A First!

Way back in the pre-parenting dark ages I developed a sudden interest in birding. It was as if a switch had been flipped and I suddenly started seeing all the birds around me and actually caring what they were. I think it's a family thing as all the women on my mom's side of the family know (or knew) their birds and knew them well. I purchased a number of reference books and pored over them, absorbing information about habitat and calls. I remember dreaming about birds at various times. I had a pretty good life list going back then but it all came to a screeching halt once kids entered my life as they really aren't the best birding companions.

We took a trip with friends to Ridgefield Wildlife Refuge today and it was a birder's paradise with marshy areas, open water, grasslands, and forest. Amazingly, I even remembered to bring along my binoculars and a field guide. We saw all kinds of things: herons, egrets, doves, swallows, flycatchers, and more. But when a large brown bird took off from the cattails, I was stumped. The boys had run ahead with the field guide so it took me a while to look it up and, lo and behold, it was one of these:The American Bittern is not particularly rare, but they're shy and not easy to spot. They always looked so endearing in the bird books as they are usually shown holding their bills aloft in an attempt to look like pond grass. I'd never thought about what they might look like flying, but there was no doubt that's what I'd seen. This was a bird I'd always wanted to see so it felt like quite a triumph once I identified it.
Our outing was lovely. No rain, but no hot sun, either. At 4.2 miles, the walk turned out to be just a bit longer than the 1.5 we'd planned on, but we started out in the wrong place and by the time we realized our error we were far enough along the trail that it made no sense to go back. The kids whined and I ended up carrying The Princess for the last of it, but it was a fine spring outing nonetheless.

Curry Noodle Pot

I recently got my hands on a copy of Super Natural Cooking, the latest from Heidi Swanson over at 101 Cookbooks which has become one of my top 5 favorite food blogs. Her recipes are fresh and vibrant and her photos are simply breathtaking. Mere mortals like myself can only dream of using a camera with her skill. I thoroughly enjoyed her earlier Cook 1.0 and was looking forward to this latest effort.

The first thing to catch my eye was a recipe entitled Big Curry Noodle Pot. It's a simple and deeply satisfying Southeast Asian style curry soup, spicy from red curry paste, rich with coconut milk, and fragrant with lime. I made the soup following the book closely the first time. The recipe was quick and easy and lent itself to experimentation so my second batch went off in a slightly different direction. I used a yellow curry paste from our local Vietnamese market and upped the veggie factor with asparagus tips and coarsely grated carrot. I wanted the asparagus to shine so I skipped the cilantro but retained the all important crushed peanuts.

The asparagus and yellow curry was just as tasty as the original pot of soup. I'm sure one can go off in any number of directions with a recipe like this depending on what looks good and fresh on any given day. I find the silky rich coconut broth so very delicious.

I'm looking forward to trying out other recipes in the book. The Wheat Berry Salad looks delicious and the Crema de Guacamole looks perfect for a sultry summer's day. Go find a copy of Super Natural Cooking. Whether you cook from it or not (and of course you should), I think you'll find that the photos are feast all on their own.

Worrying.....and not

What you don't want to hear (from your doctor, at an annual check up): "Have you felt this lump before? "

What you do want to hear (from the technician at the mammogram center, the very next day): "We don't see anything to worry about".

Now, it was only 24 hours between those two comments, and in that time I had imagined the worst, many times over. I imagined not seeing my kids grow up. I imagined my sweet husband, trying to mange without me. I imagined trying to tell my grandmother I had the same disease she's struggled with for years. I worried about how to pay for treatment. Nothing like a bit of good, old fashioned unfounded panic, I always say.

But also I felt the warmth and love of the people I'd told, especially as I sat, wrapped in a silly little pink gown, waiting for results. I knew that I had enough support to handle whatever might come, and that's a remarkably good feeling. Almost as good as being told there's nothing to worry about.

Posole Verde

I wonder how many of us have cookbooks that have been kicking around for years, allowed to languish with the dependable standards, all for one perfect recipe. That's the case with Martha Stewart's Healthy Quick Cook, a book which ended up in my collection for free after I bought the requisite cartons of orange juice many years ago. It's full of recipes for nice enough meals based mostly meat and shellfish. I can't remember making anything out of this book other than posole but I've made that many, many times and served it to I don't know how many appreciative eaters. For this one recipe, the book stays on my cookbook shelf.Posole is a traditional Mexican/New Mexican dish with a long history. There are numerous versions of the stew, most of which include pork. One constant ingredient is hominy which makes the dish hearty and filling and adds a lovely flavor and body. This is a delicious vegetarian version which is rich and spicy and full of flavor. The base is a cumin-scented, oniony broth and it's filled out with hominy, diced tomatilos, and finely sliced Swiss chard.

Because it's served with a variety of garnishes, diners can customize their bowls to taste. I usually put out small bowls filled with chopped cilantro, minced chiles, avocado chunks, sour cream, crumbled cotija cheese, and lime wedges. I find that my children love any sort of meal with lots of options so I make the stew itself fairly mild, let them load up on avocados and cheese, and add lots of minced serrano chiles and lime juice to my own bowl to get things where I like them. Something about the vitamin rich chard and tomatillos always makes me think of this as a restorative tonic, but it may just be the contrast of the rich warm broth and all the bright add-in flavors at the end. It's a pick-me-up for sure, perfect to bring to a sick friend, and just the thing for a rainy day.

I have a bit of a curse going on with this recipe. I always manage to forget one of the key ingredients. And yesterday was no exception though lunch was saved by the lovely Elizabeth who went traipsing about looking for tomatillos. It seems the tomatillo truck didn't make it to Portland this week. What she found after hitting two stores were some decidedly puny specimens, but I used them nonetheless as they are a key component and I was desperate. This was certainly not my best ever batch of posole but it was enjoyed by everyone and there was barely a bowl leftover for today's lunch. Give this simple dish a try. You'll be glad you did. The recipe is here.

