Day 3: Braised Zucchini and Leeks

The summer of my senior year of college, I read Mireille Guiliano's French Women Don't Get Fat. I had just had to have my choir dress let out a little, and felt like emergency action was required.

What I remember from the book is the philosophy of thoughtfully eating what you like.  Guiliano doesn't frown on dessert, but she encourages eating one piece of quality bittersweet chocolate over eating a frosted Krispy Kreme doughnut or half a bag of M&Ms.  She writes about facing a craving for an apple pastry head on by eating slow roasted apples cooked in cabbage leaves.

(Who are we kidding?  Cabbage leaves instead of layer upon layer of crisp buttery pastry??  As I type this, I'm struck that she would likely support a cake that substitutes zucchini for Coca-Cola.)

But the concepts are good.  If you love the apple flavor, don't substitute a cheap, unsatisfying fiber bar - eat real apples.  Just limit yourself on the fats and sugars the majority of the time.

Guiliano also shares the diet plan that her family's doctor advised for her after she put on weight in the United States.  For the first 48 hours, she ate only what she deemed "Magical Leek Soup."  In glowing terms she describes how this was the catalyst of her life-long love for sweet, buttery leeks.  She drank the delicious and nourishing leek broth several times a day, and whenever she got hungry she would eat a boiled leek with a little olive oil and cracked pepper.  Not only were these leeks delectable, they filled her up; and she still lost some significant pounds (or kilos).

I was sold.

A Vacation from Vacation

"It's like Dillinger once told me: 'Remember, it's always the darkest just before they turn on the lights.' " - from Anything Goes

I have this theory about vacations: they are for children, resort towns and swimsuit retailers.  In fact, I suspect they were designed by swimsuit retailers exactly the same way Valentine's Day was cooked up by card companies.  The gym is probably in on it too.

It's pretty genius, actually.

Glossy posters and shiny TV ads tantalize with photoshopped beaches that are a sharp contrast to my gray cubicle walls.  Images of people carelessly flung across a padded lounge chair haunt me as I wake up at dawn to sleepily pull on work boots and feed chickens.  

I buy in, and plan a vacation.  It goes something like this:

1. Decide on time-off.
2. Hope Matt and I can get the same time-off.
3. Apply for time-off.
4. Change time off-because Matt couldn't get approved for the same time.
5. Breathe a sigh of relief because we finally got the days in sync.
6. Find a place to stay.*
7. E-mail approximately two dozen people to ask exactly "how handicapped friendly are you?"
8. Find a place for the dog to stay.
9. Find someone just crazy enough to want to take care of chickens and still be relied on to not let them become skunk bait. 
10. Convince Katie to keep four baby turkeys for a week.  "They've only flown out of their cage twice.  Very easy."  
11. Confirm beach rental.*
12. Confirm all animal keepers.  Use lots of flattery to butter them up and ensure the well-being of animals.  
13. Mulch garden in attempt to prevent jungle tendencies.
14. Use Round-Up on everything else.
15.  Do laundry.
16. Find all the pieces of all the bathing suits.  Surprisingly difficult.
17. Attempt to have the whole house clean at one time.  It's never been done, but why not try again?
18. Mow grass within an inch of its life - must be done within moments of leaving .  Obviously.
19. Cram two weeks worth of office work into one week.  But do it in a way that does not imply that I can be relied on to work at these speeds when I get back.
20.  Schedule and pay contractors working on inspection punch-sheet for the house we're selling five days after we return. 

After days weeks months of that any vacation would seem like the lap of luxury.  Seriously, to sit down anywhere right now, I would think, "Wait - I don't have to pack a suitcase today? How incredibly indulgent!  I'm done following up on a sheep-sitter?  Well, well, well, look who is going all lazy today."

At this point the ocean shines brighter, the sand feels sunnier, the beach house more charming.

It is in the preparing for a vacation that the need occurs.  This is how the resort towns guarantee they'll stay crowded, the swimsuit retailers sell ill-fitting spandex, and the gym gets money for exercise.   

I plan to go enjoy the pants off this vacation next week.  And not only because I couldn't find all the pieces of my bathing suits.   

For a more poetic, sentimental view of our annual vacation, you can read what I wrote last year.

* I actually didn't have to do those things this time around.  Thanks, Dad!

The Six Emotions of Shoo-Fly Pie

This is not intended to be a food blog.  I've never intended it to be anything other than an Elizabeth blog.  But I write about food often because it's important to me, it's universal, and it's easy: the ease of writing about food being a result of the first two reasons.  But under the surface it is more than that.


