Visions

It's looking just the way I thought it would.

One thing about our marriage: when we have a shared vision of something, we make it happen.

Jeeps broke his back building the wall, I broke my back removing the sod. We used all the rocks out of the old wall, and then scavenged the yard for every single rock we could find. We even considered the many crumbling stone walls in the acres of woods around our house that used to be farmland. We lacked a mule to haul them. We toiled on, stacked and dug, dug and stacked.

Jeeps stacked in unseasonable heat. I dug in the rain. He lost the nail on his pinky because a dropped a rock on it. I swear did something bad to my right tricep. We couldn't move by 6PM every night. The kids ate cold cereal or pizza while we fell into bed like death, primed with 50 Advil each.

But we did it.

We wanted an arbor for the gap in the wall. Jeeps is very particular about keeping hardscape in line with the mission/prairie style of our house. Translation: no white, frou-frou pickets or curved arches. I stepped back and let him find something, I'm usually fine with whatever he picks out anyway. And he found this sort of Japanese-style one. I love it and I can totally picture a Sweet Autumn clematis clambering over it.

Then we looked high and low for a bench that would go with the plan as well. We fell in love with this one, with the rising sun motif.

The idea is to walk in through the arbor, then there will be that circular, gravel path with the bench at the top. Apart from a few standing perennials that survived the construction, I get to build the beds up from scratch. 

I'm starting with the circle bed in the center. I have about a $230 budget which is comprised of birthday money from my mother-in-law, plus whatever cash I squirrel away or find in the laundry. And where else do you go to squander the stash but to Claire's Garden Center?

(Cue Hallelujah chorus)

I love this place. This place is the bomb. I could spend $1,000 here in half an hour. Easily. But I only had $230 and after nights in bed with my garden books, pencil and paper, and the Claire's catalog, I had a plan sketched out. When I was tempted by other plants, I took pictures, took note of the price, and sternly told myself, "Another time. I said, ANOTHER TIME!"

So here's my vision for the circle:

Here's what I came home from Claire's with:

And here's where it all will go:

(Sigh).... It's not going to look complete this year, I accept that. Eye on the vision, people, eye on the vision. To garden, you have to have vision and patience.

(By the way, I fucking hate patience).

Something Out of Nothing

Sometimes it works.

You remember to set up the coffee the night before, so in the morning all you have to do is press a button.

You bought frozen hash browns during the weekend food shop, and feel smugly virtuous as you serve your children something other than cereal on a school morning.

You remember what day it is and who is going where. You remembered to write the check, sign the permission slip, sew on the button, buy rinse aid, re-stock toilet paper.

You find a moment to write, to weed, to walk through your gardens.

The laundry is not only folded, but put away.

Things are where they are supposed to be.

You have time.

Your family is relaxed. Your stomach is calm.

You have game.

It all works.

And from two potatoes, two onions and a bag of frozen corn, you make soup. You whip up a box of Trader Joe's Birds' Nests. For kicks, you assemble a salsa of halved cherry tomatoes, black beans, cilantro, red onion and more corn.

And everyone eats it.

I love days like these.

Arroz con Pollo (y Lágrimas)

I wanted this dish to be great. This should have been great and it was so not great. Now I'm depressed.

I did it for Redman. He loves Mexican food, he loves rice and beans, he loves chicken. And I love that little boy to pieces, I don't need to explain to anyone here, this is not about sons, this is about dinner. I thought why don't I make this kid arroz con pollo? He'll love it. And I'll make it in the slow cooker, this will be a snap. A slam-dunk.

Hah, it was more like a brick.

It's my fault. I didn't think. What's going to happen when you put rice in the slow cooker for six hours, huh, smarty-pants?

Nothing attractive, I'll tell you that. It tasted all right, and Jeeps and I ate it, but the kids couldn't get past the look of it. Panda managed a few polite bites.  Redman looked at the dish and asked where the rice was. And he was right to.  It tasted fine, but, there's no nice way to say it except it looked like puke. When your dish comes out looking like barf, there's no way to rescue it. 

