A Gracious Hostess

And…it’s all over.
My Thanksgiving timeline – which, by the end, had taken on the scope of MRP for a small company – didn’t steer me wrong: I always keep on task when held accountable to a piece of paper. My boyfriend came over after work on Wednesday to help me get ready; he was greeted with a mountain of Brussels sprouts, a raw turkey, and a festive Togo’s dinner. But weren’t we efficient? So much of the meal was prepared ahead of time that my sister and I spent most of Thursday in a DVD-induced stupor, with intermittent bouts of grooming.

Then: chaos.

No, of course it wasn’t that bad. But I always underestimate the last-minute-ness of so many things and never figure in the time it takes to pry the cooked turkey from the v-rack to which it’s become cemented, scrape the burned bits from the roasting pan before making the gravy, and ferry nine hot serving dishes to their designated trivets.

And, there was the Tofurky.

My sister (a vegetarian, you remember) called a few days before she arrived and asked if I could pick up some fake chicken patties as a turkey stand-in. Sure, no problem – until I couldn’t find them. It’s hard to imagine a run on soy chicken-substitute, but the freezer shelves spoke for themselves. There was, however, no shortage of Tofurky, which should have been my first warning sign.

The Tofurky (“Serves and Delights 5”!) was nestled in a small box with a tub of mushroom and “giblet” gravy. It was a fat little roast, almost spherical, and it came tightly wrapped in plastic that was secured, summer-sausage-style, by two metal grommets. Unlike chicken patties, which fare perfectly well on a paper towel in the microwave, the Tofurky required a baking dish and an hour in the oven. These specifications had not been incorporated into my oven configuration, as everyone was soon aware. But since I’m an infinitely adaptable type of person and my sister surely would have gone hungry with only seven meat-free sides from which to choose, we worked out the logistics with minimum fuss.

The Tofurky sat high in its tiny dish on a bed of onions, doused with olive oil and soy sauce, and was shuttled between the big oven and the convection oven. The gravy took a spectacularly long time to make, but didn’t taste too burned. The casseroles were hot in the center. We forgot some of the stuffing in the turkey but found it upon postprandial disassembly of the carcass. I didn’t spill my wine – or anybody’s else’s.

There is still Tofurky in the refrigerator.

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.

If there is one thing I’m good at, it’s jumping on a bandwagon and then not following through. Starting a vegetable garden seemed like a perfect outlet for this habit, which hasn’t had an agreeable place to settle since I took up – and dropped – pie-making (though whether this was a bandwagon is debatable, I suppose). But this particular garden happens to be in my parents’ backyard, so the helpful and frequent reminders (“Go harvest your beets, they’re turning to seed!”) have made it difficult to just ignore.

As it turns out, I would rather not ignore the garden. It’s fun! Mine is a manageable size, probably 5’ x 10’, with enough room for a few mini-plots of vegetables each season. I might have been a little lax with the first rotation: the beets and potatoes planted back in late winter were harvested just recently. It doesn’t get very cold out here, so I’ll gamely blame the beets’ slow maturity on our warm weather, not my forgetting to thin them out when they reached their little sprout stage. The potatoes, I think, were just keeping them company. Despite their tardiness, both were delicious:

We bought and planted the summer crop yesterday. If you’re new to gardening, or impatient, or both, I highly, highly recommend buying seedlings rather than seeds. Planting from seed is cheaper, harder, and it takes longer; if you like to feel smugly virtuous—and I do—this is a great way to do it. That being said: seedlings = instant garden! It looks pretty right away!

So this time I was an absentee plant mother, lobbing the kids off to the nanny during their touch-and-go formative years and now eagerly looking forward to beautiful bell peppers, jalepeno peppers, Anaheim peppers, tomatoes, zucchini, and eggplant. I haven’t found a way around watering and weeding (my nails!), but I shouldn’t completely deny my inner martyr her fun.

Of course I started from scratch!

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.