My Make-Believe Cooking Show

Fun with Falafel

2012-01-14T03:30:00.000-08:00

I have been loving falafel most of my life. My uncle Shukri Zazou introduced our family to it when I was probably about 12. This was quite a revelation in the 60's, in the middle of Michigan! I have since learned to make lots of middle eastern food, and fresh falafel from scratch is one of my all time favorites. The box mixes are certainly easy and decent enough tasting, much like instant mashed potatoes are perfectly edible. But who wants that?

A food processor is a must with this recipe. I guess a blender might work okay, or a manual food grinder. But really, if you are the least bit interested in cooking, go buy a Cuisinart food processor. Don't be a pretender.

Here are the 'gredients:

16 oz.bag of dried chickpeas, soaked 24 hours and uncooked
however many cloves of garlic you can take-I use about 6 or 8
1/2 cup or so of bread crumbs or soaked bulgur
sesame seeds, about 2 tablespoons (optional)
a big fistful of roughly chopped parsley or cilantro
4 tablespoons of flour
2 tablespoons ground cumin
salt and pepper

Put all the above ingredients in a very big bowl and toss them to begin incorporating them. Then pulse all this in the processor until it is incorporated but still grainy. Don't get it too fine--you don't want it to be pasty. When you grab a handful and squeeze it, the mixture should stick together. If it doesn't, add a little water. I have to process the falafel in 2 batches to get it to fit in the machine.

Don't fret if you end up with too large a batch of raw mix. It freezes really well!

Form it into little ping pong sized balls. I like to flatten them a bit so they're little fat patty shapes. Kind of like my arse looks when I've been eating too much falafel!

Heat about a half inch of peanut oil in a deep frying pan. It takes a while to get hot enough. I don't really know what the temperature should be, but if you drop a little blob of falafel into the oil it should immediately swarm with sizzly bubbles. I am so very scientific.

AND NOW THE MOST IMPORTANT THING: When you slip the falafel balls into the oil to fry, resist the urge to fuss with them and turn them about. Keep yer mitts off 'em! Just leave them alone until the submerged bits are quite cooked before you try to turn them or you'll end up with a big greasy pan of free floating falafel crumbs. Oh, the horror. The shame!

When the little darlings are crisp and brown, drain them on paper towels.

Also, you can vary the ingredients if you wish. Some people add onion, hot chiliies, fava beans--whatever your taste tells you.

I love to eat falafel with yogurt-tahini sauce and a salad of chopped tomato, cucumber, scallion, olive oil and lemon juice. I also like to jam those ingredients into a pita and have it as a sandwich.

French Onion Soup

2011-12-01T16:13:00.000-08:00

I have been thinking about French onion soup all day. I woke up with a hankering for it, and put in a request before I scurried off to work this morning. When I walked into the house tonight at dinner time it smelled ever so lovely. Andy had also made a picture perfect loaf of bread to go with the soup.

This bread was so pretty it looked as if it were made by the props department at Theatre IV. Have I mentioned how grateful I am to have a husband who loves to cook?

We often use the onion soup recipe in the little Williams Sonoma "Soup"cookbook.

Every soup in this book is delicious, and the recipes seem really well-tested. The finished dish usually looks as good as the picture, which I find to be rare.

This soup takes patience, as it begins with a huge pile of onions that are cooked and caramelized until they practically disappear. It's not a thin watery soup, but rather a thick and hearty textured soup with a beautifully complex flavor.

Andy ladled the soup into oven proof bowls, topped with a slice of that picture perfect bread and some shredded Gruyere cheese and put it in the broiler until it was all melted.

Don't skimp on the cheese. A cheap, soapy flavored Swiss does not cut it! Buy the real cave-aged Gruyere. It's a little on the pricey side, but everything else in this recipe is very inexpensive so it balances out.

We eat this soup as a main course, but it makes a wonderful appetizer as well. It comes together very quickly in the broiler, and it looks gorgeous. You can make it a day in advance and it tastes even better the second day!

Home Made Ice Cream! For Lazy People.

2011-11-08T11:51:00.000-08:00

Andy Cleveland was way over-prepared for our onslaught of Halloween revelers this year. I think he bought 3 big bags of candy, and even we have not yet managed to eat it all, a whole week later. We had 2 little visitors this year, which is a 200% increase over last year's attendance. This isn't a great neighborhood for sending your little ones out to beg for candy, unless you plan to cover them in armor to divert stray bullets and shield against crazed motorists. I usually just turn out all the lights, close the curtains and hide until spring. I guess since I married Andy I'm feeling more gregarious.

I didn't think Andy could ever tire of chocolate, but he seems to have lost interest in the big bowl of Kit Kats, Rollos and York Peppermint Patties.

I saw this recipe a while ago on a blog called Kevin and Amanda. It's home made ice cream that you make with no churning, which makes my lazy heart sing!

Three ingredients is all it contains--heavy whipping cream, sweetened condensed milk, and any flavor of your choice. How could I not try this? And what a great way to use up Halloween candy!

First I tried to chop up York Peppermint Patties in the little Cuisinart. I stuck the candy in the freezer thinking it would break up into little neat chunks more easily. This was not to be. The patties just swirled round and round in the Cuisinart, remaining perfectly intact and threatening to burn out the motor. I ended up cutting them up by hand.

Then I mixed them into the sweetened condensed milk.

Eezy-Schmeezy. Lazy-Schmazy is more like it.

I whipped the cream into stiff peaks, then folded it into the condensed milk mixture.

Poured it into a container, covered it and stuck it in the freezer.

I can't wait to see how it turns out!
I think it would be a great way to glamorize foods that are not good on their own, like fruitcake.
Imagine fruit cake on its own.
Okay, now imagine it chopped up and used to flavor some ice cream.
See? Are you getting my drift?

Brilliant Gift!

2011-05-17T13:41:00.000-07:00

Emma, Matt and Tom got us the greatest Christmas gift this past year. They bought us six shipments from Dominion Harvest, and we just got our first one last Thursday. The bright red box was sitting on the front porch when I came home for lunch and in it was: asparagus, oyster mushrooms, kale, broccoli, blackberry jam, baby swiss cheese, and this gorgeous butter lettuce pictured above. Every two weeks we'll get a new care package. How great is that?

Dominion Harvest purchases foods from local, sustainable farms and delivers it to your door. You can check them out at

Just What the Hell IS Cream of Tartar?

2011-05-13T13:45:00.000-07:00

My mom had the same tin of cream of tartar for my entire childhood. It was made of actual tin, perhaps fabricated by peasants in Wales during the iron age. I remember thinking it was retro looking as a kid in the 1960's.I used to shuffle it around to get to the more popular spices like cinnamon and nutmeg. Never knew what it was for, and I'm still not sure it's necessary for anything. Next time I need a wedding gift, I am going to give a tin of cream of tartar. I will attach a note saying, "I wanted to give you a gift that will stand the test of time, as I'm sure your marriage will. Think of me when you use this. I understand that will not happen very often!"

Brightening a Corner Can Be Just the Beginning

2011-05-13T13:16:00.000-07:00

Today in Jackson Ward, where I work, there was a gigantic crew of people volunteering all around the neighborhood to pretty it up. I walked out the back door of my building to find our stairwell had been power-washed and was now being weatherproofed by the volunteers. Then I came around to the front of the building to see a team weeding, mulching and planting flowers!

This is a great neighborhood absolutely rich with black history, and I am fascinated by the stories and the characters and the architecture. But it is also still very much on it's way up, but not "there" yet. I don't exactly know what I mean when I say "there." There is a lot of gentrification happening here, and I don't always look upon that favorably, especially if it displaces poor people. But I digress...

I am just happy to see some loving care directed at anything and everything around here. I find that brightening up one corner can change the direction of a whole neighborhood. Case in point is this huge mural that's being painted at West Broad and Brook and Adams, right by Theatre IV.

This empty corner had nothing to offer but two walls, a phone booth and a bunch of garbage. Now it's going to house a work of public art that celebrates the beautiful fabric of this neighborhood--something that everybody can enjoy, young and old, rich and poor.

Perhaps this will inspire more acts of artistic sharing here in our promising gallery district. I can't wait to see it finished and to post a picture!

"Loser" Curry

2011-05-03T18:06:00.000-07:00

That is what Andy called this dish tonight.

If it's made with anything that smacks of convenience it goes into the loser pile. "Convenience" in this case just means curry powder that is bought pre-made, and not roasted and ground by Andy.

Never you mind that it looks like a hot mess in this picture. All I know is that it tasted yummy and it took about 20 minutes to knock together.

We sauteed chopped onion, red bell pepper and zucchini in a big knob of butter until it was beginning to get soft. We added leftover chicken (from last night) and added chicken broth, cream and Jamaican curry powder. In a separate saucepan, I brought some chicken broth to a boil, added some lemon zest and threw in some couscous to have with the curry.

It was very tasty and we sat on the back stoop, ate our dinner and watched birds with the cats. Andy Cleveland had 2 helpings, which puts it in "winner" curry status.

A Comforting End to My Least Favorite Weekday

2011-05-02T18:15:00.000-07:00

Monday is always my worst day of the week. I am always functioning (or malfunctioning) on a sleep deficit and cooking a complicated meal for dinner is the last thing I feel like doing. A roasted chicken is such an easy and economical thing to make, because not only do you cook Monday's dinner, but you are halfway to Tuesday's as well. Buying a whole chicken and getting 2 or 3 meals from it makes my thrifty heart sing.

If the thought of roasting a whole chicken seems daunting to you, fear not. It is one of the easiest and foolproof things you can make. It looks and smells gorgeous, and it's very homey and comforting.

I massaged this one with olive oil, then salted and peppered it. Into a dutch oven it went with a quartered fennel bulb, a quartered lemon, about 6 cloves of garlic and some sprigs of fresh thyme and rosemary. I covered it and put it in a 375 degree oven. Andy and I went for a hot sweaty walk with our friend Jenny while the bird cooked. By the time we got home, which was about 90 minutes later, the house smelled incredible! I uncovered the chicken, laid a big fistful of asparagus on top, and replaced the cover for 10 minutes to steam the asparagus. Then I turned up the heat to about 450, and removed the lid to crisp up the skin and reduce the liquid.

If you really want to go all out and make this more substantial, make gravy out of the drippings and serve it with mashed taties on the side. The flavors of the herbs in the juice are divine. But you'll have to go to somebody else's blog to learn how to make gravy, because my gravy sucks. I can take the best ingredients and turn them into a gravy that you could stick up wallpaper with. Gravy is just not in my skill set at this time.

I nearly dropped the chicken on the floor when I removed it from the pan. It was so tender, it was falling off the bone. I let it rest for about 10 minutes to allow the juices to return to where they belong, then we served it up with the asparagus and fennel on the side. Mercy sakes alive, it was so good. Have you ever tasted fennel cooked in roasted chicken juices? Wow.

Tomorrow, something with leftover chicken, vegetables and couscous--not sure what, but I'll keep you posted.

Bistro 27

2010-08-27T19:12:00.001-07:00

Have you been to Bistro 27 for lunch?
Don't let the elegant space with its high ceilings, beautiful linens and attractive and interesting waitstaff fool you. You may look at this place and think it's a bit hoity-toity for a nonprofit arts organization employee to have lunch. Oh crap, am I spelling hoity-toity correctly? Probably not.
Anyway, you can buy a lunch here that is approximately the same price as a lunch at a greasy spoon. But you get so much more in return. You get an experience that feels very upscale with fresh, delicious and beautifully presented food.
This particular dessert in the picture is called a "Bomba." It is passion fruit and mango sorbet encased in a thin layer of white chocolate drizzled with dark chocolate, embellished with fresh strawberries and blackberries. It's so pretty that I had my friend Brian take a picture of me kissing and worshipping it.
Bistro 27 is just kitty corner from Theatre IV on Broad St. Next time you take in a show, I encourage you--no--I demand that you treat yourself to a meal at Bistro 27.

Radio Rehab!

2010-08-15T18:31:00.000-07:00

My fauxsband, Clever Clogs Cleveland, had this great sounding little radio that was originally black and missing all its little feet. Today he completely revived it by peeling off the shopworn black laminate and covering it in this pretty maple veneer. We found rubber plug things at Lowe's and made feet out of them.

Doesn't it look fabulous now?

Cheater Cheater Pizza Eater

2010-08-08T15:02:00.000-07:00

I am the first to admit that I am a total snob when it comes to prepared foods. There is a lady named Sandra (?) on the Food Network who has a cooking show called Semi Homemade or something like that. I am not a fan of her half store bought/half homemade approach. Or her store bought big boobs that don't match the rest of her body. Okay, that was ugly, I am guilty. Moving on..

One night Andy brought home some pre-made pizza crust in a magic tube, and I have to admit, it was really tasty. Thin and crispy, just the way I like it. And it's easy. I didn't have time for crust from scratch, so I trotted down to The Worst Food Lion Ever and bought me one of them pre-made crusts.

But I swear, this was the only thing I cheated on!

I picked little roma tomatoes and basil from my own yard. I slow roasted the romas, and made a little batch of fresh pesto, and cut up some buffalo mozzarella.

What a feast for my eyes--the roasted red tomatoes (whose flavors had concentrated beautifully) and the soft white mozzarella on a field of fresh pesto! It looked even prettier when it was cooked.

So I hope I have not completely besmirched my good name with this one little dalliance with convenience crust. I wish I could say I've gotten it out of my system, but that might not be quite true!

Bag Pic and Book Plug!

2010-08-08T06:33:00.000-07:00

Here are some pics of the bag I am making for myself. I am showing a before and after to illustrate the transformation. I haven't finished the handles yet.
I just happen to be reading Irene Ziegler's new book, Ashes to Water, which I highly recommend to everybody! Here I use it for scale.
The bag is draped over the Yellow Pages to help it keep its shape when it dries. And you thought nobody had any use for the Yellow Pages anymore! Think again.

Before:

After:

A Peach of a Cake

2010-08-07T13:37:00.000-07:00

Oh. My. My. MY. There are no words to accurately describe how much I love a ripe, juicy summer peach.

Okay that's a bit much, but honestly, I would rather eat a peach than a piece of chocolate. They are in the height of their perfection right now, and I aim to eat them every which way I can.

This is my first upside down cake, but it will be the first of many, because it has all the qualities of a successful recipe--it is easy, it looks beautiful, and tastes divine.

Very ripe peaches with soft flesh and lots of juice work well for this cake. I peeled and sliced 3 of them.

I cheated (gasp, swoon) with a yellow box cake mix, and I don't care who knows it.

I melted a half stick of butter in the cake pan, used a pastry brush to brush some of that butter up the sides, and sprinkled the melted butter on the bottom liberally with dark brown sugar.

Layered the peaches like in the picture, then poured the cake batter until it covered the peaches. The pan was about 2/3 filled, maybe a teeny bit more. 35 to 40 minutes in a 350 degree oven, and it was done. I waited about 5 minutes, inverted it on a plate and gave it a few very firm knocks. Then I waited another five or so before I lifted the cake plate off.

