Tag: dinner

2019: The Year of The Pig, Or How The Chinese Zodiac Is Conspiring Against Me

It me.

So I haven’t written all month in this space, and only once last month, and the last time that happened I decided to call it a “break” and then come back on a semi-regular schedule of two blogs with recipes every month.

This “break” doesn’t feel like that one. I am not sure what’s happening, but it seems easiest to blame it on the upcoming Year of the Pig, my year (I am a metal Pig), which says that this year is going to be not so rosy for Pigs in general. Not Year of the Snake devastating (2013) – just generally not the best.

Proof of impending doom: this new WordPress update which has made hyperlinking text nearly impossible for me to decode. Technology is THE WORST.

But I digress.

I am not sure what direction I am heading vis-a-vis this little old life of mine. I finished a novel of dubious quality in November and attended a writing retreat at Cacapon State Park in December (my first, and a revelation on a number of different levels). Both of these events, in conjunction with a slight tapering off of my (paid) mercenary writing work, have conspired to make me more interested in spending more time considering my own creative life. Not necessarily fiction, but something of my own, whether it’s writing or painting.

For over a year now there has been a bubbling of some idea in the background of my brain, and I can’t quite place my finger on it. I spend a lot of time sitting around, thinking, but I also spend a lot of time, sitting around on social media, and I think that has really dulled my brainpan’s ability to pick up on the finer ideas that are floating around. There is a pattern to my social media usage (it increases when I am feeling disconnected, which increases my feeling of disconnection, ironically, and if I was a person who ate their feelings I would have ballooned to epic proportions in the last six months, but thankfully I am not, as menopause approacheth, I think, and I cannot handle having the Menopausal Muffin Top at the same time I am trying figure out some shit regarding What It All Means and Why Am I Even Here).

Again, digression. But if you are staring down the barrel of 48 years of age (March 14th, if you’d like to order something early. I prefer travel, domestic is fine, and it needn’t be first class. Thanks.), these are some of the things you might be worrying about, too:

  1. How you spend your days when you can spend them (mostly and within reason) in any manner you would choose.
  2. What you might want to create.
  3. Why you might continue to bother creating even though one day feels much like the next and you are continually reminded by your culture that you are, for all intents and purposes, mostly already dead anyway (Helen Mirren is the exception, not the rule).
  4. What on earth you create in the kitchen in the first place when you are now essentially living alone, since your particular friend has moved out (but is still your lovin’ spoonful) and you have no one to cook for anymore, really, even as you had very few people to cook for in the first place. This sounds exceptionally pitiful, but I look at this as a creative issue more than a personal one. Today. Today that’s how I look at it.

And then today I went to yoga – always a good idea – and my lovely teacher Martha read this poem.

Saint Francis and the Sow

The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don’t flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as Saint Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

Galway Kinnell

What is it about yoga teachers sometimes? This was a perfect reminder, in poetry, that the thing that matters is understanding the long, lovely length of you before anything else.

A powerful and potent reminder on a day when, other than yoga, the only thing I have done is endlessly troll the aforementioned social media while eating a surfeit of cinnamon buns and bacon.

But it’s not enough to just know on the inside something. My current dilemma is what to do with the outside.

I was about to push “publish” on this, and I am sure this blog would have been okay. But as it stood, prior to these next few sentences, it is disingenuous and not unlike all of the other “Oh, woe is me, What ever shall I do with all of my free time?” It’s the same white noise of all the other blog posts, only with maybe more run-on sentences and made-up words.

And maybe this post is still like that, to a large extent. I feel like I am struggling with a bonus mid-life crisis (the first one prompted at 42 by a dead husband, for those of you who have not been playing along thus far), except I have no desire for the typical trappings of that – mostly I want to sell my house, bank the cash, and trade the Subaru in for a van that I can live in.

Is this in the realm of possibility? Yes.

Is this the kind of drastic move that I need to make to figure out the burbling idea in the back of my mind, to forever loose the shackles of the unexamined life that I may be leading? Who knows? As all three regular readers of this blog know, it’s not like my life is unexamined. And it’s not like I haven’t had sudden, life-upending change occur already.

