Cooking Through Grief and Worry and Frustration and ...

Last week was not easy. I went to the memorial service of a man who was like a second father to me — my childhood best friend's father. While he lived a wonderful full life, dying only three weeks after he was out dancing with his wife of 63 years and at the age of 87, it's still, as everyone knows who has suffered this kind of loss, gut wrenching.

Last week is also when our granddaughter was diagnosed with MRSA. MRSA, if you don't know, is a fairly — no very — scary antibiotic-resistant form of staph. Of course Rachel and John have pulled out all the stops. (You can read about it in Rachel's blog.) But they're 3,000 miles away and I can't do a damn thing to help other than read things about MRSA online (I would not recommend this as a plan by the way) and try very hard not to freak out.

So in between just feeling sad and hyperventilating, I did one of the things I do when I'm trying to work through emotions. I cooked.

I made mookies (recipe here)


And roasted vegetable soup


And a quiche


and banana chocolate chip oatmeal cookies


(Oh and I also put a coat of paint on a display case I'm redoing and knit. So yea, I was a little manic.)

The cooking made me feel a little better, though. As I diced and mixed and stirred and spiced, I felt as if things were normal. I was making good food for someone I love, food that would nurture him literally and emotionally, and for at least those moments life's uncontrollable moments were held at bay. It may not be for long, but I'll take it.

Banana Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies

ingredients
1 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 cup (! 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
1/2 cup mashed ripe banana
1 cup rolled oats
8 ounces semisweet chocolate chips
1/2 cups chopped walnuts

method
Heat oven to 375 degrees.
Mix together the butter and sugars in a large bowl and beat until light and creamy. Add the egg and vanilla and mix until combined. Mix in the banana. Add the flour, salt and baking soda and mix until just combined. Add the oats, chocolate chips and walnuts.

Place on a baking sheet. Bake 12-13 minutes until golden brown. Cool on wire racks.

Healthy + Delicious Muffins. For Real.

Rachel here.

We've got a finicky eater on our hand. By finicky I mean that someone in this household who is only about yay high has issued a moratorium on trying new things. And by new things I include hot chocolate. No matter the deliciousness, Miss M simply refuses to let anything new cross her lips. Thank god we'd gotten a few super nutrients over the threshold before the embargo settled in. The fact that she will eat interesting and strongly flavored foods (such as garlic and ginger), though, makes her refusal to continue adventuring all the more frustrating. John and I both offer her things to try with confidence that she'll like them, only to find our spoons butting against her cheek instead of her open mouth.

We're getting pretty good, though, at tricking her into eating things without knowing it. We put silken tofu in yogurt and oatmeal; John minces vegetables and adds them to pasta sauce. And the other day I whipped up some muffins that are brimming with carrots and unsweetened coconut, flax and organic whole wheat flour. Evidently, putting things in muffin form moves them into the acceptable category for Miss M. Just don't put a carrot on her plate.

Anyway, these muffins were surprisingly tasty. I used demarara sugar which is one of the least-sweet sugars around. I used just enough to cut the tang of the wheat flour and the muffins are just ever-so-slightly sweetened. These are hearty little lumps, excellent with a smear of cream cheese on top. Though generated for M, we've all been eating them.

I adapted this recipe from this old hippy tome.


According to my marginalia, I've made these muffins before in a different variation (I used apples and agave and such in that endeavor). I always mark my differences, and pretty soon my marginalia is going to crowd out the original recipe. Maybe next time I should try them the way the cookbook suggests...




Oh, you mis-measured the milk? And just poured it in anyway? And now your batter's too runny? Yeah, I did that, too. I just added handfuls of flax meal until things returned to a nice, gooey consistency again. And then I patted myself on the back for upping the health ante.


Voila! Don't these suckers look extra healthy next to the heaping basket of produce our sweet hippy neighbors dropped off?


They hold up all right on their own, though, too. I think perhaps part of tricking a saucy toddler into eating healthy muffins is putting them in cute polka dotted wrappers.


It's hard to wait for muffins to cool, but somebody's gotta do it.

Chocolate Chip Cookies with a Twist

Regular readers know I (Janet) am fairly cookie-obsessed. I love to bake them and I love to eat them. This past weekend it was snowing here in the Northeast, a time when I always feel particularly cozy baking up a storm.

There was just one little problem: I'm in the middle of my annual purification cleanse, which basically means taking a bunch of supplements, drinking a lot of water, and eating mostly fruits and vegetables. Notably not on the list are cookies.

