It's a "Shoo"-in.

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I'll be attempting a few audience-pleasers in the kitchen. My father gave the Pennsylvania Dutch to me, so I'm going to surprise him with a home-made wet-bottom shoo fly pie. I have a feeling I won't have any problems with the flies, but I might be "shoo"-ing away a few humans.

R(ea(t)d This.

This book is the key to my destiny. It is the most inspirational text I've picked up in years. Not since oh, geez, I don't know, my first reading of Katherine Hepburn's autobiography? have I been this inspired. Well that isn't true, and it isn't the point. I would like to buy a copy of this book for everyone I know.

Moo Cluck

Moo Cluck vegan chocolate chip cookies are not the same as regular chocolate chip cookies. There are no eggs or dairy products in the ingredients, and even though it says there is real chocolate in there somewhere, neither of us could figure out where. We ate them anyway, after big bowls of really delicious roasted red pepper soup and some little grilled cheese sandwiches that were mostly just grilled spelt bread. I made my cookies extra vegan by eating them with a big mug of cold milk.

I haven't been cooking.

My colleague told me during his first year of teaching he lost 20 pounds. "I would go all day without eating running from place to place, getting this or that done," he said. Then by the end of the day he would be so hungry he would devour an entire fillet of salmon, a pot of rice, and finally get to work on a half gallon of Edy's pumpkin ice cream before bed. By the end of the week, he'd cleaned out Gristedes' entire stock of the autumn-flavored dessert, his body under such a hyperthyroidic stress-trance he seemed to burn twice the calories of what he consumed while consuming them. "That stuff is goood," he said, laughing gruffly with a vestige of laringitis.

Society Coffee

This is the story of New York City. One comes home to an empty apartment and goes out to a coffee shop named after the effort of people who are lonely to become un-lonely -- "Society."

I tried eating alone at first. I tried to cook dinner for myself. WNYC talked to me, loudly, as I sat at the kitchen table and read the rest of last weekend's New York Times, scooping up bits of egg with bread, then dipping bread in wine, then in olive oil, then eating sherbet out of the container. It was so boring.

Le Monde avec Mom

I am less embarrassed by my mother than I ever was. It must be around that time of my life. And of all the things she does that are impressive, this weekend kind of took the cake.

I just moved to Harlem, and despite, or perhaps because of, my Mom's own personal aversion to germs, I was granted a free floor scrub and shower scouring, as well as various hardware installations and a week of groceries and beer. I tell you once my Mother gets going I can't intervene; I have tried. So n return for her efforts I conceded her only request – that I attend my first Catholic mass in ten years, and afterwards, of course, accompany her to breakfast.

We brunched at Le Monde on the UWS because it was close to the church and I was getting tired of the usual Morningside breakfast fare: Nussbaum, which I never go to; Tom’s Restaurant, which is touristy and unappetizing and packed with college students; and that other place, I don’t know the name, but which is on the corner of 115^th and Broadway and has delicious French toast. I normally would have picked that one, but I had never been to Le Monde, and it was still early, and one should always try what one doesn’t know about, so we went, and at 9:40 we were the second patrons in the entire place, so I got excited thinking we’d actually eat soon and be on our way back to the park in time for a gander at the farmer’s market.

But as the waitress poured coffee and chatted to us, I looked cautiously over my mother's shoulder and spotted danger. The mother/father/daughter trio beyond us, the only other people in the place, were looking around with hungry eyes. “Just so you know,” the waitress said, “they are making fresh hollandaise, so that’s why your breakfast will take a little longer. It’ll be fresh, but it’ll be a little bit.” She had a voice like Kathy Griffith’s.

“That’s ok,” we said to her, because that is what you say, and she went away and we went back to guzzling coffee and fidgeting with various table items.

Ten more minutes passed and nothing. Ten more. Halfway through our third cups of coffee we had a game of speculation going good as well as a hypersensitive bout of the giggles. “The cook never showed up,” Mom said, setting the jittering coffee cup back down on her saucer. “He isn’t here.” “This better be worth it.” I stared jealously over my shoulder at the plates of bagels and lox being consumed by four blonde tweens and their mother at an outdoor table, my stomach growling. “We should have ordered something non-hollandaise,” I said, watching the team sleepily gathering their bags and heading off to do whatever mothers and daughters looking that happy and healthy and sated do on Sunday mornings after they've been properly nourished.

When the eggs Florentine did arrive, it was all over for me. All of it. It was like getting a much-needed haircut on the house, or like taking the wrong exit and having a fit only to find out you are exactly where you needed to be in the first place. The eggs were huge and puffy and beautifully poached, their whites soft and whipped back, as if dropped like batter from a spoon. The yolks, when gently cut into with the side of a fork, ran out perfectly over the spinach and English muffin, which was buttered and toasted and still maintaining soft whiteness. The hash browns hadn’t a speck of grease, but were just crispy and seasoned with something aromatic but not overbearing. I saved half of the meal to eat for dinner tonight, after my mother left me. “After this Florentine is gone,” I said to her as we gathered our things to leave, “I am back to being my own Mom.” And now I am. And somehow I’m certain I’ll never eat Eggs Florentine that good again.

