The Vitamix box is now a mask. But a mask of whose face? The first person to answer correctly in the comments wins a copy of Smoke and Pickles. |
LAST WEDNESDAY I made the yellow squash soup with pickled strawberries from Smoke and Pickles and a prettier soup you’ve never seen. Just look at it. Sadly, it's a cold soup and I don't love cold soup. I thought maybe I'd changed, but no. I heated the leftovers for lunch the next day and in my view hot is the way to go with this and all soups except gazpacho. Pickled strawberries sound daunting but are just sliced berries tossed with salt and sugar and allowed to sit for an hour. The recipe for the soup and strawberries is here.
THURSDAY Made fudgy, soil-black brownies from Melissa Clark’s In the Kitchen with a Good Appetite. The batter calls for both unsweetened chocolate and cocoa powder, then you sprinkle sea salt on top of the brownies before putting the pan in the oven. (The recipe also calls for cayenne, which I omitted.) Mark and Isabel declared these brownies the best I've made. I liked them, but The Essential New York Times brownie remains my #1. You can decide for yourselves. Clark recipe is here.
FRIDAY In Smoke and Pickles Edward Lee offers a handful of recipes for what he calls "rice bowls:" individual bowls of hot, crusty rice onto which you pile a variety of other ingredients and then mix into the rice with a spoon. It's a dish that appears sloppy and effortless, like something a young drunk guy throws together when he comes home starving at midnight and then shovels into his mouth while standing at the counter of his crappy apartment in Ballard or Oakland or Brooklyn.
Well, it's not like that at all. No drunk person could assemble an Edward Lee rice bowl except maybe Edward Lee. Friday night I made Lee's rice bowl with beef and this “simple but satisfying rice bowl” contains 43 ingredients including homemade remoulade, freshly shucked corn, cooked collard greens, marinated flat iron steak, and fried eggs. It’s a little deflating to go to the trouble of gathering/making all these components and then see everything dumped into a little bowl and mixed up. But I got over it real quick. The steak was tender and full of flavor, the collards rib-sticking and almost meaty themselves, and the crunchy-creamy-salty corn remoulade tied it all together. The recipe is here and you should make it before the last of the summer corn disappears. This is a stupendous dish.
Well, it's not like that at all. No drunk person could assemble an Edward Lee rice bowl except maybe Edward Lee. Friday night I made Lee's rice bowl with beef and this “simple but satisfying rice bowl” contains 43 ingredients including homemade remoulade, freshly shucked corn, cooked collard greens, marinated flat iron steak, and fried eggs. It’s a little deflating to go to the trouble of gathering/making all these components and then see everything dumped into a little bowl and mixed up. But I got over it real quick. The steak was tender and full of flavor, the collards rib-sticking and almost meaty themselves, and the crunchy-creamy-salty corn remoulade tied it all together. The recipe is here and you should make it before the last of the summer corn disappears. This is a stupendous dish.
My family, of course, is not a family of eaters. Isabel didn't eat the collard greens or egg. Mark didn't eat the collards. Owen wouldn't eat the collards, remoulade, or rice (which he complained was "mushy") and because he was in a lousy mood he also informed me that despite all evidence to the contrary, he hates brownies and why would anyone put salt on a brownie?
Eighth grade is a hard year.
SATURDAY I decided to help Owen clean his room, which hasn't been vacuumed in 6 months. The floor was covered with Legos, Optimus Prime figurines, Joker drawings, clown wigs, school papers, and dirty jeans in layers so thick and ancient that you couldn't even see the the floor much less vacuum it. In the course of our cleaning, he yelled at me. I yelled at him. Mark came up and gazed at us both reproachfully and asked if we couldn’t do this without yelling. I wanted to throw Decepticon at him. After several hours, the room was 67% of the way toward vacuumability and Owen went to a birthday party.
I decided to sign up for a 10-day free meditation program.
SUNDAY Owen woke up with puffy eyes. Apparently we'd stirred up a hive of dust mites during our cleaning, but I decided this should be a day of rest. I went to see Short Term 12 which is wonderful. Did day #2 of the meditation program and felt calm for about 3 minutes afterwards. No cooking.