Even today I dissolved some of it in a lot of chicken broth and tarted it up with lime juice and cilantro, thinking it could pass for a Mexican soup.

It didn't pass.

So live and learn, y'all: NO RICE IN THE SLOW COOKER!!! 

Let me beat myself with a wire hanger and repeat that. 

NO!  RICE!  IN!  THE!  SLOW-COOKER!  EVER!!!!

I will give you the recipe now, verbatim, but note well that you should make yellow rice and peas separately, on the side, and then serve the slow-cooked chicken over the rice and it will be beautiful. A slam-dunk.

Pollo Sin Arroz

• 1 pinch saffron threads
• Chopped cilantro or scallions
• Frozen peas
• Salt and pepper
• 8 skinless chicken thighs
• 3 cups chicken broth
• 1 28-oz can tomatoes, drained
• 1 tbsp dried parsley
• 1 tsp paprika
• 2 tsp dried oregano
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 1/2 cups rice
• 2 bell peppers, any color, chopped (I used red and yellow)
• 3-4 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1 large red onion, chopped
• 2 tablespoons boiling water

Put the saffron in a small dish and pour the boiling water over. Set aside.

Season chicken with salt and pepper, set aside.

Heat olive oil in a skillet over medium high heat. Saute the onon, garlic, pepper for five minutes. Add the rice and stir until well coated. Add the herbs and tomatoes (if using whole tomatoes, break them up). Empty all the vegetables and rice into the slow cooker.

Working in batches, brown the chicken on both sides and add to the slow cooker.

Pour the broth and reserved saffron over all. Cover and cook 6 hours on high heat. For the last 30 minutes, stir in the frozen peas.

Garnish with cilantro or scallions if desired.

Serve.

Sigh.

And no, I'm not going to show you what it looked like. Let's just pretend it looked like this:

Spring Flings

A great weekend of friends, family, fun, gardening and candy. Daffodils and muscari are thriving. The tulips are starting to bloom. Bleeding hearts are bleeding their little hearts out. The crows are molting.

The seedlings are doing well. All the tomatoes have been moved into 4" pots and I set out the broccoli this afternoon. To help keep the cutworms away, I read about this trick of cutting paper towel rolls into rings and putting them around the seedlings.

Behind the veggie garden was always this eyesore of weeds, rocks, burning bush seedlings and whatever cuttings and crap I would lob over the fence. I got sick of looking at it so last weekend I thought up, cut in, planted, mulched, and now it's one of my favorite places. It's also the home of Redman's little pine tree. His teacher owns a Christmas tree farm and she gave each kid in the class one to take home and plant. And name, if they so wished. Redman named his Gasol. As in Pau Gasol.

Over on the other side of the yard, Jeeps has started to move the stone wall to create the new triangle bed under the living room windows. I don't know what happened but my weeping cherry tree standard totally croaked over the winter, such a bummer (for me, that is; Jeeps always hated that thing). But the Andromeda looks terrific. I love Andromeda...when I was little I called it a "popcorn bush" and would strip off all the little white blossoms into a bowl to serve my stuffed animals.

Saturday was our annual Egg Hunt. Last year it poured rain but this year it was picture-perfect gorgeous. Jeeps broke out the bunny suit and cavorted with our neighbor Elizabeth, who not only owns a chicken suit, but dons it and crosses the road. I always wanted the kids to wear hats or butterfly wings, and I always put it on the invite, but it never happened. However, my friend Brandy stepped up and brought the baby in his bear suit, to which she stapled some long ears and added a pom-pom tail. Too bad he can't eat chocolate yet, I would've totally given him a Cadbury egg.

And then it was Easter Sunday. We got up and had candy for breakfast. I worked outside, the boys watched the Knick game. Panda was...somewhere, I don't know where she was but she came back for dinner which was roasted turkey breast with potatoes, carrots, red onions, brussels sprouts, and green beans. Followed by more candy.

Happy Easter and Passover to all.