I was thrilled to see that it all held together beautifully and the brown sugar, fruit juice and butter made a gorgeous glossy golden brown glaze.

Butter + brown sugar + ripe peaches + batter = Heaven.
Serve with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream!

Suvir's Sweet Pepper Biriyani

2010-08-01T15:10:00.000-07:00

I have mentioned again and again how much I love chef Suvir Saran, author of my most used and heavily stained cookbook, Indian Home Cooking.

Today for Sunday dinner I made his Sweet Pepper Biriyani with Cumin and Fennel Seeds. This is a wonderfully light, aromatic dish that is well spiced and relatively low on guilt.

It is basically made from alternating layers of basmati rice, fresh cilantro, and a gorgeous fragrant medley of sweet bell peppers, onions, a spice blend, fresh tomatoes, Andy's homemade tomato chutney (I am so very spoiled) and --this was my addition--raisins and slivered almonds.

The spice blend is coriander, cumin, black mustard and fennel seeds and dried red chile, all ground into a powder. The smell of grinding your own spices is intoxicating.

The veggies are sauteed with the spice blend until everything is really tender. The rice is cooked to near-doneness. Then Everything is stacked up in a covered casserole in layers and baked in a 350 degree oven for 35 minutes.

Let it sit for 10 minutes if you are able. The aroma is so tempting that it will be hard to do this unless you have a glass of wine at the ready. Scatter some more cilantro on top and feed to your sweetie with a kiss!

The Passport Bag

2010-07-29T05:55:00.001-07:00

Man, do I ever hate dragging a pile of luggage around the airport. When I travel I throw caution to the wind and totally trust the airline to take good care of my baggage. Call me crazy, but I always feel really smug when I am calmly settled in my airplane seat and I am watching somebody try to jam a big fat heavy "carry on" into an overhead compartment. I like to feel unencumbered when I am trying to get from A to B. I have enough to keep track of as it is.

I am naming this felted wool bag the Passport Bag. It is just big enough for this following list of things I cannot travel without: Passport, drivers license, debit card, credit card, boarding pass, tinted chapstick, pen (planes never have any pens), and a little cash. Going through airport security is much easier too, unless they just decide to sequester you and feel you up for no good reason.

Mini Makeover

2010-07-26T04:11:00.000-07:00

My teensy dining room (8x10 feet or so) has a nice big window that I like to use as a focal point to show off my dorky collection of suns and pitchers. I had been meaning to replace the very tragic looking valance for ages, and finally spiffed it up yesterday by making a new colorful shade for it. I chose a lipsticky color with threads of yellow and green running through it. It really pulls my room together! And I am positively queer for ball fringe.

I bought the fabric and the fringe at William and Sherrill. I am overly fond of beautiful fabrics that I cannot afford, and I feel something very close to lust when I walk around in there. I'm usually the only woman walking around in yoga pants, t-shirt and no makeup. The store is highly populated with affluent Salisbury subdivision types who are carefully deliberating fabric choices with their decorators on their cell phones. Some years ago, I had a little business making custom window treatments, and most of my clients lived in Salisbury. They were all very nice, had the exact same taste in everything, and there were endless projects to be done in their McMansions. I eventually had to stop the business because I got so busy I could not keep up with the demand. I still enjoy doing custom window treatments for myself. Here's the before and after:

Before:

After:

I Heart Felting

2010-07-18T12:29:00.000-07:00

I am not happy unless I am making something. I must have a project in the works at all times, preferably more than one at a time. I have been a remedial knitter for years. I think I was about 9 when I learned to knit, and now at 51, I am only marginally better at it. I can knit squares, rectangles or things comprised of squares and rectangles. I just learned how to do circular knitting this morning on the internet, and I am starting my first circular knit bag. One of the reasons I am trying to get better at knitting is because knitting leads to felting, much like pot smoking leads to heroin use.

My new obsession is felted objects. Felting is achieved by washing a knitted wool item in hot water. As the wool absorbs water, its follicles stick up. The agitation of the washing makes all the fibers mash and interlock together and the knitted piece becomes a felt piece. The knitted stitches all but disappear. It is such a fascinating transformation, and felted wool is absolutely beautiful and lush.

This is a bag I just finished yesterday. Look how harmoniously this bag coordinates with my blog template! I don't miss a thing, me.
It was much, much bigger when I knitted it, like about 12" square. Now it's exactly the size of a paperback copy of The Mists of Avalon, which is what I used to help the bag keep its shape when I dried it. I still have to line the bag and put a zipper in it, but I couldn't wait to post a pic of it. I'm sending it to Emma for her birthday, which was more than a week ago. You've gotta love a late birthday gift, though, right? Just when you think the prezzies have all dried up, along comes a delightfully unexpected one!

The Tomato Channel

2010-07-11T10:25:00.000-07:00

Perhaps I will rename my blog The Tomato Channel just for July. I like to obsess when the obsessing is good.

Here's a salad I made for my light dinner tonight. It's not my original idea--I think I had it at a company picnic a few years ago, and I have made many variations on it. This particular one has:

Fresh raw sweet corn
fresh diced tomato
diced whole milk mozzarella
fresh basil
diced purple onion
salt and pepper
olive oil
wine vinegar

Just let everything mingle for about an hour. I recommend eating it at room temperature, which is how I like to eat just about everything. This is a great side to something lovely from the grill, like marinated flank steak. I am just devouring it solo. The raw corn is so refreshing and sweet!

Fresh Summer Tomato Sauce

2010-07-10T08:28:00.000-07:00

When it's a hundred degrees and humid, the last thing I want to do is turn on the oven or the stove top. I have an abundance of plum tomatoes at the moment, so this morning I made an uncooked marinated tomato sauce.

Later on, I am going to eat it with some pasta and some shaved parmesan, but this is a versatile sauce that can be used a number of ways. It makes a wonderful bruschetta topping, and grilled or broiled on flatbread with some little chunks of fresh mozzarella, it is divine.

Since I was still in my PJ's, I made this with only things I had on hand. I suppose another name for this sauce could be Lazy Slacker Sauce. Here's what I put in it:

10 plum tomatoes, diced
one clove of garlic, minced
about 12 basil leaves, finely chopped
salt and pepper
1/2 teaspoon of honey
1/2 cup of olive oil

Just mix this together in a glass bowl, cover it with plastic wrap, and let it sit in room temperature for at least 2 hours and up to 8 hours. Be careful not to go too heavy on the garlic--it will be plenty pungent in its raw state.

A tip about storing fresh tomatoes:

If you store your lovingly grown tomatoes in the fridge, you should be shaken and have your hair pulled. You might as well buy them at a suburban supermarket in the dead of winter. If you have made the effort to grow tomatoes, do not ever store them in the fridge. This kills their flavor and causes the flesh to go mealy. Just keep them in a pretty bowl and eat lots of them so they don't go bad. If you can't eat them fast enough, use them to make friends with your neighbor. If you still have too many, can or freeze them!

My money is so safe that even I can't touch it!

2010-07-09T16:07:00.000-07:00

What I love about traveling in this day and age is that, no matter where you are in the world, you can stick your ATM card in a machine and money comes out (providing there are funds in your account) in the currency of the country you're in. How great is that? So very convenient.

In the six years that Andy and I have been going to England, I have always done this without any complications. This time, when I got to England I used the card for a cash withdrawal and a couple of purchases, but suddenly my card was declined at the ATM when I needed more cash. I managed without the cash, thanks to my sugar daddy schmusband. When I used the card at Dulles to pay my parking bill, it went through. Then, (I am saying this part using my really snotty voice) when I returned to Richmond all my transactions were declined!

It took 2 days and 3 phone calls and several conversations with supervisors, not to mention the embarrassment of my card being declined as I try to pay for a buggy full of groceries at The Worst Food Lion on Jahnke Road, but I think now the situation is remedied.

Bank of America told me that because the economy is in the crapper, fraud is way up, and they are being hyper vigilant about protecting customers' accounts. I guess I can understand that. What I don't get is 1) Why do they not contact the customer to tell her that she can't have access to her money? and B) When the customer routinely uses the same merchants and ATMs in both the USA and England on a regular basis, are they not savvy enough to tell that the transactions are legitimate?

So I was advised to contact the bank now when I am going out of town to apprise them of my travel plans. This frustrates me beyond reason! Why do I have a PIN? Bank of America is wicked retarded.

Okay, I feel better now. Thank you for listening.

Farm-in-the-Box!

2010-07-08T04:58:00.000-07:00

Last summer, I saw this contraption on the internet called the Earthtainer. It is a vegetable growing container made out of 2 big plastic storage bins. The basic idea is a large container that wicks water to the plants from underneath. I bought all the stuff to make it last summer, and like many of my best laid plans, never got around to putting it together. Since I spent something like $60 on all the materials and they were still taking up room in the shed, I finally put my nerdy planter together this past May.

As you can see, I have tomatoes galore in this thing! No weeds to worry about, either. The plants grew very rapidly and yielded lots of fruit! Also, in the midst of a drought, this type of container uses water very conservatively. I fill the reservoir in the bottom through a PVC pipe. The reservoir has a soil filled pond basket in it, and the plants wick water up through the basket. You can see how to make one of your own right here.

Not the most stylish thing to have right in my front yard, but that's where the long, hot, brutal afternoon sun is, so there it sits, making the yard appear just a bit trashy. Of course, now you can purchase an attractive version of this planter for a tidy sum. Might not be a bad idea to actually buy a good looking one, as you can reuse it year after year.

What is better than picking a ripe tomato off the vine and eating it right then and there? Especially when it is warm from the sun and its fresh sweet flavor just has a party in your mouth.

Time to Hunker Down, Folks

2010-01-02T10:56:00.000-08:00

Happy Hollandaise, Everybody!

2009-12-30T06:18:00.000-08:00

Hello. I've missed you. I'm hoping that corny title will score some points with my readers, as I have been a total blogging slacker lately. It's not that I'm lazy; It's Facebook's fault, dammit! That's my story and I'm sticking with it.

I made the classic heart attack on a plate for my parents yesterday. Eggs Benedict is absolutely my favorite brunch. It's a nutritional catastrophe, but so delicious. Mom and Dad polished it off with wild abandon.

From Wikipedia:
"Hollandaise sauce is an emulsion of butter and lemon juice or vinegar using egg yolks as the emulsifying agent, usually seasoned with salt and a little white pepper or cayenne pepper. It is a French sauce, so named because it was believed to have mimicked a Dutch sauce for the state visit of the King of the Netherlands."

Though it may be caloric and artery clogging, it is a gorgeous and delicious sauce. It tastes light and heavy at the same time. The lemon hits you first, then you get the richness of the butter and egg. A few tablespoons a year won't hurt you too much, right?

I use a recipe from my mom's Betty Crocker cookbook from 1956. It is a gem of a cookbook, replete with those old illustrations of happy caucasian housewives and their satisfied, business-suited caucasian husbands.

Hollandaise has a bad rep as a difficult sauce, and many of you are afraid of screwing it up. I think this method is a great one that has always ended up successful, at least with me. The trick, I believe, is adding the very cold butter. This keeps the sauce from cooking too hot, thus curdling it.

This makes 1 cup of sauce. First, get a double boiler going on the stove. If you don't own one (I do not) just place a little sauce pan in a bigger saucepan filled with simmering water. Barely whisk 2 egg yolks with 2 tablespoons of lemon juice. Put this in the double boiler. Add a half stick of very cold unsalted butter and stir gently but constantly. When the butter has melted, add the other half stick. As you continue to stir the butter in, the sauce will thicken. I like a thick, but pourable viscosity.
I love the word viscosity.

If you aren't using the sauce immediately, keep it in the double boiler, but turn the heat off and cover it. Give it a little whisk to re-emulsify right before you serve it.

Egg yolk, butter and lemon are all I put in my hollandaise. Wkipedia says you can season it with other stuff, but I find it to be perfectly tasty with just those 3 ingredients.

Sesame Noodles

2009-10-18T13:15:00.000-07:00

I recently had sesame noodles from a downtown lunch cart and I really enjoyed them, but I thought I could tweak the noodles to make me like them even more. I just made a pound of whole wheat fettucine yesterday, so I had this lovely fresh pasta to start with. The whole thing took me an hour to knock together and eat. I made a spicy dressing which involved no cooking, and tossed it with sliced scallions and toasted cashews. Here's what I put in it:

One pound (16oz.) of cooked pasta, cooled and drained
1/2 cup of toasted peanuts or cashews
1 bunch of scallions, sliced

Sauce:

1/3 cup soy sauce
1 tablespoon peanut butter
1 tablespoon tahini
2 tablespoons toasted sesame oil
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons honey
1 tablespoon Sriracha hot chili sauce
2 tablespoons rice vinegar
4 garlic cloves, finely grated
1 1/2 " piece of ginger root, finely grated

My method was very easy. While the pasta water came to boiling, I toasted the nuts and sliced the scallions. I whisked the sauce ingredients together, then threw the noodles in to cook. When the noodles were drained and cooled, I tossed everything together until it was all nicely incorporated. And that is all there is to it. It was dead tasty! I can imagine this with any number of raw veggies added in. Things like snowpeas and cucumbers come to mind. Tofu would be good too.

White Bean Hummous

2009-10-17T13:14:00.000-07:00

One of my fave lunch spots near my office is Chez Foushee. I don't know how long they have been there at Grace and Foushee Streets--I know it's as long as I have worked at Theatre IV at least, which is 12 years. It is a charming little restaurant with a menu that is just right. Not too many or too few choices and really fresh, imaginative yet comfy food. They offer this white bean hummous sandwich that I am totally in love with.

I have made tons of hummous with chickpeas, but I love the lightness of white bean hummous. This is the version I made today:

1 14 ounce can of cannellini beans, thoroughly rinsed
1 clove of garlic
1 teaspoon of cumin seeds
juice of a small lemon
1 tablespoon tahini
ground black pepper
pinch of dried crushed red chili
about 2 tablespoons water

I just blended this in a food processor until it was super smooth. The water thins it out enough that it seems to get some fluffiness whipped into it. It is so delicious!

I ate it on a sandwich with sundried tomato pesto, spinach, bell pepper, carrot, and purple onion.

My Daily Bread

2009-10-11T17:23:00.000-07:00

This basic bread is so easy. I don't actually make it "daily" but I certainly could. It's that low maintenance.
This is a spinoff of the uber-popular no-knead bread that Mark Bittman wrote about in the NY Times. This recipe, originally from Sullivan Street Bakery, was an internet sensation. I later found a bunch of modified versions of it, and I have even modified it more on my own. It's gotten easier with each incarnation.

Here's what I do. Before I leave for work in the morning, I mix 2 cups of unbleached white bread flour or all purpose flour, 1/2 teaspoon of dry yeast, 1/2 teaspoon of salt and 1/2 teaspoon of sugar in a large bowl. I add a scant cup of lukewarm water and mix with my hand until it becomes a cohesive misshapen ball of dough. This takes maybe 2 minutes, tops. Just mix with your hands until all the loose flour is worked in. Then, drizzle a bit of oil on this dough blob, coat the blob with the oil and cover the bowl with plastic wrap. Set it in a warm (about 70 degrees) place.

