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.

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):

Yellow Rice and Peas

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? 

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.

Real Simple Barley Risotto

I dog-eared the page as soon as I saw this recipe for Barley Risotto with Butternut Squash and Spinach in the December issue of Real Simple. Then I promptly lent the magazine to my mother so when I finally wanted to make it, I had to call her and have her dictate it to me. Turns out she had dog-eared it to try as well. 

Now file this under "it takes all types" because I made it, and JP and I loved it, even the kids tried some. My mother made it, and she and my Dad thought it was "eh?" and the dog wouldn't touch it. (OK, poetic license—I made that last part up, their dog died years ago, but it sounded good)

So you'll just have to try it yourself and see.

Barley Risotto with Butternut Squash and Spinach

• 1 package pre-cut, pre-peeled butternut squash, cut into 1/2" dice
• 1 large onion, diced
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 cup pearl barley
• 1/2 cup white wine
• 3 cups chicken broth
• 1/2 bag of baby spinach
• 1/2 cup parmesan cheese
• 1 tablespoon butter
• kosher salt and ground pepper
• chopped fresh parsley

I still don't have the magazine back so this recipe will be a little more prosaic than usual

Preheat oven to 400.  In an ovenproof pot or dutch oven, saute the onion and squash in olive oil for about five minutes, season with a pinch of kosher salt and a few grinds of pepper.

Add the pearl barley, stir to combine and get the barley coated with the olive oil, cook 2-3 minutes

Add the white wine, stir well and allow to evaporate

Add chicken stock.  Bring to a boil, then cover pot and put in oven.

Bake 35-40 minutes, stirring once halfway through, until broth is absorbed.

Remove from oven, stir in spinach, parmesan cheese, butter and parsley.

Serve.

Decide.

Nonna's Stuffing

My great-grandmother Teresa Pizzamiglio (Nonna) immigrated to the US in 1913 with her husband, Angelo Danese. She was a superb cook, and a master gardener. What she was not was generous with her recipes and techniques, nor was she patient with teaching either. My grandmother, Lena Danese (Giggi), was not allowed in the kitchen as a young girl, so it's something of a miracle that she ended up as wonderful a cook as she was. To the kitchen, she took the exact opposite approach, letting my mother and her sister experiment wildly and make a mess. She could entertain both lavishly (the family backyard clambakes were renowned) and humbly (serving BLTs for dinner and calling it a night). It is from her that my mother learned to make a festa out of niente, and it is the gift that's been passed down to me.

I remember most holiday feasts being at Giggi's house in Syracuse, and always on Thanksgiving and Christmas was served Nonna's Stuffing. I don't know if Nonna created this dish herself, or copied something that was served in Italy. I don't know how, if she was indeed so parsimonious with her cooking knowledge, Giggi got the recipe out of her. But somehow she did and she made it, and my mother and my aunt made it, and now I make it and my cousins make it. This year, Panda helped me make it. It was very interesting watching her because right up until I was her age, I turned up my nose at Nonna's stuffing. So did my brother and my cousins. It was weird looking. It was green. All the adults raved about it so it had to be awful. But right around 11 or 12 years of age, we started coming around. We would verify that it would be served, "You're making Nonna's stuffing, right?" To which the adult in charge that year would look at us as if we were witless, "Of course!"

This year, Panda was sneaking bites right and left. And so another sheep is brought into the Pizzamiglio-Danese fold, and I will tuck this recipe into her little Hope Chest, and I have dreams of sitting at her table one day when she brings out the pan of Nonna's stuffing with a mixture of pride and trepidation, "I hope it came out right..."

There is no other stuffing but this.

Nonna's Stuffing

• 2 lbs sweet Italian sausage
• 1 1/2 - 2 lbs Italian bread, shredded into small pieces
• 2 cups chopped onions
• 2 cups chopped celery
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 cup fresh chopped parsley
• 2 tablespoons each fresh chopped sage and rosemary
• 1 1/2 cups Parmesan or Asiago cheese (Nonno imported Asiago cheese so that's what we use)
• 6 bags (you heard me) baby spinach
• Salt, pepper, and Bell's poultry seasoning to taste

I do this all in a particular order and the prep time takes longer than the actual cooking.

First I have to find the recipe which always causes a small panic attack. The past couple years I've been very careful to put it back in the pages of the Martha Stewart Cookbook. The recipe itself, as you can see, has gone through several annotations over the years. I don't like making a clean copy because all those scribbled notes are just so wonderful.

This is made in the 20-million-gallon size Madame Le Creuset pot. Hold your applause.

Prepping the bread is the worst part. I hate it, there's no good way to do it. I get 2 1-lb loaves from the store, tear one apart with my hands, crust and all, and then the other loaf I sort of peel away the crust and then shred up the soft insides. I always stress that there's too much bread so I put some in Madame and then have a separate holding tank. Whatever I don't use goes to the birds.

Prep everything: chop the onions, celery and garlic and have that in one bowl. Chop your herbs and have that ready. Grate the cheese, or get a small child to do it, put that aside.

Squeeze the sausage out of its casings and brown well in the largest skillet you have. Good luck getting a small child to help with the squeezing without making any poop jokes. As the sausage browns, crumble with the side of a wooden spoon. I hate this. I don't know why, but standing by the pan, breaking up clumps of sausage makes me want to scream.

