Shopping

I bought myself a rolling pin today! Sophia and I stopped at Brown’s Shoe Fit in downtown Longmont to buy her some new tennis shoes and decided to bop across the street to check out the new local cooking shop, Cayenne Kitchen. I’m not a big impulse shopper (frankly, I’m not a shopper at all), but we’d found a fabulous new pair of sneakers for Sophia on sale for $15 (with laces... soooo exciting!), so I was feeling lucky. I thought I might run across a paella pan, which I’m sure I don’t need to make paella, but they’re so coppery and gorgeous.

Alas, no paella pan, but Sophia did spot the rolling pins. As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, I’ve been using Sophia’s four-inch toy cooking set rolling pin. Sad. So, with her encouragement, I bought myself a brand-spanking-new, 12-inch, genuine Vermont maple rolling pin.

Surely this is a sign of the tides a’turning?

Parvo & Paella

I want to make homemade artisanal bread. And paella. And something, anything, with caramelized onions. I want to savor culinary triumphs and laugh uproariously at culinary failures. But I can’t. Or don’t. What has happened?

I’m exhausted. It’s not summer vacation, or depression, or even having a baby who still gets up to eat twice a night. It’s parvovirus, and I feel like it’s slowly sucking the life out of my life.

In kids, parvovirus manifests as Fifth’s Disease, which is an ominous name of an innocuous childhood illness. But in the few adults who contract it as parvovirus (those of us unlucky enough to escape it in childhood), it can be much more debilitating and it can linger. And linger. For up to six months.

My symptoms? Pseudo-arthritis, pseudo-Chronic Fatigue, with daily migraines as the proverbial cherry on top. How am I coping? Ben’s picking up so much of my slack it’s ridiculous... thank goodness he’s on summer vacation. He’s doing most of the night feedings—I make the bottles and fling myself back into bed.

The answer for all of this? Time. I’m having more blood work this week to look for possible short-term treatment ideas. For now we just wait. I’m trying so hard to grin and bear it, to find the joys and energy in every day where I can. I still laugh every day, love every day, cook every day. But I haven’t found time for much else extra. So I have let my blog languish. What was such a tremendous source of motivation and energy for me has become a guilt-inducing drain. I tell myself I’m merely on summer hiatus, much like my beloved Liz Lemon. But I’m fooling myself.

I’m just too tired to brag to myself about my culinary exploits. And I have made some marvelous things... soba salad with soy-wasabi vinaigrette with soy-marinated chicken thighs, gorgeous homemade baby food like organic nectarines and butternut squash, Nestle Tollhouse cookies vastly improved with Ghiradelli bittersweet chocolate chips.

I’m hoping that somehow, by purging some of this self-inflicted guilt (is there any other kind?) that I can get back to doing what I loved—experimenting and laughing with my family in my kitchen, sampling new flavors and recording my adventures for posterity. Oh and a book deal. I’d love a book deal.

Here’s wishing the parvo good riddance. I’m on to bigger and better things.

Anyone have a paella pan they’re looking to unload?

Work-Shirking, Anti-Feminist Spiced Banana Walnut Muffins

Of course, my title is ridiculous, but I was so taken with a recent article in O, “Muffin Manifesto” by Suzan Colón, that I had to repeat that line. The gist of her article is that, as the economy turned sour and she became self-employed, she turned to baking as aroma-therapy. While for her baking was simply a happy, mind- and body-occupying pursuit of pleasure, her friends acted as if she were “setting feminism back 30 years.” Fascinating.

I relate so much to the idea of her interest in cooking for her family being misinterpreted by her peers. I, too, have been taken aback when people view my blog as some kind of statement about their own relationship with food and cooking. As I always say, we all have the same number of hours in the day. While I spend more of them cooking from scratch than most of my peers, I then choose not to do scads of other things: garden, clean, sew, build, shop, watch TV, etc., let alone work full-time. Cooking (and blogging about cooking) is a very personal pursuit that brings me a kind of joy and peace that I find in few other corners of my life. When faced with others who seem to have taken the frequency and fervor with which I cook personally, I want to reply, “But it’s not about you!”

So, the muffins... at the end of the article is the author’s recipe for her favorite muffins, adapted to be healthier than typical muffin recipes. I was drawn to this because a) my people love a good muffin and b) I had a bunch of overripe bananas taking up counter space.

The finished product has finally been sampled by all and I would say it earned five stars all around. Made with applesauce, vegetable oil, egg and a few mashed bananas, these muffins are incredibly moist, even 24 hours after they were baked. And with the addition of cardamom and orange zest to the to-be-expected cinnamon, they have a wonderful, dynamic flavor. This recipe also gave me a chance to use my brand-new microplane rasp grater (thank you Aunt Eloise), which I love, love, love!

The only change I made to the recipe was to omit the nutmeg. I hate nutmeg (sorry Mom... I dislike it intensely). Otherwise, we got eight tasty, relatively healthy muffins from a recipe for six and everyone had a nourishing snack this afternoon before cleaning out the sandbox. Three cheers for summer vacation and overripe bananas!

