T07:37:00.000-08:00

Chocolove Chocolate Bars

How do I love thee? Enough to share news about a delicious find I recently made in time that you can seek it out before Valentine's Day, that's how much.

It was instant attraction. Packages in a palette of pretty colors, a fancy stamp suggesting the chocolate enrobed botanicals, a "postmark" from the origin of the chocolate (Belgium), the clearly marked cocoa content of each variety, and the promise of a love poem inside. Aaaah. It was only then that I noticed the dazzling array of options: Chilies & Cherries in Dark Chocolate, Almonds & Sea Salt in Dark Chocolate, Ginger Crystallized in Dark Chocolate, Cherries & Almonds in Dark Chocolate, Raspberries in Dark Chocolate, and more. From the 33% cocoa (milk chocolate) with toffee, to the mid-ranged 55% cocoa with cherries and almonds, to the stout 77% extra strong dark chocolate, these wonderful and large chocolate bars from Chocolove in Boulder, Colorado have something for everyone.

Faeries Who Live in Faerie Houses Love Chocolate Too

(Faerie House by my Favorite Four-Year-Old, Cilla)

After an arduous and demanding research study I offer Chocolove the "Sticks Forks Seal of Approval." This is really nice chocolate. Smooth and melty on the tongue, a nice clean snap along the score lines, and a rich, warm not-too-sweet flavor. I had wondered if the intense flavors were intended to mask an inferior chocolate, and all I can say is that these bars end up being greater than the sum of their pleasurable parts. The cherries are nicely chewy, just enough ancho and chipotle chili to warm and excite the palate, the sea salt creates an absolute playground in your mouth along with the toasted almonds, the crystallized ginger offers textural contrast, and all the add-ins are well balanced both in quantity and with the percentage of cocoa to which it is married.

Seek out the Chocolove bars for your Valentine this year. If you can't find them locally, you can order them by the dozen direct. A few of these for the Object of Your Desire (there are 23 varieties in the array) will easily replace the universal heart-shaped box to set you apart from the other suitors and win hearts for sure. The enchanting classic love poems inside the wrapper could even suffice as a card.

A Few of My Favorite Varieties of Chocolove

Making Whey While the Sun Shines

2012-01-17T05:52:00.000-08:00

Curried Paneer Scramble with Oregano Oil

and "Whey Good" Black Bread

I'm a Cheese Maker!

It's uncertain whether the second time a person does something might make him or her an addict, but I think I might be hooked. Last week I made soft fresh cheese for the first time, and loved both the making and eating of it so much that I've already done it again. By calling it soft fresh cheese rather than its other common name, paneer, it helps me think about many more useful applications for it beyond Indian food. Two or three easily available ingredients (milk, lemons and optional salt,) barely any skill, and just a few minutes and you, too, can become a novice cheese maker.

And where there's cheese, there's whey. You may be thinking, "No whey!" but I am saying yes whey, and lots of it. I'm learning that this protein-rich liquid has an independent role in your kitchen as well. More on that in a bit. First, the tutorial on the soft fresh cheese. Warning: You are about to become an addict.

Choose the Right Pot and You're Preference of Milk

In a large heavy-bottomed pot, pour 1/2 gallon whole or 2% milk. Simple enough so far, mon petit fromager?

Two things I've already learned about the process so far:

A non-stick pan isn't the best for this. A brown crust will form and when stirred, unsightly brown bits will slough off which you will have to pick out.
2% milk produces lean curds with more "squeak", more like the paneer I've had with Indian food. Delicious, easy to cut into cubes, and easy to brown up. Whole milk produces a creamier, stickier curd which can be cut into cubes, but is more adapted to crumbling. Both are wonderful; just decide which outcome you want when selecting your milk.

Bring the Milk to a Boil, Stirring Frequently

Next, heat the milk over medium-high heat, stirring frequently, until it comes to a rolling boil. Whole milk creates more lush bubbles at this point than 2%, already giving you an idea of the difference in the resulting product.

Have the Juice of Two Lemons Strained and Ready

Have the juice of small two lemons ready. Once the milk is boiling, slowly add up to 2 tablespoons strained fresh lemon juice, stirring constantly. Turn the heat off. If you like your cheese a little salted, add about 1 teaspoon of your favorite variety. (My favorite at the moment is pink Himalayan salt.)

Stir in Lemon Juice Until Curds Form and Separate from Whey

As you stir, yucky looking curds will magically form. If the curds are not forming, continue to add lemon juice a little at a time until they do.

Realize You Haven't Made a Mistake at This Stage

Be warned that this really isn't the most appetizing looking stuff at this point. You have not made a mistake; you've made curds and whey!

Allow Curds to Drain Through Cloth Until Cool Enough to Handle,

Twist, Weight and Wait

Line a strainer with a cotton dishtowel or double-layered cheesecloth and place it over another bowl to catch the whey if you plan to use it.

Let it drain about 10 or 15 minutes until cool enough to handle. Bundle up your soft fresh cheese in the cloth, give it a twist to squeeze out any remaining whey, and place it wrapped up on a plate. Top with another plate and a couple of large cans to weight it. Let sit for 30 minutes or so to disperse any remaining whey. Wrap and store in the refrigerator.

Some things you can do with your cheese:

Cube it up and brown it in hot oil. Serve as a appetizer with marinara sauce or any other delicious sauce or chutney.
Saute leeks, peppers, and any other diced vegetables you wish. Add crumbled or cubed cheese, curry powder to taste, and serve drizzled with this amazing oregano stuff for a fantastic scramble. (See lead photo.)
Browned cubes or crumbles would be nice in a mixed vegetable roast or saute at the last minute.
Crumble on top of salads, enchiladas, casseroles, tacos, etc. Treat it as you would Mexican Queso Fresco.
Make this most delicious chana masala and mustard green/spinach saag. Add browned cubes to the saag.
If made the creamy way with whole milk, add chopped herbs and schmear it on bruschetta, bread or toast. Or leave your schmear plain and top with honey and chopped nuts.
Stuff a date for a healthy snack.

Some things you can do with your whey:

Use it in place of the water in baking recipes. The acidity adds tenderness to baked goods similar to buttermilk or yogurt. The black bread in the above photo was made with whey, and it was wonderful. (Thank you, Heidi Swanson at 101 Cookbooks for this great recipe, and that of the Oregano Oil.)
Use it in soups. It will add a subtle tang.
Boil your pasta or rice in it.
Feed a little to your kitties. They will smile at you.
Water your acid-loving plants.

Ten Things I've Learned by Food Blogging

2012-01-09T09:21:00.000-08:00

Huevos Rancheros

Dear Me,
You've been blogging about food, wine, life and love for two years now. You've shared and overshared. At times, you've worked some things out in a self-psychoanalytic catharsis, at times you've been a goofball; at times you've tapped some great hidden memories of people you have loved; you've celebrated, grieved, and been racy, and sometimes you've taken the role of teacher on these pages. You've had a ball, but you've also learned a couple things. Why don't you share some of that with your readers?

Okay, Dear Readers, and especially other food blogging Dear Readers! In two years as a food and wine blogger a few things have come to my attention. I've learned that:

Delicious But Ugly Blood Orange Cake

People blog for different reasons. Be clear what your particular reasons are. Don't judge the reasons of others.
An inspired but infrequently-posted blog is worth following, but not insipid daily drivel. Sometimes I just need to get out and live in order to have something compelling to post about, and I make no apologies for my irregular posting schedule. Likewise, I invite you to expand me with your posts. Make me miss you and wonder what fun you're cooking up without me while you're out there living it up.
If you wouldn't serve it to guests, don't post it. For example, this green cake (above.) While the green cake was time consuming and delicious, it was supposed to be the lovely shade of blood-orange pink. Green cake doesn't sell unless it's St. Patrick's Day. If the cake was supposed to be pink but turned out green, don't post it. Instead, research why the cake turned green (in this case a chemical reaction caused by the imbalance of baking soda and chopped citrus) and learn to fix that mistake so that in the future you can share that info with your readers, if you are so inspired, because...
Photos are everything. No one reads your words if the photos aren't captivating. I've written some really nice pieces that didn't get noticed because my photos were uninspiring. Or worse than uninspiring.
Attribution is an important subject. Be fair. Give credit where it is due. Link. Name your inspirational sources. Don't say "adapted from..." if the only thing you did was up the salt 1/2 teaspoon. Just because we self-publish doesn't mean we shouldn't follow the most basic of journalistic standards. By raising all ships, we sail at a higher level ourselves. I was very guilty of breaking this guideline in my earlier blogging career, but have committed to giving proper attribution after coming to understand how important it is to the bona fide recipe authors and publishers. And, it's the law, even if there aren't interweb coppers to enforce it.
This experience teaches me that I do not want to be a cookbook author. Writing out and testing an original and proper recipe is tedious work. What I want is to be an inn keeper and have some detail-oriented person follow me around with a notepad for a month as I create wonderful dishes for my guests, catching each ingredient I intuitively plop into the pot in order to quantify it, codify it, test it, question it, and make sure it is properly organized for our little inn cookbook which visitors can purchase to take home with them. That's what I want.

In addition, our inn would be open only during Oregon high season, would serve breakfast Thursday through Sunday, would pack wine-tasting picnics (at a small additional charge) complete with winery recommendations and maps on request for our guest's day excursions. We would serve Saturday night dinner for inn guests and locals with reservations. At these dinners, we'd pair local wines and foods, highlight local artists and musicians. We would be closed December through March, when My Baby and I would travel, rest, prune the orchard and garner inspiration.

If I can't be an inn owner, I'd like to be an astronautess. An astronautess is someone who doesn't possess the usual aeroscience competencies, but who could do special assignment outer-space research like testing to see if Pinot Noir tastes the same in orbit, if the freshness of a baguette is extended in zero-gravity, and if toenail polish lasts longer wearing moon-boots rather than high heels.

It would sure be nice to have an editor smarter and more intuitive than spell-check.
If you want to boost your readership, post a dessert. We just can't resist photos of gorgeous sweet treats.
Had I gone the ad/featured publisher route I would have made somewhere in the neighborhood of $97.62 over the last two years. Woo. Even with zippy visitor traffic, that's not even enough to pay for my Site Meter and Feed Blitz subscriptions. My most favorite sites of all time haven't succumbed to distracting ads or featured publisher buttons and retain a clean visual aesthetic and voice. If they make more than parking meter change, it's because their site has launched them into some ancillary money-making venture, not from the site itself. (The exceptions are the trail blazing niche-makers, who created their market share early on and have deservedly parlayed it into big cash, including that generated by ads.) After nearly two years, SSF remains intentionally ad-free.
Two years is ancient for the average food blog. Dog years; 7:1. Blog years; 40:1.

Thanks, Readers, for your time and attention these past two years. Look forward to some exciting changes from Sticks Forks Fingers in 2012 !

A special dedication to my dear, sweet husband and forever boyfriend, who lured me out into the country and gave me something to write about. He shall remain "My Baby" forever on these pages and in my heart. He does have a respectable real name, but prefers to have his innocence and professional online demeanor protected with this cute little alias. He is the source of just about anything humorous on these pages, and exhibits his support and long suffering by eating far too many cold meals after waiting for the perfect photo to be snapped of his dinner.
Thank you, Baby.

My Dinner Has The X Factor

2011-12-07T19:16:00.000-08:00

I know I've hit a new place in my life (I refuse to call it a low) when I'm standing in the rice isle of the grocery after yoga (make a note of that; not all is lost if I'm still practicing yoga) trying to decide if I should buy quick-cooking rice so that I can have my dinner ready 10 minutes faster, before The X Factor starts. Is this even me, who rarely watches television? I don't even believe in quick-cooking rice!

Chris Rene

My rice still isn't quite yet ready when I find myself (feel free to poke out your mind's eye after reading this sentence) doing my best 50-year-old hip hop dance to the talented Chris Rene, whom I worry would just die if he knew I thought he was ahhhsome. He is cool, and I'm well, just a middle aged white lady shaking my middle aged white lady groove thang while I wait for my not quite quick enough rice to cook.

Melanie Amaro

Whoa... the kid in the wheelchair on Glee can walk???? I have no idea what that commercial is for, but the kid CAN WALK!!!

Rachel Crow

Rachel Crow??? Only 14 years old? And, golly, Marcus Canty and Melanie Amaro, too. Each of them are packed with talents. My favorites, LeRoy Bell (a fellow Nor'Westerner whose sound I've dug for years. Got his 2006 CD, Two Sides to Every Story, which is great,) Astro (who is genius with his lyrics) and Drew (whose otherwordly sound transforms me) have already had to say goodbye. Oh, my rice is finally ready.

Josh Krajcik

I'm shocked at how grabbing I find the television ads. Being a mostly PBS watcher (may I hear a whoop for The News Hour and Washington Week with Gwen Ifill?), I'm rarely exposed to flashy commercials. I pride myself on being impervious to the sway of Madison Avenue, but did you know that Ford has a car that parks itself? The X Factor taught me that. And my life would be so tidied if I'd get the newest iPhone-- Siri would eliminate the need for any human relationships whatsoever, and when I lock myself out of the house, can even call a locksmith if I whine just right into it. Who knew?

While I may have just immersed myself in the realm of cheap and guilty pleasures for the mind by watching The X Factor, at least my dinner is wholesome. I do consider it fast food; any meal which includes fresh veggies, rice and beans and can be completely prepared in the time it takes to cook a pot of rice is wholesome fast food.

Some time ago I posted about this terrific "fast food" which originated right here in Oregon, but it was early in the game and not many of you followed then. It is worth reposting. This is a favorite meal of mine. Please do give it a try.

HOW TO MAKE A YUMM BOWL:
Original Yumm Sauce
1/2 cup canola oil
1/2 cup almond meal (Trader Joe's carries this)
1/3 cup nutritional yeast
1 15 oz. can low-sodium garbanzo beans, drained
1/2 cup lemon juice
1/2 cup water
2 cloves garlic, peeled
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon curry powder

Throw all ingredients into bowl of food processor, and blend until very smooth. Makes about 3 1/2 cups sauce. Store tightly covered in refrigerator. Keeps about one week. Use on sandwiches, lightly steamed veggies, burritios, and wherever else your imagination takes you.

Variations:
Roasted Garlic
Replace the fresh garlic for 6-8 cloves of roasted garlic.

Chipotle
Add one canned chipotle chile to mixture before blending smooth.

To build an original Yumm Bowl:
(Makes 2 large bowls.)
In each of two deep bowls, layer 1/2 cup or so of hot brown rice. Drizzle liberally (we go whole-hog here, maybe even 1/3 cup each) with Yumm Sauce. Drain and rinse one can of black beans and divide among bowls. Top bean layer with your favorite fresh salsa. In each bowl, layer on 1/3 cup shredded cheddar cheese, 1 chopped tomato, 1/2 sliced avocado, and 2 Tablespoons sliced black olives. Add a small dollop of sour cream and some coarsely chopped cilantro. Feel free to riff on this, using various beans, rices, salsas, cheeses, veggies, etc. Yummmm!

Chai Pumpkin Breakfast Brûlée

2011-11-11T11:59:00.000-08:00

Chai Pumpkin Breakfast Brûlée

All my creative energy has gone into my work lately; launching new projects, hiring new staff, assuming new responsibilities. I love every minute of it, but often my days end with the feeling that my head will explode if one more thought has to be shoe-horned into it. My cooking has fallen into the comfort of old family favorites, the kind that can be made with your hands tied behind your back and in a brain dead state. Creative cooking? Writing? No sir.

Happily, though, even when domestic creativity is frizzled, I often have 3 a.m. Saturday morning dream inspirations about one of my most favorite meals of all, Saturday morning breakfast. It happened last Saturday. Breakfast thoughts swirled into my dreams and I woke with an idea.

Chai spices, homemade pumpkin puree, whole grains, and a blast from the torch. A very special breakfast in spite of my waking-hour creative doldrums.

Warming and filling and sweet. Perfect for a crisp autumn morning, and a special treat for visiting holiday house guests.

Chai Pumpkin Breakfast Brûlée

Chai Spices
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cardamom
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Mix all ingredients together and set aside.

Whole Grain Chai Pumpkin Cereal
(I used Bob's Red Mill Mighty Tasty Cereal which happens to be gluten free and is terrific. Any other hot cereal such as cream of wheat, 9-grain, oats, etc. may be used, adapting proportions to package recommendations.)
For each serving:
1/4 cup Bob's Red Mill Mighty Tasty Cereal
3/4 cup water
1 teaspoon sugar (brown, demerara, or white may be used)
1/2-3/4 teaspoon Chai spice mixture
pinch of salt
1/4 cup pumpkin puree

Add cereal to salted boiling water in small saucepan. Add sugar and Chai spices. Cook according to package directions. About 2 minutes before it is done, stir in pumpkin puree. Stir frequently until grains are fully cooked.

