Veggies Galore

This year we joined a CSA, the lovely local Frog Bottom Farm. (Well, by local, I mean less than two hours away.) This past weekend they held a fabulous potluck, and it made me think a bit about how getting a weekly share of produce has lessons for both the teacher and the parent. Here's my IHE blog post about that...

Strawberry Panzanella

I first read about strawberry panzanella on the blog 101 Cookbooks. It was one of her spring recipes, and it turned up just in time for us to test it out as an Easter dessert. It was a particularly good choice, as it's easily veganized, and easy to make ahead. Actually, it's just easy all around.

Of course I couldn't just make the recipe as given. First of all, the amounts seemed slightly off--surely you'd want more berries for that much bread? And, really, do you need to cut them into matchsticks? I've made it twice since that Easter dinner (actually, I've made it twice in one week) and I think I've got the definitive recipe now. Though actually one of the nice things about panzanella is that you don't need a definitive recipe--it's more like a method, a way of using things up and making them taste good, that is successful precisely because it's not precise.

Still, I know some people like precision. I like it myself. So here is, almost precisely, how I've been making strawberry panzanella. (I was going to wait to post this until I had a picture, but really, the one over on the original site is quite lovely. So go look at that, then make this. Or something like it.)

For dessert for 3-4, you will need:

about half a baguette, preferably a day or two past its prime (my baguette was 13 oz originally, if that matters to you), cut or torn into bite-sized chunks
1/4 cup brown sugar (I scanted this a bit, and the butter as well)
1/4 cup butter or olive oil
maybe a pinch of salt if your butter's not salted (optional)
1 quart strawberries
some Greek yogurt, sour cream, or nothing at all

Preheat oven to 400F

Melt the butter (if using) and stir together with brown sugar, or stir together brown sugar and olive oil. Add a pinch of salt if you like. (I did twice, and not the third time, and couldn't tell the difference.)

Toss bread chunks in butter/sugar mixture--use a large bowl for this, or just do it by hand on a jelly roll pan (you'll need it anyway in a minute)

Spread the buttery, sugary bread out on the jelly roll pan and toast for 10-15 minutes, turning/stirring after every five minutes, until the bread is crispy and slightly caramelized in places. Don't worry that some of the bread didn't get buttered/sugared; it will all be good, I promise.

Meanwhile, wash and slice up the berries however you like: halves, quarters, chunks, whatever works for you. Using a potato masher, mash about half of them in a large bowl. Maybe a little more than half. If the berries are slightly underripe, you could throw a tablespoon or two of extra brown sugar in here--I won't tell.

Toss the bread in with the mashed berries, trying to get the bread thoroughly soaked in berry juice. Toss in the not-mashed berries. Let the whole thing stand while you get the rest of dinner together, stirring occasionally to mix things up again. Steal a bread chunk or two while you're at it and marvel at its simple deliciousness.

Serve with Greek yogurt or sour cream dolloped on top, or don't, as you choose.

This is obviously best the day it's made, as the bread does tend to get a bit soggy the next day. Still, we happened to have some leftovers the last time and I was amazed at how tasty it still was, soggy bread and all.

Valentine's Eve

I think I've said before that I'm ambivalent about Valentine's Day. I dislike the obligatory gift- and/or card-giving in elementary school, but I love chocolate. I dislike the heterosexism, but romance is ok by me. I dislike the pressure to do something special, but I actually like doing something special.

So, OK. We have dinner plans with friends tomorrow, and various stuff planned during the day, and there's no need to get all worked up over the holiday. Nick made a Valentine's card for his "Secret Cupid" and took it to school yesterday (no school today: teacher conferences) and that took care of his obligations. But then this morning I heard Nigella on NPR talking about cupcakes*, and I knew something had to be done. I was on the website before she'd finished talking, and I decided to make the chocolate-cherry cupcakes before she even said anything about them. How could I not? Easy, delicious, and combining two favorite flavors--a sure winner.

So I stopped at the store after dropping Nick at a friend's house for a playdate and picked up cherry preserves and some nice chocolate, and went to work. As I started to prepare the muffin cups with the cupcake papers I realized that I was short about six papers, but no worries--I could improvise something with parchment paper. I was short about 1/3 cup preserves, too, but some raspberry jam seemed a reasonable substitute. Oh, and I didn't have self-rising cake flour, but a quick google told me that if I added 1/2 tsp each of baking soda and baking powder, and a 1/4 tsp of salt, to my cup of cake flour, I should be fine.

