I'm losing faith

Mixt Salads recipe #3: Heaven

Heaven: a frisee aux lardons salad plus chanterelles. Has everyone eaten the classic frisee aux lardons? If not, briefly, it's frisee lettuce tossed with small chunks of bacon, optional croutons, a vinegary dressing, and a poached egg. The yolk breaks and melds with the tart dressing to coat the bread cubes, salty bacon and crispy pale green frisee, which somehow manages to keep this salad lively and refreshing. It's an incredible treat, a perfect dish.

Does this exquisitely calibrated salad really cry out of chanterelles ? It does not. Is it in fact diminished by chanterelles? I would say, sadly, yes.

I was very excited about Heaven, because I love frisee aux lardons and I love chanterelles. Chanterelles are wonderful sauteed and then mixed with cream, because they're soft and slippery and sweet and love to be coddled. They were not meant to be tossed in an assertive salad where everything has to hold its own. Every element of the frisee aux lardons supplies some absolutely necessary component -- salt, fat, crunch, acidity -- and there's just no role for a tender, mild-mannered mushroom. The pieces of mushroom clung limply to the frisee and got in the way. What a waste of an $8 bag of chanterelles.

I don't like saying punk things about a book day after day, and I'm sure if the authors knew about it, they wouldn't like it either. I feel like maybe I should abort if the next couple of recipes don't turn out great.

Because I doubted Isabel and Owen would like the salad, I also served tempeh burgers from my old friend Gourmet Today. Practically every non-meat product in the kitchen-- seed, spice, grain, tempeh, canned chile, dried tomatoes, fresh vegetables, herbs -- went into this dish and each seemed to require toasting, grinding, simmering, soaking, chopping, chilling, or shredding. I'd forgotten how much work vegetarian cooking requires.

But the results were very tasty, if not as chewy and dense as we would have liked.

Does anyone have a veggie burger recipe they love and can recommend?

Gourmet Today: earnest summation

If you have it, keep it. If you don't, it's nothing you can't live without. That's my assessment of the fat and shiny new book from the producers of the late magazine. I wish I loved this book, but unlike the mighty 2004 Gourmet cookbook, it felt like brand extension. I heard Ruth Reichl on Forum a while back trying to explain -- and she is very persuasive -- that the book embraces all the nifty new ingredients available in our supermarkets, things like pomegranate molasses and smoked paprika and while that sounded terrific, as an organizing principle, it simply doesn't work. Or she and her crew don't make it work. This isn't an everyday cookbook like Joy, because it won't tell you how to make chocolate chip cookies, but then it includes basic, soporific recipes for pancake and custard, which struck me as lazy filler. And a lot of the supposedly kicky new dishes aren't all that kicky, they just require a bottle of spendy pomegranate liqueur, or that you send away for a sack of Canadian maple sugar. Most of the recipes were solid, few inspired.

I made 46 recipes from Gourmet Today.

Worth the Price of the book -- 0

Great: 9

Good: 23

So-so: 11

Flat-out bad: 3

What did we love? We loved the mussels ravigote and the sun-dried tomato dip and the pot roast and I'd make all of them again, but they're not worth the price of the book. There's probably a recipe that is -- I never made the pork belly buns and just typing those succulent words makes my mouth water -- but time to move on to Moro. 

Shelf essential: no. 

Thanksgiving

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. We certainly did. I'm truly grateful to have such a lovely family, both the one I was born into and the one I married into.

But this is a food blog, not a Hallmark card. Here's what we ate:

ajwain cashews 

Parsi cheese crisps

avocado crostini

dried apricots with goat cheese and pistachios

maple sour cocktails (thank-you, Justine and Michael)

----

deep-fried turkeys

fresh cranberry relish

candied sweet potatoes

mashed potatoes

red rice

brussels sprouts with butter and garlic

cider jelly 

spinach jalapeno casserole (again, thank-you, Justine)

---

chocolate chess pie

chess pie

eggnog pie

pear pie

pumpkin caramel pie

pecan pie

 

It was a Parsi/Cajun/Laurie Colwin/Southern/Joy of Cooking/Gourmet Today feast. Isabel and I prepared everything, save several key contributions from my sister Justine. It was a lot of fun and a lot of work and yesterday we were not so peppy.

