Books, books, books

Grown-up furniture in my very own house.

My childhood home is almost empty. On Thursday, all my mother's furniture came across the Golden Gate Bridge to my sister's house and mine in a truck. Finding places for serious brown antiques in houses that previously contained no serious brown antiques has been a challenge for both of us, one we take seriously. Our mother loved her things. During chemo sessions she liked to talk about who should get what and where everything should go in our houses. It made her happy and peaceful.

In addition to a lot of brown furniture, my mother had thousands and thousands of books. Books in practically every room of her house. There were strict systems for where books went. She relegated tacky-looking paperbacks to the shelves along the staircase to the basement and, of course, that was always the best place to find something you actually wanted to read. Something by Toni Morrison or Len Deighton or Herman Wouk or Judith Krantz. These were mostly books my sister or I brought home as teenagers.

Boring, handsome, old books -- noble books that her father gave her -- went in the living room. When I was a child, I remember one of my mother's friends ribbing her about the pretension of keeping pompous books you didn't read in the living room. I thought he had a point, but I also remember thinking he was being pompous in his own way. I took the boring, handsome books from my mother's living room and put them in my living room. It's not pretentious. This is just how I grew up thinking a living room should look. And it looks great.

Although. . .

What are the sources of the Japanese tradition?

Meanwhile juicy paperbacks and contemporary books are in the room where we watch TV. These are mostly books that were already in my house.

I love that The L Word  is about an inch away from The Fabrication of Farmstead Goat Cheese. I keep intending to put these books in some kind of order, but maybe I won't.

The cookbooks, of course, are absolutely in order. I could not stand to have a disorderly cookbook  collection!

When we put in this shelf eight years ago I swore I would cull before I let the cookbooks overflow.

But I didn't.

The books have overflowed to the jam shelf and a new shelf we lodged in the skinny space between the stairs and a wall and they are starting to pile up on the floor. The pile is only getting higher because 

there were about thirty cookbooks to be taken from my mother's house and I couldn't resist any of them. 

Treasure!

I finally found this, which I had been hunting for madly a few months ago. It contains the recipe for the first cheesecake I ever made when I was about twelve. I did not remember that the cheesecake contained dry milk, which sounds dismal to me now, but I swear it was the best cheesecake ever. I am going to bake it again soon.

And then there were cookbooks I wasn't looking for, but which I can't let go of.

I could never cast aside a cookbook that contains such gorgeous pictures:

See, I am helpless. Being a hoarder of cookbooks helps me empathize with people who are hoarders of everything, which, by a miracle of fate, I am not.

Happy 4th of July, everyone.

I take it all back about the Aviation

A perfect ashy-purple drink.

It's not technically an Aviation, but the Violetta at the Ashland Springs Hotel in Ashland, Oregon is very close. When I saw it on the menu I could barely contain my excitement given that, per the comments on my recent post, I clearly hadn't experienced a proper Aviation.

Right you all were. The Violetta contains Aviation gin (made in Portland), Deviation dessert wine (in place of maraschino liqueur), creme de violette, and lemon juice. The bartender drops in a tiny viola and though the color is less lavender than sooty, it's exquisitely beautiful. It is also delicious -- delicate and aromatic. The Violetta/Aviation makes a Negroni, my favorite cocktail of recent months, taste coarse and brassy. I think it's a good sign that I no longer like Manhattans (at all!) and that I may now be transitioning from Negronis to something daintier. Soon, I'll be a white wine spritzer drinker, and, after that, maybe just spritzer. A girl can dream.

All hotel lobbies should look like this.

Today we see plays. Isabel loves plays and while I do not love plays, I do love Isabel.

Even lucky boys have bad days

Gargantuan "Irish" cheesecake

Today Owen boarded a plane to Boston and he will not be back until midway through August. During the time he is gone, he will visit Ireland with his grandfather, spend time on the beach in New England with his cousins, and go to Africa with his mother. He has no idea how lucky he is.

pepperoni lasagna

Day before yesterday he and I got our shots and pills for Africa, then Owen chose his farewell meal from Guy Fieri's cookbook. He chose pepperoni lasagna and Irish cheesecake -- "because it's Irish and I'm going to Ireland!"