I should maybe have cut up a little extra parchment paper when I realized the muffin tins were overfull, but I soldiered on, just topping them off with an extra teaspoon or so of filling each. Then I glanced over at the recipe to make sure it really did say it made twelve (it does) and realized that--oops!--I'd unintentionally doubled the sugar. I considered melting some more chocolate and butter to double the recipe, but the batter was already in the muffin tins. I figured the cupcakes might come out too sweet, but it was worth a try.

I hate to throw away food.

Just as the timer beeped to tell me my 25 minutes was up I started to smell a faint smell of something a little, um, burnt. And indeed, when I opened the oven, I found a good bit of cupcake batter burned to the bottom of the oven. And lots more overfilling the muffin cups, making of the 12 separate cupcakes one rather large--thing. With indentations in the twelve former middles. As it were.

I got them out of the muffin tin (with Mark's help--he just ate most of the overflow)** and decided that, really, these were not a Valentine's dessert. I wasn't quite ready to throw them out, but I was going to start over.



Back to the store: more cake flour (still, no self-rising cake flour at my grocery store), more cherry jam, more cupcake papers. More butter.

Twenty minutes later, another batch was in the oven. This time there were fifteen--so it wasn't just all the extra sugar that overfilled them the first time. And they started to overflow before the time was up, so I lowered the temp a little bit (I've noticed before that my oven runs hotter than Nigella's) and carried on.

They came out less molten than the first batch, and definitely not as sweet (no raspberry jam in this batch, either). But Nick liked both kinds just fine, while Mark--full of the remnants of the first ones--has yet to taste one of the "official" version. [Edited to add: yes, you're right, even the "official" ones don't actually have the cherries on top. I don't like glace cherries.]



And I have most of two batches of cupcakes in my house, and only three eaters. Two of them, however, fail to see that this is a problem, so perhaps it isn't.

To round out the dinner I made Nigella's really easy salmon (from Forever Summer: marinate some salmon steaks in 1/3 cup each of pomegranate molasses and honey, and 1 tlb. soy sauce; broil until done); green beans, and couscous/rice pilaf. Nothing was perfect; everyone was happy.

The End.
Happy Valentine's Day

*Becca, this is why I listen to NPR. But then again...

**Mark says the last words he will hear on this earth are "Mark'll eat that."

Vegan ice cream

(One small edit below...)

I have to say, one thing I didn't miss while we were on the barge was cooking. I love to cook, and I love to feed people, but a week of luxury was really nice, too. The first couple days we were back I was too jet-lagged to cook, and too brain-dead to plan (it was over 100 and brutally humid). But it's cooled off now and I'm back on schedule and now I'm making meals again--not as good as Charlie's (our chef on the barge), but they're just fine. And the one thing Charlie never quite worked out for Mariah was vegan desserts--she mostly got fruit salads, which were fine, but she did sneak a few ice creams here and there on shore when he wasn't looking. So she was delighted to come back and get vegan ice cream again.

I promised this recipe a while ago, but it's taken me this long to test it more than once and make sure I like it. Everyone in the family likes it, in fact--with "real" (store-bought) ice cream in the house, this is what everyone wanted for dessert tonight.

Make sure you have your ice cream maker's bowl well chilled. I just keep mine in the freezer all summer so it's ready.

Ingredients:
1 can coconut milk [ETA: best if this is well chilled. I just store it in the fridge.]
1/2 cup soy milk
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup cocoa
4 oz. silken tofu
1 tbl. instant espresso powder (optional)
1 tsp. vanilla

Put all ingredients in the blender and blend until well mixed. Pour into your ice cream maker and freeze according to the machine's directions--mine takes about 20-30 minutes. Then remove it from the machine into a freezer container; freeze for as long as it takes to eat dinner. The next day it will be a bit hard to serve (maybe--once mine never really thickened up and it was like very cold mousse--also delicious, but not what we expected), but leave it out while you eat dinner, or nuke it briefly in the microwave, and it will be fine.

