Beets, for me

I got a voicemail from Florida the other day, from a woman I’ll call Tracy. She’d read a piece I wrote in Arthritis Today, something that grew out of a post here about how cooking and lupus collide. She was calling to relate.

It was the strangest thing, having someone ask me for advice on how to manage the disease. My first instinct was to tell her she had the wrong girl.

On Sunday, I called her back. I knew I could listen, but didn’t think I’d have much to say.

Tracy’s a personal chef, like I used to be. She has lupus, like I do. Only, she has an incredibly complicated case, a fat folder stuffed with the details of multiple autoimmune diseases. She’s had unusual reactions to all the medications that seem to help me, can’t find a doctor she likes, and doesn’t have health care. She’s lost three friends to severe lupus in the last year, and oh, friends, she’s so angry.

Talking to her reminded me how lucky I am, and how far I’ve come since 2003. I remembered how much I wanted an explanation, at first, like Tracy still does, even after living with lupus for 30 years – she wants a reason, a cause, a more accurate diagnosis.

It surprised me a little when she told me her story, and I actually felt I had advice to give. I wanted to articulate how I stopped being so mad at my body. (-ing, rather. How I’m stopping.)

There’s a calendar by my bed. Every morning, I mark it when I take my medication, and every evening, I keep track of the day – there are little notes about whether I’ve napped, how I’ve exercised, how I feel, plus any other little thing that comes to mind. It’s filled with complaints, too. (Left wrist hurting. Right knee snapping.)

The calendar keeps me honest. If I haven’t been napping, it tells me. If I’ve avoided exercise, it knows. And when I do something great for myself – get a massage, or paint my toenails, or pick flowers and arrange them in the heavy terra cotta vase my sister made - it tells me I’ve done a good job.

But no matter what the day brings, the calendar’s principle function is that of a constant caretaker. The physical habit of uncapping the pen each night reminds me that I’m in control, and that what I do every day - how I eat, how I sleep, how many Advil I take or don’t take, how much time I spend in the sun - has a direct impact on how I feel. I transfers the responsibility for my disease from some big, scary, overpowering force directly to moi.

I told Tracy about it, and asked if she did anything for herself.

“For myself?” she asked. “What do you mean?”

“You know,” I said. “For you, and only you. Not for dinner. Not for your clients. Not for your husband. For you.”

She didn’t understand.

I suggested she find a notebook, and make a list, over the course of a week or so, of things that make her happy, and to try to hold herself responsible for doing one of those things each day. We talked about chair yoga, and slow walks, and sitting in sunbeams, and taking a cut flower to a neighbor. As I wandered around the house, listening, my eyes grazed a greeting card my friend Beth gave me, years ago:

Oh, I do believe it’s true. No one else can make you happy. And from my experience, no one else can make you completely healthy, either. That’s up to you.

I’d never made a list myself, but as we chatted, I thought it sounded like a darn good idea. I realized how much more I’ve leaned on the little things, these last five years, to mask my frustration – just today, I obsessed about way a handful of cold cherries feels in my palm, and how the garbage can clatters across the asphalt when I bring it back in. Maybe it’s a convenient way to explain my OCD tendencies. But if you listen to them, I do believe life’s little pleasantries can begin to sound bigger than the worries.

When we hung up, I felt lighter. (I hope Tracy did, too.) I meant to make a list, but I didn’t.

This morning, though, trying to water the plants before the sun hit them, I found a beet in my garden. (My first beet ever!) Half the beets had bolted prematurely, so I pulled them all out, finding a good handful of little ones by the end. I was going to put them aside for dinner, for friends. But they called back.

I’ll just cut the tops off and wash them, so they stay fresh for a salad, I thought. My husband was heading off to work, and there I was, elbow-deep in a sink of cold water, playing with beet greens, enjoying the way the water iced my joints.

I’ll just trim them up a bit now, too, I decided. No sense in washing the cutting board twice, right?

I whiddled and sliced until they looked ready for a roast in the oven, but when I set them aside, they called me right back, loud as their stripes. Now, they insisted.

My deadline begged to differ. It’s been a crazy week (with not much cooking, if you hadn’t noticed), and the last thing I needed to do was make beet salad for elevenses.

But I thought of Tracy, and my nonexistent list. I could roast now, when I was really enjoying it and reveling in my garden’s newfound productivity, or later, tired, with dinner looming. So I roasted beets, at 9 a.m. on a Wednesday morning, simply because they were pretty. It meant that the beets weren’t for dinner, they were for me.

It felt like skipping class.

Sitting on the porch with the roasting pan, I started my list in a string-bound journal someone gave me months ago. I topped it with “sometime,” to separate it from the to-dos with actual deadlines. It only took five minutes, but it made me feel fantastic. I wrote things like rub the rosemary plant, and sit on the porch for five minutes on a sunny day. Nothing too intricate, nothing that takes too much time.

As I closed my book, I decided that while Tracy had been an excellent inroad for my own list, the journal would be good for any body, in any health. And sitting there, as the fog lifted off the Olympics, I almost felt luckier for not having perfect health.

I vowed to try to do something from the list, for me, each day.

So far, so good, I thought. But I might need a bigger calendar.

Roasted Beets with Oregano and Sherry Vinegar
There wasn’t much too it, really. There’s nothing fancy going on here. Just a half pound of trimmed baby beets, sliced up and tossed into a baby pan. (The skins seemed so fresh, I didn’t bother to peel them.) A sprig of oregano, stripped and sprinkled over the beets, along with a bit of sea salt and a crack of pepper. A drizzle of olive oil, and a dash of sherry vinegar. And time – oh yes, these beets need a bit of time, too, but not nearly as much as whole beets. I roasted them at 400 degrees for about 45 minutes, until soft when poked with a fork, then hit them with a tiny bit more vinegar before eating them straight out of the hot pan, with a fork, in the sun on the porch.

Fantasy Vinaigrette

I haven’t really felt like talking much, recently. Not here, anyway. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s the nice weather. (These days, I am not feeling what I would call driven.)

Maybe it’s that the things I’ve been “discovering” have felt awfully simple: Bacon. Salad. Eggs.

(Have you ever made an egg quesadilla for breakfast? Heat the tortilla up on one side, flip it over, and crack the egg onto the hot side. Use a fork to break the yolk and spread the egg around on the tortilla, like Anita does with her savory crepes. Add shredded sharp cheddar cheese. When the egg has set, fold the tortilla in half: Breakfast burrito effect, without the egg pan. I just had it for lunch. Right now, I want to make it again tomorrow, but it certainly doesn’t qualify as exciting.)

Or. Maybe it’s just that there’s not much to say.

I have been meaning to say thanks, though – to my neighbor for watching the dog, to friends for having us over for dinner. . . I’ve found just the thing. It’s my fantasy vinaigrette. From now on, I’ll be making it by the gallon.

Maybe you have such a vinaigrette in mind, too – it’s creamy without being too fattening, tangy and interesting but not clingy or cloying, flexible but never pedestrian. I found mine at American Flatbread in Burlington, Vermont, on a mixed green salad served with goat cheese. When I asked the server what was in the dressing, she rattled off an ingredient list – tahini and ginger, she said, and the tang is raspberry vinegar. (Really? Raspberry vinegar and tahini? Oh, yes.)

I’ve recreated it, with even more success than I hoped for. I’ve already found a home for it on an easygoing Bibb salad with avocado, tomato, and cucumber, and also on a simple plate of arugula. We slathered it on grilled salmon, and frankly, with today’s second batch, I plan to make a habit of eating it on a spoon, for snack. That is, unless I have a second quesadilla. In that case, I’ll wait until dinner.

Fantasy Vinaigrette (PDF)
with tahini, ginger, and raspberry vinegar

Serve the vinaigrette as is, over anything that’ll hold liquid, or use it as a dressing for pasta or chopped vegetable salads. I can’t wait to try it on a carrot salad, with scallions, cilantro, and a dash of cumin.

TIME: 15 minutes
MAKES: About 3/4 cup

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon finely grated fresh ginger
1 small garlic clove, smashed
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons (well stirred) sesame tahini (I chose the roasted kind)
1/4 cup raspberry vinegar
1/4 cup canola oil

In a blender or food processor, whirl the first six ingredients until smooth and well blended. With the machine running, add the oil in a slow, steady stream, and process until emulsified. The vinaigrette keeps, refrigerated, up to two weeks in the refrigerator. Bring to room temperature and whisk before using.