Job Related Stress

I'd been meaning to sit down and write a post about work. This term has been very challenging both because I have a bunch of high energy students who are difficult to manage and because my colleagues have decided to revamp the curriculum and make huge, sweeping changes requiring a tremendous amount of additional work. The changes are likely for the good but the process was undertaken in a way what failed to include a number of instructors from the outset and I now find myself frantically racing to get up to speed. Put simply, my job is eating my life.

There are very good reasons why I've consciously chosen to work part time. The most important, of course, are my children whose education and well being are hard to support when I am sitting in yet another meeting away from home. I feel my teaching is also suffering this term as I am spending so much energy and attention on the new stuff and planning that the daily part is suffering. I am stressed and tired and not doing a particularly good job at mothering, teaching, or anything else.

So, while there's plenty on my plate these days, I've had something huge come up that has really shaken me. It seems that one of my college's campuses (and not, thank thank G-d, the one where I work) was closed down yesterday and today due to a note found in a college restroom referencing the recent massacre at Virginia Tech. Honestly, through all the news last week, the nearly non-stop coverage of the tragedy across the country, never once did it occur to me that something similar could happen here. Not once until I got the news about my college. Everything feels completely different today and I find myself jumping at little things like noisy students in the hallway. This is doing nothing for my stress level.

Shame

We just finished watching When The Levees Broke, Spike Lee's outstanding 3 disc documentary about Hurricane Katrina and the flooding of New Orleans. It was brilliant: both eye opening and heart wrenching, but also tender, passionate, and angry. We hear from a huge range of people from working class residents of the lower 9th ward to middle class musicians and professionals to the mayor New Orleans and governor of Louisiana and everyone has a story to tell. Both local and federal governments are soundly condemned, but individual acts of courage and strength are honored and celebrated through the telling of these stories. The film is not in any way without its biases, but we got plenty of that in the mainstream reporting of Katrina and its aftermath. After all the stories turning Katrina survivors into nameless, faceless, frightening poor folks somewhere far away this film is refreshing in its depth and candor and moments of pure beauty despite the grim subject matter.

Biryani

The food section in yesterday's newspaper included an extremely long and complicated biryani recipe which caught my eye. Quite a production, this dish, but I saw that it held potential.

I started off by making a fresh batch of ghee which is the easiest thing in the world. I can't for the life of me understand why people will pay what they do for store bought ghee as it takes nothing but butter to make it. And when you make it at home, you get to scrape all the tasty bits of the bottom of the pan and eat them.

After a quick trip to the store for cashews and tiny potatoes I got started. Like I said, the recipe is long so I had to read it through a few times to get the procedure down. I started by crumbling saffron threads into warm milk and soaking the basmati rice. Starting with a base of richly browned onions I then sauteed tiny new potatoes, cauliflower, and carrots in stages. I made up a paste of ginger and garlic which was sauteed as well, its steam nearly knocking me out once I added it to the pan. Then a pile of different spices--so much flavor! All the spiced veggies are added to the rice and the whole thing is baked under cover and then served with a knockout spiced tomato gravy. Not by any stretch of the imagination a quick fix dish, but rather the sort of thing that demonstrates just how much can be brought to a meal by taking ones time and carefully adding layers of flavor. I have only two gripes--the original recipe vastly underestimates the amount of time needed to get the vegetables tender. This is not a dish where you want your vegetables salad bar crunchy and, despite longer cooking times on the potatoes, carrots, and cauliflower, I could have cooked them even longer for a better overall texture. I ended up transfering the leftovers to a covered casserole dish with a few tablespoons of water and nuking everything together to get the veggies tender enough. But you don't want them falling apart, either, so a bit of care is needed in getting the veggies just right.

And darn The Oregonian! Usually they have all their recipes available online but they only included the recipe for the tomato gravy. So I had to type out the entire biryani recipe in order to share it with you. I hope there aren't any typos. I tried to adjust the recipe into something that made more sense to me in terms of timing. Hopefully it will work for you, too. The recipe (all 4 pages of it) can be found here. And I hope that on a quiet, lazy day, you'll take the time to give this delicious dish a try.

Treasure from the Freezer

I woke up to yet another gray, rainy spring morning. The usual smoothie or yogurt/granola breakfast had no appeal whatsoever and, since it was too wet and miserable to go for a walk, I thought I could actually take the time to cook something proper. Somehow I got to thinking about the remaining bags of roasted green chiles tucked away in the back of my freezer. Every year I try to hit the farmers' markets when the chile roasting folks set up camp, mid to late September or so. I stock up, buying many pounds of the charred treasures. When I arrive home, I chop them, remove stems, and pack away in smaller size freezer bags for use the rest of the year.

Today I think I was craving protein so I decided on this simple crustless quiche. I clipped the recipe from the FOODday section of our local paper some time ago and have made it countless times since then. It's simple, hearty, easily portable, and good warm or room temperature and great for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. The ingredients are pretty basic though I really think that good roasted chiles (and not the vinegary canned types) make a huge difference, as does a good quality ricotta. I use Trader Joe's "fresh" ricotta in everything as I find it much more flavorful and less watery and insipid than most grocery store brands.

This was just what I needed this morning. Not too spicy, but definitely warming. Not too filling but definitely satisfying, getting my morning off to a good start. And, funny thing, after I ate, the slightest bit of sunlight started to peek through the gloom.

Give this recipe a try if you are interested and let me know what you think. I've noticed that, while there have been literally hundreds of dowloads of my recipes, there's been very little commentary. I'd love to hear what you think so please do post a comment now and then.

Score One for the Girly Girls

The Princess had her first ballet class yesterday. Her father found a listing in the local parks & rec catalog which we could just squeeze in with my dropping her off before work and her father picking her up afterwards.