I could not imagine a more ridiculous meal. I kept my mouth shut.

Yesterday I cooked the meal and while I was cooking he came down with a blazing fever from the shots. He lay on the couch whimpering while the rest of us ate his lasagna and Irish cheesecake. He left this morning without tasting a morsel.

How was the lasagna? Big, rude, unwieldy. I would not make it again.

How was the cheesecake? It contained Bailey's, melted semisweet chocolate, sugar, cream, eggs, and two pounds of cream cheese. It was grotesque, absurd, and delicious. But my husband remarked, and I agree, that you can't beat a plain cheesecake with a graham cracker crust and some cherry pie filling on top. These super-sweet, chocolatey cheesecakes lack tang. Tang plus richness is what makes cheesecake great, not just richness.

An inadvertently artful shot

On another subject, this is a bean pie I made the other day using a lovely book called Southern Pies by Nancie McDermott. I wrote a story about oddball regional pies and felt I had to try baking the oddest recipe I could find. According to McDermott, the bean pie was developed in the 1930s "as part of the nutritional teachings of the Nation of Islam." To make it, you mash some navy beans and stir them up with eggs, sugar, melted butter and spices then bake the fragrant custard in a pie crust. I thought no one would touch this funky pie, but everyone in the family liked it. I think they may have liked it more than they liked the Irish cheesecake.

It does a body good

Where to put the chaise lounge?

My husband built a milking stand and we've begun regularly milking Natalie. Some first impressions:

-Milking is enjoyable and satisfying when the goat cooperates.
-Milking is maddening and messy when the goat doesn't.
-Milking forces you to confront earthy realities about food which is currently very voguish but also, I think, basically a good thing.

While I've known that milk comes from live animals since I was 3, until a week ago I had only ever acquired it from a carton at the supermarket. It has been disorienting, therefore, to suddenly start squeezing milk from the body of a bony, noisy, inquisitive mammal who tries to eat the buttons on my shirt and never, ever, bathes. Then to take the white fluid up to the kitchen and put it in my coffee? How weird.

But, of course, it's not weird at all. What's weird is that I would ever think it was.

Deborah Solomon stopped by last night

Q: Wow. That is one gorgeous drink. What is it?

A: Isn't it lovely? It's called an Aviation and it contains gin, maraschino liqueur, lemon juice and something called creme de violette that renders it lavender. Steve Martin describes this cocktail in his novel Object of Beauty and I've been obsessed with trying it for the last week.

Q: Is it as good as it looks?

A: I don't know! Wait just a second. . . . Hmm. Okay. No. It is perfumey. I don't love this.

Q: Who cares, so festive.

A: I am sitting on the sofa beside my son who is watching Phineas and Ferb and it feels not very festive. Today I had to replace my falling-apart jeans and that required much self-scrutiny in the harshly-lit mirrors of Macy's, Sundance, and J. Crew. So, I decided to skip evening spin class, buy a bottle of creme de violette, and try a new cocktail.

Q: How's that approach to dieting and discouragement working out for you?

A: I don't think that's a nice question.

Q: Yeesh. Sensitive. Fair enough. You've been working through Food Network star Guy Fieri's new cookbook. How's that going?

A: I've been moving slowly and doubt I 'll get very far. I do like Guy, but his recipes are mostly gimmicky and only moderately delicious. The other night I made his version of beer can chicken. You heavily season the chicken, impale it on an open beer can, and pop it in the oven. The beer supposedly evaporates and keeps the bird moist, while the outside crisps up. Fieri's twist is to drape bacon over the skin.

Q: And that wasn't awesome?

A: It was fine, but I would not go so far as "awesome." Plus, I had to buy a whole 6-pack of Bud. Our supermarket doesn't sell singles.

Q: Quite a change of pace from Heidi Swanson.

A: I know. I miss Super Natural Every Day. Not a lot of vegetables in Fieri's book. I was very hopeful about the Bomb Bakers (recipe is here) but they were not a hit.

