One Hit, One Ho-Hum, and One Horror (A Fable in 3 Parts)

"Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.  Sometimes...it rains." --Bull Durham

And the same goes for the kitchen.  We've all been there.  The unexpected hits.  The shocking flops.  And the annoying snores.   I've got one of each for you.

Part One, The Hit:  Chicken Tacos

An ordinary week night and the gauntlet is thrown down around 4:45.  "What's for dinner, Mom?"

"Oh God, I haven't a clue."

"Can we have tacos?"

I don't know, can we?  The doors of the pantry are thrown open.  Here's a bag of Vigo rice and beans mix, and here's a can of coconut milk.  Here is a ziplock bag with a few taco shells and here's a packet of taco spice.  The refrigerator yields a few cherry tomatoes, a quarter bag of baby spinach, and a smidge of shredded cheese.  The freezer, however, yields no ground meat.  Sure, I could use what I found and make these vegetarian, but unfortunately it's a very small bag of rice and beans and I have decidedly hungry people on my  hands.

I dig deeper in the freezer.  Ah!  Half a ziplock bag of Trader Joe's chicken tenderloins.  Decidedly freezer-burnt.  But useable.  I've just had an idea.  I put the whole bag in warm water to defrost while I finish up the last bits of work.  Then I open the bag, put in some olive oil and the packet of taco spice.  I mush the chicken around to get it coated well, and let it sit another 20 minutes while I got the rice started and the fixings set up.  And the homework cleared off the table, and everyone's shit put away, and nagged the appropriate people to set the table.  Now.  Set the table now.  Right now.

Then I just sauteed up the chicken, sliced it up, put it out on a dish, and everyone made their taco.  It was awesome.  I don't have any pictures but trust me, it came out great.

Part Two, The Ho-Hum:  Pizza Calzone

Now I made a living during college by throwing pizzas, and not that I'm bragging or anything, but I was quite renowned for my calzones (by the way, it took me seven tries to spell renowned...why doesn't it have a "k" in it?)  Of course I haven't used that part of my brain in about 20 years, but when I came across this calzone recipe, re-pinned from Squiddoo:

I said WHOA!!!!  Hell, yeah I can do that!

So you can follow the link to the recipe, which is nothing more than rolling out your pizza dough into a rectangle, brushing the center with sauce and adding cheese, then snipping the sides into strips to weave up.

   

   

When I was done weaving I wasn't thrilled with the presentation, but I brushed the top with some olive oil andpopped into the oven.  30 minutes later I took it out and still wasn't thrilled.  The recipe said 375 but I don't think it was hot enough.  The calzone just looked blah.

I served it, and everyone was very nice to me, oohed and aahed and said it was great, but I thought it was blah.

Pbbhbththth

Part Three, The Horror:  Chinese Chicken Stir Fry

I'm kidding, right?  How can one possibly screw up a stir fry? Watch, grasshopper, watch and learn.

This actually was inspired by the method I used for the fabulous chicken tacos.  This time though, I had the chicken marinate in soy sauce, scallions, lime juice and a little ginger.  And I was going to saute it up and serve it with Trader Joe's vegetable fried rice.  A no-brainer.  A no-fail.

Epic fail.

And an epic fail that snuck in at the end.  I had the chicken dancing in a skillet laced with peanut oil - I'd finally found a little bottle of it and wow, does it smell amazing.  Both kids wandered by with big inhales and appreciative "Mmmmmmm"s.  When the chicken was done I removed it to a plate and sauteed up the rice in the residual soy-lime-ginger-peanut glaze.  The game was on.

I served them up plates of rice, sliced the chicken over the top.  "Thanks, Mom!"

"You're welcome, darlings!" I trilled.  And then it got quiet.  I sort of got engrossed in some piece of business before serving myself, and out the corner of my eye I absently noticed both of them were just picking at it.  I sighed.  It was going to be one of those nights.  Commence huffy inner monologue.  Damn kids, there's no pleasing them, they have no idea what it means to eat well, blah blah blah, serving myself some rice and chicken, they don't know a good thing when they have it.  Take a bite.

