Communing with Nature, Deviled Eggs

August 19th, 2009 § 0

One of the great things about the Internet, since no one’s ever pointed this out, is its capacity for providing instant gratification: accurate or not, information is current and instantly available! This is how I like my gossip. It’s not really how I like my bills, but we take the good with the bad over here. In the spirit of being relevant, I’m going to dive into my favorite weekly summertime event, the Concerts in the Park series.

The last one is tomorrow—we made it just under the wire.

The series features our wonderful municipal band, which specializes in movie themes, the official songs of each branch of the U.S. military, and everything in between. I’ve been going for years—decades, actually. The band visits five parks, each one on a specific day of the week, for two months. I’m not going to lie: my park is super awesome, and Thursday is the best night. This need not be taken with a grain of salt.

The concerts bring together some of my least favorite things – picnics, socializing, and prolonged clean-up – and make them into something wholly enjoyable. The adults wander around with glasses of wine, feeling, if they’re anything like me, a little giddy from doing the most illegal thing most of us will ever have the guts to do. (“Alcohol is prohibited in city parks,” comes the ominous but ineffectual announcement each week. “Please be circumspect in your actions.”) The little kids run around with dogs, balls, plastic weaponry, and a wealth of other accessories unsuitable for a crowded place. And we eat.

Apparently, back before my siblings and I were born, my parents would make tasty pasta salads the night before a concert, tuck them into unstained Tupperware, and cruise on down to the park unencumbered by mountains of deck chairs, yards of picnic blankets, and place-settings for five. My, how things have changed!

These days, of course, we bring enough gear to see us through Coachella. Our menu, though much different from those halcyon pre-children days, has been consistent for the last few years: homemade submarine sandwiches, deviled eggs, chips, fruit, and brownies. My mom, who is a teacher, has long been stuck with almost all of the preparation because she gets home from summer school in time to, well, prepare. Needless to say, she was getting kind of sick of it. So we have progressed to the best possible kind of picnic food: purchased.

Tomorrow we will be curled up on our deck chairs and picnic blankets, drinking wine, eating fried chicken, antipasto, potato salad, and strawberries. And it will be, as always, wholly enjoyable. Anyone who’s bored can see how many Crate and Barrel picnic tables they can count from a sitting position; my record is nine.

The Cotton is High

July 29th, 2009 § 1

I’ve been quite the jetsetter lately: first, Washington, D.C., then Nashville… Seriously, Hillary Clinton has nothing on me – except, I’m sure, a highly dedicated staff that keeps her blog churning merrily along as she reviews reports, eats peanuts, etc. My own dedicated staff (hi Mom and Dad!) was stuck with the always-glamorous tasks of shopping and cooking. They handled this with aplomb, quickly shattering any fantasies I’d entertained of my domestic indispensability. I think I’m still the only one in the house who knows how to use the ice-cream maker, and to this accomplishment I must now cling.

So anyway, I’m back. We’ve transitioned into summer, which, frankly, is a lot like the rest of the year, only with better tomatoes.

Extensive published sociological research (“magazines,” you might call it) suggests that people like to grill in the summer. Since conventional wisdom has never steered me wrong, I also like to grill in the summer – and I have had quite the grilling extravaganza over the last week! My concept of success, as it applies to cooking and many other things, is pretty liberal (i.e. no one was poisoned), but these meals could be considered successes even by more exacting standards. I’m looking at you Cook’s Illustrated!

Grilled Turkey Breast
This one started as a great idea, took a sudden turn for the truly awful, and then rose, phoenix-like, from the (literal?) ashes. Inspired by my “Best Make-Ahead Recipes” cookbook, I made a spicy, citrusy, tomato-y marinade recommended for poultry. I thought a large turkey breast would make for a more dramatic presentation than four small chicken breasts. Was I right, or was I right?

My first inkling that this was not my best laid plan came when I couldn’t find a single recipe for grilling a whole turkey breast in any of my cookbooks. Undeterred, I turned to the internet, that vessel of reliable information. “Preheat grill to high. Place the breast on the grill, skin-side down. Close cover and grill until golden brown and a crust has formed, about four to five minutes.” I’m paraphrasing. But watch: if I remove the words “close cover,” (a) it is no longer a paraphrase, and (b) I would not have had a blackened football sitting on the grill after that crucial “four to five minutes.”

All was not lost! Some enthusiastic scraping and sawing revealed a lovely brown, if still carcinogenic, exterior and surprisingly moist meat. My brother likened the remaining marinade – set aside at the start to serve with the meal – to Taco Bell hot sauce, and I think we can all agree that no higher praise could have been bestowed.

Hamburgers with Tomato Salad
This meal lacked the spectacle that made our previous entry so very thrilling, but I think reliability is an underrated virtue. Burgers are a mainstay at my house, and it was with caution that I stepped away from the beaten path this time around. For reasons long forgotten but, no doubt, completely valid, I always use ground sirloin, which dries out at the mere suggestion of heat. Switch to chuck, you suggest? Well, I just said I always use sirloin! What I suggest is this: mix in a handful grated cheddar cheese! It looks disgusting and sounds not at all original, but it was a revelation of epic, finickity-is-not-a-real-word proportion to me.

If you have suddenly found yourself with an unnervingly fruitful crop of tomatoes, only so many meals in a week, and coworkers who are nervous about produce that didn’t come from a store, have I got a recipe for you! I can hardly even call it a recipe: chop up some tomatoes and a seedless cucumber (which will still need to be seeded, naturally), slice half a red onion, and dice some feta. Add the salad dressing or vinaigrette of your choice, photograph, and post enjoy! I have yet to find a meal this didn’t compliment. Now, don’t go trying to find one – I haven’t thought about it that hard.