This is very rich--small servings are plenty.

Update on the food

I took the couple with the new baby an asparagus-mushroom strata and lemon-blueberry corncake from The Cornbread Gospels. The friend facing surgery had it postponed, but there's another strata in the freezer for her when she needs it. And, thanks to your comments, I now have a better list for the next time I face this dilemma!

Sharing Food

Every now and then I need to take a meal to someone. A friend has lost a loved one, a colleague has had a baby, someone has just had surgery--the response is to take them food. Right? In situations like that I usually bake: bread, brownies, muffins. Maybe I'll make some soup to go along with the bread, but my focus is on the baking. Recently a friend and I teamed up to take a meal to someone and that worked out great: I did rolls and soup, she did dessert and salad. Easy-peasy, and a good meal for our friend as well.

Today, though, I need to make some real meals. Someone I know from church is having a double lumpectomy today; a colleague has just had a baby and has no family in town. These are folks who need food in the freezer, meals that they can pull out later and enjoy without planning. A loaf of bread or a pan of brownies just won't cut it.

So I scanned through my recipes here on the blog and guess what? Mostly they're for side dishes and desserts. I have a few quick dinner recipes, but they're not really freezable ones--stir-frys and pastas and the like. I'm thinking strata could work, or maybe chilaquiles; I suppose a pot of chili could go in the freezer, but we're having temps in the 80s these days and chili just seems too heavy. I can do strata with spring vegetables--asparagus and mushrooms, maybe? And then it can be brunch or dinner or lunch or whatever is needed (I remember those topsy-turvy days of early parenthood, vaguely...).

What do you make for a friend in need? Why am I so stymied by this?

The Cornbread Gospels

How many recipes do you have to test out before reviewing a cookbook? I have to confess, I wanted to write about The Cornbread Gospels the day I got it, before making a single recipe--it was that much fun to read. Crescent Dragonwagon's new book is a treasure trove of recipes, stories, and cornbread lore, worthy of a place on the bookshelf by the bed as well as on the cookbook shelf.

Dragonwagon certainly has the resume to put this cookbook together. As chef/founder of the Dairy Hollow House Inn (and the Writers' Colony at Dairy Hollow) she has been making cornbread in all its varieties for over twenty-five years. (She's also the author of The Passionate Vegetarian, as well as dozens of books for children.) After living for years in Arkansas, she now makes her home in her native Vermont--so she's got both Northern and Southern styles down. An aficionado of the hot stuff, she'll do southwestern-style cornbread, with jalapenos and the like, as well. She'll take you back to various Native American and Native-inspired dishes, including a tortilla how-to. And she's found recipes for cornbread from so much of the old World (Greece, Portugal, South Africa, India...) that you may forget that corn originated right here in this hemisphere. (Don't worry, though, there's plenty of good history in the book to remind you.)

But what about the recipes? So far, I have to confess, I've only tried three, but they were all keepers. There's a yeasted dough for rolls (Glazed Maple-Cornmeal Rolls), a fabulous multi-grain muffin (Janice Carr's Mixed-Grain Muffins), and a blueberry muffin so lemony sweet and tasty that I baked it as a cake (Lemon-Blueberry Babycakes; I left off the "Crumble-Bumble" streusel). I'm still waiting for the right occasion for the Neighborly Sweet Potato Muffins, the Miss Kay's Dark Secret Cornmeal Cake (it has cocoa in it), and Vermont Maple-Sweetened Cornbread, among many, many others. There are recipes for things to go with the cornbread, too--greens and soups and stews that look fabulously warming. (There are a few recipes here if you can't wait to find the book...)

I've never been one for single-ingredient cookbooks, though I've got a few cookbooks that focus on one particular part of a meal (soup and bread are my favorites). But this one satisfies both body and mind; I'll be coming back to it often.

[full disclosure: I received a free copy of the book for review from the publisher after writing this blog post]

Friday Food: Butternut Squash and Black Bean Chili

Some time ago someone served me a delicious chili with butternut squash in it, and when I wanted to recreate it, I went (of course!) to epicurious. And I found something like it, but I knew it wouldn't quite fly with my family. I can get Nick to eat squash or greens, but I didn't think he'd do both at once. So I modified it, and it was the best chili I've made in some time: flavorful, healthy, and very warming. This is a soupy chili rather than a thick pasty chili, but you could cut back the veggie stock if you wanted it thicker. I thought it was perfect. (Nick, alas, did not, but he can scramble his own eggs, so he didn't go hungry.)