Peas and onions

The peas I’ve been planting all spring are dying with the dependability of Henry VIII’s wives. The first planting succumbed to frost, the second to shade. The third was a victim of dog trampling, the fourth made a slug family’s lunch. I do believe I’m on my fifth try. While my neighbor’s vines sprout edibles, my tendrils struggle skyward, inching their way – well, millimetering, really, to be generous – toward the strings I’ve set out for them to climb. I’m not exactly holding my breath for them to produce and, I’ll admit, I’ve been unfaithful. I bought peas at the farmers’ market this week. (Finally.) I wonder if this time, they’ll die of depression.

I thought I’d stir some together with cream, or pasta, something traditional, but when I found my very favorite onion, the sweet-sexy cipolline, so conveniently pre-peeled at Trader Joe’s, something else came up.

This should feed four, but my husband and I finished the dish off together without a problem.

Ginger-Roasted Peas and Onions (PDF)
Peas and onions have always made good spring bedfellows. Here, they take a turn away from their traditional form. Roasted first with ginger, garlic, soy and rice wine vinegar, soft cipolline onions are baked again with snap peas, so instead of creamy and heavy, the result is sharp and fresh. The juices simmer down into a lovely glaze. Serve with grilled fish and a fresh green salad.

TIME: 10 minutes prep time
MAKES: 2 to 4 servings

1/2 pound small to medium cipolline onions, peeled
2 teaspoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar
2 teaspoons sesame oil
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
1 teaspoon finely grated fresh ginger
1/4 pound snap peas

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Combine all ingredients except the peas in a small baking dish, and roast for 30 to 40 minutes, shaking the pan once or twice, or until the liquid has reduced to a glaze and the bottom of the onions are beginning to brown. (If the pan gets too dry, add a tablespoon or two of water and shake the pan to release any brown bits.)

(Note: You can prepare the dish ahead up to this point, set aside, and finish right before dinner.)

Stir the peas in with the onions, and roast another 10 minutes, or until the peas are bright. Serve immediately.

Cherry Grump

I have a new favorite word: Grump. I like the verb best, as in to grump. It may look like a noun, but in my mouth it acts just like it sounds, like a bad mood coming to life. (Say it a few times. You’ll see.)

My friend Sarah said it first, when her dog was grumping around the house, pouting about being bullied by her cat. Then my dad’s knee started grumping, and before I knew what hit me, my pie crust started doing it, too.

Washington cherries will really start rolling into Seattle next week. (I can never wait. I bought two pounds from California. I consider it training for the cherry season.)

I wanted to make a big cherry galette, the kind whose folded, sugar-sprinkled edges are the high-end jeans of the dessert world. (You know the type: They’re supposed to be low-maintenance, but by the time you buy everything, trim the edges just right, and find the perfect thing to slip on top, you’ve spent just as much time as you might have spent on something “fancier.”) In the end, galettes look so perfectly unperfect, each pleat folded neatly over the one before, juice bubbling up and over one precisely unprecise undulation in the dough.

“Who, me?” says a galette. “I just threw on an old pair of jeans.”

Usually, though, like the jeans, galettes are worth it. More so than pie, if you ask me, which is why I’ve been making them recently.

(I just replaced those chocolaty jeans, by the way, because they also happened to have holes in unladylike places. It took me two whole months to find the ones, but they’ve been worth every penny.)

This time, I started with a whole wheat crust, whipped about in the food processor with plenty of unsalted butter. I pitted a giant container of cherries, enough that by the end I wanted to toast and eat the actual pits, since I’d worked so hard for them. (Has anyone done this?)

I mixed the little ruby halves up with lemon juice and a whisper of ginger, to satisfy my husband, who equates “ginger” with “dessert.” Just when I thought I was ready to pile the fruit into the crust, though, I noticed the cherries’ thin red liquid coating the cutting board and spilling out onto the counter, into the cracks between my granite tiles and down the facing on my kitchen cupboards (white, of course).

I’ll be honest: It’s hard to be in a bad mood when there are cherries in the kitchen, but I wasn’t having a very good day yesterday. My hands ached from typing (and then, stupidly, pitting), and this goshdarn notsummer weather Seattle’s been hanging onto wasn’t doing me any favors. (I’m wearing ski socks today.)

You could say I was grumping a bit myself.

I took one look at the juice, and self-doubt flooded in. I wondered whether I’d put enough cornstarch into the cherries to convince them to gel up together. I thought about the time I put too much fruit in my galette, and the edges simply unfolded like a flower. The dough relaxed under the weight of the berries and they all rolled right out in a blueberry stampede, so I ended up with a round of uncrusty dough, topped with a pool of blue goo.

I grumped that day, too.

Yesterday, my pie crust looked perfect, but I worried the edges weren’t up to their task. I didn’t want a cherry galette that would be, in Eloise’s words, ruined ruined ruined. Plus, I’ve been a little down on my luck recently. There were the cashew noodles that seized up into a delicious, but entirely too sticky mass five minutes after they hit the serving bowl. And those giant calzones, made with a sausage I somehow didn’t realize was chicken-based (and smoked, which I hate) until entirely too late. My ego wasn’t up for another failure.

I decided to hedge. I made my galette bloom-proof by cornering it in a cake pan.

Pie making seldom offers one a sigh of relief, at least not before it goes into the oven. But as I rolled the crust out and flopped it into the pan, I was more relaxed than ever, knowing that instead of patting and gently squishing and cutting and folding, I would only have to slop the edges over the cherries, easy as dropping a wet towel on the floor. It wouldn’t matter if there were a few microscopic holes in the crust, because the pan would hold any errant juices in.

That pie crust, I think she was a little relieved, too. I mean really, each and every time, she has to mind her manners. Not too hot, not too cold, not too hard, not too soft. This time, she could really let her guard down, and grump if she wanted to. I felt like I might have been doing her a favor, flipping her on top of the cherries like that, without a speck of pretention.

The galette turned into a deep-dish cherry galette, with straight, sturdy sides that stand up royally on a plate.

I’ll call it a grump, because from now on, it’s what I’ll make when I’m grumping. When I know I don’t have the attention span for pie, or the self-confidence for a pretty galette. When I need something that puts me in a good mood the instant it pops out of the oven. (I think its success is impervious to bad moods.)

Whoever started naming fruit desserts after one’s constitution was a genius. Take the grunt, for example. It’s a fruit dessert, topped with big plops of biscuit dough. On its way into the oven, it’s sloppy enough that you almost always emit some sort of unsatisfied grunt. It’s perfect for the days when nothing can impress you.

In my opinion, though, even with betties and slumps and cobblers, that person didn’t go far enough.

Think of those days you dawdle in the kitchen – when you really mean to make dessert, but one thing leads to another, and suddenly dinner’s on the table and the chosen fruit is still languishing on the counter, unattended – why not go for a Raspberry Dither?

I’d love to know what comes out of the oven on the crankiest days. Maybe a Blueberry Bitch?

Guess I’ll find out. The season’s just beginning.

Cherry Grump (PDF)
Made with a robust whole wheat flour (I buy Stone-Buhr , if you must know), the crust for this faintly gingered grump – just another variation on fruit pie, made in a cake pan without pinching, folding, latticing, or worrying – has a sweet, almost graham crackery flavor. Serve it warm, with vanilla, ginger, or coconut ice cream.

TIME: 45 minutes active time
MAKES: 6 to 8 servings

For the crust:

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
2 tablespoons sugar
Pinch salt
1 1/2 sticks cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2” pieces
1/4 to 1/3 cup ice water

For the filling:

1 tablespoon unsalted butter, plus more for greasing the pan
2 pounds Bing cherries, stemmed, halved, and pitted
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/3 cup sugar, plus more for sprinkling on crust
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
Milk, for brushing crust

First, make the crust: Whirl the flours, sugar, and salt together in the work bowl of a food processor. Add the butter, and pulse until the butter is the size of small peas. Add the water a little at a time, pulsing as you go, until the crust holds together when you press a handful into your palm. (You’ll need more water on a dry day, less on a humid one.) Transfer the dough to wax paper, form into a flat disc, wrap well, and refrigerate at least 1 hour, or overnight.

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees, and grease an 8” cake pan with butter. Cut the tablespoon of butter into small cubes, and set side.

Make the filling: Combine the cherries with the lemon juice in a mixing bowl. In a small bowl, stir the sugar, cornstarch, and ginger together with a fork until no lumps remain. Add this dry mixture to the cherries, and stir until moist. Set aside.

Remove the crust from the refrigerator, and let sit on a floured surface at room temperature for a few minutes, until soft enough to roll. Using a floured pin, roll the dough into a roughly 14” circle (no need to be too precise about the shape). Fold the dough into quarters, transfer it to the cake pan, and unfold it, centered on the pan. Gently fit the dough down into the sides of the cake pan, allowing the edges to flop over outward.

Fill the dough with the cherry mixture, and dot the cherries with the reserved butter. Fold the dough’s edges inward, over the cherries, allowing them to land wherever they may. Brush the crust with milk and sprinkle the crust with sugar.