And finally, a gratuitous picture of my charming sister, who probably has not had time to garden since this photo was taken two months ago. Sweetie darling, if the doctor thing doesn’t work out, we’ll make you into a new-media superstar!

The Old Reliables

June 29th, 2009 § 5

My job has, dishearteningly but not surprisingly, resulted in a closet full of business casual outfits; even my going-out clothes seem to have that distinct safe-for-the-office feel. But what my wardrobe lacks in flash (everything) it more than makes up in Ann Taylor synthetics perfectly suited for sitting at a desk or sorting the mail in completely unstaged photographs. It’s predictable, machine-washable, and inoffensive if you don’t mind cardigans.

Gold star for anyone who senses a segue into food metaphor!

Judging from the lengthy editorializing on the subject in my collection of celebrity-authored cookbooks, everyone should have a repository of staples, a safety net of dishes to which you can turn time and time again. The authors, naturally, make this sound like a good thing, the culinary equivalent of a little black dress, not those gray pants I wore twice last week. Let’s take a look, shall we?

Green salad
I’d feel weird making a dinner that didn’t include something green. Nine times out of ten, this is it. But last night we had sugar snap peas and the earth kept right on spinning.

Pasta
Where to begin? No one’s excited to see this on the menu except in its more complicated forms – macaroni and cheese, stuffed shells, lasagna, spaghetti pie…unfortunately, it’s linguini and jarred sauce that fills my menu gaps.

Chicken
I don’t like making chicken since it seems to require endless hand/cutting-board/utensil-washings with hot soapy water (not that I don’t apply this degree of sanitation to all food preparation!). The advantage that can’t be overlooked: everyone (except the difficult vegetarian sister) eats it.

Couscous
I only discovered this about a year ago, and I wish it’d been much earlier. It’s so easy! I’ve heard that couscous is fluffier when steamed instead of dumped into a pot of boiling water, but I guess I’ll never know for sure.

Pork Tenderloin
As versatile as chicken, but I’m not so crazily anxious about undercooking it. Strangely enough, this means it’s always overcooked. Looks super awesome on the grill, though!

It’s a fair start. But lest complacency get the better of me (ha!), I might start allocating some of my limited creative capital to dinner by taking “one recipe and then using it to champion a whole set of different meals.” Jamie Oliver, that sounds really lovely; it also sounds a lot like accessorizing, which, as my mother and sister might point out, is not a part of my skill set. But with a little time and ingenious reworking, my basics will surely “delight everyone at the table.” (Would that it were so, Ina!)

Local Harvest

June 22nd, 2009 § 2

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!

Nuts and Bolts

June 17th, 2009 § 1

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.

A Menu for Feeding a Vegetarian

June 11th, 2009 § 3

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.

The Plan

June 8th, 2009 § 0

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!

The Players

June 5th, 2009 § 2

Because this is not a creative writing assignment, I am going to tell, not show. Also, list-making is my favorite thing ever.

The Mains

Mom
Spent 20 years shopping and cooking for ungrateful children and is, shockingly, over it. Her preferences on the domestic front now involve antique silverware and outfitting my sister’s apartment – 2000 miles away – via Craigslist and text messages. Instrumental in keeping my vegetable garden alive. Ventures into the kitchen to make hummingbird nectar and cocktails.

Dad
Bless him, will eat almost anything, including long-forgotten leftovers that could be classified rightfully as carrion. (Let this be no reflection on the state of my refrigerator.) He can light a charcoal barbeque with no special equipment and carve a turkey consulting neither a manual nor Food Network video. Was an Eagle Scout, needless to say.

Sister
Lives in Chicago but has just arrived for a two-week stay. Vegetarian, anesthesiologist, adorable, morally superior to me in almost every way. I say “almost” as she loves soy bacon, which is disgusting and undoubtedly a strike against her where heaven is concerned. Will drag out, set up, and clean the food processor rather than just chop the onion already.

Brother
In college, mechanical engineering. Can make many useful things, none of which is dinner. He is called into action when a roux is necessary; understands fat-flour-liquid ratios and their relevant applications as well as any Southern grandmother. His criticism of my meals is both unwaveringly enthusiastic and willfully vague.

The Support

Cats
Five. Pickier than they have any right to be. Incompetent hunters who once half-killed a bird (it must have been a group effort) and had no idea how to finish it off. Prefer buttered ribeye from free-range, already-dead cows.

Spoiled Backyard Squirrels
No exact headcount, but I’m surprised we haven’t reached locust-level infestation since the quality and regularity of their meals (fancy nuts hand-delivered to their feeders twice a day) is, on the whole, much better than my own.

Friends, Boyfriends, Girlfriends
Their eating habits and dietary eccentricities will be (lovingly!) disclosed once they agree that this blog will alter the dominant cultural paradigm/further their careers/not embarrass them. As such, I may never get to speak of them again.

How Green Were My Leeks

June 2nd, 2009 § 2


I don’t know if it’s possible to make a Venn diagram with five sets (edit: it is!), but this would be a fun and colorful way to present the dilemma of family meal making. Our Universal set, of course, would be all things (I consider) edible: a fine picture, indeed! Our completed diagram, however, would have a very small area of intersection, containing, I believe, mashed potatoes, vichyssoise, and whiskey.

And here we begin our journey.

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