Thank you for following the Life Told in Recipes blog. We're excited to announce that starting tomorrow, LTIR will become Table 1095! All the recipes, family memories, personal stories, and general food-loving posts you love will still be shared, with a little extra spice. We hope you'll enjoy our next incarnation!
Pull up a chair at Table1095:
Facebook
Like our new Table1095 Facebook Page and Share with your friends! (To Share, click the drop-down arrow directly below the bottom right-hand corner of our cover photo, choose Share, add your own message if you like, then hit the Share Page button.)
Prize: Our Tex-Mex Package, including a copy of Mexican Cooking, More than Everyday Recipes by Cecilia Hae-Jin Lee (yup not a mexcan name) from Chronicle Books AND The Homesick Texan Cookbook by the popular blogger Lisa Fain.
Twitter
Follow @Table1095 on Twitter! Hit the blue Follow button at the top right.
Prize: Our Quick Tips prize, How to Squeeze a Lemon: 1,023 Kitchen Tips, Food Fixes and Handy Techniques from the editors and contributors of Fine Cooking mag, Taunton Press.
Pinterest
Follow Table1095 on Pinterest! Just click Follow All under our profile picture.
Prize: Our Very Visual cookbook prize, They Draw & Cook: 107 Recipes Illustrated by Artists from Around the World from a popular blog by Nate Padavick & Salli Swindell.
Table1095.com
Follow the new blog itself for all the dish! Visit table1095.com, click the Follow button at the bottom right, and enter your email address.
Prize: The Grand Prize, incuding three must-have books:
Melissa Clark's (NYT food columnist) book Cook This Now, from Hyperion
Jamie Oliver’s Meals in Minutes from Hyperion
Fast Breads by Elinor Klivans from Chronicle Books
A mother and daughter dish and cook their way through life, one recipe at a time.
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Friday, March 16, 2012
This moment
A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. Pause, savor, remember.
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes and Cheese (OK, and Meat...)
Rachel here.
First off, check this out (pardon the blurriness--my hands were shaking from excitement):
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First off, check this out (pardon the blurriness--my hands were shaking from excitement):
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My brother, S, is staying with us this week (happy happy happy!) and our brother G shipped us this delicious surprise, replete with the appropriate cheese knife and everything. G is in Spain and these are some delicious local delicacies. Needless to say, I only snapped one picture before we dug in.
Thanks, G! Wish you were here to enjoy it with us.
But onwards.
My mom mentioned on Monday that we are moving over to a new internet home, ditching our current site and name in favor of one that we think fits us a bit better: Table1095. Part of what makes a house a home, though, is having your friends and family there with you.
To that end, we're really excited to announce a number of giveaways we're doing over the next couple weeks to welcome you to our new digs. Be one of the first to join us at the Table (by March 31st) and be entered to win great prizes. Here are the details:
Like our new Table1095 Facebook Page and Share with your friends! (To Share, click the drop-down arrow directly below the bottom right-hand corner of our cover photo, choose Share, add your own message if you like, then hit the Share Page button.)
Prize: Our Tex-Mex Package, including a copy of Mexican Cooking, More than Everyday Recipes by Cecilia Hae-Jin Lee from Chronicle Books AND The Homesick Texan Cookbook by the popular blogger Lisa Fain.
Follow @Table1095 on Twitter! Hit the blue Follow button at the top right.
Prize: Our Quick Tips prize, How to Squeeze a Lemon: 1,023 Kitchen Tips, Food Fixes and Handy Techniques from the editors and contributors of Fine Cooking mag, Taunton Press.
Follow Table1095 on Pinterest! Just click Follow All under our profile picture.
Prize: Our Very Visual cookbook prize, They Draw & Cook: 107 Recipes Illustrated by Artists from Around the World from a popular blog by Nate Padavick & Salli Swindell.
Table1095.com
Follow the new blog itself for all the dish! Visit table1095.com, click the Follow button at the bottom right, and enter your email address.
Prize: The Grand Prize, incuding three must-have books:
Melissa Clark's (NYT food columnist) book Cook This Now, from Hyperion
Jamie Oliver’s Meals in Minutes from Hyperion
Fast Breads by Elinor Klivans from Chronicle Books
Can't wait to see you all there for our official launch next Monday, March 19th.
XOXO.
Monday, March 12, 2012
Here Fishy Fishy
Janet here:
We're pretty excited here for the unveiling in just seven days of the new and (we think and hope you'll agree) improved LTIR. We've got a different look and a new name to reflect more options, both for Rachel and me to write about and for you our readers. While we've loved Life Told in Recipes, you have to admit the name is a mouthful. Anyway, a week from the today is the big launch so be sure to see what we've been up to.
