Bread, Wine, Salt

I'm a big believer in homemade birthday cakes . Unfortunately that doesn't always translate into the time to make them for my friends. When it does I have my usual concerns about making a cake that isn't pretty enough. Certainly no one is going to pay me for my decorating skills. But if I don't over-extend myself on the decorating I can produce an acceptable cake exterior. Once you start slicing, the pretty doesn't matter anymore, but the flavor and texture of the cake matter with every forkful. This carrot cake was wonderful, flavorful, tender, and just sweet enough.  Cream cheese frosting is a natural with carrot cake, and this one is just right.  The recipe comes from BakeWise by Shirley O. Corriher, who you might recognize as the cheerful food scientist who makes appearances on Good Eats . Corriher uses the science of food to come up with recipes that work perfectly. It's a big book, and I haven't tried all of her recipes (not even close)...

( Full recipe with vegan variation here. )

My kids are unpredictable. Restaurant portion sizes are unpredictable. Put them together and I end up with one whole, huge grilled cheese sandwich in my fridge. I have this aversion to throwing away food, especially if I paid someone to cook it for me, so the grilled cheese sits in my fridge for a few days. Grilled cheese is not a food which ages well. I had to do something. That something turned out to be a super-simple savory bread pudding which used up the grilled cheese and two sausage links that were hiding out in my freezer, waiting to be forgotten. It's even pretty quick since it bakes a skillet already hot from the stove. It's adaptable to whatever crusty bread you might have lying around, and it will be great with or without those two lonely sausage links in your freezer. Savory Bread Pudding with Sausage, Cheddar and Apples 1 Tablespoon olive oil 1 small onion 8 ounces italian sausage 2 small tart apples 6 ounces leftover grilled cheese sandwich, or c...

No play-group lunches this week. My boys and I are stuck at home with what I thought was three cases of Coxsackie virus but might be something else. Regardless I've decided to keep us all home until we're not blistered/exhausted/super cranky all the time. (Not everyone has all of the listed symptoms, but we all have at least one of them. Well, not Husband. He's fine. Nothing wrong with him at all. Of course.) But the show must go on, so here's a meal that's quick to the table if you put a bit of time in the night before. We ate it for breakfast, but it works any time of the day, it's a whole grain and it's versatile. Polenta can be served with any sauce you'd use for pasta, or simply as a side the same way you'd serve rice or potatoes. If you have an Italian Nonna, she might have stirred her polenta in a special copper pot reserved for the purpose (so says my friend MF.) But I have no Nonna and no patience for things that require c...

I know, I know, it's visions of sugar plums .  In fact, The Night Before Christmas was the first book I ever "read" as a kid.   I had it memorized when I was four.   I might try to make real sugar plums , but these cookies are old-fashioned, too, so in my mind they all get lumped together.   December is the month of sugar. Cookies and cakes and sweetened hot drinks are offered up everywhere you go. Newspapers and magazines and blogs all publish recipes for sweet things you are expected to bake and share (with your friends and neighbors who are also baking and sharing.) And I start to wonder, when did we start needing quite so many different kinds of cookies? Are they really necessary, all these toffee-coffee-choco-banana-mint thumbprint sandwiches (with lemon glaze!)? I say NO! No we do not need all those concoctions and I'm going to take a stand, just as soon as I'm done eating this banana-peanut-butter-sandwich cookies . Mmmm... Where was I? ...

I love maple syrup. Everyone else in my house loves maple syrup. But sometimes it's nice to switch things up. And if switching things up means we eat a little more fruit and a little less sugar? Well, that's nice, too. This would probably work with any berry you happened to have bouncing around in your freezer. We always have blueberries in my freezer because a certain small person likes frozen blueberries on everything. If berries are in season, you can use fresh, but you'll want to add a bit of water (maybe ¼ cup) at the beginning and mash them a bit with a spoon to encourage them to give up some juice. Blueberry Sauce for Pancakes (and whatever else you might want to make more blueberry.) 2 cups frozen blueberries ¼ cup maple syrup 1 Tablespoon all-purpose flour ¼ cup water Put blueberries and maple syrup in a small saucepan over low heat. Cook uncovered until the berries release enough juice to swim freely. Mix the flour and water together to form a ...

