A Gracious Hostess

My Anxious-Sunday Syndrome began in grammar school and continues still, almost comforting in its reliability. I hope that someday Sunday afternoons and evenings will feel like weekend, not the night before an interview, but by now I should know this is a false hope.

It was under the panicky anticipation of this week-as-yet-unstarted that I tripped over a power cord stretched between outlet and portable DVD player (resting innocuously on my bed), pitched forward into a door, and caught the fall with my face. It was quite a shock: I lead a cautious and deskbound life, so it’s been years since I’ve drawn blood with anything besides a kitchen knife. I cleaned myself up and started wailing about it as soon as there was somebody around to pay attention to me. This happened to be my brother, who is something of a self-made expert on split chins and was satisfactorily indulgent: “Hmm, bet that really hurt!” The cut was hardly big enough to warrant a Band-aid, let alone a butterfly (my family’s traditional proxy for a trip to the emergency room), but I do have a big bruise that makes my chin look like a peeled russet with a bad end.

This all happened after Halloween, thank goodness, because Laura Petrie would never be so clumsy; that, of course, was Rob’s job. And I was right: getting costumed early in the morning – for work, no less! – seemed impossibly daunting. Instead, I wore a set of my sister’s scrubs with a white coat over, which was very much like wearing PJs to the office and made the whole day seem festive.

I had more time to prepare on actual-Halloween, and I needed it. I haven’t spent so long getting ready since prom, and my makeup skills haven’t improved much since then. The false eyelashes were a big surprise – they looked kind of good! I could hardly hold my eyes open, but such is the price of looking like, upon inspection of the pictures, myself with curled hair. (The effect was improved when I met up with my boyfriend, who, trooper that he is, had found a tweed blazer and appropriately skinny tie; he wouldn’t trip over an ottoman for me, though.) All that, and I opened the door to three groups of trick-or-treaters.
Where’s my martini?

We still haven’t gotten a fall cool-down around here, but the time change has made weather-incongruent meals more palatable as dinnertime now falls under the forgiving cover of darkness.

Sunday: Shepherd’s pie, salad
Monday: Baked fish, rice pilaf, salad
Tuesday: Pasta puttanesca, salad
Wednesday: Sloppy joes, chips, fruit
Thursday: Takeout

A strong start, anyway.

My shepherd’s pie (a shepherd’s pie/cottage pie hybrid, actually) comes from a recipe that looks a lot like Alton Brown’s, by no little coincidence. It’s pretty standard, with peas, carrots, corn – really, just another way to ruin would-be hamburgers. My most recent preparation of the pie, however, led to a wonderful discovery: mashed potatoes can sit on the stove, fluffy and quiet and hot, for a long time. Like, half an hour, or maybe even more! I stirred in some (additional) hot milk and they were ready to go. I feel like a huge weight has been lifted from my shoulders, since potatoes have always caused a disproportionate amount of my Thanksgiving stress. When to start boiling? Will they be ready on time? Or overcooked? How can I mash them and make the gravy at the same time?! It’s a wonder I could even function under the pressure.

Finally: rain. One radio DJ said that this might be the biggest storm southern California has seen in 70 years. Here’s hoping. I’ve tried to pack as many cold (“cold”) weather meals as possible into the week in anticipation of the inevitable October switch back to summer temperatures – 85° by Friday, as meanly confirmed by weather.com.

See, these are nice, warm, rainy-day meals:

Sunday: Meatloaf, baked potatoes, salad
Monday: Frittata with potatoes; salad
Tuesday: Gnocchi, salad
Wednesday: Tomato basil soup, crusty bread, cheese
Thursday: Curry and rice…and salad

It’s true, there is no lack of bagged, prewashed lettuce in the crisper.

My parents and I really like meatloaf. My boyfriend and brother seem to agree that if I’m going to bother mixing ground meat with other stuff and cooking it at all, I might as well make it into burgers. Perhaps they don’t understand that meatloaf is so much cozier, and that meatloaf means I don’t have to scrub the grills on the barbecue. I won’t get either of them started on the post-Christmas ham loaf.