Today's recipe is my go-to fish recipe. It's perfect for dinner gatherings because you can get it all set up before people arrive and then just plunk it in the oven when you're ready. That leaves plenty of time for you to be chatting it up, noshing and drinking with the people you've invited over because, really, otherwise what is the point?
This recipe is inspired from one of my six — yes, that clearly qualifies as a problem — Moosewood cookbooks. Mollie Katzen and the Moosewood crew were the ones who helped me realize giving up red meat did not mean a life of salad dinners and enabled me to convince my now lovely husband when we began living together that eating mostly vegetarian (with some fish thrown in) was actually going to be just fine. In 30 years of marriage, I've only made one thing we couldn't eat (zucchini pancakes) and I hope to revisit this epic fail someday now that I know a thing or two more about cooking with zucchini. My measurements for this are a little loose (a surprise I know) because I just do it by taste but that's part of the wonder of this recipe: There's plenty of room for experimenting. I served it with this leek, sage and potatoes gratin, which was a killer combination.
Fabulous Fish
serves 4-6
ingredients
1/2 lemon squeezed and the zested rind from that too
1/2 cup olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon dried basil--maybe two or so if fresh and chopped
2 cups bread crumbs
2/3 cups grated Parmesan cheese
salt and pepper to taste
fish fillets: I've used scrod, halibut, tilapia. You want something a little meaty but not as meaty as, say, tuna, so that the breadcrumbs complement the fish but don't overwhelm it
method
Heat the olive oil and lemon juice and rind in a heated pan. Add the garlic and basil and saute briefly. Mix in the bread crumbs until they are coated with the oil and saute, stirring regularly, until they are golden brown and dry. Remove from the heat and stir in the cheese and pepper.
Place the fish in an oiled baking pan. Spread the topping over it. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Cover and bake 20 minutes.
Friday, March 9, 2012
This Moment
A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. Pause, savor, remember.
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
National Eating Disorder Awareness Week (a few days late)
Rachel here.
So, I thought I had two disparate post ideas for today, but after thinking them over for a while, I've realized that, in fact, they're deeply connected.
As you may or may not know, last week was National Eating Disorder Awareness Week. The goal of the week (helmed by the National Eating Disorder Association) is to increase awareness and, along those lines, this year's theme was "Everyone Knows Someone."
Think you don't?
You do. You know me.
NEDAW has been going on for a while, and every year bloggers stand up and speak out en masse. They write about their experiences, their hopes, their struggles. They chronicle their victories, their defeats, and their gains. They write for themselves, for those who find themselves mirrored back in their pages, against silence and invisibility. They write for everyone.
Every year I vow that I am going to add my voice.
Every year I am silent.
And I was this year, too, though I thought and thought and thought about writing. I piled excuses up against the desire, a barricade against a story who's entirety I have only ever told one person (my holy-crap-amazing therapist), until finally the week had passed. And now it's today, and I'm sitting here after a pleasant but exhausting day at the restaurant I work in, cheeks puffing out with the explosive desire I have to tell my own, small story.
The other post I was considering for today was about realizing during our trip east that, though we share a food blog, I had never cooked with my mother until this past week.
Nope. Never.
We've baked together countless times. Most of what I know I learned at her hip. But not until this past week did we stand side by side, chopping and seasoning and stepping around each other to prepare the entirety of a meal (I'll try not to over-think the fact that she relegated me to salad duty uummm....every night).
It was so, so nice. I hate the word "nice" but this is one of those rare moments where it feels just right. It was relaxed and gentle, a sharing so basic it left me feeling calmly full before the meal even began. Nice. It was really, really nice.
I've been thinking since we came home about why it took so long for this coming together at the kitchen counter to occur. Sure, some of it has to do with not having lived together since I was an asshole teenager, and some of it has to do with the years since being spent thousands of miles apart. But there was something else lurking, something I struggled to put my finger on as I sat at the dining room table with my family, enjoying food prepared by my mom's and my hands.
And then I figured it out. Baking doesn't require eating. Baking, in fact, is the perfect culinary sport for someone who is obsessed with controlling their food. Baking is something you do for other people; it generates a product no one bothers to notice whether you consume or not. Cooking, in that regard, is the food addict's nemesis. People watch you at dinner. They watch you after dinner. Dinner is, if you will, on the table. It is access, particularly in our family where sharing dinner was an important and regular staple in our days. Baking is a way to touch food, to smell it, to take teeny tiny tastes, without ever being expected to actually eat. Cooking is the exact opposite.