Pasta with Chopping-Board Pistachio Pesto

This dish was a huge surprise in its short journey from cutting board to tabletop to fork. I was drawn to this because, as the authors point out in the recipe introduction, “You do it all with your trusty knife and one pot.” That’s an appealing proposition in and of itself, and then I looked at the ingredient list and was definitely in: you literally just chop up the pesto on the cutting board, mixing salt and pepper, garlic, scallion tops (or chives), basil, red onion and pistachios. Easy as can be. You even stir in the olive oil right there on the cutting board. I don’t know why, but this seemed somehow radical... no Cuisinart required? Cook some linguine (I used whole grain by Barilla for added nutritional punch) and stir in some pasta water and Asiago with the pesto and dinner is done. Probably took 30 minutes, tops.

So, where was the surprise? Once the pasta cooked, I sautéed a bit of red onion and then heated the pesto before tossing with the noodles and cheese. The pesto smelled phenomenal on the cutting board and was a beautiful, almost technicolor green. However, it seemed scant when tossed in with a pound of pasta, even after adding pasta water. As I carried it from the countertop to the table, and as I dished up plates, I was already rewriting the recipe for next time—double the pesto and stir in the Asiago gradually, so it doesn’t clump (I would actually do this next time). As I twirled, there was very little pesto clinging to the noodles, and I feared a mostly bland dinner.

First bite... wow! Huge flavor! It tastes as if each strand is gently coated in the essence of the pesto, with the occasional bite loaded with herbs and pistachio and cheese for greater intensity. Looks were very deceiving, and the dish was just wonderful, bursting with flavor despite the pesto to pasta ratio.

Next time, I’ll cut the garlic by half. Since the garlic is never cooked, it leaves that raw garlic taste in the mouth, which I can do without. Ben and I both thought it would be even better served with a little protein like roasted salmon or grilled chicken and shrimp. The pesto would actually make an incredible topping for roasted salmon.

I loved being so surprised by this dish, loved being wrong about how it would taste. This is a wonderful, inventive dinner that comes together quickly and easily, doesn't make a huge mess in the kitchen and would pair nicely with a range of simple proteins. This is definitely my new favorite cookbook!

Pesky Baby!

So, I was all ready to blog about how incensed I was that Joseph was not devouring my beautiful, delicious, nourishing homemade organic baby food. So far, I’ve only made him peas and sweet potatoes because we were traveling, and, when we got home, he had no interest in these first two foods. I really wanted him to develop a test for veggies before introducing sweet fruits, so we were in a bit of a holding pattern. I even had a title for my blog, which I hardly ever write in advance: “Frankly, I’m Offended.” I had writing time set aside for Thursday night and was looking forward to venting my proverbial spleen because, well, I can’t exactly complain to him about it, can I? Well, wouldn’t you just know it? I offered him sweet potatoes Thursday night with dinner and, lo and behold, he gobbled them up. I thought he might just be showing off for his Eryc, whom he adores, but no, the next morning he ate all of his peas. While I’m of course thrilled that he’s eating the gorgeous baby food I’m making, I’m a little peeved that he ruined a perfectly good blog post. So, there you go... Joseph’s finally taken to homemade baby food. Next on the agenda—butternut squash!

The Blog as Self-Portrait

Next Monday, June 29, I’ll be participating in a panel discussion for the Mizel Museum on blogging as self-portraiture. I feel very honored to join four other fascinating bloggers:

Eric Elkins: The Dating Dad

Eryc Eyl: Mile High Makeout for Denver’s Westword

John Common: Hit Record and Play

Naomi Zeveloff: The Lady Finger

The panel is part of Mizel Museum’s current exhibition, “My Self: Original Self Portraits."

Details:

When: Monday, June 29, 8:00 p.m.

Where: Forest Room 5 Restaurant, Denver, CO

Cost: $5

Interested? RSVP online on Facebook.

Creamy Orzo II—Don’t Buy Cheap Tomatoes!

Quick note: always buy the good tomatoes! It wasn’t until I read The Splendid Table’s How to Eat Supper that I realized that the brand of canned tomatoes I bought even mattered. Since reading their wise words, I’ve generally been buying Muir Glen or Hunt’s Organic. Well, tonight I skimped and bought generic diced tomatoes and learned a valuable lesson. Not only was the flavor of the store-brand tomatoes less dynamic, but the cheap tomatoes were also poorly packaged. When I made this recipe the first time, I used Muir Glen diced tomatoes. The recipe says to drain them, and when I drained the Muir Glen, I was left with lovely little chunks of tomato. Period. When I tried to drain the cheap tomatoes, I realized they were packaged not in water, but in a thick purée, which was impossible to separate from the chunks. Ergo, my sauce was too runny. Yuck. Alas, lesson learned. The good tomatoes are worth it. Every time. Even for Monday night pasta.