I'm going to post two recipes here because they're spectacular and I've made them enough times that I feel some ownership, though I certainly did not invent them.

#1. Paul Prudhomme's cranberry relish

From his Louisiana Kitchen, which is a stellar cookbook. This relish is fresh and tangy and so much zippier than jellied "sauce" that I'm surprised it hasn't caught on in a huge way. You can watch a video of Chef Paul demonstrating a version of this recipe right here.

In a food processor, grind together 1 lb. cranberries, 1 1/2 cups sugar, 2 tablespoons vanilla, the juice and pulp from 2/3 of a seeded lemon, the sections from 2 peeled, seeded oranges. Refrigerate for a few hours before serving. 

You'll have a boatload of relish; it's excellent on sandwiches.

#2. John Egerton's chess pie

This recipe comes from his encyclopedic Southern Food, another stellar cookbook. I first made this pie in 1996 and have baked it just about every Thanksgiving since. Flat and very sweet and pale yellow, it my all-time favorite.

 

First, make pie dough using any recipe you like and roll it out to fit in a 9-inch pan. Preheat oven to 375. Beat 3 eggs with 1 1/2 cups sugar, 3 tablespoons melted butter, 1 tablespoon white cornmeal, 1/3 cup buttermilk, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla. Mix well. Pour into the crust and bake for 15 minutes. Reduce heat to 350 and bake 20 minutes more. It should be mostly set but still slightly jiggly in the middle. It will firm as it cools.

As usual, there is none of this pie left over.

As for the turkeys, they were storebought. They were not heritage. Next year, I vow to do better.

I was going to write about frying turkeys, except we're done with frying turkeys. We fried a bunch of turkeys in the mid-1990s when it first became trendy, then lost enthusiasm. Since my father-in-law really wanted to try one, we hauled out the cooker, the giant pot and seasoning injectors, bought six gallons of peanut oil, and went through the dramatic and laborious process one last time. The turkeys were tasty and spicy and much appreciated, but it's undeniably an ordeal and henceforth, we are roasting. 

Long post about recent social events and what I cooked

We clocked some serious recipe mileage over the last few days. All dishes made from Gourmet Today.

 

Saturday

Guests: The parents of Isabel's best friend, who have become friends in their own right 

Topics discussed: the perfidy of middle-school girls, gravlax, wallpaper, Cheerful Money, football.

Made:

Pisco sours. This highly alcoholic South American cocktail is supposed to be creamy, frothy, tangy and white. As prepared using the GT recipe, this drink was all those things, but it was also lumpy. Although GT says you can use powdered egg whites instead of the real thing, you can't, or, if you can, you need more detailed instructions.

mussels on the half-shell with ravigote sauce. The first time I've ever made anything "on the half-shell" and it wasn't as hard as feared. In fact, it wasn't hard at all. You should make these for Thanksgiving; they were great and the recipe is here.

You steam the mussels, remove from shells, marinate in an oniony vinaigrette, then place them back in the shells. Everything can be done ahead. I omitted the chervil because I've never been able to find anywhere, ever. My other piece of advice would be to get the biggest mussels you can find.

wine-braised chuck. Really good pot roast.

roasted brussels sprouts with pancetta. Really good brussels sprouts

red leaf lettuce salad with citrus dressing and pine nuts. Not an especially good salad.

hazelnut gelato. I prefer Jack Bishop's recipe from Complete Italian Vegetarian.

Sunday

Guests: my mother and our cousin Ana Maria

Topics of discussion: the cuteness of chickens, the ugliness of turkeys (at least in my mother's very strong opinion), Cheerful Money, new mammogram guidelines, Thanksgiving table settings

Made:

chunky butternut squash and white bean soup. Chosen because my mother requeseted "bland, comforting" foods. It wasn't all that bland; it was delicious. I hope it was comforting. Floating on top are toasted pumpkin seeds.

pear fool. You poach pears in lemon and wine, puree them to a Gerber consistency, layer with whipped cream. See photo at top of post. Bland and comforting.

