Tiny tragedies

It’s been a week of tiny tragedies, here in Seattle. I’ve been sighing a lot. They’re not the contented, self-congratulatory kind of sighs, but the deflating, disappointed sort. The kind you eek out, when there’s nothing left to do.

I’m not sure how it started. Maybe it was last Thursday. Yes, that was it. Curses on you, Thursday.

First I somehow sliced my finger open with my own wedding ring. Then I hit a parked car—a 6,000-year-old Suburban, thank goodness—and busted a headlight. Then a raccoon attacked my normally scrappy cat, and we spent part of a night in the kitty ER. (Jackson came out a little maimed, but alive. He’s mostly just insulted he’s so poorly shaven and trapped indoors.)

Then—then—I made a ricotta cheesecake, a gorgeous, pumpkin-tinged, ginger-crusted gem of a thing, inspired by my borderline-unhealthy obsession with kabocha squash and a bit of leftover cream cheese. But I nearly broke it in half, moving it too fast (and too soon) from pan to platter. (And it had been so beautiful!)

Of course, it still tasted like a perfectly plated pumpkin cheesecake. (Say that ten times fast.) I took one slice out to verify. (Yes: delicious.) Then we took it to a Halloween party, and I never got a second slice.

Poor decision.

Now, a couple days later, in the middle of a grey afternoon, I have a finger that won’t type, a completely unnecessary $150 mechanic bill, a cat yowling to be let out, good coffee, and no last slice of pumpkin cheesecake. All I really feel capable of doing is pouting out loud.

I’ll just give you the recipe instead.

By the way, there’s a tiny lie in the recipe title – it’s actually a light, faintly spiced cheesecake made with pureed kabocha squash, but there’s something inherently unsexy about a squash cheesecake. Don’t you agree? Ditto for cream cheese pie, which is what my husband called the cheesecake when he couldn’t think of the correct word.  So pumpkin cheesecake it is.

Pumpkin-Ricotta Cheesecake (PDF)

Loosely based on the recipe for Eve’s Lemon Cheesecake, from Kathy Gunst’s Relax, Company’s Coming! (one of my all-time go-to cookbooks), this fallish, ginger-crusted treat satisfies all manners of cheesecake cravings. Thanks to plenty of eggs and ricotta cheese (and a bit less sugar than usual), it’s lighter than your typical doorstop dessert. Use pureed kabocha squash if you have it, or simply substitute canned pumpkin.

TIME: 90 minutes, start to finish
MAKES: 12 servings

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted, plus more for greasing pan
1 (5-ounce) package ginger thins, pulverized in a food processor
1/2 cup sifted confectioners’ sugar
1 pound cream cheese, room temperature
1 cup sugar
1 pound whole milk ricotta
4 large eggs, room temperature
1 1/4 cups mashed kabocha squash
1/8 teaspoon each ground ginger, cardamom, nutmeg, and allspice
1 teaspoon vanilla
Pinch salt

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside. Grease an 8” springform pan generously with butter, wrap the bottom with a piece of foil (to catch any butter that drips out while baking) and set aside.

Stir the melted butter, ginger thin crumbs, and confectioners’ sugar together in a bowl until well blended. Dump the mixture into the bottom of the springform pan, and use your hands to pat it into an even layer on the bottom of the pan and about 1/2” up the sides. Transfer the pan to the freezer to harden while you make the filling.

Next, in the work bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, whip the cream cheese and sugar on medium speed until light, about 3 minutes. Add the ricotta, and whip another minute or two. Add the eggs one at a time, whipping on low and scraping the sides of the work bowl between additions. Stir the squash, spices, vanilla, and salt together in a separate bowl, then add the squash mixture to the batter, and mix on medium speed until uniform in color, scraping any stray cream cheese off the very bottom of the bowl.

Place the chilled pan on the prepared baking sheet, and transfer the batter to the pan. Bake on the middle rack for about 1 hour 15 minutes, or until the cake is puffed and just beginning to crack. (It may still jiggle a bit, but the cake will move as one piece, rather than just jiggling in the center.) Let cool to room temperature (or chill overnight), then cut and serve.

Note: If you want a cheesecake with almost no color (besides the obvious pumpkin-orange tinge) on the top, place a baking sheet on the rack directly above it as it bakes.

Halloween homage

It’s hard to bring a dead magazine flowers, especially when you live thousands of miles away from its former headquarters. But more than profess Gourmet magazine’s perfection or symbolism, its former prowess or power, what I’ve been wanting to say, these last few weeks, is just. . . You know. Sorry.

 

A cake to crush on

I saw you at the farmers’ market this weekend. You picked up a kabocha squash – that big, tough-looking green one, with the woody stump – and fairly considered it. You turned it around and around, right side-up and upside-down. It wasn’t without effort, of course – the weight of the thing made your market bag trip over your shoulder blade and careen down your upper arm, at which point you wondered how you’d get the beast home. Then your buddy said, “So, how do you think you get it open?” And I watched you put that poor squash down.

I hate to be Debbie Downer, but you made the wrong decision, sister. A kabocha squash can be a big thug of a thing, but it is not (despite those witchy warts and scars) actually scary or difficult to use.

And I don’t mean to be smug, but I should know. These days, with sore joints, a can opener is my nemesis; I do not cut hard things. The thought of hacking into anything tougher than a bagel (much less quartering a big ol’ squash) brings tears to my eyes. But I love kabocha. So my choices are threefold: 1) stop buying squash and be sad, 2) let my husband finally buy the Samurai sword he’s always wanted, and pray he doesn’t hurt the counters or himself, or 3) skip the farmers’ market and buy pre-cut squash at the grocery store.

But oh, wait. WAIT. There’s a fourth. See, you don’t actually have to cut into a kabocha before you cook it, if you want soft squash. You can just put it in the oven, stem and all, and roast away at 400 degrees. It comes out like I do after a too-long day at the beach—tanned and tired, a bit stinky and maybe a little slumpy. But it’s as easy to cut into as a stick of room-temperature butter. I almost snatched your sleeve to tell you, right there at the market booth, but that would have been so awkward and stalkerish.

See, if I’d grabbed you, I would have had to tell you about my kabocha-maple bundt cake, too. As if you needed someone yakking to you about a cake that went out of style five decades ago. As if you need more kitchen equipment. I mean really, who owns a bundt cake pan anymore? I certainly didn’t. But last week, after testing a donut recipe for my friend Lara’s upcoming book (it’s tentatively called The Doughnut Cookbook, now who could argue with that?), one with an addictive maple glaze, I had maple glaze on my mind. It tangoed around in my brain with all sorts of ingredients, until settling on—well, drizzling down, really—the sides of a bundt cake hued with the rich, sweet flesh of a kabocha squash.

I broke into my neighbor’s house to borrow a bundt cake pan. (Okay, maybe there was a key involved, but rifling through her cupboards with no one in the house, it felt like a break-in.) I stirred and whipped and mashed, until I had a butternut-orange batter tinged with maple syrup and spunked with sour cream. Up it baked, in a meticulously buttered and floured pan – in 40 minutes, which was less time than I expected – then out it came, gorgeous and spongy and smooth in all the right places and, I daresay, almost sexy. Aside from the oft-abused line from My Big Fat Greek Wedding, I’ve never given the bundt cake a second thought, but goodness, yes, they’re sexy, with all those curves. Add a quick maple-vanilla glaze and a sprinkling of nuts, and you’ve got a head-turner.

But enough about the way she looks. I have to tell you this: She might be my best-tasting cake. Ever.

I’ve told you before that I’m not much of a cake person. I don’t like the way dry edges call out for frosting—in my opinion, a cake shouldn’t need frosting, and frosting shouldn’t need cake. Each should be delicious on its own, but they should complement each other when they’re put together. Like people, I guess. But like people, it’s not always as easy as it sounds. This cake is different. The glaze is diamonds on a woman too beautiful for jewelry: certainly not needed, but once they’re there, how could you take them off?

I love this cake because it’s equally appropriate for the plate at 8 a.m., 4 p.m., or 8 p.m. (and, I suspect, at 4 a.m., although I didn’t get the opportunity to try). I like it because I let it sit for two days before serving it to a crowd, and it was still perfectly moist. I like it because unlike a regular dessert cake, it’s hard for others to tell how big a piece you’re really cutting for yourself, so you can have ten little slivers, if that suits you, or one giant hunk, without looking like a princess or a pig. I like that it has a rich, dense crumb, all the way to the edges. I love that it’s easy to cut. And most of all, I love that nothing about making it hurts me right now.

The problem with kabocha, in my house, is that we never seem to have enough. Roasting up a soccer ball-sized specimen left me with about a quart of mashed squash, and I’m already panicking about how to use the last of it. Do I make another cake and freeze it for my mom’s visit next week? Or do I whirl it up in the blender with a bit of coconut milk and a dab of curry paste, for a quick lunch soup? Or do I sacrifice an ice cube tray, and freeze the rest into little cubes, for Graham to eat, once he gets past the initial shock of putting something besides milk in his mouth?

Oh, dear me. I might just have to roast another. I’ve actually just purchased my own bundt pan, so you can guess where the kabocha will most likely go. I want to try the cake with cardamom.

Kabocha-Maple Sour Cream Bundt Cake with Maple-Vanilla Glaze (PDF)

Kabocha squash has a rich, yellowy flesh that mashes up soft and smooth (like canned pumpkin) when it’s cooked. To roast it, slice a kabocha roughly in half and remove the seeds with an ice cream scoop. Roast cut side-down on a parchment- or silpat-lined baking sheet (no need to oil it) at 400 degrees until the skin is easy to poke with a fork, about an hour. (Timing will depend on the size and age of the squash.) Let the squash cool, peel away the skin and any other tough pieces, and mash the squash like you would potatoes, until smooth.

If you’re afraid of cutting the squash, you can also put the entire thing – stem and all – into the oven, and bake it a bit longer. Just be sure to scoop out the seeds and stringy stuff before you mash the flesh.

TIME: 30 minutes active time
MAKES: About 16 servings

For the cake:
2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter (at room temperature), plus more for pan
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for pan
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 cup sour cream (8 ounce container)
1/4 cup maple syrup
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 1/2 packed cups mashed kabocha squash

For the glaze:
3/4 cup confectioners’ sugar
1 tablespoon maple syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 teaspoons water (plus more, if necessary)
2 tablespoons chopped toasted nuts, such as hazelnuts, pecans, or walnuts (optional)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Generously (and carefully) flour and butter a bundt cake pan, and set aside.

Whisk the flours, baking powder, baking soda, and salt together in a bowl, and set aside.

Using a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, whip the butter and sugar together on medium speed until light, 3 to 4 minutes. Add the eggs one at a time, scraping down the sides of the bowl and mixing between additions. Stir the sour cream, maple syrup, and vanilla together in a bowl. With the machine on low, alternate adding the dry and wet mixtures – first some of the flour, then some of the cream, then flour, cream again, and finally flour. When just mixed, add the squash, and mix on low until uniform in color.

Transfer the batter to the prepared bundt cake pan, smooth the top, and bake (I find it easier to transfer if it’s on a baking sheet) until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out with just a few crumbs, and the top springs back when touched lightly, about 40 to 45 minutes.

Let the cake cool 10 minutes in the pan, then carefully invert onto a serving platter. When cool to the touch (after about an hour), make the glaze: Whisk the sugar, syrup, vanilla, and water together until smooth, adding additional water if necessary to make a thick, barely pourable glaze. Drizzle the glaze (or pour it right out of the bowl) along the crown of the cake, allowing it to ooze down the inside and outside of the cake. Sprinkle immediately with nuts, if using.