Here's what I used:

2 tablespoons olive oil
2 cups chopped onions
3 garlic cloves, chopped
2 1/2 cups 1/2-inch pieces peeled butternut squash (I used one whole, small, squash)
2 tablespoons chili powder
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon cinnamon
3 15-ounce cans black beans, rinsed, drained
2 cups vegetable broth (it was probably a little less; I just measured it into the tomato can)
1 14 1/2-ounce can diced tomatoes in juice
1 small can chopped ortega (mild green) chilis

Here's what I did:

Saute the onions and garlic in the oil until soft--5 to 10 minutes, depending on your patience. Add the spices and the squash and continue to saute until the vegetables are all colored by the spices and the squash begins to soften a bit--you don't need to cook it through at this point. Now add the beans, broth, tomatoes, and chilis. Bring it all to a boil and then reduce the heat and simmer for 20-30 minutes (epicurious said 15, but my squash was not tender at that point). Serve with garnishes such as shredded cheese, sour cream, and/or chopped cilantro--or just ladle it into a bowl with some cornbread on the side.

(Epicurious thinks this serves 4, but I'd say more like 6. It's a nice, generous pot of chili, and just as good the second day.)

Cornbread!

We have chili and cornbread almost once a week in the winter. The chili can easily be vegan, to satisfy Mariah, it's quick and easy, which satisfies me, and if it's not too spicy Nick will (usually) eat it. Everyone loves the cornbread. (No, it's not vegan, but until she moves out Mariah makes an exception for baked goods, to my immense relief.) I'll post a chili recipe soon, though most often it's just "dump a can of this and a can of that into a pot," but I thought I'd post the cornbread recipe we like the best now, so that I can remember it and you can share it, too. This is a slightly sweet, very moist cornbread: it keeps well (though we usually eat it up in a day or two) and is as good split and toasted with jam in the morning as it was under or next to the chili in the evening. It comes from a fabulous bread book, The Secrets of Jesuit Breadmaking.

Preheat the oven to 425 F. Lightly grease a 9x5 inch loaf pan or an 8x8 square cake pan. I have a pottery bread pan that's perfect for this.

Mix together in a large bowl:
1-1/4 cups yellow cornmeal
3/4 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar (I use brown sugar)
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

Blend together in a large pitcher or bowl:
1-1/4 cups milk
2 eggs
1/2 cup vegetable oil

Pour the milk mixture into the cornmeal mixture, stirring just enough to incorporate and moisten all the ingredients. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for about 25 minutes, or until golden brown.

Mmmm...

Nick has been home all week with the flu. He went to school yesterday, but ended up in the nurse's office after lunch and I went and picked him up. He started on tamiflu Monday, but either it was too late (he'd probably been sick since before the weekend) or his case is just particularly stubborn. (Mariah and I, with fewer symptoms, started on the meds the same day and are much better.) He has a little surge of energy every afternoon that makes us think the next morning will be better--but so far, it hasn't been. Sigh.

Anyway by today we're pretty bored with each other. So I decided it was time to try something new for lunch. We have a new panini press--a Christmas gift, only just unboxed earlier this week--and I figured we could try it out. I suggested tuna melts (cupboard pretty bare) and discovered Nick had never had one.

So we remedied that gap in his education, and it was pretty delicious. Then we were still hungry.

"How about dessert?" I asked. We'd been looking at the cookbook that came with the press, and there were several sweet ones, though none (of course) using ingredients we had in the house. Instead we came up with a potentally Elvis-esque concoction that, while I wouldn't eat it every day, definitely hit the spot: grilled peanut butter-banana-chocolate chip sandwiches. (Well, sandwich: we split one). Two minutes on the grill and it was gooey perfection.

I think the press can stay.

Time to bake

I made brownies and espresso cookies yesterday to give to Nick's teachers. (Yes, the brownies were still warm when I put them on the plates, but they were done!) I put crushed-up candy canes in the brownies and they are delightfully fudgy and pepperminty--why have I never done this before?