The Recipe, straight from Dad

Best Bloody Mary:

In a tall mixed drink glass, fill half to two-thirds with ice cubes. Add good vodka to about one-third level in the glass. Add V-8 with full sodium content (not the Low Sodium variety) to within about a half inch of the top of the glass. Add about a tablespoon of lemon (not lime) juice from either a real lemon or from a Realemon. Shake about twenty drops of McIlhenny's tabasco sauce, several shakes of salt, and about twenty twists on the pepper mill, with it set to medium fine grind.

Now shake shake shake your Mary. Add celery sprig, and don't drink more than two of these in one night.

not getting work done, part I

My father insists his Bloody Mary recipe is a secret ("never order a Bloody Mary out, it will be less than half as good as this"), but I will tell you: Stoli, Tabasco, fresh ground pepper, and whatever you do, do not add Worcestershire sauce.

makin pretty food, or makin food pretty?

Want the recipe? LMK.

best breakfast cabbage

Breakfast, to me, is anything that makes you stop feeling hungry enough to get on with your day. Still it is usually a trial. I am picky. Cereal, for instance, has maintained a highly unattractive status for many years. Oatmeal and its implied fix-ins are often too much trouble. Fruit is ok, but not by itself. Yogurt is good with fruit, but there isn't any in the house.

Skipping coffee altogether, which usually entertains me during my indecisive breakfast session in front of the open fridge, I decided on a half head of red cabbage and some light cream. Quartered the cabbage, then quartered it again, then sauteed in butter over medium heat with one side of each quarter down. After about 5 minutes flipped them so the other side hit the pan. Poured in the cream, covered it, lowered the heat very low, so that it maintained a gentle simmer, and cooked for 15 minutes. Sprinkled with salt and fork-served the wilty leaves into the mouth. Braised breakfast, this was called. Braised best breakfast.

and things on which to spread it

Breads n' Spreads looks on the outside like one of those clinics you can find in a strip mall somewhere, flanked by a Subway and a Baskin Robbins, shoved in beside a Christian bookstore; a clinic lacking insignia save for the hyphenated name of the doctor printed on the door. For those who know the truth about it, though, it actually serves excellent lunch.

After today I write in praise of Brian's turkey and provolone on toasted bread with red pepper spread, and the cold potato leek soup I ordered, which tasted like a hybrid of what I imagine ranch dressing and pure vegetable broth would be if: 1) they were mixed well, 2) if the vegetable broth was made from the juice of the crispest, cleanest, freshest cucumbers and zucchini in the countryside, and 3) if the whole thing at the end was sprinkled delicately with chives.

Brian's sandwich also came with an herbed penne salad, featuring black olives, sundried tomatoes and prettily chopped red onions. My soup came with a warm roll, which I had to eat simply because I haven't received a warm roll with anything I've ordered out, I don't think, since I was eight. We drank rounds of tall glasses of cold Snickerdoodle coffee, trying to bite the ice cubes that floated at the top. The ice really did look delicious; the cubes were made of coffee instead of water, and looked like big bobbing blocks of chocolate. All food was served on the kind of ware you only see in Anthropologie catalogues.

a cement hole with indoor yelling

Moving day is bad for everyone. Moving day with full-stop traffic in 90 degree car with no air conditioning is worse. After enough moving days, you become prepared for it all. The tribulations come less as a shock.

What I was not ready for were Pennsylvanians on the interstate. In New York, if you are standing at the Metrocard machine and your debit card just won't swipe, and you turn around and look whoever it is behind you -- the first person in the traffic jam you've caused-- in the face and give an earnest "I'm sorry," they will give you a nod back and say "it's ok." If you put your flashers on in Pennsylvania, however, or linger in the left lane, they'll flip you the bird, man. They will. It's rather shocking.

It is my fault, of course, that I packed so haphazardly as to allow for a jar of minced garlic to spill all over some box in the backseat. It is my fault that, while driving, I decided to stick my hand back there and try to figure out where it was, which of course led me to find it and then freak. out. when I pulled my hand back and it was covered in garlicy goo, and which of course was the reason that I slowed down in the left lane to a creepy 40, and swerved a bit, too. I know, I am ashamed.

The lessons to be taken away from this are many, including the food-related thing that it's important to take your time -- with cooking, with reading recipes, with sharing meals, with eating them. And when packing to leave a place, keep the minced garlic behind.

Aromatic vegetables etc.

This week's recipe photos turned out great.

tender corners, shaped like washington state

A lot of people have moved to Washington in the past eight years. The 2000 and 2008 census reflect a near 600,000 individual accession, versus Pennsylvania's 167,227 and New York's measly 513, 981.

Sartre's food blog

Our most basic pleasure drives: food and sexual gratification. Thomas Aquinas understood that these drives are in themselves wholesome because they're aimed at what is basically necessary for human life. But Kafka and Nietzsche spoke outwardly of their aversions to sex. And yet, were they not "generative?"

It seems to me there are two ways of being in the world -- I have seen it enough -- those who are born to romp and to eat, and those who find alternative nourishment; those who "regenerate" by contemplation, by asserting a voice into a crowd. It used to seem impossible to exist in both groups when I first came to New York. I became thin and severe, a pilchard sort of fish. But then I found Sartre's cookbook.

a word to the wise.