So I didn't cook with my mom. I baked and hid and maintained a white-knuckled grip on what went into my body.
It is a bigger story than this. Much bigger. It is the better part of 27 years and, I now know, something that I will never remember living without. It is my albatross.
It's funny--I had this deranged idea that being pregnant cured me of my entanglement with eating disorders. While actively knowing that part of how I maintain a relatively healthy relationship with food is contingent on the fact that I still nurse Maxine--like, there is a voice in my head that says make sure you eat enough or else you won't make breast milk or you will make really crappy breast milk and you have a kid with a weak immune system so don't you dare do that--I still tried to convince myself that I had turned some corner that I could never walk back around. And then we all got the flu and two really terrifying things happened.
The first was that I didn't get the flu. John fell first and, without somebody to eat with--to notice my eating--I just stopped. I didn't even think about it. I ate two peanut butter cookies in as many days. The part that shook me, though, wasn't the not eating. It was that I didn't realize I'd stopped until John got better. It was that effortless, that deeply rooted in my subconscious, still that familiar in spite of years of hard work.
The second thing that happened was that I did get the flu. I should say that what happened to John with the flu was unlike anything I've ever seen. That guy was SICK. Explosively, uncontrollably, every 15 minutes, SICK. It was wild. And then when I got it, I threw up two times. That was it. And I was disappointed. Which, now that I've got some space from that whole debacle, makes me feel really sad. Really, really sad. In a feverish haze I lay in bed considering my turn with the flu a bit of a missed opportunity.
I am 27 years old. I am a mother who wants NOTHING more for her daughter than for her to inhabit her body with love. I practice yoga. I work in food. I have a food blog. I love eating. I have spent years and years in therapy. And yet, when the flu comes knocking, I stop taking care of myself without realizing it and feel jealous that I didn't expel as much of my insides as my partner did.
I am 27 years old. I have eaten to numbness. I have binged and purged. I have eaten laxatives. I have starved to the point of fainting. I have pulled out clumps of my hair in the shower. I have bruised. I have bled. I have dropped out of college because I feared for my life. I have stopped getting my period. I have had my husband and brother threaten to hospitalize me. I have known how many calories I consumed in a day, a week, a month. I have avoided social situations for fear that I might be expected to eat bread. I have walked 5 miles to work to justify eating a cup of plain grits. I could go on. The list is long. I am a professional. We all are.
And I have clawed my way out.
And I claw myself out.
One day at a time. A breath. An expansion. A refusal to disappear. Hands over eyes, I part fingers. I peel them apart and make myself peer out at the world. See it. Be in it. Stop hiding.
There is an arsenal working against me. It is social and it is personal and it is unrelenting. I am stockpiling weapons, though, each day stashed aside as MINE.
I am putting cooking with my mother in my pocket. It is a reminder of how wonderfully full a life with food can feel. It is a reason to fight.
Because cooking with my mom? It's so, so nice.
So, I thought I had two disparate post ideas for today, but after thinking them over for a while, I've realized that, in fact, they're deeply connected.
As you may or may not know, last week was National Eating Disorder Awareness Week. The goal of the week (helmed by the National Eating Disorder Association) is to increase awareness and, along those lines, this year's theme was "Everyone Knows Someone."
Think you don't?
You do. You know me.
NEDAW has been going on for a while, and every year bloggers stand up and speak out en masse. They write about their experiences, their hopes, their struggles. They chronicle their victories, their defeats, and their gains. They write for themselves, for those who find themselves mirrored back in their pages, against silence and invisibility. They write for everyone.
Every year I vow that I am going to add my voice.
Every year I am silent.
And I was this year, too, though I thought and thought and thought about writing. I piled excuses up against the desire, a barricade against a story who's entirety I have only ever told one person (my holy-crap-amazing therapist), until finally the week had passed. And now it's today, and I'm sitting here after a pleasant but exhausting day at the restaurant I work in, cheeks puffing out with the explosive desire I have to tell my own, small story.
The other post I was considering for today was about realizing during our trip east that, though we share a food blog, I had never cooked with my mother until this past week.
Nope. Never.
We've baked together countless times. Most of what I know I learned at her hip. But not until this past week did we stand side by side, chopping and seasoning and stepping around each other to prepare the entirety of a meal (I'll try not to over-think the fact that she relegated me to salad duty uummm....every night).
It was so, so nice. I hate the word "nice" but this is one of those rare moments where it feels just right. It was relaxed and gentle, a sharing so basic it left me feeling calmly full before the meal even began. Nice. It was really, really nice.