Williams-Sonoma Pasta

I bought myself two cookbooks last week.  One is the original Barefoot Contessa Cookbook, because I can't live any longer without my own copy.  And the other is Williams-Sonoma Pasta.  This is a bloody great book.  I always see it in my local Homegoods, I always stop and browse through it and take mental notes.  Finally I decided it was getting ridiculous, I should have it for my own. So what to make first?!  I hate that with a new cookbook I end up in a funk of indecision.  But after taking it to bed a few times (shut up) tonight I took their recipe for Linguine with Italian Tuna and Cherry Tomatoes and tweaked it a little to suit what I had on hand.  I've never cooked with the Italian tuna in olive oil, but I make tuna cakes all the time so I wasn't worried it would be rejected.  I had no linguini so I used cavatappi.  I had cherry tomatoes and I also had some cauliflower that needed to be used.  The recipe called for sun-dried tomatoes and capers, which I did not have, nor did I have spring onions.  But the garden is full of chives so I cut off a bunch and substituted, and at the end I threw in some diced mozzarella.

And it came out AWESOME.  The flavor from the tuna wasn't too strong, it just gave a really subtle, background savoriness.  I really like the combination of pasta and cauliflower, but I wasn't generous enough with the cherry tomatoes, next time I will use the whole two pints.

Pasta with Italian Tuna and Vegetables

• 2 pints cherry tomatoes (I used 1 pint mixed red and orange)
• 1 head cauliflower cut into small florets (my addition)
• 8 green spring onions, including green parts, thinly sliced (I used a small handful of chives and snipped them with scissors)
• 3 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
• 1/4 cup olive oil plus more for drizzling
• 1 lb linguine (I used cavatappi)
• About 6 oil-packed sun-dried tomatoes, drained and thinly sliced (I didn't have)
• 2 6-oz cans Italian tuna in olive oil, drained and flaked
• 1/4 cup capers (I didn't have)
• Large handful of Italian parsley leaves, coarsely chopped
• About a dozenciligene -small mozzarella cheese balls - halved

Preheat oven to 450.  Start water for pasta boiling.

Toss cauliflower florets in a large bowl with 1/2 the olive oil, salt and pepper.  Spread on baking sheet

In same large bowl, toss cherry tomatoes, onions (or chives), and garlic with the rest of the olive oil, salt and pepper.

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Roast cauliflower for 10 minutes, then add tomatoes to the baking sheet and roast another 10 minutes.  I miraculously timed this so that the tomatoes went into the oven at the same time the pasta went into the water.  Thank you.  Thank you, I try my best.

In a large bowl, put the tuna, parsley, capers, sun-dried tomatoes, and diced cheese.

Drain the pasta and add to bowl.

Tip veggies off tray into bowl.  Toss all well.  Drizzle with olive oil and serve.

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Is the toast burning...or is your house burning?

I have a whole bunch of blogs bookmarked that I take in with my morning coffee, and Free Range Kids is the top of the list. Today her blog featured an article that should have been a story of a little girl's resourcefulness and a community's strength. Instead it was made sensational news under the headline "A Parent's Worst Nightmare!"

Now make no mistake, if your kid is not where he or she is supposed to be, your heart goes into your throat. You can't help it. And I'm not saying it's not a scary thing. But let's step back and look two independent facts:

1) FBI Statistics reveal there has been no increase in crime against children. Your child is more likely to get struck by lightning than be abducted. Furthermore, the majority of abductions are committed by people the child knows, not strangers.

2) The world is an imperfect place. Mistakes are known to occur. People are human. Shit happens.

Yes, it is frightening when your child isn't where they are supposed to be.

Yes, the school, on its second day of the session, in the chaos of sorting out who goes on what bus, missed that this little girl boarded the bus for daycare instead of the bus for home.

Yes, the little girl arrived at an empty house and was upset, but through her tears she had the wherewithal to go to a neighbor's house. Calls were made. The grandmother was sent for. Cookies were served. Everything worked out fine.

And the mother went to the newspapers.

What. The. Fuck.