Go to work and do your best to act like a grownup.

When you get home, you will see the blob has at least doubled in size! It will have lots of bubbles in it. Take a baking sheet and sprinkle it liberally with flour. Turn the dough out of the bowl and onto the sheet. The dough will de-gas and shrink as you coax it out of the bowl--this is okay. It needs to rise again and that will happen next. With a very gentle touch, coax the dough into an approximate loaf shape, making sure it gets coated in flour. Cover with plastic and let it rise for another 1 1/2 hours or so.

This is when you can make soup. Well, at least that's what I did today!

Put the bread into a 400 degree preheated oven and bake it for about 40 minutes, or until the crust is nice and brown and crispy looking.

Red Lentil Soup

2009-10-11T16:40:00.000-07:00

Today was a perfect fall day and that makes me want to bake bread and make soup!
While the bread was baking, I concocted a spicy red lentil soup tonight. Split red lentils are a staple in our kitchen. They're a beautiful coral color and very tiny, and they cook quickly and just sort of melt into the mix, giving a thick velvety consistency. Don't spill them on your kitchen floor. You will still be picking them up a decade after the actual spill.

Here's what I used:

1 tablespoon peanut oil
1 medium onion, chopped finely
4 cloves of garlic, minced
2 teaspoons fenugreek seeds
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
thumb-sized piece of ginger, grated
3 tablespoons of red curry paste
2 tablespoons of tomato paste
1 cup dried split red lentils
3 cups vegetable broth
1 14 ounce can light coconut milk
1 small peeled and diced sweet potato
1/2 cup chopped cilantro
2 teaspoons red chili powder or cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
salt and pepper to taste

Heat the oil and fry the onion until soft. Add the fenugreek and cumin and give it another minute. Then add the garlic and ginger and cook for another minute. Add the tomato paste and curry paste and swish that around for a couple minutes, until you can really smell the flavors intensifying. Add the veg broth, lentils, sweet potato, cilantro and coconut milk. Finally, add the nutmeg and red chili powder. Simmer partially covered on low heat until the lentils are so tender you can't really find them anymore, and the sweet potato is soft. Blend with an immersion blender until mostly smooth with just a few chunks for texture.
If you don't have an immersion blender, for the love of Darwin, get thee to Target and buy one. Alternatively, just get in there with a whisk and puree it a little.
Add salt and pepper to taste.

I was too lazy to do this tonight, but a sprinkle of chopped fresh mint, stolen from Joe and Debra's yard, would make a perfect garnish for this soup.

I ate the lovely soup with fresh warm slices of bread and (vegan) butter. If you are avoiding dairy and miss the taste of butter, I highly recommend Earth Balance spread. It contains no dairy, but it is just as tasty as butter. You can cook with it, too.

I thought about taking pictures, but this soup eats better than it photographs!

Homemade Vegan Pasta

2009-10-04T13:19:00.000-07:00

I'm sure I've mentioned how I love my pasta roller. It is the rock bottom model, at about 60 bucks at any snooty kitchen store. I didn't know this when I bought it, but all the pasta making afficionados will tell you that the plain old simple, hand-cranked machine is the best one to get. So Yay Me! Every once in a while I screw up and do something right. I have an Atlas brand machine, and it is made of very weighty shiny steel. You don't even have to wash it when you're finished using it--you just wipe it with a dry cotton towel.

I wanted to try my hand at vegan pasta today. I found this recipe by Bryanna Clark Grogan on the internet. I loved the simplicity of it--it only called for 3 ingredients: Unbleached white flour, chickpea flour, and water. If you are stumped as to where you would find chickpea flour, have no fear. Go to any Indian grocery and you will easily find it. It also might be labeled by its Indian name, Besan.

Apparently, chickpea flour has proteins, fats and lecethin that act as tenderizers in the dough, the same way eggs would if you were using them. I was very pleased with the dough, and it went through the machine just as smoothly as non-vegan dough does.

We are going to eat the pasta with some roasted and sauteed veggies for a light dinner. Between now and then, I have to get gussied up so I can go sing some songs at a fundraising party for Henley Street Theatre Company.

I may post a pic of the finished dish when I get home tonight. We'll see if it turns out purty enough!

Update: YUM.. Roasted grape tomatoes, red bell peppers and garlic cloves. Sauteed red onion, courgette (that's the posh name for zucchini, which is the posh name for summer squash) and spinach. The homemade pasta cooked in just a minute or so, then we drained it and tossed everything together. We finished it off with a drizzle of olive oil, a squeeze of lemon, salt and pepper and sprinkle of balsamic vinegar. Mwaahh!

Re-Veganizing!

2009-09-30T15:35:00.000-07:00

We are returning to our vegan status once again. We have strayed into lacto-ovo territory for quite a while now, and we have even dipped our toes in a bit of bacon and sausage in the last year. But the truth is, we both feel a whole lot better when we stick to eating plants.

When we turned vegan, we did it cold turkey (or should I say cold tofurkey? Ha ha. I slay me.) We went from full carnivore to vegan, not in stages. That may sound dreadful to some of you, but we enjoyed it and saw it as a culinary challenge. We expanded our repertoire dramatically and really grew and developed as cooks.

I also recall feeling better almost immediately. My guts suddenly worked perfectly with no heartburn or indigestion, and my allergy symptoms were 90% gone within about 2 weeks. So plan on seeing some new stuff on this blog as I rededicate myself to plants!

Yum. Yum. Darling.

2009-09-27T12:34:00.000-07:00

We had a couple friends over for brunch today and I made these cute little muffins. I found the recipe in a gorgeous cookbook by Rose Elliot called Veggie Chic. They're mini feta and sundried tomato muffins, and they were the perfect little compliment to the spinach frittata and fruit salad that we made!

2 T olive oil
1 egg
2 T sundried tomato pesto
2 T water
1 cup all purpose flour
2 t baking powder
8 oz. feta cheese, tiny diced
8 sundried tomatoes packed in oil, drained and finely chopped
4 T chopped fresh basil

Preheat the oven to 375. Spray a mini muffin pan with nonstick spray and set aside. Whisk together the olive oil, egg, tomato pesto and water. Sift the flour and baking powder into a separate bowl and mix in the feta, sundried tomatoes, basil, and some salt and pepper. Make a well in the center of that and tip the egg/oil mixture into it. Stir this until it is just combined--don't over mix it. Spoon into the muffin tins and fill them well. I seemed to have extra batter and ended up baking 18 muffins. The recipe said to bake them for 10 minutes, but I ended up baking them for more like 20 minutes. They smell incredible when they're baking! Great little nibbles to serve with your brekkie or to take to a party!

Pasta a la Carbonara

2009-09-15T05:07:00.000-07:00

Pasta a la carbonara is a sumptuous, sinful dish, and it is pretty easy to make. You can knock it together in 15 or 20 minutes, it will impress your friends and probably will fill their arteries with gunk! And oddly, they will love you for it. I recommend not skimping on the ingredients. Cheap parmesan and less-than-heavy cream and Fakin' Bacon do not cut it in this dish! Use really good quality parmesan that's fresh, and grate it yourself. The same goes for the pork--a nice quality pancetta or good center cut bacon.

Man, I sound like such a Bossy-Boots!

This dish is especially quick and yummy with fresh pasta, but dried pasta works very nicely too. Here are the ingredients for enough to serve 4 people:

16 ounces of fettucini or linguini
8 slices of bacon or pancetta
1 cup of heavy cream
6 ounces of very finely shredded parmesan
2 egg yolks
fresh ground pepper
1 cup chopped fresh parsley
1/2 cup of peas (optional)

First, get the pasta water boiling. Then, in a big frying pan with tallish sides, cut up the slices of pork into about 1/2" squares and toss them in the pan to cook. I used a center cut bacon last time and it rendered a surprisingly low amount of fat. But fear not, there will be no shortage of fat in the dish! Once the pork has gotten well cooked (but not dry and crumbly!) remove all but about a tablespoon of the rendered fat. Turn the heat off--the pan is still going to remain pretty hot. Stir in about a cup of heavy cream, then the shredded parmesan and keep this mixture warm, but not sizzling hot.

Time to put the pasta in to cook. If it's fresh it won't take more than a couple of minutes. If you are adding peas, toss those in with the pasta to blanch. I don't think this dish has peas traditionally, but if you live with Andy Cleveland you put peas in just about everything.

When your pasta is practically done, whisk 2 egg yolks into the bacon-cream-parm mixture. Make sure it's warm, not boiling hot, and keep it moving so the egg yolks get incorporated. Drain and toss the hot pasta into the sauce, tossing to thoroughly coat it. The hot pasta also finishes cooking the egg yolk. What you end up with is a fairly thick sauce that really sticks to the noodles.

Transfer the pasta onto plates and garnish generously with fresh cracked pepper and chopped fresh parsley. Stop and notice how pretty it looks.

Your guests will get really quiet when they take the first bite. Then you will see eyes rolling back into sockets and you will hear groaning. Lots of groaning. Don't worry! This is all good. It just means the carbonara tastes so divine that there are no words.

If you decide to round out the meal with a salad, keep it really simple and light. Same goes for dessert--something light and fruity. Otherwise you'll have to remove your dinner guests with a crane.

Now That's More Like It!

2009-08-17T15:42:00.000-07:00

I have tried to embrace the green drink. Try as I have, I can't quite like it. The best I have been able to make it is "almost palatable." So let me share another green drink with you that is sure to make you smile. Sure to make you sit on the floor if you drink it too fast!

Janine's Frozen Margarita

Ingredient list:
1 can limeade concentrate
Tequila
Triple Sec or Cointreau

In a blender, dump the whole cylinder of frozen limeade concentrate
Fill the empty limeade container with tequila and dump it in.
Fill it again halfway with triple sec or cointreau. Dump it in.
Optional-dump in a half-cylinder of any special flavoring, such as strawberries or peaches. Otherwise skip this bit.
Now blend this mixture until it is sssmooooove.

This is your Master Mix. Pour it in a pitcher and set aside.

Now, fill your blender with ice. Pour enough master mix over the ice to cover it. Blend the living daylights out of this mixture until it is a smooth velvety boozy pitcher of perfection. Feed to those you love and prepare to have overnight guests.

Kitty in the Bag

2009-08-14T16:16:00.000-07:00

I'm learning how to post video. Let's see if this works.

Detoxing a la Dr. Oz

2009-08-12T14:56:00.000-07:00

I feel the need for a cleansing and refreshing smoothie-type addition to my regime.
Wait...Does over-consumption of bad carbs and cheese and butter and cream and wine constitute a regime?

I really want to up, up, up the amount of raw food in my diet.

I'm going to begin and end each day by drinking a great big glass of Dr. Oz's Green Drink. It's a totally vegan raw, very pulpy juice made of:

handful of parsley
2 handfuls of spinach
stick of celery
2 apples
juice of a lemon
1/2" piece of peeled ginger root
1 cucumber
spring water to help liquefy

I don't have a juicer, so I use the blender. It makes a very pulpy drink (yes, I know I said "pulpy" twice. That's just how pulpy it is) with a taste that I hope will become acquired soon. It's teeming with vitamins and fiber-chocked goodness. You're allowed to switch up the ingredients a little to suit your taste. When I make tomorrow's batch I'm going to substitute one of the apples for a nice ripe peach to add a little more sweetness.

I will resist the temptation to add champagne to it. Well, maybe just on Sundays...

There's Something About Boys Called Jack

2009-07-30T16:40:00.000-07:00

This is Jack. He's seven, and he has been at Stage Explorers Camp for the last 2 weeks. Just look at that little face.

Jack and I have become thick as thieves. We sit and talk at length about survival in the wild. At Jack's insistence, every day we are different animals. Today we were gorillas. Yesterday we were penguins. Tuesday it was hawks. We talk about what we'll eat, how we'll find our food, and how we will protect ourselves from predators.

Jack's probably not who you'd peg as the teacher's pet, but for some reason he has stolen my heart. As imperfect as he is, he is absolutely perfect. I think Jack will have some significant challenges as he grows up, especially in school. If you happen to meet him, give him a chance to be your friend. You won't be sorry!

Stage Explorers 2009!

2009-07-14T18:00:00.000-07:00

I'm in my fourth of six weeks of Stage Explorers Summer Camp at work. I am so partial to this particular group of kids! They are so focused and attentive and sweet. I officially love them. We did "Head Shots" this week. Some turned out better than others. Here are some really great ones.

How Can I Not Comment

2009-06-25T18:47:00.000-07:00

...on Michael Jackson's passing today?

I was standing in line at a Ukrop's checkoout a couple of years ago. There were these two VCU-student-types in back of me, looking at tabloids, and they were saying, "Michael Jackson. He is so weird. Was he ever any good?" And I promptly turned around to face them squarely, and I said "He was fabulous." And he really was. Put aside the controversy, the surgeries, the weirdness. He was simply so bloody gifted. Poor kid--his gift deprived him of anything resembling a childhood.

My first album, played on my little plastic stereo from Sears, was ABC by The Jackson 5. I will never tire of that recording.

Greek Beans with a Chipotle Twist

2009-06-21T07:45:00.000-07:00

Andy and I have been experimenting with dishes that meld diverse cultures together. Last weekend, he created an amazing cauliflower in a red sauce that was spiced with Indian flavors. Kind of an India meets Italy thing. He has named this new sauce Maharaja-nara sauce. Isn't he a clever-clogs? I hope to blog about maharajanara sauce soon. I hope he can remember how he made it!

Yesterday I was in my favorite little Greek food store--Nick's Produce on West Broad--and bought a pound of gigantes. Gigantes are huge white beans with a creamy, beautiful texture. After they have soaked overnight, they're even more freakishly huge.

I was going to make the beans the traditional greek way (delicious!) but this recipe from 101 Cookbooks caught my eye. I love the smoky hot flavor of chipotle, and this just sang to me. Giant white beans, baked with greens in a chipotle tomato sauce with queso fresco crumbled on top, served with a scattering of toasted whole wheat bread crumbs and drizzled with a cilantro pesto. Oh yes. Come to Janine.

It was a pretty easy recipe to knock together. While the beans are cooking, you make sauce and pesto. The chipotles in adobo sauce and the queso fresco are really easy to find if your grocery store has a hispanic section. The chipotles come in a little can, and the queso fresco usually is with the Mexican cheeses and is shaped like a little wheel. It is firm and crumbly with a light, slightly salty taste. Feta could be used as a substitute.

The bread crumbs are nice and crunchy because they're toasted in a skillet with olive oil. The pesto is a very liquid consistency and could be made in a blender. I used a hand blender in a coffee cup! Instead of chopping up fresh greens, I used frozen collards. They worked great!

I sat outside with Maggie and a Negra Modelo, watching birds while the beans baked.

This is what it looked like right out of the oven.

And here it is, served with a side of brown rice. I think it's a really pretty dish!

The Junk Food Junkie Antidote!

2009-06-01T15:16:00.000-07:00

I grew up on crap food, and I freely admit that I loved it.

Every once in a while I'll drive past a Burger King or a McDonald's or Hardeee's and I will almost get sucked in by that comforting greasy smell. The smell that is exactly the same, whether you are in Richmond, Paris, London, or Singapore.