Monday

Guests: my husband's parents who are in town from Boston for Thanksgiving

Topics discussed: the appropriateness of the movie An Education for a 7th-grade girl (too late, already took her, she'll live), ginger cookies made by a long-deceased Wasp relative for which no one has a recipe, family, Cheerful Money

Made:

black bean soup with ancho chili. What it sounds like.

grilled cheese sandwiches with curried mayo and fennel. You take an already fattening food and make it more fattening by adding mayonnaise. Brilliant idea! These were fantastic. Recipe here. 

banoffee pie. Sickly sweet, sticky, and I'm wondering if it will hurt the chickens to eat the remains. Probably. I ordered this once a long, long time ago at a restaurant in Ireland and remembered it as ambrosial. Apparently my tastes have changed. Crust, dulce de leche, bananas, whipped cream. The recipe is here, if you're interested.

 

In other news, I wrote a story about my attempt to buy a Thanksgiving turkey which you can read here. 

Will start the Moro cookbook right after Thanksgiving. 

Not to change the subject or anything

But it is hard to weigh a live turkey on a bathroom scale. I did it, sort of. She weighs about 20 pounds. I didn't even try with the Narragansett tom, who is about half her weight and even more skittish. He's really skinny. For an interesting take on heritage turkeys, I recommend this blog post. 

The author of that blog owns a ranch that is featured in the beautiful and inspiring Big Sur Bakery Cookbook, which I have. Of course. Since it is well past time to move on from Gourmet Today, I've been considering starting up with this book. But there are two other strong contenders. Here's the lineup:

-The Big Sur Bakery Cookbook (California cuisine; very concerned with purveyors; lots of text; seasonally organized)

-Moro (Spanish/Northern African. Downside: I have the British edition which means converting all measurements, which I dread. But it is supposedly a brilliant book)

-A16 (Italian; challenging; recipes for squid ink pasta and pancetta)

There's a poll, if you feel like voting.

Adding pomegranate molasses and sesame oil is not a revolution

I once wrote a story about the history of Caesar salad and I don't remember any of it. Something about Tijuana? I don't remember! Who was Caesar? Don't remember! All I remember is that the salad was initially intended to be eaten with the fingers. I think.

The Gourmet Today grilled Caesar salad involves briefly searing the croutons and the romaine. I had high hopes. Preamble to recipe: "Contrasting cool and warm, crunchy and soft, this Caesar is revolutionary yet familiar."

Not really. It was okay. I felt the lettuce was a tiny bit stewed. We ate it, but I would not grill another Caesar. This whole cookbook seems to be about making tiny, dubious changes to "familiar" dishes and passing them off as "revolutionary."

 

Another example: the seltzer waffles. 

Despite the "odd" addition of seltzer water, they are just waffles. Good waffles, but just waffles.

Meanwhile, I am beside myself with delight over the wonderful breast cancer screening news. If women under 50 don't get  mammograms or do breast self exams we will never find a questionable shadow or pea-sized lump and that means. . . fewer breast cancer diagnoses! Hurray! This is change I can believe in. I bet all those women in their 30s and 40s who have battled cancer are bumming right about now, realizing they could have skipped the early diagnosis, lumpectomy, radiation, chemo, nausea, rashes, and ugly hair loss and gone straight to hospice. 

Some odds and ends

This is the best dish I've made from Gourmet Today, and it is the one for which I had the lowest expectations. Sun-dried tomato dip. Bleah, right?

I hosted this "group" -- it's not a book group, more like a chat group -- last night and wanted to make appetizers that wouldn't be fussy or difficult or involve oysters, phyllo dough, or caviar. I came up with two: chickpea crostini, which were fine, and sun-dried tomato dip, which was fantastic. It's smooth and rich, incredibly delicious and stupidly easy -- you just throw everything into a blender or Cuisineart. I served it with crackers, but the leftovers will go on sandwiches. I was going to copy the recipe into this space, but it is actually available right here. Try it!

I've been cooking steadily through Gourmet Today but for some reason have been disinclined to post. Everything is good but boring: celery tofu salad, tuna burgers, pasta with lentils and kale, etc. The pomegranate gelato, which was the recipe I most wanted make, failed. When churned, the cream turned grainy, a situation I've encountered before with fruit juice-based ice cream. 

But the devil's food cake with marshmallow icing was a hit.

Isabel made it herself, start to finish. There was some disaster with the decorative cocoa powder falling too quickly out of the sifter at the very end, followed by a futile attempt to fix the situation followed by frustration and tears. I can relate; failed cakes are very frustrating, though I would not count this one as a failure. 