Omelets should assist rather than hinder the salience of egg. Do not even think of adding meat; it is out of the question. Vegetables, on the other hand, belong to another family entirely, with a different leader. Their leader is neither better nor brighter than the leader of eggs and meat; the two are just on opposite ends of the spectrum. When we have tried in the past to have two leaders within the same family within the same omelet, it ended in bad flavor. Again, so did today's chicken-and-egg experiment, save for the serendipitous pun.

some ideas you have when you're delirious are actual good ideas.

As I write this I'm half delirious, like Kathy Fagan writing "Little Bad Dream Charm." I haven't ingested anything all day except a few teaspoons full of bittersweet powdered cocoa, and two Dixie cups of white wine. So now I'm sitting here, heart pounding, with a multigrain boule, made into a delicious sandwich with 2% Fage, sliced tomatoes, oregano and olive oil. This sandwich is seriously in the top 5 best ideas I've ever had while out of my mind. Do not gchat or call for the next 30 minutes.

taking food pictures less seriously

Exhibit A: last night's dinner.

There is only so much to a picture of bouchons au thon, you know what I mean, or like, chocolate cupcakes. A premium photograph of a chocolate cupcake makes the cupcake look appealing, resulting in a desire or a small unfettered anxiety about finding said dessert and inhaling it. But what does this cupcake taste like? Yes, I mean the one in your photograph, oh pristine food-photographing blogger. I have seen beautiful chocolate cupcakes before, and I've made them from your recipe, and they tasted like foam, or one time oatmeal. This should never happen and it proves the flaw.

I would rather interpret the quality and taste of food by how it's been written about, versus the aesthetic appeal of the photograph per se. There is something to be said for people who can do this, who can write engagingly about making/eating food, hence making that food seem irresistible. I believe this recipe really worked for them because they are able to recount the feelings they had as they were eating it and making it. Julia Child has done this. Molly Wizenberg has done this. I have respect.

My calculated declination in food photography over the next few weeks will be in effort to improve my own food writing, starting......now, featuring (above) shoddy photograph of what I ate for dinner last night (post haste), including blurry background glimpses of the disheveled laptop-centered life I lead, not failing to include the occasional cameo of a used Q-tip.

The 9G Burrito Cart

It's inexplicable to live at Bard College for a summer and never eat at the Route 9G/199 Burrito camper, which I just learned is officially called Bubby's. I have never tasted a burrito so soft and fat and perfectly crisped and variegated by a charcoal grill as the ones I've tasted here. And I've had a lot of burritos. Like, probably not more than people who have worked at burrito joints but close enough to know those burritos are sub par. They have nothing like the home-made, hand-mashed guacamole the burrito cart ladies mash up a few hours before the lunch hour begins, or the fluffy, basmati rice brought in straight from India, or the salsa verde they make at home and put out in little jars for you to spoon on your tortilla in the little nooks where it folds in above some melty local organic cheese. After being exposed to that kind of salt-of-the-earth enterprise those Other burritos you get from Some Mopey Employee at the chain joint just bring shame to the tortilla-wrapped genre of cuisine, in my opinion, and to the world as a whole.

Today I spent my penultimate $5 bill on what may be my last rice-and-beans-in-foil until I return to the Hudson Valley next summer to graduate with my first master's degree. If I had not waited until the last hours of the afternoon to eat lunch today, a digital memory of the Bubby's cart and all its representative attributes might be pictured here. As it is, you'll just have to take my blog for it.

tahini.

The coup de grâce of anything resembling regular dinner food ever again. Dayum.

Share?

Here's a shot of Obama with my cute friend Kim sharing some tortellini at the beach. More luncheons with the Prez and beach eating on the way.

Cleaning/Shipping out

This is a very exciting week. I'm moving! On Friday! Which means I'll need to clean out my fridge.

This idea excited me very much until I actually opened my fridge to see what was in there. I have no idea how I have this much food.

• half a purple bell pepper (slowly rotting)
• 11 eggs
• 2 sticks of butter
• 3/4 jar Peanut Butter & Co. Dark Chocolate Dreams
• 1 canister Sesame Tahini
• 1/4 cucumber
• half a lime
• 10 oz. fresh spinach
• 6 carrots
• 4 chicken filets
• 1 jar minced garlic
• 1 onion
• 2 bananas
• 1 tomato
• 1 apple
• 1 tablespoon bacon fat which has now probably permanently aroma-stained the mason jar it's in and which I'll now probably have to throw away too, sad face.
  

Bad Ideas I used to Have:

• eating nothing but oatmeal for an entire week
• eating nothing for an entire week
• mixing chocolate peanut butter cookies with my hands
• eating Boca burgers without cooking them
• opening canned stewed tomatoes with a knife
• Honey Bunches of Oats, Life cereal, Nutter Butter cookies broken up and dumped into a bowl beneath tons of milk
• spaghetti sandwich

the best lunch meat between toast ever, except for that time I added jelly.

For dinner a turkey/artichoke panini from Panera on toasted Foccacia bread, and a giant chocolate chip cookie which did not (and I checked) contain trans-fat. Eaten whilst driving through the traffic light on route 9W on the way back over the bridge, both windows down, with the still, steady August air coming in from both sides, a little of the artichoke/cheese juices going down my wrist. I have never had better lunch meat between two slices of toast in my life. There were no parking spots when I got back, so I sidled up on the grass, not-caring. The post-Barnes and Noble Friday night $9 dinner to go was the best post-Barnes and Noble Friday night $9 I ever spent. (as opposed to the mid-Barnes and Noble $9, which is usually accompanied by a few other digits, and then a guilty walk out the big, smooth, wooden B&N doors, resulting in a typical $9 dinner, according to my track record, which is usually the post-B&N thing that tends to round it all out)

Yerba. No, Yerba.