It has been a difficult week.  We have been negotiating for a house and property we very much want.  It seems that every time we reach an agreement on one issue with the seller, like the heads of Hydra two more issues arise.  And in the midst of that we lost a very dear little fur friend.  He had an important role in the Judge family, and his death has left a hole. 


Henry misses his friend.

Tonight, after dinner, Matthew said, "I would really like some pie."

Suddenly, I was picturing the layers of a shoo fly pie. I haven't made one in seven years, but in my mind I saw the sticky pudding layer and the layer like gingerbread topped with a crumbly, streusel layer. I did a mental check of the pantry.  I had everything I needed - molasses, butter, brown sugar.  I even had a pre-made pie crust in the fridge (don't judge).  I jumped up, grabbed my pink mixing bowls, started to break up butter in sugar and flour until it formed course crumbs. 

I was first introduced to shoo fly pie in Lois Lenski's Shoo Fly Girl.  Strawberry Girl may be the Newbery winner, but for me it couldn't compare to the story of the sincere little Amish girl.  I loved the book so much, I begged my mom to make me a shoo fly pie.  The hands-on mom that she is, she was pulling  one out of the oven not long after that.  I'm not sure what I expected, but it certainly wasn't the dark, mostly unfamiliar flavor of molasses.  Disappointed, I finished just one piece.

It wasn't until years later that I made my own shoo fly pie.  It is one of the first things I remember making all on my own - just because I felt like it  By this point, I loved molasses, and this time it did not disappoint.

When we were in college, lonely and tired of trying to figure out how to be adults, Rebekah quietly said to me, "I would love some shoo fly pie right now." 

My jaw dropped.  First, because I never knew Rebekah loved shoo fly pie, and I thought I knew everything about my little sister.  Second, because with startling clarity, I realized I too wanted that simple, comfortable pie.

Tonight I baked one for Matthew and me.  While the warm scent of it filled the kitchen I listed to Beethoven's Seventh and felt strongly.  Not a simple, easy to pin-point feeling.  But the whole kaleidoscope of feelings that comes from living a full life and baking a pie that has a plethora of memories mixed in with the sugar and cinnamon.

I am sad at the death of a sweet dog.
I am happy as I bake pie and listen to Matthew in the other room busy with his lizards.
I am nervous that we might get this house.  Nervous that we might not.
I am lonely for my family still as far away as they were when I was at college.  Only now Rebekah is further away too.
I am in love with the man in the room with the lizards.
And I am grateful. Grateful for my memories and the rich life I have now.

Not everyone likes molasses.  I get that.  But if you haven't had shoo fly pie, give it a try.  If nothing else, it will make your house smell like the safest place in the world. 

Shoo Fly Pie

1 9" inch pie crust

Crumb topping:
1 cup flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 Tablespoons butter
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon ginger
1/8 teaspoon cloves

Filling:
3/4 cup corn syrup
3/4 cup hot water
1 well beaten egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon baking soda

Preheat the oven to 400. Line a 9 inch pie pan with crust. Mix all the crumb ingredients together until rough crumbs form. Set aside. Combine corn syrup and hot water, then stir in remaining ingredients. Place a third of the crumbs in the pie crust. Pour half the syrup on top of the crumbs. Layer another third of the crumbs, followed by the remaining syrup. Top evenly with remaining crumbs. Bake at 400 for 20 -25 minutes.

Tomato Jam: A Love Story

Once upon a time, all throughout the land, people made tomato jam.  In heavy pots, chunks of tomatoes would simmer in sugar and spices until they were cooked down into garnet-colored jam.  The evocative scent of cinnamon, clove and garlic would linger in the kitchen long after the jam was carefully sealed into little glass jars. 

From My Binder: Italian Birthday (Week)Night

I mentioned in my post on hospitality that I keep a binder for meal planning.  I am a sucker for food blogs and Pinterest, and I love to plan a meals with a theme. 

Unless it's just Matthew and I: then cereal, leftover salami, and string cheese are a meal. 

Themes give me a structure to work in and make me feel like my meal is complete.  They can also give me a headache and make me want to take on way too much work.  But I'm getting better at keeping my expectations real even if it means adapting what I see in food magazines.

As I've mentioned (just a couple times), I work a lot, and if I'm going to pull off hospitality on a weeknight the food has to be mostly make-ahead. 