"Oh my God, this SUCKS!" I cried.

Redman looked up gleefully.  Panda, a little more diplomatic, said, "You know?  I thought maybe something was...not right...?"

"This is terrible," I declared.  I must've had heavy hand with the soy sauce because the chicken was just inedible, and the saltiness overpowered the rice as well.  I whisked the plates away from them.

"Well, it wasn't that bad," Panda said generously.

"You're very sweet, but that was pretty bad," I said.  "Holy cow, Mom really botched that one.  Who wants a scrambled egg?"

Moral of the Story:  More often than not, you kick some ass in the kitchen...but when your own ass gets kicked, be the first to laugh at yourself.  And always have eggs as a backup plan.

Onion Bread (and Split Pea Soup)

With the return of the cold spell, we return to comfort food. Not only did I break out David Crockpot, but I brought forth the bread machine as well. If you have one, this onion bread is amazing. 

Back when we had our old house on the market, I would play dirty and have a batch of onion bread going at every viewing and open house. People would step into the kitchen and go into a trance. "What is that...?"

Try it and see: as soon as the machine hits the bake cycle, the kitchen fills up. It's sweet with brown sugar, flecked with poppy seeds, and packs heat from black pepper. It's superb with split pea or lentil soup, toasted with cheese, and any leftovers make amazing croutons to toss into a green salad, or even into a panzanella with cherry tomatoes, onions and beans.

Onion Bread

  • 1 1/4 cups warm water
  • 2 tbsp butter
  • 3 cups white flour
  • 2 tbsp dry milk
  • 2 tbsp brown sugar
  • 1 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/2 cup dried onions
  • 1/2 tsp onion powder
  • 1 tsp black pepper (you might want to start with 1/2 tsp if you're making this for the first time)
  • 1 tsp poppy seeds (which I think is stingy, I make it more like a tablespoon)
  • 1 1/2 tsp fast-rise yeast or 3 tsp active dry yeast

Measure and add all ingredients to the bread pan in the order listed.  Bake according to machine directions.

Split Pea Soup

This will be prose recipe, as I'm sure everyone has their own methodology for Split Pea Soup.

Once upon a time, there was bacon. 

Now there are two purposes to making bacon: one, to have bacon (duh); and two, to have leftover bacon grease with which to saute greens or provide a base for split pea soup. If you don't have any, no big deal, you can saute up some ham or just use olive oil. But there's nothing like bacon. While I'm frying it, I line a small bowl with foil and pour the grease off into there. When it's cool I wrap the foil packet in another piece of foil and put it in the freezer. When I want to use it, I just slice off a chunk with a sharp knife. Usually I end up slicing off some bits of foil that got smushed in and frozen, but as the fat melts, those are easily picked out with tongs.

Saute onions, garlic, carrots and celery in the bacon fat, then dump that into the crockpot. Add a bag of dried split peas—I love yellow split pea soup because it's pretty, but you can't go wrong with classic green. 12 cups of liquid: chicken broth, vegetable broth, a mix of broth and water. A bay leaf. Cover. Go away for 6-8 hours.

When the soup is done, some people serve as is, country style. Others blend the soup to gourmet smoothness. I have a foot in both camps: I skim out most of the carrots with a slotted spoon and put them aside, then I blend smooth and stir the carrots back in. I do this because I'm all about visual appeal, and I like the look of the orange carrots floating in the soup, especially if it's yellow-split pea.  If I'm making green split-pea and I blend all the veggies in, the carrots turn the soup a really weird color.

Unfortunately there is no money shot as we packed this up and took it over to some friends for dinner.  It got eaten before I remembered to take a picture.  But it looked something like this in a less attractive bowl.