Coffee is borderline healthy, with positive effects to the psyche and immune system, so it has been hard to shake.

I bought the stuff they sell at Whole Foods in a little container that looks like hot chocolate, something called Teccino, made with figs and nuts and, as far as I could see, twigs and branches and other home-building materials suitable for a vole. But that ended up garnishing my ice cream. What worked for me once, my sophomore year, was green tea, which, after six months (and even before that) really just tasted like a sock. I switched back to coffee after a fateful run to Starbucks that morning, and have since been caffeinating regularly while turning my attention to the drugs, sex, and other related vices of my friends and family members.

A week ago, during my sometimes- routine of drinking cup after cup of coffee and getting really involved in some article or paper such that I forget to eat, I felt heart flutters. It didn't feel great, like the other times when I've had heart flutters. And they didn't go away this time, even after I ate an apple and some toast. Instead, they came back a few times, and I had the distinct feeling like this was bad, like my mind was telling me to stop it. I couldn't sleep at all that night, and the next day, I made one measly cup in the morning out of habit, and just the smell felt like I was forcing myself to do this thing I didn't want or need. I abandoned it after one sip.

I decided yesterday I might have hit a plateau, like I did with alcohol after 9 years of experimenting with my repetitive inability to drink more than one beer. I decided it might be time for a moratorium; time to admit I no longer need the abundance of youth to keep me going.

I think I am OK with it. This tea I'm drinking helps. It doesn't have caffeine, which is amazing, because it tastes like it definitely should, and though it's got a very earthy, dirt-like flavor, it's nothing like the green tea sock.

Yerba Mate, it's called. I like it.

an impromptu road trip.

I drove to Pennsylvania over the weekend -- a good four hour haul down I-78.


I had a lot of work to do, but I felt the need to "escape," i.e. to use a real washing machine, to take a bath in my own bathtub, to drink a disproportionately measured gin and tonic you'd never get in any bar. To spend some quality time with the boys: Joe and Bri, and Dad, to whom the disproportionately measured gin and tonic duties have always been carefully entrusted.

Bri and I are starting to get ready for our big move to New York City at the end of the month, so I also took the opportunity to schlep a few boxes of books and odds n' ends back to my adolescent bedroom; a room which has, for the past few months, served as nothing but a big storage unit. Funny how that happens. Funny how I feel like it means I am at last an adult.

I meant to spend a lot of time in the kitchen while I was home, and so I did. On Sunday, Bri read aloud to me from the New York Times Magazine while I broiled a pork loin, baked a loaf of banana-chocolate bread (from Molly Wizenberg's book A Homemade Life), and prepared a delicious batch of eggplant ratatouille with organic flank steak.





After a long day, we scooted over to a gathering just in time to meet the lovely host of get fork'd, who had just welcomed into her life a delightful little Pomeranian puppy, who may or may not be named Mercutio.

Perplexities of gorgeous company.

I can just hear the assembly of nectarines, peaches and apricots guffawing over by the windowsill.



I know. Fruit doesn't guffaw. But it ought to. It waits while I walk slowly around the farm stands, meticulously choosing it -- the juiciest, most fragrant of the bunch -- only to bring it home in a bulbous paper sack and then not eat it.

What can I do? It's hot, and the heat ruins my appetite. But I am alone! and 3 peaches, 1 tomato, 1 jicama, 20 raspberries, 6 carrots, 2 bell peppers and 4 apricots do not make happy company when the appetite is perplexed. They must be mixed, blended, chunked, baked and somehow transformed in the next 4 days before it all goes bad. I know not how. Only that raspberries and jicama go first, for they are the most beautiful.

Trimming the Fat

It's 6 in the morning and I'm making bacon. More bacon than I have ever dared rest my eyes on at one time. I'm teaching myself to render bacon fat for the food blog I write for (not this one), which touts the philosophy that we should keep eating the way our primordial ancestors ate, which includes using all the parts of an animal, as well as finding ways to use (rather than discard) its fat.


I can't help but think, as I photograph the bacon fat in the light of a new sun that has just barely come up, how I am not a caveman, and I do not want to eat bacon, nor find uses for its fat. As I walk back to my bedroom, my clothes, my hair, and the entire bottom floor of this building stinking of fried lard, I think: Oh, Nana. And all the Nanas of the world. How did you ever handle it back then, in the 40s, 50s and 60s when bacon was such a regular and desired-after breakfast module? Daily bacon. Really?

The Opera is on Friday.

The dishes were accumulating so I couraged up and tackled them, and now I'm biceptually intimidating. That is, my muscles are strong.


Les Huguenots will premiere this weekend, so there are a lot of people in my building right now singing opera. That's how I got sidetracked and muscular -- I was on my way to the kitchen with a heavy box of plates when a voice came out of nowhere. Holding my heavy box I creepily lingered in the hallway in front of the door where that voice was coming, perking my ears and trying to take part in the music. My arms, oh they were aching with the weight of those dishes, oh and people were passing now too, giving me odd stares. But I didn't budge. I was standing there, with my heavy plates, enjoying the singing, and my arms were shaking, but it was beautiful, it really was.