Bake the grump for 10 minutes. Decrease heat to 350 degrees, and bake for 60 minutes more, or until the crust is browned and the filling bubbles excitedly. Let the grump cool about an hour before slicing (the fruit will firm up as it sits). Serve warm.

Makin’ bacon

I have bacon on the brain, and I want your help.

I was reminded recently that bacon doesn’t always happen on top of the stove. I knew this, I think, in theory, but not in practice.

If you’re a converted baking sheet bacon maker, pardon me: I’m a little slow on the uptake. But if you’re still scooting bacon around in a pan four pieces at a time, the way I’ve always done it, and if you aren’t too attached to your container of congealed bacon grease, I have a weekend experiment for you. It saves time, and probably calories, and if you’re as sloppy a bacon maker as I am, a good deal of laundry detergent.

Line a rimmed baking sheet with aluminum foil. Fit a cooling rack into the sheet. Arrange bacon slices on the rack - yes, you can cook, lordy lordy, a whole pound at once, if the bacon’s sliced thick! Slide the sheet into the oven and heat to 400 degrees. When the oven tells you it’s preheated, start checking the bacon - it should be done about five minutes after the oven reaches 400 degrees.

The beauty of the thing is that you can just let the grease cool right on the foil, then fold it up like it never happened. There’s the argument for not wasting the foil, but I think this technique reduces the number of paper towels you need, so perhaps the waste discussion is a moot point.

You can cook the bacon plain, of course, but baking bacon opens the door on bacon as substrate. I drizzled ours with maple syrup and sprinkled it with a good dose of chili powder before popping it into the oven, and it disappeared with greedy reviews.

But Oh! the places you’ll go! I’m envisioning smearing it with mustard and drizzling it with honey, or coating it with my own cracked black pepper. . .

What else have you done with baking sheet bacon?

I’m so glad you’re here

I’m falling in love with my best friend again.

I don’t mean that in any sort of romantic, husband-replacing way. I mean that when she moved to Seattle last month, I found part of myself I didn’t know I’d been missing.

Hilary and I have known each other since 7th grade reading class. I still have the coral-colored t-shirt I borrowed in junior high and accidentally-on-purpose never returned. (It’s very, very soft. And a little short.)

Growing up, our friendship followed a predictably rollercoasterish pattern. We spent symbiotic summers bouncing between each others’ houses, playing by the river in McCall, and sneaking out of the house late at night to do nothing besides be out of the house late at night. There was a group of us, with secret symbols and code names and personal mottos. All the things a girl could want.

Each winter, ski racing would start up again, and I’d travel a lot for various races. Hilary and I would fight, dependably and bitterly. One year, she threw all of my schoolbooks out of our locker. They skittered clear across sophomore hall, right in front of everyone. “It’s not like you need a locker anyway,” I remember her saying through clenched teeth. “It’s not like you’re ever here.”

Somehow, over the years, we’ve kept it alive, even living (sometimes literal) oceans apart. (I suppose it helps that her husband is in the military, and that they’re constantly stationed in exotic locales I can’t help but visit.) But the more time we spend together, the better we do.

A few weeks ago, Hilary and her family moved to Seattle. To my neighborhood. Ten blocks away, to be precise.

In the weeks before she arrived, I almost panicked. We’d never lived close with real grown-up restraints on our time – things like jobs, and laundry, and families, and other friends. We’d never had to say I’m sorry, I can’t have coffee, I have a deadline. Or No, I can’t turn on NPR right this instant. It’s bath time. Our careers don’t collide in any way, really, and our recreational interests have long since diverged. I wondered whether we’d have anything to talk about, and whether I’d be able to be around as much as she might expect.

Mostly, I was afraid of getting kicked out. The first time was bad enough, and I have a lot more books now.

But it’s been good. Really good. We’ve had meals and walks and coffee and even a few late-night phone calls. (Only now, “late” is a lot earlier.) We’re settling into our new version of permanent summer, with the added benefits of age and hindsight.

There’s nothing that builds friendship as well as time. Hilary was there when I got my braces on, for goodness’ sake, and for the beginning of my orange phase. We’re no longer so twinnish and predictable together, but her company feels necessary, like that good wool blanket you keep in the back of the car. I feel warmer with her here, even on the days I don’t see her.

The funny thing is, since Hilary arrived, I’ve been feeling pretty good physically, too. Long ago, we formed a habit of talking, about nothing and everything, without thinking about time. I’ve been surprised to find I can still do it – I can still fall into a conversation without envisioning its end, or watching the clock, as I admit I do so often. She doesn’t make me nap, or tell me what to eat, but she calms me. (I wonder how much modern medicine might improve if doctors started prescribing long-term friendship.)

I’m helping her, too, I think. The other day I babysat, so she could go see a movie with another friend, for the first time in months. I raced around the house with her toddler, Abi. We read seven books. Then we napped together. As she snuggled up against me, I couldn’t help but feel like my best friend had blossomed into two people. I felt so lucky.

Abi woke up and looked at me with woeful, sleepy eyes. “Eeeeeaaaatttt,” she pleaded desperately. “Cheeeeeeese.”

Wouldn’t it be great, if every time you got hungry, you could just wail the word “Eat,” and food would come your way? (I’m going to work on that with Jim: “Eeeaaatt. Enchilaaaadaaaaas.”)

“Yes,” I said to Abi. “Eat. Let’s eat.”

We sat on the kitchen floor together and ate cheese. (Abi wants to name her baby sister Cheese, too. I believe her suggestion is still under consideration.)

In high school, when a crisis hit, our group of girls would flock around the victim with food: Ben & Jerry’s, or hot, gooey rice crispy treats. We shoveled food in through tears and laughter, usually slumped against the cupboards on someone’s kitchen floor.

Sitting there, with Abi, I thought of how life evolves, about how what qualified as a crisis before – a mean rumor, or a disastrous exchange student – lead us to the same spot Abi needed, to cure post-nap hunger pains. They say comfort always comes in the kitchen; I sometimes think it has more to do with the kitchen floor.

As I was leaving that day, Hilary said, “Call me for dinner. We’re always available.” Her intonation reminded me of her mother. Standing there on her porch with one foot in the house and one stepping into next week, I’m sure I reminded her of mine.

I took a deep breath. “I think I need to work on being a little less available,” I sort of half-whispered, still afraid of not being the friend I’d want, if I were her. It occurred to me that almost twenty years ago, I might have passed her the same words in a note, written on purple paper and folded into some nifty shape.

“Okay,” she said.

And it was as easy as that. No book throwing. Just complete understanding. We hugged good-bye.

The next day, I emailed her: You have plans for dinner?

She responded: Coming to your house?

I seared salmon, and topped it with a Thai basil salsa verde. You could call it an Asian chimichurri, which it was, or a pesto made with all the green things leftover in one of my refrigerator’s produce drawers, which it also was.

We chatted and gossiped while Hilary picked the basil, then tried to convince Abi that salmon is not poisonous. (She much preferred dipping her rotini into the green sauce.)

Then we had ice cream (no crisis required), and talked about nothing and everything, without thinking about time.

Hil, I’m so glad you’re here.

Thai Basil Salsa Verde (PDF)
Smeared into Vietnamese-style baguette sandwiches or scooped onto grilled salmon, this bright, slightly spicy condiment opens the door on the word “pesto.” It keeps nicely in a sealed container in the fridge for about a week without turning brown.

TIME: 15 minutes
MAKES: About 1 cup

1 packed cup Thai basil leaves (the kind with purple stems)
2/3 packed cup fresh cilantro (leaves and stems)
1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and chopped
1 large clove garlic, smashed
Juice of 1/2 large lime
2 tablespoons rice wine vinegar
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

Add the first six ingredients to the work bowl of a food processor, and whirl until very finely chopped. With the machine running, add the oil in a slow, steady stream, until emulsified. Season to taste with salt and pepper, and serve.

A casualty of Big Bertha

If what you really want is a way to spend more time with the nice TSA folks the next time you travel by air - if all that removing and rearranging and Ziplocbagging and patting and puttingbackon isn’t enough - I have a suggestion: Pack an ancient cast-iron muffin pan in your carry-on luggage.

I inherited one when I was in Boise. It belonged to my mother’s mother, Merle, who used it for popovers.

It’s certainly dainty-looking, with those cute petal-shaped cutouts on the edge, but I have trouble picking it up with one hand. We’re calling her Big Bertha.

While her twin stayed asleep in my mother’s baking drawer, I swaddled Big Bertha in my yoga pants, rust and all, and crammed her into my roll-aboard for a long-term stay in Seattle.

