My childhood with Marcella

Once upon a time. When boyfriend was not quite boyfriend yet, just a boy who made my chest hurt, he was trying very hard to impress me.

We were swapping memories and I told him I was going to make him one of my favorite meals from childhood - pasta with bacon, peas and ricotta. He said it sounded gross. To which I replied, you sound gross. 

In an attempts to win my affection, boyfriend went to the store to purchase all the things I said I needed for this meal.

"Why did you get black-eyed peas?"

"For your thing. You said you needed peas."

"Yeah. I need peas. Actual peas."

"Oh."

In an attempt to look like I handled crisis and change well, I went ahead and made the dish with the (eventually very incorrectly cooked) black-eyed peas.

When we sat down to eat, I could barely hold back my emotions.

"This is kind of ruining my childhood."

He stoically ate all of it, leftovers included.

Eventually, I must have made the dish correctly for him, and he was not impressed. He said he couldn't really taste the difference between this and the other version. 

Once again emotions rose up in me and I tried very hard not to punch this still-not-boyfriend in the nose.

This dish, and many others that came from the pages of Marcella Hazan's kitchen were such huge parts of my childhood happiness, it was hard (still is hard) for me to understand how they don't evoke the same emotions in others.   

The food of Marcella Hazan is the food of my favorite memories. This dish of everyday-excuse-for-bacon joy, rice salad of Nantucket summer nights, pasta al forno (with homemade bolognese) for birthdays and welcome homes. Any and all of these things, eaten the next morning, a bonus dinner for breakfast treat.

Boyfriend managed to stick. So did these meals. Every one now cooked in my kitchen too. 

Thank you, Marcella, for a delicious life.

Other people wrote about her too: In the New York Times, and the New Yorker.

Pictured: my first ever made all-by-myself pot of Bolognese.

 

Friday treat challenge

This whole week has been pretty intense at work, and the pressure cooker isn't going to let up for another 20 days or so.

But the biggest challenge of this week is happening this morning.

It's my turn to bring in Friday treats. 

Friday treats is one, small way my office has come up with to keep ourselves from bursting into tears mid-On Track meeting or punching our database help desk staff in the throat. Friday treats give us something to work for, especially (I'm assuming) during the long, miserable, Vitamin-D deficient time when we don't have summer hours. 

I am still desperately trying to get these people to like me and when my tedious self-deprecating humor runs dry, I'm excited to be able to turn to snacks to try and buy their love. 

Here's the problem though- I don't know how to bake for 30 people (I was told to bring treats for half the office). And I don't know how to bake at a normal human hour. Last night required working until 6 and then eating my birthweight in complementary shrimp until 8:00, leaving me scrambling at 9:30 in the Jewel Osco. 

Like so many things in my life - the idea was flawless, the execution was lacking. Also, I need to carry cash, because it is a rule of the universe that your back-up-plan will always be cash only.

My hope is that everyone in my office is thoughtful about sharing- something I had not even though of until right now. As I sit impatiently on this El car, already 20 minutes late, I find myself hoping, not so much for praise and thanks, but for the people in my office to be good sharers.

Today's Friday Treats had a Choose Your Own Adventure/Seasonal theme:

For those holding onto sweet summer - Cake Batter Blondies (recommended by the lovely C-sea)

For those ready for fall - Pumpkin Donut Muffins (aquired from Pinterest and so delicious. These were everyone's favorite thing). Next time I'm making them in a mini muffin tin, and they will be perfection.

For those who do not let the seasons dictate their treat choices - Delicious BBQ Pork and Ham & Cheese buns from the Chiu Quon Bakery (this place is so amazing. If you live in Chicago you MUST visit for breakfast or a midday snack).

Happy Friday Treat day, everyone. Learn to share. 

In the Kitchen: Lavender Cookies

I'm not much of a baker. Sweet stuff is better left to my better half, mostly because its way more science than cooking and I'm a little too free-form to be constrained by measurements and rules (also, I tend to over-indulge in the licking-the-cake-spoon department). But occasionally I'll pull out the flour and sugar and do the damn thing.