Consequently, the last week was nothing but growing excitement for her. She studied this book nonstop, poring over details ranging from foot position to hair accessories. She packed her frog backpack with everything she could possibly need including hairbands in various colors and a string of fake pearls "for luck". Then the bag was unpacked, double checked, and re-packed more times than I could count.

We visited a distinctly non-glamorous dance store in a grotty eastside strip mall for shoes and The Princess was in little girl heaven, surrounded by tulle and spangles and glitter. I felt sort of itchy myself and longed to escape, but I tried to let her enjoy the moment.

The big moment came yesterday, we met up with her father in the rain and they went off to find the class. The Princess was nearly vibrating with excitement when I said "goodbye". I drove to work once again wondering why I have such a hard time with all this sparkly pink girly stuff. I know I don't want her obsessing over her appearance and her body image. I don't want her to get nasty and competitive, and I don't want her to feel she needs to compare herself with other girls or meet socially constructed expectations of beauty.

We kept talking to her about what hard work ballet is but in fact The Spouse tells me that the class is really a bit of a fluttery pink free-for-all with all those tiny tutu'd girls running about. The Princess, he informs me, was very serious and tried her best to take it all in. When I came home from work she was still flouncing about in her dance ensemble, eager to tell me every detail. I guess what matters most is that she is very, very happy.

Now, I wonder if I can get her to think about tae kwon do or aikido....

Gnocchi

One of the reasons I started a food blog was because I so enjoy reading food blogs. I frequently visit all kinds of folks on the web whose writing and photography skills I can't even touch. But it gives me something to aspire to, along with some really great recipes.

I've been spending a lot of time at Smitten Kitchen lately. The Lighter than Air Chocolate Cake was such a spectacular success at our seder that the author now has a fan for life. She recently posted about making gnocchi which I've tried a time or two, with entirely disastrous results so I was interested in her technique which, while simple, was right on and made for a lovely meal.

Past gnocchi attempts have always started with boiled potatoes, leading to unsurprisingly soggy results. This recipe uses grated baked baked potatoes which make for a lighter dough. Making the gnocchi is one of those easy but time consuming projects. The gnocchi are made up simply of the grated baked potatoes, egg, and enough flour to make up a workable mass of dough. Rolled into long "snakes" and cut into bite-sized bits, they are then decorated with the tines of a fork.

I found the fork decoration a bit challenging and my gnocchi were in no way uniform. The second batch I made came out prettier. After dumping the leftover challah glazing egg into the mixing bowl, I think the higher egg content made them easier to work.

I made up two batches: one with pesto and another with a bit of butter and Parmesan for the kids who hoovered them all down with nary a trace remaining. I am now interested in pursuing other gnocchi possibilities. I've heard of (but never tried) ricotta gnocchi which sound lovely. Or perhaps something made with winter squash and sage? I'll definitely have to look into this further now that I know I have the potential to make something edible.

My thanks to Smitten Kitchen for helping me overcome the trauma of prior gnocchi!

A Big Hole

Today is my brother's yartzeit. Five years younger than me, he was a husband and a father and a well-respected police officer when, overwhelmed by circumstances, he chose to leave us.

He was quirky, for sure, but also generous, brilliant, wickedly funny and your worst nightmare as a Scrabble opponent. He loved animals, especially ugly dogs, and worked hard to create a beautiful garden. He was always such a great problem solver--nothing seemed too difficult for him. Until everything was.

I don't know what he went through in his final days, what was so awful that he saw no way out. I'll never get over feeling that maybe I could have said something, done something, reached out in some way. There's a lot of anger, too, that I've been struggling with for four years. Anger that he would choose to give up, anger that he left us all devastated. Of course it's pointless, even counter-productive to hang on to anger as I've done but it's so very hard to let it go.

I can still get panicky and short of breath when I think about hearing the news and the days that followed. It was the most awful and surreal time but I still need to keep most details tucked away for fear of bringing back all that raw emotion , the horrifying and very real sense of being trapped in a nightmare. I can't really talk about it with my family, I stay away from the memorial walks they take each year because I still just can't go there.

Today has been sad. I can't get him out of my mind. We went to shul to say kaddish tonight and it struck me that it never gets any easier, even after all this time. The Dark Lord threw a bony arm around me when he caught me crying, giving me support in his gawky teen way and that was a needed bit of sweetness. I don't know how much he and MonkeyBoy remember their uncle but he was a larger-than-life hero when they were young.

Mostly I just miss my brother like crazy. I wish he were here to see his son, and my children grow up. I long to hear one of his long, drawn-out, ridiculous stories or hear about the latest project. Our family will never be the same. He left a giant Ben-shaped hole in all our hearts which is still ragged and painful but hopefully beginning to heal ever so slightly.

A Passover Dinner

The seders are fun and engaging but the reality is that it doesn't take too long before matzoh gets old, along with eating Passover style. Knowing that by the weekend my family would be kvetching I made a big hunk of meat. This is very rare in our house. None of us are big meat eaters and a couple of us generally can't stand the stuff. But brisket, prepared in the style of my grandmother, is something we all love. So I spent an extraordinary amount of money on 4 pounds of kosher brisket, cooked it up and served it with new potatoes, carrot salad, and asparagus for Shabbat dinner.

I had the meal composed in my head well in advance except for dessert. Finding a good dairy-free dessert to serve with meat is challenging enough. I'm all for butter and cream whenever possible, really. But I also needed something without flour to make it kosher for Passover. I looked to The Book of Jewish Food by Claudia Roden where I came across a whole section of Passover cakes. The Almond Cake in Orange Syrup caught my eye since I'm already crazy for orange cake. I was thinking that a syrup cake would make up for the lack of butter. The cake is simple, made only of eggs, ground almonds, sugar, oranges, and cinnamon. Unfortunately because my Passover bakeware is limited, I had another notable lesson in using the proper size pan. The cake ballooned out of the pan I had, but I trimmed it up, plopped it into its syrup bath and it was quite delicious: sticky, moist, nutty, and tasting very strongly of oranges which I found a perfect combination. It's not particularly elegant but it is a simple and lovely cake. Try it and see.