The creative conundrum I also find myself in (who to cook for? What to write? Why write? Who cares?) is an added bonus. It makes the struggle to find meaning in the everyday that much more fraught. And godallahbuddha knows I have had plenty of that fraughtness. #MadeUpWord

So it is with not a little humor that I acknowledge my own failing to recognize the long, perfect loveliness of the sow (Pig) that is me and usher in the Year of the Pig (over a month early) with this stuffed pork chop.

Did I answer the question of What The Hell in this blog post? Not really. But it eases this Pig’s mind to practice a little gallows humor as the darkness of this year comes to a close. Plus, this chop is pretty damn good and would make an excellent New Year’s dinner. Cut it in half to make two if you have no one to cook for, and enjoy the little story of its current incarnation.

Stuffed Porkchop With Spinach, Cherries, and Comté

I haven’t ever been pork’s biggest fan. Part of this is due to the fact that I was raised by nearly-Jewish vegetarians, and pork was not part of the regular rotation. Mostly it has to do with preparation. All the pork I ate well into adulthood was thin chops, more bone than meat, fried to within an inch of its life and served without sauce next to an arid bed of rice or other grain.

I drank a lot of water to get those chops down.

That all changed when I met Dorlene Olsen. Dorlene was Dane’s grandmother (the dead husband), an outspoken woman who wasn’t shy about sharing her feelings. The first time I met her, she opened up her door, looked me up and down without even attempting tact and said, “Huh. I thought you were blonde.”

Not an auspicious beginning, and although it was rough going many times with her and me, I always admired the way she cooked. She was the type of cook who didn’t use a recipe, just threw together ingredients and made something delicious. Her food wasn’t fancy, just plentiful and always mouth-watering. The one Thanksgiving I spent with her at the helm was filled with confusion, drunkenness, and one or two joints for the cooks. Dinner didn’t make an appearance until 9:30 p.m., by which time I was faint with hunger and ready for bed, but when it came to the table everyone dug in.

Aside from pecan pie, one of Dorlene’s specialties was the stuffed pork chop. I had never heard of such a thing, but once I tasted it I was sold. Dorlene stuffed hers with homemade bread stuffing, but I have lightened it up just a bit here with tart Northwest cherries in her honor and Comté cheese and spinach that she probably would have disliked on principle.

Spend money for the best chops you can buy; local, pasture-raised, heritage-bred, and organically farmed pork makes all the difference here.

Ingredients

1 cup tart dried cherries
½ cup Comté cheese, diced small
4 tablespoons cold butter, cut into small cubes
10 ounces fresh spinach, washed, thicker stems removed, and roughly chopped
¼ teaspoon salt
Freshly cracked black pepper
4 thick, center cut pork chops with no bone
4 tablespoons butter (for searing)
1 sprig rosemary

Optional Sauce: 1 sprig thyme, 1 finely chopped shallot, ½ cup chicken stock or white wine, 1 tablespoon butter.

Method

Preheat oven to 350⁰. This is where an oven thermometer will come in handy. If your oven is colder, it will take the chops forever to cook.

In a small bowl, combine the cherries, Comte, butter, spinach, salt, and pepper.

With a sharp knife, cut a slit in the pork chops like you are making a little pocket for the stuffing (which is, in fact, exactly what you are doing).

Divide filling evenly among the four pork chops. Season both sides of the chop well with salt and pepper. You should be able to see salt and pepper flecks.

Heat butter and rosemary in a large, oven-proof skillet (cast iron works really well here). When the pan is hot, add the pork chops and sear without moving, about three minutes. Flip and sear the other side, then move skillet to the preheated oven. Cook until the chop reaches an internal temperature of 135⁰, and then move chops to a cutting board to rest for at least five minutes. The carryover heat will cook the chop to a perfect 145⁰.

Should you require a simple sauce, return the skillet to the heat and use a wooden spoon to scrape the bits from the bottom of the pan. Pour off any extra fat (not all of it; some fat is good) and remove the rosemary, then stir in one chopped shallot and a sprig of thyme. Add ½ to one cup of chicken stock or wine and stir as the sauce comes to a boil, reducing the sauce for about five minutes or until it is about half of what you started with.

