Bread, Wine, Salt

We were out of town for a weekend, off the grid on a church retreat which usually takes place in crisp Fall weather. But this year the retreat was a week earlier than usual, and thanks to Global Warming or just bad luck, it was shorts and t-shirt weather the whole time.  I wanted cool days and chilly nights. I wanted to need an extra blanket and to find the heat of the Saturday night campfire a relief, to draw closer. Instead it was warm and the bugs were still out and the fire was so hot I had to roll my log-seat further away. It was still a good retreat. There are no bad weekends at the Shrine, but it was not Fall. Fall arrived on Monday. The morning was grey and we all knew it would storm even before we checked the weather.  By late morning the wind was blowing hard and the clouds had cracked open. The rain lasted most of the day and the air it left behind belonged firmly to October. It was time to make soup. I wanted this batch of soup to be vegetarian. The challeng...

Down the Hill When I told Facebook that I was giving up driving for Lent, my yoga teach said "You're all going to be so strong!" That wasn't the point, of course, but it would be a nice side effect. Nearly two weeks in, I'm not there yet. I'll get there, I'm sure of it. I will come to a point where the last walk of the day will seem like a pleasant stroll. For the time being though, the last walk has been something to endure. The boys have started asking to ride their bikes wherever they're going. It's a very sensible suggestion, except that they need some practice before the bikes become fast than walking. Younger son and I left a bit early to pick older son up from school so the walking bike could get a workout.  By the time we were on the downhill toward home he was gliding farther and faster than he ever had before and I see many more trips on that bike for him during Lent. One of the consequences of walking is that we take longer to ge...

A quick car-less update: I have walked fourteen miles in the past three days. The vests are very reflective, so are the straps on big boy's backpack. On Wednesday, when dance classes were over, I picked up the small boy and said "Are you ready to walk home?" "Yes!" he answered with great enthusiasm. "Mommy, will you carry me?"  His enthusiasm wavered when I explained that I would not be carrying him all the way home. The reflective vests were the source of much excitement, and might have kept the boys cheerful all the way home despite the pouring rain, but big boy slipped on the wet pavement and banged up his head and his knee. Neither was serious, but they did away with all sense of adventure. It's been better since then, because it hasn't rained and there's been less walking. Walking means we can stop at the signs and trace the letters. And we can use parking lots to practice balancing. I have  a dinner meeting t...

I sent the first two chapters of my novel off to a respected author who wrote me back, told me my writing was beautiful but boring and those two chapters might need to be cut entirely.  The book I thought was almost ready for publication needs its nose cut off.  Even though I knew in my heart she was right, I was knocked sideways. I cried a little. I posted a flounce on Facebook, declared I would put the whole thing in a box and forget about it. I felt that way for fifteen entire minutes before I blew my nose, squared my shoulders and went to read chapter three of my novel. It turned out that chapter three could be an excellent chapter one with only minor corrections. In December I went back to yoga class after a long absence. I went with excellent intentions. And then in January we had weather-related school delays and I had a nasty head-cold and I was out of class for three weeks.  I had to drag myself there this morning, not because I didn't want to get back ...

In June we had house guests. Since the last time we'd seen them they converted to the paleo diet. (Short version: no grains, no dairy, no legumes, lots of meats, veggies, nuts, and fruits, limited raw honey, dark chocolate.) We had to feed them, while also feeding my older son who won't eat meat unless it's bacon. Almost as soon as they were gone I had vegetarian friends come over for a play date, and I had to feed them lunch. And then the next day my mostly vegetarian friend and her utterly carnivorous husband and son came for a visit and I had to feed them, too.  I say "had to feed them" as if it were a trauma, which is wasn't. I like feeding people. I say "had to" because they were in my home over mealtimes so I was required by the laws of hospitality to offer them sustenance. Basic hospitality also required that I provide food that was acceptable to them. Hospitality doesn't say anything about judging their dietary choices. Why they ea...

Sleep is surprisingly necessary for the proper functioning of my body.  Most of the time I get enough sleep and I wash my hands often enough I can avoid most of The Yuck, the nasal/sinus/chest phelgm monster that travels the preschool circuit.  But my job sometimes gets in the way.  I was up all night on Sunday, so what had been an annoying thing at the back of my throat, easily vanquished with gargling and tea, became a full blown head cold, complete with that most undignified of symptoms, the runny nose.  This morning, after dropping W at preschool and humoring A through a toddler art class I walked to the grocery store to pick up the extra soft tissues, and the ingredients for this soup. This is potent stuff.  You have to be dedicated to garlic and ginger to eat it made with the full amounts.  But it's just the thing when you can't smell and you need something to give you a boost.  It won't cure the common cold, but it will make a lovely companion...

Sometimes the births I attend as a doula are intense, and there is no talking beyond simple phrases (come here, drink this, press here, turn that off) sometimes there are long stretches where my role is to keep people's minds off of their worries. I never discuss politics or religion with a client unless they specifically ask me a question, and then I answer as briefly as possible.  I will discuss food, but not the politics of my food. The other day I sat with a client and waited, and waited, and waited for a planned cesarean to happen.  There was a lot of time to talk and eventually we had each other's who histories including my undergraduate degree in animal science.  The father asked me if I was a vegetarian, so I explained about free-range, humanely raised meats.  He wanted to know what that cost, so I told him.  And he made a face, which is fair, because it's a lot of money.  I explained that we compensated by eating less meat (which is easie...