Sure enough, the agents at Boise International were on point. She was spotted in the X-ray machine, unearthed, tested, and passed from person to person until they were all yesverycertain that the muffin pan was not a bomb.

I scrubbed the red dust off the inside, and made the homecoming meal any cast-iron pan deserves: Corn muffins.

Only, they’re not everyday corn muffins. They don’t crawl around in your mouth like a napkin, selfishly mopping up every last bit of moisture, like so many corn muffins do. Moistened with sour cream and spiked with a smattering of crunchy whole grains, they have a little more class than the crumbly version, and quite a bit more intrigue.

Now, I’m not one to scorn a box of Jiffy. (That blue-and-white box is a go-to every time chili comes off the stove.)

But for breakfast, on a cool, sunny summer morning, with a smear of butter and a dollop of Anna’s cinnamon creamed honey, these are hard to beat.

Next time, I hope I won’t be so blase about balancing the wet muffin pan on the edge of the sink. Big Bertha takes no prisoners.

Crunchy Whole Grain Corn Muffins (PDF)
In her essential breakfast book, Sunlight Cafe, author Mollie Katzen always mixes the sugar right into the dry ingredients for muffins, and stirs the melted butter in at the end. I’ve adopted her technique, because it saves the time required to cream butter and sugar together. (These muffins really do take 15 minutes to make.) When you pry open your first grain-studded muffin, hot from the oven, consider topping it with a fat slab of salted butter. Drizzle it with creamed honey, for good measure.

For savory muffins, skip the sugar and increase the salt to 1 teaspoon. Stir in a handful of Parmesan cheese, sautéed onions, and/or chopped green chilies, if you’d like.

TIME: 15 minutes active time
MAKES: 8 regular or 12 small muffins

Vegetable oil spray
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup cornmeal
1/4 cup (raw) millet
1/4 cup (raw) quinoa
2 tablespoons flaxseed meal
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup sugar
1 cup milk
1/2 cup sour cream
2 large eggs
1/2 stick (4 tablespoons) unsalted butter, melted

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Spray a muffin tin with the vegetable oil spray. (The batter will make 11 muffins in an age-old cast-iron pan, or 8 regular or 12 small muffins in a contemporary standard muffin pan.)

Whisk the next nine ingredients, through sugar, together in a large mixing bowl. In a smaller bowl, whisk the milk, sour cream and eggs together until well blended and smooth. Stir in the melted butter, then add all the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients, and stir until no dry spots remain.

Fill 8 muffin cups almost to the top with batter (or for smaller muffins, fill 12 cups a little less full), and bake for 20 to 25 minutes on the middle rack, or until puffed and barely cracked. (The muffins won’t brown much.) Let cool 5 minutes in pans, then serve warm.

Store cooled leftover muffins in an airtight container. Halve and toast before serving.

Soup for consumption

Calling this beauty a soup is a bit of a stretch. Sure, it fits on a spoon, and slides down the throat like a cure, but it’s really meant to be just that – a tonic, with some occasional added chewability.

I met her at Frank and Michelle’s house last week. We gathered there for a Saturday night feast, with a Wooly Pigs Berkshire pork shoulder and a few bottles of St. Joseph, to hear about their trip to India. (We never did talk about India, did we?)

Before dinner, Michelle pulled a pot off the back of the stove. “It’s a quick little consommé,” she murmured nonchalantly. Like we all make consommé on Saturday nights.

The kitchen showed no signs of the true consommé process, a (probably, once you’ve done it more than twice, not all that) tenuous procedure that involves adding ground meat and finely chopped vegetables and egg white to an intensely flavorful stock. (The choppy bits gather up all the impurities in the stock (read: the fat), and eventually float to the top of the liquid, to form what’s ridiculously (in my opinion) called a “raft.” You take the raft off, and serve a perfectly clear, delicious liquid. Here’s a great Cookthink post on making pho from scratch with good pictures of how the raft works. The final product is gorgeous, but I’m only convinced it’s worth it when I’m not the one cooking.)

Michelle’s consommé was a well-dressed, low-maintenance version. She started with a rotisserie chicken and a box of store-bough chicken broth, and let the two simmer together with ginger and lemongrass, and enough spice to really get the nose running. We chopped basil and cilantro and mint up good and fine, stirred it into the strained liquid, and served it in big mugs, along with lime juice and thin hot pepper slices.

It was as convincing as chicken soup, but bright, and fiery, and somehow quite springlike, with the soft, sweet herbs floating on top. The night got cold more quickly than any of us expected, and when we went outside to wait for the pork to cook, the consommé was a necessary companion. I almost didn’t want dinner to come.

Then the pork came out, with silk stockings around each and every string of muscle, and we ate it with Frank’s lemon gnocchi, and we were ohso happy we hadn’t stopped at soup.

I made Michelle’s soup again a couple nights ago, only for dinner, with shredded chicken, to feed the cold Jim contracted in Boise. (Last weekend, he and my brother had another adventure. They rode Bogus Basin Road, 16 miles and 3,000 feet up. At the top, they got caught in a thunderstorm. Jim stuffed his jacket, Tour-style, with the first 100 pages of a phone book, to stay warmer on the way down. Even so, the next day, he was sick sick sick. We thought perhaps it was consumption. Or SARS.)

I left the herbs whole this time, simply because they seemed more fortifying that way.

Sure enough, when Jim left for Finland this weekend (I do hope we’ll hear from him here, but no promises), he seemed stronger.

Maybe it’s just a cold. Or maybe it’s The Soup that Cures Everything.

I certainly feel better.

Chicken Soup for the Road Biker’s Cold (PDF)
When your immune system gets caught in the undertow, you need a soup that sasses back. Here’s a spicy Asian-inspired broth for spring, whose bright spice and fragrant whole herbs make eating chicken soup out of “soup season” an actual pleasure. This shortcut version, based on one my friend Michelle makes, is spicy enough to warm you up, but if you’re really under the weather, load up on the chilies (or use a spicier variety) and smoke the bad stuff right out.

For a more filling soup, turn it into a version of pho, with vermicelli and bean sprouts, or stir in chopped spring vegetables, like asparagus, chard, peas, and green garlic.

TIME: 20 minutes active time
MAKES: 4 servings

3 1/2 to 4 pound rotisserie chicken (look for a plain flavor)
2 carrots, cut into chunks
1 medium onion, cut into chunks
4 cups low-sodium chicken broth
2” piece ginger (about 1” in diameter), peeled and thinly sliced
3 stalks lemongrass, cut into 1” chunks (white and light green parts only)
5 peppercorns
5 cilantro stems
2 red jalapeno peppers, very thinly sliced (seeds included)
Juice of 2 medium limes
Salt
2 teaspoons Asian fish sauce (or to taste)
4 big stalks Thai basil
4 big stalks mint
1 cup cilantro

If your chicken has any sort of wacky seasoning on it, remove the skin. (Your dog will be happy to help, if it’s not crisp and delicious enough for your standards.) Remove much of the chicken’s breast and thigh meat and shred it. (You should have 4 loosely packed cups of meat, and enough meat left on the bones to flavor the broth.) Set aside.

Place the chicken carcass in a large soup pot, and add the next 7 ingredients, along with about 10 cups cold water. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a strong simmer and cook for 1 hour.

Add one jalapeno’s worth of pepper slices, and simmer for 5 minutes longer. Strain the broth carefully through a fine-mesh sieve, and return to a clean pot. Add the lime juice, and season with salt and fish sauce, to taste.

Divide the chicken and remaining jalapeno slices between 4 large bowls. Add broth to each bowl and top with herbs. Serve immediately.

Graduation

It’s been an eventful ten days, in the most literal sense: My best friend moved to Seattle. My husband turned 30. My little sister graduated from high school.

Yes, I have a 17-year-old sister. I have a picture of us on a ridge near our parents’ house in Boise, Idaho, taken the week I left for college, the summer a forest fire engulfed the hills around our home. She was six. I like it because the way I’m carrying her, her dark hair blends into the charred earth behind us, and it sort of looks like she’s on fire, too.

It’s appropriate, for such a driven person. When I was in high school, Allison was the kind of kid who would hold her breath until she turned blue, just to beat me.

She’s still tenacious. She has an amazing intellectual wingspan. She’s funny, and remarkably beautiful. And she’s turning into the sort of friend I look up to unconditionally. (But whatever you say, I’m still taller.)

Last weekend, we all gathered around her and clucked. It must have driven her crazy, the way we talked about her like she wasn’t even in the room, all weekend long. (If you think being an only child sounds hard, try fending off two parents and two (much) older siblings, and their significant others.) We chirped about her summer job, what her friends are doing, what she should adjust on her road bike, where she’s going to college. . .