Once the glaze has dried, the cake keeps well, wrapped in plastic, at room temperature, up to 3 days.

MAKE AHEAD: Cake can also be made ahead, wrapped in foil and plastic, and frozen up to 1 month. Glaze after defrosting at room temperature.

Victim of the market vortex

Click here to hear me chat on the radio with KUOW’s Megan Sukys about The Asian Grandmothers Cookbook, which has been my source of dinner inspiration for the last week or so . . . Above, 1-2-3-4-5 Sticky Spareribs. Scroll down for recipes.

Last week, I walked into HT, an Asian grocery store near my house, with a very short list:

Shaoxing rice wine
Pandan leaves
Panko

I’d dog-eared a few pages in my most recent cookbook acquisition, The Asian Grandmothers Cookbook, knowing I’d have to expand my pantry a bit to make a few of the recipes I’d picked out. But as I stood there at the front of the store, in the shock one inevitably undergoes when one enters a market that’s not totally familiar, I looked at the list again. Is that all?

It’s a well-known fact that if you don’t go into the grocery store with a specific list, you come out with more than you really need. But there’s a corollary to that rule: if you go in with too short a list, you come out with what you need and what you never knew you needed. Multiply by two if you’re in a store you don’t visit often, then by six if you’re hungry, and again by three if your child is sleeping peacefully. (See Why I Don’t Go to Target.)

At HT, I totally got sucked into the market vortex. I came home with the last of the ingredients I needed for the recipes I’d picked from the book, as well as enough for beef pho for roughly six people, fun frozen dim sum for an army, and whatever else I could fit into four giant shopping bags: chilies, tofu, six tiny cans of coconut milk, Vietnamese meatballs . . .

This week, it’s been all about other peoples’ recipes. Gotta cook down the fridge, if you know what I mean. But here are a few for you to try . . .

(And a quick note: try poaching pears in the ginger tea, below.)

From The Asian Grandmothers Cookbook, by Pat Tanumihardja:

1-2-3-4-5 Sticky Spareribs (PDF)

Chicken and Eggs in a Golden Curry (PDF)

Ginger Tea (PDF)

*Also, fresh ginger is sometimes available at Mair Farm-Taki at the UD farmers market (not Maki Farm, as I said on the radio!).

Spain, in 5 ingredients

Once, then I’m done: Some days, lupus bites. Not in a lovely, peppery vinaigrette sort of way. In a rocks-in-my-soup sort of way. I felt so good all summer, then boom. I turned away for just a moment, and the wolf walked in the door.

It’s no wonder, really. We spent a week in Spain for a wedding, plus a long weekend in Rhode Island for another wedding. It all adds up to Too Much Fun. It was lovely, of course – the jamon iberico, watching the Vuelta a Espana’s last time trial, seeing cousins I hadn’t seen in (literally) decades, participating in weddings I wouldn’t have missed for the world . . . But coming home, we had sort of a crash landing. Graham didn’t adjust back to our time zone as well as he had going the other direction, and between his schedule, our own jetlag, and three good cases of the sniffles, we’ve been a mess. And my body has not been happy.

Thankfully, the one taste I had to bring back from our trip – the flavor of Spain that lingered on my tongue, through all the ham, through the weird Oktoberfest meal on Lufthansa, through the Willow Tree chicken salad reunion (me and the chicken salad) in Newport – was the simplest of stews. We had it at a roadside restaurant, driving from La Rioja back to Madrid in a rented 6-speed diesel minivan. (As a side note, I do not recommend driving a large vehicle through the heart of Madrid if there’s even a small chance your iPhone, with all its hoo-ha navigational capabilities, will lose power.)

Considering our lack of Spanish, you could say we ordered the soup on accident. It was hardly a looker – just chickpeas, soaking in a simple broth with little beads of paprika-spiked oil bobbing around on the surface. Studded with slices of mild chorizo, it went down easy, rich but not overwhelming, unmistakably Spanish but after 8 days of ham, appreciably different. It had the kind of broth you want to drink for days on end, like a tonic.

When I sat down to think about how to make it, I felt like my brain wasn’t working. If I sautéed chorizo and then simmered it, along with dried chickpeas, in a paprika-rich homemade stock, the legumes would soak up some of that meaty flavor. But wasn’t there more? Five ingredients didn’t seem like enough.

But they were plenty. And an hour later, there it was: Spain. I’d purchased bulk chorizo, instead of the regular kind in casings, which made it a bit different from the version I fell in love with. (If you must know, I don’t like the way sausage slices look cooked with the casings on. The way the exterior shrinks up and strangles the meat reminds me of putting nylons on – you know, when they’re only partway up your thighs? Uncomfortable, and a little gross.)

Of course, the one thing missing from the roadside stew – the same thing, frankly, that was missing from so many of my meals in Spain – was the color green. I served ours over sautéed kale.

This could very well be The Fall I Didn’t Make Pie. Peeling apples just doesn’t seem to be an option right now. My hands are too sore.

But soup. Soup can be easy.

Thank goodness.

Quick Chorizo and Chickpea Stew (PDF)

Brimming with more flavor than a stew that takes 10 minutes of attention really deserves, this hearty concoction was my favorite meal from our recent trip to Spain. I used bulk chorizo, but sliced (sausage-style) chorizo would work well also (and was what we ate in Spain). Homemade chicken stock is important here—use yours, if you have some.

Serve the stew as is, or try ladling it over sautéed greens, such as kale or chard, or over leftover rice.

TIME: 10 minutes prep time
MAKES: 4 servings

1 1/4 cup dried chickpeas
6 cups good chicken stock
3/4 pound chorizo (bulk or in casings, thinly sliced)
1/2 teaspoon smoked Spanish paprika (Pimenton de la Vera)
Salt and freshly ground pepper

Bring the chickpeas and 4 cups of the stock to a boil in a soup pot. Cover, remove from heat, and let sit for 1 hour.

Preheat a large skillet over medium-high heat. Crumble the chorizo into the pan (or add the sliced chorizo) and cook, stirring and breaking into bite-sized pieces after the first 5 minutes, until cooked through, about 10 minutes. Transfer meat to the pan with the chickpeas, stir in the paprika and the remaining 2 cups stock, and season with salt and pepper. Simmer for 1 hour, until the beans are soft.

Season to taste, and serve hot.

Baby Boy A

Before our son, Graham, was born, I started daydreaming about his culinary education. His first course always seemed obvious: My firstborn would be a boob man from the start. Yes, I’d teach it myself, with equipment provided and fuel replenished by nature. Only it never occurred to me in all the hours spent obsessing over what foods he might prefer later, or whether he’d be unreasonably picky, that there might be a glitch—like being born unable to eat.

When Graham showed up almost two months early, we knew we were fortunate because he had good lungs and a willingness to fight the e. coli infection that sent me into labor. And (be still my beating heart) he apparently inherited my rock-solid digestive system. There was just one minor detail: he’d skipped the part of fetal development in which we learn to suck and swallow. So instead of waiting until toddlerhood, when kids typically begin refusing any food whose assembly they don’t personally witness, Graham decided we needed to fret over what he did or didn’t ingest from day one. For seven weeks, we watched our child learn to do what most kids are born doing.

Graham spent the first week of his life in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), then the next two weeks at a similar but slightly less scary ward called the Infant Special Care Unit (ISCU), both at Seattle’s Swedish Hospital. If you’ve never had the pleasure of visiting these places twice daily for weeks on end, you’ll find a close approximation, minus the cow sounds, at your nearest feed lot. Here, in I’d say half the cases, small but otherwise healthy children are nourished through a tube, their every nutritional need calculated and analyzed, prioritized, and criticized. There are charts and protocols and many, many syringes. Lactation consultants—nipple nazis, we called them—float from cribside to cribside, encouraging new moms to pump breast milk for their babies, touting it as nature’s perfect food. New mothers hide behind curtains, hooked up like modest, half-clothed heifers, but most of the babies end up on formula, because it’s often the most effective way to get calories in—and in the ISCU, calories count for everything. In other words, the ISCU is where babies become veal.

Continue reading Baby Boy A at LeitesCulinaria.com

Meet Darla

It’s the same sort of day as most of the other days here in Seattle, I suppose. I’m sitting at a coffee shop, next to a woman who appears, at a brief glance, to be editing a Swedish-Chinese dictionary.

I’ve started working again, three days a week. Sitting down at Herkimer, my body remembered all the right moves—sidling into a seat before getting coffee because the line was long, shyly sneaking my yogurt snack into the corner of my little bench seat, tuning into Basia Bulat. I even remembered my favorite barista’s name.

It all seems amazingly simple: I had a certain life. Then I had a child. Now I have a different sort of life, and I also have a child. Life’s changed, but then again, it hasn’t.

I can’t imagine anything better, for me, for now.

At least, I couldn’t, until we got a new dishwasher.

A new dishwasher, people, really does change a life. It’s not that we didn’t have one before. We did. It was white and dirty, rusty inside and cranky. It didn’t clean dishes particularly well, and our dinner plates didn’t fit inside. I consider myself neither a dishwasher snob nor a connoisseur, but clearly, fitting one’s dishes inside and getting them clean should be two of a dishwasher’s top attractions.

I actually learned a few things in the buying process:

a) a dishwasher should wash your dishes for you, not after you

b) putting rinsed dishes in the dishwasher with abrasive soap leads to cloudy glassware

c) with a new energy-efficient dishwasher, you really only need about a tablespoon of soap

The new one is named Darla. Yes, I named it. I mean her. But only after some thorough testing. She had to earn her keep, you see.

It turns out that the guy I bought our new KitchenAid from, Joe, has an appliance blog. Yes, he blogs about dishwashers and refrigerators and washing machines. When he told me, I tried to stifle a laugh. But then he challenged me: Try everything, he said. See if you can stump your dishwasher. Then tell me what happens.

So I did. I baked blueberry crisp, ate half of it, and reheated the leftovers, so the purple scrapies on the bottom burned right into the pan. I left the empty pan in the sink overnight, untouched, and Darla cleaned it right up.

Then I made Thanksgiving. I know that sounds crazy. It was mid-August and 85 degrees outside, but I was working on some recipes for a November issue, and I didn’t see any way to avoid it. Darla took on the sticky cranberry sauce ring, and a  challinging kale gratin dish, and boy, did she shine.

Next I made little hand tarts. I let the fruit bubble up and over the cornmeal crust, right down into the baby brulee dishes I baked them in, and plunked the dishes right onto the top rack, berry crusties and all. The first time, they didn’t come quite clean, but once I moved them to the bottom rack, where the real business gets done, she came through.

Finally, I gave her cheese. I made a sausage- and vegetable-studded breakfast strata, and baked it until the top layer of cheese – the cheese leather, Jim calls it – was good and brown. We ate a third of it for breakfast the first day, then a third the second day, and the last of it on yet a third day, reheating it in the oven each time and cementing (at least we thought) layers of cheese to the dish’s topsides. Again: clean.

Darla darling, we love you for your cleaning ability. Joe was right. You can do anything.

Now, if you could only figure out how to dry the dishes, we’d be much obliged. Joe said you might not like our eco-froofroo dishwashing detergent. We switched to something that looks much more environmentally harmful, but you’re still not happy.

Darla. Oh, Darla. What should we do? We’ll have to call Joe again.