 

This is our chicken run-in-progress.

Call Sunset! I think they might want to run a Western design feature.

And this is my sister's son, whose name is Ben and who is, as far as I can tell, the perfect baby.

Another day, another coffee cake

Funny, because I rarely eat coffee cake, preferring to maintain the illusion that I'm on a diet until at least noon. But in the interest of science. . .

The Gourmet Today buttermilk coffee cake beats out both Starbucks and the Todd Wilbur Starbucks clone recipe. Taller, fluffier, more substantial, prettier, though the same general rich batter/cinnamon streusel idea. All I would do to improve this cake would be to use more nuts and leave them in biggish pieces for crunch.

In other news, the turkey is tragically lonely. I would think she was sick if I hadn't seen her traipsing widely and seemingly cheerfully around her original home with her turkey companions just a few days ago. Now she just stands in one place for hours and makes hiccuping sounds if anyone approaches. I have picked her up, and she's this heavy, warm, throbbing armful of bird and I hate that she is so glum. She's barely eating, and although I've forced her beak into the water bowl, have not seen her drink. I'm sorry I didn't buy one of the other turkeys to keep her company, and have considered going back to correct my mistake, but it's a very, very long drive to French Camp and the plan was never to keep this bird for long.

If I get more turkeys, which I'd like to do in the spring, I'm going to get heritage turkeys, and start them from poults. This turkey is a painfully awkward animal -- she can't fly and can barely navigate the stairs because she's so top-heavy, so buxom. I suspect she's a broad-breasted white, the Frankenstein breed developed for factory farms. I'm sure you can have a very nice life as a clumsy, top-heavy, flightless bird -- but only if thoughtless people don't also separate you from your BFFs.

I really might have to go back and buy that other turkey. That is crazy, right? Yes. It is crazy.

We all have to have our nice hobbies

Here's Jonathan Safran Foer on urban homesteading , specifically, the value of keeping backyard chickens: "Is it a solution to anything? Not really. It might be kind of nice in a hobby way. . . People who do stuff on their own, it's more like a personal interest thing rather than a real alternative."

I don't disagree. But the decision to keep chickens is no more or less a "real alternative" to the problem of factory-farmed eggs than an individual choosing to become a vegan, the option chosen by Jonathan Safran Foer. A real alternative? I don't know. Legislation? That sounds like fun. I would never, ever argue that keeping chickens is going to save the world,  but "it might be kind of nice in a hobby way" has such a supercilious edge to it.

Foer comes out as a vegan right here, then skirts the issue throughout his new book, Eating Animals, and in most interviews. I was going to go hear him speak yesterday at Book Passage and ask him why, but Isabel was sent home sick -- coughing, feverish, dizzy, sore throat, etc. -- and I stayed in. All symptoms of the unspeakable, which the advice nurse at the pediatrician's office said it well might be. 

At top is the cup custard I made using Gourmet Today and hobby eggs. 

And these are the baked eggs in piperade, ditto.

A typical Gourmet Today performance: fine.

Gourmet Today: this marriage can't be saved

I'm feeling no passion for Gourmet Today. Last week I was happily cheating on Ruth Reichl with Todd Wilbur who is so completely sleazy he uses margarine in some of his recipes. I bought margarine, which is simply wrong and just goes to show how bored I am in my primary relationship.

Wilbur's longtime schtick is to try to "clone" brand-name recipes -- Popeye's biscuits, Pepperidge Farm cookies, McDonalds' shakes, et cetera -- and I was messing around with his latest book, Top Secret Recipes Unlocked, for a review that is presumably going to appear in another venue shortly. (After that, all details about onion rings, donuts, and more will be revealed) The project was extremely fun and funny and surprisingly delicious. 

 

The other morning, on my own time, I made Wilbur's version of Starbucks' pumpkin scones. He calls them "orange triangles of goodness," which is typical of his prose. They really were orange triangles of goodness -- soft, sufficiently pumpkiny (rare), like a muffin married to a scone. We didn't bother cross-tasting them with the store product as I have recently sampled enough Starbucks baked goods to know that they are all substandard and overpriced. These were like the Platonic ideal of a Starbucks scone. 