You brine the potatoes for 8 hours, roll them in oil and Lawry's seasoned salt, then roast them for an hour. I was very curious about brined potatoes, except to me they just tasted like baked potatoes with inedible, salty skin.

On the other hand, I loved Guy's pork blade steak piccata. Recipe is here.

Q: What's on the table tonight?

A: Bloody Mary flank steak. It's been marinating in V-8, vodka and a lot of other stuff for the last 24 hours.

Q: On another subject entirely, how's the little goat?

A: Wild and impish and she charges at the chickens. We're petting her lots, but pretty soon we're going to need a lasso.

Q: Are you liking the Aviation better now that you're getting to the bottom of the glass?

A: It is vile. I like it so little that, to my shock and disappointment, I'm going to stop at one.

All about bedrooms and a little about brisket

8th grader no more

"Bedroom community" strikes me as the wrong term for a suburb, at least the suburb in which I live. This feels more like a factory town where the product is children. I'm not talking about babies, which, yes, are traditionally made in bedrooms. But in fact, they're often made in urban bedrooms and eventually (some) parents bring the babies out to the suburbs for finishing. I grew up in a city. That was fun. But this seems fun, too.

June is a big month, as product starts coming off the assembly line. Day before yesterday, Owen graduated from elementary school. He and his cohort have mastered their math facts and can sing Congolese folk songs. They are of middling height and physically awkward. According to the inspirational quotes they recited, they believe in striving, friendship, and the value of being true to one's self. Admirable! At the graduation, there were a lot of dresses with "bubble skirts" like this. While the ceremony was sweet, it did not feel momentous and I went straight from the graduation to buy goat ration and fly traps.

 Goof

A few hours later, Isabel graduated from middle school. That ceremony was not sweet and it did feel momentous. There were a lot of dresses like this. At one point during the distribution of diplomas the principal called the name of a girl named Ella C. who spent the night at our house several times circa 2006. I said to my husband, "Well, they screwed up. That's not Ella." He said, "That's Ella." I squinted my feeble old eyes. I still couldn't see that this was Ella.

But later I confirmed: it was Ella.

This happened again and again and again. Everywhere wandered radiant young people I've known since they were five, almost all of them taller than me with vaguely familiar faces and very long legs. It was poignant and unsettling.

Isabel went to a graduation dance in the evening where the dresses got shorter and tighter, the heels higher. I had bad dreams all night. One involved raising a baby albino alligator that I was feeding with an eye dropper until the baby alligator ate the eye dropper and swam away. In another dream, I excised a very tiny kid goat from inside of a Bartlett pear. And in the worst nightmare of all, I overheard a friend say that my bedroom looked "like a pig pen." I did not, in the dream, deny that my bedroom looked like a pig pen, merely chastised this friend for gossiping about the way I keep house. If you know how to analyze dreams, please, please don't.

Back to our scheduled programming: The other night I made Guy Fieri's Bring It On Beef Brisket.  About half of his dishes have gimmicky names like that, which doesn't bother me when the recipes work. This one didn't, not for me. It was the most disappointing kind of bad meal, because I was so looking forward to it. The photograph in Fieri's book shows the brisket is falling to shreds, collapsing under a blanket of what appears to be glossy barbecue sauce. I thought about that brisket all day and it cooked for what seemed like all day. But the the meat never softened, remaining an implacable raft of stiff gray cow flesh. The sauce lacked zest.

Three possibilities:

1. the recipe is wrong
2. the piece of brisket I got was wrong
3. I did something wrong

Last night, I made Fieri's ginger carrot soup. My husband thought this was great, but I could not eat it. I've grown accustomed to vegetable soups made with only vegetables, and the homemade chicken stock was overpowering, too chickeny, and I couldn't taste the ginger.

None for me, thanks

Tonight: Fieri's pork blade steak piccata. The grill is heating as I type.