I have two methods of menu planning. The first is to sit down with my husband and decide which of our regular meals should be in rotation in a given week, and then make sure that our shopping list reflects the plan. It's easy, but it's a tiny bit boring. The second method is to pick up one of my many cookbooks and flip through it looking for recipes I want to try. A book which has been sitting on my shelf for a while, sadly neglected, is Supermarket Vegan . I picked it off the shelf last week and made a menu plan. I love this book. I am not a vegan, not even a vegetarian, but when I do eat meat it is grass-fed, free-range, humanely-raised meat, because I believe it is better for me, better for the animals and better for the planet. “But” say my friends, “that kind of meat is so expensive.” And they're right; it is. No one knows that better than the person who bought the rib-eye roast for the Beef Wellington at Christmas dinner. (Me!) Since we don't have a v...

Lunch in the Park , a novel about love and family, is available for sale in multiple electronic formats at Smashwords , for the Kindle at Amazon.com and for the Nook at BN.com Wherever you buy it, it is DRM-free . The delicious recipes that Kate and Jeff cook up are right here on my blog. I hope you'll read Lunch in the Park , you'll love it, and you'll feel the overwhelming urge to write a review on one or more of the sites above. And of course I'd love to hear from you here on the blog, too.  "Kate was in the kitchen making banana cranberry bread, which she had learned to make from her own grandfather in his long ago kitchen that always smelled of coffee and baked goods.” Lunch in the Park, New Year's Eve Kate's grandfather taught her to make the bread as she stood on a kitchen step stool pushed up to the counter so that even as a small child of three or four she could help measure and mix. This recipe does actually come from a grandfather , ...

I had several days where things just went wrong in the kitchen. J from A Half-Baked Life came down with her family to visit. I had planned soup and rolls for lunch but both failed. The rolls didn't rise as they should have, and the soup was a disaster. I couldn't serve it, so lunch was out instead. On Christmas day I kept the dinner plans simple, with eggnog and cookies planned for dessert. The red wine gravy for the Beef Wellington failed. (The Beef Wellington itself was lovely, and I'm sure the gravy was my fault.) Both cookie recipes I mixed refused to roll out and cut out properly. Despite my best efforts at tempering the eggs the eggnog curdled. I served a friend's gift of Austrian Christmas Bread and the box of chocolates my mother brought. I used a stick blender to revive the eggnog, and there was enough rum available that folks didn't seem to mind. I had planned roasted balsamic carrots with Christmas dinner, but I realized far too late that I di...

I dropped a bunch of cookbooks in front of my husband this weekend and told him to pick meals for the week. He filled out a weeks worth of dinners with references so I could find the recipe.  It was very helpful.  What he didn't do was actually read the recipes.  Once of his choices was spaghetti with plum tomatoes and basil.  I didn't follow the recipe because I'm an inherently lazy cook and because I believe I am capable of throwing together a fresh tomato sauce.  You are also capable of creating such a lovely thing. So I'm not going to give a recipe, but I will walk you through the process. Start with good tomatoes. There's no point in trying this with mediocre tomatoes.  Buy enough to feed however many people you're going to feed.  Set a pot of water in the stove to boil. Coarsely chop the tomatoes, place in a colander and sprinkle with a small amount of salt.  Allow to drain.  When the water comes to a boil, drop spaghetti, ...

More than once I have gotten within half an hour of dinner time and had no idea what I was going to do about dinner. Nothing was planned, and I could not mentally survey my pantry and compound something easy. On days like that, there are only two ways to avoid a restaurant: spaghetti or having something in the fridge that I can scoop into bowls and call dinner. In the winter time that something is soup, but in the summertime it's tabbouleh or this easy to assemble salad. It also travels well to potluck lunches. photo by Rich Renomeron 2 cans black beans, rinsed OR 2.5 cups cooked blacked beans OR 1 ¼ cups dried black beans 16 ounces frozen corn (or fresh if you can get corn picked that day) 1 jalapeño pepper (optional) ¼ cup olive oil 2 bunches scallions 1 bunch cilantro 5 medium tomatoes OR a pint of cherry tomatoes juice of 2 limes salt and black pepper to taste If you're starting with dried beans, cook beans until tender . Preheat oven to 400 F. Line a baki...

Yes, this is a terrible photo. A example of how we decide on dinner plans: I went to the warehouse store this morning and brought home stuff that required a freezer rearrangement. I managed to fit everything in, but clearly we needed to start using the frozen stuff. So on the way home from lunch we considered the state of our stores. A google search later and I had settled on a curried lentil salad which would use green beans from the freezer, lentils from the pantry, celery from the crisper and some of the cilantro left over from beans and rice on Thursday night. A trip to the store was required for the tomatoes. This was a much more civilized menu planning process than I normally undertake. The salad is vegetarian, easily made vegan, low fat, high fiber, gluten free, iron rich, colorful and straightforward. It also makes plenty. Curried Lentil Salad 8 ounces dried brown lentils 2 teaspoons olive oil 1 medium onion 2 teaspoons salt 2 cloves garlic 1" piec...

Probably not the Martha you're thinking of, unless you also have a young child who loves the show " Martha Speaks " on PBS. Bird had been begging for alphabet soup. So I picked up some alphabet pasta and whipped up some soup.  The soup was popular enough that I had to make it again almost as soon as the first batch was gone.  Even the grown-ups liked it.  It might not make your dog talk, but it does make a nice lunch. 2 Tablespoons vegetable oil 1 medium onion 2 cloves garlic 1 28-oz can tomato puree 4 cups water 1 cup alphabet pasta (or other small pasta shape) salt and pepper to taste juice of 1 lemon Add oil to a medium saucepan over medium heat. Finely dice onion and add it to the pot, stirring to coat onion with oil. While the onion cooks, peel and mince the garlic.  Add garlic to pot and stir again.  Allow onion and garlic to cook together for about 5 minutes until onion is translucent. Add tomato puree and heat to a bare simmer. ...

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 ...

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 ...

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...

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...