Remove pan from heat and add a healthy tablespoon of butter. Transfer pork chops to a platter and drizzle sauce over them.


NaNoWriMo: Tamale Pie Saves The Day

Not pictured: two sleeping dogs and a laptop. And a cocktail.

As I begin this blog post, we are getting ready to fall back, and I have not even thought once about writing for this space in November.

I am, instead, writing a novel over these next 30 days, a novel that will most assuredly be a steaming pile of crap but that’s quite against the point. The point is to put the words down, a minimum of 50,000 of them, to let the characters guide the story and really hope for the best.

Take care, and good luck.

Generally, people participating in National Novel Writing Month advise stockpiling snacks and warning loved ones to lower their expectations appropriate to the challenge that lies ahead.

The 50,000 words is not much more than I write for other people for actual cash money but that writing is completely different. Non-fiction writing, even when it’s about laws in Arizona and online professional development, comes easy to me and always has. This month also marks the completion of a huge non-fiction writing job for me: the entirety of the AZ Dentist website.

If there is something wrong with your mouth, chances are very, very good that I can diagnose you. As a party trick, it’s frankly rather obnoxious.

So to celebrate the light pockets that come with finishing a huge job, while nourishing the family during this crazy month of writing (for those keeping track, it’s the 50,000 words on top of the regular 35,000 I have scheduled for November), there is this easy, cheap, filling, and delicious recipe: Tamale Pie.

I never thought I would give out this recipe, but desperate times call for sharing. This is, after all, mid-term elections on top of everything else, so something that fills you up and makes you feel cared for is the best I can do. It’s delicious, warming to the bones, vegan (without the cheese and sour cream), and loved by most everyone who tries it (minus picky teenagers, but they are old enough to heat up their own mac-n-cheese).

It is ironic and curious that so many of the things I love to eat and make for other people are things that I might not have made for myself. This is especially true for when I make dinner.

I make a distinction between making dinner and cooking. Making dinner is that sometimes-crazy activity that gets slotted between after school, athletics, classes, meetings, and bedtimes. It’s why grocery stores have pre-roasted chickens and pre-made mashed potatoes hot and ready. It’s why you can get a bucket of chicken that will serve four people for less than $20. And it’s why pizza places came up with delivery.

In short, making dinner is often frantic, often unhealthy, and sometimes at my house a bag of chips and a tub of guacamole. And maybe some ice cream. These are the types of dinners that most people rely on during National Novel Writing Month.

Cooking, on the other hand, is that lovely, leisurely thing that I do when I have ample time, beautiful ingredients, and no one to please but myself. It’s when I get to experiment with new tools in the kitchen (like my mandolin, which is a lifesaver if I ever had one), when I lazily leaf through cookbooks and cooking magazines to see what strikes my fancy, or when I head up to the market specifically for that day’s meal (so very European).

Making dinner is like feeding baby birds in the nest: everyone with their mouths open, squawking for food, any food, before they start gnawing on and pecking at each other.

Cooking is a light breeze blowing through an open kitchen window, a glass of bourbon by the stove, and Florence + the Machine in the background.

Somehow, some way, Tamale Pie meets somewhere in the middle. It’s easy, but it smells delicious, is like actual cooking without being terribly complicated, and it freezes well. This is a great way to avoid the greasy bucket of chicken and still get dinner on the table in 30 minutes.

Tamale Pie

Feel free to make adjustments to the spice level and seasoning as you wish. Amounts below are mere suggestions.

Ingredients

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon chili powder
2 teaspoons ground cumin
2 cans beans, rinsed and drained (whatever you have: pinto, kidney, black beans)
1 cup diced tomatoes with juice
1 can of corn, drained (frozen is fine, 2 cups)
1  ¾  polenta (grits work, too – see Recipe Notes)
4 to 6 cups water
¾ teaspoon salt
2 cups Monterey jack cheese, shredded (leave out for vegan version, or use vegan cheese if you are that sort of person)

Method

Preheat oven to 350⁰. Grease and 9″ x 12” glass baking dish (or one of those white Corningware casseroles, the big one) and set aside.