Eventually, of course, the music stopped, and I went away. My dishes now are done, and I am sipping tea in my room, reflecting on the chicken and fingerling potatoes I ate at lunch, drizzled with lemon-caper dressing. I will sleep well tonight. The opera is on Friday.

The Upper West, Yes.

Searching for an apartment in New York City has been a nightmare, but the worst may be over now.

Brian came up from PA yesterday to help me look at a place, and we put our deposit down on an apartment located around the Petit Senegal neighborhood of 8th avenue. We found it on Craigslist after weeks of complicated searching, which entailed my driving back and forth to the city on the weekends and meeting with various people to see a very limited array of options based on what our budget allows (apparently that includes anything from a basement apartment with no windows to a fifth-floor walkup with no stove).

There was an air of inevitability about it, that something else would come along. And sure enough...this video might be our new backyard. I should hear from the building owner this week.

Other forms of it.

I have been standing or sitting on the Oriental rug, looking out the window, listening to the Opera singer who lives next door sing through the wall. I have been writing research papers, not journal entries. I am not cooking, but I am very, very glad.

Sharing is caring

Sharing is caring, my colleague assures me. And my best rejoinder yet for stealing all his printer ink? Homemade brownies.

I find that making desserts is, in general, a pretty fool proof idea. Especially in grad school. Especially when you're looking for an excuse not to analyze the Deweyesque notions of democratic education one more time, because if you do your brain will Deweyesquely explode.

The glory of dessert is something I first learned back in high school, when I never had a pen or was always forgetting my text book. I'd get someone to share with me by offering them the freshly baked whateveritwas in my lunch. There was great success in this method then. Some things never change.

Blangavo

The source of all misery is rejection. It's true even for old fruit. So better to be kind-- when an avocado is nearing the end of its edible life, do whatever you can not to throw it out. Instead, accelerate a rebirth.

Rebirth and acceleration are big reasons why I own a blender. Blenders do a darn-tootin' good job of both accelerating the rebirth of foods that are nearing their throw-away stages, and accelerating my access to newly born foods that are otherwise tedious or just plain boring to eat. Maybe you don't experience this, but when I look at an avocado, I want badly to do something creative with it. Still, I end up just eating it by itself, plain, scooping it out of its thin dark skin with a spoon. Afterwards I look at some eggs longingly. I pick up and put down a pineapple. I close my eyes and contemplate the taste of a blueberry-avocado-cilantro mix. Had I employed a blender, I could have made a morphing. I could have pulverized several foods into one, and made something new of avocado which was also only accessible by straw. Turning food into a one-way road kind of deal (one serving device vs. plate, fork, napkin etc.) is a great aid to those of us already plagued by so much indecision in so many aspects of our non-kitchen lives.


Today, in need of a creative half hour, I actively took my own advice and blenderized. Blueberries, a little coconut milk, agave syrup. Ice, plenty of ice. No forks, no chop sticks. Straw only. Orange slices on top...

....and guess what?

"Blangavo" means "this recipe needs work."

In Food Blogging, a Gender Gap

photo by Ms. Alizanne

++

All food bloggers document food -- its recipes, its history, its context -- for a creative outlet, a hobby, or a profit. But most of those people are not men.

In February, the TIMESONLINE put out a piece on the top 50 food bloggers, five of which were male. Matt Armendariz of Mattbites.com is listed as "one of the select numbers."

Women food bloggers are all over the internet. Some are confined to the home-zone by choice, but most are working, oscillating between what was once the call of duty for a girl and what is now considered the dream modern women should want: to be successful and confident enough to "make a home" by herself, by her own financial gains.

Molly Wizenberg of Orangette is a favorite of mine. She is neither a stay-at-home mom, nor someone who straightaway tied herself (wrists, hips and ankles) to the apron as a gimmick. She actually started her food blog in 2005 after dropping out of a PhD program in social anthropology -- so the girl's smart! -- and while she was "on the search" for her next step she began to write, and eat, and then write about eating, and now she has a book and a soon-to-be opening pizza shop in Seattle.

Molly arrived in the kitchen without coercion, and she confirms my suspicion that something about the kitchen is "right" when life isn't. Something about the kitchen is "personal" and "universal" at the same time. And being there as a woman in 2009 is an immaterial thing.

++

If there had been food bloggers right after the Civil War, they'd have been the Miss Prim variety. Blogging would have been a lot of lecturing. It would've attempted to moralize, talk of "what the children and/or husband liked," but would have condemned food discussion related, for example, to anatomy (especially brindling at the terms "breast" and "leg")

Today, femme-foodies are open about limbacy, and many other topics, which make it easy for them to turn a food blog into a big discussion about life. Perhaps because of that, the idea that food is "a lot of talking," the movement, the opening of the internet kitchen doors, has perhaps been more effective for one gender over another.

Even though both men and women eat food, and agree that the kitchen is, across the world, an inclusive space, could the desire to talk about food, and connect it to a larger discussion be a gendered thing?

"We all have kitchens," the men seem to say. "We just don't think about it that much."

Ode to Ruth, and blueberries

On my way into town for some beer and groceries, I noticed the engine gauge on my dashboard going berserk. I pulled off to the side of the road and opened the hood. Coolant, all over my foot.