Look, maybe I'm in the minority here, but this is overreacting. If she had to seek out fame for her "ordeal", then it should have been spun as a positive story. Because it was one!

The child regrouped and went to a neighbor! Great job, honey, that was smart thinking!

The neighbor took her in and gave her a snack and called the mother. Mrs. So-and-So, I am so grateful to have you as a neighbor, thank you so much.

A mistake was made but it worked out fine. Yes, Ms. Principal, it was a little scary for a few minutes, but all is well. Under the circumstances, I can forgive the mix-up, I'm sure it won't happen again. And hey, I'm glad she knows what to do when things like this happen, that's really the greater lesson, isn't it?

No. A parent's worst nightmare! This is unacceptable! The school shall pay, heads will roll, my child is damaged forever!!

Actually, honey, your kid is fine. It's you who's acting like a lunatic. One of the commentators on the blog post said something great, I think she was quoting her grandmother: "If you behave like this when the toast is burning, what will you do when the house is on fire?"

Think about it. If there is a break in the routine of any magnitude, would you want your child to be the one who keeps calm and goes with the flow, or the one who is hysterical? Most of us want the former, but there lies the break in parenting style: some parents don't want ANYTHING to EVER happen to their child. As a result, they have children who can't do anything when something happens. Other parents teach their kids to deal efficiently with every day glitches, with confidence that doing so will render them able to keep a cool head when faced with a real emergency. And face it, which is more likely to happen in a lifetime: burned toast or a house fire?

We tend to run what-if scenarios with our kids that involve dire circumstances: fire, severe injury, abduction. Yes, your child needs to know how to get out of the house, how to dial 911, and to not take rides from people he doesn't know, and when in doubt, scream loud and run away.

BUT! Do you also prepare your child for the every-day, mundane shit that invariably happens because life is chaotic and messy and people are human and make mistakes? What are the things that are so much more likely to happen, and could your kids deal?

So let's brainstorm and play a game of "What if?" Try running a few of these past your children, or come up with your own to share. The only rules are 1) no life-threatening emergencies and 2) try to steer their first reaction away from, "Call for Mom and Dad."

—Here's one that I always toss at Redman when he's playing outside: "What if your ball rolls into the street?" That's a good one, right? It happens. Balls are round, the driveway is smooth, kids throw wild. The ball rolls into the street. What do you do? (Or rather, what do you NOT do?)

—You're playing in the yard and you see a raccoon. In the daytime. Lumbering along looking kind of dopey and weird. What do you do? (Depending on where you live, you could extend this to bobcats, coyotes or bears)

—A dog wanders into your yard. Nice dog, friendly dog, looks a little lonely. Maybe he's lost. Suppose it's a really hot day and he's panting like crazy. What do you do? (No you may not keep him)

—Let's take one right from the source: You go to an after-school program on Mondays, which involves going on a different bus. However, we just had a long holiday weekend with Monday off so even though today is Tuesday, your brain thinks it's Monday, so you get on the after-school program bus. Oops. It's Tuesday. You were supposed to go on the home bus. What do you do?

—Now let's up the ante a little. Suppose Mom and/or Dad (whatever the case may be) is in bed with a horrible flu, broken leg, any scenario where all the usually responsible adults cannot get up on a school morning. Could you get yourself ready, get yourself breakfast, and get yourself to school? (This last part of course depends on how that normally happens—does your child walk to school, walk to a bus stop, or get taken to a bus stop? In any case, anyone can be felled by stomach flu at any time, so what is the Plan?)

—Same situation, but in the evening. Mom and Dad are down for the count. Can you make yourself some dinner? (NOTE: a PB & J, or a bowl of cereal is a perfectly acceptable dinner. This is a test of resourcefulness, not cooking technique.)

—From somewhere in the house, you hear your Mom or Dad bellow, “OH MY GOD, TURN OFF THE WATER MAIN!” Do you know what that is, where that is, and how to turn it off?