That last bit is a delicate topic. See, she’s not quite sure. She still might go to Middlebury, where my brother and I went, or to UW, in Seattle.

I loved Middlebury, and I’m sure she would, too. (She’ll succeed anywhere.) But when I was back east, I missed Allison’s childhood. I sent twigs for her nest, but I was not always there to help build it. My heart does a little dance when I think of her coming to UW. I’ve been fantasizing about her showing up at our house on Sundays, to have dinner and do her laundry in our basement.

All weekend, the family balanced there, together, in a strange, exciting void between celebration and uncertainty. When Allison wasn’t home, we volleyed the advantages of Vermont and Washington back and forth with equal weight. I can’t imagine the conflict inside her head, but I do think I know, with the advantage of hindsight, that she’ll be happy at either place. And we’ll be happy, too, wherever she is.

On Monday morning, the day before graduation, I volunteered my brother Josh to make crepes. We’ve never been a pancake or waffle sort of family, but crepes – doled one at a time out of a hot, buttery pan – are commonplace.

A crepe is a pancake’s overachieving sibling. The batter pools onto a hot pan and runs across it, instead of plopping down and sitting there, like a pancake would. On a relaxing morning, pancakes watch television. Crepes play Wii.

I don’t make them often in my own home. I have a good blue steel pan, and know how to make the thin, demanding batter skitter across a film of bubbling butter and lace up all pretty. I love how they taste, but I just don’t do it. Crepes are the cornerstone to Howe holiday mornings, and to me, they seem most at home on an oak dining table in the Boise foothills.

Josh left home with a different impression. In San Francisco, he makes crepes weekly, almost, folded up with goat cheese, bacon, and chives, or rolled around chicken and mushrooms for dinner. Though I have every confidence in my own crepe-making ability, it somehow felt funny to step up to the stove with him in the room. He’s a damn good cook, and he’s inherited my father’s status as crepe-maker.

He blended up a batch of all whole-wheat crepe batter, using the local milk my mom has started buying. We inherited the same willingness to tinker in the kitchen; he added pinches of this or that until something inside him determined the batter was perfect.

Crepe batter needs a good rest. Normally, my mother makes it the night before, and it sleeps in the fridge, where the flour’s proteins relax, so it pours smoothly the next day, and the crepes yield easily between the teeth. On Monday, we made another pot of coffee, and put the blender aside for a quick nap.

No one in my family sits still very well. (If you think I’m energetic for someone with lupus, you should meet my mother. You’ll understand how much I have slowed down.) Yet there we were, drinking coffee and sitting, remembering J.R. Simplot on Memorial Day, listening as his giant flag snapped this way and that in the wind, at half mast. (Yes, the king of potatoes has passed.)

May is the best that way, in Boise. The weather’s never good enough to encourage early action, nor hot enough to insist on it. The month just stimulates coffee consumption.

Josh showed me how he knows the batter is thin enough in the blender. After it rested, we had to add a bit more milk, because the whole wheat seemed to swell up a bit. I chopped strawberries, and he started pouring and flipping, topping and serving:

If you’ve made crepes, you know it wasn’t Josh’s fault; the first crepe is dependably ugly. The pan is always too hot, or not hot enough, or not centered over the flame, or perhaps just needs a good therapy session. The longer it’s been since its last use, the more cantankerous the pan is likely to be. (That’s all part of it.)

As soon as Josh unwrapped the butter for the pan, my dad hit his chair, effectively claiming the first one, no matter what it looked like. The rest of the family sat down at the table, waiting for Josh to pick the next recipient, while he tucked strawberries, or bananas and walnuts, inside, and topped each one with a dollop of whipped cream. I held the plates.

When the fruit was gone, I took a turn, filling the last one with walnuts and cinnamon and sugar, and watched as the cream slid down the hot crepe. (If the cream stays on top, there’s a problem. Either the cream is not real, or the crepe is not hot.)

Instead of eating by turn and leaving the table, like we usually do, coming back for the next round when the crepe-maker calls, we all stayed in the kitchen, enjoying each others’ company. And wondering, no doubt, when we’ll be making crepes together next, and where.

Josh’s Whole Wheat Crepes (PDF)
My brother Josh’s more nutritious version of the family’s crepe recipe reminds us of true buckwheat crepes from Brittany, but they’re a lot less fussy. Made with all whole-wheat flour, the batter may thicken a little upon standing; feel free to adjust it as you go. (Josh says the key element to making crepes is using your judgment, instead of staying glued to a recipe. If the batter seems to thick, add milk. Too thin? Add flour. Pan too hot? Cool it down. Crepes not browning? Turn the heat up. Too greasy? Less butter. Et cetera.) You want a batter that’s thin enough to run across a hot pan when you swivel it around in your hand, but beyond that, crepes are much more flexible than you might think. Traditional French crepes are paper-thin, but we tend to pour them a little thicker, so more actually make it to the breakfast table.

Fill crepes with chopped fresh fruit and top with whipped cream, or sprinkle with sugar and lemon before folding. For savory crepes, omit the sugar, and add a bit more salt, plus a handful of finely chopped herbs, if you’re feeling adventuresome.

And for goodness’ sake, don’t make them all at once and keep them in the oven. Serve them hot, the instant they come out of the pan.

MAKES: 6 servings

2 cups milk (plus more, if needed)
2 large eggs
1 stick unsalted butter, melted, plus more for the pan
1 1/2 tablespoons sugar
3/4 teaspoon Kosher salt
1 2/3 cups whole wheat flour

Combine the milk, eggs, melted butter, sugar, salt and 1 cup flour in a blender, and whirl until smooth, scraping down the sides of the glass, if necessary. Add all or most of the remaining flour, a bit at a time, until the batter has roughly the consistency of drinkable yogurt (very thin for pancake batter, but not runny). Let the batter sit at least 30 minutes at room temperature, or overnight in the refrigerator. (Bring the batter back to room temperature before continuing.)

Before cooking, thin the batter with a bit more milk, if it seems substantially thicker.

Preheat a crepe pan or large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. When hot, grease with a dollop of butter (using a stick of butter to smear some directly on the skillet works nicely), and add enough batter to coat the skillet in a thin, even layer when you swivel the skillet around in your hand. (The actual amount of batter will depend on the size of your pan and the thickness of the batter; we used about 1/4 cup.) Cook for a couple minutes, until you see bubbles in the center of the crepe and the bottom side is nicely browned. Flip carefully and cook another couple minutes on the other side. Fill as desired and serve immediately. Repeat with the remaining batter.

Brownies, for a mission

It was a ridiculous mission.

My husband, brother, and a few friends decided to climb Mt. Shasta in a day. It’s a big mountain, to put it mildly, and it was only when Jim dropped me off in Portland, where I was to spend the weekend with my grandmother, that I realized how scared I was about having two of the men I love most in the world being up on that mountain together. Individually, they’re both smart, fit, and snow-savvy; together, they’re . . .well, you know how boys can be.

People ask me what I’d want for my last meal with a regularity I find stunning. I rarely think of my own morbidity, and, frankly, I think the concept of picking just one meal to cherish is a little ridiculous. Yet, when Jim was packing for the trip, I found myself flipping through recipes in my head, trying to think of the perfect thing for either he or my brother to have, should one of them find himself stuck on the side of a 14,000-foot peak, awaiting care.

I’ve been awfully heavy on the sweets here recently, but of course, I had to make brownies – a whole wheat, espresso-laden version of the ones in the back of June’s Gourmet. Jim is hopelessly addicted to the (coffee) bean, and over the last few years, my brother has been steadily working his way through one fudgy, dark chocolate brownie recipe after the next, hoping to find The One.

If you don’t count the hours I spent lying awake in bed, worrying, I had a lovely weekend. (Really, I was only there for 36 hours.)

I took my grandmother to the Portland farmers’ market for the first time, and we sat on a bench together, our knees touching, with a barbecued pork sandwich balanced nicely between our four kneecaps. We browsed at Powell’s, and took our purchases into the Anthropologie across the street, because really, what’s a book without a good couch? (No one seemed to mind.)

I read The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, which was excellent, except it made me think of people having freak accidents and dying. Poor timing, I guess.

While we wandered and ate, the climbers slept for 3 hours, hiked and skied for 14 hours (up the red, down the blue), and summited with enough altitude sickness to prevent them from planning the next trip before they said their goodbyes. (In my opinion, this constitutes a perfect outcome.)