As I stood around waiting for the mechanic to install my new radiator (magically I had pulled off the road and right into the lot of a fix-it garage), I vaguely eavesdropped on his conversation with another customer and mostly stared into space. I was thinking about my future: a dream-life with a perfectly new and always-reliable car; a life with no car at all.

Suddenly, a little girl appeared before me.

"This is for you," she said, offering up a very long-stemmed dandelion. She stared with confidence at her hands as they convened with mine, successfully passing the gift. She stared at my stomach, where, had I been her height, there would have been eyes staring back.

"Thank you," I managed, climbing out of my thoughts, somewhat cloudily taking her in. "That's a beautiful thing."

++

I know it's cliche to talk about the naivete of children, and how we, the unfeeling "adults" should strive to imitate their candor more often in our daily lives. But perhaps because of my surroundings -- a greasy, spare-parts laden garage in the middle of a dusty highway-- something about this particular child and her particular offering struck me as special.

I was thinking about money, the pain of having to fork it over in a sum that would nicely inhibit my freedom in the coming weeks. But then this girl, this flower. This way she told me it was "for me." Not just the dandelion, the car bills. But this experience, this day, this life. And despite all the noise, all the inconsistencies and inconveniences, what remained salient, really, was this little act of human tenderness. And indeed she is what I remembered returning home that afternoon. Not the car.

++

Home, I ate fresh blueberries with milk. I ate them in a little white dish, slowly, by the spoonful, with lots of white sugar on top. I tilted the bowl at the end to drink up the last of the milk, which was cool and sweet and only ever so slightly blue.

What do you do with a....

There's nothing like spending a Tuesday night reading a 19th century female bildungsroman to inspire a meal with feminist prowess. In order to make this meal, call to mind the swooning artisan who's paying off his lover's lover's debts (from that Tennyson poem?), and then imagine what that guy's probably not eating. That's what I'm making tonight.

on deck:

lamb chops
farmer's market Swiss chard
blueberries (2 cartons)
$10 bottle Merlot
some sweet potato
some tarragon
some garlic, minced

now the question is: what will I do?

"the room is full of you! -- A something in the air, intangible...And suddenly I thought, "I have been here before!"

Ever since my very lovable friends Norah and Jeff first mentioned the name "Mark Bittman" to me in early spring of this year (and subsequently blew me away replicating his rice pilaf recipe), I wondered about whether or not to refer to him for lessons in cooking. It wasn't until a few weeks ago that the name was mentioned again, and aside from becoming instantly addicted to his blog, I finally ventured to expand my own skills according to his artistry (quel snob? Jamais!)

A colleague and fan of Bittman's no-knead bread recipe helped to suade my ego. He convinced me with his own gourmet novice success that the New York Times could make anyone into a great baker. Not only could I make a whole wheat boule as good as the next guy, he said, or the guy at the Sullivan Street Bakery, but following the Times' recipes I could probably make 5-star chocolate chip cookies too, with relative ease.

What I found in the New York Times Dining archive was this little treasure map for Jacques Torres chocolate chip cookies; cookies which are the best (least dietetic) cookie I have ever baked in my whole life, and an impressive example of what I think a chocolate chip cookie should be.




Proof of the perfection e is in the fact that the dough can be prepared comfortably while talking on the phone, even though that is otherwise perhaps the most annoying thing in the world. (Not just to the person on the other end!) It is uncharacteristic of me to multi-task to that extent, or in that way, and yet while I prepared the dough for these, I remained on the line with the dear and always-engaging Brian for nearly an hour without saying a peep about discomfiture, or abruptly ending the conversation out of frustration, or without dropping the phone numerous times until the battery fell out of it, which happens a lot to me.

No, I was transfixed. During the butter-and-sugar blending process, I was sitting at my table, stirring and stirring, watching the room-temp butter and brown-and-white sweetness slowly commingle then swiftly blend then become this soft, milk-in-your-coffee colored, heavenly-smelling, perfectly whipped cream-stuff, all while Brian talked, and I made sure to offer the adequate "uh huh, uh huhs" to keep the conversation going on my end.

The mixture was so beautiful when I was done, and smelled so buttery and sweet, I almost jarred some of it for later to use as lotion. But didn't.


Ever since I started writing about food for Mark Sisson, I have been trying to eat more like his diet suggests, which means no sugar. None. But the rain provoked me. When it rains, I hunker way down to my old domestic get-cozy-and-warm habits, and I start drinking wine, and I get nostalgic for cookies.

I went overboard this time (too excited about the new recipe) and so the baking of these cookies turned into baking many batches of these cookies, which then turned into a party. I sent an email invitation asking everyone in the building to come to the kitchen and help figure out what to do with all the cookies. And those guys, let me tell you. They are so smart. They knew just the solution.

Gould Gorgeous

Emily Gould now has a food blog. It's great, check it out!

eating toast does not make me better-tempered; I feel evil still

Holy Moly! Not a one left!




There is a farmer's market cart just up route 9G operated by the sweetest, most salt of the earth people you'll ever meet. They sell "second rate" strawberries for less than a buck, and I try to go early not only to get the pick of the litter but to socialize while ogling the other delicious fruits.