Then before breakfast (!) I had a batch of spice cookies in the oven. I've got lots to do around the house and it's easier to clean when the house smells like cookies. Or that's the theory. I'll let you know how it turns out.

"Greenwashing"

As if it weren't enough to feel guilty pretty much every time I shop--something I buy is likely to be trucked across the country, grown in an unsustainable manner, or bad for me--now I have to worry that even the "good" things are also bad. Still, I appreciated the tips here on figuring out what's really "eco-friendly" and what isn't. And I'm trying to remind myself that doing one thing better is better than none, so I'm trying to let go of the guilt and just be grateful that I have choices.

Today I bought some of this organic chocolate (yes, because I had read about it). I don't know if it was a good choice or a bad one, but it will be tasty, I'm sure. And I bought it from a small locally-owned store.

(I know I saw the "Six Sins of Greenwashing" on someone else's blog, but I can no longer remember whose...)

Re-entry

After a week away at a wonderful conference in Kyoto, I'm having a little trouble getting back on track. I got back late Thursday night, after just about 24 hours of travel, slept 12 hours, and spent yesterday doing laundry and baking a pie to celebrate Mark's 50th birthday. I managed to get three loads of laundry done, and a creditable birthday dinner on the table (yes! there were even presents!) but now I'm wiped. And it's gorgeous out today--clear blue sky, 80 degrees with low humidity. So I'm sitting on the back porch enjoying the weather and reading last Sunday's paper.

One of the things I most enjoyed about Kyoto was the food. The things they can do with vegetables make me want to study Japanese cooking--I think it would take years to learn all the things they do. Here's a bento box that was served to me as "Buddhist Lenten fare"--an all-vegetarian lunch at a temple at Mt. Hiei. I can't identify several of the items in the lunch, but I ate it all anyway. Hardly pentitential!

back

Nick's back from camp, with a sunburn, several new beaded creations and one leather wristband, a garbage bag full of dirty clothing, and a request for "food like we normally eat. Not hot dogs."

Must be doing something right...

one great cake

Here's the cake I baked for Caroline's birthday. It's a very rich, very delicious chocolate layer cake with ganache instead of frosting (and then candied flowers, just because). I got it from a cookbook I picked up at the library: Dave's Dinners, by Dave Lieberman. (I live under a rock, so I haven't seen his show on the Food Network, but the book had pretty pictures so I checked it out.)

Here's how you make the cake:

Ingredients:
3 eggs
1 cup whole-milk yogurt (I used 3/4 cup non-fat and 1/4 cup full fat Greek yogurt)
1 stick unsalted butter, melted
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
pinch salt
1 cup hot water

Preheat oven to 350.

Beat the eggs, yogurt, and melted butter together in a large bowl. Add the vanilla, then gradually beat in the sugar.

Whisk together the dry ingredients in a separate bowl, then mix them into the wet in two steps, alternating with the hot water.

Divide the batter between two greased and floured (or just sprayed with cooking spray) 8 or 9-inch round pans. Bake at 350 for 25-30 minutes, or until set. (This took about 27 minutes in my oven.) Allow to cool fully.

For the ganache:
Bring one cup heavy cream to a boil in a saucepan. Remove from stove and whisk in 12 oz chopped bittersweet chocolate (Dave used semi-sweet; I had lovely bittersweet callebaut). Whisk until the chocolate is melted and the mixture is thick and creamy. Allow it to cool.

Put one layer on a large plate and pour ganache over it, spreading with a spatula and smoothing to cover sides. Set the other layer on top and repeat. Chill in the fridge for at least an hour before serving.

Zucchini all the time...

I don't have a vegetable garden overproducing zucchini, but I've been on the receiving end in the past. I've never really minded; I like zucchini, and there's a lot you can do with it. Bread, muffins, pancakes, stir-frys, pastas...the list goes on. Lately, though, all we do with it is grill it. Three of us like it best that way and Nick will eat it if pressed.