By the time they hit Portland, they were exhausted. I drove them home in the early, early morning to the sound of a full snore-chestra. There was a drummer behind me, playing a slow, low beat on a set of Timpani drums, and a much more delicate sleeper, whispering a soft rhythm, in and out, like those little brushes drummers use on their symbols. Behind me, I honestly couldn’t say who made which noise, but in the front seat, my husband honked out a most unmusical bleat. He was sitting upright, in the position one uses when one needs sleep in the most desperate way but would like to appear awake: shoulders hunched, chin pushed forward, spine bent awkwardly forward, like a flower toward the sun. Every once in a while, he would have a limb spasm and fall against the dashboard or the window, and I would giggle, there in the drivers’ seat, happy to have laughter replace chewing on my fingertips as the best means of keeping myself awake.

The best way to stay awake at 2 a.m., of course, is food. I ate Swedish Fish, which I hate, as a rule, but when I asked Jim for candy at the gas station, they were the only thing he came back with.

I’m so glad he’s home, but I haven’t quite forgiven him for not telling me there were brownies left in the backseat.

Whole Wheat Bittersweet Espresso Brownies (PDF)
This recipe is adapted from Ruth Cousineau’s recipe for Deep Chocolate Brownies, in the back of the June 2008 issue of Gourmet magazine. She called for chocolate no stronger than 60% cacao, but I used Trader Joe’s 72%. I used white whole wheat flour exclusively for this recipe – even for preparing the baking pan – and the results were sensational (especially if you’re looking for brownies with two sources of caffeine). For the prettiest results, do allow the brownies to cool completely in the pan before cutting and transporting.

TIME: 20 minutes active time
MAKES: 30 good-sized brownies

2 sticks (1/2 pound) unsalted butter, plus more for the pan
8 ounces bittersweet chocolate
1/4 cup espresso beans, very finely ground
2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
5 large eggs, room temperature
2/3 cup white whole wheat flour, plus more for the pan
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees, and center a rack in the middle of the oven. Butter and flour a 13” by 9” baking pan, and set aside.

Melt the butter and chocolate in a 3-quart heavy saucepan over low heat, stirring until smooth. When the chocolate has melted, add the ground coffee, and let sit until lukewarm.

Whisk in the sugar and vanilla, then add the eggs, one at a time, whisking between additions until the mixture is thick and glossy.

Whisk together the flour, cocoa power, and salt, and stir into the chocolate mixture, just until the flour is combined.

Spread the batter in an even layer in the pan and bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out with a few crumbs attached, 30 to 35 minutes. Cool completely, then cut into squares.

Christmas, in May(ne)

I felt like a bit of a fugitive, slipping through Boston without telling a soul. I wrote a friend afterward: I hope you understand. I’d committed to the trip months before, and when I started flaring again, I just couldn’t bear the thought of traveling for more than one reason. I didn’t want to cancel the whole thing, but I wanted to be healthy.

It was the right decision. I’d planned to spend the week in Maine, with Kathy, testing and developing recipes for her next cookbook.

Just as the plane left Seattle, it seems, the new drug regimen blossomed into a bit of energy, and we spent four delicious days pretending to cook for the holidays. (If you don’t feel like you’re appreciating May, try cooking 35 recipes without peas, asparagus, or rhubarb.)

I met Kathy about six years ago. Technically, she’s my husband’s aunt’s first cousin. The aunt introduced us when I was in culinary school (thanks, Kim!), thinking I might learn a thing or two from a seasoned cookbook author. I marched right into Kathy’s kitchen and demanded and internship, and since then, our lives have tumbled together. (Oh, how I’ve learned.) She’s become a mentor, and a dear friend. Since we moved to Seattle, I’ve missed the creative energy that simmers up and out of my brain when we cook together.

I’ve also missed her coffee. (She makes the best coffee.) This week, it helped us blaze through the better part of a book. (I can’t tell you much, but I can tell you there’s a holiday book I’ll be recommending next year.) We alternated cooking with eating, eating with baking, baking with typing, typing with snacking.

There were naps involved, great flops onto Kathy’s red couch that recharged our appetites as much as our energy.

We had people over for dinner, there in her big farmhouse, and it really was a little like Christmas, sitting at the table long after we’d finished our last bites.

There are few houses in this world where a typical night involves a mom quizzing her daughter on her anatomy homework, while the daughter cracks lobsters open for her for lobster stew.

Where lunch means leftover rolled, stuffed leg of lamb and a slice of pork roast:

Where cooking with another person means standing over a fried egg together in the morning before the caffeine has kicked in, one person salting and one person peppering, arms moving in concert like they belong to the same body.

I had a lovely time. We worked hard, but it almost felt like vacation.

The problem now is that I’m awfully tired of eating.

At least, I thought I was, until I fell in love with a berry display.

At first, it seemed like a good idea to just buy them, despite the price, and go on a fresh fruit binge for a few days, to clear away that post-Thanksgiving blah feeling. (And oh. My. How the steroids bump up the appetite.)

But looking at the strawberries and blueberries en masse like that, all cozied together like they were gearing up for a nap in the oven, my mind cartwheeled toward a bubbling berry crisp.

Then, standing there in the produce section with the little clamshells stacked up in my cart, I did some quick math, and almost fainted. I do not have $28 for a berry crisp, I thought. I heard George Bush, the devil on my shoulder, blathering on about a tax refund. Dan Barber popped up on the other side, and I remembered how I’d stocked up on frozen blueberries and raspberries at a farmers’ market recently (for less than what I’d pay in the freezer section at Whole Foods, mind you). I bought frozen strawberries, and headed home, where my hazelnut cache was waiting.

Three Berry Crisp (PDF)
Before summer really comes, it’s hard to find berries plump enough to simmer into a juicy, full-flavored crisp. Using frozen berries (especially if you have the good fortune to buy them locally) is a good alternative if you can’t wait for July, and it can also be more economical. Here, I’ve spent the savings on hazelnuts for a deliciously nutty, gingery topping, but you could substitute chopped walnuts, pecans, or sliced almonds.

TIME: 30 minutes active time
MAKES: 6 to 8 servings

For the fruit:
1 pound frozen blueberries
1 pound frozen strawberries
1 pound frozen raspberries
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon ground ginger

For the topping:
3/4 cup old-fashioned oats
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup (packed) dark brown sugar
1 cup chopped hazelnuts
1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
7 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

In a large bowl, stir all the fruit ingredients together until the flour coats all pieces. Transfer to a 9” x 13” baking dish (or similar), and bake for 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, in the same bowl, stir all the topping ingredients except the butter together to blend. Drizzle the melted butter over the top, and stir until all ingredients are moistened.

After 20 minutes, remove the berries, stir to combine, and sprinkle the topping in an even layer over the berries, pushing it all the way to the edges of the pan. Bake another 30 to 40 minutes, or until the topping is browned and the filling is bubbling.

Crunch Time

It wasn’t a baguette I wanted, when the dentist finally gave me carte blanche to eat anything at all. I needed something more violent, something with so much crunch it prevented me from hearing the person next to me speak. It came in the form of a hazelnut granola.

When I settled on what to stir into the oats – hazelnuts (hardly chopped), fat strips of chewy unsweetened coconut, and sticky black currants – it sounded like quite a mouthful.

But I wanted the kind of granola that needs to be shoveled in on overloaded spoonfuls, the kind whose deep, sweet flavors force a person to inadvertently take bites so big that a little piece, maybe a cluster of ginger-scented oats or a whole toasted hazelnut, pops right out and splashes back into the bowl. I needed a breakfast that dropped flavors into every crevice in my mouth (especially the ones that used to be off-limits).

So yes, hazelnut-coconut-blackcurrant granola is a bit of a mouthful. But my mouth was ready.

Hazelnut-Coconut-Blackcurrant Granola (PDF)
If you can find it, unsweetened large flake coconut is the best type for this recipe. I use the kind made by Bob’s Red Mill, which comes in fat shavings about an inch long.

For extra nutty flavor, use a nut oil instead of plain old canola.

TIME: 20 minutes active time
MAKES: about 15 cups granola

3 cups hazelnuts
1 cup honey
1/2 cup (packed) brown sugar
1 18-ounce container (6 1/2 cups) old-fashioned oats
2 cups unsweetened large flake coconut
1 cup dried blackcurrants (about 6 ounces)
1/3 cup flaxseed meal
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 cup canola or nut oil (such as walnut, hazelnut, or pecan oil)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Place the hazelnuts on a parchment-lined baking sheet, and bake for about 10 minutes, until the nuts’ skins crack and begin to lift off the nuts themselves. Let cool for 10 minutes, or until the skins stop crackling and whispering. (You’ll hear them.) Transfer the nuts to a clean tea towel a handful at a time, and rub between layers of the towel to remove as much of the loose skins as possible. When all the nuts are rubbed mostly clean (no need to be too strict, ya hear?), give them a rough chop and transfer them to a large mixing bowl.

Combine the honey and brown sugar in a small saucepan and cook over low heat, stirring, until the sugar has dissolved completely. Set aside.

