Category Archives: food

Food as ballast

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Food as sanity. Food as pleasure. Food as ballast, continuity, novelty. To prep food is to focus. That’s benefit enough, but there’s also how assembling ingredients performs a kind of magic, a magic that is at once artful and one of the most pedestrian domestic chores going. How is that possible?

Furthermore, because we get hungry over and over again, there’s no scrambling for motivation. It’s built in. How great is that?

This year has found me regularly trying out new recipes. Nothing as disciplined as working through a cookbook, but still . . .

4 garlic cloves, sage, mint, oregano, S&P, EVOO, and lemon juice

Sage and mint from the garden, oregano from the cupboard. I cooked the quinoa with a little saffron. The recipe didn’t call for that but one a few pages later did and I don’t know about you, but I often fudge things that way.

Since I don’t always have some of the more exotic ingredients, I apply a loose standard and that’s fine, since it’s not about perfect replication but rather about stretching my palate and experimenting a little, getting out of my domestic ruts.

For example, this Ottolenghi dish called for Persian dried lime powder and sweet potatoes. I used fresh lime zest for the former and left out the latter. I can see how sweet potato chunks would be a tasty addition, but the salad was PLENTY good without them (see what I did there?)

I gushed over this one in my usual over-the-top way. Oh my god — this one’s restaurant worthy! [Moan] Wow, this is good. Too bad we don’t run a B&B! Served a little bit warm, rice on the toothsome side, the feta adding a luscious creaminess, trust me when I tell you it was outstanding.

A few cherry tomatoes gifted from a friend’s garden added a perfect dash of color and acid, tasting like summer and sunshine.

My husband doesn’t say much (and I guess I gush enough for the both of us), but when he gets up for seconds, his opinion is clear enough.

Season and ancestors

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SEASON: Two weeks from midsummer and already we see signs of fall. This, at least, is nothing new. But the ordinary rain falling on an otherwise ordinary Sunday tamps down extraordinary Canadian smoke. It still plagues the Northeast.

ANCESTORS: It’s always befuddled me, this notion of wanting contact with dead relatives. Kind of spoiled the idea of Heaven too. You don’t need to ask why. But here’s what I’m trying. It’s so simple.

When I make dough now — always a tricky proposition for me — I channel an unnamed ancestor from the west coast of Ireland — County Cork, let’s say, where my MGM Alice Healey’s family resided. I feel the dough though her hands. Sometimes I close my eyes. She knows what to do even if I don’t. How to fold the dough. How much flour to shake on the counter. When to stop.

I don’t know who she is but I can imagine her — wry-humored, stout, with grey eyes. She grieves the loss of her sons and daughters before they even set sail for America. She can milk a cow and jerry-rig a fan. Her name could be Bridget or Mary.

This morning, the result? One of the best batches of buttermilk biscuits I’ve ever made!

Notes:

I used Elizabeth Germain’s recipe from one in a series of small books published by Cook’s Illustrated.

Somewhere I recently learned NOT TO TWIST your cutter. It wrecks the air flow or something.

Rosemary round up

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I forgot the rosemary yesterday when we walked over to the grocery store and picked up a leg of lamb. My bad. So I drove over early to pick some up. Also my bad.

How could I forget that my grocer stocks their produce aisles from 8:00 to 9:30?

The place looked like it might the day before a blizzard. Ravaged. Marked by emptiness.

There was no rosemary. Not a single stinking sprig. No lemons. No green beans.

Who thinks that’s a good business model? (And who am I to expect their business model to conform to my need?)

I next headed down Route 9 to another grocery store to fill the gaps in my list, which you need to understand is decidedly not my style. In fact, it is so not my style that when I listen to a friend, probably “a shopper” but not necessarily, describe going to multiple shops to get what they were looking for, it’s as if I’m listening to someone from another planet. I’d rather wear something that doesn’t fit. Or go without.

See: my five-year-old bathing suit.

I am already annoyed, but it just so happens I’m wearing socks like slide. You know the ones — every twenty or thirty steps or so you need to reach down and tug them up or you’ll soon find a naked heel meeting the inside of your shoe.

The question could be: why do some socks do this? But heading down the long dairy aisle for vanilla ice cream and bending to tug, I realized the question could just as easily be: why don’t ALL socks do this?

Meanwhile, in Los Angeles rosemary grows in freaking HEDGES. I can’t help but look back and find a couple of pics.

Happy Easter to anyone who celebrates! I’m off to marinate my lamb in rosemary, parsley, oregano, thyme, lemon, olive oil, and tons of garlic.

Spring is near

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The rake is cold in my hands, the absence of gloves testament to how often a gardening task happens without forethought.

I hear my oft-repeated assertions of the last several weeks: “I’m not gardening this year. I’m just not.” If there was a sound track for a husband’s eye rolling, I’d insert it here.

Every year, the satisfactions make themselves known and why do I forget? — the soothing rhythm of movement, the visible results, the smell of dirt.

Yes, lots of plants have suffered lately, particularly newly planted shrubs, making investments rather less than ideal. Will it be mind-meltingly hot again this year? Will the body find itself pleading with the heavens for rain?

I could spend an entire summer caring for what’s here and filling a few containers with annuals. I think that’s what I mean by “not gardening.”

We’re supposed to get some more snow, a right nor’easter heading toward the Cape, heavy accumulation predicted for west and south of here. So after I cleared the sedum of dead leaves, I thought the better of it and slid back a protective layer. They’re hardy buggers, but still.

I think Finn can smell the storm coming.

The sky already wears its snowstorm grey.

And we have snowstorm-worthy leftovers for today.

Finn barks. The day calls.

One blend, one box, 3 cloths

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Sometimes I get intimidated about the fact that people actually read these posts. Forgive the blindness imbedded in such folly, but I know I’m not alone in this weird double-take.

For instance, I want to post more about anti-racism again and about my book, now titled The Weight of Cloth, but part of me wonders — who am I? Well not about the book, which I am amply qualified to speak about, but about more general issues of structural racism.

I’ll get over myself. Have no fear!

So here is a simpler kind of post. Show and tell. And really, a chance to note recent gifts.

ONE BLEND. A blend of exotic spices prepared by a friend was one of my favorite gifts this year. A pinch flavors a big pot of stock on the stovetop at this very moment. It turns out that I committed to trying new-to-me flavors this year before even recognizing the thought. A resolution? Yes, and a discovery — that the better resolutions might be those that you adopt before even making note of them. No forcing.

Another Ottolenghi recipe. Ripped from the book PLENTY’s cover. This is my creation tho — both the food and the photo. And yea, it was tasty!

ONE BOX. Those of you that follow my cousin Ginny Mallon will recognize her artistry on this repurposed cigar box. I LOVE IT. When she started posting them on Instagram this fall, I knew I needed to give one to my husband for Christmas. Him being a Cancer was the excuse, my adoring them, the real impetus.

And since Ginny wouldn’t let me pay her, I received a gift too!

THREE CLOTHS. The first is a close up and finished. The second is almost ready to be bound. And the third is a close up of one that feels like I will never finish it. A progression of sorts.

All I want to say about them today is how liberating I found Jude’s recent comment about how she doesn’t see ugly (or something like that). I was referring to a quilt not shown here. I’ve always worked with ugly and messy, maybe even taken a tiresome pride in the fact, but this feels different. It gives me staying power.