Next time you feel a binge coming on, go to a website called This is Why You're Fat. This website is a photo gallery of the most excessive, cholesterol laden, ridiculously overindulgent and thoroughly disgusting dishes ever created. Scroll down through one hideous dish after the next, and you will soon find yourself feeling queasy and yearning for something fresh and plant-like. If this website should happen to make you salivate and feel ravenously hungry, please seek counseling and/or incarceration immediately.

This example is called The Sandwich of Knowledge. "The bottom tier contains eight strips of bacon, six sausages and four burger paddies; followed by a second tier of black pudding; topped by a third tier comprised of two diced chicken breasts and six fried eggs."

Now, knowledge of what, I don't know. Maybe the knowledge that you are going to die of a massive heart attack while sitting on the terlet with your drawers around your ankles.

Greens. The Other White Meat.

2009-05-17T17:44:00.001-07:00

I wanted something flavorful, but super healthy for our dinner tonight. We have this wonderful cookbook called 660 Curries, which I think would be a hilarious gag gift for Jill Bari Steinberg, but that's another post for another day. This book is great if you have an over-abundance of something and need a recipe to use it up. There are just so damn many recipes in the book. The guy who wrote it said he called it 660 Curries because he meant to make it 1001 and just ran out of steam at 660!

This vegan dish is a main dish for us, but maybe a side for a carnivore. I just served it with brown rice, and it was very spicy and delicious, but light. And packed with nutrition! Loads of fiber and vitamins and stuff. In fact, it has 100% of the daily requirement of Stuff. It would also make a really nice side dish for a meat entree. It's a quick fix, and here's how I made it:

Ingredients:
1 medium onion, chopped
2 T canola oil
1 t cumin seeds
a puree of 10 garlic cloves, 2"piece of ginger root and 4 hot green chillies
1 pound of fresh spinach, stems removed and rough chopped
1 pound of fresh collard greens or mustard greens, stems and spines removed, rough chopped
1 14.5 ounce can of diced tomatoes
1.5 t garam masala
salt to taste

Saute the onion until it's very done. If you wish, you can add the salt right now--it will help the onions leech moisture and caramelize. Then, add the cumin seeds and fry them until they smell nutty, about 20 seconds. Add the garlic-ginger-chilli paste and swish it around until it colors a bit, about a minute. If it starts to stick to the pan, deglaze with a little water. Now add the greens a handful at a time, and cover between handfuls so they'll wilt. When you have added all the greens and they've wilted down enough, add the can of tomato with the juice. Let that heat through, then add the garam masala. Add more salt if you think it needs it. If it looks too watery, just cook uncovered until some of the water evaporates. Last but not least, and this is optional, give it a whiz with a hand blender. I just did a partial puree because I like the occasional chunks.

I served this with brown rice, but I think it would be lovely with couscous, too! The flavor is very spicy! If you are a wimp, cut down on the hot chillies.

Sleepy Old Girl

2009-05-10T18:55:00.000-07:00

Gilda is the first kitty I had all to myself. I got her for my 39th birthday from Robyn O'Neill. She was a squirrely little kitten with a short stump where her tail ought to be. I was going through a divorce, living alone, feeling ungrounded, and I am forever grateful that my dear friend recognized that I needed a cat to come home to. I named her Gilda, and she slept in a little pile on my chest the first night she spent in my apartment.

She's 11 now, and officially elderly, but she is really very spry and still lots of fun. I'm pretty sure she spends most of her day sleeping on my bed when I'm at work. She is highly skilled at napping, looking fetching while napping, and displaying her mouthful of teeth with a big yawn.

Sally Bell's Kitchen

2009-05-07T18:48:00.000-07:00

Have you ever had a Sally Bell's box lunch?

Sally Bell's Kitchen is a Richmond institution. I'm thinking most of you are familiar with this incredibly charming little shop, but just in case you aren't, visit their website!

Yes, Sally Bell's is one of Richmond's shining examples of women's entrepreneurship with a fantastic story that began in 1924. But really, for me, it's the aesthetic aspect of the whole thing. There is no better place to buy a box lunch in Richmond.

Sally Bell's box lunch consists of a sandwich (today it was cream cheese and nut--so delicious), a deviled egg half, a light flaky little cheese cookie with a pecan in the center, a little cup of potato salad--the best I know of, and a cupcake frosted upside down.

I am totally sucked in by the packaging. The darling little box with the logo on top and the black and white checkered tissue paper lining it. It's a compact box, filled with all homemade goodness. I mean sure, they could throw it in a plastic container in a plastic bag like everybody else does, but instead you are handed this little package with cotton string tied to secure it. It's like ordering lunch and being handed a present!

Lemon Fusilli with Arugula

2009-05-03T17:10:00.000-07:00

I feel like I have been on the arugula channel this weekend--all arugula, all the time! But I still had a huge bunch of it to use up, and I found this fabulous recipe by Ina Garten (The Barefoot Contessa). It came together very easily and it was delicious. Mine looked just like the picture, which is actually from a lovely blog called Sweet and Saucy. Don't let the healthy vegetables fool you--they're swirling around in a heavy cream, lemon and parmesan sauce. We really loved it!

Support Our Local Growers and Artists!

2009-05-03T11:21:00.000-07:00

I found a ceramics artist at the farmers market yesterday who had the most beautiful stuff for sale! Her name is Jane Fencher Hendley and she has a booth at the Saturday market in Forest Hill Park. Go visit her! You will love her work, and Mothers Day is right around the corner. Her website is janehendley.com.

This is the beautiful bowl I bought. I was going to send it to my mom, but I am having second thoughts now. Impure thoughts of keeping it for myself!

Arugula. It's What's for Dinner.

2009-05-02T17:58:00.000-07:00

The South of the James Farmers Market opened back up today! Good thing, because I have been thinking of nothing but arugula lately--it borders on an obsession, I swear!

I had to work late tonight, so dinner was at 8:30 and I wanted something fast to prepare and not too heavy. Andy peeled and oven roasted some beetroot and blanched some asparagus before I got home, so all I had to do was assemble the divinely tasty salad:

Fresh arugula
very thinly sliced purple onion
roasted beetroot cut in cubes and still slightly warm
crumbled gorganzola
blanched asparagus
dressing of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, honey, dry mustard and black pepper

The slightly sweet dressing, peppery arugula, and the pungent cheese were a lovely medley. The beets were delicious and slightly warm, so they wilted the greens just a little. The asparagus gave just a little crunch. It was just right, and very pretty to boot. I ate it so enthusiastically that no pictures were taken. Sorry.

I still have half a bag of the arugula left. I must think of something gorgeous to do with it tomorrow.

Smells Good. Looks Ugly.

2009-04-29T18:08:00.000-07:00

The last couple of loaves of whole wheat bread I've baked have done this:

The strange thing is that the dough rises up very nicely, then it seems to sink back down during baking. WTF?? It's not like I'm banging pots and pans and slamming the oven door. I'm being very gentle and it's NOT WORKING. It smells and tastes good, but it looks like a damn brick.

Any bread people out there? This doesn't happen when I use all white flour, by the way. Only when I do part whole wheat. This loaf has 1/3 whole wheat flour.

This Happened Ages Ago, But I Loved It.

2009-04-28T18:28:00.000-07:00

Way back in the mid 90's, when I worked as a bank teller at NationsBank at 6th and Grace, I regularly waited on this old, sort of crusty customer--I can't remember his name but he was 70-ish, sharp, trim and impeccably attired. He wasn't grumpy or mean, just not a fan of small talk, usually.

I was surprised one day when he informed me that he was "in the market" to begin dating, as his wife had long been in a facility after some years of living with Alzheimer's.

He pulled his wallet out of a pocket and flipped it open to show me a very worn-looking picture of a lovely woman with glossy, wavy hair and big, expressive dark eyes. It was a picture she had sent him when he was a soldier in WWII. He told me the picture was taken of her while she was writing a letter to him.

I remarked at how beautiful she was, and he agreed. He then commented that his wife no longer knew who he was, which made me so sad. I remarked about how beautiful she'd been and how lucky he must have felt to have her as his wife.

He agreed, and added that "She was magnificent."

After more than 10 years, I can still hear him saying "Magnificent."

What a lovely thing to say about somebody who doesn't even know who you are anymore.

Food.com--try it!

2009-04-23T10:10:00.000-07:00

I have discovered Food.com. Well, Andy Cleveland really discovered it and told me about it.

Anyway, it's a great website that searches tons of other websites for recipes. The really nice thing is that you can use all kinds of different filters to narrow your search and you can search by ingredient, type of cuisine, special diet restrictions, methods/ techniques and length of prep time. You can save recipes in a recipe box.

How cool is that? This is going to be my new go-to place for recipes until the geniuses come up with something better. I constantly would find myself going to 20 different food sites for a recipe. Now I can just see all of them in one place. I call that excellent!

You have to register for this one. Now, I don't want to hear any whining about how you don't want to register. Just suck it up and register. Geez.

England Pix

2009-04-21T16:47:00.000-07:00

I know, we've been back for a week and no posts.
Here are some pix of our trip. We had a great time, as always.

Gardens at Chatsworth, home of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire. Yep, they insisted we come for tea.

Here we are leaving the house and heading towards the gardens. What a dump!

These are all pictures of the charming little park right across from the house Andy grew up in. His parents still live there, and they love it. Who wouldn't? Look how lovely!

The excursion to Brighton was a bit of a bust. We were so weary, after being up for 24+ hours, we would have been better off lounging in a hotel room. We were cranky and squabbly and I was even a bit weepy at one dark moment. Brighton was really quite charming--I just wish my state of mind had been as charming. We did finally find solace in a pub. We sat by the window, which overlooked a bus stop, and we got toasted and made jokes about all the rough looking women passing by.

Highlights of the trip included a 5-hour fantastic tune session at Sandy Bell's Pub in Edinburgh (Andy played his butt off and was every bit as good as the regulars), visiting Edinburgh Castle and Chatsworth. I like a nice castle, don't you?

I also must confess that I had sausage no less than 4 times and a beef pie once. It was mostly delicious, namely the Epworth sausages (made by a butcher in Andy's mom's home village) and a gorgeous beef pie at this charming pub. It was the house specialty, and it was really good! It didn't even give me a meat hangover.

Andy had lots of fish and chips, but I just had chips. Needless to say, I have returned feeling like a frigging zeppelin.

I can't wait to get back to cooking!

Off to England Soon!

2009-03-31T17:35:00.000-07:00

It's that time of year again. It's almost England.

We leave on Thursday for our yearly family visit. This year, we are adding a little excursion to the front end of our trip and spending a couple of nights in Edinburgh before we go to Scunthorpe where Andy's family is.

We thought we were so clever when we booked a 9 o'clock flight on Friday morning to Edinburgh. Turns out we actually booked the flight for 9 PM. Now we have something like 14 hours to kill before flying from London to Edinbugh. Crap!

Do we hang around Gatwick Airport for the whole day? Do we get a hotel near the airport and hang there all day? Do we try to exchange the tix for an earlier flight? Actually, the answer to that last question is no, we tried that.

The plan is to hop on a train and go to Brighton for the day. It's a 25 minute train ride and 8 pounds for a round trip ticket. We'll be tired, having been up for hours, but we'll be wired as we usually are that first day.

That is called making lemonade out of idiot juice.

Vietnamese Inspired Noodle Bowl

2009-03-27T23:03:00.000-07:00

I first had this dish at Mekong, one of my favorite restaurants in Richmond. They usually make it with pork or shrimp or tofu and cut up spring rolls. I do a vegan version and serve it with peanut sauce rather than the traditional fish sauce. My Janine twist on this is the addition of tart apple cut into matchsticks. It looks pretty, tastes fresh and smacky and goes great with peanut.

Most of this dish is prep work. There's very little actual cooking, except a few seconds to cook the rice noodles and the making of the peanut sauce.

I make the sauce first.

In a small saucepan, heat up a cup of vegetable broth. Add 3 tablespoons of peanut butter, 2 tablespoons of molasses, 2 tablespoons of rice or cider vinegar, pureed garlic and pureed ginger, and crushed red pepper flakes. If you do not have to worry about sodium, use soy sauce instead of molasses. Heat all this stuff until the peanut butter's all melted and everything's incorporated. Then take a little of the mixture out, dissolve a couple teaspoons of cornstarch in it and stir it back into the sauce. The sauce will become thicker and it will suddenly look all creamy and emulsified.

Yep, it's magic. Set the sauce aside.

Then I just layer all the stuff in the bowls. First, napa cabbage cut into very thin slices.

Then fresh mung bean sprouts and roughly chopped fresh Thai basil. Don't skip the basil! It's a very important flavor component and it tastes divine. Then julienned zucchini.

At this point, I like to drizzle a bit of peanut sauce or some hot sauce, like Sriracha.

Next, I add a layer of rice vermicelli. Then julienned carrot, matchsticks of tart apple, scallions, more peanut sauce and crushed peanut. Oh, what the hell--add a few more Sriracha polka dots.

This may seem like a strange blend of flavors, but the crunch of the raw vegetables, the incredibly aromatic Thai basil, the sweet tartness of the apples and the peanut sauce all work together to throw a gala in your mouth. Enjoy the splendid flavors and textures. You're welcome.

Snow Day!

2009-03-02T14:26:00.000-08:00

We awoke to half a foot of snow today--enough to send poor Richmond into a tailspin! We took a trudgy long walk down to Forest Hill Park, where I knew there would be tons of sledding going on! The joy was palpable.

Favorite little doggy down the street. I have no idea what his name is. I call him Petey.

This day reminded me so much of growing up in Michigan.

Guatemalan Breakfast for Dinner

2009-03-01T19:05:00.000-08:00

We were looking through one of our favorite cookbooks, World Food Cafe 2 by Chris and Carolyn Caldicott, and we spotted this Guatemalan breakfast and decided to have it for dinner. At first glance you think it's going to be like Mexican because it's eggs, salsa, guacamole, refried beans.

But upon closer inspection, the ingredients and combinations are very different, and very delicious!

The beans were black beans, cooked with lots of red onion and garlic and a blob of butter. Who can stay mad at butter? I simmered them until they were very tender, then pureed them with a glug of olive oil and served with chopped fresh cilantro.

The salsa had no tomatoes or tomatillos. It was made with carrot, red onion, garlic, hot fresh chillies, cilantro and lime juice. It was processed into a very fine consistency, and tasted ever so smacky and fresh.

The guacamole had fresh basil and finely chopped celery, a combination I'd have never considered. It was divine, and I will make it again. Maybe tomorrow.

The scrambled eggs were even a little special, seasoned with allspice, black pepper and oregano leaves.

We served all this plain flour tortillas scorched in a hot dry pan.

I didn't take piccys, but if you want to see a generous sampling of this lovely book and the actual recipes that we used, click here.

The combination of flavors was a fiesta in my mouth!

Baba Wawa--Warning--Can't Stand Her

2009-02-20T20:01:00.000-08:00

Is it just me, or is Barbara Walters getting creepier as she gets older?