Just in case this hasn’t become abundantly clear, frittata is a personal favorite. Like quiche, but easy! Like scrambled eggs, but kind of dinner-y! A few weeks ago I had an unexpected, almost dizzying, spell of inspiration and bought a bag of Trader Joe’s frozen roasted potatoes with peppers and onions. I set my sister to cooking them in the skillet while I beat ten eggs with some milk. To the hot potatoes we added the eggs, a handful of cheddar, some chopped up roasted green chilies, and leftover chopped tomatoes; tossed it in the oven; and – brilliant! It looked like a golden, slightly overcooked Spanish tortilla. My brother, after painstakingly picking out every tomato, managed to choke it down with glares and copious lashings of Tabasco. I may never make it any other way.

Speaking of recipes that will remain forever unchanged, I recently planned The Great Thanksgiving Menu of 2009, which looks very much like those of all years prior. Since this took five minutes, I backed up into Halloween mode – no sense rushing the best fiscal and calendar quarter of the year…as anxiety-fraught as it so often is.

My mom loves Halloween. But as the day draws nearer and busy schedules render the house conspicuously un-be-webbed and bereft of (tasteful) gargoyles, run-of-the-mill anxiety can become full-blown, we-forgot-to-order-the-turkey-style panic. I was driving somewhere (interesting and important, no doubt) around, say October 3rd, and passed a house with a pumpkin on the porch. I immediately called my brother.

“We need to go get the Halloween stuff out of the storage locker.”
“Huh? Now?”
“Yes, now! I just saw a house with a pumpkin on the porch.”
“So? Why do –“ There was a terrified pause; I knew he understood. “Has Mom seen a house with a pumpkin on the porch yet?”

Ta-da! (Tastefully) decorated house!

The September issue of Bon Appétit arrived yesterday, its cover promising “Cozy Fall Suppers.” It’s been about 100° here for the last two weeks, with no sign of a cool-down, so it looks like the short ribs and shepherd’s pie will have to wait. That’s OK: the eating-vegetarian thing is, except when it isn’t, going pretty well. But come our fall (November?), when no one wants another frittata, I’ll be prepared. Unfortunately, no one will want short ribs, either.

This past week was red letter:
Sunday: Portobello burgers, basil mayo, red pepper tapenade, couscous salad (I made a last-minute swap last week, moving the mushrooms to Sunday and putting veggie curry in their place)
Monday: Takeout…yeah
Tuesday: Mac and cheese, salad
Wednesday: Leftover mac and cheese, salad
Thursday: Black bean tacos with broccoli slaw, feta, grilled eggplant, mango

As my boss might say about a poorly-executed project, let’s review our lessons learned:
• My brother has stopped being a good sport about portobellos. He opted instead for a fake-chicken patty that’d been carelessly wrapped and left lingering in the freezer since my sister’s visit two months ago. That’s hardcore.
• Everyone, including me, still likes takeout more than my cooking.
• The black-bean taco menu sounds gross, but it wasn’t, really.
• Lots of condiments in little dishes make a meal look more impressive!
• So does whiskey! (And it’s vegetarian to boot.)
• I’m much too uncommitted and conflict-averse to come up with a meatless Labor Day meal.

In news unrelated to food, I have at long last found a publication worthy of filling the void left by the folding of my beloved Cottage Living : this, my friends, is Midwest Living. Whether you want to visit Walnut Grove, Minnesota, make Danish pastry apple bars, redecorate your Lincoln Park condo, or peruse ads for walk-in bathtubs, the answer is but a page-turn away.

Me: Do you want to look at the magazine? I know you’ll love it.
Boyfriend: Why? I don’t have any gourds that need preserving.
Me: Wait, you already read it?

If you need to know why the Midwest is awesome, besides my telling you so, the magazine has provided a helpful list. No, I don’t work for them; but they know where to find me. Nowhere near the Midwest, incidentally.

My boyfriend and I ate at a vegan restaurant for dinner last night. Neither of us is vegan, but tempeh and dairy-free ranch dressing sounded tantalizingly weird. Anyway, it was his idea.

…But only because I’ve been trying to eat less meat (says she who was carrying on about fried chicken not 24 hours ago)! My family is game – even my brother, kind of. He’s awfully environmentally-minded, so with a quick reminder about greenhouse-gases-as-direct-result-of-beef-production he was more or less on-board. As a common sense bonus: it’s much cheaper eating less meat, especially when your mom refuses to eat anything that didn’t spend its short life running around in green pastures while grazing, rooting, scratching, etc. Let’s just say that Whole Foods isn’t selling its happy cows for $2.99 a pound.