Sausage & Summer Vegetable Strata (PDF)

It’s easy to fold summer’s best produce into lunches and dinners, but I think we too often forget how good the garden tastes first thing in the morning. Here’s a make-ahead strata that shines with bright cherry tomatoes and zucchini. You can buy a baguette just for the occasion and let it sit out overnight, to dry it out, but I love to use up all the old bread heels that somehow end up congregating in the corner of my freezer.

TIME: 15 minutes prep time, plus 30 minutes baking time

MAKES: 4 to 6 servings

4 large eggs

3/4 cup half and half

1 cup milk

1 teaspoon chopped fresh rosemary

1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme

Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

Butter (for the pan)

1/2 day-old baguette, cut into 1” cubes (or 4 cups cubes of assorted bread)

1 cup crumbled feta cheese

1 small zucchini, chopped into 1/2” pieces

1 cup grape tomatoes, halved

1 heaping cup cooked, crumbled sausage (from 1 large sausage, about 1/3 pound)

1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese

Whiz the eggs, half and half, milk, rosemary, thyme, salt, and pepper together in a blender until well mixed. Butter an 8” x 8” casserole dish (or similar), and arrange the baguette chunks in an even layer in the dish. Scatter the feta, zucchini, tomatoes, and sausage evenly over the bread, then pour the egg mixture over everything, turning and scooping so that all the bread pieces are moistened. Top with the cheddar. Cover with foil and refrigerate overnight.

Before baking, preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Remove the foil and bake for 40 to 50 minutes, or until the top layer is toasted and melty. Serve warm.

The food fairy

Today, I’m on KUOW talking about how preparing great food ahead of time makes me feel like there’s a food fairy in the fridge. It works like this: I get hungry, I open the door, and boom – there she is, all twinkles and glitter, handing me the perfect mayo-less pasta salad.

Unlike more typical pasta salads, in this one, it’s the vegetables (and a good hit of vinegar) that shine. Crisp corn, juicy cherry tomatoes, and summer’s best green beans compete for attention in each bite. Instead of the usual dairy component, the salad gets its creaminess from white beans—which means it’s also packed with protein.

Oh, how I love the food fairy.

If you listened in, here are the other make-ahead recipes I mentioned:

Quick Bulgur Salad with Corn, Feta, and Basil (PDF)
Sausage and Summer Vegetable Strata (PDF)
Lulu’s Carnivore-Friendly Vegan Banana Pancakes (PDF)
Basil-Champagne Vinaigrette (PDF)

Bean and Bright Vegetable Salad (PDF)
TIME: 20 minutes active time
MAKES: 4 to 6 servings

1 cup orzo or other small pasta
1/4 pound thin green beans, trimmed and chopped into 1/2” pieces
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons finely chopped shallot
1/4 cup champagne wine vinegar
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
Salt and freshly ground pepper
Kernels from 1 large ear corn
1 (15-ounce) can white or Great Northern beans, drained, or 1 cup dried beans, soaked and cooked
2 cups baby tomatoes, halved or quartered
1/4 cup finely chopped fresh parsley

Cook the orzo for 7 minutes in a large pot of boiling, salted water. Add the green beans, cook 2 more minutes, and drain them both together.

Meanwhile, whisk the mustard, shallot, vinegar, olive oil, and a bit of salt and pepper together in a large mixing bowl. Add the hot pasta and beans as soon as they’ve been drained, then stir in the corn and beans. Let cool to room temperature, stirring occasionally, then fold in the tomatoes and parsley. Season to taste with salt and pepper, and serve. (Salad can be kept in the refrigerator, covered, up to 5 days.)

Shhhh. (They’re vegan.)

I’ve always had texture issues with banana pancakes. I like the principle. Who wouldn’t mind a bit of extra sweetness in a breakfast favorite, especially if each bite echoed a slice of banana bread? I’ve tried plopping slices into pancake batter right on the pan, the way you do with chocolate chips or blueberries, so that you get the right number of banana bursts in each bite as you work through the pancake. But unlike its flavored pancake cousins, banana pancakes have a clear downfall: sogginess. Right around each banana slice, no matter how careful I am (or even if I caramelize the bananas on the pan before adding the batter), there’s a little ring of gooey batter, and I plum don’t like that. Pancakes can be many, many things, but they should not be soggy. So I don’t make banana pancakes.

Last weekend, I went to Boise to celebrate my birthday. My mother, who now goes by Lulu—or Woowoo, depending on how optimistic we’re feeling about our son’s future ability to articulate certain letters—whipped up a batch of pancakes with bananas right in the batter. These were vegan pancakes, made for a brunch with a vegan and someone allergic to eggs on the guest list.

Now, I’m about as open to eating vegan as I am to not eating at all, so I’ll admit I really had no intention of eating them. Vegan foods are for other people, I usually think. They’ll be sandy or chalky or otherwise culinarily handicapped. And there was that throwinginness to my mother’s body language when she made them; that always makes me uneasy. You’ve probably seen it before, in someone you know who is completely incapable of measuring: There’s a cereal spoon in each of four different bags of flour, and a day-old half banana sitting on the counter, and a hand dipped straight into the sugar dish. It’s how I like cooking best, honestly, but since I have very little experience with vegan food, and I know my mother doesn’t have much either, I got nervous. Blind-mixing pancake batter is one thing when you can rely on an egg to lift it up and a block of butter for flavor, but I don’t exactly think of soymilk as one of those magic ingredients that makes everything work.

Now, there’s nothing really wrong with vegan food for breakfast – one bite of a Mighty O chocolate-frosted chocolate donut will tell you that. But if you’ve ever tasted through the offerings at a vegan bakery, you might have tripped over a few gritty slices of cake, and decided that there’s nothing really right with it either, if it’s not completely necessary. At least, that’s what I did. Sometime long, long ago, “vegan” settled into my vocabulary as an overgrown four-letter word.

I also thought that my general distaste for vegan baked goods was my own fault. I might as well come out with it: I have texture issues. Give me a food – any food, even one everyone else deems perfect – and chances are good that I might find something wrong with it. This time of year, for example, I live in constant fear of someone offering me the “perfect” peach. Anyone normal would die for a bite, die to swoon right into the firm-ripe flesh and watch the juices run down the hand’s creases and past the place where, years ago, we used to all wear wristwatches.

But me? I can’t do the fuzz. Just can’t get past it. I taste that bright juice, but before the flavor gets all the way to my heart, something in my brain trips over a fuzzy caterpillar, or a square of shag carpet, and I have to eat my perfect slice like an orange, before I go into convulsions because I think I’m eating caterpillars or carpet. (Tell me I’m not the only one.)

When I think about the sandy texture a lot of unfortunate vegan baked goods have, I get that same shivery reaction. So it’s not so terribly surprising, I don’t think, that last Sunday, I planned to eat bagels and cream cheese and a few slices of bacon and avoid the pancakes entirely.

The problem was that by the time my mother had blended and stirred, fiddled and fixed, burned two batches and set my husband to the task of cooking off the rest of the bowl, I’d forgotten the pancakes she was making were vegan. One accidentally found its way to my mouth. And I have news for you: that pancake didn’t taste unfortunate in any way. The baking powder made each one stand up light and fluffy, the way eggs normally do for pancakes, and the banana flavor in the background was part sweetness, part fruitiness, and all deliciousness, without any of the dreaded soggy banana rings or any sort of grittiness.

Shoot, I said. I wish I’d watched you. I need this recipe. Are you sure it’s vegan? I had visions of our friend sinking into anaphylaxis at the breakfast table.

My mother rattled off what she’d added, and like always, it was a medley.

I used half this kind of flour, and half that kind off flour, and a little of this, and a little of that. Oh, and I used a recipe, she said. She skittered around for it, finally finding it in another room, completely untouched. Here, she said. It was a recipe for 5-minute vegan pancakes, one that obviously had never made it into the kitchen. I knew I’d have to recreate her version myself.

I woke up Monday morning, on my birthday, ready for pancakes. There was no baking soda. (Who runs out of baking soda?)

This morning, armed with leavener, I tried again. I used a whole banana, for good measure, and just one kind of flour. I sweetened with maple syrup. I whizzed in the blender, adding hazelnut oil instead of my mother’s grapeseed, and poured and flipped, and realized, yet again, that there’s nothing wrong with vegan food for breakfast. I’m apparently just going to the wrong bakeries.

Being not so strictly vegan ourselves, we piled our pancakes high with Greek yogurt and nectarines, and cooked up some bacon. Nothing was missing.

Lulu’s Carnivore-Friendly Vegan Banana Pancakes (PDF)

Made with soymilk, baking powder, and hazelnut oil, these little pancakes are as great as traditional pancakes – or better, with their sweet punch of maple syrup and banana. My mom, who made the first version, found her inspiration in Mark Bittman’s How To Cook Everything Vegetarian, and online, from a recipe for 5-minute vegan pancakes.

TIME: 15 minutes, start to finish
MAKES: 2 to 3 servings

1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 1/2 tablespoons maple syrup
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 cup vanilla soymilk
2 tablespoons hazelnut oil (or other nut oil, or canola oil)
1 ripe banana
Pinch salt
Spray vegetable oil

Blend the flour, syrup, baking powder, soymilk, oil, banana, and salt in a blender until smooth. Transfer to a mixing bowl and set aside.

Heat a large nonstick or heavy cast iron pan over medium heat. When hot, spray with the vegetable oil spray, and drop batter by scant 1/4 cupfuls onto the pan. Cook for a couple minutes, until the bubbles reach the center, then flip and cook another minute or two. Serve the first pancakes hot, and repeat with the remaining batter.

A quickie, for the fridge

My tomato neighbor – the one who replaced his backyard with what could seriously be called an urban tomato farm – is at it again. He’s been working all year, really, planning and plotting, digging and watering. But unlike the Little Red Hen, he’s generous to those of us who have sat idly by, doing nothing – which means this time of year, every third day or so, a new crop of tomatoes rainbows across the windowsill on my front porch.

He doesn’t just grow regular tomatoes. He grows celebrities. At least, that’s how they sound to me. They all have names like movie stars from the 20’s: Paul Robeson and Jean Flemme (which is actually Jaune Flamme, but would make a great name nonetheless) are the current favorites. And like famous people, the tomatoes look best wearing very little.

Lately, in my house, “very little” has meant a basil vinaigrette. I’ve been making it in big batches, and storing it in a Ball jar in the fridge, giving it just the quickest of shakes before dousing anything within arm’s reach – grilled chicken, sliced mangoes, you name it.

It’s the simplest thing to make – just a dollop of mustard, a scoop of yogurt, a glug of good Champagne vinegar, and a big stream of extra virgin olive oil, whizzed in the blender along with as much basil as I can tear off the basil plant with one hand. On paper, it hardly looks like a recipe at all. But I promise, it’s just the thing. Try it on a mixed green salad, with avocado slices and crab cakes, or mixed with some freshly-boiled new potatoes. Drizzle it over a simple salad of Bibb lettuce and hazelnuts. Or pile your favorite tomatoes on a plate, sprinkle them with feta, and drown them in the vinaigrette.

When you’re done, a nice slice of baguette should help you mop up. Of course, I much prefer to just use my fingers.

Basil-Champagne Vinaigrette (PDF)

MAKES: About 1 cup
TIME: 5 minutes

1/4 cup (packed) fresh basil leaves
1/4 cup Champagne wine vinegar
1/2 cup plus 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 1/2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons plain Greek yogurt
Salt and pepper, to taste

Whirl all ingredients together in a blender until smooth.