Still, I'm always interested in a new zucchini recipe. Recently my mother sent me this one from the NYTimes for zucchini carpaccio--thinly-sliced zucchini marinated in olive oil and lemon and layered with pistachios and avocado. It looked delicious. Alas, though, we have no pistachios or avocados in the house. So I did a little research on epicurious and found these variations, one with mint and another with arugula. Alas, I didn't have those in the house, either, and in our current lethargic state grocery shopping is not high on my list of things to do.

So here's what I came up with instead--it's not quite a salad, because I've recently decided that salads make great pasta toppings (ok, maybe not coleslaw), but you could certainly leave out the pasta and make it as a salad as well.

Zucchini Pasta

3 small zucchini, very thinly sliced (I used a vegetable peeler)
2 tablespoons olive oil
juice of 1/2 lemon
about 8 basil leaves, more if you have it, thinly sliced
about 1/4 cup shaved parmesan or other hard grating cheese
salt and pepper to taste
1/8 cup pine nuts
1 lb. pasta (I used gemelli)

Whisk together the olive oil and lemon juice. Spread the very thinly sliced zucchini on a plate (it can overlap) and sprinkle the basil over it. Pour the olive oil/lemon juice mixture over that and sprinkle with s&p to taste. Let sit while the pasta boils.

Once the pasta is done to your liking, toss it in a large bowl with a little olive oil. At this point either toss the zucchini with the pasta or divide the pasta into individual bowls and top with zucchini. Top with shaved parmesan and pine nuts (toasted or not, as you choose--I left them untoasted and they were lovely).

This is generous for four and could really probably serve six if you also had a green salad. It's a nice light dinner for a hot night. Even Nick didn't complain.

Breaking up is hard to do...

So I mentioned a while back that I was decaffeinated. I meant to get back to that.

About two weeks ago I went in for my annual check-up. I saw a terrific nurse practitioner who noticed my knitting and we spent a lot of time chatting about that. She knits, too, but can't do complicated patterns because she does most of her knitting while waiting with laboring mothers. (Hmm, what's my excuse?) Anyway, during the course of our chat she mentioned that caffeine is a culprit in, among other things, heart palpitations, which I've noticed occasionally. So I thought maybe I could stop drinking coffee. [Aside: she said tea and chocolate didn't seem nearly as problematic, which made the prospect of going coffee-free seem much easier. She did laugh when I asked her about chocolate, though.]

I switched to decaf the next morning. I really only drink one, maybe one and a half, cups of coffee a day, so I thought it would be easy. I gave up coffee entirely during both pregnancies with no problem. And for a while all seemed well.

Now, coffee and I, we have a history. It began in high school. Seniors had the privilege of drinking coffee and chatting with teachers in the headmaster's study after lunch, and I got in the habit of downing two or three heavily sugared demitasse cups every day. At some point I noticed an inverse relationship between the number of cups I drank and the number of minutes I could sit still in my afternoon classes--but that was a long, slow realization, and the after-lunch conversation seemed more meaningful than the late afternoon classes anyway. (Ah, the rationalization, it starts early!) In college I began to be a coffee snob, bringing my own French press to the dining hall filled with my own grounds so I could brew it fresh rather than drinking the dining hall swill. When Starbucks became ubiquitous I found it rather too easy to spend over two dollars on a cup of hot steaming liquid. It just tasted so good!

But I'm not such a coffee snob that I can't just brew my own delicious decaf and take it from there. So that was the plan: decaf all day instead of just after lunch, a change I made years ago to stave off insomnia.

As I said, at first all seemed well. Nick's illness, our trip up north, all passed uneventfully--at least on the coffee front. I just drank decaf, or (for a few mornings) tea. I vaguely expected a headache or two from the withdrawal, but nothing. I was smugly congratulating myself.

Until Friday, when I had a splitting headache all day. I put it down to aftereffects of travel--my sunglasses are a little too tight, the drive had been long, I was finally home and able to relax, which is sometimes when stuff like that kicks in. That was all.

Until Saturday, when the headache persisted. Tylenol had no effect. A glass of wine with dinner did nothing. This morning I had two more tylenol before breakfast, but nothing changed.

Until lunch today, when I poured myself a cup of coffee, drank it, and about an hour later noticed the headache was gone. (And, yes, for the record: it did taste better than the decaf, too.)

So now the question is: can I drink one cup of coffee a week to stave off the headaches? Do I need to taper off more slowly? Was this just a coincidence?