(Photo credit: SimplyRecipes.com):

The Gardening Pre-Show: Sketches and Excelsperations

It snowed today, but I'm all right with it.  As far as winters go, this one has been a piece of cake, I can live with winter being like this.   Right up until today we've had a spell of unusually moderate weather:  mid 40s to 50s.  I spent all of last weekend outside and it was so wonderful.  The cheapest form of therapy there is.  My iPhone tucked in my pocket with a playlist on shuffle, I went around from bed to bed, doing a bunch of cleanup that I usually can't get to until the end of March.  Hellebores were putting out blooms.  Iris was sending up new pointy shoots.  Clearing away debris, pruning back, poking in the dirt, saying hello to old friends, I went into a zone of perfect happiness. As I worked in the veggie garden, which is right next to the road, cars slowed down and most people waved to me.  One woman stopped and rolled down her window.  "Are your tulips out yet, they can't be!" she cried.

"They're coming up," I called back.  "Couple more months, you'll see them."

"I always see them from the road, I love driving past your house," she said, and with another wave she was off.

Exchanges like these make me think twice about our plans to put a fence at the edge of our property where it borders the road.  I grow my gardens for me, yes, but over the years I have gotten such response from people walking and driving by.  If the flowers are the high point of someone's commute to work, if they move a stranger to roll down the window and say so...how can you cut that kind of thing off?  I hope Jeeps and I can reach a compromise in a fence that marks the property without blocking the view.

Anyway, it's that time of year...

Yes indeed, that is my vegetable garden depicted in an Excel spreadsheet.  That, my friends, is the Plan.

I love the Plan.  I make Plans every year - don't you see the tab with "Garden 2011"?  I had a file with all the garden plans going back to 2005 but that got lost in the great coffee spillage debacle.  Bummer.  But before you think I am completely insane at worst, or a total control-freak at best, let's get a couple things straight:

The primary reason I plan out the garden like this is crop rotation.  Any farmer on any scale will tell you this is common sense practice - it's good for the soil and it deters pests from infesting in one place.  So the spreadsheet makes it very easy to see, year over year, what got planted where and how I'm going to rotate the crops.  Fair enough, right?  Right.

The second reason is because it's something fun to do when I'm out of my mind with winter boredom.  There's a stack of seed and flower catalogs by my bed and more arriving in the mail every day, and I'm just itching to start.  I can't get outside and actually START start, so what's the next best thing?  Virtual garden.  Pretend.  Believe me, come actually spring time, do I go and follow this plan down to the square inch?  Hell, no.  Other than the basics of "carrots go here this year, zucchini over there," a lot of the plan gets forgotten.  Or turns out to be impractical or outright impossible, what was I thinking?

Yet filled with optimism at the start of the growing season, I do try to set some goals for projects and technique, just to keep from biting off more than I can chew, and, face it, to try and get the most out of that lovely little garden of mine, and to try to keep it as organic as possible.  Goals I've jotted down thus far:

*Jeeps and I want to take the area under the living room windows and turn it from grass to garden.  He hates cutting that awkward piece of turf and it always ends up being baked by the end of June anyway.  I am supremely psyched for this idea but it involves removing all that turf, and then taking apart the stacked stone wall that currently edges part of the garden border.  The wall has to be rebuilt at the edge of the walkway but when done, I will have a little enclosed herb and cutting garden.  I can't wait!!  But this is a big project, therefore I tell myself to keep the focus here.  Other little plans and dreams for the yard can wait.

*Case in point:  the new walkway from the front door.  Big vision.  It's gonna be awesome.  But I have to hold off until the new space is done.  [Editor's note:  or hire it out, (cough cough)]

*I will not grow pole beans this year.  I have not been having good luck with them lately so I'm taking a break.  It's not them, it's me.  Actually it's them.

*Crops I'm trying for the first time:  fava beans, lima beans, bok choy and swiss chard.

*Way, WAY too many cucumbers last year!  Let's exercise some control this time.

*I will not grow peas this year.  I give them my heart and soul and yet I always end up with like two measly cups as the entire crop.  It's totally discouraging and a waste of my time and space.  No peas this year.

*(Chin wobbling)...but I love peas.  Yes.  I will give them another chance.

*No I won't...

*...Yes I will.