Forty-Five Left to Go

We were in that tricky spot in our marriage where the honeymoon had worn off, and we were still frantically trying to figure out how to live with each other.  I think we'd been married a little over four months.  The life expectancy of our bliss was the same as the life expectancy of light bulbs, and we stood in the aisle at Lowe's trying to figure out the difference between halogen and incandescent. 

An elderly couple came by, pushing a cart with a poodle in the baby seat.  We stopped them to ask about the dog and give her the appropriate pats on her head- as fluffy white as her owners'. 

"Are you newlyweds?" the wife asked shrewdly.

I wondered if we wore our awkward affection like a sandwich board.

"We've been married fifty-six years."  She smiled at her husband.  "Don't worry - the first fifty are the hardest."

Florida: A Tradition in Mayonnaise

It takes my breath away how a place almost 900 miles from where I grew up can hold such vivid, beautiful and heartbreaking memories.  Maybe it is the regularity of it.  As certainly as spring arrives, we make the trek to northern Florida.  Over sixteen years, our family has grown, we have spread out further and further across the country, and our schedules have diversified; but still, we meet at the Gulf with tenacity.

  

Years ago, I would spend the night before our trip making sandwiches.  The way I remember it is endless rows of rolls that needed to sawed in half, the crumbs going everywhere.  Armed with a large jar of Hellmans and a butter knife, I would slap mayonnaise on the top half of each roll.  Faced with such a mundane task, my imagination ran wild.  As I put mayonnaise on roll after roll after roll, I was struck that, "the mayonnaise quivered expectantly." 

So thrilled was I with this description of making sandwiches, that I put down my knife, ran to my room and wrote it down.  As though there was a chance someone might steal it.  I don't know what I thought the mayonnaise was expecting.  Perhaps the anticipation of sharing its existence with shaved turkey was almost more than it could take?

Handling Hospitality

Seven years ago, I would never have invited  friends over for a bucket of fried chicken.  I knew how to fry my own chicken, thank you very much! But let me tell you about the only time I ever tried to fry chicken for company. My grease caught fire, I poured a full bag of flour on it, and we all ended up in the front yard eating take-out pizza while the smoke cleared.  Thankfully, the man I was trying to impress didn't mind too much and now lets me burn food for him all the time.  So glad I went that homemade route!

I think that those of us that enjoy cooking and entertaining have the hardest time doing it. We are so full of ideas. When it comes to executing all these ideas under time constraints  and with an audience, things often unravel.  My inner Crazy-Hostess still haunts me, but I've learned some things that help me be more realistic and successful with entertaining.

The Ruins

 A short story by Elizabeth Collins


The coffee was hot, black and bitter. Meg took another gulp, willing the scalding liquid to make her feel something.  From the table, Jason was watching her over his mug. She leaned into the counter, and wrapped her fingers tightly around her cup.

Jason cleared his throat.  “I heard you last night.” Discomfort showed on his face like oil on water.

“I’m sorry if I woke you up.” She barely recognized her own flat voice.

“I’m worried about you.” The warmth of his voice traveled through her like the warmth of the coffee. She loosened her grip on the mug, and imagined clasping his hand instead.  His fingers had once fit casually between her own.

“I was thinking,” he said. “Maybe we should put some of those things away for a while. Turn the third room into an art studio for you.”

Her head whipped up and the words died on his lips.

“Forget it.” His face was slack.

Dizzy, she turned and clutched the counter. “No,” she whispered. “I appreciate it; I really do.”

Outside, a distant leaf blower whirred to life. A car hummed by.

“I’m sorry.” She turned to face him, but he was looking down at his phone.

The coffee was unpalatable. She had lost count and added too many scoops.  Slowly, she set the half-empty cup in the sink. “I’m going for a walk.”

Without waiting for a reply, she grabbed her coat.

Outside the air was damp and held the chill of an inevitable winter.  Leaves as brittle as old, yellowed paper crunched under Meg's feet as she ducked under the pine trees dense behind their house.

Last night, when Jason’s breathing had become soft and even beside her, she had slipped out of their bed and stumbled across the hall and into the nursery. Fumbling on the rocking chair for the plush bear, she had curled up on the floor with it and cried into the sleeve of her t-shirt. Even in the dark, she had known the undisturbed white crib and the sheets dotted with tiny blue elephants.

 “It’s never too early to buy furniture!” a glossy brochure had lied.