Like most of my enthusiastically committed-to great ideas, I’m not sure how long this will last. I can’t realistically imagine taking meat out of rotation entirely, since I’m having a hard time coming up with ideas for even two weeks. I can just see my sister (the only actual vegetarian in the family) rolling her eyes. But then, she isn’t cooking for our brother. Also, my vegetarian meals tend to rely heavily on cheese, eggs, and restaurants. Since the goals, if you will, of this exercise are to (1) Save the Planet, natch, (2) spend less, and (3) be healthier, it makes no sense to go buy a brick of cheddar, which, while tasty, is neither cheap nor particularly good for you. This is not to say we can’t eat some cheese and some eggs – there are a lot of exceptions and gray areas in this plan – but I’m trying to avoid having them take center stage at every meal.

This is what I’ve come up with:
Week 1
Sunday: Homemade pizzas, salad
Monday: Black bean and squash chili over sweet potatoes
Tuesday: Corn chowder, salad
Wednesday: Linguini, marinara sauce, salad (you guessed it!)
Thursday: Fried chicken (but it’s the LAST CONCERT)

Week 2
Sunday: Fish, maybe? I’m ok with some cheating.
Monday: Baked penne with tomatoes and olives, salad
Tuesday: Grilled portobello burgers with tasty, as-yet-undecided toppings
Wednesday: Monday’s leftovers
Thursday: Thai noodle soup

So far, the pizza has been the only thing that everyone’s liked, although I have high hopes for the baked penne. We’ll see. Laziness often kills these grand plans before they even get off the ground, but having it in writing might guilt me into sticking with it. Or lying.

I’ve written earlier about my inability to think well on my feet. At work it makes for all kinds of awkward interactions, particularly when I need to, like, interact. At home, though, menus – and their requisite lists – let me simply follow a set of instructions, a task at which I am exceptionally gifted.

I work with a Sunday through Thursday calendar, since we eat take-out Mexican on Fridays, and everyone fends for themselves on Saturdays. I hate going to the market more than once or twice a week, so if you’re a likeminded (incredibly practical) person, well-planned menus become essential. Slightly wilted produce isn’t exactly a tragedy, although you may be told otherwise.

Monday is my menu-sketching day. I have a little spreadsheet. This system gives me most of the week to second-guess my choices without wasting paper! I write up the final draft and accompanying grocery list during 30 Rock, and the end product looks the same as my mom’s always did – menu up top, list below:

I’ve tried typing my lists a few times but felt, for no good reason, really stupid pulling these out at the market. Since the last thing you want is to look foolish at the grocery store, I’d recommend the handwritten list. Classic, serviceable, and one day they’ll make an unappreciated gift for your children.

So here’s my approach, tried and true, mostly:

[Saturday: Shopping and cooking-in-advance day, made more agreeable with the promise of a drink and a dinner I didn’t make at the end of it.]

Sunday: Something that takes a little more time, like one of Martha’s “Dinner for Four in About an Hour” (apparently meant for weeknight meals!).

Monday: Something that will leave leftovers, which will be made into something “new” (croquettes?) on Tuesday.

Tuesday: See Monday.

Wednesday: A dish that’s been lurking in the freezer from a Saturday make-ahead session. Can’t have too many of these.

Thursday: Something new, no quotation marks! I should rethink this placement within the week because everyone’s always too tired to be satisfactorily impressed.

The formatting lesson ends here, sorry to say. Eventually you’ll need to pick some actual food and make it look like dinner. And every month lovely menus spring, fully formed, from the pages of Gourmet, Rachael Ray, the internet, et al. – just choose your preferred level of cute and you’re off. The editors seem to have good, if anxiety-inducing, intentions, what with their pretty, balanced mains and sides and thoughtful wine pairings. So let’s forget for a minute that my family has tastes that seem incompatible with every recipe ever created, and that I nurse a blind reliance on ten dishes. Change is, ever so faintly, in the air.

This is such a well-timed entry, since, by happy accident, I have a vegetarian in the house right now : my younger sister. Also in the house is my younger brother, and the two have, it seems to me, mutually exclusive tastes in dinner food. What an exciting challenge!