TUESDAY Owen woke up with puffy eyes again and had to take a Benadryl before leaving for school. He begged to stay home because he thought he looked "freaky," but I said no because he didn't look freaky. We argued. He slunk off to school. We're not getting along, but we'll always have Cuzco. I decided I’d finish cleaning his room myself and get it vacuumed. I scooped up fistfuls of Legos and dirty Kleenexes, petrified gray socks, stuffed animals, a grotesque horseshoe crab shell, crayons, unwanted Harry Potter books, Archie comics and a broken picture frame on which I cut my hand. Once finished with his room, I booked a business trip, made a dental appointment, answered a query letter from the IRS, bought batteries and a canister of Comet, paid the auto insurance, ordered a cover for the Weber kettle grill, and sorted laundry. I did meditation session #4 and took a moment, as directed, to “notice my mood." Mood: foul.
But it improved. Since we had leftover remoulade, I made Lee's rice bowls with salmon for dinner. Holy smokes, this is an amazing dish. Even better than the rice bowl with beef. Marinated salmon, shiitake mushrooms, proscuitto, remoulade, slivered dried mango. Big hit with all. I can't find the recipe online, so you'll need to track down a copy of Smoke and Pickles. Library, bookstore, or start trying to identify that mask.
But it improved. Since we had leftover remoulade, I made Lee's rice bowls with salmon for dinner. Holy smokes, this is an amazing dish. Even better than the rice bowl with beef. Marinated salmon, shiitake mushrooms, proscuitto, remoulade, slivered dried mango. Big hit with all. I can't find the recipe online, so you'll need to track down a copy of Smoke and Pickles. Library, bookstore, or start trying to identify that mask.
All I can say is that the mask looks exactly like my boys' Lego guys. Maybe a pirate? I cannot get more specific than that. Clare
ReplyDeleteThat's what I would have said until I asked.
DeleteJohn Gore (not Reese)!
ReplyDeleteOk, you win. I wondered if anyone would win! My email is tipsybaker@gmail.com and I will arrange for delivery.
DeleteI was going to say a lego (not so mini) mini fig head.
ReplyDeleteAs I said, that would have been my guess.
DeleteRambo? I'm probably too old to guess correctly. Wait, was the answer given away in the file name? I have no idea who or what John Gore is.
ReplyDeleteBenadryl turns me into a zombie, but it is effective.
Oh no! Did I give it away with the photo file name? Who's too old to be doing this! Me.
DeleteWhere can you see the photo file name? I'm going to assume Telepsychic didn't cheat.
DeleteIn Chrome, if you right-click over the image, you can either view the image directly (seeing the file name in your browser), or you can copy the image URL. (Or, for a third way, inspect the element, although that means you have to pick through all of the HTML.)
DeleteGood to know. This image came off of Owen's Facebook.
DeleteI made the NY Times brownies last week for my mechanics, they were amazing. Thumbs up from the family except for my son who said they were too fudgy. In my mind, that is the definition of a good brownie! Is it a Mine Craft character? Yes,I asked my kids for help.
ReplyDeleteThat is totally Chuck Norris. :)
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure it is pirate Lego man. Stay on top of Owen with the whole cleanliness thing...Maddy's roommates are the classic man-child who are fine living in filth...You don't want Owen to turn out like that. I am glad you like Smoke and Pickles! I still have that ginger whiskey cake on my to do list.
ReplyDeleteThat cake is on my list too. We should coordinate.
DeleteI worry about his future wife.
I think your son needs to become a FlyBoy with www.flylady.net - he. Ay be too old for the House Fairy, but for those of us not "born organized" she is awesome. Best, Ida P.S. Not a spam ad; she is free. "FLY" means "finally loving yourself", she helps you stop living in CHAOS ("Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome"), and she taught me to conquer Mount Washmore.
ReplyDeleteI have in the past shined my sink. And when the house feels out of control, that's one of the first things I do.
DeleteIt's a Lego man, but which one?