Heat oil in a sauté pan over medium heat. Add onions and cook until translucent, about five minutes. Add garlic, chili, and cumin and sauté five minutes more.

Add tomatoes, beans, and corn. Season with salt and pepper and let simmer uncovered while you make the crust.

Bring four cups of salted water to a boil in a large saucepan. Whisk polenta in. Cook over medium heat until boiling. Reduce heat to low and cook until thick, stirring constantly, about ten minutes. If your polenta gets thick but is not yet soft and creamy, add more water and continue to cook.

Taste bean mixture for seasoning and flavor before assembling the dish. If it needs more of anything add it now.

Remove polenta from heat. Pour half of the polenta mixture into the glass baking dish, spreading it halfway up the sides of the dish. Pour bean mixture on top, then pour polenta on top of the beans and spread to cover. You will not use all of the polenta (see below)

Top with shredded cheese and bake for 30 minutes. Let sit for at least five minutes before eating. Ten is better.

Recipe notes

  • Any combination of beans is delicious. Use whatever you have on hand.
  • If you don’t have tomatoes, substitute a jar of salsa.
  • Sharp cheddar is also a great topping.
  • Pass the sour cream when serving.
  • If you have leftovers, reheat by adding a little water to whatever you are reheating in and placing the pie on top. The water will lightly steam the polenta as it heats, helping it have a creamier texture the next day.
  • This recipe makes extra polenta, which should be considered a good thing. Reheat the polenta and add some roasted veggies and a fried egg for an award-winning and sanity-saving dinner for two the following night.

We Are(n’t) Family: African* Peanut Stew

Formation.

My brother and I have not spoken more than a handful of times since November 8, 2016.

While the final catalyst was his part in the current president’s election, I realized a long time ago that there was a disconnect between us, formed since we could walk. We spent our childhood together, me mostly afraid of him as the object of his ire, scorn, amusement, and anger. Both of our parents worked, and we spent a lot of time alone together. When my brother needed a punching bag I was handy; he routinely delivered punches, smacks, and pinches, along with various projectiles aimed at my head. He broke two windows in our house, one with a walnut and one with a deflated volleyball, as a result of those errant projectiles that veered from me at the last minute and met instead the fragile single panes of our house in the woods.

In terms of missiles, I remember most the Osage oranges, the softball-sized round seed pods that looked like I imagined brains looked. They were all over the base of the hill where our bus turned around. Florida Ropp, our bus driver for my entire elementary career, would pull up to the bottom of the steep hill and let us off before backing into a wide driveway and turning around. I sat in the front so I could fly down the stairs and immediately start running up the hill.

My brother emerged slowly, casually, a few seconds after me, to begin leisurely scanning the ground for the best orange. He would heft several in his hands before finding the perfect missile. My short legs never carried me far enough, fast enough, and the first one nearly always hit me square in the back between my shoulder blades. He had good aim and didn’t often miss.

We don’t agree on politics. We don’t have the same friends, taste in music, or ideas of what is important. Although I think he is a great dad and has a strong work ethic, I am not sure he believes either of those things to be true about me. When I started my own school, I think he envisioned me in a prairie skirt huddled around a kitchen table with a few raggedy unfortunates, not the fully accredited, non-profit private school I actually built.

When my husband died, though, he showed up. He cleaned out the demolished car and returned, silent and somber. He handled Dane’s bill collectors so I did not have to. His whole family piled into their car and drove down to Georgia from Northern Virginia to sit with us, and on that first fatherless Father’s Day in 2013 we spent it at Camden Yards in Baltimore with them.

It is hard for me to rectify what he did in that one time that was so important and vital with the rest of our lives. Even as we don’t speak, I would do the same for his family.

Perhaps we can just come to some peace with each other, where it’s ok that we are related and all, but there is really no obligation. We are guests in each others’ house; our children are strangers to each other. We cannot choose our family, but we can choose who we continue to invite into our lives. It’s hard when the chasm between us is vast and filled with fundamental differences in the way we believe the world should work.