*I will devote more time to soil improvement.  The plan is two-fold:  maintaining the compost heaps, and working the resulting organic material into the soil.  I have a dream that someday Jeeps will build me a multi-bin compost system like this:

Isn't that awesome?!  But I can survive without it.

*I'm going to try to sow a cover crop of crimson clover in all the raised beds this fall, and till it under next spring.

*I will companion plant.

Companion planting is something I've gotten really into the past couple years.  For the uninitiated, companion planting is the practice of planting different crops together on the theory that they aid each other in pollination, pest control, and nutrient up-take.  You scratch my back, I scratch yours.

For example, Sweet Alyssum, planted as a ground cover underneath broccoli and other brassica crops, attract parasitic wasps that prey on cabbage lopers, those disgusting worms that can chew leaves to lace.   It's also common practice to plant basil and marigolds by your tomatoes, but the theory is that the strong-smelling basil can deter certain tomato-preying pests, while marigolds also deter nemotodes in the soil.  Nasturtiums grown near squash can lure caterpillars that normally prey on the squash into preying on the nasturtium blossoms instead.  This is called "trap cropping".   The best success I've ever had with trap cropping is when I grew Miribilis (common name "Four O'Clocks") by my roses.  Supposedly their flowers lure Japanese Beetles.   Supposedly?  More like, um, YEAH!  To the point of Four O'Clock plants dripping beetles that you then dunk off into a pail of soapy water.  Done, done and dead.

Carrots love tomatoes.  Dill loves carrots.  Borage loves everything.  And so on and so forth, all with the added perk that flowers attract pollinators like bees and butterflies, and vegetables and flowers just look pretty grown side-by-side.  Sometimes it seems they just beg to be put together.  Look at this eggplant and this coleus, are they made for each other or what:

Make no mistake, there is a ton of information out there about companion planting, and often someone will dismiss what another person swears by.  I like to stick to one or two sources that have studies to back them up.  This year I found a book Great Garden Companions which seems to be the very thing for me - already it's dog-eared and filled with penciled underlinings and notes.  I love the author's simple approach to building garden "neighborhoods" of related crops and their herb/flower best friends.  The Plan uses a ton of her ideas.

It all looks good on paper.  How it turns out in execution, we shall see.

No peas.

...Yes, peas.

Yellow Rice and Peas

Yellow2.jpg

I promised Stacie I'd tell her about yellow rice and peas although there's really not much to tell. I buy it pre-made in the store and it makes itself in like 20 seconds. Yes, one can make their own Mexican-style saffron rice but I've never had good luck with the recipes. I think it's the turmeric. Turmeric and I do not get along.

So Vigo brand it is, Goya also makes a nice mix. For the last five minutes of cooking I throw in half a bag of frozen peas. Redman is very passionate about yellow rice and peas, it's one of his very favorite things for dinner. I love it for sheer convenience but also because it goes with just about anything: it can be the backbone of a vegetarian meal, or it cozies nicely up to roast chicken, breaded chicken, grilled fish, grilled shrimp, meat loaf, tuna cakes. It's the little black dress of your pantry.

I have a soft spot for rice and peas myself. My junior year of high school, I went for two weeks to La Rochelle, France on an exchange program. My host student was named Christophe Roland. He had a reputation as a punk and I didn't know how we were going to get along. We had zero in common yet within two days we were brother and sister. He loved American music and I spent many an hour mooching his cigarettes and translating lyrics for him.

"Listen, what is this," he said, putting on Modern English. "These words...making love to you was never second best. What does that mean?"

I gave him a look. "What does making love mean?"

"I know what making love means, stupid," he said, laughing out a cloud of smoke. "What does he mean was never second best?"

Christopher was something of a loner within the Lycée. His best friend was in his twenties and lived alone in the center of La Rochelle. Christophe took me to his apartment one night and the two young men cooked for me. I was not allowed to help. They were like Oscar and Felix. It was hilarious, and also touching, to watch them collide and bicker in the kitchen, earnestly working to make this meal. Finally they marched out, beaming, bearing grilled fish with a side dish of rice and peas. I was seventeen and felt I had arrived among the ultra hip.