Spoon cooked pumpkin cereal into 5" brulee dishes and smooth top with small offset spatula. Sprinkle sugar evenly and somewhat heavily over tops. Using your kitchen torch, carefully and evenly melt sugar, allowing it to crisp into a crackly, crunching top. Serve immediately with strong hot coffee.

Rookie Farmers Seek Assistance

2011-10-28T09:36:00.000-07:00

Warm Applesauce Sundaes with 5-Spice Shortbread Leaves

Wanted: Rookie farmers seek assistance with pruning, organic pest control, weeding, harvesting, and most importantly turning all this stuff into something. No help required with planting and growing, as everything we stick into the dirt seems to thrive without much more from us. Hours flexible. Pay comes in the form of edible foodstuffs and a satisfying connection to the land.

This painting had been in My Baby's family since he was a boy. It captured his imagination, and as a pre-teen he promised himself that he would someday live in a beautiful place like that. The painting now hangs over a fireplace which is in a house nestled on property that is, indeed, a beautiful place like that.

Our place.

After years of searching (his realtor had two babies during his property hunt) My Baby found this dream property only a year before we met 4 1/2 years ago. (Lucky for him, I tease, because my house-hunting criteria includes being within one hour from an international airport, being within 10 minutes of a full-service grocery store, and lots of closets, which this property doesn't quite meet!) Nearly five acres of property; a mere postage stamp surrounded by hundreds of acres of fertile Southern Willamette Valley farm and ranch lands, tucked into the base of the Coburg foothills. Trouble is, while we possess myriad skills, abilities, talents and gifts, neither of us had any gardening experience, much less the charge of five whole workable acres.

Our property came with:

Orchard

3 apple trees
2 pear trees
1 Asian pear tree
3 plum trees

yellow plums
red plums
Italian prune plums

2 fig trees
2 cherry trees (still babies, we planted those)

Berries

strawberries (too many plants to count)

early season
everbearing

4 Marionberry canes
18 blueberry bushes

Garden

conservatively 700 square feet

Pasture

3 useable acres

The two of us can't begin to consume all this food alone or capitalize on the potential of this land. I'm sure there are formulas which exist that could calculate it precisely, but let's just say this property could feed a lot of people. The apple trees alone produced, in my best estimation, four times my weight in wonderful apples. Apart from coffee beans, sugar cane and cinnamon, we could be nearly self-sufficient. If only we knew how and had the time!

Here's What 30 Pounds of Tomatoes Look Like, and There's More Where They Came From

Like many of you, our time isn't laid out neatly and abundantly for us. I work full time, staying most of the week away from home, and have long commutes. My Baby has come out of his early retirement to a very busy consulting practice, and travels to see me during the week when he can. It is a challenge to gather up all the fruit when it decides it's ready, much less to use it or organize the sharing of it all.

This year we made a hero's attempt to preserve more of our harvest. We purchased a food dehydrator which was billed as having endless capacity and magical qualities, and we dried rack after rack of fresh figs. We dried rack after rack of Italian plums. I cooked up 30 pounds of San Marzano tomatoes in huge pots full of sauce. Etc., etc. To very dismal result.

Only a Representational Smattering of the Load of 2011 Apples

I went to the pantry for the dried figs the other day, and my heart sunk. The entire sealed bag had molded. The prunes, same thing. The tomato sauce never even made it to the canning jars, because after a day's work over the stove, it just tasted terrible.

Before you grow too sad at this tale, friends and neighbors, near and far, I've thought of a solution!

Come get it!! Next year, I'll post what is ripe and available. Load your kids, your dogs, your horses, cows, (there's room!) sacks and boxes and drive on out for a Saturday. If you feel like grabbing a pruner, pulling a few weeds or spreading some compost, all the better, but not required. Collect up all the goodies you can, and take them away. Chances are there will be a pot of something good on the stove to share while you are here to keep you fortified.
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This is one of my favorite autumn desserts. Don't let the humble nature fool you... this is a wonderful combination of flavors and textures. While I expect you to riff on the types of nuts you use, the spices in the shortbread, and your own choices for sweetening your applesauce, please try it just like this once! At the risk of sounding un-American, this is better than apple pie!

Warm Applesauce Sundaes with 5-Spice Shortbread Leaves

Homemade Applesauce (recipe below)
Toasted whole almonds
5-Spice Shortbread (recipe below)
Your favorite vanilla ice cream

Homemade Applesauce

Peel, core and coarsely chop as many apples as you want and put them in a lidded saucepan. Add just a little water to get the steam going, about a Tablespoon for a small pan or 2 Tablespoons for a large pan. Set over medium-low heat. Stir every 5 minutes or so until the apple have broken down to your textural liking, about 15 minutes for a small pan of chunky sauce or 30 minutes for a large pan of smooth sauce. If you like a sweeter sauce, you may add honey, agave syrup, brown or white sugar or maple syrup to sweeten to you liking, depending on your apples. If you will be freezing the sauce in freezer bags, it is wise to add the juice of half a lemon to prevent browning, or 1/4 teaspoon powdered citric acid at the beginning. Set the applesauce aside until time to compose your sundae, then gently rewarm over low heat.

5-Spice Shortbread
1 stick butter, room temperature
1/3 cup + Tablespoon white sugar
3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1 egg yolk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 1/4 cup all purpose flour
3 1/4 teaspoons 5-spice powder

Preheat over to 325 degrees. Mix flour and 5-spice powder in small bowl. Set aside.

In stand mixer, beat butter until pliable. Add sugar and salt and mix in. Add yolk and vanilla extract, and mix with paddle just until thoroughly combined. Gradually add flour mixture, mixing on low speed until flour is thoroughly incorporated. Crumbs will be large and hold together well when pinched. The whole process takes only a matter of minutes.

On a sheet of wax paper, press the dough together in a 3/4" tall square, about 7 " x 7". Cover loosely and place in freezer for about 10 minutes to chill thoroughly. Remove from freezer and cover with another sheet of wax paper. (Rolling chilled dough between wax paper eliminates the need to add more flour for rolling, resulting in more tender cookies.) Roll out until about 1/3" thick. Cut with cutters. Place entire sheet of cut cookies, without removing from the wax paper sheet, on a baking sheet and place in freezer again for about 10 minutes. Remove once again from the freezer, and peel well-chilled cut dough from wax paper. Place on parchment-lined baking sheet. Bake for 15-20 minutes until just beginning to take on a light tan color and feel fairly firm to the touch. Cool completely on baking sheet.

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If you turn 40 pounds of apples from our place into apple butter and wanted to share a pint or two, that would be nice, and would be about all the two of us could eat in a year. If your canned tomatoes taste better than mine, we'd love to try a jar! Or not. No strings are attached to this idea. This idea isn't meant as a commercial enterprise, but one of time and resource sharing. If there are certain vegetable varieties you'd like to see planted, we could probably even accommodate those garden requests. We just don't want to see what we've been given go to waste.

Back Porch Swarm

August 30, 2011

And if any of you have the slightest idea how to harvest the honey that is currently being manufactured under my back porch by these busy bees, that would be fantastic!

What do you think of this idea? Could it work? Is it mutual? Is it fun? Is it useful? Would you come?

Home Alone, Part Two

2011-10-26T19:03:00.000-07:00

Apple Sage Sausage

Spaghetti with Browned-Butter Sage Sauce, Mizithra Cheese and Winter Squash

Once I got over my little seed tantrum, the rest of my home alone day was so nurturing, so satisfying and so productive. The discipline of the seeds reminded me of my favorite job I ever had, which was being a stay-at-home mom to my three children. I had convinced myself then that I was doing it for them, but in retrospect, it was mostly for me. I adored taking special care of people I love, the sense of creating a home, and the sense of organization and order that exists when that is the job of one person in the house. As those happy recollections flooded my heart, can you guess what they inspired?

Bonus points to you if you guessed clean and organized kitchen drawers!

And get ready for an aaaaahh moment...

I came across the silver baby spoon of my youngest child. Yes, twenty-three years ago my very little chubby-cheeked John enjoyed his sweet potatoes and smashed peas from this spoon. The happiest of memories poured over my soul as I thought of him and his older brother and sister, and my home alone day took on a new glow.

Latent efficiencies took over and on I moved to my dual-spiced sausage-making plans. I've been making Italian sausage at home this year to great result, and was ready to expand my horizons. In the past, I've used ground pork from the market. This time, I used pork shoulder and let the food processor do the grinding. I used the format from Martha Stewart Living, October 2011, but made a change or two. Rather than repeat the entire recipe which is quite simple, I'll just note those changes and recommendations here:

For apple sage sausage, divide the 4 lbs. of pork in half. With one half (2 lbs.), make the herbed pork in the Martha recipe, adding 1/2 of a chopped peeled apple to the food processor. You will only need 1/2 of the herbs and spices called for, because you will only be using half of the pork. We are lucky with this one, as I used sage, thyme and apple from our own garden and orchard.
For hot Italian sausage, with the other half (2 lbs.) of the pork, add twice as many herbs and spices as called for in my blog post about hot Italian sausages here. The original recipe is intended for only one pound of pork.
Be kind to yourself and follow the directions about giving the cut cubes of meat a gentle freeze before attempting to chop them in the food processor. Especially the fatty bits turn out with a much better texture when they are very cold first. I learned this the hard way so you don't have to! If you cut your meat chunks first and pop them into the freezer, they will be ready by the time you have the rest of your ingredients prepped.

For nearly the same amount of effort, I had given myself eight chubby 1/2 lb. packages of two varieties of sausage. Seven of the packages went into the freezer. The remaining 1/2 pound went in to our evening's dinner, browned in patties, served alongside spaghetti in browned-butter sage sauce tossed with tangy Mizithra cheese and chunks of the roasted Kabocha squash I'd also worked on during the day.

I only wish my schedule allowed for more home alone days!

Home Alone, Part One

2011-10-25T00:34:00.000-07:00

Pumpkin Seeds, right, and Kabocha Squash Seeds, left

I won't say never, but I hardly ever am home alone. Today was different. I kissed My Baby goodbye this morning, and had the whole day at home to myself. The day in the making started with the faint scent of woodsmoke in the crisp air, the kind of morning for which fuzzy warm slippers and a cup of hot coffee are made. This was going to be fun.

Designs for the adventure I'd literally cook up with my home alone day included:

four pounds of pork waiting to be made into two kinds of sausage

2 pounds apple sage sausage
2 pounds hot Italian sausage

one large Kabocha squash and a medium Cinderella pumpkin for a winter's worth of puree.

Ever since last summer when I had my leaf-to-root epiphany, I've been trying to do a better job of using all the edible bits one foodstuff offers, and it's been both fun and humbling. My "using it all" intentions are twofold; to be in fraternity with my fellow citizens who have no choice but to use it all in this time of economic depression, and at least as importantly, to be a more responsible citizen by honoring the food that is available. Rather than to cut into several squashes for their succulent flesh alone, it makes sense to pick one and exploit all of its nutritional value before reaching for another.

As I split open the blue-skinned squash for its oven roasting debut, its big, puffy seeds nearly burst out. I hadn't planned this, but today, grateful that I have the luxury of time in the kitchen, I scooped the slimy seeds into a strainer to prepare them for roasting.

My good intentions quickly went astray. I grew more and more anxious as I tried to clean the slippery squash seeds, most of which refused to release their fiberous hold from their mother ship. I had a lot to accomplish with my day alone, and I didn't want to spend it all on one scant cup of seeds. The morning's calm was turning to subtle irritation. My commitment to the seed project grew challenged as my breathing grew shallow and I grew increasingly antsy. Who knew that squash seeds could be so unraveling?

Not So Slippery, Easier to Clean Pumpkin Seeds

What happened next is a testament to my five-year yoga practice.

I began to notice the seeds. As I paid attention to their nature, it occurred to me that the seeds were quite like so many other things in life... Neither a hold too tight nor a hold too loose proved productive. A "Mama Bear" hold allowed the seeds to easily come free from their pulp. My favorite little calming phrase began to repeat itself over and over in my mind, "Quiet mind, peaceful heart." As my breathing once again deepened, an untroubled karma yoga "discipline of action" filled me.

After a few minutes, the silent phrase was unconsciously replaced by my usual barely audible hum, a sure sign that my inner joy had returned. And, as a bonus, piles of spicy squash and pumpkin seeds and a winter's worth of sweet puree resulted for us to enjoy.

Sweet, Smoky and Spicy Roasted Squash and Pumpkin Seeds

Preheat oven to 375. Cover a baking sheet with foil and set aside.

Fill a small saucepan 2/3 full with water and add 1 tablespoon salt. Add seeds from winter squash, thoroughly removed of fiber and rinsed, bring to a boil and simmer for ten minutes. Drain, and pat dry.

Per squash, combine in a small bowl:
2 Tablespoons brown sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon smoked paprika

Add seeds to bowl and stir several minutes to combine and coat evenly. Drizzle baking sheet with olive oil. Spread seeds atop in one layer. Lay several thin slices of butter ( about 2 Tablespoons) on seeds. Place baking sheet in oven for five minutes. Remove and stir seeds to redistribute and mix in butter. Roast for another 10 minutes, stir again. At this point, roast in five minute increments until the seeds are as toasty as you prefer, another 5 minutes or so for smaller pumpkin seeds, another 10 minutes or so for larger squash seeds. Allow to cool completely before eating, as they crisp up as they cool.

Eat out of hand for a snack, or sprinkle on salads, breads or casseroles.

There was more to my home alone day...

Ten Things to Like About Europe

2011-10-22T19:01:00.000-07:00

Europe was fantastic! It is difficult to summarize one of the most sensational times of my life, and I don't use the word sensational lightly. In Europe, all of my sensory faculties were exercised in new ways: Textures, colors, sights, sounds and scents-- there is really just no way to report the dynamism of this adventure in one blog post. I've grappled with how to share this great experience, and I've landed on this: Just to share a few of my most immediate and casual perceptions of Venice, Koper, Dubrovnik, Korfu, Olympia and Myconos.

While we wined and dined delightfully throughout our trip, food and wine wasn't the focus. Since this is technically a food blog, though, I'll lead this list with that topic:

1. The fish along the Mediterranean is impeccable. Fishing is, of course, serious business there, and every bite is served at it's peak of freshness. We had wonderful fish and seafood every day, and sometimes two or three times a day. In Oregon, we live about an hour's drive from the Pacific Ocean, but we rarely get fish as beautiful and tasting-of-the-sea as this. What a lovely treat.

2. Graffiti happens. EVERYWHERE. Even on the 400-year-old Ponte de Rialto, the oldest bridge spanning the Grand Canal in Venice. What you must remember is that 400 years is pretty young by European standards.

Graffiti happens in Koper, Slovenia, above and below:

And in Dubrovnic, Croatia.

I wonder if we globally embraced graffiti as the public art form it is most often intended to be, if it might not just go away. Maybe. Or not. Maybe we just have to get used to it as a part of every landscape.

3. The US Postal Service might not have to raise its rates if we took a tip form the Italians. The three people from right to left in the above photo...

...Il Postino. Yes, postal workers. No uniforms. They wear whatever they please, at no cost to the Italian government. Shrewd. And, they just hop onto the water-bus (vaporetto) to make their appointed rounds.

4. Men in Italy don't have haircuts, they have hair-dos,

and apparently, the more hair the better.

This young fellow is getting an early start at the man-do. This is something I really enjoyed about Italy!

5. Italians take good and beautiful footwear very seriously. Starting, again, at a very young age. These silver sneakers were on the feet of a little girl about a year old,

and these sliver sneakers were on a man about 60 years old!

I didn't want to appear too voyeuristic, so I didn't get all the photos I wanted of great footwear,

but these were my very most favorite of all the great shoes I saw. Metallic is "in" the whole world over, it seems. (As is a nice pedicure!)

6. If the grandeur and heft of buildings are a reflection of a people,

we in the US we should start to worry. It's not just the fortifications and cathedrals that are built to last, but houses, too.

I guess rooftop air conditioning units aren't necessary when your walls are stone two or three feet thick.

The ruins in Olympia make me wonder how much of any building in my town will be standing after nearly 4000 years.

7. I'm so glad I read the book City of the Falling Angels by John Berendt before going to Venice. It gave things like the Gran Teatro La Fenice,

and this Murano glass figurine blown before our eyes depth and interest, and linked Venice's rich and colorful history with the people of today.