This year I got the brilliant idea of using my pastry cutter to do this job and I will never again use the spoon.

When the sausage is done, dump it into a colandar in the sink to drain well, you can even rinse it if you wish. Do not wipe out the pan.

In the same pan you fried the sausage, with the drippings still there, saute the onion, celery and garlic about five minutes or until translucent. Add the fresh herbs and saute another 2-3 minutes. Scrape all this into the pot with the bread, and put the pan back on the stove and add a little olive oil.

One at a time, saute each bag of baby spinach. I know 6 bags seems like a lot and every year I think it's a lot, it's too much, it's crazy. But every year each bag wilts down into a pathetic lump and then I panic that it's not enough. It's enough, just go with it. As each batch is done, put it in the colander in the sink and press out as much juice as possible, then put into the pot with the bread and vegetables.

Now you can turn off the heat, finally. Add the sausage and cheese to the pot and mix well. Use a big spoon or your hands. Now taste. You can add salt, pepper (I like 1/2 teaspoon of white pepper) and Bell's poultry seasoning as needed. But the best way to really see if you have it right it to take a little stuffing, make a small patty, and fry it up. And then make another because you are the cook. This year during the tasting phase, I found the stuffing had far too many savory notes, something wasn't right. So I chopped up another onion and 2 ribs of celery, sauteed them quick, mixed it in and that did the trick —it needed that extra bit of bright sweetness. Every year it's different.

Pat into your baking dish. I always make a regular 9x13 dish to serve, and then there's another 9x9 pan for my brother. At this point you could wrap the dish in foil and freeze it until show time. Otherwise it goes into a 350 oven for an hour.

Grazie, Nonna.

Bok Choy with Asian-style Ribs

I've been on a mission to try bok choy for some time now, and a few stir-fry recipes from Fast, Fresh & Green have clinched the deal.  But Susie Middleton really threw down the gauntlet when she added as a blithe aside, "these would be good with some oven-roasted boneless pork ribs."

Hello.

Asian-style boneless pork ribs.  In the slow-cooker.  Did such a thing exist?

Consult the Oracle.  Of course it exists.  My searchings led me to the blog Choosy Beggars, and this awesome post about boneless Asian BBQ beef ribs.   She used beef, I figured it would work just as well for pork.  I'm not going to transpose it here, because hers is so well-written, being both about ribs and about slow cookers in general.  Just know I followed the recipe to the letter (and yes, there was a special shopping trip involved for things like oyster sauce, Chinese 5-spice powder, etc), and I'll give you a few impressions here:

1) The recipe calls for a grated onion.  I know.  You just have to suck it up and do.  I've heard all kinds of tricks for keeping tears at bay while working with onions; frankly the only thing that is a surefire thing for me is having my contact lenses in.  No such luck so last night I had to try the remedy of chewing gum as I grated.  Not much help.  It was a sobby business.

2) The sauce smells amazing.  I put it all together last night in a tupperware container and the smell lingered around the kitchen for a while.

3) Ribs in cooker.  Sauce on top.  10 hours.  That's the extent of it.  At the end, you will need to skim quite a bit of fat off the top.

4) I didn't love them.  I know, bummer, huh?  They smelled amazing, they looked divine, they cozied up beautifully to the bok choy over rice, they were thoroughly enjoyable.  But I didn't love them.  Maybe I'd love them if they were beef ribs but somehow I don't think so.

I did, however LOVE the bok choy.  That and the rice I could eat over and over again.  So that said, here is the real star of the show...

Stir-Fried Baby Bok Choy with Golden Garlic and Silky Sauce

(I added some halved baby carrots to this recipe just so there would be something for the kiddies to fall back on)

• 12 oz baby bok choy (4-5 heads that are 6-7" long)
• 1 tbsp oyster sauce (one of the specialties I had to go get, it was in both this and the rib sauce)
• 1 tbsp low-sodium chicken broth
• 1/2 tsp cornstarch
• 2 tbsp peanut oil (and again, had to seek that out.  Wow, does peanut oil smell good!)
• 2 large garlic cloves, sliced very thinly crosswise
• 1/2 tsp kosher salt

Cut the bok choy lengthwise into quarters.  Wash them well by swishing them in a bowl of tepid water, and spin them dry (I shook mine dry, I didn't feel like breaking out the spinner).

In a small bowl, combine the oyster sauce, broth and cornstarch

In a large, non-stick stir fry pan, heat the peanut oil over medium heat.  When the oil is hot, add the garlic slices and break them up.  Cook, stirring, just until fragrant, about 30 seconds (it smells awesome!)  Add the bok choy to the pan.  Season with the salt and turn the heat up to high.  Using tongs, toss the bok choy with the oil to coat and to distribute the garlic slices.

Cook, rotating and turning the bok choy with the tongs and spreading it out so that all of the stems have some contact with the pan as they cook, and so that the garlic doesn't all gather on the bottom of the pan, until all of the bok choy stems are browned in parts (9 to 12 minutes).

Remove the pan from the heat and, using a silicone spatula, immediately stir the sauce as you pour it into the pan.  As soon as the sauce thickens and begins to coat the vegetables, transfer to the bok choy and the sauce to a serving dish.

Delicious.  The bok choy was crisp and savory, perfect with the sweetness of the carrots, and the sauce is indeed silky.  Really loved this dish.