Add the remaining ingredients to the bowl with the hazelnuts, and stir until very well blended. Drizzle the honey and sugar mixture on top, and stir again until the sweeteners coat all ingredients.

Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or silicon baking mats. Divide the granola between the two sheets, spreading it into an even layer on each sheet, and bake for 35 to 40 minutes, stirring the granola and rotating sheets top to bottom and back to front a few times during baking. The granola is done when it’s uniformly deep golden brown.

Let the granola cool to room temperature on the baking sheets, undisturbed. Break apart and store in an airtight container.

Get behind the mule and plow

On Sunday, I bought pinto beans from Buck, at Alvarez Farms’ Ballard Farmers’ Market stand, thinking I could make real refried beans:

On Monday, Jim came home to find me sprawled out in the sunbeam on the floor of our office, snow angel style, except very still. I stared up at him and asked him not to make me move. The combination of riding our bikes to the market and a three-mile walk had been too much the day before, and even with a two-hour nap, I couldn’t kick the fatigue. I’d thawed out a pound of ground beef, hoping I could work up enough excitement to make tacos with homemade shells for Cinco de Mayo, with the refried beans.

Jim decided it wasn’t a good idea for me to use a knife. “Plus, you’re probably very dirty,” he said. “Have you seen that floor up close?”

I suggested going out, since I hadn’t done anything with the beans yet anyway, and he, Mr. I Love Mexican, refused. (He always refuses to do the expected.)

Then, my husband offered to make me spaghetti and meatballs. (He’s the best that way. I’d be so sick of being my pick-me-up, in his position, but he always finds the right thing to say.) Lying on the floor, feeling the warmth of the pine planks soothe my back, it sounded like the best idea in the world. He told me to stay put.

“That would be wonderful,” I said, and decided to do my very best not to coach. He checked his email and showered, and my sun hid behind the back fence.

One thing, I thought. I’ll just get out all the stuff he could put in the meatballs. That nearly-dead head of parsley. That half an onion. The right pan. I got up.

“What’s this?” he asked, pointing to the pan.

“For searing meatballs.”

“I can’t do them in the oven?”

“You can. But if you do them on the stove, you can just dump the sauce in on top, and let them simmer, and it’s fewer dishes.” Ah ha. Trump card. I had revealed that there was premade sauce somewhere in the house.

I piled a few things onto the counter, then I really did sit down to read.

He sounded like an unpracticed ping-pong player in the kitchen, rattling around without the habitual patterns that come to someone who cooks frequently in the same space. Three drawers would open before he’d find what he was looking for. When he began snapping the tongs open and shut over and over, I could tell he was standing over the meatballs, waiting for them to cook, instead of flitting off to start a different task, like I might have done. I wished I could watch him.

I don’t know how long it took. It was long enough for me to finish a magazine, which I rarely do. Long enough for a neighbor to knock on the door and announce, “Wow! It smells like chicken livers!” (I don’t think Jim liked that part. It smelled nothing like chicken livers.)

It was long enough for me to recognize the way a dinner’s smells rustle themselves up and out of a kitchen, and make the one who’s being cooked for feel darn near queenlike.

When it was done, he called me in.

There, simmering in the high-sided skillet, was a gorgeous sauce. It looked like a Bolognese, only the meat had more body.

“Is this meatball sauce?” I asked carefully.

“Yeah,” he said. “Your meatball theory doesn’t work. They started to burn, so I had to scramble them into a sauce.”

I decided not to argue about my “theory.”

“So we’re having bucatini with scrambled meatball sauce?”

“Yes,” he said. He piled pasta into our bowls a little awkwardly, and smothered it with his creation. He showered everything with Parmesan cheese.

Meatballs are always better than the sum of their parts, and this sauce – flecked with egg, breadcrumbs, cheese, herbs, and the oatmeal his mother always uses in her meatballs – was better still, because there was no cutting involved. Each bite of pasta had just the right amount of meat. I swooned, and he sat, eating quietly, and I could tell he was proud of himself (and maybe a little surprised). I couldn’t have wished for anything more on May 5th.

“Babe,” I said, mouth full. “This is amazing.”

“Maybe I should cook with you more,” he said tentatively, and I agreed. He promised he’d make the sauce again, so I could write down the recipe.

After dinner, I told Jim about how I’d heard Tom Waits playing at a coffee shop that morning. I’d decided it was a Tom Waits sort of day, all grumbly and growly, when it could have been so nice. “That’s the whole premise of that one album,” he said. “The song that goes ‘Some days, you just have to get behind the mule and plow.’ Even on the bad days, you just have to keep on going.”

He’s right. You have to rest, but you also have to plow.

I put the pinto beans in a bowl of water to soak, and decided we’d have Cinco de Mayo a day late.

It’s been a rough week or two, lupus-wise. New symptoms. New meds. Spoon counting, again. Maybe this is what the rune reader meant by “patience.” Tuesday morning, I woke up exhausted again, and tried to remind myself, every now and then during the day, that it’s okay not to feel good. Even when it gets all annoying and grumbly, illness does not equal failure.

Somewhere during the day, I found my way to the grocery store, and stocked up on poblanos and fresh chili powder. I sautéed onions and spring garlic from the market in my favorite pot, then softened the peppers, and stirred in the soaked beans and spices. I covered the pot, put it in the oven without setting a timer, and took a long nap.

Two hours later, I did feel better. We scooped piles of mild, simple, slow-cooked pinto-poblano chili up with quesadilla triangles, and relaxed together.

I feel much better today. Go figure.

Baked Pinto Poblano Chili (PDF)
Once cooked, dried pinto beans plump up with a soft, almost meaty texture no can could match. Making chili with dried beans may sound like more work, but it’s not, especially when you just tuck it into the oven to cook for a couple hours, completely undisturbed.

If you don’t have time to soak the beans overnight, place them in a pot and add water to cover. Bring to a boil, then let sit for an hour before draining, rinsing, and continuing as directed.

Also, you can substitute 3 cloves chopped garlic for the spring garlic, if you don’t have access to the leek-like garlic shoots that farmers’ market often sell in the spring.

TIME: 30 minutes active time
MAKES: 6 to 8 servings

1 pound dried pinto beans
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 bunch spring garlic (about 6 stalks, 1” in diameter at thickest point), chopped (white and green parts)
Salt and freshly ground pepper
3 poblano peppers, seeded and chopped
2 tablespoons ancho chili powder
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 tablespoon chopped fresh oregano (or 1 teaspoon dried oregano)
4 cups vegetable or chicken broth
1 (15-ounce) can tomato sauce
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 (15-ounce) can corn (or 1 1/2 cups fresh kernels, if available)
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
Cotija or crumbled goat cheese, for garnish

Place the beans in a large bowl and add water to cover by 2 inches. Let soak overnight, then rinse and drain.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Heat a large, heavy pot with a lid (such as a Dutch oven) on the stove over medium heat. Add the oil, then the onions and spring garlic. Season with salt and pepper, and cook and stir for 10 minutes, until soft. Add the poblanos, spices, and oregano, and cook and stir another minute or two. Add the beans, broth, tomato sauce, vinegar, and brown sugar, season again, and bring to a simmer, stirring occasionally. Cover the pot, and bake in the oven for 2 hours, undisturbed.

Stir in the corn and cilantro, and season to taste with additional salt and pepper, if necessary. Serve hot, sprinkled with cheese.

Butter and coconut

When a pound of butter stands up in the fridge and yells – really hollers – about not being used enough around here these days, it’s dangerous not to listen.

That’s what happened yesterday. I got to thinking about macaroons, and my butter’s blocky limbs started waving around every time I went for the juice. My friend Cheryl, who’s my instant go-to when it comes to anything coconut, told me to hold off on the macaroons, if my mouth wasn’t up for the chewing.

“Patience, sister, patience,” she wrote. “The only thing worse than not having macaroons is having to eat them gingerly. Macaroons are meant to be chewed and gnawed over. Wait until you’re good and ready.”

She was right, of course. But the butter.

I turned to one of her recipes, a real homage to coconut with enough chocolate to make my heart start pounding in one quick glance. (It’s funny. I’d made them before, for a personal chef client, but I’d never actually tried them myself, because I didn’t think I’d like the coconut. How times change.)

I made a few minor adjustments, adding whole wheat flour – nothing you’ll really notice – and substituting dark chocolate chips for Cheryl’s milk chocolate chunks. (I also skipped the 1/4 teaspoon almond extract, simply because I didn’t have it, but I’m sure it would be delicious.) The cookies had just the coconut flavor I craved, and a consistency soft enough for my tender palate.