New Term, New Tensions

Despite missing the first night of class so I could be part of at least one seder this year, my term is off to a rolling start. I have nearly 30 students in my class, pretty evenly divided between Russian speakers (who are mostly ethnic Turks) and Spanish speakers (from Mexico,Guatemala, and Honduras). They're a bright and lively bunch and it should be a great term.

There's just one problem. I'm already seeing the beginnings of tension between the kids from each group. We've had fights before, so I am hyper-sensitive to any kind of bad vibes and tonight there was a bit of trouble. My students were working on an activity which required them to move around the room and speak with a variety of students. A couple of Mexican boys were chatting with a Turkish girl whose brother (also in the class) was not all happy and began to yell at them to leave her alone. Feeling (rightly) that they'd done nothing wrong, the Mexican boys wanted to continue the conversation and the girl in question seemed to be more embarrassed by her brother's outburst than by the other boys' attention. The room became charged with energy and I placed myself in between the boys to try and defuse the tension. Eventually everyone settled down but I found it very frustrating because I can't speak Russian well enough to help mediate things like this.

This isn't the first time there's been inter-ethnic tension and the fights have always involved a girl. I expect my students to regularly work with one another in mixed gender and mixed ethnicity groups. It forces them to use English and gives them experience in a multicultural environment which is new to many of them. The "don't talk to my sister" attitude drives me crazy. The girls don't need protecting.

As newcomers to the US with minimal English skills and no real power that these students have far more in common than they realize. Nothing is gained by this silly posturing and there's much to lose. Our current policy is that anyone caught fighting is expelled. Period. They're just teenagers but one of the lessons they most need to learn is to think past the next 10 seconds. They need to learn enough self-control to back down and focus on their education. Now, if only I could say that in a language they all understood.

Aaaahhhhhh.......

The 48 hour frenzy of cooking and cleaning is over and I won't have to cook again for days.

The first Passover seder was tonight. We were 14 all together which is accomplished in my house by putting two 6-foot tables together to make one large (not long) table, filling up the dining room. We pull dishes from two sets of china and use every wine and drinking glass in the house. It's a tight fit around the table and once everyone's in there's not a lot of up and down.

We had the following for dinner:

blanched vegetables with yogurt-dill dip
matzah balls in roasted vegetable stock
gefilte fish
apple-walnut charoset and cherry-pear-ginger charoset
sweet potato and carrot tzimmes
matzakopita
potato kugel
green salad
fruit salad
steamed asparagus

lighter-than-air chocolate cake
coconut macaroons

I cooked everything but the kugel, green salad, and macaroons (all of which were made by Fran and were absolutely delicious).

For those unfamiliar with the names, charoset is a paste of fruit, nuts, and sweet wine that is served at the seder in memory of the mortar used by the Israelite slaves in Egypt. Tzimmes is a stew made of sweet potatoes, carrots, prunes, and dried apricots simmered in orange juice with cinnamon. Matazakopita has no real history. I created it last year while looking for a new variation on the classic soggy matzoh and cheese genre. I make up a filling of spinach, feta, ricotta, and eggs like I'd put between layers of filo the rest of the year but instead I layer it with damp matzoh. It sounds horrid but tastes surprisingly good. The soggy matzoh is kind of like a delicate fresh pasta if you let just yourself believe.

It was a lot of cooking and by the middle of this afternoon my refrigerator looked like this, with barely an inch of space to spare:

The most fun was making the Lighter Than Air Chocolate Cake that I found recently over at Smitten Kitchen. It's four layers of flourless chocolate cake sandwiching a sweetened cream filling. It was a little bit fussy and the tiniest bit stressful when it came to getting the layers out of the pans but it was worth every minute of work and a perfect ending to a grand family meal. I didn't get any great photos to show how gorgeous it was but I like his photo because it shows the half-eaten cake with a marvelous, magical halo underneath.

That's kind of how I feel after pulling off one of these super meals, when everything goes right and everyone is well fed and well behaved--kind of glowy and warm and deliciously tired.

Gefilte Fish

Gefilte fish, the butt of many jokes and disparaging comments, is simply a long simmered fish dumpling. It's not particularly glamorous or lovely--the individual pieces are rather lumpy and homely. Nonetheless it's a holiday classic among Jews of Eastern European origin and making it each year has become one of my Passover traditions. If you've ever seen (or worse yet, tasted) gefilte fish out of a jar you may think that's how it's supposed to taste and why bother making it. The homemade variety is altogether different and quite tasty, especially slathered in horseradish.

You need to plan ahead and talk with your fish market to make sure they'll grind fish and provide you with fish bones for the stock. This used to be no big deal but recently, as more and more fish has come from far off places, many stores are unable, apparently by law, to give you bones and trimmings. So call around. Here in the Northwest, I usually use a mixture of salmon, cod, and halibut but you can certainly experiment with your fish varieties. Have the fish market grind the fish for you --the market I use has a grinder that is only used for fish (no shellfish, pork, or other meats) so that takes care of the kashrut issue, at least for our family. Ask them to throw in some onion and carrot while they do the grinding--this will save you work and mess down the road.

Once you get home with your package of ground fish and weird bones and trimmings, the first step is making the stock as seen in the photo below. Note the fin! This is, after all, ethnic cooking.Once the stock is cooked and strained, it's time to dig your hands into all that fishiness and mix in eggs, matzoh meal, salt, and pepper. The small patties are formed and then slipped gently into the simmering stock and cooked for a good long time. Eventually you end up with this:

Your seder guests will be delighted and amazed to have real, homemade gefilte fish which they will happily slather with horseradish and gobble down. It's expensive and stinky to make, but it's a big part of my Passover tradition. If you aren't completely appalled and actually want to try it for yourself (and I hope you will), the recipe is here.