I have never been an enormous fan--merely indifferent--but lately when I see her in an interview with somebody, she just sort of makes me feel uncomfortable. She makes my skin crawl.

It seems that she is just out to mine the most lurid, sensational, shameful, embarrassing bits of her subjects, then she brings them to light under the thin guise of actually caring, with the grand prize of bringing the subject to tears on camera. I get the strong impression that she feels it is more valuable to pander to the lowest common denominator than it is to educate as a journalist. Why teach us something we didn't know when you can force-feed us a second helping of trash? Yessiree, this is real journalism. I just think she is generally out of touch with what is interesting to us these days. She insults my intelligence.

I know, I know..trailblazer, feminist icon, etc. I'm sure she had her day, and I give her props for being great when she was great, but those days are gone and she has now evolved into somebody who, in my opinion, is cheap and shallow.

I laughed like crazy when Bette Midler recently commented on Barbara's tell-all biography. She said something like, "Well Barbara has a new book out and apparently she slept with everybody--I never knew she had it in her--so to speak."

OK Facebook, I Give.

2009-02-17T12:00:00.000-08:00

It seems that if I want to be able to find people, it is necessary for me to be on Facebook. It is the year 2009. Do I do this grumpily? Hell yes, but I am in the theatre world and I have all sorts of occasions to hunt people down. Facebook is just plain useful for that. I don't have to love it, I just have to be polite.

But check out this very very funny Facebook send-up I got today from a kindred spirit (where Facebook is concerned, at least):

http://www.much-ado.net/austenbook/

My Dream Wedding (as discussed with Jan Guarino)

2009-02-10T17:36:00.000-08:00

I have already been married and had the nice church wedding with the gown, the man--what was he called--oh yeah, the groom, the flowers and the gifts. I ran out of steam halfway through the thank you notes and I'm pretty sure I never finished them. I just hope that time has erased this from people's memories. Or that a lot of those people who gave me gifts are now deceased.

Anyway, if I ever get married again, I'm going to do something totally different. I'm going to have the wedding in my front yard, like a yard sale. I am going to post signs on the telephone pole at the big road at the end of my street labeled WEDDIN' with a big arrow. Furthermore, I am going to have a whole bunch of our old stuff sitting out on tables. Instead of bringing us presents, I will ask the guests to pretty please and for the love-o-gawd, take something with you when you leave. I mean, what a festive way to get all your friends to help you clean out your attic!

I give thanks to Jan Guarino, who helped me formulate this idea.

Bye, Steve P.

2009-02-10T16:42:00.001-08:00

We had a little farewell party after work tonight for Steve Perigard, who has been our Associate Artistic Director since longer than I have been at our company. He has always been so busy and pulled in so many directions, that I can't really say we ever spent loads of time together at the office, and yet I will miss his presence and I have a hard time imagining the place without him.

I'm glad he has agreed to still direct and act in some of our shows. It's a real honor to be in a show with Steve or directed by him. He's just one of the most gifted people I have ever had the good fortune to come in contact with. I have always been in awe of how he can find the very center, the sweet spot, the essence of a play and really nurture the actors to make it shine through in the performance. Damn, I wish I had that skill.

My boss gave a great farewell speech that was just perfect. He talked about how Steve has been his artistic compass all these years, always reminding him that the most important thing to our company was artistic excellence, even when it was tempting to succumb to just looking at the bottom line financially. It wasn't sappy and long, and I wasn't secretly longing for him to shut up. My boss is a very engaging man to listen to. I actually enjoyed the speech, and at the end of a workday I probably have the attention span of a toddler.

Anyway, I'm sure I speak for the whole theatre community in wishing Steve the very best. We all see nothing but promise for him!

Washington D.C.

2009-02-05T13:28:00.000-08:00

I am in our nation's capital, right near the Capitol. I'm holed up at the Hyatt Regency at the Kennedy Center Educational Partners Annual Meeting. I have been going to lots of really long meetings--like 4 hour long meetings. And then a meeting afterwards to discuss the meeting, then another meeting to discuss the discussion of the 4 hour long meeting. I am schmoozing around with lots of really sharp people, and I am trying to act like a grownup to the best of my ability.

Now I have to primp because I'm going to the Kennedy Center to see the Alvin Ailey dancers and have dinner. Whee!

Paella!

2009-01-28T15:45:00.002-08:00

We have been watching this travel/food show on public TV for weeks now. I actually don't know what it's called, but it's Gwyneth Paltrow, Claudia Basols, Mario Batali and Mark Bittman travelling through Spain and eating food. I have had so much fun watching this show! Plus, a companion book has been published, and Andy's son got it for him for Christmas.

I was out of town last week, but I told Andy that I wanted us to try making paella when I got back. Well my excellent boyfriend stepped up to the plate in a big way. I came home to discover he had gone to the snooty kitchen store and bought a paella pan. The pan was really reasonable, but then the special fancy rice was more expensive than the pan!

The paella turned out deeeeeeee-licious and I can't wait to try it again. Of course we made a non-traditional version because I don't eat swimmy things. We made a vegetarian version, but followed the traditional method. Paella pans are very shallow and wide. This does not lend to even cooking on a stovetop. We had to straddle the pan over two burners and stand vigil and rotate the pan to ensure even cooking.

I now want to buy a charcoal grill just so I can cook paella. It's the perfect thing and they're not terribly expensive. Actually, you can buy paella burners, which hook up to a propane tank and are perched on a tripod, which costs extra. Very expensive when you add it all up, and you can only use them for cooking one thing!

But a charcoal grill would do just great.

This dish is traditionally eaten straight out of the pan. Everybody gathers around the table. You put the paella in the center, and you go to town. Doesn't that sound fun? I love the communal arrangement. No place for germophobes.

The dish is cooked to perfection when the rice has absorbed all the liquid and has formed a chewy crust on the bottom. Kind of like when you scrape that last bit of mac and cheese out of the pan. That's why you must eat it out of the pan! And, hey, not too many dishes to do. Not a damn thing wrong with that!

So here's the basic drill. This will feed 2 to 4 people.

Use a generous amount of oil! This will help facilitate the crusty bottom layer later on. I used 1/4 cup.

Let the oil heat until it smokes, then add onion and saute for about 8 minutes. Add a few cloves of minced garlic, a tablespoon of smoked spanish paprika, and any vegetables that may take a long time to cook, like carrots or green beans. Now add pureed tomato, about 3/4 cup. Add a cup of paella rice. Stir this mess around until the rice is nicely coated and incorporated with the tomato mixture (called the sofrito).

Now, you'll add 2 cups of broth. I used vegetable broth infused with 1/2 a teaspoon of saffron threads. If you don't have saffron you can sub with 1/4 teaspoon of turmeric-the purpose is the lovely color it imparts. Add the broth slowly, and gently arrange the rice and veggies so they are evenly distributed across the pan. The goal is a nice thin, wide layer of rice, with the veggies attractively arranged.

Now comes the hard part. Leave it the hell alone for about 10 to 20 minutes. No stirring! Otherwise you will not get the hallowed lovely crust on the bottom. Cook it uncovered. The surface should look bubbly and it will make a crackly noise, and you want that!

As I mentioned previously, we had to straddle 2 burners and keep rotating the pan. Yes, high maintenance, but worth it. I won't have to be concerned with that when I buy that charcoal grill I am dreaming of.

When all the liquid has been absorbed, add any additional quick cooking veggies, like asparagus or artichokes or peas. Cover the pan with foil, turn down the heat and give it another 10 to 15 minutes.

What you want to end up with is rice that is cooked but has a little resistance when you bite into it. Squeeze a little lemon juice over it before you dig in. Grains should be separate, not gummy. The whole pan should have a nice crust all over the bottom. Yum--crusty bottom. What a lovely phrase.

PS! I got a great little charcoal grill at Lowe's for $28! Tried the paella again the next Sunday (today) and the grill is brilliant!

It's just the right size for the pan and it cooked evenly and was nice and crusty on the bottom!

Cleveland's West Side Market

2009-01-23T09:59:00.000-08:00

If you're ever in Cleveland, and you are interested in food, you MUST visit the West Side Market. If I had a market like this in my city, I would never set foot in a supermarket again. This place has everything I need in the way of food, and it's all spectacularly fresh and good quality.

First of all, baked goods. I have never seen so many gorgeous baked goods in one place. Breads, cakes, pies, pastries, sweet and savory. Each stall was more beautiful than the last. I like to bake my own bread, but if I had a West Side Market, I wouldn't bother. There's no type of home baked bread you can't find.

Meats. Now, as you know I don't eat meat, but there is a huge array of butcher stalls with all kinds of fresh meat. Lots of home made sausages, big thick sliced bacon, all kinds of steaks and chops and ground stuff, and some huge whole dead animals. I was a bit grossed out by the meat, but I can imagine that if you were a carnivore and liked to cook meat, this would be a paradise.

Cheese! There were 4 or 5 outstanding cheesemongers. (I love the -monger suffix.) I was stymied by the selection, and ended up with a huge hunk of Petit Basque and a hunk of Stilton.

Produce. The produce has its own big L-shaped wing. The stalls are jam packed with fresh fruits, veggies and flowers. If I weren't an out-of-towner I'd have stocked up big time. Everything was super fresh and the prices were great. The selection was, once again, huge and ranged from the mundane to the exotic.

I bought some Lebanese olive oil from this Lebanese lady. Her shop is called The Olive and the Grape, and they have a satellite stall at this market. She recommended this olive oil to me because she is friends with the family in Lebanon who owns the olive grove from which this oil is produced. I can't wait to taste it!

Urban Herbs has every spice you could dream of and lots of spices you've never heard of. I bought whole nutmeg, Tellicherry peppercorns and real cinnamon sticks. Did you know that most cinnamon sticks you buy in the grocery store are actually not cinnamon at all, but something called Cassia, which is cheaper and easier to come by.

And lastly, I couldn't leave the market without buying a big hunk of chocolate for my sweetie.

I give the West Side Market a big A+. The vendors are extremely friendly and the whole place has a wonderful upbeat feel. If you are ever sent to Cleveland, don't despair. This will be the highlight of your trip!

Oh The Glamour

2009-01-19T15:49:00.000-08:00

I'm in Cleveland. I know, you wish you were me. I know you long to be in the heart of the frozen tundra.

I drove here yesterday instead of flying. I had so much stuff to drag along with me that I actually thought it would be easier to drive. It took 8 hours, and it was clear and sunny all the way. The mountains in Pennsylvania were all snow covered with tall, bare brown trees poking up through. The sun made sharp horizontal shadows across the mountainsides, and everything looked all criss-crossy, as if the land were covered in a rough fabric. It was so pretty!

I'm representing my company at a conference called IPAY, and don't ask me exactly what it stands for. I know it is a meeting of people who do performing arts for young audiences and the entities who book (buy) their products. International Performing Arts for Youth? Yeah, I think that's it. This is not a normal part of my job. I'm substituting for my work spouse, who is performing in "Sanders Family Christmas" this week. Poor Eric has to sing gospel bluegrass holiday music in the end of January. Bless him twice.

I'm being put up in a nice hotel with a giant bed and enough fluffy pillows to comfort a village. I don't travel too much, and when I do, I usually travel to visit my family or Andy's family. Staying in a nice hotel is kind of a treat for me.

I went to the exhibit hall to set up my display yesterday, which was the thing I was most apprehensive about. See, it's this strange contraption that fits into a neat and tidy 50-pound cylindrical wheeled case, but it unfolds like a crazy spider into this big curvy, colorful display with jazzy spotlights and stuff. It's kinda magic. But slightly confounding to put together. I ended up doing fine, and it only took me an hour and 10 minutes, not even all of the 2 hours we were allotted for set-up.

So far, my impression of downtown Cleveland is mediocre. It looks like there's a lot to do here, but I don't see any people. People, where are you? People?

Anyway, tomorrow I am going to play a bit of hookey and I am going to venture out to the West Side Market. It's a huge nationally renowned food market and it's supposed to be cool as crap. Plus, Andy said he would "never forgive me" if I missed seeing it. Those are some strong words. Of course, in my frenzy to leave on time this yesterday, I didn't pack my camera. My words will have to suffice.

More later!

What I Learned on This Cold, Cold Day

2009-01-17T15:32:00.000-08:00

My nose felt extra cold when I woke up today. I climbed out of bed, and on my way to the coffee pot, I glanced at the thermostat and it read 52. Huh? I blinked and looked again. Still 52 degrees. I had it set at 62, because I like to sleep in a cool house. 52 is not cool. 52 is cold.

I had run out of propane, which is what my furnace uses. I have these 2 big tanks in my back yard, and they get filled on a regular schedule, but sometimes the weather disrupts that schedule and I run out. An unpleasant side effect of the tanks running out is that your house fills with a smell that is very close to rotten eggs or what I'd imagine wild boar farts to smell like.

I called the gas guys immediately, and I got their answering service. The first person who answered was sort of cheeky. I explained to her that I was completely out of gas, and she informed me that, "Lady, everybody who's calling today is completely out of gas" to which I replied, "well if you guys can't anticipate that customers might run out of gas faster when we have a cold snap it's really not my problem that you're not on the ball blah-blah-blah"...and she just says "hold please" and puts me on hold for a really, really long time.

So now what do I do? Now I have been condescending and snotty to the woman who can hook me up with heat juice. The only thing to do is hang up, call back, and hopefully get another operator. Or if I get the same one, I have to disguise my voice and sound really solicitous.

Got a different operator the next time. I was nice from the get-go, and gee whiz, she was nice to me! Isn't that funny how that works? I still had to wait until 2:30 today to get my propane, and the house took another 3 hours to heat back up. It had gotten down to 47.

Things are just about back to normal now, and I have learned a valuable lesson.
Be nice to the operator and she'll be nice to you?
No.
When you know that cold weather is coming, check your propane tanks and make sure you have enough, because the propane people aren't bright enough to do that.

My Very First Flu!

2009-01-07T09:44:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I awoke with a dry cough and a mild headache. By 2:00 in the afternoon, my entire body hurt, including my hair. Chills fluttered all over me and I had a temperature of 101.5. Today, same thing! Tylenol makes me feel better, but when it wears off I feel crappy again.

My doctor, who should be called Doctor Pill-and-Vaccine-Happy, tried really hard to push a flu shot on me. Of course I refused and stated that I had never had the flu in my life, all superior-like.

So experts, just how long does this last? If I have to sit through another day of this I'm going to plummet into a deep funk.

Carrot Porn

2009-01-04T16:55:00.000-08:00

Tan A, my fave Asian market has these freakishly huge carrots.

Black-Eyed Peas!

2009-01-01T13:13:00.000-08:00

It's New Year's Day and the traditional southern food for today is black-eyed peas, but we are making them with an Indian twist, with lots of layers of spices. I am using a recipe from Indian Home Cooking by Suvir Saran. I have used this book so much in the last few years that it is full of stains on my favorite pages. I think a really well-loved cookbook is liberally spotted with stains, and this book is my prime example. I once wrote a fan letter to Suvir Saran, and I squealed like a giddy teen when he wrote back to me--the next day! Since then, I always write a fan letter when I feel the urge.