A cake baked all at once

It’s a question that keeps coming up: Who is this person in my dryer?

I don’t mean there’s actually a human being in my dryer, of course. That would be mean, and very cramped (although not impossible, if the college story my friend tells is true).

I mean that every time I take clothing out of our dryer, I have a bit of an identity crisis. There are burp cloths tangled around maternity t-shirts, tiny diaper covers Velcroed to the thick seat of my bike shorts, and bras with much more infrastructure than previously necessary. I must look like a beginning stargazer, squinting sideways, mouth agape, as I try to identify each article: Mine? Graham’s? At least Jim’s clothes are all the same. But I keep wanting to ask: Who are we now?

The process of getting our clothes clean does seem to represent motherhood perfectly, though. I can almost always start a load of laundry, but the follow-through is inevitably not so hot. I’ll shove everything in and forget to turn the machine on, or put all the wet clothes on the line to dry and forget they’re there when it starts to pour rain. Or I’ll wash and dry everything just fine, and leave it smashed in the hamper for four whole days. It’s always something.

This is my new life. It doesn’t really bother me, all this underachieving in the laundry department. I’m getting used to not ever completing a single task all at once. I wash my hair in one showering, and condition it in the next. I water one half of the plants on the back porch, and hope I can return for the other half. I start a sentence and can’t quite . . .

The thing is, I really like seeing baby clothes on the line outside. I like that I never finish an email in one go, because there’s always something I’m more compelled to do. That something is my son. It’s cheesy, but it’s true. I’m happy for the distraction.

What does bother me is how the laundry concept translates to the kitchen – or doesn’t translate, as the case may be. You can’t start cooking chicken, get busy with a baby, and just serve the chicken raw. Dinner is not usually delicious half-cooked.

Oh, that? Honey, that’s a cake. I made it just for you, only I never got around to putting the batter in the oven. Sorry the candles don’t quite stand up.

Luckily, I have enough common sense – barely – to know that starting in on a batch of homemade ravioli is a really bad idea these days, if I actually want to serve it for dinner. Ditto for anything that requires attentive browning, or baking, or even a stir-fry that requires too much chopping. Or, for that matter, anything that has to be cooked by me, as opposed to my husband, who often swoops in mid-meal when Graham gets hungry or cranky. Simply put, I have abandoned the old kitchen Jess and developed a new persona there.

The new kitchen Jess has been doing things in 5-minute chunks. I’ll marinate chicken for the grill at 9 a.m., or cook wheat berries at 10 p.m., just because I know that chances are good our kid will be asleep at 11 p.m., when I need to take them off the stove. I cook simply, relying mostly on olive oil, salt, pepper, and good basic ingredients. I rarely make more than one thing that requires more than 10 minutes of my time, and – here’s the kicker, the biggest change – I almost never add additional tasks while I’m cooking, because putting the knife down to coo at Graham is way more fun (no offense) than, say, scribbling down a recipe for this here blog between stirs. Herego, the scrumptious recipes I do want to share, like the orrecchiette I sautéed last week with Swiss chard, tomatoes, and summer squash and drizzled with a goat cheese cream, never get written down. (Okay, so that one wasn’t so simple. Delicious, though.) Like the laundry, it’s not that I mind the new program, but it does take some adjusting.

The most basic problem with the new deal in the kitchen is that I don’t always get to eat what I want to eat. I’ve been eating cherries, but with the time required to pit the things, cherry pie is definitely out. The hubby has been requesting ribs, but I’m not sure I can hack the incessant basting required of my favorite recipe. My yearly batch of raspberry jam? Yeah, right.

Last weekend, when the glossy leaves of the huckleberry bushes we encountered on a hike reminded me of the Trafton family birthday cake, I started hankering for a fat, fluffy cake with berries buried in the bottom. I didn’t have to have the exact birthday cake – my birthday’s a month away still, after all – but something similar was in order, something rich but still light, made with the blueberries rolling out of our local markets right now. I needed a ten-minute blueberry cake. I assumed it would be weeks before I could get to it.

Then my Friday afternoon plans fell through. Exhausted by a 45-minute stint as Mr. Personality at my doctor’s office, Graham started rubbing his eyes – a first for him, talent-wise, and a sign I decided I shouldn’t ignore. I tucked him into his crib, and by the time his eyes were closed for good, I’d slid a cake into the oven. It took 15 minutes, to be honest, because at the last minute I snowed it with a coconut streusel, on a whim.

Graham stayed asleep for another hour. While the cake baked, I wandered around the house, collecting the sheets I left on the line outside overnight, putting away dishes I’d meant to put away that morning, replenishing the dog’s water. . . Then I just sat at the kitchen table with a glass of water, breathing in the scent of a cake baked from start to finish without any major distractions.

It’s a new kitchen, but it feels good to know that sometimes, I can make the same things. And some day, I know, baking a cake won’t seem like a big deal at all.

Blueberry Yogurt Cake with Coconut Streusel (PDF)

Made with honey-flavored Greek yogurt (I used the “Greek Gods” brand from Seattle), this cake is a tangy, airy, crunchy-topped celebration of summer. I like it best at about 4 in the afternoon.

TIME: 15 minutes active time
MAKES: 9 servings

Vegetable oil spray
1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus 1/4 cup for streusel
3 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (packed) brown sugar
1/2 cup large flake unsweetened coconut
1 cup sugar
1 cup Greek yogurt, preferably full fat and honey-flavored
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups blueberries

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Spray an 8” square (or 9” round) cake pan with the vegetable oil spray and set aside.

Melt the butter in a small saucepan and set aside to cool.

Whisk 1 1/2 cups of the flour, baking powder, and salt together in a small mixing bowl and set aside.

In another bowl, make the streusel: stir together the remaining 1/4 cup flour, the brown sugar, and the coconut, and set aside.

In a big mixing bowl, whisk the sugar, yogurt, eggs, and vanilla together until blended. Add the melted butter in a slow, steady stream while whisking, then fold the dry ingredients in with a spatula until almost all the white is gone. Gently fold in the blueberries. Scoop the batter into the prepared pan, smooth it flat with a small spatula, and top with the streusel.

Bake the cake on the middle rack for 40 to 50 minutes, or until the cake is browned and firm in the center. Let cool 15 minutes in the pan before cutting into squares and serving.

Corn and bulgur

It’s not a conversation I’ll ever be able to live down, so I might as well tell you about it. It went like this, a few Junes ago, when we lived on Cape Cod, where there is no corn in June:

JIM: Wow! Corn on the cob!? Really?
JESS: Yup! Doesn’t it look great?
JIM: Where did you get corn this time of year?
JESS: (Looking sideways to see where her smart husband went.) The store.
JIM: No. I mean what country. Where did it come from?
JESS: Ohhh. California, I think.

There are a number of problems with this conversation: First, California is technically not a country. Second, corn usually tastes way better when purchased out of the back of a truck. Third, I was buying corn in June. Guilty. It’s just one of those things. Some people can’t stop themselves from buying Chilean cherries in January. I always buy corn before I should.

It’s become a bit of a joke between us. Anytime I bring something seasonal home – fat, drippy apricots, or heirloom tomatoes, or fava beans, say – Jim asks where it came from, and I tell him I got it at the store, even if I’ve just come straight from the farmers’ market. It’s our way of reminding ourselves that we can all be idiots, sometimes. We have a good laugh.

Last week, I spied soft, creamy cornsilk poking out from behind the bell pepper display, and couldn’t resist. At eight for $5, it wasn’t exactly cheap high-season corn, but I figured two ears were better than none in terms of satisfying my early-season craving, and better than buying a whole bushel, in terms of food miles. Into the cart they went, without a plan.

Then came the bulgur binge.

Last year was the summer of quinoa. We piled beans and avocado and tomatoes and corn atop big bowls of the stuff, or mixed it with vinaigrettes of all types, along with myriad summer vegetables, making glistening summer salads we could scoop in at all hours of the day. This year, though, I’ve decided my grain of choice is bulgur.

Bulgur has the unluckiest of grain names. Quinoa may be hard to pronounce, and even harder to spell, but it’s saved by its q; I’d love it on the basis of its Scrabble potential alone. Being easy to cook and delicious to eat seals the deal.

But bulgur. In a bag, it doesn’t look like much more than squirrel food, and what’s sexy about a food that rhymes with vulgar?

Lots, I think. Great nutty flavor, for one. And it’s cheap; I buy it in the bulk section of my local supermarket. It falls into the whole grain category, which means you can preen your feathers in nutritional self-congratulation while you’re standing in line at the check-out counter. Bulgur also bridges the gap between crunchy and yielding between the teeth, and accepts almost any flavor, like that rare woman who looks good in absolutely any color. (If I think about it too long that way, I get a little jealous, but I do love a food with flexibility.)

Recently, I’ve learned that bulgur can also stalk a person as well as any convicted sex offender. It’s been following me all spring, in fact. A couple weeks ago, my cousin Julia sent me a video of the tabbouleh dance:

I don’t really care if you think it’s funny (or not), or completely inappropriate (or not). It’s become clear to me that no one I forward it to seems to laugh as hard as I do. Which is fine. I never did have a normal sense of humor. The point – besides the fact that from now on, I will think of chopping a shoplifter’s hand off when I hack the stems off a bunch of parsley – is that the song is now deeply enough engraved in my brain that I’m singing songs to my son about changing his diapers in the same tune. Yes, the tabbouleh song has entered my nursery rhyme repertoire. And my husbands get-a-beer-out-of-the-fridge dancing soundtrack. And, it turns out, my kitchen psyche.

This video made me realize I’ve never actually made tabbouleh, that classic middle eastern mix of bulgur (which is cracked wheat, cooked by simply soaking it in hot water), parsley, tomatoes, and whatever else one likes to use. I wondered if I was missing something.

The day after Julia sent me the video, my friend Jon brought over a most delicious tabbouleh – one with the usual crunchy bulgur, parsley, and some mint, I believe, but instead of tomatoes, he’d folded in gigantic white beans. I took a modest portion at dinner, then focused on raving over the rest of our meal, partly because it very much deserved raving, and partly because I wanted to distract the others so there would be more tabbouleh leftover for me to snack on at midnight. It worked.

Then my mom got to talking tabbouleh. She even sent me photos. (See? Stalker.) This weekend, when I needed a side dish for a barbecue with friends, I put some water on to boil.

My bulgur salad was even faster to make than I suspected it might be. I soaked the grains, then sawed the kernels off a couple corn cobs, chopped some herbs, and crumbled feta. Into a bowl it all went. My husband grumbled something about salad for squirrels, and after being indoctrinated by the video, he insisted I couldn’t in good conscience call it tabbouleh since there aren’t tomatoes in it. A spoonful later, he was as smitten as I was. I won’t call it tabbouleh, but I will call it delicious.

Tomorrow, I’m going to make another version, this time with tomatoes and little chunks of mozzerella cheese, and perhaps balsamic vinegar instead of the lemon juice I used here. Maybe the next day, I’ll make another bulgur salad, with the fresh chickpeas coming into markets in Seattle. I see a creamy bulgur side dish in my future, too, and muffins studded with bulgur and fresh raspberries.

And oh, yes. Someday, there will be fresh local corn, and I’ll make this one again.

Quick Bulgur Salad with Corn, Feta, and Basil (PDF)

Though it satisfies like a pasta salad, bulgur salad requires a lot less attention (and less time near a hot stove, when summer weather hits). It’s also cheap, a bit healthier, and seems to get tastier after a day or two in the fridge.