It seems so obvious that I shouldn't have to say it, but .....don't taste the raw fish.

Lemon Curd

Passover is nearly here, my long stage of denial is over and I'm now in the frantic activity mode. I've had years when I really went nuts getting rid of every speck of chametz and completely changing over the kitchen to dishes and cookware used only during Passover. In the past we've been joined at our seder by friends who are considerably more detail-oriented Jews than I am but I always wanted them to feel comfortable so I prepared a bit more thoroughly . This year is simpler but nonetheless there's a ton of cleaning to do, all the regular cookware and flatware I'm intending to use needs to be made kosher for Passover through immersion in boiling water, the counters are scrubbed, the refrigerator is throughly cleaned and the cupboards are emptied of non-Passover foods and wiped down. And, with a houseful of guests coming Monday night for the first seder, there's plenty of regular old run of the mill housecleaning to do as well.

I try to look for the spiritual metaphors of liberation, freedom, and rebirth as I scrub but honestly, I just want to prepare the kitchen so I can get to the cooking. I was pretty wiped out after cleaning tonight, but I simply had to start my official Passover cooking with a batch of Meyer lemon curd.My email pal Ruth gave me this recipe years ago and it's become tradition in my home. When eating matzoh for a week, it's nice to have a special spread. The original recipe called for regular old lemons but I love Meyer lemons so much that I tried using them a few years ago and found that they make a delightful curd though I did cut the sugar back slightly as I like my lemon curd quite tart. It's remarkably easy to make, one of those things that comes out looking far more fabulous than the work really merits. I make a few jars each year, enough for us and to share with friends. The recipe is here.

An Outing

The Spouse was able to rearrange things at work and I am still desperately trying to deny Passover's imminent approach so we decided that a trip to Seattle sounded much more pleasant than cleaning kitchen cupboards.

We packed up the kids after a long debate about bringing laptops along. Needless to say I found that issue less urgent than my boys did and, to punish me, they spent the first 30 minutes of the 3 hour drive squabbling loudly. Then, praise God, they fell asleep. The Princess kept busy with a bag of amusements I'd packed for her so "when-do-we-get-there?" wasn't repeated too many times.

It wad a gorgeous, sunny day and we were blessed with very little traffic and an easy entry into Seattle despite its mind boggling freeway system which includes numerous mysterious offshoots and exits off both the right and the left sides which strikes me as particularly demented and makes for slightly stressed out day trippers. After wedging the mighty minivan into a tiny underground parking space with a whole 4 inches to spare on either side, we walked out down to the Pike Place Market, a Seattle institution that I loved visiting as a kid. There's enough going on there to keep everyone interested and amused for the day.

We met up with good friends who were also visiting the city this week. The Princess and her best buddy posed for pictures with the pig:We did a little shopping, lots of browsing, and lots of eating (which is described in detail, with photos, here). I enjoyed showing my children some of the things I remembered from childhood visits to my beloved aunt including the original Starbucks, the crumpet shop, and Market Spice tea.

We gave each of the boys a little spending money to play with and they'd brought a bit of their own. MonkeyBoy spent a few dollars on tooth destroying candy and then gave quite a bit of money to the street performers. As we were leaving the market and walking back to the car at the end of the day a woman who was clearly needy asked us for a little something. I gave her a couple of dollars and then noticed MonkeyBoy reaching for his wallet once again. He was a bit troubled but gave the lady the $5 bill that he had left. He actually hesitated because, he later told me, he'd planned on using that money as his contribution to the MS Walk in 2 weeks. Maybe it's easy for him to give away money because he's rarely ever earned it, but I was very proud of his generosity. Given what an absolute pill he can be much of the time, it does me good to know he has such a giving and non-judgmental nature.

The Dark Lord seemed to have a fine time despite spending a fair amount of time showing us the teen attitude he's perfecting these days. (I've recently stumbled upon the term bershon which pretty much sums it up.) What amazes me is how the kid manages to retain the bored/cool/whatever look while chowing down on a giant cookie! His observations on the day in Seattle can be found here.

It's not such a long drive, really, and The Princess travels well as long as I have the foresight to burn through a bunch of ink downloading enough things from Enchanted Learning to keep her entertained, so we might make the trip more often. A change of scenery is good.

Eating at Pike Place Market

We found ourselves suddenly able to take a day off today and decided to pack up the kids and head for Seattle. We had neither the time nor the money for an overnight stay but figured a change of scenery and a few hours at the Pike Place Market would be a perfect outing.

I hadn't visited the market in years but it was a regular stop on visits to my aunt when I was young and I figured there would be enough there to keep all the kids amused for the day. We made a few stops that honored my childhood memories. At The Crumpet Shop I was delighted to buy my kids warm crumpets with butter and honey--a sweet, sticky, and perfect snack. My aunt took me there during my Anglophile phase and I never lost my fondness for a good toasty crumpet. At Market Spice I was able to pick up a bag of their famous tea, rich with orange and cinnamon which was a favorite of mine growing up.

Though the kids found it dull as anything, I was loving all the gorgeous produce. But after a fair amount of aimless wandering we found ourselves good and hungry and needing a proper meal. With all three of The Picky Ones giving input, choosing a lunch spot was tedious as no one could agree on anything. We tried one of the venerable old restaurants in the middle of the market but once seated we were rather abruptly moved from a perfectly nice booth with a lovely view to a table back in an upstairs corner with a view of cleaning supplies. After the move we were ignored by the waitress, which gave a us a long time to contemplate a menu that, though extensive, grew rather less appealing with each reading. Despite rumbling stomachs, we (politely) up and left in the hopes of escaping an unpleasant and overpriced meal. I'd run out of patience for juvenile kvetching and made everyone grab a stool at Piroshky Piroshky which proved to be a brilliant move. The kids had the potato and onion pastries which were hearty and savory and absolutely without surprises or green matter so they were happy. My selection was filled with deeply browned onions and cabbage that was sweet and delicious. The pastry dough was both light and rich and had I not been perfectly satiated I might have sampled some of their sweet pastries which also looked divine. If I hadn't been so busy hoovering down my food I might have taken a photo or two. I wish I had because in addition to being extremely tasty, the piroshki were also very pretty.