Once upon a time, a little while ago, my amazing Godmother made amazing lavender cookies. I don't know if there was a specific occasion to go along with them, but they were there and I ate them and they were so.good.

I've thought about them on occasion since that day. And since I now live in one of the only neighborhoods where you can buy lavender without too much struggle (oh, Middle Eastern Bakery, you are The. Best.) I knew it was only a matter of time before I was having enough of a bad day to know I needed to make some soothing, smellgood cookies. 

Lavender Olive Oil Cookies (adapted from a Lemon Thyme Olive Oil Cookies recipe)
Recipe courtesy George Duran (by way of AEM).

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ginger  
1 tablespoon lavender
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
3 tablespoons milk (I ended up using about 6 T. by the end)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon of salt 

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper or use silicone baking sheets.

Put the flour, sugar, baking soda, ginger, lavender, and salt into a bowl and whisk together to combine. In a small bowl, whisk together the olive oil, milk, vanilla. Add the liquid ingredients to the dry ingredients, stirring with a wooden spoon until you form a nice smooth dough (my dough was super crumbly, so I kept adding additional tablespoons of milk, and ended up using about 3 additional table spoons before I got a consistency I was okay with; even after the additional milk they still required a little bit of TLC to be made into ball-shapes, but once cooked, they tasted perfect).

Roll heaping teaspoonfuls of the dough into balls. Place them about 2 inches apart on the prepared baking sheets. Bake the cookies about 12 to 15 minutes, or until they are browned around the edges. Let the cookies cool for a few minutes and then transfer them to wire racks to cool completely.

They were just as awesome as I remembered them. After taking an informal poll of all the people who got to have a few, the boys all said they tasted like soap. The girls, however, said they tasted like a delightful secret garden experience in yo' mouth. I am inclined to agree with the girls. Lavender is such a strong scent, that it can be over- powering, but the olive-oil seemed to neutralize it. Make them, and let me know what you think. 

After I shared my batch, someone told me that apparently Princess Kate over there in jolly ole England is apparently big into lavender biscuits (which is what they call cookies over there, I guess. Probably because Pillsbury hasn't really gotten into the UK market). They were instrumental in helping to sooth her yucky preggo tummy in the first trimester. While my friend was not preggo, she was having some of the bubble guts and apparently these made her feel surprisingly better. So not only are they crazydelicious, they're medicinal too! 

Also, in other news, I've decided I hate the lighting in my kitchen. Everything looks so harsh and unappetizing. As I continue to spend more time than expected barefoot and in the kitchen, I'm also working on how to make the pictures of food I take look not gross. Any insight into how I can do this (without becoming a photoshop whiz) would be greatly appreciated.

Adventures in Messy

Apparently, there's this thing in cooking called "cleaning as you go."

This is not a methodology I ascribe to, clearly.

In other news, the cookies I made were ah-maaaazing.

Two- nip

Oh! And I dealt with a turnip for the first time. It would have been way less stressful if the Internet had just told me that a turnip is basically a carrot playing Turtle from Entourage.

Doughy

Phyllo dough is a completely unfamiliar art form. We've had it in the freezer for ages and I finally found a recipe that sounded delicious and healthy.

Turns out I did it wrong as the dough is uncooked in some places, and apparently twice as thick as it needed to be.

Lesson learned, leave the fancy business to the Greeks. Though, as an Italian - I would say I made it look good.

two brilliant ideas (regarding food)

Since starting unemployment, I have been eating very well. My reliance on things that come in boxes and bags has been lessened now that I have all kinds of time to cook and grocery shop.

And of course, the added bonus is when you cook actual food and there are only two of you - you get tons and tons of leftovers. Double Win!

Sometimes though, you get too many leftovers and you have to get creative. So here are my two creative ideas, for you to take and use in your own life. You're welcome.