To make the bulgur, you simply dump it into in a mixing bowl, add hot water, and let it soak for half an hour.

TIME: 30 minutes
MAKES: 4 to 6 servings

1 cup bulgur
1 cup boiling water
Kernels from 2 ears of corn
1/2 cup finely chopped parsley
1/2 cup finely chopped basil
3/4 cup crumbled feta cheese
1/4 cup olive oil
Juice from 1 large lemon
Salt and freshly ground pepper

Place the bulgur in a small mixing bowl. Add boiling water, stir, and let sit 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, blend corn, herbs, feta, olive oil, and lemon juice in a medium bowl. Add bulgur, season with salt and pepper, and serve at room temperature.

A new thing

There’s a clear order of operations to my conversations these days. You know, like how in 8th grade math class you looked through an equation to find all the additions you had to do, then the subtractions, then . . . or wait, was it the multiplications first? (This is why I’m not a math teacher.)

But yes, it goes like this: First, people ask how the baby is doing. (He’s great, by the way. More than ten pounds!) Then, they ask how I’m doing. (Fine also.) Finally, always the third question:

Are you writing?

Honestly, this one sort of cracks me up – first, because going back to work is really still nowhere near the top of my list of priorities, and second, because when I was working regular full-time hours, people in general assumed I wasn’t writing. I’m not sure if this applies to all freelancers, but most of my friends with normal jobs have always called at, say, 10 a.m. on a Tuesday morning, when they’re on their lunch break on east coast time. They say something brilliant, like Hey, what are you doing? Like Tuesday morning is popcorn hour for all freelance writers. It always seems to come as a big surprise that I’m working. Sometimes I make things up, just for shock value. Oh, you know. Getting a pedicure before my dog’s Botox appointment. Normal Tuesday stuff.

But now, six weeks after Graham’s come home, it seems everyone expects me to be writing writing writing. And, well, what can I say? I sort of expected I might be, also. It’s not that I don’t want to write. And the words still come – only now, they flood my brain at the most inconvenient times. I do my best to contain them, while I’m nursing or walking or rocking a baby in the middle of the night, but it’s marbles on an ice rink, and I’m not even wearing skates. Heck, I don’t even own skates.

Before Graham was born, I had a very clear-cut creative process. I wrote in violent storms, usually in the morning. They were never any more predictable than that, but when they came – always with mental lightning and thunder, some sort of warning that got me sitting in front of a keyboard before the rains came – I was usually available. Now? Not so much. I’m often whole rooms away from a keyboard. The rains come, and they drench me, and then they pass, and I’m left sitting there in a big puddle of words.

Someday – who knows when? – I’m going to have to find a new creative process, for the days when I’m not in charge. Not an umbrella, per say, but maybe gutters, or a good, dependable catchment system for all these thoughts. A new thing, for this new life. I don’t think it will necessarily be a better way of writing, or worse. Just different. I’m really looking forward to it, whatever it is.

For now, since all those words about my neighbor’s birthday party have long since dried into puddle crust on the kitchen floor, just a recipe for the chicken salad I made for a group of giggly women. If nothing else, I beg you: Make the herbed mayonnaise. It goes a long way to make things exciting when you’re slapping turkey sandwiches together in the middle of the night.

Lemon-Chive Chicken Salad with Herbed Mayonnaise (PDF)

My neighbor recently had what she called her first 49th birthday party. I volunteered to bring chicken salad. I wanted something summery and light and herby, but didn’t want to make any presumptions about how gooey guests liked their sandwiches. (Goodness knows there’s nothing worse than eating the wrong rank on your mayonnaise scale.) I think I found the ultimate solution: I mixed the chicken up with about half the dressing—a mixture of mayonnaise, plain yogurt, bright lemon zest, and handfuls of herbs from my porch garden—and let people slather the rest on baguette halves, along with tomatoes, avocado slices, and pickled onions, as they assembled their own sandwiches.

Save any extra herbed mayo for bartering; it’s worth its weight in gold. (And if you make your own mayonnaise, it’ll be worth whatever’s more expensive than gold.)

If you’re pressed for time, substitute pre-roasted rotisserie chicken (2 large or 3 small) for the chicken breasts.

TIME: 45 minutes
MAKES: About 10 big sandwiches’ worth

4 cups chicken broth
3 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts, trimmed
2 cups chopped celery (from 4 big ribs)
3/4 cup golden raisins
2 cups mayonnaise
1/2 cup plain yogurt
Zest and juice of 2 large lemons
1/2 cup finely chopped chives, plus 1/4 cup coarsely chopped chives
1/3 cup finely chopped tarragon
1/3 cup finely chopped parsley, plus 1 cup (loosely packed) coarsely chopped parsley
Salt and freshly ground pepper
2 large shallots, finely chopped

Bring the chicken broth to a bare simmer in a wide, shallow pan. Add the chicken breasts, and poach, turning occasionally, until cooked through (about 15 minutes). Transfer chicken to a cutting board to cool. Add the celery and raisins to the hot broth, and let sit for 5 minutes. (This softens the celery a bit and plumps up the raisins.) Strain celery and raisins (reserving broth for another use, if you’d like), and set aside to cool.

In a medium bowl, whisk the mayonnaise, yogurt, lemon zest and juice, 1/2 cup finely chopped chives, tarragon, and 1/3 cup finely chopped parsley until blended. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Shred or chop the chicken, and transfer to a large mixing bowl, along with the celery, raisins, 1/4 cup coarsely chopped chives, 1 cup coarsely chopped parsley, chopped shallot, and 1 cup of the herbed mayonnaise. Mix well, and season to taste with additional salt, pepper, and mayonnaise. Serve on lettuce or in sandwiches, with additional mayonnaise on the side.

Back in the saddle

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It was so polite, the way she said it. You shouldn’t feel obligated to bring anything. But we’ll be putting out cheese and olives and such, and there’s always room for an appetizer. As if I thought I might be imposing, if I actually decided to bring something. Like I was afraid one more dish might cause the table’s legs to buckle, like some overburdened pack horse.

As soon as I realized we were actually going out—to an engagement party, at someone else’s house, with the express intent of talking to people whose conversations just might veer off the too-worn path of dirty diapers and breast milk—I knew I had to bring something that looked fancy. Not so much because I wanted to spend tons of energy in the kitchen, but because I felt ready to buzz again. Ready to spin from the sink to the cutting board to the stove and back without thinking about it.

The buzz happened, albeit slowly. I started with a square of banana leaf from the freezer, and little twirly bamboo skewers–the ones I’ve been hoarding in my kitchen drawer for probably the better part of a decade. These, I thought. I’ll put something on these.

It wasn’t the least bit complicated. I gave a couple pounds of shrimp a quick bath in curried coconut milk, then threaded them onto the skewers and grilled them. On a whim, instead of stirring together a separate dipping sauce, I plunked the marinade on the stove, where it simmered and bubbled and (surprise!) caramelized into a sticky, spicy, faintly sweet glaze for the shrimp. I brushed it on the shrimp, so I didn’t have to bother with transporting a dipping sauce, or watch people juggle baby kebabs and sauce and cheese and olives and champagne flutes all at once.

And it was all really that simple. I made a great appetizer, and brought it to a party.

On the way there, I looked at my husband with a broad grin. We’re on time, I said. (We’re not typically late people, but we’re often late for these friends.) And we’re bringing food and a baby. I told Jim I felt like I was back in the saddle again.

So, okay, it took me five (wait, six) days to type this recipe. And thinking back, I remember I did realize, halfway through cooking, that my t-shirt was on inside-out and backward.

So what? The shrimp tasted really good.

Onward and upward.

Curried Minted Grilled Shrimp with Caramelized Coconut Glaze (PDF)

Here’s a two-for-the-price-of-one sort of recipe: the marinade, sharp and sweet with red curry and coconut milk, makes for tasty, mildly spicy grilled shrimp. Simmer the marinade down, though, and the coconut milk caramelizes, making a pleasingly sticky glaze that’s fancy and beautiful but not actually messy. This dish is great for a party; because you brush the sauce right onto the shellfish, it also travels quite well.

You’ll need about 3 dozen small (4” or 6”) skewers; be sure to soak them in water for about 30 minutes before threading the shrimp on, to avoid burning.

TIME: 45 minutes active time, plus marinating
MAKES: About 3 dozen skewers

2 tablespoons roasted red curry paste
1 (15-ounce) can coconut milk
2 pounds shrimp (16-20 per pound size), peeled and deveined, tails removed
6 kaffir lime leaves
1/4 cup loosely packed chopped cilantro
1/4 cup loosely packed chopped fresh mint, plus 1 tablespoon finely chopped mint
3 dozen small (4” or 6”) skewers
Vegetable or olive oil, for the grill
Pinch salt
1 tablespoon honey

Place the curry paste in a large mixing bowl. Add about a quarter of the coconut milk, and whisk until blended. Add the remaining coconut milk, whisk again, then add the shrimp, lime leaves, cilantro, and 1/4 cup chopped mint. Stir to coat and refrigerate, covered, at least 1 hour and up to 6 hours.

Preheat a gas or charcoal grill to medium-high heat. While the grill heats, thread 2 shrimp on each skewer, so each skewer goes through each shrimp twice, reserving the marinade in the bowl as you work. Lightly oil the grill and cook the shrimp in batches for 2 to 3 minutes per side, until just pink and slightly charred.

While the shrimp cook, transfer the remaining marinade to a small saucepan. Bring to a boil and cook for 5 to 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the sauce reduces to about a cup of liquid and darkens as the coconut milk caramelizes. Stir in a pinch of salt and the honey, then strain the sauce (through a fine mesh strainer) into a bowl. When the shrimp are done, brush the sauce onto the shrimp on both sides. Sprinkle the shrimp with the remaining tablespoon of mint, and serve warm or at room temperature, with extra sauce on the side, if desired.

Hungry Monkey

I knew I’d want to cook again, but I didn’t know exactly how I’d get started. It didn’t happen the way I expected—not with the ripe fragrance of strawberries on the counter, or a craving, or a taste, translated from tonguespeak to brainwave, like they so often do, into some sort of cookable fantasy. It was sound that brought me in.

There are a lot of new sounds in my life right now. There’s Graham, of course, who turns out to be part horse, whinnying and neighing in his sleep. There’s the thud of the mail in the bin, always right around 2 p.m. There’s the now-familiar squeak of our not-so-gently used rocking chair.

That chair is beginning to feel like part of my own anatomy. I feed in it. I read in it. I pump in it. And yes, occasionally, I sleep in it. The other day, I had Graham on my shoulder, rocking and patting. It must have been some seldom-seen hour, because as I listened, the thwattwhattwhat sound of my palm on his back morphed into the steady rhythm of a KitchenAid, beating its contents against the side of the work bowl with dutiful regularity. I am going crazy, I thought. I am imagining my child as a stand mixer. I could see the dough in the bowl, curling and cleaving around the white hook. I’m not generally that into bread making, so it sort of surprised me to find myself wondering what sort of bread I’d start in the morning. No, I thought. If you haven’t showered in 3 days, you may not make bread. I ignored the urge, but for days, every time I went to burp Graham, I thought about it. Thwatthwatthwat.

This chair of ours, it’s been a godsend in the wee hours, which I’ve decided to dedicate to all the baby preparation reading I never did before Graham was born. At night, after I feed him, I’ve been plunking him on a pillow on my lap, and reading and rocking to make sure he’s good and konked out before putting him back to bed. This worked like a charm for the first few nights, when I was reading one of those What to Expect books, which are roughly as entertaining as a grammar primer.