—You drop a glass and it shatters. Mom and Dad are outside doing yardwork, and you are not wearing shoes. What do you do? (No screaming. Extra credit for knowing where the vacuum cleaner is)

—While outside playing you fall in the muddy creek, swamp, whatever wet and muddy place there is to fall into. Your pants, shoes, and socks are soaked and muddy. What do you do? (Obviously changing clothes is the answer, but the REAL point here is that they know to a) not walk into the house with muddy shoes and b) that they leave the soaked and muddy clothes in an appropriate place, like the laundry room, mudroom, the garage or back steps, etc.)

—You shart. (Come on!!! Life is messy and it happens!!)

Play along with me. Leave a comment with some non-life threatening situations you'd want your kid to be able to handle. Let's not worry about everything that might happen, and worry about what is likely to happen.

Faith in Germination

Usually I'm a very trusting person, but when it comes to bulbs and seedlings, I just have no faith. It's an awed kind of faithlessness. After all these years of gardening, I guess I still can't believe the miracle of it. That from tiny seeds grow such beautiful things. My friend Marie said pretty much the same thing on Facebook the other day: "After almost 40 years of life I am still astonished and thrilled each spring when the forsythia bloom..."

Every spring I start my seedlings in my Bio-Domes (available at Park Seed and a very worthwhile investment, mine have lasted for years). I put them in the window and I swear, an hour later, I am peering down into the cells. 

Anything yet? No? 

With the direct-sown crops, I'm even more of a wreck, down on my knees searching the soil where I broadcasted lettuce seeds and peas. They're not coming up. They won't come up. It's been a week. This is the year when they're not going to sprout.

But they do.

My bulb paranoia is a little more justified. Three years ago I planted over two hundred daffodils along the lower stone wall. The show that spring was spectacular. But the following year: no show. Not one daffodil. I'm not exaggerating. NOT ONE! If I hadn't taken pictures of the blooms, I would swear I had hallucinated the whole thing. To this day, I don't know what became of them. I assume something ate them. But ate all of them? From underground? It's bizarre. 

So you can imagine my angst this year, trying to recall the exact location of all the daffodils and alliums I dropped in October. Every day, poking around the beds for the telltale shoots. I put some here. I think. Maybe here? Surely here. I know I put them here. Where are they? They're not coming up. They have to come up. Everyone else's are coming up. Some people's are in bloom. Where are mine? I'm a failure. Where are they? They're not coming up.

They came up.

So my seedlings are started, and thanks to this unusual spring I have been busy busy busy outside. The cool weather crops are sown, the beds are raked out, and I've been occupied with the usual rearranging of plants based on what was successful last year, and what was a failure. I'm waiting on a shipment of plants as well, which brings up the topic of mail-order nurseries.

It seems January 1st brings a free-for-all of soft porn garden catalogs in the mail, and a lot of people ask me if I ever do order plants online. I do, but not as much as I used to. When we moved to this house there was not one flower in the whole 1 1/4-acre lot. I ordered a lot of plants online and learned a few valuable lessons the most valuable being if you buy cheap, you get cheap. Sure, maybe you can get 10 plants for $10.99, but they will be tiny, possibly damaged from the shipment, possibly bareroot with no viable life, and it will be 2-3 anxious years before they really establish themselves. Is it worth it? Well, when you're kind of broke with over an acre to fill, it has to be. Gardening requires extraordinary patience.

These days when the garden catalogs come, I peruse for pleasure and ideas. I tear out pages and take them with me to local nurseries. I'm at the stage now where I don't start many perennials from seed any more, it's mostly veggies and annuals.

This year I am starting a ton of lupines because I love them so much, and a breed of variegated heliopsis called 'Sunburst.' I like the foliage a lot. I started some orange and yellow Butterfly Weed, too, because the kind I have is pink and I don't like it much.