That dinner was not second best.

Artichoke Dip, Saucepans, and Paper Roses

"As all caregivers know, at four o'clock, children must be fed something."--Laurie Colwin

With triplet boys, Suzanne T. knows this all too well, and around 4:00—at least on the days that I've been in her house—she is putting out little somethings to eat. Cheese and crackers, chips and hummus, veggies and dip.  Of course I've done this myself, who can't do this? But did you ever notice that the hors d'oeuvres always look greener in someone else's kitchen? Why do most of us possess a slightly nagging suspicion that as well as we do it, somewhere there's someone doing it cooler?

Oh screw it. Anyway, where was I? Right, the 4:00 nosh, and out of the oven Suzanne pulls a crock of amazingness: hot artichoke dip. We fell on it with pita chips and groans. I offered a taste to Panda which she accepted with a wrinkled nose. Next thing I knew she was elbowing Jeeps out of the way to get her chip into the heart of the crock. Move over ranch dressing, there's a new kid in town. 

So tonight Redman was at a friend's and got the playdate extended to dinner, and Panda asked if I'd make the dip. Why certainly, my dear. Let's have a little cocktail hour of our own.

By the way, did I ever introduce my little Corning Glass saucepan?  I have two of them.  Did I tell you this story?  No?  Well once upon a time, I used to waitress at Ponderosa. I'll pause while you process that. Yeah, it sucked, but there were small glimmers in the misery. One was this guy David who was a salesman for Corning. 

David would come into the Ponderosa every Wednesday or something, and he'd always sit in my section. He was an older guy, greying with a mustache, and just very nice to me. He possessed that keen trick some men have of taking an ordinary, restaurant-issue paper napkin and folding it into a rose. And he'd leave that along with the tip every Wednesday. 

Time passed and soon I was moving on to bigger and better things, and on my last Wednesday, David left more than a tip and a paper rose: he gave me two little Corning Glass saucepans. We said goodbye and never crossed paths again.

Or we might have.

A few summers ago, when Panda was quite young, we were down at the Jersey Shore and out to dinner at the Italian restaurant on the corner. All through dinner, there was this silver-haired gentleman with a mustache, sitting with his wife and grown children at a table across the room, and he kept glancing sideways at Panda and smiling. 

When he got up to leave with his family, he came by our table and held out to Panda a paper napkin, folded into a rose. "I just love your red hair," he said gallantly, winked at me and left. It was like a full five minutes later when my head snapped up and I thought, Oh my God, was that David?

Highly unlikely, but it makes a nice story to have over the 4:00 hors d'oeuvres.

Suzanne's Highly Unlikely Artichoke Dip

  • 1 can artichoke hearts, chopped
  • 1/2 onion, diced
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 cup mayo
  • 1 cup parmesan cheese
  • Pinch of horseradish (optional, I didn't have any, neither did Suzanne when she made it this last time)

Preheat oven to 350

Mix all ingredients in a bowl and pour into a small oven-proof pot, crock or casserole

Bake 25-30 minutes.

Serve.

Nosh.

Photo Credit (via creative commons):
Tavins Origami

Comfort Food

This week I was filled with grief for a former co-worker who lost his only son. All week Jeeps and I have been upset, questioning the world and its tenuousness, reaffirming each other and the kids, trying to remember what is important. Redman, especially, got kissed and manhandled a lot this week.

In my sad distraction I found myself all too easily sliding back into not eating.  Seeking comfort as well as inspiration, I re-read Molly Wizenberg's A Homemade Life and she delivered on both fronts. Sobbing through the chapters of her beloved father's death, I arrived at the recipe for "Ed Fretwell Soup." This Italian vegetable creation was delivered to the Wizenbergs by Ed and Barbara Fretwell, during the time of Molly's father's long decline.

“It was full of Swiss chard and carrots and plump beans, hearty and reassuring, one of the best soups I’d ever had. When the first batch was gone, we called to ask for more, and Ed delivered it on the next day.”