8. Like interesting shoes...

... eye wear is pretty important to Italians.

I think these clear lucite frames in a shop window are wonderful,

and if you look closely to this shop window, bizarre and wildly creative frames will emerge.

I wish I had the presence to wear something like this (not to mention the bank account to support an eyeglass habit!)

All the eye wear I saw, both on faces and in windows, was anything but subtle.

9. Sunrises all around the globe are worth waking up early for.

10. People and their dogs...

...look alike...

...the world over!

A huge thank you, Nancy, for making this extraordinarily memorable time possible,

and to Ebba Jo, Marti and Luc

for providing such wonderful companionship.

And a big hug to you, My Baby, for providing me entree to these wonderful people and this delicious experience!

Wake up, Venice!

2011-10-01T12:26:00.000-07:00

Wake up! Wake up, everyone! Wake up, Venice!

We arrived in Venice last night just before sunset, in time to revel in the evening's pink sunset falling on the Grand Canal, to sip Chianti, and enjoy the end of the day bustle of people coming and going on the vaporetto.

We watched the piano nobile in the huge private mansion just across the canal from our hotel being prepared for the night's party, complete with gigantic crystal chandeliers glowing, candles lit on the steps of the dock to warm guests arriving by boat, and footmen. Stripe-shirted gondoliers stroked through the water in front of us, enchanting other Venecian guests in their slim shiny black vessels. Venice is so much more beautiful than I'd ever imagined and I had had pretty high expectations.

After dark we wound ourselves through unobtrusive cobble walkways lined with seemingly ancient shuttered buildings of variegated gold, ochre, rust and gray, intuitively finding an open square lined with canopied outdoor restaurants. Choosing one on the basis of its quaintness, we ate our first Italian great meal of black risotto made with cuttlefish, roasted whole branzino, salade misto and wine from Verona.

After lingering at our table to soak up the pealing church bells and attuning our ears to conversations in the most romantic of languages, we strolled our travel-weary selves back to our charming hotel to collapse.

Now, two hours later, like a child on Christmas morning I've woken myself up with giddy laughter-- I'm in Italy!! And I want it to wake up so we can play. I want to see the boats unloading the days worth of supplies to markets and restaurants, I want to watch shopkeepers sweep their walks and open their gates. I'm wondering how my first true Italian espresso will taste and want to smell the morning scent of a bakery. And I giggle some more.

My excitement wakes My Baby, who is apparently a little giddy himself. As if he's been reading my mind, he jokingly asks if I think the Italians can make coffee as good as Starbucks, and wonders what we'll have for breakfast.

Hurry Up, Venice! Wake up!

Sticks Forks Fingers is off seeing the world and will return all too soon.

Skirts, Boots and Ginger Cookies

2011-09-27T00:34:00.000-07:00

Mom's Favorite Chewy Molasses Ginger Cookies

The fall Nordstrom catalog arrived the other day. There are very few things about which I get excited enough about to be willing to kiss warm, dry, social summer goodbye,

but boots and grey sweater dresses definitely are on my buh-bye summer list. Thank you Nordstrom, for easing the transition.

These uber-special ginger cookies are another item on the"so-long summer, catch ya the next time around" list. If I believed in secret recipes, mine would be this. But for you I share.

I think of this recipe at this time of year not only for it's chewy, spicy, gingery, molasses-ey goodness, but because it is one of my mom's favorites, and she has an early autumn birthday. For twenty-five years, my mom and I have lived she on the east coast, me on the west, and rarely get to share birthdays or changing seasons. I think of her every time I make them.

And while I'm talking about my mom, fall and fashion, let me share this: It was my mom who showed me to care about fashion. We weren't wealthy, but we were creative and industrious. Under my mom's tutelage, the very first garment I sewed at the age of eight was a simple skirt. I wore it to school the first day of the fourth grade.

I still love skirts best of all. (And, by the way, Nordstrom's skirts rock this fall.)

Dolman sleeves??? I love dolman sleeves!

It was also my mom who made way in her kitchen for her eight-year-old daughter to play and experiment. After a couple of years of those experiments going well, it was my mom who traded me dishwashing duties for cooking, an arrangement that suited this pre-teen well. All I had to do was make a list of ingredients I would need, and they'd magically appear for my next turn in the kitchen, thanks to mom.

Cookies Men Like

These cookies also remind me of my mom because back somewhere around 1968, something like it was all the rage with her and her coffee clatch of neighbor women. Theirs was a little more dense in texture, not so chewy, but pretty darn good. They all loved it because it was a favorite with their husbands. Their overheard conversation made me think about food in a new and powerful way. While I've never met a woman who doesn't like this cookie I'll always think of them as the Cookie Men Like.

Go ahead a treat yourself to these cookies. The batch makes a mere 15 (HUGE) cookies, enough for you to have one with tea the afternoon you bake them, and the rest for your office mates, neighbors or if you're lucky, your mom. They also make a pretty fantastic I cream sandwich with brown sugar- molasses ice cream (even more huge.)

Chewy Ginger Molasses Cookies

makes 15 very large cookies

2 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
3 teaspoons pumpkin or apple pie spice
1/2 teaspoon salt
zest of one lemon, finely grated
a generous 1/3 cup finely snipped candied ginger
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup canola oil
1 large egg
1/4 cup dark molasses
Additional white sanding sugar (for rolling dough balls)

Preheat oven to 350˚. Line two large baking sheets with parchment paper.

Whisk flour through ginger (six ingredients) in a large bowl. In another large bowl, beat sugar and canola oil with stand or hand mixer until pale in color, about 2 minutes. Beat in egg. Beat in molasses. Cup at a time, gently stir in flour mixture by hand.

With a 3-tablespoon scoop, gather up a ball of dough and drop it into a small bowl of sanding sugar. Gently roll it to evenly coat the dough. Place at least 2 inches apart on parchment lined baking sheets. (Five cookies of this size will fill a standard baking sheet.)

Bake until cookies are golden brown and crackly on top, about 12 minutes. Let cook 3 minutes on baking sheet, then transfer to wire rack to complete cooling.

Notes: These make 30 or so smaller cookies as well, just watch to time accordingly to not overbake. But there's something so generous about one large cookie rather than 3 small ones!

The lemon zest is the secret ingredient. You don't notice it's there unless it's not there, so don't be tempted to omit it.

Granulated sugar will work in a pinch, but the big white sanding sugar crystals make a really neat textural crunch around the chewiness of the cookies. I get mine at a local grocery store bakery... You might have to ask. Or order at King Arthur.

Happy Birthday, Mom!

Tomato Feast Tomato Famine

2011-09-23T22:15:00.000-07:00

Tomato Water Mocktails

By mid-September, most of Oregon has entered a definite early autumn. Usually. But not this year.
For the longest time, summer refused to come. I took the flannel sheets off of the beds in early June, and it was a month too soon. The flowers took their sweet time coming into robust bloom. The vegetable garden languored to the point that we anticipated our gardening efforts would be a bust. Let me add here that we had planted somewhere in the neighborhood of a dozen tomato plants, and there are only two of us. I'm sure you can see where this is going.

Now it's mid-September, when typically our Oregon days reach the mid-seventies for a high, and we're still popping up to the high eighties. The tomatoes have decided to ripen. All at once.

I'm not complaining. Last summer, we ended up at this time with tiny hard, green tomatoes, and you can only fry up so many of those.

All summer we've made lovely "mocktails" with a squeeze of lemon or lime, ice, a glassful of mineral water and a shake or two of any number of delicious bitters as the mood strikes. Fee Brothers makes a huge variety of bitters, and I couldn't help but to stock the pantry with lemon, West Indies orange, plum, cranberry, mint, cherry, peach, rhubarb and celery flavors. (My local liquor store only stocks a few flavors, but happily ordered in the rest on request.) This again, for two people, amounts to what I'm sure is a lifetime supply of bitters.

As I pondered a pile of very ripe tomato orbs of multiple varieties, this variation of a little afternoon refresher came to mind.

Tomato Water Mocktails

makes one

1 large or 2 small very ripe tomatoes
one small sprig basil
1 small wedge lemon
ice to fill glass
mineral water, chilled
celery bitters

Chop tomatoes roughly. Place a few pieces at a time in a wire mesh strainer and crush with the back of a spoon over a small bowl.
Tear off several basil leaves. Muddle in bottom of glass with the back of a spoon.
Squeeze in the lemon wedge and toss the remains into the glass.
Pour tomato water back through the strainer into the glass.
Fill glass with ice.
Fill glass with mineral water.
Top with two or three shakes of celery bitters.
Gently push down just a little on the top ice cube, not enough to disturb the lovely red tomato water layer on the bottom.
Garnish with a sprig of basil flowers. Serve with dispatch.

If you want to fancy this up for company or a special occasion, I'd go to the trouble of straining, without squeezing, the tomato pulp through several layers of cheesecloth or a dish towel. Otherwise, the tomato water does separate, creating a more rustic appearance.

I invite you to share your ideas for quick, easy ways to quickly capitalize on highly anticipated fresh tomatoes while they are available and abundant. Of course there's nothing wrong with eating them out of hand for a snack or sliced for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and we've been doing a lot of that, too.

Eat a Rainbow

2011-09-11T08:39:00.000-07:00

"Roy G. Biv," my 6th grade science teacher, Mr. Rowles, said. "Memorize that, and you'll always know the colors of the rainbow. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet." I remember my mind wandering off into prisms of light; dreaming about white light splitting into the Roy G. Biv spectrum; dancing through millions of tiny raindrops each refracting white into many colors making up one huge rainbow after a storm or through the spray of a fountain; and wondering about the fabled pot of gold at each ones' end. (If I remembered that Au stood for gold, would that make the wandering thoughts okay during science class?) Rainbows and pyramids and...plates. Plates? What's inspiring about a plate to the average elementary school student?

This salad came from my recent pondering of the new USDA food guidance icon, My Plate, which replaces the Food Pyramid. No one asked me, but it seems to me that the My Plate icon would be better suited for adult consumers, not school children. My Plate is easy to understand at a quick glance, something that could be tacked up on grocery store and restaurant walls to remind grown-ups, whom children are at the mercy of when it comes to food purchasing, of some good ratios to remember for their health and that of their kids. But is My Plate enough to inspire a generation of young people just learning about making food and lifestyle choices?

The now obsolete My Pyramid, by contrast, implies a rounded healthy life for kids. See all the young people playing outdoors? See the kiddo bounding to the top of the pyramid, symbolizing the achievement of greater health through nutrition and exercise? The ratios are still easily understood at quick glance by looking at the size of each food group slice. This is exciting stuff.

I love the Food Pyramid, and am really sorry to see it go. How can the My Plate icon even come close to offering this kind of inspiration?

This Eat a Rainbow Salad is offered to all the teachers and kids in the world who have gone back to school, and all the moms and dads who's routines have been turned upside down to get their kids there. I hope that it will remind the grown-ups of the good stuff they give to our children, and that that good stuff really can spark imaginations, change lives, and improve healthy outcomes. The salad is easy enough for even young kids to help make, and, it packs well for lunches, for both teachers and for kids who might like to eat a rainbow.

Eat A Rainbow Salad
1 cup orzo, cooked in 4 quarts water, drained and rinsed
Red stuff:
cherry tomatoes, halved
diced red pepper
Orange stuff:
orange cherry tomatoes, halved
Yellow stuff:
pattypan or yellow crookneck squash, sliced into bite sized pieces
Hungarian pepper, sliced thinly
Green stuff:
green beans, sliced into thirds
green onions, thinly sliced
fresh basil, thinly sliced
(OK, so there's no blue stuff!)
Purple stuff:
purple kohlrabi, sliced into quarters then thinly sliced
purple onion rings for garnish

In a skillet, swirl pan with extra virgin olive oil. Quickly saute yellow squash, green beans and kohlrabi until just beginning to soften, to al dente. Put all ingredients, except garnish in bowl. Top with dressing.

Dressing:
Juice of on freshly squeezed lemon (more yellow stuff!)
equal amount of extra virgin olive oil (eyeball it)
salt, pepper
Shake all ingredients together in a jar. Pour over salad and lightly mix until evenly coated.

Blueberry Sorbet, Buttermilk and Sweet Corn Ice Creams and Carmelized Corn Flakes

2011-09-02T00:34:00.000-07:00

This is the Best Dessert of Summer 2011, hands down. And there are a few people who had something to say about how it came together.

Admittedly, my favorite food blogger, Tim Mazurek, at my favorite Lottie + Doof tossed me a few bones. His recent post about "weird" sweet corn ice cream was a gift. Claudia Fleming's Sweet Corn Ice Cream was already on my list of things-to-make-if-I-could-only-afford-her-beautiful-out-of-print-cookbook (at last check, a signed first edition is $475 on e-Bay.) Tim figured it out, and pushed my lazy bones going.

Next, Tim posted about a lovely blueberry galette. We had already galetted ourselves out around here so I didn't want to go quite that direction, but his cornmeal pastry dough contains a good splash of buttermilk, which also got me thinking...

All of Tim's flavors sounded exciting and summery together, but I wanted to give them my own twist. So I made this blueberry sorbet, Tim's sweet corn ice cream, and continued to experiment with my smooth invert sugar no-cook base for the buttermilk ice cream as follows:

Sticks Forks Fingers Buttermilk Ice Cream

2 cups cold buttermilk
1 pint cold whipping cream
1 cup granulated sugar
scant 1/4 cup light corn syrup
pinch salt

Stir buttermilk, sugar, corn syrup and salt together in large mixing bowl. Let sit until sugar is completely dissolved, stirring frequently, about 5 minutes. Stir in cold cream until all ingredients are thoroughly combined. Freeze according to ice-cream maker directions. Makes one generous quart.

The crowning glory is the caramelized corn-flake crunchies on top. There is just no good way to describe the goodness of those buttery caramel-y crunchies and how they crown these flavors so beautifully. I adapted the recipe from The New York Times:

Caramelized Corn Flakes
2 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon dried buttermilk powder
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
1 pinch salt
1 cup corn flakes

Melt butter in small microwavable bowl for about 30 seconds. Stir until butter is completely melted. Add buttermilk powder, sugar and salt. Stir until thoroughly combined. Pour cornflakes on top, and with bottom of measuring cup, smash down on them a few times to crush into medium sized bits. Stir until flakes are evenly coated.

In a small parchment lined baking sheet (a toaster oven is perfect for this) dump mixture and spread flat. Bake at 250-270 degrees until well browned and bubbly (caramelized), about 20 minutes. Watch carefully at the end not to burn. Allow to cool completely, then break up into bits and sprinkle over ice cream.

You want this dessert. You really do. Hurry. Before summer is over and it's too late and you have to file it away for next year. Hurry.

Cleaning Up: My Postprandial Grace

2011-08-30T00:01:00.000-07:00

I gave up saying grace at the table some number of years ago. I didn't like how the practice could unintentionally appear sanctimonious by excluding others or cause them to feel awkward; other family members grew reluctant; and for a while I was angry at God for how things turned out and didn't feel like talking.

My earlier orientation toward thankfulness and gratitude hasn't changed, only the way in which I express them. Frequent little toasts, "To you," "To us," "To the beautiful evening," "To your big day tomorrow," "To the garden and the gardener," are minor prayers of sorts, linking my simple thoughts, appreciations and thankful awarenesses to the grander concepts of gratitude, abundance and community. But it is when I'm at my kitchen sink where the expression of my thankfulness takes a more intimate turn.

Some of the most sacred moments of my life happen amid a dim hushed house, warm soapy water and a dishcloth. After all guests are gone I stand at the sink like a flamingo (right foot firmly placed on inner thigh above left knee, my signature genuflect since childhood) thinking through the time we've just spent, flooded with the sense of connectedness and in awe at how my life has been touched by such wonderful people. The higher the stacks of plates and glasses and the more baked-on the schmutz in the pots and pans, the more time to settle into these private devotions.

During these times my hopes silently join in again with those of our companions for health (our own and those we love,) prosperity, and acceptance. I remember and swallow up more of the lingering good medicine of our earlier laughter. I'm grateful that our table contains far more than enough to share. And, in all reality, I'm often blessed by the fact that our friends and family most often come 30, 40 or 90 miles to our countryside home to share a meal.

All alone, these private check-ins have a way of pointing out my earlier angry short-sightedness and the truth that things turned out pretty great after all, even far greater than I had imagined. My former crossness melts away to humility.

So, if you come to our house for a visit, please don't think I'm rushing your exit if I decline your kind offer to help clean up. It's just that when you leave, I'll be saying grace.