Can someone better at photography than I am please explain why my sour cream is glowing? I promise it wasn't really glowing. Black bean and cheddar quesadillas on whole wheat tortillas, served with salsa and sour cream. Beans were cooked as described here . Everything else was store-bought. This was more than enough for the four-year-old, the 18-month-old and the spare toddler. The container is Ziploc brand. I don't pack many lunches these days. Older is only in school half-days and I'm at home during the day. Wednesdays are my only consistent lunch-packing days, as that's the lunchtime playgroup day. The lunches at playgroup vary widely, from nutritionally balanced to "Here, eat some raisins and goldfish." Honestly if I weren't posting lunches here I'd probably serve ravioli every week, and it's possible that the fruit wouldn't always be part of the plan. It's not that I don't serve my kids a variety of foods, it's...

Madhur Jaffery's World Vegetarian is a great resource when you have something vegetarian in your fridge or pantry and don't know what to do with it. I had a bunch of red beans left over from the vegetarian chili that I wanted to use for Sunday dinner. If you google “red beans” you end up with a lot of recipes for Louisiana style red beans and rice, which wasn't what I had in mind. This African stew was just the thing: easy and tasty. The peanut-butter flavor isn't strong here, the peanut butter adds more creaminess than flavor. My peanut-butter-refusing four-year-old ate his portion without complaint. If you're dealing with allergies I think any mild nut or seed butter would work here. You can use up beans you've already cooked, a mix of varieties would be fine, especially if you have pinto beans around. The original recipe calls for kidney beans, but I used small red beans. You can cook them just for the occasion, or you can use canned, so ...

Compline

The lovely and talented Justine left a suggestion on my post about cooking steel cut oats , so I had to try it. I always do what Justine tells me, because in addition to being lovely and talented she's very smart. Toasted oats, people! You must toast your oats! MUST! Why? Because it makes them taste all toasty and nutty and yum and you will love it. Also, because if you follow my instructions you can wake up to a pot of oats which requires only enough heat to warm through and then it's done. No fuss, no muss. The night before you want oatmeal for breakfast, measure out your water and put it on to boil. I use a ratio of 1 part oats to 3 parts water. I use an electric kettle and I really think everyone with electricity should own one, but a kettle on the stove will do as well. Put a large pot over low heat. Toss in a pat of butter (or don't if you'd rather not. This will work either way.) to melt. Measure and add your oats. Add a pinch of salt. Stir...

Another potluck, another dish shared and this time Husband was so pleased with it that he requested it again. (I would say that he even went to the store to pick up a missing ingredient, but he loves going to the store, so that doesn't signify.) Once you've decided to take the plunge and cook some beans, you may find yourself wondering how to turn them into to chili, and then you'll remember that the crazy woman who talked you into cooking dried beans in the first place promised you a recipe. And then you'll come looking for it, and so I figured I'd better get it up here. This is a great potluck recipe, because it comes together quickly once the beans are cooked (and if you use canned I promise not to tell, just be sure to rinse them well.) the cornbread topping makes it easy to transport without any sloshing and dribbling, and it's easy for folks to serve themselves so they don't hold up the line. The chili itself is vegan, and you could easily s...

If two people in two days tell me in real life that they miss me here on the tubes, does that say good things about my writing, or bad things about my real life presence? Anywho, the past two weeks of silence were brought to you by my “Why am I writing this? Five people read it and I'm in regular contact with them anyway.” crisis. (Hi, five people!) The crisis actually only lasted a week, but then I got food poisoning (not from my cooking) and while I considered posting just long enough to sing the praises of my favorite ginger tea, I decided I'd just curl up in a ball instead. The family has to eat no matter what crisis I might be having, and a favorite around here is black bean quesadillas. ( Don't forget to shred your own cheese! ) They're easy, filling, healthful, and once you've made the big pot of beans, you're all set up for another easy dinner later. Just add rice. Dried beans are a great pantry staple, because they're cheap, nutrit...

My lunches are pretty plain. The four-year-old got leftovers (his request) today and the toddler and I got more ravioli. Some of the lunches over at What's for Lunch are so much prettier and more creative than mine, but I still post my pictures. I have two reasons. The first is you, dear reader, who probably came here from there. I love checking my stats after I post a lunch box, because it means I can see the map light up with visitors from all over. The other reason is that I enjoy looking at the lunches so much, even the ones which aren't pretty, that I feel like I ought to share something of mine in return. So here is what we had for lunch today. If you're a visitor or you've been lurking, please take a minute to say hello. Pinto beans, cornbread , peas, apple ginger muffin cheese ravioli and mixed veggies, apples, pound cake Containers are Ziploc brand.