ReplyDeleteSmoke and Pickles is such a restaurant book. Forty ingredients in every dish. It's easy to make in a professional kitchen where you make a big batch of remoulade twice a week, all the corn is shucked and the green onions sliced for you by a prep cook, there's a sheet pan of cooked rice in the walk in, and the night staff already marinated the meat for you. We do bowls like that at Forage.
ReplyDeleteI know. It's such a restaurant book, but unlike French Laundry cookbook it looks so casual and thrown-together. Some of the dishes are manageable. I think the rice bowl with beef might be the hardest.
DeleteLego Frankenstein?
ReplyDeleteI've been meditating for the better part of a year now... most days of the week. The calm doesn't always last very long after it's over, but there is value to it. I *WISH* the way it worked was that I meditate for 10 minutes, then I'm blissed for the rest of the day, but sadly, it doesn't. DAMN IT! But I have noticed that I can recognize my emotions, give them a name, and feel them, without getting stuck in them like I used to. The churning on a feeling is gone. They tend to come in waves now, instead of... I don't know... sitting in a tepid hot tub of sad or angry. There's a mental image for you.
ReplyDeleteThat's a great image, actually. And I know what you're talking about on a very small scale after just a few days. It's also getting easier.
DeleteI have no idea who John Gore is. I don't think I will ever make a rice bowl with 43 ingredients. I love your blog and writing. Keep up the good work.
ReplyDeleteI'll probably never make another rice bowl with 43 ingredients, however great it was. Thank you for your kind words.
DeleteYou've sold me on Smoke and Pickles. I love rice bowls and can't get them where I live. By the way, do you know that not only is your blog the only one I regularly check, it is the only blog that has reader's comments that I like to read? And you even respond to reader's comments. I think I may have found by blogosphere community. Maybe I'll even stop being anonymous.
ReplyDeleteReveal yourself!
DeleteI know I will never make anything that requires 43 ingredients. That's why there are restaurants. However, I enjoy hearing about how it goes when you do it. And I love that you seem to have no self-imposed barriers on your to-do list. I aspire to be more like you. So keep posting, I love reading about your adventures.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Beckster.
DeleteYou're back! I missed your posts last week. I just wanted to let you know how much I enjoy your blog. It regularly makes me laugh out loud (or LOL, as the kids say these days), which unfortunately has become a rarer event as I get older. When I find something that is funny enough to make me actually laugh audibly, I know it is a true gem. Your descriptions of things are dry, witty, and always spot-on. Your description of how one might imagine rice bowls, for example, is both hilarious and totally accurate. You have a way with words and humor that I envy. Keep it up!
ReplyDeleteThank you!
DeleteThanks for all your honesty. I agree with Maggie that laughing aloud becomes a rare commodity as we get older. I miss you between posts. I'm visiting Paris, where food rules. Any favorites here you recommend that are affordable (besides croissants, crepes, baguettes)??
ReplyDeleteMaybe if Owen were to watch a few of those Hoarders shows he'd change his ways. "Stop now before you get as bad as this!" Or perhaps if he viewed some images of dust mites. I commend you for your fortitude in executing a 43-ingredient recipe. I'm glad it was worth the effort. It would have been tragic if it were not. I have no idea who John Gore is.
ReplyDeleteI started to write that I really enjoy it when you write this kind of post, but I really enjoy all your posts. I love reading about the ambitious cooking. 43 ingredients? For a rice bowl? you're a better woman than I. Like yours, my family wouldn't eat that, but unlike you, I just give up before starting and make: plain rice, plain sauteed beef, and some vegetable (plain! after the "WHY DOES MY BROCCOLI HAVE SOME AWFUL SAUCE ON IT" debacle of 2011) that will probably be ignored anyway. I eat this while thinking that in 10 years I'll get to make whatever I like for myself, and while repressing the thought that whenever I cook for myself I default to something really lazy like salad and a piece of cheese.
ReplyDeleteSigh.
Tl;dr version: thank you for letting me live/eat vicariously through your blog.
I'm with you on the NY Times brownies - much better than the Clark recipe.
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