Wine for Each Course = A Happy Heart and Lots of Glasses

Be Nice To Your Cheese

2011-08-23T23:03:00.000-07:00

Once we hit forty, women only have about four taste buds left: one for vodka, one for wine, one for cheese, and one for chocolate. ~ Gina Barecca

Cheese. Even though I'm not scholarly on the topic, it is an incredibly fun world to explore. I find myself regularly purchasing cheeses just because the name sounds interesting as well as some that became early favorites. While Oregon has its share of really spectacular, award winning cheeses, there's also no better way to learn about far away places than to taste their cheeses with place-matched wines. And, while imported cheeses can be expensive, a chunk of cheese and a bottle of wine are far cheaper than plane tickets for two and can provide a lovely moment of transport.

The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese. ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

I love the freebie cheese papers that are sometimes offered at finer cheese purveyors, and if available, always take one in which to wrap my investment. At first, I admit that I felt a little sanctimonious over using a shi-shi product like cheese paper. But, cheese stored in plastic wrap, I've learned the hard way, is a kiss of death to our fine cultured treasures.

Plastic wrap suffocates the living cheese, trapping in its exhalate (gas and moisture just like breath and sweat) thereby encouraging bacteria growth on your precious bundles of joy. Plastic wrap then traps the off-odors that cheese produce naturally (like ammonia) from being dissipated. It doesn't take too much imagination to see where the term "cutting the cheese" comes from when you unwrap a nice cheese after a couple of days in plastic. Let's put it plainly: BO and bad breath do not a fine cheese make.

Wine and cheese are ageless companions, like aspirin and aches, or June and moon, or good people and noble ventures. ~ M. F. K. Fisher

Cheese paper can be purchased in too-large, wastefully sized sheets a dozen or 15 to a package, at the high cost of anywhere between $6 and $11 dollars. In my household ledger, this adds to the overall cost of the experience and is money I'd rather spend on yet another fine cheese or a toward a nice bottle of wine to go with it. Cheese paper that doesn't come in tear-off rolls, allowing me to properly portion a piece to fit my remaining cheese and containing the costs of my home kitchen has been something of an annoyance, and for about half a minute, even enough so to be an idea for a new business venture.

Cheese - milk's leap toward immortality. ~ Clifton Paul Fadiman

Desperate times; desperate measures, as they say, caused me to recently rip off a sheet of baking parchment as an experimental wrap on a really nice cheese. Viola!! Parchment can be found for under $3 for a 30-square foot roll at the grocery, and I always have it around. My cheese paper dilemma has been solved. No extra clutter, no exorbitant prices, and really nice, fresh cheese.

Give the parchment wrap a try and let me know how it works for you. And I'm also interested in your comments about what cheeses are your favorites, where they come from, and what wines you prefer as pairings.

For centuries, people thought the moon was made of green cheese. Then astronauts found that the moon is really a big hard rock. That's what happens to cheese when you leave it out. ~ Unknown

Just Like Bourdain?

2011-08-20T08:15:00.000-07:00

A review of Anthony Bourdain's Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook, along with a photolog of a wonderful evening I had at the restaurant Piccolo in Minneapolis on a short stop last year. It was a phenomenal experience that I never got around to writing about, but is definitely worth pointing out.

I've been hanging out with Anthony Bourdain this week, having read his smart, intriguing f-bomb-filled memoir, Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook. This is not a man short on sharp opinions, self indulgence or back-handed compliments. Actually, since the definition of a back-handed compliment is an insult dressed up to look like a compliment, that is not true: Bourdain's way leans more to compliments dressed up to look like insults. Would that make him the king of the back-handed insult? (If my arm-chair psychology has it right, it also belies a teddy-bear heart hidden somewhere down in him.) His expressions are wired with angry negativity, but he is clever and sassy, and smart enough to know a good thing, so out it comes... A very bloody valentine.

Take for example, the chapter titled "Go Ask Alice" in which Bourdain takes to task the Green Goddess herself, the "Mother of Slow Food", the Orator of Organic, the High Exalted Alice Waters. In one of many castigating stories he tells about her, Alice Waters, who hadn't voted since 1966, suddenly became political to the point of nominating herself and a cadre of influential foodie friends to the newly elected Barack Obama as "a small advisory group-- a 'Kitchen Cabinet' if you will-- to help with your selection of a White House chef. A person with integrity and devotion to the ideals of environmentalism, health and conservation..."

Bourdain is aghast that Ms. Waters had assumed the worst about the White House and its kitchen, an assumption that, according to him, even a token Google search would have dispelled. "It's all about Alice," is Bourdain's cry. In the end, though, he finds common ground with her and tips his hat to her misaligned (his opinion) work for having made a difference, and opts to accept the messenger if not her precise message. Happy Valentine's Day, Alice Waters.

On the other hand, Bourdain's latent teddy-bear self shows through with his deep respect for Justo Thomas, the unknown and unsung hero of his chapter called "My Aim is True". This chapter/essay couldn't be more beautiful. Mr. Thomas is the fish butcher at Le Bernardin, the Michelin-starred, three consecutive New York Times four-star reviewed restaurant which Bourdain deems "probably the best seafood restaurant in America." The reverence in which Bourdain depicts Mr. Thomas' swift, meticulous, professional work all but glows, along with his respect for Eric Ripert and the management of Le Bernardin for their committment to social justice. This gorgeous essay moved me to tears, and I learned so much about the restaurant industry at the same time.

His vitriol and self-indulgence has rubbed off on me, so allow me, for a moment, to depart from my usual sunshiny self to blather about things in the world of food and wine that annoy me. Here I go, channeling my best, most disagreeable, inner Tony Bourdain:

Cologned service staff. If I were the God of Restaurants, this would be cause for immediate dismissal. I hate it when Pinot Noir tastes like Eau de Pew or when Syrah tastes like Essence of Sunday School Teacher, which happens all to frequently while dining out. This goes for those pouring at wineries, too.
Restaurant cell phone chatterers. Put. It. Down. "They" will not miss you for the fricking hour it takes to nourish yourself and enjoy your meal. If they can't wait, please keep you phone on vibrate and step outside to take your call. Your louder-than-table-talk phone conversation is seriously diminishing my enjoyable experience, and next time, if my stink eye isn't enough to make you end your call, I may even tell on you to the waiter.
Cheap-ass tippers, and you know who you are. The people who accommodate and anticipate your every need, take all the crap that comes their way both from their management and from thoughtless patrons should be treated nicely. Come on, have you ever met a wealthy waitperson?? Once you do, you can become stingy with your tips.

Well, that's about it for my terrible rant. I can see that I'll have to leave the intense, entertaining and intelligent vociferations to Mr. Bourdain.

A Little Love Story

2011-08-07T15:40:00.000-07:00

Even though I'd been promised a breakfast of lox and bagels with the works, while lying awake in bed in the wee hours, thoughts of lemon buttermilk pancakes kept popping into my head. I tried to push the pancake thoughts aside in between thinking and fretting, contemplations both anxious and excited. We've not been sleeping well at night here lately. Yes, there are lots of exhilarating future possibilities bubbling below the surface, but the thing that mostly keeps us awake is sorrow. Our beloved Murray the Amazing Wonderdog is slipping away from us with cancer and we are preparing ourselves.

Lying awake with so much on my mind makes me hungry, so I bumble out of bed before sunrise and gather pancake ingredients from the pantry. This is so unlike me, whose internal clock tends toward the night owl setting. My vigilance over Murray has heightened other thoughts and observations about this morning, too. I notice the cool morning air which pours over the hills outside our east-facing door and windows, filling the house with a subtle pressure before its escape out the westerly door and windows. I notice that Murray, who pants and breathes hard at night, has a little wag to his tail this morning as he joins me in the kitchen, a hopeful sign that our days together aren't yet ready to end. I walk out on the east deck to see golden and pink sun rays reach over the hills. I notice a softly lit wispy layer of low-lying fog puff around the huge hay bales in our farmer-neighbor's field out our north-facing front door, and hear the intense low buzz of a hummingbird gathering its dawn breakfast.

I know My Baby hasn't slept much either, and after putting the kettle on the stove for tea, walk back to the guest room bed where we are sleeping (our bedroom is up a flight of stairs which Murray-Dog is having trouble negotiating so we have temporarily moved to the guest quarters for him) to kiss his forehead and ask if he wants pancakes and tea before trying to capture a little more rest. Yes, he drowsily says, if you bring them here and we have some together.

Back in the kitchen the teapot begins singing softly, its bubbling contents awaking Darjeeling leaves. My 32-year-old copy of Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook is pulled from the shelf and nearly flips itself open to the stained pancake page. I reach into the refrigerator for buttermilk, an egg, and a lemon and only now notice that I've purchased low fat buttermilk, and wonder how that will work in the pancakes. (Note to self: Make optometrist appointment. Label reading has become impaired by outdated Rx.) I smile when I pull the cast-iron skillet from its hook and appreciate that My Baby had just seasoned it yesterday. Perfect timing.

Even though it's early and we are sleepy and heavyhearted, I take the time to dust the pancakes with powdered sugar and drape a lemon slice across both platefuls, because life is just too special to not make it special.

We sip and nibble in the quiet, then are able to fall asleep in each others arms, Murray the Amazing Wonderdog settling in near the foot of the bed. When we awake, there will be lox and bagels and strong black coffee. And whatever else the day brings.

The Art of Toast

2011-07-31T23:49:00.000-07:00

Toast: Drop a couple of bread slices in the slots. Wait a few minutes. Pop. Butter. Eat, right?

Not so fast! I realize that it's only toast, but since so many terrific nibbles begin with toast, including a summer radish tea sandwich, perhaps it deserves a more careful look.

Everything I learned about great toast I learned from my Grandpa, and in order to understand why, it would help to know a little about him.

A self-taught but serious student of classical music, my Grandpa was always either quietly humming or gently whistling to himself whatever movement in which he was currently engrossed. His perpetual music making gave me the sense that he was always thinking of beautiful things. Grandpa was a slightly built man with a kind of lithe thinness normally associated with fast movers like runners, or in those with a higher than normal level of internal discipline. Interestingly, I never saw Grandpa make the rapid, reflexive moves of an athlete, but he could sit very still, quietly listening to family conversation the entire afternoon long without necessity of comment. When he did speak, it may have been on a point long since passed over, but with evidence that he'd been thinking it through all the while. And, when he spoke, we all listened.

That level of internal discipline, apparently, is also what it takes to make really wonderful toast. As it is with so many things, the few extra minutes that separate okay toast from really great toast require a bit of self-restraint.

Great toast always starts with great bread. I recently discovered Dave's Killer Bread in the natural foods section of my grocery. For grainier breads Dave's is the bomb. For the radish sandwiches, I choose Dave's 21 Whole Grains. 21 Whole Grains is just what it sounds like, only with a unique combination of seeds added. I am particularly fond of the nutty black sesame seeds speckled throughout and around this loaf.

Whatever bread you happen to use, toast it until it has at least a medium golden tone. Only then will it have the proper amount of toasty flavor. That is the no-brainer part. But here's Grandpa's big secret: If you are using a toaster, leave the slices standing in the slots until they are completely cool. If you are using a toaster oven or some other device, remove the toast, prop it upright, and allow it to completely cool. By all means, do not lay the bread flat on a plate, cutting board or counter. Steam will build underneath as it cools and completely change the texture of the final product from crispy/crunchy to chewy/flabby.

I hear you... you are protesting that your butter won't melt into the crannies of your slice this way. That is right! It won't. I respect the melted butter perspective on toast, I really do. But please hear me out.

With your toast cooling, we can now turn our attention to the other significant aspect. Butter. For the perfect toast you butter needs to be at cool room temperature. During the winter, this is not a problem, but in the heat of summer, it can be a little trickier. You will do well to store your butter in the 'fridge, removing it just 30 minutes or so before using it for it to be at the proper consistency. Unsalted butter is best, and if you feel like the luxury, European butter, of course, is amazing. I'm sorry that my Grandpa never got to taste European butter, now so readily available in the market, before he passed away. He would have loved it on his toast.

The cooled toasted bread and just barely softened butter make the butter even better. Butter becomes more like a cheese in a way. Slather it on. Go ahead. You will be surprised how little butter it takes to give you a lovely layer of buttery yumminess compared to the melted-into-your-toast method.

For a lovely break on a warm summer day, layer thinly sliced radishes atop the butter, sprinkle with Maldon sea salt flakes and serve with a chilled French Rose'. Put your feet up in the shade, take a moment to think about the uniquenesses of the people who have loved you in your lifetime, and raise your glasses and your hearts in their honor. And while you're at it, toast your toast!

Brown Sugar-Molasses Ice Cream and Apricot Gallette

2011-07-26T05:43:00.000-07:00

Brown Sugar-Molasses Ice Cream and Apricot Gallette

My grandmother was a serious, focused woman known for her attention to detail and lack of tolerance for silliness. She was a spectacular seamstress who made things like tailored suits from the best wool, complete with welted pockets, satin linings and bone buttons. While my mother and I sewed so that we'd have lots of fashionable things to wear, Grandma sewed, she once told me, in order to have fine things to wear. It is with the same sense of order and precision that she addressed cooking.

My grandmother was an excellent cook who eschewed the encroaching fast food conveniences like Minute Rice (regular rice is more nutritious, she told me, is less expensive and only takes 15 minutes longer) for seasonally fresh and home-preserved items. As the adept executive assistant to the chief executive of an insurance company, Grandma once told the story of being served turtle soup at a dinner with her boss. As an eight-year-old, turtle soup was the most exotic food I could imagine. I was dually impressed with Grandma's gustatorial bravery. And, I wondered, if a turtle could be prepared and eaten, then what else??

Grandma served me many wonderfully prepared dishes, but one thing stands out as the most simply spectacular thing I ever tasted: Apricot pie. I only had my grandma's apricot pie once, and even though it was close to four decades ago, the memory is boldly indelible. The sweet and tart and velvety fruit, still subtly warm, enrobed in a crackly, flaky crust stole my attention.

Honestly, I've never tried to recreate that pie, and never will. That delicious memory is simply too precious to be tampered with. I'm happy, though, to allow it to inspire new iterations of the theme. My Grandma would have loved this apricot gallette and its accompanying ice cream. I think you might, too.

A fresh apricot is a fine thing, but poaching, roasting or baking turns it into something ethereal and otherworldly, both in intensified flavor and in melting texture. For the gallette I used exactly the same method and pastry recipe as this, substituting 8 large apricots, halved, for the fruit. The crisp and tender butter pastry marries happily with the apricots.

The brown sugar-molasses ice cream (my new favorite flavor) came about as a bit of a fluke. I always make ice cream from a cooked custard, so when I skipped that method in a time crunch I really expected a ho-hum outcome. I am my grandmother's granddaughter, after all, and cut corners are usually noticed. I was very wrong, and will experiment further with this "cheater" ice cream base. The ice cream froze into a perfectly firm yet creamy and scoopable texture free of icy particles, which is what I had always thought I was avoiding with the more laborious custard.

I had planned just the brown sugar ice cream flavor, but as I was stirring it all together, I really wanted a darker color and deeper flavor than I was getting. The addition of molasses was also an experiment and resulted in something lovely.

Brown Sugar-Molasses Ice Cream

2 cups whole milk
2 cups cream
1 1/4 cups dark brown sugar
2 tablespoons dark molasses
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
pinch kosher salt

Mix all ingredients together in 2 quart mixing bowl until sugar and molasses are completely dissolved, about 2 minutes. Freeze according to ice cream maker's manufacturers directions. Cover tightly and place in freezer until ready to serve.

To all the grandma's of the world, let us not underestimate our impact on our grandchildren. We never know just what small thing (perhaps an apricot?) may cause them to think of us when we're gone.

A Girl, A Grill and A Gill

2011-07-15T12:53:00.000-07:00

Orange and Herb Grilled Oregon Rockfish

It only made sense that I had lost custody of one of the finest grills ever made in my divorce. Yes, I'd flipped a few burgers and steaks and grilled the pizzas over the years, but the grill was for the most part man's domain. So I left behind the gargantuan manly three-element gas grill with an ancillary side burner and all the bells and whistles in exchange for a more diminutive and delicate charcoal-burning Smoky Joe.

My first summer as a suddenly single after 28 years, I learned to love that Smoky Joe. After work on summer nights I'd wrap a meal of various vegetables, maybe a piece of protein of some kind, herbs or a sauce in foil and toss on the hot coals. Meal for one! I had friends over for smoky kebobs or pizzas. It is during this summer that I also made one of my most important pairing discoveries: A charcoal-blackened hotdog is a perfect match for a Cabernet Sauvignon.