On another subject, we've begun milking Natalie. Last night, Owen helped milk and then I went upstairs and made him hot chocolate with the fresh milk. He couldn't get over how awesome the whole experience was. I don't think I could persist in our onerous and messy animal project without him. I appreciate not just the work he contributes to keeping them, but his sheer joy at having them.

At least it wasn't Twinkle

Owen named her Sparkle. I tried to point him in another direction, any other direction, but he is adamant: She is Sparkle. And she is perfect.

The other night, I cooked Guy Fieri's lamb chops with mint pesto, my maiden voyage into Guy Fieri Food. They were excellent. I wish Guy didn't try so hard, what with the tats and the slang and the Phyllis Diller hair, because I think he has good ideas and sound recipes and all that shtick just makes him seem insecure. But I guess shtick is required these days to become a Food Network star.

It seems tasteless to post a photograph of lamb chops adjacent to a photograph of a baby goat, so I'll skip right to Fieri's chicken-under-a-brick, which I served last night.

To make this, you spatchcock a chicken and season it well, then heat oil in a skillet, splay the chicken out in the hot fat, and top with another skillet weighted down with four foil-wrapped bricks.

Roughly thirty minutes later, the chicken looks disturbing, but tastes wonderful. Serve with green sauce.

I know. 

Does anyone watch much food TV? Favorite shows? The other day, Owen and I watched Anne Thornton make s'mores bars on a program called Dessert First. It's sort of stunning that shows are devoted to recipes this remedial, but still, we watched. When it was over, Owen said, "Mom you HAVE to make those."

 I did.

And they were insanely good. One of those desserts -- buttery, a bit salty, crumbly, chocolatey but not overwhelmingly so, crunchy, gooey -- that you can not stop eating. You just want more, more, more. I have a problem with this kind of dessert as there's no built-in stopping point. Satisfaction is impossible. But I would be derelict in my blogging duty if I didn't tell you that the recipe is absolutely phenomenal. (I omitted the chipotle powder, as Thornton does on the show. Come to think of it, chipotle powder might make these easier to stop eating.)

It's a doeling!

Twenty minutes old.

Natalie gave birth to a beautiful baby girl today.

The labor was fast and agonizing in the agonizing way of all labors in my limited experience. Finally, I gave a gentle tug on the tiny hooves that were emerging from Natalie's body, as I have seen done in YouTube goat birth videos, and to my complete wonderment and shock, about one second later there was a slippery, squirming miniature goat in my hands. I'd read that you needed to wipe the baby down with towels and clear its throat and nostrils, but Natalie was instantly all over that kid, licking and nuzzling and possessive. All that was "needed" from Owen and me was to dip the newborn's navel in iodine and step away.

Isabel and her friend Juliet were up in Isabel's room. As Juliet said, "The goat was screaming, but Owen was screaming louder."

That's it for our summer 2011 kidding season. Short and sweet. Peppermint never caught.

Not that this would make Peppermint feel any better -- probably, it would gross her out -- but the new baby is her very own half-sister.

From focus and momentum to mild confusion and indolence

Monday, I used 6 inches of red pencil in 5 hours. 

Wind me up, set me off in a direction and there I go. Put me on the sofa, and there I sit. Shifting course is what's hardest for me. Maybe everyone?

The last 10 days were intense. I would admire my own work ethic except it felt less like an ethic than brute momentum.  I did nothing but pore over the manuscript of my book to the point of neglecting to brush my hair, sort the mail, or attend zumba class, and I would have done so for the rest of my life had a deadline not forced a change of course.

Day before yesterday arrived that deadline. I reluctantly carried the proofs to the UPS store and overnighted them (old school!) back to the editor in New York and then, hair still uncombed, wearing jogging shoes and least attractive jeans I have ever owned, drove straight to the Century Regency on Smith Ranch Road to see Midnight in Paris.* The ship has been forcibly turned and I am back to my usual, semi-indolent ways.  It will take a new deadline to get me to change again.

By the way, if there is any place on the planet you can confidently go with uncombed hair and wearing unflattering jeans, it is the Regency midday on a Tuesday. As usual, it was just the field trippers from the retirement home and me. I was very happy to be back.