It's one of the best soups I've had, too, and funny thing, because it seems like it's just another minestrone soup recipe. Yet it's not. I don't know what makes it different or so special. But I made it tonight and ate four bowls of it. And about eight oatmeal-chocolate-cherry cookies.

The recipe from Homemade Life involves dried beans and their preparation, which involves overnight soaking. I wanted to make this tonight, right now. I had no dried beans and I tend not to have good luck with them anyway. This involved rearranging the recipe, plus I added a few other tweaks. 

So for the original, click here to go to the January 2005 of Molly's blog Orangette. Scroll down to the post called "On industry, indolence, and Italian vegetable soup". Or, for crying out loud, buy yourself a copy of the book because it is well worth having.

Here is my sped-up tweaked version. The original recipe caveats this makes a lot of soup. If you don't have a large enough pot or enough people, Molly suggests halving the recipe. Which I did here.

Italian Vegetable Soup, based on half of Ed Fretwell Soup

  • 1/2 package of dried porcini mushrooms 
  • 3 large cloves garlic
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1 medium onion, chopped
  • 2 stalks celery, sliced thin
  • 6 carrots, sliced
  • 1 medium zucchini, trimmed, quartered lengthwise and sliced
  • 2 turnips, diced (not in the original recipe but I'd bought a few because I've been wanting to try them anyway and this seemed a safe way)
  • 6 cups vegetable or chicken broth
  • 1/2 small bunch Swiss Chard, stalks discarded and leaves coarsely chopped
  • 1/4 head of cabbage, coarsely chopped (I didn't have cabbage so I used my entire bunch of Swiss chard, something else I've been wanting to try more of)
  • 1 28-oz can whole peeled tomatoes, drained and chopped (that's from the full recipe but I didn't have a 14-oz can so I just used the whole thing.)
  • 1/2 tsp dried sage leaves
  • 1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
  • 1 can cannelini beans, 1 can red kidney beans, 1 can chick peas, all drained and rinsed together. You'll use 1 cup to 1 1/2 cups of the mix as you see fit.  Refrigerate the rest for a 3-bean salad.
  • Best-quality olive oil and parmesan cheese for serving.

About 1/2 hour before starting the soup, put the dried mushrooms in a small bowl with 1 1/2 cups of warm water. Let sit to reconstitute. Remove the mushrooms and chop. Strain the mushroom water through a fine sieve or coffee filter and reserve. (I can't stress the straining enough. You don't want grit in your soup.)

In a large soup pot, warm the olive oil over medium heat. Add the onions, celery, carrots, garlic, and turnips. Saute for 10-15 minutes, stirring frequently. Add the zucchini and broth, increase the heat to medium-high and bring to a simmer. Add the Swiss chard, tomatoes, sage, and reserved mushroom liquid.

Cover the pot and turn heat low to keep at a simmer for 1 hour. It will seem there is far too little liquid for all the vegetables in the pot but don't worry: the vegetables will give off a good amount of water as they cook.

After an hour, stir in the beans (as much as you like). Taste to see if it needs salt, I found it didn't need a speck. Cover and simmer another 20 minutes. Stir in the parsley.

Serve, and be comforted, with a hearty glug of good olive oil over the top of the bowl and some parmesan cheese sprinkled about. It's not the prettiest soup in the world, but my God, it's good. And if you're going to fret, you should Fretwell.

(Sorry)

I served some to Panda and she wrinkled her nose. "It doesn't look very good," I said, "but it tastes really good."

"If I don't like it, is there something else?" she asked in a small voice. I assured her there was leftover spaghetti and meatballs to fall back on. "Well...okay," she said reluctantly, and took a small spoonful. She still looked doubtful but she did take the bowl downstairs to the TV room. 

Puttering around the kitchen, I kept an ear to the basement stairs and sure enough, up floated that sound so dear to a mother's heart: a spoon repeatedly clinking against the bowl. Followed soon by footsteps up the stairs and those wonderful words, "Can I have some more?"