Soup is an odd transition but perhaps just as polarizing. I have never lived with anyone who has liked soup. I do not understand how a person could not like soup. Various reasons have been that it’s sort of a half-meal and not particularly satisfying, or that it’s too, well, soup-y. For this reason, even though I am incredibly good at it (if I do say so myself), I don’t often make soup of any kind.

This recipe was an accident of sorts. Back when I was a public school teacher working with unruly adolescents, I was planning to teach a history unit on Africa and came home one evening – late and hungry – from a team planning meeting. My team decided that I was to design a dish that was quick and easy to share with my class when we started the unit; on that cold and rainy evening, I threw together some traditional flavors from all over Africa and hoped for the best.

After tasting the first batch, I ended up keeping the first to myself and making another for the class. Even the anti-soup faction in the house begrudgingly admitted it was delicious.

These days I make it all for myself and eat the whole batch over several days. It is silky and simple and complicated all at once, and warming all the way down to the bones. I have made my own ras-el-hanout spice blend instead of using the simple ginger/cayenne mixture I first used in this stew (back in 1999). There are various recipes online that include between six and 30 spices in their ras-el-hanout mixes; I chose to go simple for the sake of ease and convenience. The result is a deep, complex, satisfying, and somehow familiar stew that brings everyone back to the table.

African* Peanut Stew

Ingredients

4 tablespoons olive oil
3 cups sweet potatoes or yams, chopped into ½” cubes
1 large onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
2 cups vegetable stock (or chicken if not cooking for vegetarians)
2 15-ounce cans of diced tomatoes (or two pints if you preserve your own)
1 large apple, peeled, seeded, and chopped
1 heaping tablespoon ras-el-hanout (recipe below)
Optional but highly recommended: 2 T grated fresh ginger
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper (more or less to taste)Salt and pepper to taste
1/4 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
1 cup crunchy peanut butter (unsweetened is best)
1 green pepper, seeded and chopped

Salt and pepper of varying amounts

Ras el Hanout Spice Blend

1 tablespoon coriander seeds
1 1/2 teaspoons cumin seeds
1 teaspoon crushed chili flakes
2 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons paprika
1 teaspoon ground cardamom
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground turmeric

Method

If you are making your own ras-el-hanout, make that first. Add coriander and cumin seeds to a small frying pan over medium heat. Toast until spices begin to open up (they will smell more…toasty…), swirling frequently to avoid burning. If they burn, start over.

Place toasted seeds in a coffee grinder and allow to cool. Add red pepper flakes and grind until fine and incorporated. You can also use a mortar and pestle if you don’t have a spice grinder.

Combine all spices and mix thoroughly. This makes a little over 1/4 cup of ras-el-hanout, which will stay fresh for about a month in a dark, dry place. Realistically, it will be okay longer but just lose flavor the longer you have it.

Make the soup: In a large, heavy-bottomed stewpot (enameled cast iron is great for this), heat olive oil over medium heat. Add onion and sauté for two or three minutes, adding about a teaspoon of salt and some cracked black pepper. Add sweet potatoes and sauté until just cooked, soft on the outside with a slightly firm center (al dente).

Add chopped garlic, stock, tomatoes, apple, ras-el-hanout, fresh ginger (if using), and cayenne pepper. Season with salt and pepper. Bring to a low boil, and then lower the heat and simmer for 45 minutes.

Stir in shredded coconut, peanut butter, and green pepper and simmer for another ten minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Serve with more shredded coconut and chopped unsalted peanuts.

*Yes, this is a blanket and general name for a stew that takes flavors from all over, most especially Morocco but also in the southern regions of Africa (and western as well). I do not pretend to be any kind of expert in these flavor profiles; I am simply experimenting and combining things that taste delicious, no matter how incongruous. I mean no disrespect.

Life Doesn’t Stand Up To Thinking: Roasted Beet Dip With Feta And Aleppo Pepper Crackers

“Life doesn’t stand up to thinking. Smell the air out there; there are wonders.”