Here are two online nurseries that I do regularly buy from:

Graceful Gardens in Mecklenburg, NY, run by Amanda and Mark Shenstone. They have an interesting operation where they sell their plants in 4-packs, and you buy trays of 8 packs for around $80. That comes out to $2.50 per plant, which is virtually unheard of in the online nursery world, and you'd think for that price you'd be getting crap. But let me tell you, these are good plants. The first time I opened a box from Graceful Gardens, I nearly passed out. The packs were gorgeous. Lush, healthy, definitely not crap. So every year I order from GG those small-seeded things I have such trouble germinating myself: foxgloves, poppies, etc. They don't carry a huge selection, you won't get the latest breeds or exotic varieties or the hard-to-finds. They have the tried-and-true foundation plants and their quality is first-rate. So is their customer service.

Bluestone Perennials in Madison, OH. They have a larger selection, and are a wee bit pricier, but their plants arrive in excellent shape and I've never lost one—whatever I ordered from Bluestone remains a star to this day.

Once upon a time I did order a lot of hellebores through catalogs. Grown hellebore plants are extremely pricey and I always felt I could just afford one. One lousy hellebore just doesn't cut it. So I went with the option to buy five or six online every year. Sure enough they arrived with maybe two leaves, and it has taken about four years for them all to mature, but well worth the wait.  Here they are, all growns up! By the way, the best way to photograph hellebores is to practically lie on the ground and point your camera up at them.

They are so gorgeous, and they have the most wonderful timing, blooming right when you think you're going to go out of your mind with winter fever. And check this out, they made babies! As soon as they grow some true leaves I will transplant some, and pot the rest up and give away as gifts. Let me know if you want one. Or three.

Panda speaks: Banana Nut(ella) Muffins

So Pandagirl has Home & Careers as an elective this quarter.  Back in the day we called this Home Ec, but whatever.  They do a unit on table manners, I can't wait.  Sorry.  Love the kiddipookykins to pieces but for the love of Mike, please close your mouth when you eat, and hello - that thing is called a fork?!  I'm also a little weary of the constant tutorials of "This thing is a dining room chair, and that thing over there is a closet.  Don't confuse the two." Followed by throwing a jacket across the room to make the point. Anyway, where was I?

So Panda came home from school a couple weeks ago, pleased as punch, with four banana muffins they had made in H & C class.  And everybody had one and we loved them and we were sad when they were gone.  And I promised we could make them again at home, whenever I happened to have bananas around.

Last night Panda's friend MK was over.  I should introduce MK because she's a wonderful friend and has spent enough time at our house that she very freely calls me "Mom."  In return, I treat her like one of my own which means she's often been told to unload the dishwasher or set the table.  She loves to eat over and is very lavish in her praise for my dinners.  So naturally I have no problem with her being over.  And I like the friendship she has with Panda.  It's very drama free.  "We're not besties," they say.  "We're beasties."

Panda and MK were working hard on an English project.  They broke for dinner and then went back to the books.  Noticing that I did have bananas around, I offered to make the muffins.

It's a pretty straight-forward recipe:  dry ingredients, wet ingredients, combine.  "Should I put some blueberries in these?" I asked.  The reception was lukewarm so I offered walnuts instead.  Walnuts were accepted.  "Chocolate chips are good in banana muffins," MK said, with a hopeful look.

"They are," I agreed, "unfortunately I don't have any chocolate chips."

There was silence for a little bit; the girls worked, I mixed.  And then I had a bit of an idea.  "What if..." I said, opening a cupboard.  "I'm just thinking out loud here...What if, after I put the batter in the muffin tins, I put a little spoon of Nutella on top and then bake them?"

The cupboard door was open so they were hidden from view while I was talking.  I shut the door and there they were, two little faces, eyes perfectly round, mouths open in little O's of wonder.  "Ohhhhhhh MOMMMMMMMMMEEEEEEEEE!!"

Yeah, yeah, that's my name, don't wear it out.

Ohhhhhh Mommmmmeeee Banana Nutella Muffins

• 2 1/2 cups flour
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 cup dark brown sugar
• 1/4 tsp cinnamon
• 2 cups mashed bananas (4-6)
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1/2 cup milk
• 2 large eggs
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 3/4 cup chopped walnuts
• Nutella (optional, but come on!)