 

As for Gourmet Today. Sigh. I keep fishing out the recipes with the lowest "active time" which is a bad sign. To wit, the other last night: hoisin turkey cutlets (active time: 15 minutes), panfried Romaine (active time: 20 minutes) chocolate sorbet (active time: 15  minutes.)  

Writing about this drab weeknight convenience food feels like a sad joke. Plus, just look at it. 

The turkey was fine.

The sorbet  was fine.

The panfried Romaine was better than fine. You buy packaged hearts of Romaine , cut them in half lengthwise, wash well and dry. Heat olive oil, put the Romaine hearts face down, salt, sear for a minute, flip, cover, cook for two minutes more. I loved this and will make it again.

The next night I made a Gascon white bean soup (active time: 30 minutes) that was fine, and baked apples with candied walnuts, (active time: 15 minutes) also fine. 

It's all fine. But this whole book feels like fine leftovers someone has turned into a casserole by topping with a little cheese and reheating.

 

Gourmet Today: roasted pears and candied celery

Right before we went to Boston last week, we had party with my uncle Luis, his wife Ana Maria, and my grandmother. The only dish I made that didn't come from Gourmet Today was the guacamole (excellent Rick Bayless version with tomatillos) and the guests -- all natives of Guatemala -- informed me that this chunky Mexican guacamole lacked the suave, elegant texture of Guatemalan guacamole, which is essentially pureed and, of course, far superior. Having stated their case, they basically scraped the bowl clean of the barbaric Mexican guacamole and my grandmother took the dish to her place at the table and used the last bits as a relish for the rest of the meal.

 I served straciatella, a chicken soup with spinach and egg that was fine, and an eggplant souffle, that was also fine but didn't rise one centimeter, so I called it a frittata. I forced myself not to apologize.

 

 For dessert, we had roasted pears with candied celery because I wanted to taste candied celery.

To make this, you halve and core Bosc pears and lay them in a bed of sliced celery and pour over everything a lemony, sugary syrup spiked with expensive dessert wine. 

I used the cheapest dessert wine I could find (Moscato) and it cost $15 for a half bottle, which gave me pain.

 You roast the pears until tender, remove them from the oven and place them in a serving dish while you boil down the syrup and celery. When the celery is shiny, sticky, and almost jammy, you take it off the heat, pour it over the pears, and serve.

Like the rest of the meal it was fine; the celery tasted only vaguely of celery, mostly it was just achingly sweet. We enjoyed this novelty dish, but I'd never make it again and I'm worried that a lot of Gourmet Today recipes are going to fall into this category.

 

There's more to this story. Many months ago, I stated steeping vanilla using inexpensive beans I bought in bulk on amazon. Since I couldn't decide what liquor to use, I made three batches: one with dark rum, one with golden rum, one with vodka. I cut the beans into pieces, stuffed them into three jars, and added the booze. Then I let them sit and sit and sit.

To embellish the pears, I decided I would make custard sauce and divide it into four portions and flavor each with a different vanilla, including a supermarket vanilla. Then we would taste them all, discuss, and declare a winner.

 

I wish I could say there was a dramatic finale to the vanilla experiment, but you had to really concentrate if you wanted to detect a difference between the batches of custard sauce. There was a weak preference for the homemade vanilla made with light rum and I would say the dark rum was the loser. The supermarket vanilla was definitely the mildest, but I'm not sure that was a bad thing; it didn't overshadow the bright flavors of the milk and egg. 

Really, though, the differences were so subtle it was hard to make a case for any of these vanillas. I haven't priced it out, but on flavor alone, homemade vanilla -- at least as made by me -- is no better than McCormick's. 

******

A scene from our home a few minutes ago:

Owen: Mom! Dad!

Tipsy: Yes?

Owen: I asked the Magic 8 ball if any more of our chickens are going to die and he said, "My sources say no!"

Tipsy (heart sinking): That's wonderful.

Husband: Ask the Magic 8 ball if I am the handsomest dad in Tam Valley. 

Owen: Aaahh! He says "Don't count on it." Wait, let me try again.

I find nine to be a very sweet age.