1 - Meatloaf and fried egg sandwich. I made a 4 lb. meatloaf by accident last week (I didn't really comprehend what four pounds of meat was until I was handmixing it. It was mildy excessive, but crazy delicious. Anyway - I was getting sick of just meatloaf and had run out of mashed potatoes, so I warmed the meatloaf, toasted bread, fried an egg and put the ketchup betwixt the egg & 'loaf so as not to soggy up the bread before enjoyment.

2 - Omelets full of Dip. It's the holidays, so I am sure you have some sort of cheese-and-mayo based dips lying around your house. And if you don't - this is an okay excuse to make one. Start making your omelet just like normal and instead of throwing veggies or meat in there, just dump some spoonfuls of dip (I used artichoke and crab dip). Fold that monster up and eat it. Boom. Delicious.

Finding it.

(guys- this post is officially 2 weeks old. embarrassing. but enjoy)

Easter had always been a holiday about creating new traditions. Some of the new traditions are now officially old traditions, but Easter is an opportunity to create new things to last for a long time.

Or perhaps. Rediscover old things.

This year we had an egg hunt. I have not participated in an egg hunt in about 12 years. Since Easter had been relocated from its permanent position at Granny's house to wherever-I-am-when-it-happens - there have been pinatas and champagne brunches at midnight, but no eggs to find.

This was Boyfriend's first year as an Easter Orphan and he wanted a real deal Easter (except he wanted turkey instead of ham) including a search for plastic eggs full of candy.

Because he's a grown-up now, he wanted to hide the eggs instead of look. Since we only had a 40' x 20' space to hide them in and we didn't want our friends rooting through all of our shit, he had to do a really good job.

Cut to Easter Sunday, when 7 of our friends were cut loose and told to find all the eggs.

I wish I had stopped worrying about cooking for like 30 seconds and had taken some pictures, because it was literally like they were a bunch of 7 year-olds with empty paper bags in one hand and mimosas in the other.

There were a fair amount of eggs at eye level and easily accessible that kept them busy for about 6 minutes and then things got interesting. I feel as though their grown-up senses got in the way of their egg hunting occasionally. While kids would immediately stick their hands into the paper feeder on the scanner, the adults think twice - worrying about the lasting effects of melting chocolate on electronics.

The last egg needed to be found, we gave a hint or two and then without saying anything, KK climbed up on a table in the living room and plucked the egg from where it was hiding in plain sight on the window, hopped down and held it aloft victorious.

Very few times will one of your fanciest friends abandon decorum and stand on your furniture in the hopes of winning something out of the grab bag. The laugh and sense of nostalgia you will get from that moment will be worth all of the hours you put in to cooking the turkey. Enjoy it. Make it a tradition.

Adventures in sticky sushi rice

A few weeks ago Boyfriend and I were lazing about on a Friday night.  I complained about wanting sushi and he complained about not wanting to go out. He then brought up the fact that our first Christmas together I bought him a sushi making kit. 

I confessed that I bought him that anticipating that we probably would not be dating any more by the time he got around to using it.  He wouldn't take that as an excuse so off we went to Whole Foods to get all the other things you need.

Surprisingly - you don't need much to make sushi.  You need rice, seaweed wrap and things to put in it.

 

The rice is the worst part.  When you are cooling it - do not put it in a regular bowl.  Put it in some thing flatter or it will take about 400 billion years to cool and you will just be getting hungrier and hungrier and seriously regretting your choices before you even start.

 

When chopping your fillings always think long and skinny. Also cucumbers are the best.  So crunchy and easy to manipulate. Boyfriends who read instructions are always good to have around too.

It took us awhile to figure out how to cut them evenly. So they were pretty ugly for awhile.  The most important part of sushi?! A bowl of vinegar water that you dip your hands, knives and anything else that comes in contact with the rice or seaweed wraps.  The rice is so sticky and the vinegar water magically makes it unsticky-to-your-hands. Don't even try making sushi without it.