Then I picked up Hungry Monkey. It’s ostensibly a book on raising a kid to eat well, so it qualifies for inclusion in my midnight reading pile. The only problem is that it makes me laugh so much—and I say makes, not made, because I keep picking it up to reread bits and parts—that I keep waking my kid up.

You know Roots and Grubs, right? It’s a blog, by Matthew Amster-Burton, another Seattle food writer. He’s fantastic; it’s one of the few blogs I actually read on a regular basis. When I’m in a funk—or worse, at a bad press event—Matthew always makes me laugh.

If I were to make sweeping generalizations, I’d say Roots and Grubs is about making his family dinner. It goes like this: He cooks something, and his daughter, Iris, says something hilarious. I’m not convinced he doesn’t make some of it up, because it’s always funny, and no one’s funny all the time. Except Matthew and Iris. I’ve never actually met her, but Iris seems to be a great advertisement for having children. And Matthew, it turns out, is a great advertisement for being a parent (in the food department, at least).

Hungry Monkey is Matthew’s first book—one I’d been waiting anxiously to read, because it chronicles his attempts to raise an Eater, capital E, within the restraints toddlerhood naturally entails (pickiness, unexplained changes in food preferences, preschool peer pressure, etc.). I plowed through my advance copy before Graham was born, chortling over stories about taking Iris to a Seattle sushi-go-round, teaching her to make pancakes on an Iris-sized griddle, and competing with other parents to make the most sensational preschool snack. Here’s the one about fish eyeballs that Graham lost sleep over:

One night I made stuffed trout for dinner. “And will the trout get very, very big when you stuff it?” Iris asked. She helped me stuff the trout with fennel, bacon, red onion, and fresh herbs.

Stuffed trout is easier to make than it is to eat, because you want to just cut off a hunk with stuffing sandwiched between two pieces of boneless fish, but there are many bones in the way of this noble intention. For this reason and because Iris is frequently more enthusiastic about cooking than eating, I figured she would forget about the trout by the time it hit the table and concentrate on the hash browns I served with it.

Wrong. Iris at the fish, the bacon, the vegetables, the potatoes, and even, well . . .

To say that she was undeterred by the fact that the fish’s head was there on the platter would be an understatement. “There’s the head!” she exclaimed. I found a piece of cheek meat and ate it, and Iris said,

“I want to eat some cheek.”

I said okay and rooted around for another piece. “There’s some check,” Iris said, pointing.

“No, that’s the eyeball.”

“I want to eat the eyeball.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes.” She took a bite. “It’s gooey. Why is it gooey?”

“Eyeballs are just like that,” said Laurie.

Iris thought about this, then requested and ate the other eyeball.

Anyway. The first time through, I folded down page corners, like I always do with food books, promising myself I’d make potstickers, and larb gai, and gingerbread cupcakes, and duck hash. Then came Graham, followed almost immediately by fantasies about raising a kid whose plate sees as much action as Iris’s. I picked up Hungry Monkey again, and bought twelve copies (not joking) for friends celebrating (or about to celebrate) Mother’s Day.

So now, every day, I open the book to a random page, hoping to absorb the crumbs of parenting wisdom Matthew sprinkles throughout his stories—but after Graham’s asleep, so when my belly jiggles I don’t disturb him as much. This morning, frustrated by Graham’s introduction to breastfeeding, I flipped to the first chapter again:

According to Laurie, on our first night home from the hospital, I made one of our favorite dinners, salmon with cucumber salad. I have no memory of this, or much of anything from those first three months before Laurie went back to work. I remember Iris nursing almost constantly, day and night, and taking naps in our laps. She refused to be put down, ever, for twelve weeks. I’m not exaggerating for effect: we held her 24-7 for twelve weeks. I called her the Ice Princess, because she never smiled. Sometimes, when it had been twenty minutes since her last feeding and she was ready for the next one, I called her Hungry Monkey.

Ah. So it’s not just me. And it’s okay, that my child has no concept of time, and that I will have no recollection of writing this?

So nice to have a book on child-rearing that tells me I’m normal.

Yesterday, I flipped to chapter 13, and was reassured in advance that no parent can avoid being a sucker at the grocery store:

But shopping at the supermarket with Iris brings up the kind of stereotypical parent-child issues that I like to pretend I can opt out of. As in: Iris tries to convince me to buy some stupid product. I say no. She whines. I relent. When we get home we eat 10 percent of the product and the rest goes stale. This happened most recently with frozen pretzels, which I agreed to buy even though I make homemade pretzels and Iris loves to sprinkle salt on them.

Time out, I thought. He makes pretzels? As in, squishy, salty, Bavarian-style pretzels? It never occurred to me that they could be produced without a two-hour rest on some sort of spinning device under heat lamps. But there it was, a recipe for pretzels, right at the back of the chapter. Better yet, it looked easy—just required a quick knead in the stand mixer. Oooh, I thought. I can make bread without actually making bread.

These pretzels require very few ingredients and the attention span of a three-year-old. (Perfect!) Sometime mid-afternoon, I announced to Jim that I’d be baking them, and that yes, I’d let him dip them in mustard. He looked at me like he was going to go get prepared to clean up after me (emotionally or physically, I’m not sure), and mumbled some sort of acquiescence.

I measured. The KitchenAid mixed. The dough puffed up. I rolled it out into skinny little snakes, feeling almost a little guilty that I didn’t wait for Graham to be old enough to make them for the first time. I boiled them, flipping them with a fish spatula before transferring them to the baking sheet. I salted, and when the salt melted in a little, I salted again. (It’s best to use salting as a verb, so you get enough on there. Someday, I’ll have a toddler who can do this for me.) They looked like a line of grumpy old men with their arms crossed, standing guard on the baking sheet. In they went.

In about 20 minutes of actual work time, I had pretzels way tastier than what we buy for $4 a pop at the German pub down the street—soft, gorgeously crackled, gently blistery pretzels. Even better, they came out of the oven on the same baking sheet I put them in on, which meant something in my brain registered “hot” and I didn’t burn my fingers, like I do every single time at Prost. We ate all six of them immediately.

Honestly, I sort of fault Matthew for buying frozen pretzels now. I mean, I understand the in situ issue—gorgeous child embarrassing him in the grocery store, baying about how if he loved her he’d buy her frozen pretzels. . . but really. If you make these, and ever feel the urge to buy a frozen pretzel afterwards, I’ll buy you a beer. (If you remind me I said this when Graham’s 3, though, I’ll deny it.)

Of course, now that I’ve made them, I have to admit that I was wrong—the thwattwhattwhat sound I was remembering is the one the paddle attachment makes, whipping a looser batter, like for a cake. Kneading dough with the hook makes more of a grumbling noise. Which, come to think of it, Graham makes also. But whatever. All that happens in the middle of the night, and in a few weeks, I won’t remember any of it anyway.

Pretzels (PDF)
Recipe by Matthew Amster-Burton, from Hungry Monkey: A Food-Loving Father’s Quest to Raise an Adventurous Eater. Used with permission.

TIME: 2 hours, including rising time
YOU’LL NEED: stand mixer
LITTLE FINGERS: After I let Iris help shape pretzels, she invented this game where she curls a rubber band or piece of string into a squiggle and asks,” Would you eat a pretzel shaped like THIS? Yes or no?” Repeat a hundred times. Other than that and the obvious warnings about the electric mixer and the oven, I have no caveats about letting your children help make pretzels.

Makes 6 pretzels

8 ounces all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon instant yeast
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon honey
1/2 cup lukewarm water
cooking spray
2 tablespoons baking soda
kosher or pretzel salt for sprinkling

1. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, stir together the flour, yeast, and salt. Stir the honey into the water until it begins to dissolve, then add the honey-water mixture to the dry ingredients. Mix with the paddle on low speed until the dough starts to come together, then switch to the dough hook and knead on medium speed (4 on the KitchenAid) for 4 minutes. If the dough is very dry (bits are refusing to incorporate) add an additional tablespoon of water. Spray a bowl with cooking spray and place the dough in it. Spray a bit more cooking spray on top of the dough, cover the bowl with plastic wrap, and let rise 75 minutes, punching down the dough after 45 minutes.
2. Line a large baking sheet with parchment and spray with cooking spray. Divide the dough into 6 pieces (about 2 ounces each). (It will be easier to form the pretzels if you cut the dough into strips with a bench knife rather than pulling off balls of dough by hand.) Roll each piece into a long (18-inch) snake and form into a pretzel. Place the formed pretzels on the baking sheet.
3. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F. Bring 2 quarts of water and the baking soda to a boil in a saucepan. Add 3 pretzels to the boiling water and boil 30 seconds. Flip the pretzels, boil an additional 30 seconds, and return them to the baking sheet. Repeat with the remaining pretzels. Sprinkle the pretzels with kosher salt or with pretzel salt (available from kingarthurflour.com) if you have it.
4. Bake 9 to 10 minutes or until deep golden brown. Cool pretzels on a rack and serve warm.

House Arrest

Early yesterday morning, I got hungry for the first time in weeks. The day before, we’d had our first hot breakfast since bringing Graham home. The food wasn’t that special—chicken sausage, a couple fried eggs, some buttered toast. I might have made the same breakfast on a weekend, a few long weeks ago, without any significance, but this time, it seemed like a big deal. I’d cooked the sausage’s skin to within an inch of its life, the way I love doing links. Only, it was the first time I’d made this particular brand of chicken sausage (the little ones from Trader Joe’s), and I was surprised by how much the exterior tasted like the perfectly crisped skin of a roasted chicken. Jim and I sat at the real dining table—the way we do now that Graham is here, so we can watch him sleep in the cradle right next to us while we eat—and chomped down sausage after sausage, pontificating on the possible advantages of chicken over pork. (Roasted chicken flavor, minus the dirty roasting pan. What’s not to like?) But for all of April—my, how the days pass!—the things I put in my mouth didn’t do much for my brain.

Then boom, at 4 a.m. yesterday, that chicken skin flavor came back to me, and I realized, with a little relief, that I might actually be hungry again. (I’ll admit a period of fear: What if having a kid somehow took away my appetite? Wouldn’t do much for job security.) Listening to the pounding rain, my brain meandered toward the refrigerator, and I realized, with a little shock, that my milk was letting down. Oh God, I thought. What if my shirt gets wet every time I think about chicken skin? It would be disastrous. And very messy, because there are few things I like more. And what if my brain found something more exciting than chicken? Who knows what my body might do.

Then I realized that while my mind was on chicken, my eyes were in fact still on our little boy, and my response was in fact quite normal. Issue resolved.

Anyway—I’m hungry. Actually, we’re all hungry, all the time, because food is quite an effective substitute for sleep. Luckily, most days, our refrigerator is full. We’ve been siphoning off the kindness poured from other peoples’ kitchens, and on our plates and in our hearts, it’s been delicious. There’s been high-brow tortilla casserole, great gooey macaroni and cheese, and enchiladas cuddled under a snow of scallions. Long-simmered carnitas, delivered with all the fixings and home-pickled jalapeno slaw. Delicious frozen lasagnas, to pop into the oven whenever we feel like eating. Sandwiches from Picnic. Banana bread. Angel food cake with berries and cream, left on the porch after a quick knock on the door. A pot of strawberries abandoned on the front steps, because goodness knows I won’t have the presence of mind to plant my own this year.

It’s been delicious, and ohso appreciated. Having a baby in the hospital was no cakewalk, but having people drop food off for us—to help, when we’re still trying to find ourselves as a family—has been one of the hardest parts about having a premature baby.