She stopped shy of the ruined house tucked back in the woods. Stubby remnants of a brick wall and a chimney were all that were left. From where she stood, she could barely make out the original outline buried under leaves. She never grew tired of looking at the skeleton of rooms and imagining the family that had gathered around that fireplace.

Stepping over the bricks, she gathered up a pile of leaves accumulating in the corner of the wall and dumped them on the other side. They fluttered to the ground like dried-out butterflies. She gathered up another pile and then another, systematically clearing the ground of leaves.

“You can try again,” the doctor had said from the safety of his white coat. Jason had shaken the doctor’s hand and then retreated into his own version of silence. Try again. Like it was easy. Like it was putting a quarter in the claw machine at the mall.

The dust from the leaves and debris burned her eyes and choked her, but she kept clearing.

All she had left was the wasteland she shared with Jason – the person she couldn’t look at without seeing all her suffering reflected in his eyes. If she faced that, then the only thing still holding her together might crumble like the leaves in her hands.

She kept gathering leaves and throwing them over the side. Scoop, dump, scoop dump.  When, at last, the entire area was clear, she sat down and leaned against the brick wall. Cold seeped up through the grass, but she didn’t move. She ran her eyes over the exposed foundation of the house. No one had warned her how painful love could be. How it could be like a million slivers of glass, shining and blinding, trying to come back together again.

There was a crunching of leaves, and she looked up to see Jason standing near the edge of the wall.

“Hey." It was the best apology she could muster.

Awkwardly, he held out a thermos. “I brought you some coffee. Thought you might be cold.”

Once again, the warmth began to stir in her stomach. She inclined her head. “Do you want to sit down?”

In two strides, he covered the distance between them. “Here.” He shrugged off his coat. “Sit on this.”

Meg adjusted her weight until they were both sitting on his huntsman jacket. Jason unscrewed the thermos, poured coffee into the lid, and passed it to her. The steam was thick in the damp air. She took a sip and felt the warmth spread. They sat silent, sharing the coffee back and forth until the cup was empty.

She pulled at a loose thread on the lining of his jacket.  "Jason."

He pulled himself up. “Wait right here.” He gathered up an armful of leaves and carried it to the fireplace. Pulling out a lighter, he lit the debris then came back and joined her.

Fire licked over the leaves then burst up into flames. Meg leaned her head against Jason’s shoulder and watched as one more fire burned in the ruined house.

Chicken Soup with Spinach and Orzo

A number of years ago, I called my mom and boasted, "I just roasted a chicken!" 


She was nonplussed.  "Anyone can roast a chicken.  It's taking the meat off the bones that is the hard part."


There is something to that.  Deboning a chicken is greasy, mindless work.  When we were kids, my parents would scare us into doing homework by regaling us with stories of chicken factories.  Now I pull meat off the pokey bones off a chicken and mutter, "I went to college...I went to college." 

To: New Mom, From: Working Girl

Being honest on the internet is tricky.  Assuming you successfully walk the line between too much information and vague rambling, there is always the good chance you'll come off either whiney or self-satisfied (see, even in saying that there is a certain smugness).   However, I am going to risk it, and write (briefly) about something that has been difficult for me: benevolance.

When I was growing up, there were a lot of new babies in our house .  And where there are new babies, there are benevolant people bringing hot meals and well wishes.  In turn, my mom took meals to new moms and others in need.  In the foggy future I envisioned for myself, I knew I'd be taking meals to people as well.

I never thought I'd be 29 and working full-time (let's face it; I never thought I'd be 29); but while most of my friends are raising babies, I am working at a desk from 8:30-5:00.  I appreciate the differences - they serve four people supper at 5:30 or 6:00; I serve two people supper at 7:30.  They run errands during the day with children; I run errands on the weekends with my favorite adult (and many, many more differences).  But I am a competative person, and it is easy for me to feel like I am less than I should be when my lifestyle doesn't align with their's. 

A Valentine's Orange

Most evenings, Matt grabs two oranges from the fruit bowl and brings one to me.  I peel my orange, my peelings littering the coffee table like an elephant graveyard, and eat it.   But Matt is still carefully pulling away white pith from his orange.  His long, deft fingers patiently turn the orange over and over looking for the stray pieces of rind.  Using his thumb, he edges each imperfection off the surface until the glow of the fruit is visible through the skin   He breaks it in half and sets one half down besides his circumspect pile of peelings.  Slowly, he pulls off a wedge.  Then, he turns and hands the first wedge to me.

Happy Valentine's Day, dear friends.  May your day be as happy as mine!