But I really wanted to bake. The question was would I be able to refrain from eating one of these little numbers warm from the oven or perhaps sneaking an errant chocolate chip or two from the batter?

Welllllll, no. I did eat one cookie, and it was damn good. I'm pretty sure my detoxifying liver and kidney will recover.

As for the recipe, it's a good one. I added a little twist that I heartily recommend: cinnamon. Seriously. Give it whirl and let us know what you think.

Cinnamon Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Cookies
about 3 dozen

ingredients
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup smooth or chunky peanut butter (I used a little of each)
1 cup packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
2/3 cup roasted, salted peanuts, coarsely chopped
2 teaspoons vanilla

method
Put the butter and peanut butter in a bowl and mix until smooth. (If you're using an electric mixer that would be about 2 minutes.) Add the sugars and mix some more. Mix in the eggs. Add the flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon and mix until just combined. Fold in the chocolate chips, peanuts and vanilla and mix well. Refrigerate for about 15 minutes.

Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Roll the dough into small balls and place on a baking sheet. Flatten slightly with your hand or a fork. Bake until golden, about 13 minutes. Transfer to a rack to cool.

A Mess 'o Magazine (Pages)

Janet here: Sooooo last year I posted about my magazine, um, problem. The picture probably tells the story but if you want to hear all the messy details, you can read it here.

At the time, my very clever solution was to simply tear the pages out of the magazines, thus eliminating the ever-growing stack. (You can probably tell where this is going.) But now, I have a mess of — yup — pages, including recipes I've printed from things I've read online. It's not pretty.

Clearly this strategy isn't working, especially since on top of it all I have hardly cooked a single thing from this pile. Pathetic I know.

But I've been thinking a bit about why we do this. For me I think it's all part of my lifetime quest to create the family I wished I'd had as a child. Don't get me wrong: plenty of things about my childhood were perfectly wonderful. I grew up in a middle class neighborhood and never really wanted for anything; my family was intact and many of my memories are happy ones. But there was, as there is in every family, a dark side, and in my particular case that dark side involved alcohol and all the many messy, confusing (to a child particularly), scary things that disease invokes.

And at a certain point — I think I was in 9th grade — I vowed my family would be different. I can picture the moment quite clearly. I was in my room and I looked up at the sky, hand clenched, and vowed, not unlike Scarlett in that seminal scene in Gone with the Wind, that my family, the one I created with my future husband, would be different.

I've been working at that mission ever since we had children. And food — making food from scratch, trying to ensure that everyone liked the food, literally keeping my family well fed — has played a major part. So as I flip through magazines or scroll through food blogs and recipes, this desire to feed people well is always in the back of my mind. It's about showing my love and, of course, looking for love in return.

So I rip, thinking G and S might like this one or maybe I can make that one for Rachel and her family or perhaps this one would be great when we have some of our friends over for dinner. I rip, thinking, hoping, that this next meal will add just another knot in the quilt of my life I've been sewing since I was 14. The more knots, apparently, the stronger I think it will be.

Still, something in this method has to change. So here's my (kind of) New Year resolution about this. I am going to cook something from this pile at least three times a month. (I originally was going to say once a week, but that would fail oh probably around week two, at which point I might give up on the whole thing and I'd be back to just a growing mountain of magazine pages.) Anyway, once I make the recipe, I will decide if it's a keeper or a tosser. The keepers will go in a notebook for posterity. And some day, as my children clear out what's left, they'll be able to know that these particular recipes were some of the ones that made the cut.

In the meantime, if anyone has any brilliant ideas about how they deal with their ripped-out recipes — I know I'm not the only person who does this — please share them! You'll be doing us all a favor.

Stop Censorship

STOP INTERNET CENSORSHIP

Rachel here.

So, this Wednesday we will be silent. Our silence will speak volumes, though, about our vehement opposition to the internet censorship bill (PIPA in the Senate and SOPA in the House...such innocuous sounding nicknames for policy with such terrifying implications). We will be standing in quiet solidarity with websites around the country in protest of this insidious attack on freedom of expression. As writers, as women, and as mothers we refuse to be passive in the face of such violent assault on our voices.

Here is a little video to clue you in in case you're not entirely sure what the big deal is:

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

A year ago, during the Arab Spring, the United States government was outspoken about their dismay at various Middle Eastern governments' censorship of their citizens. Today, on the heels of a growing grassroots movement against the United States government, we find ourselves faced with a government that seeks to enact the very sort of policy they tsk-tsked a year ago. The rhetoric around PIPA and SOPA fronts as a sort of "defense of the entertainment industry" schtick. We know, though, that it is only the latest policy move towards privileging corporations over people, advancing an agenda of grotesque profits and power for a tiny few on the backs of the vast rest of us.