See, when we left the hospital last Wednesday, Graham got a clean bill of health—but having him home with us, getting early hugs and kisses, means he’s not still inside, building the stronger immune system most term babies have. The doctors recommended taking no visitors whatsoever until his due date, May 23rd (to avoid germs), and being extremely careful for a good bit afterward, too. It’s basically house arrest, minus the criminal record, which is all well and good until someone comes to the door with a lasagna.

I won’t lie. I don’t have the energy or leisure to sit and chat for an hour right now, or to do dishes after a dinner party. (Last night we actually grilled bratwurst, and even that was pushing it. I managed to break the grill.)

But a crucial ingredient in the food people share is the people themselves, and this last week or so, with this whole quarantine business, I’ve really missed them. I’m counting down the days until I don’t have to stand at the door, Graham in my arms, and wave, rather than hug, my hellos. Until I can say Yes, come in, please wash your hands. Until I can say Can you stay to eat this with us? Of course, I’m also selfishly looking forward to a bit of show-and-tell, too. He’s six and a half pounds now, and it’s mostly cheeks.

For now, though, it’s eating and running. Or eating and sitting, rather, while the cook runs away. We’ll spend Mother’s Day together right here, at this table next to the cradle, probably eating food someone else made with their own family. Everyone seems to understand. But someday very, very soon, I’ll cook for real again. I’ll open the door, and invite the neighbors over, and cheeks will be pinched. Then I’ll go back to the stove, and keep stirring, so I can put something in the freezer and drop it off later for someone else who’s still learning what it means to be a family.

Thank you, all.

Graham

On April 6th, at 9:54 a.m., we met our son, Graham McArthur Thomson. He was born about 7 weeks premature, at 4 pounds 6 ounces, but he’s a trooper. And boy, can he tug the heartstrings.

My birth story looks like a reading comprehension test in a med school textbook: Chorioamnionitis. Bacteremia. Adrenal shock. Some of it is actually starting to be funny: Our doula leaving halfway through labor. The number of nurses who can’t use a blood pressure cuff properly. Chasing down doctors at midnight.

But now, thank goodness, all that is behind us. I’m home, and recovering well, finally getting used to being upright after 12 days in bed.

Graham’s got some growing to do, but the kid can eat. He’ll be home before we know it!

Thanks so much for all your words of support and encouragement.

Back soon!

April

I think my senses are playing tricks on me.

What I heard on Monday was I think we’re going to admit you to the hospital. Then, on Tuesday, when I was actually admitted and asked the nurse what I should order for lunch, I thought I heard her recommend the fish and chips.

“Really?” I asked. Fried? Isn’t a hospital where one goes to get . . . you know . . .healthy? The menu reads like something from a college pub: Cheeseburgers. Pizza. French dip.

“The nachos are pretty good, too,” she said. Right.

I started with tomato soup and grilled cheese, a drape of orange cheddar wedged between two pieces of buttery toast that had been steamed to soggy under a plate cover for a few minutes, along with a fat slice of pickle, before landing in front of me. That’s what one gets for being food-obsessed, I suppose: warm pickles.

What I saw yesterday, on April Fool’s Day, was no joke either: snow, on April 1st in Seattle, flying sideways against all of downtown. And what I felt – my water breaking, at 7 a.m. – was certainly real. There are a lot of questions, and a lot of uncertainties, but at the very least, it’s clear that even at 33 weeks, this baby of ours has a sense of humor.

Since then, it’s been mostly unbelievable sounds: The local NPR station, graciously ending its pledge drive just in time. Our baby’s heart, ricocheting around inside my bedside monitor, thumpthumpthumping like a washing machine stuck with all the sheets on one side of the tumbler. My IV contraption, ticking and purring and clicking. Before last night, when I got to listen to it for hours on end, I didn’t realize machines can be reincarnated, too. I know this one was once one of those old ink plotters – I can hear the old-school computer paper spooling through on its little side holes, and the blotters jumping all around, individual spots of schizophrenia in an otherwise organized system.

There are unknowns, of course. We’re not sure why whatever language is being spoken next door sounds best to them, whoever they are, at maximum volume. We’re not sure why someone’s male partner seems to like singing the female leads to Mamma Mia songs. We’re not sure if the scrambled eggs will always be overcooked, or if the lattes will always be hot and surprisingly delicious. (This is Seattle, after all.)

We’re also not sure how long our baby will stay snug inside (he’s been given a permission slip to stay in, if he feels like it), or how much extra snuggling will be required after birth. We are sure that for now, we’re all healthy, and that five pounds is already a lot of baby. On this floor, we’re the lucky ones.

So, no. No recipe for you today, or for weeks (or maybe months) to come. I probably won’t tell you about the pizza some friends brought the first night, or the homemade nutter butters someone else dropped off, because now, I need to be here. Plus, the IVs seem to work best in my hand, and typing with one hand is a handicap I don’t have the patience for.

Until soon. Be well, have fun cooking, and eat something for me, will you?

Blink 182

It would be so lovely if I had something else on my mind today besides pregnancy. An epiphany about homemade butter, perhaps, or maybe a braised leek recipe. (I’ve never made braised leeks, and I expect any week now, the leeks I ritualistically buy at the farmer’s market will go into a dish starring themselves, instead of disappearing anonymously into some soup. At least, that’s my hope.)

But no. Today, it’s just the belly, and these things simply can’t be forced.

So. A quick summary of carrying your first child, if you haven’t done it already or don’t plan to: First, you blink. Then, when you open your eyes, your cat sleeps on a changing table with a stuffed giraffe, there is (by volume) more pillow than person in your bed (counting your partner), and you weigh 182 pounds.

This weekend, we told superneighbor we were off for a walk in Discovery Park, and she actually laughed. “’Walk!’” she sad. Giggle giggle. “Good luck. Have a nice waddle.” (I could hardly be insulted. She brought us hot cinnamon rolls from Mae’s, in the middle of a Sunday morning, for no reason at all. And, well, she’s right. I waddle now. These two things are possibly connected.)

Yes, it’s astonishing, how fast it goes. And doctors—they say the darndest things, don’t they? On Friday, mine said, “Those 35-weekers, they tend to do really, really well.” 35-weekers are presumably babies born at 35 weeks’ gestation. As opposed to the usual 40. As in, just under four weeks from where I am now. As in, one month left of life as I know it. How do you describe four weeks in meals eaten sitting down with no one in your lap? And what do you say to a doctor who tells you something you simply can’t believe?

The thing is, I still don’t really understand what the hubbub’s all about. I mean, I know it’s unusual for a person with lupus to go to full term, but please, people. I have seen the ultrasound photographs, and our child does not have a fuse. I sort of feel like if baby had an opinion about housing conditions, besides the usual square footage complaints, I would know. It’s not like baby and doctor can have a conversation without me around, right?

Doc: Baby, can I speak with you alone for a moment?
Baby: Alone?
Doc: Yeah. We need to discuss your situation. Without her.
Baby: I’d love to, but it’s hard for me to get away. And the food’s good here.
Doc: Fine. But when are you going to tell her?
Baby: Tell her what, exactly?

According to baby, and me, things are still going swimmingly. But the fact that no one describes a continuum between notbedrest and bedrest still bothers me, so I’m still doing my halvsies thing, in hopes of avoiding treating the latter as inevitable—naps, and feet up, and less work, and quick dinners.

Okay, wait, that last part is sort of a lie. I am resting, and clocking outrageous numbers of hours sleeping on weekday afternoons, but I am not not cooking. I’ve tried, really. But it seems the harder I try to avoid the kitchen, the faster the ideas come. The other morning, I was just going to fry an egg or two, and suddenly there was a can’s worth of crushed tomatoes, simmering away with garlic and rosemary in a baking dish. I cracked a few eggs in, slipped the thing back into the oven, and they poached happily there, right in the tomato juice, soaking up little whispers of rosemary all the while. We ate the whole mess on toast, with crumbled goat cheese. It meant possibly 14 minutes on my feet, instead of the 10 it takes to cook eggs on the stove, but tell me: How could tomato-baked eggs with rosemary and garlic and goat cheese be bad for a person? Plus, from a pregnancy perspective, they were quite the thrill. They look like poached eggs, but the yolks are actually just gelled all the way through:

So yes, I’m still cooking. My kitchen is littered with little scraps of paper, recipes born illegitimately and recorded in haste, when I’m supposed to just be heating up soup. They will be outed, someday.

I’ve been on a bender with other people’s recipes, too -great vegan chocolate cupcakes, Dutch babies, and maple scones.

Thing is, four weeks is really not a long time. This weekend it occurred to me that I have stacks—stacks—of food magazines sitting on the coffee table, all marked with delicious-sounding recipes I want to try. But I’ll hardly be interested in cooking from the December issues in May, much less in August. It must sound crazy, since we just lept into spring, but four weeks is simply not enough time to get winter cooking out of my system. And goodness, what if I all-out miss asparagus season?

Course, when we enter the black hole called baby, we might not close off the entrance entirely. We might remain human. And it might not be four weeks from now, right? Last week’s doctor said she thought I’d be just a couple weeks early. And it might really be 9 more whole weeks. Or, goodness, 11. (In that case, will someone arrange a psychologist for my husband? He’ll need it, because I’ll be a basket case. I know few women know exactly when they’ll give birth, but I strongly feel that a roughly one-month timeframe is twice as fair as giving someone two months to juggle.)

Anyway. All I meant to say, sitting down today, is that on the food front, I’m finally starting to feel pregnant. Until now, I haven’t had much in the way of strong cravings. But it’s started. On Friday, I suddenly needed a bagel with cream cheese, the way a person needs a drink after saltines with peanut butter. Friday night, it was the meatloaf from this month’s Gourmet—which, for the record, is much sexier than any meatloaf I’ve tasted, with pistachios and prunes and that silky-smooth chicken liver. It seemed quite at home on a Sunday lunch table, with arugula salad and butter and mustard and pickles and plenty of friendly conversation, spread all around.

Today? It’s pasta. If I felt like being honest, I’d say what I really wanted was the box of generic-brand macaroni and cheese I’ve been craving for, oh, about 48 hours now. I don’t normally keep it in the house, but I wanted to watch the way powder sprays out onto the counter, no matter how careful I am, and hear the way the noodles make squeaky noises, like sploshy wet running shoes, when I stir the milk and butter in.

But, alas, no box. So I rustled up the homemade equivalent of what it seemed my body wanted-a whole wheat penne dish I’ve made four or five times now in my pregnant obsessiveness, one rich with cream and goat cheese, but not entirely lacking in nutrition. It’s what I’d have called a decent dinner, when I started sauteing kale and tomatoes the first time. Think the same, if you want-but by the time you’ve folded the vegetables together with leftover salmon, warming everything together just long enough for the goat cheese to melt into a velvety sauce, you’ll know it’s the kind of pasta dish that makes you want to eat alone, lest someone expect you to speak.

And yes, in fact, if you stir it really hard, it does make the squeaky mac and cheese noise.

Creamy Penne with Salmon, Kale, and Goat Cheese (PDF)

If you find yourself shying away from buying fish because you’re afraid of wasting leftovers, shy no more—here’s a quick, creamy dish that makes second-day salmon worth saving. If you’re buying fish just for this recipe, buy a bit less than 1/2 pound and cook it while the pasta water comes to a boil.

You can use fresh or canned, peeled tomatoes for this recipe.