The best thing about sushi is you can pretty put anything in it.  We were stressed out about the whole "raw fish" bit - so we only used imitation crab.  But we also put in cukes, 'cados, sweet potatoes, cream cheese, pineapple, strawberries, regular mayo, fun strawberry wasabi mayo (homemade), and as seen above - cheddar cheese & giardiniera.  Some taste better than others (obviously), but when you dunk everything in soy sauce it tends to taste pretty good. 

 

Our most perfect, perfect sweet potato and cream cheese roll. Look how pretty it is!  Making your own food is so satisfying.

Not only is it satisfying (but labor intensive) - it is incredibly cost effective.  While we had some of the ingredients lying around the house but - we only spent about $30 on supplies and made all this sushi (at least 9 or 10 rolls). If you have ever bought mid-range sushi from anywhere you know that $30 will maybe get you two - four rolls.  So this felt good - also, now I know that I can do it.  I can make sushi.

Its nice to know I can make things.

He gets me.

Rachel - Oh olives. You are the only ones who get me.
Boyfriend - You better not let pickles hear you talk like that...

Also, and I don't mean to brag - but he cooked jerk chicken on Tuesday with a jerk seasoning he made, out of peppers he grew.

I've trained him well.

Basil Party

If you're anything like me (and for your sake, I hope this is not the case - but, just go with me) you probably have a lot of basil at your house.

Apparently, this stuff is impossible to kill.  While most of the plant-tending falls to Boyfriend and his vegetable-whisperer hands, I can even some how keep basil alive.

And its not just alive.  It thrives.  It is unstoppable.  Which is sometimes more trouble than its worth.

Boyfriend is quite good at making the vegetables grow, but he lacks the initiative to then utilize them.  So when I stepped out on our deck garden two weeks ago, I realized there were four or five lush green basil plants humming merrily along on their way to being coriander that had yet to be touched.

So while Boyfriend was having a well-deserved break from me in Alabama - I got down to business.

Obviously my first thoughts were pesto and caprese salad but since there is so much I knew I was going to have to go outside my little box.  So I went to the only place where I get new recipes (when my mom isn't around) - the internet.

Here is what I have for you.

Basil, Artichoke, Tomato Pasta.  I found this recipe here.  Its pretty much a no brainer, as its basically a caprese salad in pasta, but I was stoked by the addition of artichokes (canned, obviously) - I didn't use marinated ones because that's the lazy way out.  I just sauteed them with the tomatoes in golden balsamic (because its what we had) and pretty much any spices I could find.  And I doubled all the good stuff to add to the pasta (recipes are so stingy with the food that actually tastes good). 

I think if I make it again, I'll use sun-dried tomatoes, because they have way more flavor, and make some sort of dressing, because this was a little too dry for my taste. Oh, and shredded moz. (instead of little balls) because then you get the melty cheese in your pasta which always makes turning on the oven in the middle of the hottest summer ever more worth it.

And then? Corn-and-Basil Cakes.  These are my most favorite thing of this very moment.  Noble Pig is always my first stop for new recipes.  The problem is, I don't know what kind of glamour shots operation she has going on but her food looks amazing.  Mine does not.  These especially refused to get actually pancake-y.  They just looked sad.  Womp womp.

sad but yummy. Yummy Sad.

Also, I put a ton of Old Bay in which was the perfect addition.  I think next time they need more flour and possibly to be cooked in a skillet instead of on the griddle.  But seriously, so delicious (and really simple).  Do it.

Of course, it may be Sunday night, and you may be trying to eat all the food in your house in preparation for your upcoming annual pilgrimage to the best place in the universe.  In which case, this is a perfectly acceptable basil usage.

Not classy - but crazy delicious. No plate required.

could use a timer

How to hard boil an egg when you're me:

1- Make Boyfriend buy eggs.

2- Wait about a week because you're too lazy to figure out how to boil eggs.

3- Run out of acceptable alternative proteins for your daily lunch salad and figure now is as good a time as any.

4- Google "how to hard boil an egg."

5- Get judged by Boyfriend for never having hard boiled an egg.

6- Retort back that in Your Family, hard boiled eggs are an "Easter-only" food and it's not like Boyfriend could give you accurate instructions so who is he to judge.