A Girl and Her Grill, Then

As I was falling in love with being at the helm of a charcoal fire, a larger grilling surface to cook for a crowd was in order. This is a picture of me, gleeful upon lighting the first fire in my newly-assembled (by me!!) grill. The sense of accomplishment, both on the assembly job and on claiming the title of grill-master was heady.

That was a few years ago. Now, My Baby once again does the majority of the grilling, but knows enough to hand over the matches and spatula when I get the urge to be in charge. I recently read several articles on grilling a whole fish, something I'd not done before and was eager to try.

We are lucky to have a several fine fish markets in our nearby city, and recently went to choose the perfect whole fish. Away we left with a gorgeous orangish-colored Oregon Rockfish.

At home I sprinkled our little fella inside and out with sea salt and pepper and layered a sliced orange, thyme and basil from the garden in his cavity. Slicing deep slits at an angle along his sides was a trick I'd seen done in Mexico, and allowed for even cooked flesh and the smoky flavor to penetrate through.

A few minutes on each side over medium-hot coals rendered a truly delightful pescine dinner. Served with a warm potato salad, grilled whole carrots and asparagus and our delicious leaf-to-root salsa verde, it was a lovely summer's eve meal.

A Girl and Her Grill, Now

One of our favorite Oregon wines from one of our favorite Oregon wineries provided the perfect backdrop for the fish. Reustle Prayer Rock Vineyards 2008 Sauvigonon Blanc carries many qualities of the New Zealand sauvies My Baby and I grew to love while honeymooning there. Perhaps the most playful of Reustle's mostly elegant wines, their 2008 (a sold-out vintage) Sauvignon Blanc has notes of passion fruit and other tropicals atop bright limey citrus, and a zippy acidity for an overall experience I can only sum up as fresh and summery.

Carrot Top Salsa Verde Condiment

To the Ladies: For a Thrill, Seize the Grill!

Leaf-to-Root Eating: Carrot Top Salsa Verde

2011-07-06T21:49:00.000-07:00

Snout-to-tail eating has been the rage, but let me tell you about my recent experimentation with another eating concept I hereby deem Leaf-to-Root Eating.

My wheels first started spinning on this idea after reading Lindsay over at rosemarried a couple of weeks ago. She made a radish leaf pesto pasta salad that sounded pretty good, but made me realize that I didn't really know what radish leaf tasted like at all. Or a carrot or beet top for that matter. In 50 years, I wondered, how many carrot, radish, beet and turnip tops had I let go uneaten?

Lindsay's post completely transformed my Saturday farmer's market experience. Instead of seeing the leafy aspect of all the veggies as merely a freshness indicator or handy carrying device, I saw it as potential addition foodstuff.

Not only did the shiny vermilion radishes, snowy white baby turnips, topaz and ruby-hued beets and carrots no bigger around than a sharpie catch my eye, but I really noticed their fronds. The carrot tops were feathery and light, the beet greens crisp as lettuce, and the radish leaves had a nap much like a cat's tongue. The green stuff was just as inspirational as the rest of the plant.

At home, I felt a little like Alice Waters. I was surrounded by heaps of beautiful fresh food purchased directly from the eager curly-headed young men and sunburn-faced young women who had just that morning picked it from the fields where they had spent previous months non-chemically tilling, composting, planting, watering and weeding. I was actually a little ashamed of myself that it took me so long to realize the utility and joy of the above-ground parts of these plants.

Ms. Waters' book The Art of Simple Food: Notes, Lessons and Recipes from a Delicious Revolution, has a nice recipe for Salsa Verde, which she considers one of four essential sauces and recommends served with grilled fish, meats and vegetables. Her recipe (printed with her permission here in the NYT) is one I've used before. She uses a myriad of finely chopped garden fresh herbs, lemon zest, garlic, capers, salt, pepper and olive oil in this bright, lush condiment. (Do try her version including salt-packed anchovies. It is stellar.) Think chimichurri, and you're getting the idea.

My version used all of one bunch of carrot tops, about a half-bunch of radish tops and several sprigs of basil, parsley and mint from our garden. Instead of lemon zest, I used orange zest. Garlic, good olive oil, and salt and pepper. And while Ms. Waters prefers to use nothing but a sharp knife, I shamelessly resort to my good ol' favorite Cuisinart.

Veggie-top Salsa Verde Even Makes Murray the Amazing Wonderdog Smile

The finished sauce was amazing. Carrot tops, I learned, taste a little carroty and a lot herby. Radish leaves have the spicy aspect of radish roots, but also an obvious green flavor component. It's like the world of herbs just opened up a whole new branch to me.

We used the sauce with a heavenly grilled fish and roasted vegetables, and of course a wonderful Oregon wine which reflected the green notes of the sauce. Next post, I'll go into those details. In a feat of versatility, the next morning a couple of tablespoonsful of the salsa verde was whisked into cracked eggs for a summer vegetable frittata with feta cheese; and the day after that My Baby stirred some into the pulp of a grilled eggplant for a delicious version of baba ghanoush.

Leaf-to-Root Eating, like its Whole Beast counterpart snout-to-tail, is ecologically sound, economically sensible, healthful and practical. After all, even the biggest compost pile can only handle so much nitrogen-based leafy matter. But most importantly, leaf-to-root eating is delicious.

Copper Rivers and Sunny Skies

2011-06-27T16:30:00.000-07:00

Glorious Copper River Salmon

It's the end of June and the flannel sheets jut came off the bed today. The grill is finally ready for full-on action, not just the occasional use between rain showers it has received in the last couple of months. The indoor table is being passed over for one of the al freso dining rooms available on our property, with every meal, morning, noon and night being taken outside.

Our Trusty Weber

Summer, ladies and gents, it seems, has finally arrived in Oregon.

Some with Pesto, Some Without

I'm determined to use the grill as frequently as possible before Labor Day. A glorious Copper River King salmon fillet swabbed in a layer of fresh pesto, bathed in smoke and heat until the skin is rendered crisp is about as wonderful as a meal gets. A few grilled vegetables, a marinated potato salad and a quintessential Oregon Pinot Noir made for one of the most memorable meals I can recall.

Argyle 2008 Pinot Noir, Willamette Valley

Argyle 2008 Pinot Noir (given 90 points by both Wine Advocate and Wine Spectator, not that I put too much stock in such things) has beautiful balance of fruit, acid and tannin. Spice box on the nose, Oregon berry and cherry fruit and damp clean peat work so perfectly with the crackly-skinned salmon.

Copper River salmon is only available for a very short window, so we are sure to take advantage whenever we see it. The goodness of salmon from this particular river is not hype. These stellar athletes of fish must swim 300 miles up a 1000' elevation in cold waters to their spawning grounds, requiring extra amounts of those precious Omega-3's. It is these conditions that cause Copper River salmon to have its red rich flesh, succulent flavor, firm texture and high oil content which makes it excellent for the grill.

Can you believe that the weather forecast predicts rain again tomorrow? Maybe those flannel sheets came off a day or two too soon.

Places of Inspiration

2011-06-23T21:35:00.000-07:00

Spelt Flour Chamomile Apricot Cake Inspired by Kim Boyce, and a Few Other Places

(The potholder upon which the cake rests was a gift from my friend Liz who is an amazing textile artist. The other side of the potholder is really the intended focal point, but I love this side the most, partly because of her architectural handwriting, )

The change of seasons always provides a huge inspiration to me in the kitchen. For this reason, it is shear delight that we have four very distinct seasons in Oregon. Summer, though, is late in coming this year, which means it's still going to be a wait for the sunny plums, apricots, cherries and berries which I've been dreaming about since mid-winter. Sour cherry sorbet is on hold, as is strawberry shortcake (our strawberries are still only coming ripe a few at a time.) The plums hanging on our trees are only about the size of my thumb, so it will still be a while before I'll be baking a much anticipated plum upside-down cake. All of our orchard fruits are late this year. With low heat units to date, I can't even imagine what the 2011 vintage of Oregon wines will be like.

This phenomenon has made me think a lot about sources of food inspiration. Without the muse of a plump velvety apricot or glossy crimson cherry (the cook's equivalent of a beautiful landscape or gorgeous model to a painter) where else do we look for stimulus?

This nice and slightly off-beat cake started with reading through Kim Boyce's Good to the Grain and landing upon her Olive Oil Cake. Her cake is different in that it includes flavor notes of rosemary along with a handful of chopped dark chocolate, and more distinctly that it uses a dab of spelt four. I've never baked with spelt before, so that sounded interesting. Inspiration #1.

Mountain Rose Herb Chamomile Tea

If you can put rosemary in a cake, why not chamomile flowers? We've been drinking potful after potful of the most wonderful chamomile tea in our still nippy evenings. Mountain Rose Herbs makes some great teas, and this chamomile is glorious. One hundred percent chamomile flowers, it brews up into a softly floral golden brew. Inspiration #2.

Notes in the Margins: Other Flavor Combos to Try With This Recipe

I'm craving fresh fruit, but all that is available in my house at the moment are some dried apricots. A quick glance through The Flavor Bible confirms my inkling that, yes, apricot and chamomile are compatible. And if Kim Boyce gets a kick out of adding dark chocolate to rosemary and olive oil, why not add some of that, too? Inspiration #3.

This cake is really wonderful. It has a very delicate crumb for an olive oil based cake, with no heaviness or chewiness that I've experienced with others of the genre. The olive oil flavor does come through, so choose your oil wisely. I suggest choosing either a neutral flavored olive oil, or one with a definite fruitiness. The basic formula is a great framework for seasonal or any other type of inspiration.

Kim's Olive Oil Cake falls at only about a 6 on a 1-10 sweet scale, so it functions nicely as an afternoon tea cake, or as a lovely way to breakfast. A scoop of ice ream (why not chamomile?) or plop of whipped cream dresses it up for an official dessert. I did learn that I'm an all or nothing person when it comes to chocolate. Next time I'll either add quite a bit more, or none at all.

Where do you look for inspiration in the kitchen? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Sourcing: That's Some Tomato

2011-06-03T15:10:00.000-07:00

Deconstructed Eggplant Parmesan

Country living, with all of its upside, comes with a few disadvantages. The one-hour round trip to the nearest full-service grocery has put a halt to my former habit of running to the market on a whim for a few ingredients. I've always loved having a well stocked pantry, but living in the country, it becomes essential.

On the recommendation of Bon Appetit magazine (April 2011, page 124) in an article called Buy American Eat Italian, I ordered (among other things) a half-dozen Jersey Farms crushed tomatoes from Primizie Fine Foods in the Bronx. At some level, this goes against my "buy local" ethos to have foods shipped via Fed Ex across the country, but let me tell you how worth it this was for this pantry staple.

Items for a Happy Pantry

This is the best brand of canned tomato I've ever had. A fresh, sweet tomato scent popped up as I was opening the can. Super thick and rich, there was no watery separation of juice from the flesh. I could image spooning bites directly into my mouth, but instead, decided to gussy up the crushed tomatoes a bit first.

That's Some Tomato!

Primizie sent along in the box a recipe for a 5-minute marinara sauce, which I immediately whipped up. The only change I made was to saute half of a small onion in the olive oil with the garlic before proceeding, and adding a good big pinch of the oregano at the end:

Primizie's 5-Minute Tomato Marinara Sauce

I first used the sauce on a pizza, topped with house-made Italian sausage and some other things. It was superb.

With the remaining sauce, I made a version of Deconstructed Eggplant Parmesan that I knocked off from Kay at My Home Cooked Meals. (Hers is a little prettier, and do check out her site... she's a great teacher!) The rich, fresh tomato sauce really shone in this dish. Thanks, Kay, for the great idea.

LaVelle Vineyards, a nearby Willamette Valley winery, produces a Bordeaux blend from Columbia Valley grapes. 2008 Trilogy (Merlot, Cab Sauv and Cab Franc) has the unique huskiness of Hungarian oak, and stands up nicely to red-sauced pasta dishes or most anything off the grill. Yes, my tomatoes were from far, far away, but the wine, at least, was home-grown.

LaVelle Vineyards 2008 Trilogy

Back to Primizie Fine Foods. The Italian oregano and salt-packed anchovies (which I am enjoying as I write this, on a nice Romaine salad) that arrived are also stellar; just as lovely as the tomatoes. I had a question regarding my invoice, and a quick call to Becky at Primizie resulted in a friendly, quick answer. It means something to me when a company treats me like a valued customer, and that is definitely the way things are at Primizie. Even though I paid a small fortune to have heavy canned tomatoes shipped across the country, I will do it again for the quality and service they offer. Do give them a try.

Black Horse & the Cherry Tree

2011-06-01T03:45:00.000-07:00

Kim Boyce's Cherry Crumb Bars

...Or, as in the case of our recent house guests, a grulla mare, her buckskin filly and a black walnut tree. This post could also be subtitled: Things I Never Expected To Happen In My Lifetime.

Born on the infamous March 11, Shez Tsunami Slick (Tsu for short)

Several weeks ago My Baby got a call from our neighbor Kay of Joel-and-Kay, with whom we share a nearly mile long drive and who own the hundreds and hundreds of acres of land that swallow up our five acres as if it were a mere postage stamp. Joel farms and ranches, Kay tends to things domestic, runs their social calendar, and above all is an avid and accomplished horsewoman.

All I could overhear of the conversation sounded something like this:

"Hi, Kay. Great, and you? (wa-waa waa wa wa) Oh sure, when? Great. I'll check with Pam, but I'm sure it won't be a problem. Bring them by any time. (wa waa wa wa) Our pleasure, Kay. See you soon."

After he'd hung up, My Dear Sweet Hospitable Baby said, "Well, if it's okay with you, Kay would like to bring her mare and filly to stay in our stable and pasture for a few days while they are away."

I am not proud of what happened next. And it goes like this:

"Baby, are you nuts?? Horses? Us? I'd have thought you were nuts to bring a goldfish home, but HORSES??"

"Yes, but Pam, they'll be outdoor horses."

"Baby, let me remind you that my only experience with horses was the time forty-five years ago when my Dad took me to the shopping center parking lot, paid a man $1, sat me on a horse and walked me around in a circle for 5 minutes. May I remind you that your only experience with horses was the riding lessons you took when you were in 6th grade, and that was forty-SEVEN years ago. I'm not sure that large animal husbandry was a part of my moving-to-the-country agreement!"

"I tell you what, Pam. Let's take a vote: All those in favor of the horses coming say aye. All opposed say neeeiiigggh."

And so my life goes. The Things I Never Expected In My Lifetime list just keeps growing.

Beautiful Mama Shez Come Undun (Charm for short)

Once I got over the dizzying fact that my neighbor trusts us enough to keep her horses alive (or more plausibly that she trusts her horses to keep themselves alive), they ended up being a great delight. One of the fun aspects of their companionship, besides the handsome lawn ornamentation they provided, was feeding them their buckets of grain twice a day. It is this grain along with this terrific catchy little song (woo hoo) that inspired me to bake the Cherry Crumb Bars.

(I will add, to further underscore my incompetence where horses are concerned, that the representational horse-food oats in this recipe are good for horses, but the rye is NOT a representational horse food. I just learned that if horses eat rye a problem of enormous stable-clean up proportions will ensue. I'm really glad our four-legged guests didn't share the baked goods.)

My Baby, In His Hay-Day

The recipe came from the highly recommended Kim Boyce's Good to the Grain cookbook. This was my first baking project from her book, only because I have yet to take inventory of the necessary flours and grains with which to stock the pantry in preparation, but I did have whole oats and a dab of rye flour. A simple buttery rye and wheat shortbread is baked, then topped with preserves and the buttery oat-y crumb topping and baked again. I found the bars to be just sweet enough and just tender enough to not feel like Euell Gibbons' "health food", and the texture actually improved the next day. This treat stayed delicious for several days and its moderate sweetness made as fine of a breakfast as it did a dessert.

A Little Experiment with Whipped Skim Milk Instead of Cream

(Not So Successful!)

Cherries from our trees are still a month away this year in our chilly spring weather, and I can't wait for them. But while I do, Bonne Maman Cherry Preserves nicely suffice. This brand of preserves from France is my favorite purchased jam.

My Favorite Purchased Jam

I hope that Kay never asks me to take care of her houseplants while she's away, because I really am no good at all with those.