Make it or Buy it: hot dog buns

Blog evidence to the contrary, it is not my dream to churn butter, render lard, bake crumpets, and pickle watermelon rinds from dawn to dusk. If I actually had to make all my food from scratch, I would never get to read a book, earn a paycheck, play the piano, sit around watching The Office with my kids or Dahmer all by myself (Last night. Stupendous, though you should lock your doors before inserting the disc and prepare for troubled sleep.) There's a lot to be said for the convenience of buying your mustard and ketchup and bread and cheese.

But the more I cook, the more depressed I get, because it becomes more and more obvious that what we have gained in freedom we have lost in tastiness. No one else is surprised by this, so I don't know why I am. But I am. It never fails to shock me how easy it is to wildly outperform the big food companies. 

It seemed a little ridiculous to make hot dog buns, but we had an open package of franks and no buns, so I decided to try. I used the recipe from page 232 of the King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion and I'm going to print it here, slightly  "adapted." I hope they don't mind; I can't think of a better advertisement for this excellent book.

Hot Dog Buns

1. In a bowl mix 1 cup water, 2 tablespoons butter, 1 egg, 3 1/4 cups flour, 1/4 cup sugar, 1 teaspoon salt, and 1 tablespoon instant yeast. Knead until you have a soft, smooth dough. Scoop up the dough, grease the bowl, return the dough to the bowl, cover with a damp towel,  and let rise for 1 hour. (More is fine; I let it rise for three hours.)

2. Divide the dough into 8 pieces, shape into logs, and place on a greased cookie sheet. (Obviously, you can shape the dough into hamburger buns if you wish.) Drape with the same damp towel. Let rise for 40 minutes until "quite puffy." Mine got more than quite puffy; this is dough with Frankenstein inclinations, so err on the side of petite when you shape your buns.

3. Preheat oven to 375. Bake for 12-15 minutes until golden brown. The recipe says to cool the buns, but I would use them soon. Like, immediately.

 

I didn't think I minded storebought hot dog buns, but now I am ruined. These were ethereal, slightly sweet, chewy, and fresh. The kids and I were hushed as we ate. It was like tasting your first Cabernet after a lifetime of Thunderbird, after a lifetime when you thought there was nothing BUT Thunderbird.

The buns were delicious. They were easy (much easier than bread, easier than most cookies). They were also inexpensive. By my estimate, using bulk yeast, it cost $1.41 to execute this recipe, including oven heat. This works out to 18 cents a bun. By contrast, the rock-bottom house-brand buns at Safeway are currently 25 cents a bun. After this, a big jump: Ball Park buns: 42 cents. Columbo: 45 cents. Orowheat: 53 cents.

I would not mind paying three times as much for the convenience of packaged food if it were not so insultingly bad. You only realize just how flagrantly, needlessly crummy it is after you try making it yourself. I should probably feel empowered, but instead I feel indignant.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming: 

Gourmet Today's roasted tomato soup with Parmesan croutons was sweet and creamy and took care of the the last of the tomatoes. I wish the recipe was on Epicurious so I could link, but it's not. Two caveats:

 1. The instructions call for you to put the soup through a fine sieve after pureeing, but I didn't do this. The soup might not have been velvety enough for Joel Robuchon, but it drew no complaints from a suburban family of four. I really hate cleaning the sieve.

2. The Parmesan wafers did not melt into firm wafers, but were yummy dumped in the soup as shreds.

 

Gourmet Today: more low-hanging fruit

I have roasted a lot of chickens over the years and they were all tasty. The oven temperature, basting, brining, stuffing, slathering with herb butter -- I don't think any of it matters. What matters about roasting a chicken is that you just do it. 

I was thinking about rotisserie chickens. They're usually smaller, not organic and they're a tiny bit oily (a plus, depending on who you ask, and if you ask me, a plus). I think they're delicious, often more delicious than a chicken you roast at home. They're definitely easier and sometimes even cheaper, which is inexplicable.

Still, they're not the same, are they.  They don't pack the symbolic wallop of a whole bird crackling and spitting in a pan in your very own oven. Rotisserie is fine for picnics, but for a family dinner, you need to roast your own.

My roundabout way of saying the salt-roast chicken from Gourmet Today was very tasty, if not worth the price of the book.