I remember strawberry picking as a kid, but not so much enjoying fresh strawberries. Once we got them home my mother would quick cut them up and sprinkle sugar on, which caused them to turn into this soggy, syrupy confection I no longer recognized and wouldn't eat.




The strawberries I bought from the cart down the road this week are beautiful, right from the patch, barely bruised. Fresh and red and petite. Ever since I got my hands on them I've been itching for an opportunity to eat them in something else.

Reviewing my week's diet (that is, looking in the fridge to figure what's not there anymore) I'd say I've been lacking in carbohydrates. The decision to borrow Molly Wizenberg's recipe for strawberry scones this morning was easy. I forgot the egg, but they still turned out beautifully! Thanks, Molly!

For the recipe, click the link above or head over to her site and just have a looksie. It's worth it even if you never end up making the scones.

the mutable cacao

Do you know that feeling when you find out a belief you've held is wrong? That feeling came over me when I tried to make salmon the other night.



I returned to the apartment late, put on slippers and looked out the window through the rain. The glow of distant houses filled the night. I looked in the fridge. There was some salmon. There was some pasta uncooked. I had a bad craving for hot chocolate. Hot hot food. Warmth. Golden inner light. Food light. Chocolate salmon pasta. Stomach. Eats.



Usually, the fatty omegas and protein in salmon prevent my brain from getting to this point, where I'm going all wrong and losing perspective on the cooking ingredients that are available in the house. If I had already eaten salmon that day, I would have discovered what to do much more quickly. As it was, it took some time. I came around.

I realized salmon can be cooked with cocoa. Hot chocolate salmon. How splendid. We forget that cocoa powder is not sweet. It's bitter. It can be mixed with things that are not sweet. Mixed with dry mustard, for example, and some olive oil. And put on the outside of fish. Omega fatty acids for the brain, flavonoids for the heart, all in one meal.

I didn't eat it with anything else. I didn't eat it with hot chocolate. I didn't need to, it was so delicieuse. Not even leftover wine would have made it better. And now that I've had it on salmon, I'm not sure I'll really want to go back to cocoa the old way. Warning: you might not either.


To make Spicy Cocoa Salmon you need:

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 tsp cocoa
• 1 tsp dry mustard
• 1/4 tsp cinnammon
• 1 tablespoon ground cumin
• 4 oz. filets of salmon

1. Heat oven to broil. Mix all dry ingredients (cocoa, mustard, cinnamon and cumin) in a small bowl using a whisk.
2. Rinse salmon filets. Add oil to the cooking pan and coat filets on both sides with the oil. One at a time, coat filets with the dry ingredient mixture.
3. Broil for 4-5 minutes or until salmon is cooked through.
   

Trans Fat for Good Breath?

You don't eat your friends, right, so you don't care what their bodies are made up of (only what's in their heart).

Likewise, you don't expect your food to be there for you when times get rough.

But food labels are different than social labels. They're supposed to be limiting. They exist to inform in one specific area: ingredients. Food goes into your organs (unlike your friends) and allows or destructs certain functioning. You need to know what's in it.

If you've educated yourself about nutrition, you already know this. If you haven't, you're probably still buying a lot of trans fats and high fructose corn syrup, suffering undiagnosable aches and pains, and playing roller coaster with your health and weight (or will be soon). More than that, you probably have no idea that foods with "0 g" next to the Trans Fat column on the label doesn't actually mean the stuff is trans-fat free.

If you're a "sometimes" reader of labels, the advice in this blog is especially for you, because it's likely that if you bother to read labels at all, you are only thinking to read them on foods you consider "staples." Which means the last place you probably check is chewing gum. Guess what? It's there.

Food processing plants and product engineers are extremely sneaky. I mean inconceivably sneaky. They're their own CIA. If I hadn't been training myself for years to wear hyper-label spectacles every time I'm near food, I wouldn't have guessed either that they were putting trans fats in my favorite gum.

About a year and a half ago was when I first discovered that Orbit, the best gum I ever bought (judged solely by how well it disguised my coffee breath), was using partially hydrogenated vegetable oils in various flavors of their product. I had been chewing the peppermint kind (free of trans fats, high in aspartame) but found myself at an unfamiliar bodega in Brooklyn once where peppermint was unavailable. I turned to "Mojito Mint," squinting at the label.

What I found was trans fat, first ingredient. So I put it down and picked up the next one (Raspberry Spasm, or something) and what I found there was the same. I looked through all the other weird flavors and couldn't get away from the stuff. I left the store empty-handed and went home to brush my teeth.

Since then, I have pretty much sworn off gum altogether. And when it comes down to it, that's best. If you can help it, don't buy mints, breath "tape" or any of it. All the food companies that are trying to eliminate trans fats from their snacks are just transferring it to stuff that's already entirely bad for you, like gum and candy, whose labels people are less likely to read because they buy it whimsically at the checkout.

Drink enough water, keep coffee to the mornings, brush your teeth more often, and you'll be fine. If you're popping gum when you're hungry, just eat real food. And if it's the kind with labels, read them.

The Best Brunch Scramble

Eggs can be so boring. And not just boring, but confusing as hell. Stand in the grocery store and just try to decide what's organic, cage-free, and factory-farmed. Get home and find out you bought the wrong kind, then break some into a bowl and meditate over what it is you're about to eat. That runny, sulphuric mess.