7- Decide how many eggs to hard boil - this is especially challenging because you know you want to make scrambled eggs or maybe omelettes or maybe french toast this weekend, so you have to chose carefully.  Because there is no possibly way you can go to the grocery store between now and the weekend.  Its IMPOSSIBLE.  New neighborhood sucks.  Select 5 eggs.  Because there is nothing like the frustration of having a single egg left in the carton. 

8- Put eggs in saucepan and fill saucepan with water so the water covering the eggs by about an inch or two - or really just "some" is fine because you have bad depth perception and the water isn't really helping.

9- Turn on heat under saucepan of eggs and water.

10 - Wait 3 minutes.

11- Remember you were supposed to put salt in and so throw some in and watch it gracefully fall to the bottom of the already heated pan where it can sit there uselessly.

12- Go back to watching Top Chef: All Stars, playing on internet, and looking for Boyfriend's missing drill bits (not a euphemism). 

13 - Remember that you are hard boiling eggs.  Run over to stove to see water boiling away happily.  Wig out a bit because you read that the water is only supposed to boil for a minute and take eggs off heat immediately.  Cover the saucepan with lid that is too big for saucepan because this is FAR too stressful a situation to find the correct lid.

14 - Worry a bit about if the water had just started to boil and so maybe you actually took the eggs off too early.  Judge yourself.  Eat some home-made whipped cream straight out of the blender. 

15 - Eat dessert, continue to search for missing drill bits, fold clean clothes that have been in hamper for 6 days, unpack single box and feel incredibly successful.

16 - Remember that you are hard boiling eggs and that you were supposed to take them out of the water 20 minutes ago.  Decide against using the kitchen utensil that is made Specifically for this task and use your hand to drain the water out of the saucepan.  Fill and then drain the saucepan with cold water a few times. 

17 - Realize it takes your cold water almost as long to get cold as it takes your hot water to get hot.  Decide that this is super strange.  Fill and drain a few more times. 

18 - Put eggs in tupperware container.

19 - Decide that eggs are not cool enough and put them back in the saucepan with some (actually) cold water.

20 - Brush teeth, floss, put on pajamas, read book, get into bed, turn out lights.

21- Remember that you still have eggs in a saucepan of cold water on the stove.

22- Ignore Boyfriend's laughs as they follow you down the hall back to (now dark) kitchen. 

23- Take eggs out of saucepan, put back into tupperware and put tupperware of eggs into fridge.  Leave saucepan of water on stove to instill bad habits in cat.  Realize that you thrive with cooking that either requires strict concentration or 5 hours of simmering and you can't really handle anything in between.  Except Pasta, but that doesn't really count.

dinner time

So Boyfriend and I are moving (DUH.) so in preparation we are doing the one thing we've managed to forget the past two times.

We are eating everything in the house so we don't have to move it.  This is all fun and games until you run out of normal food and are eating everything else.

So tonight's dinner is tater tots, baked beans and the piece de resistance - store brand velveta (that expired in July) mixed with salsa.

Do you eat it all together, do you eat everything separately with tortilla chips and/or ketchup or do you cover everything with Costco brand giardiniera and wash it down with a Miller Lite?

nom nom nom

Normally when I add things to my genius side bar - I do it on the sly. I assume that people, after reading all of the blather that comes out of my mouth/keyboard they will totally trust that I know what I am talking about in terms of amazing web content (and I totally do - all of those people are awesome).

Anyway - recently while wasting time on facebook I discovered a shared link by a friend of mine in Seattle (hi Beanstalk!) - it was for what looked like the most delicious sandwich on the planet. I haven't tried it yet, but I am just waiting for a moment when I am not writing a novel and its not Christmas season and all the other excuses I can make right now - to make this...and enjoy the crap out of it.

This website, Noble Pig is my new internet porn. Food porn. It makes me hungry and it makes me want to cook. As someone who spent most of her childhood avoiding cooking it seems strange to now want it so bad - to crave the challenge and the satisfaction you get from making something and then eating it and knowing it is delicious.