Last night, a friend of ours got a sweet new job offer, so we took the batch to their house, to share, and celebrate. Then today, my friend Sarah and I spent the morning gardening in the rain, and Cheryl’s cookies were really just the thing, when we got tired of pulling weeds.

I’m a little embarrassed to say the cookies gone already. (It’s been 25 hours.)

Thank goodness I have more butter.

Cheryl’s Double-Chocolate Coconut Cookies (PDF)
This recipe, by Cheryl Sternman Rule, has been changed only slightly from its original incarnation, which appeared in Lora Brody’s tasty chronicle of Yankee flavor, The New England Table. Cheryl’s note in the original says the cookies will freeze beautifully, but I doubt you’ll have any left.

TIME: 30 minutes active time
MAKES: three dozen

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup white whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup regular cocoa powder
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
2/3 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
2/3 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups sweetened flaked coconut
1 1/2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line two baking sheets (or three, if you have three oven racks) with parchment paper or silicon baking mats, and set aside.

Sift the first five ingredients into a medium bowl, and set aside. In the work bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter and both sugars on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes, scraping down the sides of the bowl a few times along the way. Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing well between additions. Add the vanilla, and mix well. With the mixer on low speed, add the dry ingredients and blend just until incorporated. Fold in the coconut and chocolate chips.

Drop the batter by heaping tablespoonfuls onto the baking sheets, about 12 cookies per sheet. (Bake in the center of the oven for 12 to 14 minutes, rotating sheets top to bottom and front to back halfway through. The cookies are done when the edges are firm and the centers lose their shine. (You will never see them brown, obviously.) Cool cookies on sheets for 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

The sandwich I really wanted

The toothbrush I’ve been using for the last two weeks is wimpy. It’s a fat blue thing, designed for the floppy hands of someone doped up on Vicodin for much longer than I was, with a pittance of soft bristles that do more mopping than actual brushing. It’s the dead fish handshake of the toothbrush world. I hated it.

Today, I graduated to a specially-designed “sensitive brush,” which is about halfway to the real thing. I never knew I could be so excited about a toothbrush. But I am, because it heralds a sure march back to the world of real food.

I was three bites in, last Saturday in Colorado, when I realized I was eating bread for the first time in more than a week. It was store-bought garlic bread, the spineless, squishy kind that you warm up in a metallic bag. As we shoveled it in late that night, mopping up the last of two Stouffer’s lasagnas, it occurred to me that there are times when good, crusty bread is exactly what you don’t want. We were gathered in John’s kitchen after the service, ten people perched on chairs and counters and stairs instead of spread out at the table in the next room. I thought it fitting, how even though Susie wasn’t there with us, we were gathered around the spot where she might have been, eating food that comforted us the way she did. (A kitchen always comforts, I guess.) I couldn’t imagine a better meal.

For me, of course, biting into the bread without risking dental upheaval was a nice thrill. I felt like I’d advanced to a new level of healing. I got cocky.

On the way back to the airport the next day, we hit a café in Glenwood Springs, where we saw a coconut curried chicken salad sandwich on the board. (You know how I feel about chicken salad.) Just saying the word “sandwich” made me feel like a reckless teenager; the idea of shredded coconut in chicken salad delighted me to the point of public squealing. (I’ve never been a big coconut fan before, beyond the milk, but I think it’s safe to say I’m on the front end of an undeniable love affair with the stuff. It must have started with lust for something I couldn’t have. Doesn’t it always.)

I hung back in line at the café to gauge the sandwich’s safety, see if looked soft enough to eat, and when I saw one come out on a wheaty version of Wonder bread, I decided to take the plunge. I’d chewed the garlic bread without doing any damage – how different could it be, eating a doughy sandwich with mushy stuff inside?

Mouth-wise, it was fine; I took tiny bites and rolled everything back to the good molars, away from the still-tender tissue in the front of my mouth. I have graduated to soft sandwiches, too.

The chicken salad was another story. There were big, dry chunks of chicken, slathered with a curried mayonnaise too thin to give the salad any real mouthfeel, along with overwithered cranberries and zilch in the way of coconut. I was happy to be eating regular food, but disappointed that the sammy’s insides didn’t have much in the way of flavor, especially given the amount of mayonnaise involved.

Today, spurred by sandwiches in the news, I made the flavorful, yeilding chicken salad I’d wanted. I slathered chicken breasts with spices and roasted them right on the bone, so they stayed moist, and whirled the meat around in my KitchenAid, so it got good and shreddy without much effort from my hands. I added Madras curry, and thick Greek yogurt, and the bittiest dollop of real mayonnaise, along with basil and scallions and a hefty dose of toasted unsweetened coconut. It stirred up into the sort of fine-textured chicken salad that makes you want to get out the ice cream scoop, an avocado half, and a fat butter lettuce leaf, and pretend it’s 1975.

I know it will be better tomorrow, when the curry has had more of chance to do its business, but waiting didn’t seem to be an option today. I piled it onto my favorite seeded bread (have your sandwiches met Dave yet? He’s our new hero.), along with fat slices of avocado, and ate myself silly.

Going for the seeded bread was a little aggressive (even though I put the toast on a wet cutting board before assembling the sandwich, so it would soften a little), but now that I’ve conquered the sandwich, I have big aspirations for this almost-healed mouth of mine. Tomorrow, I’ll have another scoop of chicken salad, maybe on naan or soft pita.

But soon, I’ll be eating apples and tortilla chips and, big, sharp slabs of chocolate. Just you wait.

Curried Coconut Chicken Salad (PDF)
In my opinion, chicken salad is best when the chicken is shredded, as opposed to cubed, because it allows the flavorings – in this case freshly chopped basil, scallions, curry, and a delicious dose of toasted coconut – to wedge themselves into little crevices, in each and every bite. I “shred” my chicken in a stand mixer because it’s easier for me, but you could certainly use your hands or a fork. Adding chopped apples and walnuts or cashews would make this is a more traditional curried chicken salad.

Before you begin adding curry powder, taste it first, and judge how much you need based on its strength.

TIME: 40 minutes active time
MAKES: enough for 4 or 5 sandwiches

2 large chicken breasts on the bone (about 2 pounds total)
2 teaspoons extra virgin olive oil
2 1/2 teaspoons Madras curry powder
1/2 teaspoon Kosher salt, plus more to taste
Freshly ground pepper
1 (7 ounce) container 2% Greek yogurt
2 tablespoons mayonnaise
1/4 cup chopped fresh scallions
1/4 cup (packed) chopped fresh basil
1/2 cup toasted unsweetened coconut

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Place the chicken in a large pan fitted with a roasting rack. Stir the olive oil and one teaspoon of the curry powder together in a small bowl with the salt and a good grinding of pepper, and rub the mixture all over the chicken, in a thin layer. Roast for 40 to 45 minutes, or until the chicken reaches 165 degrees at the thickest part on an instant-read thermometer. Set aside to cool.

When cool, pull the chicken off the bone and cut it into 1” pieces. (You should have a generous three cups.) In the work bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, shred the chicken using on-off motions until you reach the desired consistency. Add the remaining 1 1/2 teaspoons curry powder, plus the yogurt, mayonnaise, scallions, basil, and coconut. Stir to blend, and season to taste with salt and pepper.

Sorting and reading

I’m all tumbled up inside. We went to Colorado this weekend, to celebrate a loved one who had decided not to say that she was dying. It was, I think, the kind of gathering she’d envisioned, but I can’t chase the feeling of juggling too many emotions. There’s the surprise, that she had cancer at all, and the sadness, that she’s gone. There’s heartbreak, because she suffered the evilest death, but also happiness, because she had the kind of sweetness and charisma and kindness that made us all want to come together to think about her.

That’s just what we did. It seemed easy, hopping on a plane, then driving out I-70, to their house in the desert. It was the thing to do, so we did it. We hugged and cried and smiled and talked, but now, after the service, when there’s nothing left to do, it’s harder. Bill Withers comes on the radio, and I weep into my tea. We’ll miss her.

Anyway. It certainly puts things into perspective, as death always seems to do so effectively. There I was, whining about the weather and my stupid mouth, when she was fighting, literally, for her life. I need to find a sorting hat, and spend some time thinking it all out.

It’s been a while, I think, since I shared what I’ve been working on. Today, that feels like a safe topic. (Most links are PDFs.)

From Sunset magazine, a day with Bakery Nouveau’s William Leaman, something about Seattle’s Skillet Street Food, and a little ditty on learning my manners at Seattle’s Fairmont hotel.

Edible Seattle, a new local food magazine, is also out. The recipes aren’t available online yet, but pick one up (at Metropolitan Market, for example). Them’s tasty recipes. (Here’s a little more about what the magazine is about.)

In Seattle Metropolitan magazine, there’s been stuff about green garlic (from April) and