I probably shouldn’t have made my first menu so restaurant heavy, since it’s not how we usually eat. But let’s start with the exception, and then we’ll get to the rule.

Sunday: Homemade-ish pizza, salad
Monday: George’s Greek Cafe
Tuesday: Macaroni and cheese, salad
Wednesday: Leftover mac and cheese, salad (I’m sensing a trend.)
Thursday: Grilled stuffed portobello mushrooms, grilled zucchini
Friday: Super Mex take-out
Saturday: Up for grabs! By which I mean, I don’t know.

Notes on the week:
Sunday
Pizza dough and sauce were both from Trader Joe’s, which was miles easier than starting from scratch. We made three pizzas; this took considerable oven/rack coordination but yielded enough for five, with some leftovers. Terrified of a soggy crust (manifestation of general yeast-phobia), I used just a little smear of sauce, and this meagerness did not go unnoticed by my dining companions. Since the bottom crust was not lacking for crunch, next time I might (might) use more than a spoonful.

You don’t actually need any special equipment for pizza. If you’ll forgive my going all Alton-Brown-minimalist, the oiled back of a baking pan works fine. But special pizza equipment is just the best. I will mention that my boyfriend (who would probably prefer not to be mentioned) got me a pizza peel and stone a little while back; both were used with great success, particularly the peel, which gets bonus points for its unheard-of level of dough transfer accuracy and overall awesomeness.

Monday
Half-price wine night! Forgot to bring home the second half of the second bottle, not so surprisingly. The surprising part, really, is that the bottle was not finished.

Tuesday
My macaroni and cheese comes from a Martha Stewart recipe and includes tomatoes, which means tipping a few cupfuls of the plain mixture into a small baking dish for my brother, adding tomatoes to the pot of remaining mac and cheese, and then dumping all this into the larger, rest-of-the-family dish. I won’t lie: it’s a pain. I could be mean and make my brother pick around the tomatoes, but this is a concession I’ll make, if only to remind him of all my extra effort (failing to acknowledge that guilt is not his main source of motivation, as it is mine).

As an aside, I forgot to remove the pizza stone from the oven on Monday, so it was preheated to lava-hot by the time the mac and cheese needed to bake. Quick thinking girls that we are, my sister and I grabbed the oven mitts, extracted the stone, and whisked it outside to cool on the barbeque. And there it remains, possibly safe to touch by now.

Today
It feels abrupt to stop here without an analysis of the grilled portobellos, but we’ll save that for when Cook’s Illustrated comes calling. (Any day now!) I’ve made them more than a few times, to glowing-ish reviews; they have enough butter, parmesan, and breadcrumbs to keep even the mushroom-shy fairly happy. No one ever said vegetarian cooking had to be healthy!

After work: remove pizza stone from grill

My sister enjoys posing clipping rosemary in the garden.

Spontaneity in the kitchen certainly has its place: Let’s open another bottle! And I think the cat needs a bath! I would never begrudge anyone – least of all myself – a little bit of freedom to make unwise domestic choices.

But as a supremely self-aware person, I know my limitations, and on-the-fly meal making is always an unwise choice. I’m sure some people can handle it beautifully, just as I’m sure that someone, somewhere, still does regression analysis by hand.

In case I haven’t been perfectly clear, I can do neither, and that is why I rely on weekly menus and, of course, Excel.

Unfortunately, readers, this is not a blog about statistics. It’s a blog about feeding your family a “decent” (definition forthcoming) dinner most nights of the week – nights when you’d rather not be cooking, nights when they’d rather be at Claim Jumper. And what’s the best way to feed a family of fussy eaters when you arrive home, fresh-faced and smiling warmly, at 6:15 (besides take-out, which obviously would be everyone’s first choice)? Why, with the assembly and execution of sensible menus! It’s a simple idea that is, let’s be generous, a little frustrating in its implementation – just ask my mother.

Clearly, the world has been waiting with bated breath for a new voice to inspire and lead in the arena of menu planning, like a Joan of Arc who knows the layout of the grocery store. Who am I to deny the masses? I am but your humble servant.

Let the planning begin before I drown in all this gratuitous punctuation!

Beets!