I'm going to transcribe the recipe exactly as the teacher wrote it because it's just beautiful to visualize teams of sixth graders doing this.

1.  Put on apron

2.  Wash hands

3.  Preheat oven to 425

4.  Grease muffin pan

5.  In a medium mixing bowl mash bananas enough to measure approximately 2 cups

6.  Add the oil, milk, eggs, vanilla and salt

7.  Whisk to combine ingredients.  Set aside

8.  Into a large mixing bowl measure the flour, baking soda, dark brown sugar and cinnamon.

9.  Stir with a wooden spoon

10.  Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients

11.  Pour wet ingredients into the center; then stir with a wooden spoon until the dry ingredients are moistened but still lumpy.

12.  Gently stir in 3/4 cups chopped nuts, if desired

13.  Fill muffin cups 2/3 full

==>Put a small dollop of Nutella on top of each muffin

14.  Label pan with your kitchen number

15.  Place muffins in the oven and immediately reduce heat to 375

16.  Bake until golden brown, about 25 minutes

17.  Cool muffins in the pan on a cooling rack for 5 minutes

18.  Remove muffins to cooling rack

In retrospect I would've taken a toothpick or skewer and run it through the Nutella to distribute a little.  Or I would have put a little batter in the bottom of the cups, put the dollop of Nutella, then a little more batter on top.  I'm sure I'll be trying these again.  They were quite yummy.

Creamed Tuna and Peas on Toast (Tuna Optional)

I crack up looking at this picture. I lived here. 

Once upon a time, another lifetime ago, this was my apartment. The door on the left (your left), that was my door and the big window on the left, that was my bedroom. 

Jesus. 

At the time, this was it: this was everything, this was the freakin' best thing ever. It was my first place, and the first time I was completely on my own in the big world (or as big as it got in Dunkirk, NY). 

I lived here and worked two or three jobs and I paid the bills and food shopped and cooked and cleaned. Eventually my boyfriend moved in and together we lived in this dumpy little place on the ground floor with no windows, except for that big picture window that faced the street so the curtains were always drawn.

From Howard Avenue it was a nice walk to the shore of Lake Erie (ironically, years later, when I was heavily into family tree research, I would come to find out my great-uncle Max lived in Dunkirk, on 2nd Street, barely half a mile from my apartment). But one of the best things about Howard Avenue was that it was adjacent to the railroad tracks that served the Norfolk Southern Railway. 

I grew up around trains and I love the sound of them going by. My childhood house in Croton-on-Hudson was clear across town from the Metro North Rail Yard, but you could still hear train whistles echoing around. It's a sound I've always associated with home. And in Dunkirk, trains rolled along the tracks just across the street from my bedroom window, long freight trains trundling through at two in the morning. Some people might find this unbearable. It felt like home to me.

The kitchen was actually pretty good in the apartment. It had no dishwasher, but the landlord had just put in a new stove before I moved in, and it was a gas stove—something I'd never cooked on before. 

What the heck did I cook? I'm sure a lot of split chicken breasts marinated in Italian dressing and baked in the oven. Pasta, naturally. A thousand boxes of pierogies, at least. Salad, scrambled eggs, canned soup and grilled cheese, I'm sure. I remember trying to broil a steak once and it being a smoky disaster.  I remember once splurging on baby lamp chops because I was missing my dad.

And then there was creamed tuna and peas on toast.

This was my boyfriend's contribution to the dinner menu, one of the few things, possibly the only thing he knew how to make. When he first suggested it, I gave him a skeptical look and a lot of teasing. Creamed tuna and peas on toast, what was this, the 1950's? Did he know how to make chipped beef and salmon loaf, too? 

He busied himself at the stove and I stayed out of the way, and when he came over to the couch with two plates balanced on his hands and a triumphant expression, I took my plate and nicely ate it. 

And it was absolutely fabulous. 

I used the last crust of toast to mop up the last bit of cream sauce and handed a pristine plate back to him. "You're making that again," I said, licking my fingers.