Oatmeal Chocolate Cherry Cookies

As I was making the Fretwell soup tonight, I felt compelled to make oatmeal raisin cookies.  And as with brownies, Martha Stewart's recipe is the only one I need.

Small change of plan, however: my raisins looked weird. Honestly I couldn't tell you how old they are but they looked really dried out and withered, congealed in a sticky, solid mass inside the container. Yuck. What else could I use? 

Dried-Pitted-Tart-Montmorency-Cherries-5.jpg

Ah, of course, my usual three and a half bags of Trader Joe's dried Montmorency cherries in the pantry.  I love these things. I've always loved sour cherries: every year my Mom would pick, pit and freeze gallons of them to make pies. I would take a bowlful out of the freezer for a snack and eat them while reading. I consumed a lot of fruit and books in my youth, you can ask her about that sometime. 

Anyway, the dried variety at Trader Joe's was a spectacular discovery. Their sourness got me through being pregnant with Redman. They still help ward off carsickness on long trips and they are awesome with salted almonds while reading in bed. 

Now, what cozies up so nicely with cherries? Why chocolate, of course, and I happened to have exactly 1/2 cup of Hershey's dark chocolate chips in the freezer, leftover from Christmas baking. Thus is born...

Oatmeal Chocolate Cherry Cookies

  • 3 cups rolled oats
  • 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons flour
  • 1/2 cup wheat germ (yes, that's what she said)
  • 1/4 cup chia seeds (optional)
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp cinnamon (or a whole tsp if you're not paying attention, ahem)
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 2 sticks unsalted butter (I found half butter, half coconut oil in solid state to be terrific)
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1 cup packed brown sugar (I made them scant cups because I was using chocolate)
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 1 1/2 cups raisins OR 1 cup dried cherries and 1/2 cup chocolate chips.  Or any 1 1/2 cups of fruit-nut-chocolate combo as you see fit.

Preheat oven to 350.

In a medium bowl, whisk together oats, wheat germ, chia, flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon and salt. Set aside.

In mixer, cream butter and sugars until fluffy. Add eggs and mix. Add vanilla. Turn speed to low and add dry ingredients. Then add fruit and chocolate.

Drop rounded teaspoons onto baking sheets. Bake 14 minutes, rotating trays halfway. Cookies will be brown on the edges but look slightly underdone on the tops. This is fine, they will collapse down and be lovely and chewy. Cool on wire racks. Get a big glass of milk and let 'er rip.

Meatballs 3 Ways

Trader Joe's pre-cooked turkey meatballs are the bomb. I'm never without two or three bags of them in the downstairs freezer. These things have to be terrible for you, the sodium content is probably off the chart. But they are always there when I need them. And when you have four different people with four different ideas for dinner, meatballs are the common thread.

Case in point, tonight. I was wanting soup. Panda and Redman wanted yellow rice with peas. Jeeps pointed out that the bag of kale in the crisper drawer was approaching slimehood and needed to be used.

Now, watch...

One soup pot on the back burner. Olive oil. Three carrots scraped and sliced.  A can of cannellini beans, drained and rinsed. Half a pint of grape tomatoes.  Saute all. Add chicken broth. Chopped parsley if you have it. Lower the heat, cover and let it do its thing.

One skillet on the front burner. Olive oil. Five big cloves garlic, minced. Work it. Add half the bag of kale, toss with tongs. Cover and let wilt. Add other half. Salt and pepper. Toss. Cover and let it do its thing.

Third skillet down. Olive oil. Half the bag of pre-cooked meatballs. Brown them.

The stove now looks like this. Jeeps insisted I take the picture so I could prove I wasn't putting three different nights' dinners into one post. As if I would do such a thing.

And now (drum roll), from these three pots and one tupperware from the fridge, I give you dinner:

The kids had meatballs with their yellow rice. Jeeps constructed yellow rice, kale, and meatballs. I dropped meatballs and kale into my soup.

Everyone was happy. And personally, I think mine was best.