I've been thinking since we came home about why it took so long for this coming together at the kitchen counter to occur. Sure, some of it has to do with not having lived together since I was an asshole teenager, and some of it has to do with the years since being spent thousands of miles apart. But there was something else lurking, something I struggled to put my finger on as I sat at the dining room table with my family, enjoying food prepared by my mom's and my hands.
And then I figured it out. Baking doesn't require eating. Baking, in fact, is the perfect culinary sport for someone who is obsessed with controlling their food. Baking is something you do for other people; it generates a product no one bothers to notice whether you consume or not. Cooking, in that regard, is the food addict's nemesis. People watch you at dinner. They watch you after dinner. Dinner is, if you will, on the table. It is access, particularly in our family where sharing dinner was an important and regular staple in our days. Baking is a way to touch food, to smell it, to take teeny tiny tastes, without ever being expected to actually eat. Cooking is the exact opposite.
So I didn't cook with my mom. I baked and hid and maintained a white-knuckled grip on what went into my body.
It is a bigger story than this. Much bigger. It is the better part of 27 years and, I now know, something that I will never remember living without. It is my albatross.
It's funny--I had this deranged idea that being pregnant cured me of my entanglement with eating disorders. While actively knowing that part of how I maintain a relatively healthy relationship with food is contingent on the fact that I still nurse Maxine--like, there is a voice in my head that says make sure you eat enough or else you won't make breast milk or you will make really crappy breast milk and you have a kid with a weak immune system so don't you dare do that--I still tried to convince myself that I had turned some corner that I could never walk back around. And then we all got the flu and two really terrifying things happened.
The first was that I didn't get the flu. John fell first and, without somebody to eat with--to notice my eating--I just stopped. I didn't even think about it. I ate two peanut butter cookies in as many days. The part that shook me, though, wasn't the not eating. It was that I didn't realize I'd stopped until John got better. It was that effortless, that deeply rooted in my subconscious, still that familiar in spite of years of hard work.
The second thing that happened was that I did get the flu. I should say that what happened to John with the flu was unlike anything I've ever seen. That guy was SICK. Explosively, uncontrollably, every 15 minutes, SICK. It was wild. And then when I got it, I threw up two times. That was it. And I was disappointed. Which, now that I've got some space from that whole debacle, makes me feel really sad. Really, really sad. In a feverish haze I lay in bed considering my turn with the flu a bit of a missed opportunity.
I am 27 years old. I am a mother who wants NOTHING more for her daughter than for her to inhabit her body with love. I practice yoga. I work in food. I have a food blog. I love eating. I have spent years and years in therapy. And yet, when the flu comes knocking, I stop taking care of myself without realizing it and feel jealous that I didn't expel as much of my insides as my partner did.
I am 27 years old. I have eaten to numbness. I have binged and purged. I have eaten laxatives. I have starved to the point of fainting. I have pulled out clumps of my hair in the shower. I have bruised. I have bled. I have dropped out of college because I feared for my life. I have stopped getting my period. I have had my husband and brother threaten to hospitalize me. I have known how many calories I consumed in a day, a week, a month. I have avoided social situations for fear that I might be expected to eat bread. I have walked 5 miles to work to justify eating a cup of plain grits. I could go on. The list is long. I am a professional. We all are.
And I have clawed my way out.
And I claw myself out.
One day at a time. A breath. An expansion. A refusal to disappear. Hands over eyes, I part fingers. I peel them apart and make myself peer out at the world. See it. Be in it. Stop hiding.
There is an arsenal working against me. It is social and it is personal and it is unrelenting. I am stockpiling weapons, though, each day stashed aside as MINE.
I am putting cooking with my mother in my pocket. It is a reminder of how wonderfully full a life with food can feel. It is a reason to fight.
Because cooking with my mom? It's so, so nice.
Monday, March 5, 2012
Janet here:
First and foremost, I am coming off a week-long visit with Miss M and her caretakers and I am officially in mourning. Despite the fact that they all had colds, it was wonderful on every level possible and I am counting the days until we are all together again. (Anything longer than a month is too long in case anyone is wondering.)
But on to the food. Best part: Rachel and I got to cook together AND the Divine Miss M joined us. Best. Thing. Ever.
But when Max wasn't helping in the kitchen, the other best part was cooking for more than two and cooking new food. This leek and sage casserole was a killer side to a fish dish I made (stay tuned for that recipe). I've said it before but it bears saying again: I was a fool for presuming that leeks were the same as yellow onions for ALL OF MY COOKING LIFE UNTIL LAST YEAR. I was an idiot. If you like leeks even just a little bit, make this now. You won't be sorry.