Uni-Tasking: One Brain-Box at a Time

2011-05-27T03:45:00.000-07:00

Home-Made Spicy Fennel Sausage and Roasted Red Pepper Sauced Gemelli

There were years of my life, decades, really, when I was an ace at multi-tasking. A baby on one hip, a preschooler attached to my hem, chasing a 7-year old daredevil while swinging the 'fridge door shut with the other hip; a phone perpetually pinched between my ear and shoulder; a spatula in one hand and car keys in the other; an ever-present symphony of dryer buzzers, oven timers and ringing doorbells; squeezing auto-insurance comparison shopping in between baby's nap-time and big-kid school pickup; soccer, ballet, trumpet, basketball and band practice coordination; meal planning, grocery shopping and taking dinners to the sick and grieving of our community; baking cupcakes at 10 p.m. after some scrunchy-eyed sleepyhead emerged from lights-out saying, "Mom, I forgot... I said I'd bring treats to the class party tomorrow. What can I take?" It was for the most part a fun and well-run, efficient ship.

Ahhh. Those were the days.

Call it aging, call it Being Here Now, or maybe its that my stress-balancing hormones are shot or that I'm living in two places, but my ability to juggle all those balls is slipping away. My thinking is becoming more and more compartmentalized with seperate brain-boxes for family, work, friends, creative pursuits, house (which has several sub-boxes), yoga and vacations. Occasionally the contents of one brain-box want to spill out onto the contents of another, but can easily be swept back into its proper cube again.

I have become a uni-tasker. And, it's not bad. With uni-tasking comes greater focus and presence.

Uni-tasking demands a simplicity which gives me a peace and a smile these days. I still get a thrill out of occasionally preparing tricky and elaborate meals, but straightforward, focused dishes in which the essence of the ingredients shines through without much intervention appeals more and more.

The Stuff Sausage is Made Of

A monk introduced me to homemade sausage some months ago, and I've enthusiastically taken its delicious, uncomplicated goodness from pizza to pasta. The combination of light, simple roasted red pepper sauce, gemelli "twins" and spicy, meaty sausage is simple, delicious, and meets my current uni-tasking ethos.

Sausage Spices

The sausage recipe is here, and here below is the easy, straightforward sauce.

One Brain-Box at a Time Roasted Red Pepper Sauce

a swirl of olive oil
one 12 oz. jar fire-roasted red peppers, chopped (Trader Joe's is great)
one 15 oz can fire-roasted diced tomatoes with juices (Muir Glen's Organic brand can't be beat)
5 or 6 cloves garlic, peeled and finely chopped
1 small onion, finely chopped
2-3 tablespoons each chopped fresh oregano and basil
salt and pepper to taste

In a 3 quart saucepan, lightly saute garlic and onion over medium heat until translucent. Add chopped herbs and saute for another 2 minutes. Add the chopped peppers and diced tomatoes with their juices. Heat just until boiling. Add salt and pepper to taste. Cool slightly, then whirl in your food processor until smooth, adding water tablespoon by tablespoon if necessary for a nice light consistency.

To sauce in pot, add 8 oz. hot cooked gemelli. (Reserve 1/2 cup pasta water to thin sauce, if necessary.)
Stir in browned sausage bits. Place in baking dish(es), sprinkle with a little mozzarella (or a lot, if you'd rather) and bake at 375 degrees until bubbly and beginning to get brown toasty spots.

The Brandborg 2005 Syrah (Umpqua Valley) was amazing with this meal. This Syrah opens up with inky ripe berry fruit, sneaks into a gentle herbaceousness and ends lushly with the classic Syrah peppery tannic finish. This Syrah has a lot going on (I will say it's anything but a uni-tasker) with it's layers and layers of unfolding complexity. You simply must try it.

Nontraditional Pairings

2011-05-25T03:45:00.001-07:00

Fried chicken and waffles. Pop rocks and champagne. Robert Plant and Alison Krauss. Pizza and Pinot Noir.

Yes, that's right. Pizza and Pinot Noir.

Don't all fantastic non-traditional pairings have at least one common element in the midst of the unusual match? Fried chicken and waffles both have crispy exteriors which give way to tender insides. Pop rocks and champagne both bubble up in your mouth. Robert Plant and Alison Krauss both tried unexpected things for themselves, but together. It was magic.

Admittedly, Pinot Noir isn't the first wine to come to mind when it's pizza night. But with a little masterful manipulation of the pizza ingredients to find those common elements, nearly any wine will work with pizza. It's just a matter of what kind of pizza.

We worked with the Sarver 2008 Pinot Noir, a single vineyard Pinot Noir from the southern end of Oregon's Willamette Valley AVA. This Pinot Noir has a deep cherry fruit, dried rose petal floral notes, and good compost-y earthiness which calls out for crimini mushrooms. Crimini's, or "Baby 'Bella's" since they are really very young portabella mushrooms, are concentrated with a very similar damp organic matter flavor. This is a good start to creating a stellar pizza/Pinot pairing.

Another flavor element that connects food to many Pinot Noir's is oregano. I used a hefty dash of Mediterranean oregano over the top of this pizza. Thinly sliced red onion (to bring out a bit of earthy sweetness) and a few slices of smoked chicken sausage (Pinot Noir tends to love umami, heavily present in the sausage). Oregon's favorite mild, creamy Tillamook brand mozzarella brought it all together. And, here's the link to our favorite pizza dough recipe.

To further connect the food to the wine, we made a herbes de Provence vinaigrette for the Romaine wedges we served alongside the pizza. The flowery quality of the herbes de Provence gave the final boost to link the plate to the glass, leaning into the rose-petal notes of the wine.

Herbes de Provence Vinaigrette

In a small recycled jam jar pour:

3 tablespoons champagne vinegar
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly cracked black pepper
1/2 teaspoon herbes de Provence
6 tablespoons of your best-quality olive oil

Screw the lid on tightly and shake. Dress salad greens with vinaigrette.

Fresh Pineapple Gallette

2011-04-30T19:29:00.000-07:00

Vacations can be great. And I'm on one. Family; royal wedding sleepover (yes, we stayed up all night) shopping; wine tasting; hanging out; thinking about life. Since I've only got one more vacation day left in which to relax, let's get right to the short and sweet of it, shall we?

Here is a divine, simple dessert that showcases fresh fruit and perhaps one of the best, most buttery pastry crusts I've ever made. Minimal desserts speak to me more and more, and this one certainly is simple. The idea and pastry crust recipe comes from one of my old favorite inspirations, Flo Braker and her Art of Simple Baking. I loved this Fresh Pineapple Galette first time I made it decades ago, and love it still. My version is sans Flo's crumble topping, simplifying it even a bit more.

Flo's Butter Pastry is perfect just as she suggests. The only thing I do at all differently is to roll the pastry dough out between sheets of wax paper, which eliminates the need to use excess flour which can toughen the baked crust. The other thing I do, in lieu of the crumble topping which sweetens the galette, is to sprinkle demerara sugar in the bottom of the rolled crust, place the sliced fresh fruit atop the lightly sugared crust, then sprinkle more demerara sugar atop the fruit before folding the crust in. That's it! Super easy, fresh and good.

Our Willamette Valley bubbly from Domaine Meriwether, a 2000 Captain Clark Vintage Cuvee, a provided creamy palate, with citrusy and exotic fruit notes. The crispness of this methode champenoise (we call it Champagne at our house; no matter what the "rules" are, that is what it is) balances nicely with the buttery crust and tropical fruit. Definitely give this a try together.

I've got one day of vacation left before heading home to Oregon. I'm not quite ready to hit my usual routine, but I miss Murray the Amazing Wonder Dog and my little house in the country. Did I mention how great vacation can be??

Love Nest Cooking: The Truth

2011-04-19T05:43:00.000-07:00

Love Nest Pasta a la Heidi Swanson

Perhaps I over-dramatize on occasion. Like the time I told you about our cute little Love Nest. Yes, it's cute and yes, it's little, and it's all the nice things I mentioned a year ago. What I didn't share then is that once a week (usually Monday mornings), I crawl out of bed at the uncivilized hour of 5:30 a.m. to drive the hour-and-a-half to the office, otherwise known as the hometown of the Love Nest. I read somewhere that for optimal perkiness, a person should keep the same sleep pattern day in, day out. I don't do that. Some days of the week I wake at 7:30, some at 6:30, some at 8 a.m. The horrific back-to-the-office-day alarm comes as an assault.

Another Love Nest Truth I Didn't Share With You:
A Severely Sloping Cooking Surface

This morning I drug my weary tukhus away from dreams, the warmth of the covers and the sweet morning scent of My Baby into the chilly, dark dawn. I had my suitcase and garment bag packed in the car last night as usual, but a few last minute items always wait until right before I drive away, including a small cooler packed with a few food items to get me by for the 3 or 4 days away. The Love Nest cooking plan this week included a ultra-green eggy springtime pasta I'd read about from Heidi Swanson over at 101 Cookbooks. It sounded easy, delicious and healthful; I had sugar peas, green beans and spinach at home with which to make it. Great. Easy peasy.

So at 6:15 this morning, having traded in weatherproof boots and jeans for high heels and office attire, I packed my little cooler, which required cutting an egg carton with kitchen shears so that the two eggs necessary for Heidi's recipe would fit with protection, a task that definitely strained my small-muscle coordination that early in the morning. Veggies, leftover pineapple galette (stay tuned for that), eggs, a dab of remaining fennel-potato gratin from the weekend, a sandwich baggie full of my favorite peanut M & M's, and tiny neat ice packs to keep it all fresh. Viola. Food for the week. Kisses and goodbyes, and I was off.

Sometime around noon I went to fetch my cooler from the car. No cooler. That's how together I was this morning. I packed the cooler and forget to put in the car. No cooler = no food.

After a long day at work, I schlepped to the grocery and purchased the things I'd left behind. In the meantime, a new iteration on Heidi's suggested recipe came to mind. All the veggies would still be great, but garlic and a little salty tang thrown in would be nice. Feta would work well for that.

In a non-rational hunger delirium, I chose this off-the-shelf Riesling purely because of it's name. By then I was really hungry, my pineapple galette was nearly a hundred miles away, and a cupcake sounded really good. I have no comments on the wine. You get what you pay for, and I got what I expected. Except no cupcake.

It was a fresh, tasty, easy weeknight meal. The next time I make it, some torn basil and a handful of pine nuts would be a nice addition.

If I don't forget them at home.

Taste Buds

2011-04-15T08:11:00.000-07:00

Tea and Ginger Steamed Halibut

We called ourselves the Taste Buds. Each of the twelve of us had an above-average interest in learning more about food, wine, and cooking and gathered every other month to cook and share a meal. Together we ventured into untried territory to grasp new skills, new flavors, and to deepen our appreciation for fine wine. The rotating host house conjured up a fantastic thematic menu, and we'd typically share the preparation duties. All evening long, we'd sip great things, cook great things, eat great things and laugh. Man, did we laugh.

We took many culinary "trips around the world" together via those meals, but I learned the most at Selina's house. Selina is from China, and when she and Mike hosted, all 12 of us would gather around their huge kitchen island and Selina would start issuing duties. The traditional Chinese meals we made always involved a variety of meat, poultry and fish prepared in a multitude of ways, with incredible ingredients sourced from the Chinese community in San Fransisco where Selina's mom lived. I was fascinated by Selina's uber-seasoned heavy wok, razor-sharp knives, and still vividly recall the first time I ever wielded Selina's seriously scary huge cleaver, used to chop off heads of things or whack up a mahogany-dark sticky chicken right through the bones.

Eventually, life took me in a different direction, but I have missed my old Taste Buddies. I still even have vivid dreams about those times and those people.

In the Steamer

The other day My Baby brought home a meaty, thick piece of halibut from the fish market with the idea of steaming it in tea. My contribution was the scallion, ginger and dark savory sauce I recalled from my experience of steaming fish under Selina's tutelage. And so, a simple but brilliant meal was born.

Selina Recommends Pearl River Bridge Dark Soy, Which Has Molasses-Like Qualities

In the bottom of our steamer pan about an inch of water was brought to a boil, to which about 3 tablespoons of loose-leaf oolong tea was added. In the steamer basket went half of a 2" piece of peeled fresh ginger, cut into thin matchsticks and half of 5 scallions, also cut into matchsticks upon which the fish rested. The remaining half of each smothered the top of the fish. Lidded, the fish was perfectly steamed in about 7 minutes.

So Delicious

The tea gave the fish a subtle perfumed quality that was ethereal. The drizzling sauce was a quick stir of about 1 tablespoon each of regular soy sauce, dark soy sauce and mirin, and one scallion, finely minced. It took longer to find the three bottles in the pantry than it did to mix up the nice accompaniment. Did I mention that besides being fresh, beautiful and tasty, this is a really fast meal to prepare?

(

We served the fish atop steamed jasmine rice and a stir-fry of green beans, shitakes and thinly sliced red pepper, giving them our very favorite treatment. (We love these beans so much, we wrote about them in our very first ever blog post, and references to them show up regularly. I learned the basic formula from another Taste Bud, Kathy.)

Abacela 2009 Viognier, Estate Grown in the Umpqua Valley

I give credit to those fun Taste Bud years for laying a great foundation for my passion for wine. Now, it wouldn't be dinner if My Baby (and forever Taste Bud) and I didn't discuss the wine pairing options throughout the afternoon leading up to our meal. He had several really good ideas for this match up, but landed on the Abacela 2009 Estate Viognier. Abacela's trailblazers, Earl and Hilda Jones, are famed for putting Tempranillo on the map in Southern Oregon, and produce lovely wines. Their Viognier bears only slight tropical notes usually associated with Viognier, leaning to more of a ripe pear and apricot fruitiness. The perfumey nose is heavenly, and it's roundness is lifted beautifully with its mid-level acidity which balanced really, really nicely with this lean springtime meal.

Cheers to my old Taste Buddies! I wonder what you are cooking and drinking these days, and hope each of your are happy and well.

Noticing Spring

2011-04-10T05:43:00.000-07:00

Budding Red Plum

Our Oregon countryside acreage is a breathtaking place from which to observe changing seasons. If I'm privileged to live a good long life, I'll have maybe 85 or 90 spring seasons to experience which, in my sense of time, is not that many. And with 51 of them now gone, I'm motivated to pay really close attention to each gift of a northwest spring.

Last summer, during the dog days, you stopped by my garden for a stroll and a glass or two of wine. Thanks for dropping by again to notice the extravaganza of spring here at our special place.

Burgundian Countryside

Out Our Southern Willamette Valley Back Door

If these photos don't make you want to save thousands on your next vacation by coming to Oregon instead of France, I don't know what will! While here, you may confuse yourself with being in the Burgundian countryside, but it's all Oregon.

Before we get started on our pastoral walk-about, let me me tell you a little about today's refreshment. The air is still a little too nippy to really enjoy a chilled white in the out-of-doors, but a little too warm for a big, heavy red. So, I have an idea...

While you may confuse this wine with a Burgundy from France, it, too, is all Oregon. Sarver Winery 2008 Pinot Noir has stolen my heart. First I must admit my absolute adoration for the Pinot Noir grape. Pinot Noir, for me, evokes the best of all that is feminine. From goddesses to tom boys, you can find it in Pinot Noir. Elegant and refined; sassy and sexy; earthy and unpretentious; those contrasts can all be detected in Pinot Noir, and if you're lucky, sometimes you find it all in one glass. That is the case here. Let's fill up your glass, and we'll talk more about the wine a little later.

This year, spring seems to be teaching me lessons about contrasts. I'm curiously attuned to the distinctions between hydration and saplessness; vigor and dormancy; sun and rain (here in springtime Oregon often one hour will entertain several shifts between them both.)

Budding Yellow Plum

The first thing I'll point out is some of the blooming fruit trees. Here are the yellow plum buds up close...

... and here is the same plum tree in it's entirety, in full white bloom. It makes me a little excited about making some great things this summer, like sherbetty plum ice cream...

Plum Upside-Down Cake

... or this fantastic plum upside-down cake. Remind me again in the summer, and I'll share the recipe with you.

We had a woodpecker friend who insisted for a while on drilling his holes in our house siding. I was relieved when he discovered the perch of this leaning shovel handle this winter, and went about his woodworking on our old apple tree instead of our home. His handiwork adds a little more character to this already beautiful tree.

In the vegetable garden, the only thing happening is the gnarly remnants of last year's kale (above) and Swiss chard (below.) We've had several nice meals throughout the winter from these hardy growers.

It wouldn't be spring, of course, without emerging pops of encouraging color. The monotony of winter drab is certainly broken with these hopeful flowers.

This tree hasn't yet let go of its crisp brown leaves from last autumn, but still plays host to a ring of sunny daffodils. See what I mean about contrasts?

I love this billow of daffodils, and especially how they seem so contrary to the bare structure of the trees behind.

The sweet scent of the white hyacinths under the guest room window delivers a fine welcome all the way to the front door. Soon, they'll be surrounded by a flounce of bleeding hearts.