I go through this every week. I'm a big fan of eggs, so what I've described is basically my routine. I get upset. I have eggs in my fridge all the time, and I'm incessantly looking for new ways to make them "exciting."

While all the stuff I already know how to do with them is very good (including making that perfectly soft-boiled egg, with a yolk that breaks and runs out over your toast with the light tap of a fork) I never feel like doing any of it. And today I pulled out two eggs, followed by everything in the fridge, and went crazy. Which, as history has shown, is precisely the path to innovation.


What I came up with, and what I'm calling The Best Brunch Scramble, is the best thing I've ever seen eggs do. It's the best "egg thing" I've ever tasted. And I'm not just saying that because I invented it. I'll give you the recipe to try for yourself. You'll see.

What I think makes this scramble so interesting is that it combines all the elements of a whole meal, while maintaining its status as "breakfast" on account of the ingredients it uses. It also makes premium use of my secret weapon, tarragon.


To make The Best Brunch Scramble, you need

• 4 oz. turkey meatballs (or about 4, diced)
• 1 egg, 3 egg whites
• 6 small red potatoes, boiled
• fresh spinach, as much as desired
• 1-2 tablespoons chopped fresh tarragon
• salt and pepper to taste
• olive oil cooking spray
• 1 tsp olive oil

1. Spray small skillet with olive oil cooking spray. Then add regular olive oil over medium-high heat. When surface is hot, add quartered potatoes, lightly frying for about a minute or two.
   
2. While potatoes fry, cut up turkey meatballs and chop tarragon. Add them to skillet and toss everything around to blend flavors. Add 1-2 tablespoons of water to the pan. It should be very aromatic.
   
3. In a small bowl, scramble whole egg with egg whites. Pour eggs over the potato-meat mixture. Reduce heat to medium. Eggs should cook easily, so make sure to stir them to prevent burning to the pan.
4. Add spinach, finally, and scramble everything together. Ready to serve when eggs are fully cooked and spinach has wilted and looks bright green. Serves 2.
   

Peach Muffins

Don't waste. A lesson my mother tried to instill in me ever since I was a little kid, using such clever and unique quips as "Clean your plate. You're not getting dessert until you do" and even more unheard of: "There are starving children in China."

It's only now, when I'm living on my own and supporting my own eating habits (with skimpy amounts of money), that I have at last considered the malnourished orphans abroad and adopted the habit of using every morsel of food that comes into my kitchen. Don't waste. Use up what you have. The study of economics in sum: make the resources you've got go as far as they can.

Thanks to muffins (and other foods like stew, shepherd's pie, and omelets) it's easy to avoid wasting food. You can basically put anything into a muffin, depending on your tastes. While I prefer to stick with the sweet kind, there are such things as meat muffins, cheese muffins, and of course, those super branny fiber muffins without any sugar. I don't know which of those three is worst.

What I do know is one of the saddest sights of summer is throwing away a peach because it's slowly going bad. Why didn't you eat it in time? That peach deserved more attention.

But if you peel that peach, dice it up, you're still in luck. You can fold it into some muffin batter and eat it for dessert. Or breakfast. Or any time. Snacks for a week.

For basic muffin batter into which you can fold anything (preferably edible)

Dry ingredients

1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup spelt flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
cinnamon

Wet ingredients

1/2 cup agave syrup (change this if you're planning to add meat or cheese to the batter)
1 egg
2 tablespoons milk
4 oz. unsweetened applesauce
1 tsp. vegetable oil

Lightly spray a muffin tin with olive oil cooking spray. Whisk together the dry ingredients in a small bowl. In a separate bowl, blend all wet ingredients. Slowly add dry to wet, mixing until smooth and all flour has been incorporated.

To make peach muffins:

After completing all instructions for basic batter, peel and dice as many peaches you as desire (keep in mind too many peaches will make the muffins very gooey in the middle--too gooey) and fold them gently into the batter.

Bake at 400 F for 12-15 minutes.

Flax Chicken Nuggets

The chicken in the fridge was almost a week past its expiration date and I was getting bored with panko breadcrumbs, so I picked up a bag of ground flaxseed (it was on sale) at the grocery store to see what I could invent.

Flax seed is a pretty good source of poly-and-monounsaturated fats, as well as high in fiber (all of its carbohydrates come from fiber) so I didn't mind using quite a bit of it for coating the meat. I thought the seeds would provide a nice texture and alternative coating for chicken, and as it turns out, I was right. My only qualm is I wish I'd added seasonings to intensify the flavor.

Additionally, I mixed dijon mustard with honey for a dipping sauce. Plain honey or plain mustard would have worked equally well, depending on your yen.

To make the nuggets, you need

• preferred amount of boneless, skinless chicken breasts (not thin-sliced)
• whole ground flax seed flour
  
• garlic powder, mustard powder, oregano, basil, thyme, salt, pepper
• 1 egg white
• honey
• mustard

1. Rinse and cut chicken into nugget-sized pieces
2. In a shallow bowl, break one egg and quickly whisk egg white, tossing yolk in trash
3. In a separate bowl, dump flax seed and mix in herbs and seasonings of choice
4. Cover meat pieces in egg white, then transfer to flax mixture and coat well. Place in lightly misted baking dish.
5. Cook meat at 400 F in oven for 10-15 minutes.
6. Enjoy with dipping sauce!