Sage and Potatoes Gratin
serves 8
ingredients
2 tablespoons butter
4 leeks, cleaned and sliced
1 cloves garlic, crushed
about 2 pounds sweet potatoes, peeled and thinly sliced
about 2 pounds potatoes (I used Russet but I think you could try this with Yukon too), thinly sliced
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup chopped sage leaves
1 1/2 cups (or so) grated fontina cheese or cheddar if you prefer
salt and pepper to taste
method
Heat the oven to 400 degrees. Melt the butter in a frying pan. Add the leek and garlic, salt and pepper and cook for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Place the sweet and regular potatoes in a bowl with the olive oil and salt and pepper. Toss until well coated.
In a casserole dish (9X13 or smaller), create layers. First the potatoes. Then the leek mixture with cheese and sage. Then repeat, finishing with a cheese layer.
Cover loosely with foil. Bake for 30 minutes with the foil on. Then uncover and bake an additional 30 minutes. Serve.
Friday, March 2, 2012
Beer and Chocolate. No Joke.
Mike the Gay Beer Guy weighs in on the wonders of chocolate and, yes, beer.
So who likes chocolate? Here’s a quick desert that takes about 20 minutes to make, 10 minutes to bake, and an evening to enjoy! We make this molten lava cake a few times a month ... very little “real” baking technique is required and the results are amazing. This recipe is from Epicurious, and can be doubled or halved as needed. For tonight I only made two, even though we have 4 ramekins. Did I mention it’s quick and easy?! And of course why would I pair this with anything other a chocolate beer!
Molten Lava Cake
Serves 2 (or 4...or 8)
Ingredients
3 ¼ oz bittersweet chocolate
1 ½ tablespoons butter
Pinch (or less) of salt
2 large egg yolks
3 tablespoon sugar
1 large egg white
Method
Heat the oven to 425 degrees F and grease/flour (or maybe use cocoa powder?) your ramekins. Over a double boiler (or my makeshift stainless-bowl-over-a-small-pot-of-water) melt the chocolate, butter, and salt; there will be a noticeable texture change and that’s when you’re done. Set the bowl aside to cool for about 10 minutes.
In a new bowl, beat the egg yolks and 2 ½ tablespoons of the sugar together until smooth, about 2 minutes. Fold the cooled chocolate/butter mixture into the yolks and set aside. Using another bowl, whisk the egg white and remaining sugar until stiff, but not dry... the recipe from epicurious recommends using an electric beater, but for one egg, I just do it all by hand. Fold it gently into the chocolate mixture being careful not to deflate the egg white. Divide the mixture evenly into your ramekins, put them on a pan, and pop ‘em into the oven for 10 or 11 minutes.
When the cakes are done baking, let them cool for about a minute on a wire rack. Loosen the cake from the ramekin by sliding a knife around the edge and invert the cake onto a plate. Garnish with whipped cream and/or strawberries (seriously, I thought we had strawberries in the fridge... I’m kind of upset they weren’t there).
Bière au Chocolat
Our local big brewery, the Boulevard Brewing Company, just released a batch of its Chocolate Ale here in Kansas City. The beer attracted so much attention that my friends and I couldn’t even find a bar that wasn’t sold out by the time we got there, let alone buy a bottle or two to drink at home! So Dr E, my microbiologist friend, asked me to make a version... the end result is nothing like Boulevard’s, but it’s certainly something I’m happy with. The recipe is based on my Brown Porter recipe, but without the Brown malt and of course with chocolate. By the way, I told Dr E I would come up with the recipe but that HE would have to be the brewer... this is his first beer, with my assistance of course! Cheers!
OG: 1.060
FG: 1.018
IBU: 29
SBV: 5.5%
Ingredients
10 lbs 2-Row Malt
2 lbs Red Wheat Malt
1 lb Crystal 40
1 lb unsweetened baking cocoa powder
½ lb chocolate malt
½ lb biscuit malt
½ victory malt
1 ½ oz East Kent Golding Hops at 5% AA for 60 minutes
½ oz East Kent Golding Hops at 5% AA for 30 minutes
WLP 005 British Ale Yeast (or any English yeast will do!)
Method
Mash grains at 155*F for 60 minutes or so. Sparge as usual. Boil your wort adding the hops at the times indicated; add the cocoa powder during the last 2 minutes or so to sanitize. Ferment (chocolate sludge and all!) at the lower end of the spectrum to provide minimal esters, but still retaining the English character... I went with 65*F. I think this beer works best with minimal carbonation; just the slightest hint of bubbles is my preference... think about 1 to 1 ½ volumes of CO2.
Cheers!
- Mike TGBG
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