Candy-Striped Camelia

Big Old Cedar

Oregon definitely felt the roaring lion of March this year. A brief though intense storm blew through on March 13, bringing down nearly half of our 40-foot cedar. This photo doesn't show the scale of this loss, and we are grateful that it didn't come down on our roof. Some of our friends weren't so lucky with this storm. It was a good reminder of the power of nature.

So when life gives you trunks, you make trivets. And coasters. Can you smell the sappy cedar? What an amazing scent.

Our grass is utterly juicy. Chlorophyll production is in full throttle,

as is also evident via our weed production.

The primeval-looking pear tree is just beginning to bud out, while the hedgerow behind is adorned in layers and layers of lacy petals.

The grand-daddy black walnut is also slow to wake up.

Do you notice how quickly the light changes this time of year? One second it looks like this,

and in the next second it shifts to this,

and as things fall into shadow, the air remembers winter and becomes cold again. Let's warm up inside where we can refill our glasses, have a nosh, and sit by the fire, shall we?

Can you smell the berries and spice on the nose, and taste the juicy bright cherries, dried pink rose petals, and loamy "funk" in our Pinot Noir? Can you believe that the Sarver's sell this for only $20? I think it's one of the best Pinot Noir values in all of Oregon. And, if I may say, not terribly unlike some good French Burgundy's I've had.

The wine tastes so delicious with a platter of Franco-Oregonian flavors. (Or is it that the flavors taste so good with the wine?) Truffle pate; Oregon's world renowned Rogue River Blue cheese, which is wrapped in pear brandy-soaked grape leaves (ooh la la); freshly toasted hazelnuts from last autumn's farmers market; Dijon mustard; tarragon-y French cornichons; homemade blackberry preserves; a bit of brie and some dried cherries and figs. I'm in heaven. Or is it Oregon? Or France?

Before we sit in front of the fire, maybe you'd like to see My Baby's orchid in full bloom in the shaded west window. The window that is shaded by our half-there cedar tree.

Thanks for stopping by to enjoy this bit of spring with me. As always, I've really enjoyed your company!

To Bloom Again

2011-03-24T05:43:00.001-07:00

Before I met My Baby, I had never known anyone who could bring an orchid to blossom a second or third time after the initial bloom.

My Grandma was great with African violets, and always had lush pots of the frilly pink and purple blooms on her windowsill. But that’s not quite the same as an orchid.

My Baby just has a way. His secrets seem to be along the lines of doing not much more than enjoying the presence of the plants. He doesn’t incessantly pick and pinch away at dead or droopy leaves, or force-feed and water them. He just delights in them. For him, it seems to be more about letting the blooms emerge, rather than making them emerge.

It’s pretty hard to resist a man who has a window ledge designated to the sick, the frail and the straggly, giving those plants that I’d be tempted to toss one last chance in the best sun the house has to offer.

Just try to resist a man who will gather up all the discounted stragglers at the florist and bring them home. They bloom again and again. Who wouldn’t? And if they don’t? He appreciates their grand effort even if it doesn’t amount to anything showy.

It was three years ago last week that I met this treasure of a man and entered into the presence of his healing and nurturing environment.

And I bloom. Again.

Vanilla beans come from orchids, and have quite the romantic story as well. In the orchid family the vanilla orchid genus produces about 110 species. The pretty white, green or greenish-yellow vanilla flowers open only once. The fully formed bloom opens in the morning, and closes at mid-afternoon never to open again. If pollination hasn't occurred in that short window of time, the flower will soon wither and fall away. Most commercially produced vanilla, therefore, is hand pollinated.

What we call the bean is actually a fruit which takes 8 or 9 months to fully ripen, nearly as long as it takes a human baby to develop. All this time and effort makes me know that the dollar or so I spend on one fragrant and flavorful bean (fruit) is quite a bargain.

Dorie Greenspan writes a lovely piece on the coveted vanilla bean that you'll enjoy reading here. I've found several online sources for vanilla beans that are quite reasonably priced and by virtue of their affordability encourage their use, rather than hoarding the costly lone bean in purchased in a vial from the spice section at the local market until it is a dried out, lifeless stick. My old favorite source is apparently no longer in business, so until I find a source to whose reliability I can attest, I encourage you to do an internet search and give one or two a try.

Just Breathe

2011-03-17T05:43:00.000-07:00

Chana Masala and Indian-Style Mustard Greens

“Is there anything specific anyone would like to work on today? Mary? Stacey? Pam?”, my yoga teacher inquired at the beginning of a recent practice.

Up went my hand and out popped the words, “Yes, my shoulders.” I’d noticed my shoulders riding higher than usual, and a sort-of-but-not-quite pain radiating from the center of my back and shoulder blades through my neck and up to nearly my crown for several days.

As soon as the words left my lips, I became aware that it really wasn’t my shoulders that needed the work (though they did get it… I’d asked for it,) but that I simply needed to breathe. I had allowed the high-stress time I had been experiencing for several weeks at work to make me tense. I’d been so focused on the tasks at hand, I’d forgotten the most simple of self-care basics… to simply breathe fully and properly. Diaphramatically. Yogically.

Me, Susan and David, In Side Angle Pose

The pressure at work hasn’t completely gone away, and I don’t anticipate that it will; we’re busier than ever with no end in sight. But I now have a greater awareness that to just take a moment for myself to breathe, on and off the mat. To remember the simple when everything seems so complex can make a big difference.

This meal is a shout out to my dear friend Alli Aruna, who happened to be my first yoga instructor before she became my dearly beloved friend.

Flexy-Bendy Pays Off

(I was moving and Alli needed a ride)

Yogis and yoginis tend to be people who are thoughtful about their food, and Alli Aruna certainly is. She is constantly learning and adapting her diet to her needs and knowledge. While she is currently a thoughtful omnivore, there have been times when she's a devout vegetarian. We've spilled our souls over a few really nice Indian meals together, and I thought of her when I made this vegetarian meal at home. Since India is the home of yoga, and my dear Alli made her pilgrimage there returning to us as Aruna, I would love to make this for her!

Fresh, Crisp Mustard Greens

The recipes for Chickpeas in Spicy Tomato Gravy (I personally resist the term "gravy" and would prefer to call this by the name I order it at the restaurant, Chana Masala) and Indian-Style Mustard Greens by chef Sanjeev Kapoor are once again from the March 2011 issue of Food and Wine magazine. I've been cooking from Food and Wine a lot lately, and am so pleased with their week-night friendly, delicious and interesting suggestions.

Chopped Jalepeno, Ginger and Garlic

The only thing I did differently was to toast and grind my own cumin and coriander for the chickpeas instead of using the ground spices as suggested. It's an easy thing to do for such a big, authentic flavor payoff.

My Baby chose Hillcrest Vineyard's 2008 Riesling "Bone Dry" from Oregon's Umpqua Valley, which served this meal delightfully well. Made from Oregon's very first vineyard planting of Reisling, winemaker Dyson Demara makes this in the dry German style.

I know, I know. It's tradition to pair Indian food with Gewurztraminer and Gewurztraminer alone. There is a terrific article in the San Francisco Chronicle about wine and Indian food pairing. It's quite complex (with a nod that perhaps beer is the easiest way to go), but a fascinating article that could send me on a month-long Indian food experiment just to internalize the nuances. All that to say, the Hillcrest Reisling was a pretty big hit.

Om, shanti, shanti, shanti.

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

2011-03-07T13:25:00.000-08:00

Simplest Chicken and Leek Stew

If it's true, as the fashion designer Givenchy once said, that hair style is the final tip-off as to whether a woman really knows herself, them I'm one mixed up lady. Though, if my confused and confusing hair style is due to the work of a stylist, am I to be held responsible for my lack of self-awareness?

Ever since my pigtails got chopped off when was five years old, I've had short hair. I was a gangly girl with a honey blond pixie back in the mid 1960s, and in the 1970's eschewed the flowing hippie tresses of the day for hair more like the Bee Gees brother Barry in the Jive Talking disco heyday. Ever since then, I've opted for hair that could be described as sharp, professional, stylish. Long and silky? Never.

A year ago, when My Baby and I decided to have an autumn wedding, I got the wild notion that I'd wear my hair in a romantic French twist for the occasion. Awkward grow-out be damned; I achieved my goal.

In the months that have followed, I've continue to let my hair grow. It was a completely new me I was coming to know, the me who enjoys feeling pretty rather than precise. Throwing it back into twists or tossled updos was fun for my farm life days, a few curls put into it worked well for my city life days. And it did feel like me.

And I felt like this...

Until Saturday. All I wanted was a little shaping and the ends refreshed for spring. I walked out with short layers everywhere on what had become my shoulder-length 'do. It'll be months before it's back to where it was. Uuuugh.

Hair being the crowning glory of a woman and all, I was pretty bummed. But you know, now that I'm a little more mature, a bad haircut really can be overcome with a great meal and bottle of great wine.

This recipe comes from Food and Wine magazine, which is a terrific source for delicious, interesting meals, many of which are quick and easy. Jamie Oliver's Simplest Chicken and Leek Stew is a good example. This quick stew has a slightly creamy, mustardy, thyme-scented sauce that drapes lightly over meaty mushrooms, lilting leeks and chunks of white chicken.

Food and Wine recommended pairing the Chicken-Leek Stew with a big, buttery California Chardonnay. We carried it in that direction, but instead used a barrel-aged Pinot Gris from one of our favorite local Oregon wineries.

Sarver Winery makes so many delightful wines, but I've grown really attached to their Pinot Gris line-up, especially their 2009 Estate Grown Barrel-aged Pinot Gris. The acidic, fruity Pinot Gris grape, when made in the Chardonnay style (aged in oak), adds up to a lovely balance of texture and flavor, and was just a joy with this dish.

With my chin up, my hair in a state of flux, my belly full and my heart warmed, I leave you with this final quote:

Life is an endless struggle full of frustrations and challenges, but eventually you find a hair stylist you like. ~ Author Unknown

Dear Mr. Jobs: A Foodie Wants More From the iPad

2011-03-04T05:43:00.000-08:00

Dear Mr. Jobs,

It was good to see you at this week's unveiling of the newest iPad2. Those little devices are amazing, and I can see it fitting in nicely with my life. If only your iPad could make and receive phone calls via a bluetooth-ish device, you and I could have a deal.

I know this may sound like a step backward in terms of size, but have you seen my handbag? I schlep. That is what I do.

I understand that an iPad/telephone may not fit into the back pants pocket of my male counterparts. The men in my sphere don't seem to carry a handbag, or have not caught on to the hip manbag, like Terrance Howard,

Mathew McConaughey,

or Seal,

but all of my female friends do. Your iPad is only about a pound heavier than your iPhone. Trust me: We women can handle it. We frequently carry our phones, our computers, and our handbags. Make life easier for me, Mr. Jobs, and I'm in.

Your iPad would, among other things, hold apps for my grocery list for the week,

...and the recipes I plan to cook.

How cool is that? I like the idea of taking a backlit iPad into the kitchen and cooking from it. The screen on my iPhone just isn't big enough from my aging eyes to tell teaspoons from tablespoons in the kitchen. Your iPad, on the other hand, is the perfect size.

Your iPad would eliminate my need for a book reader from one of your competitors for cookbooks. Quite frankly, I've been reserving judgement on this reader idea, but a I see my cookbook shelves filling up, it seems it make more and more sense. By having your Apple reader, you also loop me in to being a forever iTunes customer. That sounds good for us both, doesn't it, Mr. Jobs?

You have all kinds of slick covers, but I'm particularly fond of this bamboo one, which somehow de-technifies and softens such a high-tech gadget. I see this working aesthetically and technologically.

In summary, Mr. Jobs, when your iPad3 can also serve as my telephone, I'll be a devoted customer. If, kind sir, you could make this happen before next Christmas, I can almost guarantee a big uptick in your sales, myself included.

Thank you for listening.

My best,

Pam @ Sticks Forks Fingers

Laissez Les Bon Temps Roulez: Bananas Foster

2011-03-02T05:43:00.000-08:00

A Flaming Bananas Foster in New Orleans

Letting the good times roll is a way of life in New Orleans, even if you're attending a serious work conference. My Baby and I recently had the delightful experience of mixing work and pleasure when my organization sent me off to toil in The Big Easy.

Ready to Start Cooking

We happened to be there at the beginning of the Mardi Gras season, missing the first parade by a half-day. Purple, green and gold were flying all around, with Mardi Gras decorations and King Cakes everywhere. As always, the streets were alive and vibrant with revelers and street performers throughout the French Quarter.

Just Beginning to Caramelize

Other than a Hurricane Katrina museum exhibition, which My Baby visited while I was conferencing, there were no visible signs of the disaster. I'd been there before in 2000, and it is so very much the same spirited city now as it was then.

Bubbling, and Beginning to Flambé

It was my first trip to New Orleans when I fell in love with Bananas Foster, and was lucky enough to have a waiter there teach me how to recreate it at home. It has become a complete hit stand-by dessert, as welcome for party guests as it is for a solo late night jammie-clad indulgence. A once-every-couple-of-years purchase of banana liqueur and dark rum round out ingredients that are usually around the house, making this easy to make on a moments notice.

Sarah, Our Server at Brennan's, at the Foster Station

The big whoosh of flame can entertain a crowd for several moments, but I can attest that it is just as dramatic and endearing when done just for yourself. Which brings up a good point... Bananas Foster can just as easily be tailored to serve one person as eight. Don't let the flambé aspect intimidate you. It is as easy as lighting a match.

Bananas Foster Always Turns Heads

Bananas foster was first created in 1951 at the acclaimed Brennan's Restaurant in the French Quarter, to which a New Orleans visit just isn't complete without. Rather than write out the recipe, here's a link to Brennan's original Bananas Foster recipe, which they are kind enough to publish. My only note to add is that it is the rum vapors that ignite so beautifully, not the rum itself. Pour it on, wait just a minute for the vapors to develop, then light the whole mess up. Be prepared for applause, and don't miss the opportunity to take a bow.

Bananas Foster doesn't Look Like Much; Don't Let Looks Deceive

Here are some other charms the city held for us:

Pimm's Cup and Napoleon House

Full Moon Over the Mississippi with Riverboat, Our Dinner View

So Far Away From Home, Yet So Close:

One of Our Favorite Local Pinot Noir's on a Menu!!!

Street Performers Everywhere

This Man Stood Absolutely Still, In This Position, for Over an Hour

So Much Talent in So Few Blocks

Taking a Break From the Group to Learn Something New

Me Sporting a New Hat, Thanks to My Baby!

Monks and Devils: Pizza Diavolo

2011-02-23T05:43:00.000-08:00

Pizza Diavolo, Father Dominic's Way

I loved the old CBS News bit Everyone Has a Story. Correspondent Steve Hartman would head off to wherever in America the dart landed, flip through a phone book in a booth with his eyes closed, plop his pointer finger down on any old name, and pay a visit. His premise was that everyone has a story, and I remember several times his difficulty in explaining to the questioning soul clutching the door knob that, yes, s/he too had a story, and convincing her/him to share it. I'd always end up with tears in my eyes, and the intense feeling that people are so amazingly cool.

For most of us, we don't get to do the absolutely random dart throw/ road trip/ meet someone new, but that doesn't mean that interesting people don't cross our paths with frequency. Because, under this premise, everyone we come across is interesting.

But some people are extraordinarily interesting. Take for example, my new acquaintance, Father Dominic Garramone. Papa Dom, as his students at St. Bede's Academy call him, is a playwright, herb gardener, a former PBS cooking show host. And, the author of seven cookbooks, including his latest, Thursday Night Pizza.

I've never known a Benedictine monk before. A Benedictine monk who promotes devilishly good pizza, no less. Check this out. Look for the first very jolly man you see, and it will be Father Dom.

Diavolo (Italian for devil) generally refers to food made fiery with chile peppers, cayenne, or other forms of pepper. In Father Dominic's Pizza Diavolo, peppery heat shows up not only in a little hot pepper sauce added to his flavorful 8-minute Pizza Sauce and a topping of jalepenos, but also in his homemade Hot Italian Sausage. Homemade sausage, dear reader! I had put sausage making in the category of ketchup-making... Why go to the trouble when you can purchase a quite decent product? Make this sausage, and you'll know why. Father's Dominic's delicious and trouble-free recipe takes literally 5 minutes to put together. There is no excuse to ever buy Italian sausage again!

You also know that after decades of experimentation, I'm quite proud of my pizza crust. So proud that I had difficulty budging off of it to try Father Dominic's Basic American Style Pizza Crust recipe. Life is too short to eat even one crummy pizza crust, but I jumped in and did it his way. Absolutely no disappointment whatsoever. We baked half of the dough, froze the other half, and the following week it thawed and performed as wonderfully a second time.