He made it often. One memorable time he made it and as we were running toast around the plate rims, he stopped suddenly with a puzzled expression. 

"I didn't put the tuna in," he said.

"What?"

"I just realized I forgot to put the tuna in. This is just creamed peas on toast."

I shrugged and ran my finger across his plate, catching what he'd missed. "It was terrific anyway."

We're in touch on Facebook these days and I asked if he still had the recipe (I could Google it, sure, but what fun is that?). After realizing I was serious, he said he couldn't really remember it anymore, but we went back and forth on the process and I finally figured it couldn't be that different from creamed spinach so I adapted the white sauce from that.

Howard Avenue Creamed Tuna and Peas on Toast

• 1 cup milk
• 2 tbsp unsalted butter
• 2 tbsp flour
• 1/2 tsp kosher salt
• 1/4 tsp pepper
• 2 tbsp half-and-half
• 1 can tuna, drained
• 1 can peas, drained, or equal amount frozen peas, thawed and drained
• 2 slices toast per person

Melt 1 tbsp butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Whisk in flour. Cook for 1 minute, whisking constantly.  

Gradually whisk in milk. Whisk another 3 minutes until sauce thickens. Stir in salt, pepper, and half-and-half. Stir in tuna and peas.

Put toast slices on plate and ladle tuna mixture over. 

Best eaten with a lover on the living room couch while watching TV, or standing over the kitchen sink, staring into space, remembering a lover.

Photo is courtesy of A Good Appetite, who takes their recipe for CT&POT up several notches by preparing it with bacon, pearl onions and thyme. I suppose you could even marry this to a tuna melt and add cheese to the white sauce as well.  Experiment with the bread, too: an artisan, multi-grain boule would be dynamite.

Clean your plate, dear.

A Vegetable Stir Fry and Thou...

I used to work full time, five days a week commuting into the city, and then three nights a week I would be teaching dance, and rehearsing on weekends if it was recital time.  Sometimes I'd sleep at home, some nights after class I'd catch a late train back into the city so I could be with Jeeps.  And when you're young and in love, face it, sleep is overrated.  We'd stay up too late and get up too early and then we were off to work again... And I didn't think twice about it.  Youth is ignorant bliss.  To be young and in love and in New York was bliss.  Jeeps lived on the sixth floor of a six-floor walk-up on East 74th and First Avenue.  I had a drawer in his dresser and space in the closet; it was an extra Daisy razor on his bathtub ledge next to my own shampoo bottles, and a copy of his key on my keychain.  My books began to pile up on his bedside table, and half-and-half began showing up in the fridge.

We food shopped a few blocks away at Gristedes, and lugged the groceries home in a dozen plastic bags, trudging up the six flights of stairs.  At some point, a green grocer opened on the corner below his apartment building, and then it seemed that all we ever ate was stir fried vegetables over pasta.

I'm sure we ate a lot of chicken this and chicken that; I remember making stuffed peppers once.  But mostly I remember trawling that amazing green grocer on the corner and taking a bag of produce upstairs.  Over wine or beers, Steely Dan on the stereo (remember the stereo?), we'd smash up a bunch of garlic cloves, chop up the vegetables and fill up Jeeps' one and only skillet while pasta water boiled in his one and only pot.  Then we'd eat watching the news or the Knicks game, and usually there was something like Coffee Heath Bar Crunch in the freezer.

And all this came back to me the other night when it didn't seem there was anything to make for dinner.  And Jeeps, now my husband, wrestling on the floor with our two kids, contemplated ordering Chinese Food.  "No," I said, "I think I can manage something..."  And I poured my wine and put on my music.

Water was put to boil in my own soup pot.  I smashed half a head of garlic and chopped up onions, mushrooms, peppers, carrots, zucchini, purple cauliflower.  I sauteed them in the cast iron skillet I got as a wedding present, then added cherry tomatoes and tiny balls of marinated mozzarella cheese.  I served up plates to my family and we ate them downstairs while watching the Knicks game.

Life has been good to me.