All in Just One Cookie by Susan Goodman and Timothy Bush If there is a small person in your life who loves cookies this book is a great way to introduce the idea that ingredients all come from somewhere other than the grocery store. Grandma gets a call that guests are coming over so she starts whipping up a batch of homemade chocolate chip cookies. Her cat and dog do research online and in real books, to find out where the flour, butter and the rest of the ingredients come from. There's a simple narrative and a lot of sidebar type sections, so you can read as a bedtime story or take the time to dig in deeper. My then three-year-old loved it, and I think it would be quite popular with kids who are independent readers as well. The illustrations are charming, and the full recipe is given at the end of the book so you can try it out, too. (This is an unsolicited review. No goods or services have been received in exchange for this review. I am not affiliated with the auth...

If I could only take one thing with me to a desert island it would probably be my cast iron skillet. It would be useful for bashing the local fauna on the head and for cooking said fauna over an open fire.*  Though I am not on a desert island my cast iron skillet is still in daily use, and has developed such a lovely patina that I don't need to grease it to cook an egg so long as I have properly preheated it first. There are a few tricks to cast iron, and anyone who loves their cast iron will tell you what they are and they'll all be different and you'll get confused. Here's what I do with mine: cook with it often, scrub with hot water and a plastic scrub brush, heat it dry on the stove-top, repeat. It is a frying pan. Its ancestors helped tame the West. You don't need to coddle it. My favorite (right now) use of my cast iron is cornbread. There are two basic forms of cornbread: Southern and Yankee. Southern cornbread does not have sugar in it. Yankee...

I sat on the picnic bench at the playground across the street, watching my son and his friends chase each other around. “You seem to have this kid-birthday-party thing down.” said another mother. I shrugged and I think I remembered to say thank you. It was a very simple party, which is why I was able to pull it off. And that's the secret, if such a thing can be called a secret. I know my limits. I cannot pull off a four course dinner party, so I serve family style. (Though I think I once did a 3 course meal. That was before I had children.) I cannot manage a theme birthday party with handmade invitations and goody bags and decorations and a fancy cake. So I host parties on the playground and serve un-fancy cake. It's not that I'm a simplicity snob. I don't think that my family style dinners are better than other people's four course meals. In fact I think that four course meals are marvelous and I often wish I were the kind of mother who could do ...

This is from my archives, originally published in May 2006.  I was taking a class on the Hebrew Scriptures, which is why this starts with a quote from Deuteronomy, but even if you're not a Jew or a Christian the thoughts this reading triggered about food and what we do with it are still relevant.  When I wrote this four years ago there was a burgeoning awareness about food and the importance of knowing where your food comes from but it was not as widespread as it is today.  Even now though, there are plenty of people who think that what we eat and how we eat don't matter.  What we eat and how we eat and who we eat with all matter.  There is more to food than calories, more to nourishment than the recipe you choose. Nevertheless, you may slaughter your animals in any of your towns and eat as much of the meat as you want, as if it were gazelle or deer, according to the blessing the LORD your God gives you. Both the ceremonially unclean and the clean may eat it. ...

Except for the occasional magically delicious pasta salad , I am actually pretty bad at winging it. If I get towards dinner time and I don't have a plan then I end up saying “spaghetti” and grabbing the jar of sauce from the pantry. It's not that there's anything wrong with that, it's just that I'm happier when I don't feel like I'm resorting to an easy meal quite so often. So I need to plan. I went to the grocery store today, and before I went my husband and I talked through a partial plan. Here's what I'm going to make in the next couple of days: Black bean quesadillas (actually made these tonight.) Chili with beans and either chips or corn tortillas depending on the results of a future trip to the store. Beans and cornbread, adapted from the Pioneer Woman's recipe Braised cabbage with red beans and rice from the Mediterranean Vegan Kitchen Vegetable soup And there are two things I'd like to get to making in the next week: K...

Okay, so there's no recipe here. It's just boiling and slicing so we can get to the playground. The mini-ravioli are from Trader Joe's and are very popular around here. As you can see, the toddler couldn't even wait for me to take a picture before he snatched a sample. They cook in 15 minutes. I just put the frozen peas in the colander and drain the cooked ravioli over them. This warms the peas and helps cool off the ravioli so it's ready to eat or cover for transport. Sides today were a clementine and half an apple. The container is a Ziploc I found at Target. Check out the other bentos at What's for Lunch Wednesday.