TIME: 15 minutes active time
MAKES: 2 servings

2 cups whole wheat penne, or other bite-sized pasta
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 bunch (about 1/4 pound) kale, chopped
2 tomatoes, chopped
Salt and freshly ground pepper
1/2 cup heavy cream
2 loosely packed cups flaked leftover salmon
3 ounces goat cheese, crumbled

Put a pot of salted water on for the pasta. When the water boils, cook al dente according to package instructions.

When the pasta goes in, heat the oil over medium heat in a large sauté pan. Add the kale, and cook, stirring, until the kale is wilted, 5 minutes or so. Add the tomatoes, season with salt and pepper, and cook, stirring occasionally, until the tomatoes have lost most of their water. Add the cream and salmon, and simmer on the lowest heat.

Drain the pasta, reserving about 1/2 cup pasta water. Add the pasta to the salmon mixture, along with a bit of the water (more if you’d like a looser sauce) and the goat cheese, and stir over low heat until the mixture is warmed through and cheese is melted. Serve hot, with freshly ground pepper.

Like we did for pie

My sister called me from Colorado this weekend, in the midst of cooking for the UW ski team after a day’s races. She was with my brother, who was there coaching Stanford’s team. (Sometimes it’s convenient, having a family full of ski racers.) On the stove: a sweet potato version of the squash- and black bean-stuffed peppers we’d made together once.

There, in the midst of making dinner, she realized she wasn’t sure what to do with the potato.

“Do I just bake it?” she asked.

“Allison,” I admonished. “You can’t call me from Nationals with a question about potatoes. How’d it go?”

She gave me the quick, half-hearted version of the day’s race, then continued on her quest. “So I bake them. Then do I just scrape the stuff out, like we did for pie?”

Like we did for pie.

Those were the five words that got me: Like we did for pie. Those words, they made me realize that of all the things I might have expected, when Allison moved to Seattle, the only thing I really wanted was to have a sister again. I never harbored any real plans for teaching her to cook stuffed peppers, or sweet potato pie, or anything, for that matter. I just wanted to see her more, and take life’s juicy parts in together, in smaller sips—less How’s life, I haven’t talked to you in ages? More Hey, is that my sweatshirt?

It’s not like we ever stopped being sisters. But when you live smack in the middle of the underarm fat on the curled bicep of Cape Cod, and your kid sister lives in Idaho, it’s not exactly easy to bond on a regular basis. With my brother, distance never seemed to be an issue—we grew up in the same house, at the same time, close enough in age to suffer the mental and physical battles that bind siblings together for life.

But Al and I never had time to beat each other up. Visits were usually exciting, but hurried, sometimes stilted, and always, always too short. It’s hard to have time to wrestle with someone who lives across the country, much less invite her over for dinner.

Since September, though, when Allison moved here, we’ve been doing better. Sunday nights, she shows up with dirty laundry, chases the dog around the couch in circles, and pillages my closet for clothing that no longer fits. I love it all.

Conveniently enough for me, it’s not considered polite to pick physical fights with your pregnant sister, the way she might with my brother. So instead of wrestling, we cook—and increasingly, that means cooking together automatically, as opposed to me cooking, with her waiting, deer in headlights, for me to assign her a specific task. Now, she knows where the measuring cups are. She knows how to cut an avocado. She knows where we keep the good cloth napkins, and the hot sauce, and the extra sparkling water. And, it turns out, she knows how homemade sweet potato pie is born, which tickles me pink.

Of course, I should have seen this coming—should have seen that in my house, every Sunday at the stove means roasting one’s first chicken, and learning what goes into a fruit crisp, and learning to like real summer tomatoes. But honestly, I wasn’t marinating her in kitchen experience on purpose.

What I wanted, and what I now realize I’m getting, in part because we’re spending time eating together, is a sister who’s growing into a friend. We’re separated by twelve years, and are living quite different lives, with different values, and priorities, and schedules. But when someone that looks a lot like you walks through your front door with a hug every week, things change. We’ve gone from being related to relating.

Outside the kitchen, it’s fantastic. And the food knowledge goes both ways: Allison introduced me to the Swimming Rama stir-fry at Thai Tom, and to a new place for bubble tea, and someday, I will make it to University Teriyaki, just because she loves it.

But last night, when Allison came home after Nationals, and we started Sunday night dinners again after the two-month hiatus her ski season necessitated, I felt paralyzed. Getting confirmation that she’s watching, and listening, and learning every time she comes over freaked me right out. Teaching someone how to cook a specific dish is one thing, if you know they’re paying attention, but this whole subtle absorption thing is a bit disconcerting. What if the woman never learns to cut an onion properly? I know how to do it, and I can do it if I need to, but in practice, I’m usually sort of an onion mangler. It just wouldn’t do if she thought that was the right way.

It comes down to this: What if I don’t teach my sister the right things?

I’ve decided that would be okay. I’ve decided that if she’s learning how to stir-fry, she’s also learning that not every stir-fry tastes the same, and that some may, in fact, taste really bad. She’s along for the ride when I stuff peppers, and also when I tear their soft flesh accidentally, or burn the cheese on top. She’s realizing that the best part of a well-roasted chicken is a super crisp skin, eaten right off the bird right when it comes out of the oven, even if that means putting a bird on the dinner table stark naked. She’ll eventually find out that I hate eggplant, and that I’m not very good at making pizza, and that I’m actually quite lazy when it comes to washing vegetables. She’ll also be here for nights, like last night, when dinner means taking a vat of the world’s easiest homemade chili out of the freezer, simmering it on the stove for an hour for good measure, and not really cooking at all.

With any luck, Allison will learn that enjoying spending time in the kitchen means writing her own definition of what it means to cook, and what it means to eat well, rather than adopting mine or anyone else’s.

Last week, I cooked dinner for about 25 people with a friend who also happens to be in her third trimester of pregnancy. My assignment was chili—two giant pots of it. I made one simple vegetarian version (pictured just above), and a more time-consuming one, made with pulled pork, white beans, and green chilies (pictured at the top of the post, and farther below). We split and froze the leftovers, presumably intending to save them for when neither of us has the energy to cook. Our portion probably won’t last.

Here are both recipes; choose what suits you best.

Six-Can Vegetarian Chili (PDF)

It doesn’t sound as sexy as a meal made entirely from raw ingredients, but throwing together a hearty, healthy, vegetable-studded chili in well under half an hour appeals to me. In this version, loosely based on the beef chili my mother-in-law makes, I especially love that I can dump all the canned ingredients in without any fuss—which usually means that even on a tired day, I have the energy to make homemade cornbread while the chili simmers. Serve as is, or top with shredded cheese and a dollop of sour cream.

This recipe can be easily doubled or tripled—you’ll just have to cook the vegetables a little longer before adding the beans.

If you like a spicier, smoky chili, consider adding a finely chopped chipotle pepper or two, from a can of chipotles en adobo.

TIME: 25 minutes prep
MAKES: 4 to 6 servings

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
2 tablespoons chili powder
2 teaspoons dried oregano
1 teaspoon salt
2 large cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 (6-ounce) package sliced crimini mushrooms
1 (15-ounce) can kidney beans
1 (15-ounce) can black beans
1 (15-ounce) can pinto beans
1 (28-ounce) can tomato sauce
1 (15-ounce) can corn
1 (7-ounce) can fire-roasted, chopped green chilies
1 red bell pepper, seeded and chopped
2 tablespoons brown sugar
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar

Heat a large, heavy-bottomed soup pot over medium heat. Add the olive oil, then the onion, and cook for 5 minutes, or until the onion begins to soften. Add the chili powder, oregano, salt, and garlic, and cook and stir for a few minutes, until the spices become fragrant. Add the mushrooms, stir to blend, and cook, covered, until the mushrooms give up their water, about 10 minutes. Add the remaining ingredients, stir, and simmer for an hour or two, stirring occasionally. Season to taste and serve hot.

Leftover chili can be cooled and frozen, in an airtight container, for 3 months or so.

Pulled Pork and White Bean Chili (PDF)

I don’t suppose I get extra credit for writing a recipe that’s double slow-cooked, but that’s just what this is: pork shoulder, braised to fallingapart in spicy green salsa, then pulled and stirred into plump white beans that have been simmered for hours with the braising liquid, tomatoes, cumin, chilies, and garlic. The result—a relatively easy, deeply flavorful (but not blow-your-mind spicy) chili spiked with shreds of tender pork—is enough for a crowd. Any leftover chili can be cooled, then frozen in airtight containers up to 6 months.

This recipe takes some planning—please read it carefully before beginning. And don’t be afraid to make it ahead of time; the flavors will only improve with a day (or three) in the refrigerator. I made the pork after an early dinner one night, cooked the beans overnight, and simmered the finished chili just before dinner the next day.

TIME: 1 hour active time, plus plenty of slow cooking
MAKES: 10 servings

For the pork:
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 (roughly 3-pound) boneless pork shoulder, trimmed of excess fat
Salt and freshly ground pepper
1 large onion, finely chopped
2 (16-ounce) jars green salsa*

For the beans:
2 pounds dried cannellini or great northern beans (or a combination of the two)
2 (28-ounce) cans chopped tomatoes
3 (7-ounce) cans fire-roasted chopped green chilies
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 large onion, chopped
2 tablespoons ground cumin
2 tablespoons chili powder
1 tablespoon dried oregano
5 large cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 teaspoons salt
4 cups chicken stock

For serving:
Chopped cilantro
Chopped avocado
Crumbled cotija or shredded Monterey Jack cheese

*Be sure to taste your green salsa before using it—if you don’t like it in the jar, you probably won’t like it in the chili. I like using El Paso or Trader Joe’s version, although the latter is a bit salty, so watch your seasoning if you use it. Of course, you could use any kind or color salsa (or a mixture), as long as you avoid anything fruity.

First, braise the pork: Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Heat a large, ovenproof Dutch oven or casserole dish over medium heat. Add the oil. Season the pork on all sides with salt and pepper, then brown on all sides (about 5 minutes per side, undisturbed). Transfer the pork to a plate, add the onion, and cook, stirring occasionally, for 10 minutes, or until the onion is soft. Return the pork to the pot, add the salsa, and add water, if necessary, until the liquid comes halfway up the side of the pork. Bring the liquid to a bare simmer, cover the pot, and braise in the oven for 2 to 2 1/2 hours, turning the pork halfway through cooking—the pork is done when it falls apart when you try to pick it up with tongs. Transfer the pork to a plate, and reserve the braising liquid for cooking the beans. When the pork is cool enough to handle, chop or pull it into small pieces (discarding any fat), and refrigerate it overnight.

While the pork is cooking, start the beans: Place the beans in a large pot and add water to cover by 3 or 4 inches. Bring to a boil, remove from the heat, cover, and set aside for an hour. Drain the beans, and transfer to a large slow cooker, along with the tomatoes and chilies.

When the pork is done, heat a large skillet over medium heat. Add the oil, then the onion, and cook, stirring, until the onion is soft, about 10 minutes. Add the spices (next five ingredients), and cook and stir for 5 minutes. Add one cup of the chicken stock, bring to a simmer, and cook for a minute or two, scraping any spices off the bottom of the pan. Pour the onion mixture over the beans in the slow cooker, add the reserved braising liquid, stir, and cook on low heat for 10 hours, undisturbed.

Before serving, combine the beans and the chopped pork in a (probably very large) pot, or two smaller pots. Add the remaining chicken stock, and simmer for half an hour or so. Serve hot, garnished with chopped cilantro, avocado, and cheese.