Once fed I made a stop at Beecher's Cheese for some of their Flagship cheese. I was quite proud of my foresight because I even remembered an insulated lunch bag just in case anything needing needing to be chilled caught my eye. Later I couldn't pass up a giant molasses cookie at Cinnamon Works bakery which had the perfect chewy/crunchy thing going on and had just a bit of a kick from the ginger.

All in all it was a fine day, a perfect little escape, and a lovely chance to share some of my childhood memories with my kids.

An Old Favorite

A simple dinner tonight: creamy polenta topped with garlicky sauteed chard and crumbled sheep's milk feta. There's not a whole lot to say about this dish except that it's easy, healthy, and delicious. My friend Laura and I often share this meal when we're lucky enough to spend the day together.

Watch This Movie

Wetback: The Undocumented documentary--I came across this film because a Manu Chao song was used in the soundtrack. It's an amazing film about undocumented immigrants--what drives them to come here (poverty--big surprise) and the many dangers they face on the journey. Because I work with these kids I feel it my obligation to learn what I can about them, but anyone who's ever wondered why there are so many undocumented laborers in the US needs to see this movie. The movie presents very moving personal stories, but also some amazing facts, including that undocumented workers account for over $15 billion in contributions to the US economy,this being the difference between taxes paid and services used. The movie is skillfully made, the music is outstanding, and you will not regret having taken the time to search this one out.

Macaroni and Cheese

Passover is rapidly approaching and I find that my cupboards are still brimming with chametz, the various grain products that Jews are prohibited from eating or possessing during the eight day holiday. Forbidden foods include oats, barley, corn, and the vast number of wheat related products that we rely so heavily on: bread, pasta, tortillas, crackers, and so on. While I rather enjoy having a week that's so very distinct from the rest of the year, getting ready is rather tiresome.

A dish of delicious homemade macaroni and cheese could serve two purposes: using up pasta and reviving my spirit for there's little in this world I love more than a good homemade macaroni and cheese. It's taken me years to settle on just the right formula. Many pounds of perfectly good cheese have been wasted in the search for the perfect mac. I settled on Jack Bishop's recipe (with a few alterations) sometime last year and haven't looked back. His preference is for more bread crumbs and I prefer somewhat fewer and with a garlicky kick. He's adamant about specific cheeeses and I am far more flexible with good old Tillamook cheddar often providing the bulk of the cheesy goodness. My take on Mr Bishop's fine recipe is here.

The pickiest of The Picky Ones won't touch homemade macaroni and cheese with a ten foot pole. Announcing my dinner plans, he began to work himself up into a frenzy of indignant kvetching about how I never make anything he can eat. I regularly offer to teach him to make anything he thinks he could choke down but his general response to that is a rather loud refusal. Oddly enough he decided he'd try this time so while I made our macaroni and cheese, he made a simple red sauce and we were able to use up two pounds of pasta in one meal. The yummy macaroni was served with leftovers of what we now refer to as Orangette carrot salad followed by slices of leftover orange cake. All in all, a perfect little meal.

An Indian Supper

I spent much of the afternoon in an overstuffed chair at a cafe with a new library find: The Indian Spice Kitchen by Monisha Bharadwaj. This treasure covers, in delicious detail, the spices, herbs, produce, and other ingredients that make the cuisines of India so distinctive and includes a couple of recipes to highlight each ingredient. Needless to say, dinner would be Indian. We made a quick stop at the local Vietnamese market for ginger, chiles, cabbage, cilantro, and a few other things because, naturally, surrounded by all that produce, the menu just kept growing in my mind.

I came home and whipped up the following three dishes: Punjabi aloo, chana masala, and spiced cabbage. Aloo means potatoes, and this dish is the first Indian dish I mastered years ago using a recipe from Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian. It's very versatile and can be made in a number of different ways. Sometimes I add peas for color, greens for the vitamins, or chickpeas for extra protein. It hardly matters what you do as the dish will still be delicious. You can find my take on the the original recipe here.

The chana masala I've written about before. I found the recipe on Orangette a few weeks ago and have now made it 4 times. It never disappoints, especially reheated for breakfast.

As for the cabbage, it was a snap. I heated some coconut oil and added mustard seeds, waiting until they popped. Then into the pan went a thinly sliced red bell pepper and a good pinch of turmeric. Once the pepper was soft I added half of a green cabbage, very thinly sliced along with a pinch of salt. I stirred and fried until the cabbage was soft and sweet.

Early on in the process I'd thrown some rinsed basmati rice into my darling little rice cooker along with a broken cinnamon stick and a few crushed cardamom pods. Of course I wished for some freshly baked flat breads and a nice chutney or two, but this was spur of the moment and I was quite happy with the meal I'd whipped up. I think The Picky Ones ate sandwiches, which left us with lots of tasty leftovers.

Last night of the term

Tonight was the end of winter term. I've been through this dozens of times over the years but for some reason I had a lot of students who were hard to let go this time. Most of my students come into the class at least somewhat literate and with enough educational background to learn the material in 11 weeks and then they move on to the next level. Those that need to repeat are the ones I get to know. I was able to pass a number of repeating students this time around, including one boy who had come into my class barely literate and is now moving on after three terms with me. He's a sweet boy and I'll miss him, but the smile on his face when I gave him his final exam results was radiant and I won't soon forget that. All three of my east African girls are moving on as well. My classroom will be a less vibrant place without their musical voices and fluttering veils. As a parting gift, Yasmin offered to decorate my hands again which I find so exotic and beautiful.