Here is one small example of both the absurdity and the stakes of SOPA/PIPA passing. My niece likes to record herself singing on her computer and then upload her little ditties onto Facebook for her friends and family to hear. She's got a set of pipes, she does, and chutzpa to boot. Her latest offerings have been from Jason Mraz and Adele. And you know what? Though she's adorable beyond description and sings her heart out, I feel confident that no one--NO ONE--has opted not to purchase Adele or Jason Mraz's music because my sweet niece's version hit the spot. She's eleven, after all, and nobody masters her tracks. The idea that Facebook, or Youtube, or even SHE would be sued over this someday makes my blood curdle. Because you know what? What is lost in a world where an eleven year old girl can't sing her heart out in her bedroom and share it with her friends over the internet is more than just the sharing of the song. We lose the sharing of feelings, we lose grasp of a way to connect, to find access to ourselves through words we sometimes can't think of on our own and we lose a vehicle for sharing this part of self or moment of feeling with other people. In a society where we are trained at every turn to self-censor--to wear only the right clothes, to offer appropriate feelings, to desire only certain bodies--the idea that we would further strip away freedom of expression--and on a policy level, no less!--is appalling.

You've read Fahrenheit 459, right? Let's stand up before freedom of expression is just a pile of ash.

Here are links to a few websites. Some have links for emailing your local representatives, others have informative breakdowns of the operations of PIPA/SOPA. If you know of any others, please share them in the comments section below.

http://censorshipinamerica.com/
http://americancensorship.org/
http://front.moveon.org/

A New Tuna Casserole

Janet here: I know tuna cassroles are staples in many households and a go-to meal for a busy weeknight but I don't think I made one while my kids lived at home. The reason is simple: the word tuna.

I made a mistake as a parent I would suggest anyone reading this with young kids avoid: for a while — and waaaaayyy longer than I should have — I made separate meals for certain kids who did not like (maybe even refused to put one bite in his mouth) of the general dinner. On a given night that could mean I made four dinners. I know, I know, I know! This is CRAZY and goes against every parenting book out there. I took the path of least resistance, what can I tell you? (And I know I'm not the only one out there.)

Anyway one night, as I surveyed what was going on at the dinner table, I suddenly woke up from this nightmare and said to myself, This is going to stop. Right. Now.

The break was not happily met but as I've mentioned at various other junctures in our children's lives, this perceived grievance (not being able to have a friend over on a school night, not being their personal short order cook, not buying the latest gadget EVERYONE BUT THEM had, are all found in the latest edition of the Parents' Torture Book, which every parent receives at the hospital upon the birth of their child and they can look forward to getting their own copy one day. I also at various points may have said something like, "Well now you have something to talk to your therapist about.")

Anyway, the point is I never went down the tuna road. Since I was making one meal I did try to come up with something that would please the lowest common denominator. I probably batted 50-50 there. Thank God for cereal and peanut butter and jelly. This particular child is now a strapping 6 feet tall.

But if your family is more adventurous or if you've just got a hankering for tuna casserole yourself, this version is a little like warmed salad nicoise. And who wouldn't like that?

Mediterranean Tuna Casserole
inspired by Not Your Mother's Casseroles

ingredients
10 ounces wide egg noodles
olive oil
1 pound red potatoes, sliced
1/3 cup unsalted butter
1/4 cup flour
2 cups milk
salt and pepper to taste
4 6-ounce cans tuna, drained
1 14-ounce can artichoke hearts, drained and cut into pieces
3/4 cup capers, drained
1/2 cup sliced black olives
a few hearty shakes of dried parsley
3/4 cups shredded Parmesan

method
Heat the oven to 400 degrees. Grease a 9X13 baking pan. Boil a pot of salted water and cook the noodles until al dente. Drain and place in a large bowl. Toss in a little olive oil so they don't clump.

Bring water to a boil again and add potatoes.Blanch for four minutes, drain and return to the pot.

While the noodles and potatoes are cooking, melt the butter in a saucepan. Add the flour and stir for about five minutes. Then whisk in the milk. Cook for about five minutes, stirring regularly until it thickens. Add salt and pepper to taste. '

Mix the egg noodles and potatoes in the pot. Pour sauce over them. Add the tuna, artichoke hearts, capers, olives, scallions,parsley and Parmesan. Salt to taste. Mix it up and place in baking pan. Add a little more Parmesan. Bake, uncovered, for about 25 minutes