These black-eyed peas taste so wonderful because of the layering of spices. Cloves, whole peppercorn, cardamom pods, cinnamon stick, dried chillies, cumin seeds and bay leaves are sauteed in oil first. Then minced fresh ginger goes into the mix, then chopped onion. The onion is cooked until it is all caramelized, then more spices go in! Garlic, ground coriander, ground cumin, turmeric, and cayenne pepper. Then comes pureed tomato and, after a bit of simmering a sauce is born!

A sauce that smells so amazing that you have to crack open the wine a little early just to stave off your hunger.

Finally, the guest of honor is added. Black-eyed peas that have been soaked overnight. Then lots of water to cover, and a nice long simmer. This thickens up beautifully into a stew-like consistency.

When the beans are cooked and tender, add a healthy dose of garam masala . You can purchase garam masala at any Indian grocer--it's a specific blend of powdered dried roasted spices--or you can make your own like my excellent boyfriend does for us! I love having a curry snob in the house.

Last but not least, a big ol' dollop of plain yogurt goes in at the end. I like the Greek Fage brand. It is really thick and rich, more like yogurt on performance enhancing drugs. Good heavens, you'll want to smack your own ass when you taste these black-eyed peas.

I attempted to make naan to go with the legumes. This was my second attempt at naan bread, and though I wouldn't call it a resounding success, it was tasty and we ate it! The really yummy naan I've had in Indian restaurants is a flatbread that is thin, yet light and springy and pliable. Mine was thin enough, but didn't have the springy stretchy quality I love. I'm still working on it. This was the dough before it rose, except an hour later there was not so much rising going on.

We rolled it thin, plastered it with melted butter and minced garlic and baked it in a very hot oven. I'm giving it a 65.

Overall, this was a delicious New Year's Day dish and we ate it with gusto.

Happy 2009, everybody!

Gigantic Banana Muffins

2008-12-26T09:10:00.000-08:00

I had 5 overripe bananas in my fridge just daring me to come up with a way not to throw them away. I found this very easy recipe for banana muffinson a cute blog called Cat Can Cook. The recipe called for 3 to 4 bananas, and I used 5. I added a teeny bit more butter and I added 1/3 cup of organic wheat bran into the mix, just to create the illusion that these muffins would be good for me.

I used one of those large sized muffin tins and filled each muffin about 3/4 full. They puffed up nice and high and smelled so good that Andy's son Tom got out of bed! That was pretty flattering. I ate one for my brekkie with a little butter and it was delicious!

Christmas

2008-12-25T10:01:00.000-08:00

It's an incredibly warm and sunny Christmas day. I can't believe the weather has kept me from getting to Michigan this year--it just seems impossible when I look at the picture perfect day we're having. I have had my quota of coffee and taken a long walk to help fight the overindulgence that is sure to come later on today.

Andy and his son Tom are upstairs making a ukulele. Andy bought Tom a ukulele kit for Chrstmas, and they are hell bent on getting it made today. I am ready to roll up my sleeves and do some cookin'.

We're vegetarians, so I'm making what is a typical holiday meal at our house--a whole bunch of side dishes. We're having spinach souffle, (my very first souffle!) scalloped potatoes with Gruyere and leeks, pan fried brussels sprouts and sage stuffing patties. For dessert I'm going to make individual marmalade puddings with custard sauce.

Forgive me, for I am about to sin my ass off! If any of this mess turns out pretty, I'll take pictures.

Change of Plans!

2008-12-24T12:07:00.001-08:00

I'm getting ready to go to the annual Kennedy-DiPasquale Christmas Eve Party tonight. This is a party that I look ever so forward to. Loads of beautiful food, caroling around the piano, tons of people I love to see! Kelly introduced Andy and me, so going to their house always feels special.

I didn't think I was going to be able to attend this year, and even told Kelly so, because I truly thought I was going to be in Michigan visiting my parents. Unfortunately, Mother Nature was bound and determined to keep me home. I waited and waited at the airport yesterday only to come to the conclusion that I wasn't going ANYWHERE. What was I thinking, routing a Christmas trip through Chicago?? Mom and Dad were really sweet and understanding when I told them I couldn't come.

The upside of all this is that I get to spend Christmas in my own home, a pleasure I rarely get! Andy will be with me and the boys are coming to visit. We will cook and laugh and have a grand time.

I'm making a huge Asian style noodle salad to take to the party. I got the recipe on Pioneer Woman's site. It's got an impossible number of ingredients and it looks like a million bucks when it's done.

The Annual Office Christmas Party!

2008-12-22T15:49:00.000-08:00

Our theatre company usually has a really fun Christmas party. It's not stodgy or pretentiously politically correct. We just get together and throw down. We each bring a dish to share. Some people have their signature dishes-Gordon always brings his sausage balls. If we're really lucky, he'll have enough time to make his gorganzola cheese grits. Other Andy usually makes some kind of outrageous pie. Phil brings barbecue and Bruce brings shrimp.

I don't have a signature dish yet! I think I have brought something different every year, and this year will be no exception. Last year I brought Stuffin Muffins, which were remarkably unremarkable. This time I am making Smoked Chili Scalloped Sweet Potatoes, many thanks to Bobby Flay (who incidentally is HOT). Andy Cleveland made them for Thanksgiving and I thought they were really good! Plus, they contain 3 ingredients, so they're dead easy! I added a little more pureed chipotle chili than Bobby said to add. Well, I guess I should tell the truth--I doubled it. This dish is going to have a definite kick!

The picture above is from the Food Network's website. I am going to attempt a pic of my own tomorrow morning when I finish cooking the dish.

Update: Here it is! My piccy is much prettier, if I do say so myself. Can't wait to have a taste!

Jackson Pollack Shortbread

2008-12-20T13:16:00.000-08:00

As if the plain shortbread wasn't sinful enough...this version will send you straight to hell on the express train.

I used the same Joy of Cooking recipe as I did a few posts ago, but I incorporated the zest of an orange into the dough. Once it was baked, cut and cooled, I drizzled it with melted Lindt Intense Orange Chocolate.

I think I have a shortbread monkey on my back. I am powerless over shortbread.

White Bean and Roasted Garlic Soup

2008-12-19T18:05:00.000-08:00

I had an overabundance of garlic and Great Northern beans so I went on a hunt online to find a good recipe to use them up. I happened upon a really nice looking blog called Farmgirl Fare, where I found a recipe called Garlic Lover's White Bean Soup. How perfect is that? It was flavored with rosemary, thyme and most unusually, fennel seed. Plus the added benefit of 19 cloves of roasted garlic. Okay, the recipe called for 10 to 15 cloves, so I figured 19 would just be morer betterer, right? The soup turned out divine. The garlic became sweet and caramelized and the beans had a delicate and very velvety smooth texture when cooked, and they absorbed the flavor of the herbs and fennel seed wonderfully. The recipe has very little fat and, all in all, it was a very thick and healthy soup.

Well, it was reasonably healthy until I decided to top each bowl with homemade seasoned croutons! I had an almost week old loaf of homemade bread that I just had not gotten around to eating. It wasn't mouldy or anything gross like that--just a bit stale. So I cut the crusts off, cubed it into 1" cubes and put the cubes in a bowl. This bread had a hearty firm crumb, so it didn't disintegrate when I melted some butter with some olive oil in the microwave and drizzled it all over the cubes of bread. I then tossed that whole mess with Penzey's Mural of Flavor spice blend, spread it on a baking sheet and baked them at 350 degrees for kind of a long time, like 30 minutes. Then I drained them on paper towels when I took them out of the oven. The result was golden, butter infused croutons that were so crunchy they nearly cracked my teeth.

I usually throw my old bread out into the back yard for the birds, but I might have to reconsider this plan from now on. I like the idea that I can reincarnate old bread as decadent croutons when I don't have time to bake a fresh loaf, y'know? And because fat is a natural preservative, they'll last for a day or two so I can give them a third life with leftover soup. I love being thrifty! And the French half of me hates to waste food, so it's all bon.

Thank You, Orangyna!

2008-12-17T17:52:00.000-08:00

My really cool friend, Orangyna, the Roller Derby Queen, left a sample of rosemary infused shortbread cookies on my desk today and man-o-man, were they goooooooood. I am publicly thanking her. The cookies lasted about 2 1/2 minutes. I would never have imagined using rosemary in a cookie, but its lovely perfumey aroma was a delicious surprise. Orangyna's brother-in-law is a chef and has actually been on Iron Chef. That is surely the closest brush with culinary fame that I will ever have.

An Alarming Discovery

2008-12-08T19:30:00.000-08:00

I was staring confoundedly at my checking account balance on Saturday. It just did not make sense that there was only 35.00 in the account, so I began to review the account activity online and came to the horrifying realization that, by mistake, I paid my mortgage twice in December. Judas Priest, I was so diligent in scheduling the payment that I did it twice. There's no recourse now, because it took me a week to notice this error. In case my boss reads this, NO, I can't afford to pay double mortgage payments on purpose. Andy Cleveland points out that, in a time when loads of people can't even pay one mortgage bill, I go ahead two steps and pay the bloody thing twice!! And, no, the mortgage people don't give me a month off. They just "apply the excess towards the principle." Well thanks a hell of a lot, because I have so much extra money lying around in December, in a recession.

So, part deux of this little diatribe is ...at least I have a house. I guess I should just be grateful that my problem is not something like, "It's really cold out tonight. Where am I going to sleep?"

I am not rich by any stretch, but I am grateful.

My First Try at Shortbread

2008-12-07T13:39:00.000-08:00

Aside from bread, I'm not much of a baker. I was tickled to death today with this plain Scottish shortbread I made!

I used the tried and true recipe in The Joy of Cooking, and followed the suggestion of replacing a portion of the flour with cornstarch to give the cookie a little extra special crumble. What a good suggestion--the first bite is crispy and buttery and crumbly, then as you chew it all kind of melts in your mouth. Seriously, this is dangerously delicious.

It is really an easy recipe. Take 10 tablespoons of softened unsalted butter, 1/4 cup of powdered sugar, 1 1/2 tablespoons of regular sugar and 1/4 teaspoon of salt. Beat them together until well incorporated and fluffy. Take 1/3 cup of cornstarch and dump it into a bigger measuring cup, like a one-cup or two-cup size. Fill the bigger measuring cup the rest of the way with all purpose flour until it gets to 1 1/2 cups all together. Then get your boyfriend to stir (don't worry, I won't tell your husband) as you gradually sift the flour/cornstarch into the buttah. It will get really doughy, and it should, because you then knead it gently until it's fairly smooth and cohesive. You may add a very small amount of water if the dough won't come together.

Press the dough into an 8X8 pan and make it as smooth and even as possible. Pierce the dough liberally with a fork and bake in a preheated 300 degree oven for 45 to 50 minutes. The shortbread should be "tinged with a pale golden color and only slightly darker at the edges." Mine took 45 minues, and it smelled gorgeous when it was baking.

When they come out of the oven, gently cut almost all the way through into little finger squares. When it's cooled, cut it the rest of the way and separate the little bars. I kind of liked the slightly imperfect sizes. They looked sweet and homey.

Holy Crap, 'Tis the Season for Theme Sweaters

2008-12-04T19:17:00.000-08:00

Just because I hate your sweater doesn't mean I hate you. Okay, that being said, I hate your sweater.

I work for a non-profit theatre and we produce a show for family and school audiences every year at Christmas time. Consequently, I have had the displeasure of seeing some of the ugliest Christmas-themed outfits known to (wo)man. How much glitter, beading, sequining and embroidery can you punish one sweater with, for the love of Christ?

And the cotton turtleneck that you are wearing under the offending sweater, dotted with little snowmen, is not giving my eyes any respite. You do not need to add insult to injury. You can't improve ugly by layering ugly under it.

I wish I were allowed to take photographs in the theatre tomorrow. It's our first performance of our holiday show, "The Best Christmas Pageant, Ever." I would love to post them on this blog and have a contest for "The Ugliest Christmas Sweater, Ever."

Then I could punish the winner with a public spanking.

There, I've said it!

I feel somehow cleansed.

Snack for a Single Woman

2008-12-03T17:13:00.000-08:00

My sweet neighbor, The Debra, gave me a very thoughtful gift the other night. She knows I can't have too much salt, and she found a little jar of this stuff at Penzey's in Carytown called Mural of Flavor. It's completely salt free and really delish.

I had a hankering for roasted garlic tonight. I don't know what brought it on--maybe all the vampire mania lately? Anyway, I trimmed two whole bulbs of garlic, doused them with olive oil, and bundled them up in foil and baked them until they were all soft and sweet and caramelized. Mercy sakes alive, THE SMELL. And I mean that in a good way.

I sliced little medallions of baguette--the very same baguettes I made in my last entry--and toasted the little slices. When I removed the garlic from the oven and let it cool for a few minutes, I squeezed the soft oily and fragrant innards of the garlic cloves out and sprinkled them generously with Penzey's Mural of Flavor. Then I spread the whole mess on bits of homemade toast and gobbled it down for my dinner.

The beauty of being on my own for dinner is that I can prepare any strange thing I desire. It's ever so fortunate that I will not be sharing living space with anybody this evening. I don't need to tell you that roasted garlic definitely has its explosive effects on the digestive system. And two whole bulbs, oh my goodness. Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy ride!

Let's just say that I won't be concerned about vampires tonight. Or any intruder who toys with coming within a block of my house.

Not Your Average Baked Beans

2008-11-30T15:00:00.000-08:00

I discovered this recipe for baked beans on one of my favorite sites, 101 Cookbooks. If you've never checked it out, it's authored by Heidi Swanson, who is also a food photographer extraordinaire.

It's a really simple recipe, perfectly suited for the crockpot and so delicious it will make your eyes roll back in your head when you eat it. The only unusual ingredient was the beer. I used the same thing Heidi used--Lindeman's Framboise Lambic. It is a raspberry flavored Belgian style beer. It's way too sweet for my taste, but it makes an outstanding ingredient. I found it easily at our cute neighborhood wine shop, Once Upon a Vine. I think any berry flavored beer would work nicely. We used dried cranberries for the fruit, and we also used cranberry beans, which look quite a bit like pinto beans to me. They're very streaky and pretty. The only change I made to the recipe is the addition of garlic. I put in about 3 or 4 cloves, minced. I can't leave a recipe well enough alone, especially if it doesn't have garlic in it!

I started the beans before I left for work today and let them cook in the crockpot all afternoon. When I came back later and walked in the door the aroma made me salivate. Then I put the bread in the oven to bake and that just about put me over the edge!

And if any of you are thinking of trying this recipe and taking the slacker route, don't cop out and use canned beans or you will be punished. The dried beans cook a lot longer but they pick up all the flavors like crazy and all you have to do is soak them overnight. You can even sleep while the beans soak! Talk about multi-tasking.

I love, love, love coleslaw with my baked beans. I took a shortcut and bought the prepared cabbage and carrot stuff in the bag, but I also added about 1/4 cup of very finely chopped purple onion. I made a non-traditional dressing because I wanted a sesame flavor. I used canola oil, rice vinegar, fresh pureed garlic and ginger, sugar, salt, pepper, tahini and a few drops of sesame oil. Wow, it was really good!