Happy Thanksgiving. Real posts in December (maybe). Eat good.

Pie in the sky and other things...

As promised - here are some tart pictures. Like I said before, it was surprisingly easy although the raspberry topping I thought was going to coagulate, but instead it stayed really runny and got everywhere and made everything sticky. When I make it again, I will just put raspberries on top and have the sauce on the side. Anyway here it is before raspberry sauce:
And after I poured the sauce but before it got all over everything.
Everyone said it tasted really good, which is all that matters.

And in non-Suzy Homemaker news - my March Madness pool is OVER. All of my final 4 picks are out of the tournament all ready - this is shocking and depressing especially after years past. When my baby sister is doing better than me in picking college basketball teams I hang my head in shame (although, she is about to go to college and I am long out of it - so I guess she should be better at it than I).

This was my social weekend, which was lovely. I have become quite the homebody in my old age, but I still know how to get down. I think the homebody-ness comes from wanting to save money and having something pretty phenomenal to come home to and watching my weight and all sorts of other things. Also, I just was looking over Boyfriend's shoulder when I saw an atrocious picture of me recently posted on facebook. And I want to cry. Its awful. Not cute or funny awful, just really unattractive and I can't untag it. I have to wait 2 more weeks before it will disappear. I know this isn't an actual sad thing like world hunger but for me, its pretty miserable. Does that make me totally self centered? Yes. But what can you do?

And with that, I am done blogging for the night. I just got really depressed really fast.

Peter Pan

So I recently made a tag cloud for this blog (you can see it down below, on the left). And I realized that while probably only about half of my blogs are tagged at this point - growing up is way out in first place. I never realized how much I talk about growing up on this sucker - although I'm not surprised. I am growing up, y'all. Every day and in every way.

Yesterday I was performing in an improv show for kids at an elementary school's literacy night. There I was dancing around like a fool and I had a flash back to my days in elementary school watching people do the same kind of cockamammy-bull honkey and thinking about how much I wanted to do "that." I wanted to be up on a stage performing for people. And what's really funny is that it was only later in life (when I got to be moody and 12) that I decided I wanted to be a movie star. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a d-bag on stage. And now, I am. Which is kind of awesome in a bizarre twisty way. And I think that it is the reason that I keep doing this show even though it eats up a lot of my time and energy, because little kid me wants to do it.

And today - right now actually, I am making a tart. Not a pie. A tart. A raspberry and lime tart. Right now it looks like this:
Boyfriend went out and bought me this 8" tart pan with a removable fluted rim. About 2 months ago if you had given me a quiz and asked me what I thought a fluted rim was, I would have given you an honest answer but I really wouldn't have seen myself owning one.

But then it was time to decide what I was going to make for this week's upcoming pot luck and I had a memory of Cougar making this tart and how I thought it was incredibly fancy and grown-up back then and I still do. So now I'm making it. Its much easier than I was anticipating thus far. And it was an opportunity to buy a new kitchen toy.

Kitchen toys, btw, have replaced barbies (of my very young years), American Girl accessories (of my somewhat young years) and dance clothes (of the rest of the years in my Mom's house) as the thing I collect. I know that if I wait to get married people will give me this stuff for free but this seems to make more sense at this juncture in my life.

And don't worry - I'm not too grown up. For dinner yesterday, I had this:
Yes, that's right, a Shamrock Shake. For dinner. Like a grown-up. And also, you might notice if you check the time stamp - I am writing this at 11:30 PM. I am making a tart at midnight. Because I didn't have time earlier today and tomorrow morning I'm going to watch rugby and I'll be too drunk to be able to make it in the afternoon.

So I'm growing up and I'm getting more okay with it. I was talking with a friend about how we know people who are a few years older than us who are still acting like 23-year-old disasters and how if we grow up now we might miss out on some stuff. But I look at all the older friends I have and the people who seem to be heading in the best direction(s) are the ones who know how to cook and who do grown up things like own property. Those are the people I want to be like when I grow up.