ANaNoBloPoWriMoPhoToGoGo Or something. I'm as likely to post every day for 30 days as I am to become a GoGo dancer, but the improbable is not the impossible (and besides, impossible things are happening every day .) What I am likely to do is change my mind about stuff, even/especially stuff that I have written authoritatively about in the past. So when I talk about having to knead bread dough for 20 minutes just after the sponge stage and again after the first rising, you can hold out hope that I'll offer up an easier alternative sometime in the future. Like now, for instance. Using the recommended procedure in The Tassajara Bread Book (which I commend to you) you can cut out the second kneading and replace it with another rise which does increase the time a bit, but it's inactive time, so that's not so bad. Tassajara also gets you out of washing to bowl after the sponge, so it's environmentally friendly, too! Give it a try with this Oatmeal bread ...

Michael over at Herbivoracious is working on a cookbook. I'm very excited about it, and you should be, too if you're at all interested in vegetarian cooking that uses real food and plays with flavors. As part of writing the book Michael put out a call for recipe testers and I volunteered. He sent me a recipe for Pozole Rojo de Frijol, a vegetarian version of a traditional pork stew. I loved it. The kids liked it. The husband liked it. It must be said that not everyone at the table liked it, but I think that was my fault for misjudging the audience, not the fault of the recipe. I will make a couple of changes next time: I'll use slightly less lime juice, slightly less water, and I'll up the chiles. I used the minimum this time, and there was very little heat. Obviously someone trying to write a cookbook doesn't want his recipes reproduced all over the internet, but I am allowed to link to it. So go read the recipe , try it for yourself, and then ch...

The frozen blueberry makes regular appearances on the four-year-old's breakfast dish. Oatmeal and plain yogurt, both breakfast staples, are almost always topped with frozen blueberries, and if breakfast isn't quite ready yet, a bowl of frozen blueberries is requested as an appetizer. Naturally, blueberry pancakes are quite popular around here. (The blueberries are on the bottom, waiting to surprise you with their juicy deliciousness.) This is a very thick batter, so the pancakes will take a bit longer to cook than you may be used to, and don't expect popping bubbles to tell you when they're ready to flip. Just keep an eye on the sides, and don't cook them too hot. By the time I get to the second round I generally have my skillet on the lowest setting. (My stove-top runs a tiny bit hot, so aim for medium-low and adjust as necessary.) Blueberry Yogurt Pancakes yields ~16 4” pancakes 1/3 cup butter 12 ounces (about 3 cups) white whole wheat flour 3 teasp...

I don't have many hard and fast rules for feeding my children. Kids are all different and they keep changing and you just don't know what's going to happen from one meal to the next. One rule I do keep is this: if your four year old, who has been rejecting broccoli out of hand for three years, suddenly agrees to eat the trees of a broccoli forest so long as you make some carrot people to go with it, then you make that child a broccoli forest with carrot people in it. As you can see, the carrot people are very tall, so we dubbed them carrot giants, which is fitting since the four-year-old has been talking about giants a lot recently. The four-year-old not only ate his carrot giants and broccoli trees, but announced that he would like to eat broccoli “more times than this.” Whee! This is a slight variation on Mollie Katzen's “Enchanted Broccoli Forest” recipe from the book of the same name. You can buy it new, find it in a used bookstore, or do what I did, and ...

...and anyone else who needs a fast, hearty breakfast. We all have days when we don't have time to sit down and eat a bowl of oatmeal. I used to have them all the time, days when all I had time for was an apple in the car, but needed more than an apple to keep me upright until lunch. This stuffed apple was one of my grab and go breakfasts back then, or I'd wrap it up and eat it for lunch on the days when I didn't have time to pack something balanced. The peanut-butter provided a kick of protein and good fats. The dried fruit provided a bit of sweetness and chew. And the apple provided crunch, fiber, juiciness and clean hands. It's a simple and versatile meal. Just slice the apple in half and use a pairing knife, grapefruit spoon or melon-baller to carve out the seeds, stem and flower, then fill with peanut-butter and dried cranberries as above. Or use raisins, chopped dried apricots, currants, dried blueberries, dried cherries. Swap out the peanut-butte...