On this cold, rainy and gray day, this ended up being the perfect dinner. Fragrant and savory beans, warm crusty bread (with butter going all melty, of course) and crisp, tangy coleslaw. So much for ramping down after Thanksgiving!

Watching Rosie O'Donnell's new show...

2008-11-26T17:04:00.000-08:00

...and she is so great! I hope her show does well, because I just love that big mouthed broad. But wait...Oooooh. Liza Minelli just came out onto the stage. Crikees, she's just bizarre. As strange as her mother became in her later years, Liza has more than eclipsed her. Plus she has a vibrato that is so rangey it needs two zip codes. But I am tickled that Rosie has a variety show because I was a child of the sixties and seventies and grew up with the likes of Carol Burnett and Sonny and Cher and yes, Ed Sullivan. (Omigod I am so middle aged).

Not that I think everything was better back then, but there was a lot of good stuff on TV. Playhouse 90! A play, every week. Really cool plays, on TV in your living room. Written by real playwrights. And I also remember a show every Sunday hosted by Leonard Bernstein that was all about teaching young people about symphonies and classical music.

And now Harry Connick Jr. is on, so I must excuse myself to give him my full attention.

Happy Thanksgiving, y'all!

Roasted Red Pepper Sauce

2008-11-23T12:04:00.000-08:00

This is really Andy's sauce, but I made it today with his supervision. It's a delicious and versatile sauce, good over anything you can imagine. Pasta, pizza, gnocchi, eggs, whatever makes your tastebuds sing. I love the added smokey richness that the charred peppers provide.

I do the stovetop method of charring the bell peppers. As you can see, I take the grate off of one burner and stack it up on top of another. This keeps the peppers just a little farther from the flame, and as you turn them every now and then, they get nicely blackened all over. Then I close them in a ziploc bag and set them aside.

Meanwhile, in a saucepan saute half an onion in some olive oil until it's soft and translucent. Then add about 4 cloves of minced garlic and a dried red chili. Saute that for a couple more minutes, then add a good blob--about 1/4 cup-- of double strength tomato paste. I let the tomato paste fry with the onion, oil and garlic for a good five minutes or so. This step is important, as it makes the flavor of the tomato paste just explode.

Take the charred bell peppers out of the bag and scrape the skin off. Dice the flesh and add it to the pan, along with a 14.5 ounce can of diced tomatoes. Let this simmer for about 20 minutes. Then blend it all up with an immersion blender until it has a smooth, velvety texture. Add salt and pepper to taste.

This can easily morph into a gorgeous soup with a bit of tweaking. Add vegetable broth after the saute phase, then cream at the end and a dash of smoked paprika.

This is Tay.

2008-11-09T12:24:00.000-08:00

Tay is short for Taylor. He's my parents' new cat, you can see that he is awfully cute. He's not grown yet, and still thinks he's the big boss of the condo because he has testicles. I've been telling him not to feel too attached to those things, because they're comin' off real soon.

Tay is very sweet when he's sleeping and reasonably sweet when he's awake, despite being a whirling dervish. He purrs really loudly the minute anybody picks him up. I think Mom and Dad are really enjoying him and looking very forward to when he settles down a little. He's kinda wearing them out.

Happy Birthday, Mom!

2008-11-06T12:34:00.000-08:00

My mom turns 80 today! I am hopping on a plane at an ungodly hour on Saturday to go wish her a happy birthday in person.

When I called her today, she said she already got her biggest birthday wish--in the form of a really cool new President of the United States! Well, I guess that gets me off the hook for a creative present. I'm just delivering myself to her door.

You'd probably like my mom. She is smart, outspoken, generous, compassionate, liberal, articulate, resourceful and did I say she's outspoken? Yeah, if you don't want to know what she thinks of something or someone, that's just tough titty because she's going to tell you anyway. She swears a lot. It's kind of shocking to hear an 80-year-old lady using the premium cuss words. But when you spend as many years as she did in art education, you pick up a few key phrases from the kids.

At 80, she's not quite as physically spry as she once was, and her eyesight is pretty bad. But she has a first-rate brain, and to this day, when I am faced with any sort of dilemma or heavyweight decision that I need clarity with, she is always the greatest voice of reason in my life.

So happy birthday, Mom! Keep on rockin' like you do. You are my inspiration.

Great Voter Turnout!

2008-11-04T12:03:00.000-08:00

I could not have anticipated the hordes of people at my polling place this morning. I've lived in my neighborhood for ten years and have voted in loads of elections, but today's crowd was many times more than ever before. It made my heart sing to see the hundreds of people waiting patiently in the rain to vote. I got there at 6 a.m. and voted at 8:30 or so. I didn't care about the waiting or the weather. Nothing was going to keep me away!

Shepherd's Pie

2008-10-26T17:25:00.000-07:00

Tonight we made this Shepherd's Pie recipe that I spotted on the BBC Good Food website. I liked it because it was vegetarian with a lentil based filling and it was made with sweet potato topping rather than white potato. It was really healthy and turned out delicious! I did not follow the recipe exactly. There were not enough flavoring ingredients in it. I mean, it had no garlic! I rarely make any savory type of dish without garlic, and I added 4 cloves to this one.

I was out of canned diced tomatoes, so I omitted them altogether. I had no red wine and omitted that, though it would have been a fine addition. I added a little bag of fresh English peas (six guesses who suggested that!). To punch up the taste, I put 2 tablespoons of double concentrated tomato paste, some worcestershire sauce and some smoked spanish paprika, my new obsession.

I must stop and rhapsodize about smoked Spanish paprika. Andy brought some home this weekend. He made a roasted red bell pepper soup on Saturday seasoned with the paprika. Oh. My. God. I am hooked on that stuff! Go and buy some and do it now. You'll have to search a little, but an upscale grocer or a snooty spice shop will have a good quality one. I promise, you will be hooked.

Anyway, the shepherd's pie was comforting and delicious. I will probably make it again, and the main thing I will do differently is bake the sweet potatoes instead of boiling them. Boiling them makes them much too moist. They just don't firm up enough on the top layer of the pie. They tasted great but they were too loosey goosey. The recipe yields an enormous dish--it says that it serves 4, but you could definitely spread it to 6 if you served it with something else on the side, like steamed broccoli or green beans or salad. Of course, Mr. Cleveland and I just ate a fourth of the huge casserole each! I'm sure I will enjoy the leftovers for my lunch!

My Trip to a Foreign Land

2008-10-23T18:23:00.000-07:00

This morning, I set my watch alarm for 4:30 and my cell phone alarm for 4:45 just to make sure that I didn't oversleep. I had to leave my house at 5:30 a.m. to make it to Ashburn, VA by 8:30 a.m. Ashburn is a new tour stop for our company, and I drove up to house manage the performances and generally introduce us and make nice. We performed at this mammoth mega-church that has a school in it as well. The people at the church/school were incredibly gracious and glad to have us there. "Church" is not an apt word to describe this place. Maybe "multiplex" or perhaps "Testament to Uber-Tithing."

Good heavens, can you imagine a world where nonprofit arts organizations were lucky enough to reap the benefits of that level of tithing?

Also, I just couldn't help noticing the lack--and I mean true complete absence--of Obama signs as I drove on the secondary highways deeper and deeper into the Washington DC suburbs. I was unaware of the DC suburbs being so conservative. I had heard people talk about it, but seeing it for myself was jarring. It's the polar opposite of my blue collar middle class neighborhood in Richmond's south side.

This day served to remind me of what a historical election I am about to be a part of. I've already scheduled the following day as a vacay day. I figure either way I'm going to be up all night watching the returns and drinking wine!

School Daze

2008-10-22T12:00:00.000-07:00

I am just the biggest blogging slacker there is these days, and I humbly apologize. You see, I have been very busy with big important projects, such as creating pretty portraits like these on yearbookyourself.com.

Congratulations, Chase Kniffen!

2008-10-07T20:32:00.000-07:00

I absolutely did not feel like leaving my house tonight. My shoulder ached and I was still tired from going out last night--waaaahhhh, waaaahhh, waaaahhh. Yes. I'm a baby.

But I bought a ticket to the "Ragtime" benefit tonight for Stage 1, the new theatre company started by Chase Kniffen. Now, I have known Chase since he was 10 and played my weak, invalid son in ""The Secret Garden" at Swift Creek Mill Theatre. He was this impossibly healthy looking little boy with the requisite West End haircut. What a treasure he was, entertaining us endlessly in the green room with his antics. We have loved him ever since, and could not have been more proud of him tonight!

Because Chase is so well liked in the theatre community, he was able to summon a huge chorus and principal singers comprised of the cream of the crop of Richmond theatre. Not to mention a full orchestra. They had 3 rehearsals. Chase came out and gave a curtain speech like he'd been doing it for 20 years. Then the concert began, and it was moving and thrilling and amazing!

I was so proud of him, and I can't wait to see what's next for Stage 1.

A Whole New Kind of Birthday

2008-09-25T09:25:00.000-07:00

As far as I know, I am the inventor of the Quinticentennial Celebration. What the sam hamwich is a Quinticentennial, you ask?

The Quinticentennial is the celebration of a person's 500-month-old birthday. It happens when you are 41 years and 8 months old. (Don't try to do the math in your head if you're at a party and you've been drinking, like we attempted to do last Sunday night. Tragic.) How did the tradition of the Quinticentennial Celebration begin, you ask?

It started when my friends began to have children. They had this annoying habit of always expressing their children's ages in terms of months instead of years.

Janine: "Oh, she's so precious and talkative! How old is she?"

Annoying Friend: "She just turned 26 months!"

26 months? Why don't you just say she's 2?

So I used to make fun of this all the time. Okay, I still make fun of it. And I had this idea that I would go around expressing my age in months instead of years.

Me: "My skin looks pretty damned good, considering I've just turned 492 months old."

My sweet and reasonable friend Lisa reminded me that parents do this because that's how the kids' clothing sizes are set up in the stores. And you know, that's true. You shop for baby clothes by months, then when they get a little bigger, I think it still goes by years. Thank goodness that ends when we grow up.

Andy Cleveland thought it would be hilarious if we still had to buy our clothes according to our ages, long into adulthood. Imagine going into Macy's and asking for the women's size 49 panties! Or the men's 600-month pants!

I maintain that 500 months is a significant milestone in one's life, and one should be taken out to lunch and lavished with presents on one's Quinticentennial!

I treated my dear Robyn O'Neill to lunch for her QC, and I'm sure she'll be taking me out for mine, when that day finally comes. Shut up.

Hallmark should have a whole rack of cards devoted to it. And they need to pay me for the idea!

Beetroot, Squash and Halloumi with Chili-Herb Dressing

2008-09-23T10:44:00.000-07:00

I found this amazing salad recipe on a British website called Food Stories. I wanted to try something different for dinner last Friday. This salad had such an unusual combination of flavors, and they sang loudly and in perfect harmony in my mouth! The roasted savoriness of the beetroot and squash plus the salty and bouncy textured halloumi plus the tartness of lemon and the mint contrasting with the fresh hot chili--whew! I almost had to have a cigarette when I was finished.

The only remotely exotic ingredient was halloumi cheese, which can be found at Nick's Produce on Broad Street. Halloumi is weird! You can cut it into slabs and fry it in a dry pan, and it gets browned and crispy all over the outside and soft on the inside, and it retains its shape. It's kind of like paneer, the Indian cheese, but it's salty tasting. What a brilliant addition to a salad! Yum.

And don't tell anybody, but I tiptoed across the street and pilfered some fresh mint from the front yard of Debra, my unsuspecting dear friend.

Also, I could not find the kind of sunflower seeds I wanted, so I went with roasted pumpkin seeds instead. They were just as delicious. I will definitely make this again, and I can imagine serving it with couscous. Doesn't that sound good?

So thank you, Helen Graves, for bringing this new orgasmic salad to my world.

2008-09-18T13:44:00.000-07:00

Clearly, there is a family of raccoons living someplace very close to my house. I've seen as many as 3 at a time scurrying away from my porch as I pull my car into my driveway.

A few weeks ago, I discovered a little one sleeping in the bottom of my big empty city-issued trash can one morning. Don't know how long he'd been stuck in there, but thank goodness he hadn't starved to death. I just tipped the big can over and off he went! Not long after that, I found 2 young ones in my neighbors trash can. When my nabe shone his flash light into the can at them, they just reached up with their nimble little fingers and try to play with the light.

Then last night, I heard something fidgeting at the cat door, which is installed in a window and therefore not at ground level. Was it Maggie, attempting to deliver to me her 3rd dead mouse of the evening? No, it was a big ol' raccoon, with his nose pressed right up to the swinging glass door. I must say, he was very cute! And not shy at all. I pressed my face right up to his and loudly told him to get lost! He didn't even flinch. He just looked at me like he was saying, "Hey, sorry to be a bother, but can I come in and have a snack?" You know, he looked kind of friendly. Not like he had rabies.

So tonight, after I get home from yoga class (I just like to say that. I really suck at yoga.) I'm going make sure my camera is standing by so I can get some pictures. Am I supposed to be trying to catch these things and take them to the woods? I have no idea. If they figure out how to get in my house, then it's ON.

Broccoli, Snow Peas and Rice Noodles with Spicy Peanut Sauce

2008-09-14T15:19:00.000-07:00

As I stated a few posts back, I am on a doctor-supervised low sodium regime. It is helping. My BP was down to normal last Thursday when I had it checked. But salt tastes good, y'all! And boy, do I miss it. I feel like I have to re-learn a bunch of my favorite recipes with new, low sodium ingredients.

Tonight I made some stir fried broccoli and snow peas with rice noodles and spicy peanut sauce. I was much too impatient to take a picture of it before I ate it, but trust me, it was real purty!

Here's how I made the sauce. This makes enough for two greedy hungry people or 4 boring sensible people:

Bring 1 1/2 cups of low sodium vegetable broth to a simmer.
Add 2 cloves of pureed garlic and 1 teaspoon of pureed ginger root.*
Add 1 tablespoon black strap molasses.
Add 2 tablespoons of cider or rice vinegar.
Add 3 tablespoons of unsalted smooth or chunky peanut butter.
Add 1/2 teaspoon of crushed red pepper flakes.
Add a touch of sweetness, like maybe 1/4 teaspoon of brown sugar or maple syrup.
Swish this around until it's heated through and all the lumps are dissolved.
Gradually whisk some cornstarch into the sauce until it begins to thicken and look creamy. This will probably be a teaspoon or two. And voila--low sodium Peanut Sauce!

*The easiest way to puree garlic and ginger is to use a microplane grater on the fine end. If you do not own a microplane grater, then for cryin' out loud go buy one! Try not to grate your knuckle with it like I did tonight. Micorplanes are really sharp. You can also buy garlic-ginger paste at the Indian grocers, but fresh tastes better.

I stir fried some fresh broccoli and snow peas in a little peanut oil, placed them on a bed of rice noodles, poured the fragrant peanut sauce over the whole mess, and garnished with a little chiffonade of Thai basil. I love to say chiffonade. It makes me sound so snooty.