I heartily endorse Thursday Night Pizza with its three crust recipes, ten sauces and a myriad of pizza combos. I even suspect that recipes from this book, like Muffaleta Pizza and Denver Diner Pizza will taste at least as good on our traditional pizza Fridays as it does on St. Bede's Thursday night haustus. And I doubt that Father Dominic will argue with me that in this case, perhaps Diavolo should just be translated to mean "full of personality" instead of full of the devil.

Hot Italian Sausage

with permission

From Thursday Night Pizza by Fr. Dominic Garramone, O. S. B.

1 lb. ground pork

2 teaspoons Italian herb blend

1 1/2 teaspoons garlic powder

1 1/2 teaspoon fennel seed

1/2 teaspoon celery salt

1 teaspoon crushed red pepper

2 teaspoons black pepper

3/4 teaspoon salt

Mix in a bowl, cover, refrigerate until ready to use.

Father Dominic recommends browning this sausage before putting it atop the pizza. I dropped pinches of the sausage mixture into a lightly olive-oiled skillet over medium heat for several minutes until the pink was gone. I also followed Father Dominic's advice and crushed the spices together in a pestle before adding to the pork. He also recommends grinding them in a spice grinder as an alternative.

Our local Palotai Winery Dolcetto is a pizza night favorite, and was a hit with the Pizza Diavolo.

Apple-Rosemary French Toast and Honey Butter Sauce

2011-02-18T12:20:00.000-08:00

Apple-Rosemary French Toast and Honey Butter Sauce

I wake up hungry. Sometimes I even wake up in the night with some quick inkling of something nice in the kitchen waiting to be made breakfast, at which point I'm able to settle back into peaceful dreams knowing that come morning, the path to The Most Important Meal of The Day will be swift. And, sometimes, I start dreaming about a special breakfast even sooner than that.

Goodness Awaits

Sara Kate over at The Kitchn had recently posted a recipe for Rosemary Apple Turnovers with Honey, an intriguing flavor combination. You may have read about our Seduction Dinner marking Valentine's Day, and the great loaf of bread that supported our cheese plate. Simple called Rosemary Loaf, this Trader Joe's find gave me a new inspiration. Crusty and chewy, flecked with just enough fresh rosemary for a gentle flavor and big holes for soaking up an egg custard, this bread was destined for more greatness. So, here's what I did:

Can you tell which eggs were purchased from neighbors and which came from the grocery store?

Apple Rosemary French Toast with Honey Butter Sauce

6 thick slices Trader Joe's Rosemary Loaf (If you can't find this, just add two pinches of finely chopped fresh rosemary to your cooking apple compote and the same flavor profile will result.)

3 Fuji or Granny Smith apples, peeled and chopped into 1/3" pieces

3 eggs

3 tablespoons cream

6 tablespoons butter

3 tablespoons honey

In a medium saucepan over medium-high heat, melt butter. Add chopped apple and two tablespoons honey. Saute for several minutes, stirring frequently. Place a lid on the saucepan and lower heat to medium-low. stir frequently for several minutes, until apples have softened and have given up some of their juices to the pan. When apples are quite soft and tender, use a slotted spoon to remove them to a bowl, leaving their sweet juices behind. Over medium-high heat, reduce the juice/butter/honey in about half, until quite syrupy and thickened. Remove pan from heat. Whisk in remaining tablespoon honey and two tablespoons butter. The sauce should be quite syrupy and rich.

Whisk eggs and cream in large mixing bowl. Melt one tablespoon butter in heavy skillet over medium-high heat. In two batches, soak bread slices briefly in egg mixture and place in skillet until golden brown on each side and just beginning to puff in the center.

Remove French toast to plate and sprinkle with powdered sugar, if desired. Spoon apples down center of toast and drizzle honey-butter sauce over top. Serve immediately. A mug of hot coffee and a sparkling Mimosa completes the dream.

The Stuff of Dreams

Seduction Dinner

2011-02-14T13:45:00.000-08:00

Roasted Lobster Tail with Champagne Vanilla Reduction

It's no secret how much I adore My Baby, and I wanted to treat him to something mind-blowingly unique for Valentines Day. I'd been dreaming up this dish for months, ever since I surfed across the 1995 New York Times recipe for Lobster in Vanilla Sauce. I could image a few adjustments to the recipe (I'd want to swap the the white wine for a more romantic champagne, and would rather roast a lobster tail then a whole lobster, for example) and set to planning the rest of the meal, wines and champagnes around this centerpiece.

Oregon and French Cheeses, Rosemary Bread and Toasted Oregon Hazelnuts

Like any good American, I opted for an inside-out Euro-Oregon experience, choosing to serve dessert first: A beautiful cheese plate. From France, lush St. Andre triple-cream and barnyard-y Tomme de Savoie, made urbane with a drizzle of dark honey and a freshly cracked white peppercorn, along side an Oregon Rogue River Blue with a twangy, musty flavor that gives way to an unusual sweetness. The cheeses were surrounded by a wonderful rosemary loaf (from Trader Joe's, this was a really nice bread that you'll see again soon on these pages) and freshly toasted local hazelnuts.

Meriwether 2005 Pinot Noir, Willamette Valley

Nothing could have been a better match than the Domaine Meriwether 2005 Pinot Noir. Oregon is so very blessed with our impressive selection of classic world-class Pinot Noirs, and this one fits right in. And, this was a good warm-up to the Domaine Meriwether Sparkling Ros
é
that I had planned for the main course. Still or sparkling, Meriwether produces delightful wines.

Warming Up

Sipping this wine brings to mind dark, ripe cherries, damp peat and mushrooms on a composting Douglas Fir log. A great Valentines Day start!

Rich and Silky Meriwether 2005 Oregon Pinot Noir

Yes, these are the types of things we do for fun out here in the country. Even on Valentine's Day.

Blood Orange and Avocado Salad, Dressed with...

We then moved on to a salad course, again out of step with our European friends.

Champagne Honey Dressing

I wanted champagne and honey to be a gently reoccurring theme throughout the meal, and incorporated both into the salad course.

Using these ingredients...

And these.

Honey Champagne Salad Dressing
2 tablespoons champagne
1 tablespoon champagne vinegar
juice of half of a lemon
1/4 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon dark honey
sea salt and coarsely ground white pepper to taste
6 tablespoons good quality olive oil

Place all ingredients in a recycled jam jar, screw the lid on tightly, and shake well. This is great over a salad of baby greens, sliced avocados and supremed blood oranges.

Champagne and Lobster

I won't bother you with too many details about the lobster dish, other to say that it looked better than it tasted. I usually reserve these pages to pass on only the best of the best, and this didn't hit that mark. Why? Too much vanilla, a poor choice to serve it with saffron pasta, and our lobster tails were overdone. The lobster wasn't stellar, but let me wax on about the champagne.

Domaine Meriwether 1999 Prestige Brut Rosé Cuvee

Domaine Meriwether's 1999 Prestige Brut Rosé Cuvee has a lilting strawberry fruit and warm, toasty caramel notes, all wrapped up in a creamy texture. Its elegance is hard to suprass at this price-point.

I've told you how lucky we are to have such culinary and enological delights practically at our doorstep, and Domaine Meriwether is one such joy. Precisely 44 miles from our house, Domaine Meriwether is an easy country drive on a Sunday afternoon, and provides our main source for bubbly. Making sparkling wine via Methode Champenoise is highly labor intense and costly. Only a handful of Oregon wine-makers produce "champagne" (or to be legally accurate, sparkling wine methode champenoise) and it just so happens that we are neighbors with one who makes some of the best. Happy Valentines Day to us!

And Happy Valentine's Day to You!!

Merry Birth-mas Paella

2011-02-04T09:10:00.000-08:00

Michael's Paella

A person gets only one chance to choose how she (or he) will spend her (or his) 5oth birthday, and I chose well. But I didn't know how well until the day actually came.

My birthday happens to fall on December 25. My family of origin always made a wonderful splash of it sometime the week or two beforehand (thanks, Mom,) and for many years after moving away from home the tradition carried on, no complaints whatsoever from me. Hey, we're all a little busy on Christmas Day, right?

It so happened that this year would be the first in over 30 that My Baby, his three siblings and his mother would have the chance to all spend Christmas together. One of his sisters had just completed a fantastic house remodel in San Francisco and had graciously opened up her doors to the tribe, which meant we'd, food lovers all, be able to give her ne plus ultra kitchen its maiden voyage together. Marti's branch of the family would be flying in from Belgium, with Luc on holiday from his post in Afghanistan, and niece Jessica on holiday from her school in India.

And, Stewart and Michael had promised paella on Christmas Day.

Out of complete deference and adoration, my new husband wanted to be absolutely certain that I had the birthday celebration befitting of a woman of "a certain age," so our conversation about how we'd spend it (therefore Christmas) went a little like this:

November 5: "Baby, when are we going to tell your family that we'll be there for Christmas?"

"Not yet. I want you to really think about how you want to spend your birthday this year."

"But I want to go. Let's call them."

"Please, think about it some more. You know how much I want to see my family, but it's your 50th."

November 15: "Sweet Baby, I think I'll email Nan and tell her we're coming for Christmas, OK?"

"Wait a little first, Pam. I really want you to have your special birthday wherever you want to have it."

"But I want to go. Let's email them."

"Not yet; think about it some more."

November 30: "Dear Sweet Handsome Baby, in 26 days I'm going to go spend Christmas with your family in San Francisco and I'd really like it if you'd join me, this being our first married Christmas and everything."

"Are you really, really sure?"

"YES! I've been saying yes!"

"Okay, good. I'll let them know."

Birthday Girl

So, the day was sublime, and I'm pretty certain it was the very first time in my life that my birthday was celebrated on my birthday other than the day I was born, and that I don't remember. There was a shower of special birthday presents, none of which were wrapped in Christmas paper, but rather flowery, colorful, ladylike wrappings. Birthday candles blazed on Belgian chocolate mousse prepared by Marti. Nancy had poetically described Christmas in San Francisco as being like the inside of a pearl, and she was right. Her new house (and outstanding kitchen) were full of warmth and hospitality. Besides that, I had none of the Christmas Day meal chores to attend to, and instead enjoyed the sheer theatre of Stewart and Michael working in absolute choreography to create the ethereal scents and sights that they did.

Did I mention? I chose really, really well.

And here, in yet one more generous gift to me (and to you as well, Dear Reader) are Michael and Stewart's instructions for creating the best paella you've ever had. Michael's been making this dish for over 30 years, and his refinements make it more than memorable. Do try it.

One last comment: I have not fancied up this recounting, as it is full of the exact types of things we all want when reading a recipe that we've never made before that seems daunting. This, in my opinion, is an absolute treat to get all the tried and true tips and tricks. Besides that, it is extremely entertaining and will give you insight as to one more reason the day was so terrific!

Michael's Paella

as recited to Stewart, then told to Pam, now being passed on to you

First, tell Stewart to buy fresh seafood. My preference is for "wild caught" shrimp, as opposed to the "tiger" or "grass" shrimp that are farmed and shpped from Asia. Actually, they would be fine, but all things equal, the American variety has better taste and texture. The cherrystone or small little neck clams came from the Asian markets on Clement Street. In San Francisco, we are fortunate to have Clement Street nearby with lots of fresh shell fish. Next time we might get the shrimp there and, we might even try a lobster which would work well cut into bite sized pieces.

Gorgeous Clams from Clement Street in San Francisco

Second, tell Michael to get up at 5:00 a.m. to prep the materials in advance (actually he was still on east coast time.) Most everything can be prepped in advance so that start to finish you can be social while cooking. Plan on 45 minutes start to finish.

All Prepped and Ready to Go

Michael's comments on paella pans: He uses a paella pan with lid, but a lid is not absolutely necessary. A large brazier or similar skillet would be fine as long as it is oven safe.

Pam's comment on Michael's paella pan: Michael's paella pan is large enough to serve as a bassinet for a small child. It's that big; a happy signal no one was going to go hungry.

Serves 10-14

Preheat oven to 425 degrees

Ingredients:

2 sweet red peppers, coarsely chopped

French green beans - perhaps 25 or so- ends removed then cut in half.

2 sweet onions (Vidalia) coarsely chopped

3 cloves garlic, finely minced

12 shitake mushrooms thinly sliced in strips (decidedly not Spanish, but they have less moisture than other varieties, making it easier to control the amount of liquid as the rice cooks)

4 - 5 cups chicken broth, heated and ready to add as required (your may not use all of it)

3 generous pinches of saffron threads

24 cherrystone clams

20 scallops

20 16/20 count shrimp

12 small chicken thighs, skin on, trimmed (Michael is very particular about trimming all excess fat “any thing yellow doesn’t belong on it”)

2 slices of ham steak ½ thick, cut into strips about 2” long and ¾” wide (Stewart and Michael prefer Virginia ham. Some prefer smoked ham or sausage.)

salt and pepper

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 ¾ cup Arborio rice

Here, Here! to No Yellow Parts Left on the Chicken!

Season chicken thighs with salt and pepper. Add olive oil to to pan and sauté chicken thighs starting skin side down, medium high heat until browed on all sides. Set aside and reserve. Leave oil in pan.

Add onion and garlic to pan, stirring a few minutes until onions begin to caramelize. Add rice and stir until rice begins to become transparent on edges but NOT brown. (1 or 2 minutes, perhaps?) Add 1 ½ cup hot chicken broth. Stir. Add crushed saffron threads. Stir again.

See the Flavor Already Building in the Pan?

Add sweet red peppers, mushrooms, green beans, and ham strips. Season lightly with salt & pepper. Stir well again.

Add back the chicken thighs and another cup of hot chicken broth. Place in preheated oven for 10 minutes. Check after 5 minutes to ensure that rice absorbing broth. The idea is to keep checking from here on out to make sure that you are adding broth as slowly as the rice can absorb it.

After cooking for 10 minutes, remove from oven and add 1 cup broth and stir.

Add the seafood on top. If rice is dry you may need to add more broth but keep in mind that the clams will release more moisture and, herein is the trick. To monitor and balance the amount of juice and broth necessary to bring the rice to a nice texture – fully plump, without splitting, just beyond “al dente”.

Return to oven, cover with lid or foil. (Not totally necessary to cover but this might affect the time necessary to open clams and cook seafood.) Cook another 15 minutes but peek every 5 minutes to gently stir rice (without disturbing shellfish) to help distribute moisture to enable the rice to suck it up. It might be necessary to add broth in judiciously to obtain the correct texture.

Intent Paella Chefs Michael and Stewart

Many thanks to my family, old and new, who have made all of my years rich and wonderful. Love to all!

I'm Up! Lemon-Poppy Seed Pancakes

2011-01-31T22:00:00.000-08:00

Lemon-Poppy Seed Pancakes

Unfettered from the constructs of the work week, weekend breakfast is one time when time doesn't matter.

Long and leisurely, usually with something good to read, a crossword puzzle to work, or the soft-voiced retelling of the previous night's dreams, the habit of a weekend breakfast can provide something nice to look forward to the whole week through.

Mornings when you've woken not by the alarm but on your own volition are especially conducive to a breakfast treat. A friendly poppy-seeded pancake, tangy with buttermilk and the cheer of lemon makes the whole experience more agreeable. Earthy, crunchy poppy seeds and the congenial wake-up call of citrus in a robe of fluffy cake made toasty with butter, dolloped with lemon curd, served with a steamy mug of black coffee... Weekend, here I come!

I'm Up! Lemon-Poppy Seed Pancakes

a Sticks Forks Fingers Original

Dry ingredients:

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

2 tablespoons sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

zest of one lemon

3 tablespoons poppy seeds

Whisk all above ingredients in a large mixing bowl to combine.

Wet ingredients:

1 1/4 cup buttermilk

juice of one lemon

one extra large egg (I used 2 very small county ones here)

2 tablespoons mild olive oil

Whisk together wet ingredients in small bowl. Quickly fold them into the dry ingredients and stir just until dry ingredients are barely moistened.

Heat cast-iron skillet over medium high heat. Melt one or two tablespoons butter in pan, and drop in 1/4 cup measures of batter. Cook until bubbles form and begin to break on top and the edges are just beginning to loose their shine. Flip, and cook until bottom is nicely browned, adding more butter as necessary.

Makes about ten 4" pancakes. Top with powdered sugar and lemon curd. (Trader Joe's makes a nice one that I always keep in the pantry for such occasions, in case you don't happen to have any freshly made.)