Last night, I was going to try one of Guy Fieri's chicken recipes -- the one with the brick, or the one with the beer can -- but I ended up driving a young trombonist and a young pianist/dancer all over Marin County from 1:50 p.m. until 7 p.m. Not an exaggeration, a time sheet, as mothers of children in their middle years need not be told. So we had sushi. I felt tired and sorry for myself. I went to bed. I read 40 pages of Janet Malcolm's Reading Chekhov, which is extremely enjoyable and comprehensible even if you have never read Chekhov, which I have not. But should. I studied Malcolm's inscrutable half-smile in the jacket photo. What will my jacket photo look like? I woke up and checked on Natalie, who is still pregnant. Am I balking at starting Guy Fieri's book because he is so irritating? Or because I really don't want to eat a dish called Guy-talian Nachos? Except, who am I kidding. Of course I want to eat Guy-talian Nachos. There is no time to cook one of Fieri's chickens tonight, as I am returning to zumba class, but maybe his linguine with clams.

But then I'll look puffy in my jacket photo!

Can't wait for Tree of Life.

*Should you see it? Rachel McAdams negates her prettiness with convincing portrayal of crass shrew. Owen Wilson makes a more appealing Woody Allen than Woody Allen. Michael Sheen is wasted behind that beard. Plot: mildly amusing. Actor who plays Hemingway very cute. Altogether, Bridesmaids was better. Albeit, of course, filthy.

My yard is a petting zoo

We babysat our niece and nephew last weekend so that Justine and Michael could go away for their anniversary. Ben sat on the deck and sprayed himself with the hose just about the entire time.  I tried to remember what my own children were like at 18 months. I tried to remember what they ate, how I got them to sleep, when they woke up, how they liked to play. Couldn't. None of it.

For dinner, I served the children Heidi Swanson's mostly-not-potato salad out of Super Natural Every Day.

My mother would have loved this.

It's in the big bowl, but the humans were cuter than the salad. I was very drawn to this recipe -- a melange of chopped celery, green beans, tofu, and a very few potatoes -- because it seemed like a good diet dish, which it was. But it was not so much fun to eat, at least not when your mind is on potato salad. Conceptually, it's on a par with mostly-not-avocado guacamole or mostly-not-chocolate brownies. I mean, it tasted nice, but maybe it needs a new name. Like, chopped celery salad with potatoes?

On Sunday morning, I got up early and made Swanson's baked oatmeal. I had one of those dangerous self-congratulatory thoughts as I prepared this pretty, pretty dish. I thought, "Stella is going to love this and remember forever the baked oatmeal she had at Aunt Jenny's." Having deceived myself in this manner repeatedly over the last 14 years, I immediately I self-corrected: "This is not going to happen. Just thinking it actually ensures it's not going to happen."

I am a sage! It did not happen. I served the oatmeal to Stella who wrinkled up her nose and said, "I don't like it. I don't like nuts."

Owen said, "I don't like oatmeal that is baked."

Isabel looked at it and said, "Oh, it has fruit in it. No thanks."

My husband thought it was tremendous and ate heartily, and I agreed: tremendous. The recipe is here. If I were to make it again, I might increase the sweetener just a bit.

Apart from complaining about the baked oatmeal and spraying themselves with the hose, the children spent a lot of time with the goats and chickens.

I know. Funny, given I don't like eggs.

I have turned into the eccentric woman with the crappy (all senses) back yard and too many animals. I did not see this coming.

Stella is holding a prized Penedesenca chick. 

In case you couldn't see the prized Penedesenca chick.

On Monday, I made Swanson's dilled green beans and seitan. The little kids were gone by then -- I would not have imposed this on them. While I loved the chewy, spongy seitan, no one else ate it. No complaints, no fights, just no one ate it. My husband pushed the seitan to the side of the plate.

It was better than it looks. 

And with that I was done with Super Natural Every Day.  I still want to make Swanson's bran muffins, tutti frutti crisp, and carnival cookies, but I decided not to force myself. They are fattening treats and this isn't the spring for fattening treats.