  

The red wine/maple-glazed carrots I made as an accompaniment might have been more popular had I not used giant, woody carrots from the plastic bag in the crisper. They tasted overripe, oversweet, unwholesome. How could they not? They are as old as my children. I need to upgrade to the long, skinny, fresh carrots with leaves attached like we ate this weekend at a party, and which tasted like carrots, not mashed yams. 

I hope the hens, at least, enjoyed the carrots. They are definitely not enjoying this mad rainstorm, have been huddled underneath the coop all day, monitoring the weather. One of them, Angel, made it to her "secret" nest in the ivy and I found her there sitting on a warm egg at 9 a.m.. She was drenched, her usually jaunty, bright-white feathers sodden and mud-spattered and she appeared very scrawny without her fluffy plumage. I carried her back down to her compatriots, where she has remained. They must be very cold and hungry and as soon as I'm done with this post I'm going to take them some treats.

 

Storm should continue for a bit. There have been mudslide warnings, flood warnings, power outages, the constant screaming of ambulances in the distance. I stayed in all day and finished a long, annoying, exhausting novel that I had to write about, and did. The experience so drained and depressed me that instead of doing something practical I picked up a book I don't have to write about but thought I would love. And I do. That book is Strength in What Remains by Tracy Kidder and it is similar in subject matter to Dave Eggers' What is the What, but it's non-fiction and better. 

Brought in the last of the summer garden yesterday. Some of the white eggplants turned yellow, which was weird.

Tonight, we're having tomato soup, if I can ever rise from the couch.

Gourmet Today: some low-hanging fruit

Toasted coconut cookies. Brown sugary, chewy-crispy, like chocolate chip cookies without the chocolate chips. You finish one and your mouth instantly wants another, which is the best kind of cookie. 

 

Capellini with fresh tomato sauce.  It tasted exactly as you would expect, was juicy and much loved by children. Benefited from heavy dosing with Parmesan.

Two early thoughts about Gourmet Today: 

1. There's a recipe for cinnamon toast ice cream, but none for vanilla or strawberry. On the other hand, pasta with fresh tomatoes? Buttermilk pancakes? I'm not sure I understand the mix of novelty and pedestrian basics. 

2. So much booze. Dish after dish calls for a dram or two of some expensive/exotic liquor -- armagnac, framboise, pomegranate liqueur, sauternes, creme de menthe -- that I don't have and really don't want to buy.

 We are about to be pounded with our first storm of the season and I can not wait.  Whole Foods was aswarm, everyone talking excitedly about "stocking up for the storm," which was funny because it's not like you can't go to the supermarket in the rain. 

When you start feeling better again, you feel really good

A stomach virus has recently galloped through our home and turned three of the four of us into groveling, dead-eyed zombies. It always attacks at night, and picks off the calves first. You are sleeping sweetly and hear a plaintive: "Mom, my tummy feels weird." 

Soon, you will be doing lots of laundry.

When I was a child, minutes after my sister or I announced a stomachache, our mother, who otherwise forbade all soda, was in the Datsun heading to the supermarket to buy a six-pack of Coke. Never Pepsi. It had to be Coke, and you had to drink it in tiny, tiny sips from a glass filled with ice. Where did her devotion to this dubious remedy come from? Was there once a Coke-for-the-puking marketing campaign? If so, what an idiotic idea. If so, it worked!

Because I am now raising children who believe that this sugary, caffeinated soft drink is a holy elixir. I know that the secret Coca-Cola formula does not include antiviral properties, and I know that if you drink it too early in the stomach flu experience it will cause more harm than good. It cures nothing. But when I have turned the corner and am huddled, groggy and parched, in a stuffy room, the fizz of Coke being poured over ice is the sound of grace. I associate it with my mother taking care of me, but now I'm getting wiggy and sentimental so I will stop.

I bought Gourmet Today as my next book, even though I need another $40 all-purpose cookbook like I need stomach flu. But Isabel and I spent some time at Borders poring over this enormous tome and decided, on the basis of timeliness, a copious dessert section and the goat cheese and arugula ravioli, that it was an excellent choice. 

I liked brilliant Amy Bloom's eulogy for Gourmet: "There's no need to defend Gourmet against charges of elitism; Gourmet was certainly an elitist magazine, if by that we mean not any old mundane and familiar crap would do."

Michael Connelly's new novel is full of mundane and familiar crap; he's usually better than this. My review is here.