It turned out really good! I might make it again tomorrow night, since I still have leftover ingredients. I'll try to restrain myself long enough to take a picture before I gobble it up.

The Best Way to Roast Potatoes

2008-09-10T15:42:00.000-07:00

A potato is a cheap and simple thing, but when prepared just right it can produce intense euphoria. It is the ultimate comfort food.

This is the Andy Cleveland method of roasting taties. All the Cleveland boys LOVE roasted potatoes. You would not believe the mountains of them that have been consumed in just one meal. Andy once claimed that mine are as good as his, but only once and very quietly. I told him I learned from the master.

Use the russett potatoes--the oval floury ones. Peel them and chunk them up. The chunks can be any size you like, but they should all be in the same size range so they cook at the same rate.

Place your tatie chunks in a pan and put enough cold water to cover. Bring them to a boil until they are half-tender. You want the outside of the chunks to be tender to do the next thing! While the potatoes are boiling, pour a shallow puddle of oil (I like to use peanut oil because you can get it really hot) in a baking dish. Put the dish in the 450 degree oven and let the dish and oil heat up together.

Now drain the semi soft potatoes of all the water. Keeping them in the pan, shake the pan around until you see the taties have knocked together and gotten roughed up on the surface.

Carefully tip them into the hot baking dish and oil. Toss gently to coat with the oil, sprinkle with salt, pepper and rosemary, or whatever herb tickles your taste buds.

Roast until they are crispy and golden, turning and shuffling them a time or two. This will take anywhere from 25 to 45 minutes, depending on the size of your chunks. They should be crackly and crispy on the outside, but creamy and soft when you bite into them!

You'll need to force yourself to let them cool a few minutes before you snarf them down!

Wow! Michelle, You Rock!

2008-08-25T19:51:00.000-07:00

I am watching Michelle Obama speak at the convention and I must say she is fantastic! She is so real and warm. And she seems to be completely untethered by notes and totally at ease. What an asset to Mr. Obama.
Anybody else watch her? What did y'all think?

Habanero Salsa and High Blood Pressure

2008-08-11T10:24:00.000-07:00

I want to write about 2 things today.

First, a warning. When you are at Qdoba and they ask what kind of salsa you want--mild, medium, hot or extra hot--think twice and think hard before getting extra hot. They are telling the truth. It is habanero salsa and it is the hottest salsa I have ever tasted. It was literally painful to have it contact my tongue. And I continue to suffer as it makes its way through my intestinal tract. Mind you, I am a spicy food lover. My spice-o-meter is generally set for very high tolerance, so I'm not just whistling dixie here. Don't suffer--I have done that for you.

Next, on a more serious note--I went to the doc for a sore shoulder 2 weeks ago and was shocked to find that my blood pressure was 160 over 90. Yikes.
Sometimes being in pain can cause your bp to be high. I went again today and it was still 154 over 84. Ten minutes later it was down to 144 over 80. Later, at CVS, it was 133 over 78. I am very skeptical about taking the medicine that the doc has prescribed. Do I have actual high blood pressure or just "white coat syndrome?"I have agreed to take medicine for a month to see if it helps, but I'm not very happy about it! I mean, I definitely don't want to have a stroke, but I don't want to be old and taking 40 pills a day, either!

Sheesh, middle age is full of hurdles.

Quinoa Risotto, Recommended by Gordon Bass

2008-08-03T18:00:00.000-07:00

Gordon Bass should have his own cooking show. First of all, the camera loves him. He has done so many commercials --you can't turn on your TV without a Gordon Bass sighting. Secondly, he is a fantastic cook and has a passion for food that I have never witnessed in any other human being. When Gordon describes a great meal, he makes it sound pornographic. Of course, the show would have to be on cable or public access TV because Gordon swears like a sumbitch. But ain't he a handsome thing?

ARTICHOKE, ASPARAGUS, AND MUSHROOM QUINOA RISOTTO

2 T butter
4 T olive oil, divided
12 oz assorted wild mushrooms (such as chanterelles, stemmed shiitakes, oyster, and morels), thinly sliced (about 6 cups)
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup chopped onion
2 cups quinoa (about 13 oz), rinsed
1/2 cup white wine
3 1/2 cups vegetable broth
1 lb asparagus, trimmed, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 8oz package frozen artichoke hearts, thawed
1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese
1 cup shaved Manchego cheese

Melt butter with 1 T oil in heavy large skillet over medium high heat. Add mushrooms; Saute until brown and tender. Add garlic; Saute 2 minutes. Remove from pan and set aside.

Heat remaining 3 T oil in heavy large saucepan over medium-high heat. Add onion; saute until translucent, about 5 minutes. Add quinoa; saute 2 minutes. Add wine; cook until liquid is almost absorbed, about 2 minutes. Add 3 1/2 cups broth; cook 10 minutes. Add asparagus and artichoke hearts; simmer until quinoa and veg are tender, stirring often and adding more broth by 1/4 cupfulls as needed, about 7 minutes. Add parmesan cheese and reserved mushrooms. Stir until cheese is melted and mushrooms are heated through, about 2 minutes. season to taste w/ salt & pepper. Divide risotto amoung bowls, garnish with shaved Manchego and serve.

Note: I halved this recipe upon Gordon's suggestion and it still made 4 generous servings. It is delicious! My first time cooking quinoa, but not my last.

Oh Dearie Me

2008-08-01T12:46:00.000-07:00

These little brothers were at the back door of our office this morning. So sweet. We have no clue where they came from! They had a very busy morning of romping all over our office, and then they spent 2 hours fast asleep in my office mate's chair. By the end of the day, one of our box office employees was taking them home with her. She fell in love with them at first sight. I'm tellin' ya, these kittens were all that and more. I could barely resist them. I hope they all live happily ever after!

Bicycle Riding Update

2008-07-29T16:15:00.000-07:00

I'm sure you're all sitting around asking, "Is Janine still riding her bike to work? That crazy kid!"

It turns out I'm riding it as much as possible, and my fitness level on the bike is improving. The first time I rode to work on a bike, I burned a little over 300 calories, and that was just on the way there. Now I burn between 150 and 180 on that same trip. Mind you, I now ride a newer bike that probably operates more efficiently, but I am still moving my big butt and a contraption 5 miles. So I like to think I am improving my endurance. Hills that I found challenging at first seem easy to me now.

By the way, if you wonder how I know how many calories I'm burning, I wear a Polar F4 heart rate monitor. Fantastic gadget!

I am also trying to ride the bike on minor errands, like that trip to the grocery store on the way home from work. I had to run that exact errand today, and I found myself thinking, "It's extra gas to go out of the way right now--WAIT--I'm on a bicycle! I'm not using gas--I'm just using ME power! Plus I can have a little bit more at dinner because of the extra calorie burn from the 2 more miles!" I'm so queer. I actually do have such inner monologues.

Yes, I do arrive at work in the morning with a little bit of a sweat-on. It dissipates fairly quickly in the air conditioning, even in these dog days of summer. If I have a day when I really need to look prissy, I have to drive. I'm grateful that I live and work in the city and my commuting distance is reasonable. All in all, I am truly enjoying this change in my lifestyle. I feel great, and exercise is easier when it's simply a functional part of my day, not a chore that looms before me each morning.

Tomato-Potato Bake. A Semi-Success.

2008-07-27T13:31:00.000-07:00

I don't even bother with fresh tomatoes when they're not in season, but I make up for it in the summer by eating them nearly every day. I don't even bother with trying to think of innovative ways to eat tomatoes--give me a tomato sandwich slathered with mayo every day for a whole summer and I won't complain. They're just that tasty.

I made this dish last summer and it came out smelling and tasting okay, but the potatoes were undercooked and not the right type--I used waxy ones and not floury ones. So I made some changes this time around. I used russet potatoes and I partially cooked them first by boiling them for about 20 minutes. Then, I let them cool, peeled them, and sliced them.

I made a bread crumb mixture of one slice of whole wheat bread, 1/4 cup of grated special blend cheese from Nick's Produce, and some fresh ground pepper, and set it aside. I picked a handful of fresh basil from the yard and saved that in a little pile. Then, I sliced two big tomatoes and 2 big potatoes into 1/4" slices. Finally, I thinly sliced a small onion.

I sprayed an 8" square baking pan with non-stick olive oil spray. Then I layered the tomatoes and potatoes in alternate rows, sort of fish scale style. I don't think it much matters how you alternate them. Over the maties and the taties went a scattering of onion slices, fresh ground pepper, 1/4 cup of mozzarella cheese, and a sprinkle of the bread crumb mixture. Now, I scattered a layer of fresh basil leaves, and then I repeated the taties, maties, onions and mozzarella again. Toppped it with the remainder of the breadcrumb mixture, and popped it in a 375 degree oven for 45 minutes.

It looked and smelled great! In the interest of creating something healthy, I chose low fat cheese and didn't add any fat to the recipe. Next time I make this, it will have some taste improvements:

There's not enough fat in this recipe to carry the flavors. I would drizzle some olive oil over it before baking, add some garlic, some salt, and maybe use a stronger flavored cheese than mozzarella, like even a full-fat sharp cheddar. The texture and look and smell were all wonderful. It was completely edible and reasonably yummy--the flavor just fell a bit short. But this blog is all about success, failure and learning. And trash talk and gossip.

Despite the dinner being less than perfect, we were not deterred from eating the whole thing, so no food was wasted at our house tonight. I'll just up the workout next time, so I can up the fat and flavor.

Hot Peppa Jelly, Baby!

2008-07-23T11:28:00.000-07:00

My neighbor gave me a huge pile of very hot banana peppers. I have never made pepper jelly or any jelly before, so I got busy on the internet and found a bunch of recipes. Had to buy some pectin and had no idea where to look for it in the store, because I'm not even sure what it is. It's magic jelly juice, I think.

First, I cut the tops of the peppers, de-seeded them and scraped out the membranes. I did the same with one sweet bell pepper. I did not wear rubber gloves when I did this, because I was like, "Rubber gloves are for pansy-asses!" A little while later, I absentmindedly rubbed an itch on my nose. My left nostril is still burning as if I rubbed some sort of flesh eating acid on it. So trust me here--wear the gloves.

Put the rough chopped peppers in the food processor with a cup and a half of cider vinegar and processed until the peppers were quite finely minced. Then I dumped that mess into a big sauce pan with 6 1/2 cups of sugar. I thought that seemed like a LOT of sugar, but apparently it's not. Especially since these peppers are not at all sweet, and something had to go in there to counteract the fire.

Then I just let it go to a boil, like a big cauldron, for about 4 minutes. I then added a pouch of Certa brand pectin. I had no idea if this was enough, because all the different recipes and directions I read had conflicting information. But it looked different when I added the stuff. It suddenly began to look like jam, which excited me to no end.

One more minute of boiling, then I ladled into sterile jars. Then I put the sealed jars in a big pot of boiling water for 10 minutes. Now I'm waiting to see if it actually sets up and gets thick. Again, not sure how long it's supposed to take. I have a good feeling about it, though. And I had a little taste of it before I put it in the jars and it was yummy!

P.S. I'm adding this later. After a couple of hours, the pepper jelly firmed up beautifully. It's the perfect consistency. I wish my whole life was like that.

Facebook. I don't get it.

2008-07-22T14:59:00.000-07:00

Ages ago, and for some reason I truly can't recall, I signed up for Facebook. Now the Facebook people won't leave me alone.

I get all these emails from people who want to be friends with me. Most of these emails come from people whom I already thought I was friends with. Then I have to go to the Facebook place, sign in and say that, yes, I will be friends with So-and-So. I guess I'm wondering why So-and-So can't just email me directly to confirm our friendship, which I thought had been previously established anyway. It's all very confusing.

I also get things that say "Mr. So-and-So thinks that you and Miss Thus-and-Such should be friends." Excuse me? I am very adept at picking my own friends. Besides, maybe I have a very good reason for avoiding Miss Thus-and-Such. Maybe she annoys me.

And then the other day I got one that said "Miss Whatsy-Whoosit wrote something on your wall." Then the email proceeds to tell me what she wrote on my wall. So why bother with the wall? if you're going to telescope it to me in the email? Plus, I went to Facebook and can't even find my own wall. Somebody please tell me how to find my wall.

Yes, I know I sound like Andy Rooney with this rant. I promise you I say all this with a smile. But I'm also going to take my Facebook thing down, if I can figure out how to do it!

Pesto

2008-07-19T13:12:00.000-07:00

This past spring, Ellwood Thompson's was giving out these little seedling kits for herbs. It was just a 1 1/2" pot, some seeds, and this pellet that swelled up and turned into soil when you added water. From that teensy kit came about 8 nice bushy basil plants! I eventually transplanted them to my front yard and they have thrived!

The basil was getting all tall and leggy, so I really hacked it back and decided it was time for a big batch of fresh pesto. I had the last bit of the gorgeous expensive Frantoia olive oil that Andy bought on Amazon.com when he had insomnia. We also rode our bikes to Nick's Produce and bought some pine nuts and some lovely cheese. Mani Mouris, the owner, makes this special blend of grated cheese. I'm not sure what's in it. I just ask for the special blend. It gives me a false sense of being in the know.

The smell of a big colander of basil is intoxicating! I spend a long time picking the leaves off, and discarding the flowery parts--they're a little bitter. Then really give it a good wash, like 3 times over.

I dry roast the pine nuts in a pan to get a little toasty flavor, then take them out and cool them before I add them to the rest of the stuff. You can use other kinds of nuts, too. I have made pesto with almonds and I made a really great pesto one time with pecans.

I use a food processor to make my pesto, but if you've not yet been dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century and you don't have a food processor, a blender will work, too. Even a mortar and pestle will do the trick.

I cram the basil leaves in first, pulse a few times to reduce their bulk, then add the other ingredients.

I don't measure anything, I just go by look, consistency and taste. I used a generous amount of garlic in this batch--about 6 cloves. You don't need to chop it up much. Then I used about a cup and a half of the cheese, then about 3/4 cup of pine nuts. I add the olive oil as I am processing, and I stop adding oil when the pesto is thinner than a "paste" but thicker than a "sauce." I like to call it gloppy. Lastly, I process in the juice of half a lemon. This adds a barely discernable tart note and helps keep the pesto from oxidizing.

I think the flavor of fresh made pesto bears absolutely no resemblance to that salty crap you find in jars at the grocery store. Plus, when you make fresh pesto with such lovely ingredients, you must do it justice and eat it at the optimal time, which is right after you make it. I will use leftover pesto as an ingredient--like in soup or on pizza--but with pasta where it's the star of the show it has to be lip-smackin' fresh.

Now, if I were a really perfect girlfriend, I would have made fresh pasta today. But perfection is so boring, and trust me, it's difficult to maintain. So I just used some penne rigate we had in the cupboard.

Talk about a taste explosion! I was going around imitating Gordon Bass, exclaiming, "MUTHER. OF. GAWWD." We made lots of moaning sounds when we were eating it. If anybody had come to the door, they'd have thought we were having an afternoon shag!