Anyway, there's a sweet coda to my short expedition through this lovely book. On Tuesday, I found myself with aging CSA corn, aging CSA fava beans, aging CSA green peppers, and brand new CSA cilantro. I concocted a dish that was entirely inspired by Heidi Swanson, using up ingredients I bought to cook from her book. It was fabulous. So fabulous, in fact, that I wrote the recipe down.

Super Natural Homage Succotash

1 pound fava beans (week old is okay)

4 ears corn (they don't have to be just picked -- week old is okay)

2 tablespoons coconut oil (or vegetable oil)

1 small onion, finely chopped

1 small green bell pepper, finely chopped 

1/2 cup canned coconut milk

2 tablespoons Thai red curry paste

kosher salt to taste

handful of fresh cilantro, finely chopped

1. Shell the fava beans, peel off the skins, and blanch for one minute in a pot of boiling water. Drain.

2. With a sharp knife, scrape the kernels off the corn.

3. In a large skillet, heat the coconut oil with the onion and green bell pepper. Cook for about 5 minutes until soft. Add the corn. Cook, stirring, for 3 minutes.

4. Add the coconut milk, curry paste, and fava beans and a splash of water. Stir and cook for a few more minutes. Taste for salt. Scrape into a bowl and top with cilantro. Serves 4.

I served the succotash with steak, which was not very Heidi Swanson, but is very Guy Fieri, whose book I start tomorrow night.

 I didn't notice quite how fatty until just now.

Poor Natalie

I'm drowning in page proofs of my book, but that's better than being due in 11 days.

The incredible, inedible egg

We feed our chickens well.

I'm an adventurous eater, but like most people I have a few intractable aversions. And they are pretty lame. I haven't drunk a glass of milk since I was 5 and I don't think I've ever eaten an entire egg. I like the yolk of a fried or soft-boiled egg, but the white makes me skin crawl. Hard-boiled eggs are out of the question as are deviled eggs and egg salad. But worst of all: scrambled eggs. I can barely stand to watch other people eat scrambled eggs. I would as soon eat a fetal duck egg as a scrambled egg.

Which is why I should never have attempted Heidi Swanson's seasonal vegetable frittata from Super Natural Every Day. I like frittata when there's so much cheese and vegetable that you can convince yourself the egg is just there to help the other ingredients coalesce This was not Swanson's seasonal vegetable frittata.

I'm not sure zucchinis are in season, but they were in our CSA box, so I used zucchini as our seasonal vegetable and sliced up some potatoes. Swanson calls for a mere ounce of goat or feta cheese for 10 eggs, so I doubled that, given my need to disguise the eggs. I thought it was a very handsome frittata.

But while I was hungry, I was apparently not hungry enough. It was too eggy for me. At the same time, it was too full of zucchini for household scrambled egg lovers. "Not the best, Mom," said Owen. "No offense."

 I don't fault Swanson's recipe. I just don't have a feel for egg cookery. We fed the leftovers to the chickens, who love eggs with a disturbing ardor. Which may have something to do, though I'm not sure exactly what, with why I'm turned off by eggs.

Our second favorite Heidi Swanson pasta salad.

Last night, I made Swanson's tortellini salad using CSA broccoli and supermarket asparagus. It was tasty, but compared unfavorably to the orzo salad I described in a previous post, the recipe for which you can find here. Try it!

As I've mentioned, I'm going to cook from Guy Fieri Food next. It appeared in the mail and Owen has been flipping through it and folding back pages of he-man dishes like spaghetti and meatballs and pork ribs. Every day he asks me when I'm going to stop cooking from "the vegetable book."

I know. But Owen has eaten a lot of tempeh and broccoli lately and I owe him. And for all the noisy graphics and dudespeak, the recipes in this book look delicious and solid.