In the coming days I need to get my house Passover ready and plan and prepare a seder. Not really a vacation by any means as I will be crazy busy but hopefully I'll find a few minutes for recharging.

Egg Salad

Egg salad? What's the big deal, right? Who doesn't know how to make egg salad? But this egg salad is something special.

I'm not a very enthusiastic egg eater but my doctor is now urging me to consume what strikes me as an insane amount of protein. I think she'd be happy if I consumed half a cow a day. She knows my feelings on meat and has consequently encouraged me to up my egg intake.

You won't see me wolfing down a plate of scrambled, fried, or over-easy eggs. I like my eggs hidden, disguised, tucked away. A sandwich is perfect but the standard, bland, full-of-mayonnaise egg salad has never really done much for me. Years ago I read the wonderful memoir Miriam's Kitchen in which author Elizabeth Ehrlich explores both the spiritual and culinary sides of Judaism at the side of her mother-in-law, a Holocaust survivor. I loved the book, but all I ever cooked from it was the egg salad which is so distinctive that it really has little to do with the pale yellow goo we call by that name. This egg salad is special, you need to plan ahead just slightly and everyone who eats it will ask for more.

It starts, as so many good things do, with lots of deeply browned onions. Three or four onions to half a dozen eggs is a good ratio. Slice them thin or dice and then sauté in a mixture of 2 tablespoons butter and the same amount of olive oil. Here is where you need patience because the darker and sweeter you let the onions get, the better the egg salad will be. Boil half a dozen eggs, cool, peel, and chop finely in a good sized bowl. When the onions are perfectly dark and sweet, scrape them along with all the pan oil over the eggs. Add salt and pepper to taste, along with finely chopped fresh dill. That's it, really.

I served this today along with some freshly baked honey-whole wheat rolls and it was just about perfect with the windows open and a lovely blossom-scented spring breeze drifting through the kitchen . The friends who were supposed to come for lunch were unable to make it (now they know what they missed!) but we enjoyed the meal nonetheless.

Turkey Sandwich

I've finally decided to faced the fact that we are a mere two weeks from Passover. The more ambitious of my tribe have been cleaning, scrubbing, and planning for weeks while I've merrily had my head in the sand. The friend who normally prods me into action as we plan our shared family seder is no longer speaking to me, so I've been a state of denial and realize that I'm going to have to make it happen without her which is both overwhelming and quite sad.

I made the initial crosstown trek to the one Albertson's store that carries all the kosher-for-Pesach items and bought the initial round of supplies including 10 pounds of matzah and the nasty kosher marshmallows that my kids seem to find a reasonable compensation for a week without bread, pasta, tortillas, cereal, and crackers. I've never understood th attraction of the marshmallows but they keep the kids happy.

I was feeling generous and decided to splurge a bit and buy The Dark Lord some flesh. While we have the requisite two sets of dishes (more actually) and all the cookware and what have you to enable us to cook and serve separate meat and dairy meals, meat is rarely seen in our house. I'm just not much of a meat cook, mostly because there's not a whole lot of meat I like. I did order 5lb of beef brisket which, when cooked according to my grandmother's recipe, really isn't meat at all as it melts in the mouth..."like buttah". I'll pick that up next week and cook it to serve my family midweek when the post-seder grumbling begins.

But today I bought the kid a pound of sliced kosher turkey so he could make a bunch of sandwiches and grow a few more inches. I can only buy this stuff at the one store across town so it's a bit of an occasion but I was happy to get the kid his much loved meat. He hoovered down a couple of sandwiches this afternoon and was eating the turkey once again when I came home from work this evening. I noticed that he had his meat sandwich on a dairy plate and was pointing out the error when I realized that he'd also put a bunch of cheese on his turkey sandwich. Now, mixing up plates I can understand. We eat meat so rarely that it's not uncommon to reach for the default (dairy) plates but someone usually remembers. But it's rather hard to accidentally put cheese your turkey sandwich. When I asked him about it, what I heard was something along the lines of "the rules are stupid, I can eat whatever I want, and I'm not even Jewish anyway".

Whew. It felt like one of those handle-this-correctly-or-you're toast parenting moments. I tried to stay calm which wasn't easy while The Spouse (who, I'll just add here, isn't even Jewish) tossed the whole $6.50/lb turkey sandwich in the trash which rather ticked off both The Dark Lord and myself as I was busy trying to determine my best response.

I know I can't force my kid to be Jewish. I can't (nor do I want to) tell him how he has to be Jewish. But it doesn't seem unreasonable to me that he be expected to respect the rules of this house. We keep kosher. Not by Chabad standards, but biblical kashrut is an important part of my keeping a Jewish home and it's been that way since The Dark Lord was tiny. I have no idea why he wanted to flaunt the rules so blatantly tonight. I kept trying to imagine what he hoped to accomplish with that turkey and cheddar sandwich. Why was it so important to him? And to me?

Judaism and I have a complex relationship and I tend to move in and out of my need for traditional observance. Sometimes I attend services regularly and other times I just can't be bothered. Sometimes I am bowled over by the wisdom and beauty of Jewish ritual and sometimes I think it's all hooey and I'd rather just knit. I've had periods when I examine the mitzvot (commandments) in great detail and try to increase my level of observance and other times I dig deep and realize that I can't in good conscience participate.

But the thing is, kashrut is easy. My friends who have more liberal diets will think I'm crazy for saying so, but really, it's easy once you get the hang of it. And it's concrete. There are things Jews don't eat and there are ways that Jews don't eat. There's nothing inherently wrong with shrimp or bacon or cheeseburgers--we just don't eat them. I don't have to dither around about what's permitted or how I can justify something. The food is either kosher or it isn't. And every time I choose the hechshered sour cream over the one with gelatin, every time I order the only vegetarian dish in a restaurant, every time I drive across town for kosher meat then I'm making choices that affirm my Judaism. At least that's what I've always thought.