Random Bullets (and pictures) of Easter

• Easter is my favorite holiday, I think. I love the springtime, for one thing; Easter usually means flowers and light, even if (as it did Saturday) it snows. I wish I'd gotten a picture of the snow on the dogwoods, but it was almost melted by the time I thought to get out the camera.

• Snow may actually have been appropriate. After all, Easter is about rebirth, resurrection, life out of death. The brief blanket of snow on Saturday reminded us that we weren't quite there yet.
  

• We had the world's best houseguests with us again. It's becoming an Easter tradition, almost--they were with us two years ago for Easter, anyway. (There were only three of them then.)

• Caroline made this fabulous lemon cake, which involves boiling and pureeing whole lemons but still didn't look like too much work. She says she'll post the recipe soon.

• As often happens, we started our meal planning with dessert. Then we bought various things and made them, and we turned out to have a pretty great Easter feast. For example:

Roasted spring vegetables: asparagus, shitake mushrooms, shallots, broccoli. There were green beans, too, but they were on their own plate and were not photographed. And then there were potatoes.

• There was also a pork tenderloin (sorry, no photo) for the carnivores among us, roasted with garlic, olive oil, and rosemary. Yum.

I realize I've never photographed the rosemary filoncino before. So here it is now.

• And one more dessert: Mariah's first chocolate guinness cake.
  

• I had to show her how to use the bottle opener. How does one get to be 17 and not know how to use a bottle opener? (I know, I know, twist-offs. And she doesn't drink soda. Or, apparently, beer.)

• Nick has the flu, which slowed him down somewhat for Easter festivities. He stayed home from church Sunday morning, but I brought him treats from coffee hour and his cousins shared their egg-hunt goodies with him. Still, he was pretty pathetic. And today when I got him to the doctor we learned that tamiflu is only effective if started within 48 hours of the onset of the flu. Since he really came down with this Friday afternoon, no go. The pediatrician told us he'd seen four cases today; apparently the flu vaccine only lasts four months, so people vaccinated in October and November are now susceptible. Which puts the rest of us at higher risk as well. Great.
  

• Our houseguests are on their way home, and Mariah and Mark are off to do some college visiting this week. Nick will be hanging out with me. (At home, mostly; see above.) I think we'll be eating leftovers all week. Anyone want to come over for cake?
  

Good Friday

Hot Cross Buns, from The (1975) Joy of Cooking
(these are better than the much more complicated ones on epicurious, by the way. Nigella has fancy ones, too, but these--which are basically the Joy's Parker House rolls with a few additions--are easy and delicious.)



PS: we have no phone or internet at home right now--and until Easter Monday at the earliest. I'm posting from the office. Sigh.

St. Patrick's Day baking

I guess most people drink (green beer?) for St. Patrick's Day, but I bake. On top, Nigella's chocolate guinness cake; below, easy Irish soda bread (no caraway seeds).

Our neighbors have a St. Patrick's Day party every year, which gives me an excuse to bake. (We won't discuss how most weekends I have no such excuse, but bake anyway. I have started to notice how much butter I've been buying and I've decided...not to notice any more.)

A few notes from the weekend:

• the cooking class Nick took is paying off. He made chocolate chip-banana muffins this morning. Now if he could only do so without waking me up first!
• it is actually possible to watch basketball for over eight hours straight. I'm not sure it's a good idea, but it's possible.
• knitting while watching basketball improves both activities.
• I am working on a sweater. I last made a sweater with sleeves about twenty years ago, for Mark, before I had heard of the sweater curse. (I'm not the Libby cited in the article, but my story is similar.) Mark's sweater was too short and too wide, and the sleeves were too long--it might have been a nice fit on an orangutan, but it really didn't work for him. Still, he wore it once or twice and only recently asked if he could give it to Goodwill. So anyway this sweater is for me, it will have sleeves, and I am just a little nervous about it.
  
• we got to watch the VCU game at the party. The hometown crowd got very excited as regulation ended and we had tied it. You haven't lived until you've watched a hometown basketball game on TV with about a dozen ten-year-old boys. I think my hearing will come back eventually.
• having baked the cake there are still five bottles of Guinness left in the fridge. Somehow I don't think they'll go to waste.