Meanwhile, here's what's left on my Swanson to-cook list:

-baked oatmeal. Because Soule Mama loves it.
-dilled green beans with seitan. Because I've never eaten seitan. (Or, as Buddy Garritty calls it, "satan.")
-repeat of the cauliflower soup. Because there's a CSA cauliflower to use up
-mostly not potato salad. Because there are CSA potatoes to use up.
-carnival cookies. Because: popcorn, peanuts, bananas, chocolate chips, ground almonds.
-Tutti frutti crumble. Because the picture is so beautiful.
-Bran muffins. Because I have been searching for the perfect bran muffin recipe since I was 18.

Mama Bear cooks faster than she types

This boy likes white bean dip.

The cooking from Heidi Swanson's Super Natural Every Day continues:

Saturday night, my sister invited us over for dinner and I contributed Swanson's white bean spread and served it with crackers and cucumber slices.  I somehow got it into my head that the instructions included steeping a 5-inch branch of rosemary in olive oil. The resulting spread was delicious, but very, very, very piney and resinous. This struck me as interesting, because Swanson usually has such a light hand with the flavoring. I was puzzling over this until last night when I reread the recipe and saw that she calls for a teaspoon of rosemary. The dish is satisfying and hummus-like and I suggest you make it as directed by Swanson. You can find the recipe here.

That was Saturday. No one invited us to dinner on Sunday night, so we stayed home and I made Swanson's broccoli and potato gribiche. You roast small, thin-skinned potatoes and broccoli then toss the warm vegetables in a tangy dressing (gribiche) of hard-cooked egg yolk, olive oil, vinegar, shallots, mustard and herbs. Spectacular.

gribiche 

Three comments:

1. I might in future omit the potatoes, because the broccoli held the dressing better.

2. But if I were to make it with potatoes, I would steam or boil them, as soft steamed/boiled potatoes absorb dressing better than roasted potatoes.

3. I omitted the chopped hard-boiled eggs you're supposed to toss with the broccoli because I don't personally like hard-boiled eggs.

This boy likes gribiche, but won't let me photograph him eating anymore.

Monday night, I made Swanson's weeknight curry, a super-quick stew of Thai red curry paste, coconut milk, cauliflower and zucchini. It was exactly as billed -- an easy weeknight dinner.

The next morning, I baked her millet muffins. Having eaten almost no sugar for a month, I am probably not the best judge, but I thought they were outstanding.

Hunger is the best sauce.

I'm not sure what the tiny, chalky pellets of millet add to the muffin, but I don't mind them.

Tuesday night, I made Swanson's orzo salad, using whole wheat macaroni because I couldn't find whole wheat orzo. You blanch some broccoli and use about half of it to make a pesto. I'd never tried broccoli pesto and it was great. Toss the pesto with the rest of the blanched broccoli and your boiled pasta, add some chunked avocado. Rich, sharp, tangy, cheesy, nutty, much loved.

I am coming to the end of what I can do with Super Natural Every Day. There are a few more recipes I want to try, but I've pretty much powered through that book. I went to the library yesterday to try to borrow Swanson's prequel, Super Natural Cooking, but every copy in the Marin County Library system was checked out. Popular! So, regretfully, within a few days I guess I'll be moving on. The next cookbook has been chosen. Not by me, but with my consent. Owen has even gone through and folded back the pages of dishes he wants me to cook. It will be a test of my theory of dieting, which is that it's all about portion control.

Speaking of which, the other day a friend told me I looked thinner, that my face looked "less poofy." It's one of those compliments you turn over a few times in your head before you let yourself be truly happy about it.

Last night, I went out to dinner with my family and the waitress brought me a glass of wine and said, "Here you go, Mama Bear." It's one of those passing comments you turn over a few times in your head before you decide it's the waitress, not you.

We kilt those green bell peppers

You're not welcome anymore.

Blogger erased my last post, which is not a huge loss except that I wanted someone to make Heidi Swanson's white beans and cabbage from Super Natural Every Day and then to reassure me that it is as incredible as I thought it was. I've reattached the recipe to the end of this post. I worry that I'm losing my critical faculties, as being on a diet has made everything taste wonderful to me.