I've always been squeamish about meat. I can't really choke it down unless I block out images of dead animals. Kashrut requires separate meat and dairy meals--you make one or the other. I like to say that I'll take butter over meat any day, but really I find it rather nasty to cook and eat meat so 99% of the time we eat dairy or vegan around here. We're always told that kosher slaughter is more humane but in the end, the cow is still dead and probably isn't able to distinguish between the relative merits of a bolt to the skull or a sharp knife to the throat.

Today as the man in the kosher deli sliced up my Rubashkin turkey I couldn't help but think of all the horror stories I've read about the kosher meat processing plants. It's bad enough that the meat's not sustainably raised and that the animals likely don't have much of a life before slaughter. It's also very likely that the meat was processed by exploited laborers who work a miserable, dangerous job for shockingly low pay. And my buying this "kosher" meat perpetuates all of this. What, I wonder, is Jewish about that?

So in the end all I could really do is talk to The Dark Lord about respecting his parents by respecting house rules which, if you know your ten commandments falls under number five. That teen bravado that's been flexing its muscles backed down pretty quickly. He couldn't say it or anything, but I knew he was sorry when he started baking cookies and brought me the first fruits of his labors.

MS Walk

A couple of people have asked how they can donate to the walk I'm doing to raise funds for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society on April 14. Any generous souls who are interested in supporting the team named in honor of my mom are more than welcome to visit here and make a donation. Many, many thanks!

Voices

It's not in the least bit likely that I could be found in a Methodist church early on a Sunday morning. In fact, it's happened exactly once and it was today. I accepted an invitation from one of the Kateri Park volunteers to attend a service where her choir would be providing the music. Svila is a women's choir which performs Balkan songs. A few years ago I worked with another member of the choir and always lamented the fact that I was never able to attend a performance due to my work schedule so I jumped at this invitation, even if it meant going to church which, I confess, always freaks me out just a bit. I'm always afraid I'm going to blurt out some Hebrew or something. I am familiar with this particular church's basement from years of playgroup but I'd never really been upstairs. This is a very open and progressive church and I don't know what I was worried about--we were warmly welcomed.

And the singing! Absolutely breathtaking. Anyone familiar with albums like Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares will know this style of singing, full of rich, complex harmonies,haunting tunes, and joyous bleats as punctuation. This was my first experience with a live performance and it literally brought tears to my eyes as the six women filled the sanctuary with their spectacular voices. I can't wait to hear Svila again.

The pastors of the congregation reminded us more than once of the big peace rally planned for today, the 4th anniversary of the Iraq disaster. I knew this was coming up but I had forgotten and made plans to take two of my students out to Fabric Depot this afternoon. So The Spouse headed out with both boys who made their usual grumbly noises upon leaving the house but had plenty to report once they arrived back home. I wish I could have joined them as I am as furious as anyone about the war, but I had to honor my promise to take these young women out. And we had a lovely time gushing over silks and petting the yarn together. While part of my family was marching against the war, I figure I was doing my bit for improved Jewish-Muslim relations. The photo from today's rally was taken by The Dark Lord, whose account of the event can be found here.

Not even a recipe

...more of a reminder, really, that such simple, tasty things exist. When I was pregnant with my daughter 5 years ago I gave up coffee, wanting to do what I could to make up for the ancient, broken down body the poor child had to grow in. But I never lost my need for something warm to get my day started. Most mornings during that winter and early spring I'd make hot chai-spiced milk sweetened with a touch of honey. I have no idea why tonight it struck me as the perfect follow up to a delicious pizza 'festosa' from Pizzicato but once the little one was asleep and the males of the family headed downstairs to watch a movie, I wanted nothing else to keep me company as I do some writing and catch up on what's going on in the world.

Heat milk (even faux milk works) with a dash each of ground cardamom, cinnamon, and ginger and the tiniset bit of freshly ground black pepper. Add a splash of honey and, if you're feeling extravagant, half a vanilla bean. Simmer gently for 10 minutes or so and squeeze the vanilla seeds from the pod into the milk. Drink slowly from your very favorite cup--mine was appropriated from my husband who bought it at a ceramics sale last December. It's without a handle and has darling little feet. I'd never use it for coffee but it's my vessel of choice for anything warm and milky.

Eagles

They seem to be popping up everywhere. We saw a pair of bald eagles overhead a few weeks ago, last week at the beach one flew by the beach house, no more than 6 feet from the big picture window. Today we spent most of the afternoon outside, The Spouse toiling away in the garden while I sat in the sun and spun up some new roving. Looking up I spotted first one, then two bald eagles lazily circling overhead. And then, I swear, they began tossing to each other as they flew through the sky. This went on for ten minutes or so, allowing each of us to get a good look at them as they went on about the business of perpetuating the species.

Walking

My doctor called recently to remind me that she needed my blood tested every three months or so to keep an eye on the thyroid hormones and make sure I am staying "balanced" so I made an appointment for yesterday. I've always appreciated living rather close to the naturopathic clinic since I seem to spend rather a lot of time there when things get wacky. But I've always driven--it's a short drive which is helpful when I am running late (my usual state of affairs). Yesterday, though, I decided that if I got up early enough I might just manage to walk at least one way. I brought change for the bus in case I needed to ride home but I ended up walking there and back. It took me nearly an hour and a half including the time I was at the clinic, so I didn't cover the distance particularly quickly, but it was quite enjoyable with my iPod playing one of my very favorite albums. Given how rotten I felt less than a year ago, I am very grateful that I have the energy and strength to be able to walk four miles.

Four miles is slightly less than I've signed up to do next month for the MS Walk. Both MonkeyBoy and The Dark Lord will be walking with me. My mother has MS and we've seen up close what a devastating disease it can be so we thought it would be a good way to honor her struggle.