Almost everything. I still don't like green bell peppers. Although this is the season of asparagus and cherries, in our CSA box last week they gave us cold storage apples, zucchini(?!) and three green bell peppers. I really hope they don't keep this up or I might have to shop around for new A to CS.

I've only ever made one recipe in my life that highlighted green bell peppers to good (or any) effect. I  remember it like it was yesterday. To my shock, when I looked up this recipe, I saw that I made it in September 1998. Owen was -2. That's a long time to remember a recipe.

Was it really that good?

I made it again on Friday night and, yes, it is as improbably delicious as I remembered. You cook small pieces of green bell pepper in olive oil with onion and parsley until they combine to form a soft, sweet melange, then you toss this lovely green sauce with pasta shells and some Parmesan. I probably wouldn't go out and buy green peppers just to make this -- it only encourages the farmers -- but if you need to use some up, this is the recipe you want. It comes from Verdura by Viana La Place, one of my favorite cookbooks. I've made a few very slight changes.

Pasta shells with green peppers and herbs

4 tablespoons olive oil
1 small yellow onion, minced
3 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped
1/4 cup Italian parsley, chopped
3 green peppers, cored, seeded and cut into small dice
kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 pound whole-wheat pasta shells
2 tablespoons softened butter
Parmesan

1. Heat the olive oil and onion in a wide skillet and cook until the onion is translucent. Add the garlic, parsley, green peppers and some salt and pepper. Cook until the peppers are tender.

2. Meanwhile, cook the pasta in a big pot of boiling, salted water. When the pasta is almost done, scoop out about 1/3 cup of the water and add to the skillet of warm peppers. Drain the pasta. Add it to the skillet, toss in the butter, and stir until everything comes together. Serve with Parmesan. Serves 6.

Small portions, no seconds. Anything can be diet food.

And here is the recipe for Heidi Swanson's white beans and cabbage. If you make it, let me know what you think.

2 tablespoons unsalted butter or olive oil

4 ounces thin-skinned potatoes, unpeeled, scrubbed, and finely diced

kosher salt

1 large shallot, thinly sliced

2 cups cooked and cooled white beans (I used navy beans)

3 cups very finely shredded green cabbage (about half a head -- though I would use more next time)
pinch of red pepper flakes (optional)

Parmesan

1. Warm the butter or olive oil in a large skillet over medium high heat. Add the potatoes and cook until they are cooked through, 5 to 8 minutes. Be sure to scrape the pan and toss the potatoes once or twice along the way so all sides are browned

2. Stir in the shallot and the beans. Let the beans cook in a single layer for a couple miutes until they brown a bit, then scrape and toss again. Cook until the beans are crusty on all sides

3. Stir in the cabbage and cook for a few minutes until it "loses a bit of its structure." Serve with Parmesan.

Self pity is such a good look on me

Next time I'll make chocolate mousse. 

I can't really explain why my diet isn't working. It has become a source of despair and of that I am ashamed. Despairing about weight is foolish and frivolous. But I can't help it. I am despairing. A diet is a powerful metaphor for effecting change in your life and it is every bit as powerful when it doesn't work as when it does. Just in a profoundly discouraging way.

I wish I could make a joke about my feeble will power but my will power hasn't been feeble. I wish I could make jokes about my slothful habits, but my habits haven't been slothful. I've been spinning and hiking and yesterday tried something horrendous and mortifying called "Pilates Abs." I've also forbidden myself to sit down except when necessary, like to compose a blog post or watch Fringe. The other day when the temptation to sit overcame me, I baked Heidi Swanson's oat cakes from Super Natural Every Day.

I would have been better off sitting. Even sleeping.

These oat cakes are:

a. very delicious
b. very fattening

Whole grain pastries are tricky. They seem like a good idea -- oats and spelt flour, flax seeds and nuts! -- but I think a fluffy white cupcake would have been more dietetic. It's the granola syndrome: a cup of granola is more nutritious, but Frosted Flakes are less fattening.

Anyway, I can't make these again because basically all I eat now is scrambled tofu, fish, and kale.
However! If you are not a diet, I highly recommend these oat cakes. You can find the recipe here.