Are You Here with Owen Wilson and Zach Galifianakis is an unexpectedly serious movie that tricked me into thinking it would be a light-hearted bromance when really it was a meditation on the uselessness of life.

Welcome to blog, first-time readers. #KeepComingBack

Galifianakis’s character is a bipolar paranoid schizophrenic who inherits everything after his father’s death but is too crazy to know what to do with it. When a troubled Amish boy who hears voices from God tells Galifianakis that God wants him to take his medicine, Galifianakis does. He realizes, quickly, that life is filled with no purpose and is pointless. His stepmother consoles him:

“Life doesn’t stand up to thinking. Smell the air out there; there are wonders.”

And that’s just how things go, right? There is really no point. Anyone who says they have figured out life isn’t thinking too hard. Mostly they are going along with what everyone else is doing and are reasonably satisfied with their life and just sort of sink into the idea that their life is what The Purpose of Life is.

Except that’s kind of bullshit.

There is no purpose. There are diversions, to be sure, and good things to get into, just like there are tragedies and overwhelming sadness and horrible people in the world.

There is no point. Life doesn’t just stand up to thinking.

If you can get from birth to death without hurting people on purpose while also voting every two years (and in special elections) and loving some people real good and maybe making something beautiful once or twice, then that’s pretty much it.

But still, this gives you no license to waste it. When the biology of schizophrenia begins to clear, Galifianakis says of his approach to life, “I wasted so much. I gobbled it all down without tasting it.”

It’s hard to know what “wasting” your life means, really. If you choose to not pursue money or status too lustily and to instead count the grains of sand on a beach or write or paint or work temp jobs or travel your whole life, many in the U.S. would call that “wasting your life.”

Add to the list of life-wasting things (at least in the culture of the U.S.):

  • Not going to college
  • Not having children
  • Not paying into retirement
  • Not buying a house
  • Not having a “career”
  • Not donating money or volunteering regularly

I am sure you can add some of your own. Anything that doesn’t fit the mold is often considered by someone as a “wasted” life. But consider, as one always should, Mary Oliver:

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean–
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down —
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?

~The Summer Day~’

Indeed. Everything dies at last, and too soon.

Everything, from the bees to the flowers to the humans, will wilt, wither, and die in the sunshine or the snow. We are all of us just passing through.

This is, to me, a horribly debilitating and incredibly liberating understanding, all at once. We only get the one life that we know of, so there’s a ton of pressure to NOT FUCK IT UP.

But what the hell does that mean? And truly, who is keeping score? Who is the person who gets to tell us we are fucking it all up?

So there’s this idea, the liberated side of the Pointlessness of Life: do what you like.

Seriously.

Of course, not to the exclusion of caring for the children you foolishly brought into the world or hurting other people or otherwise being a douche.

But otherwise, why the hell not? Why not do what you like? You can’t take anything with you – even the memory of you will fade.

Spoiler alert: NO ONE WILL REMEMBER YOU, EVENTUALLY. And really? That’s just fine. Whatever mark we think we make will be erased in the unrelenting pressure of geologic time.

Life doesn’t stand up to thinking or reason, so just get out into the world and see what there is to see. And actually spend some time paying attention. It’s not about ticking boxes off a bucket list. It’s more about being present wherever you happen to be, placing yourself in the way of beauty and discovering what it feels like to experience awe.

Give it a shot. What the hell. We are all on our way out anyway.

You will, of course, need snacks.

This summer I am committed to the idea of what Sicily refers to as a “French Nibbler.” (TM) I have no idea where this name came from but it’s hilarious so I am using it and since this blog is in no way monetized and I have just given her credit I think we are all okay.

French Nibblers consist of finger-foodish things for dinner, set out on an appropriately beautiful, bespoke, foraged wooden board with period-authentic utensils for spreads and such.

That’s the Instagram bullshit. I am thinking more along the lines of whatever comes in the CSA, some homemade crackers, a few dips, some cured meats for the carnivores, and a couple cheeses. Serve with canned wine from Old Westminster Winery and snack on dinner as the sun goes down. Nothing to clean up, really, and no need to turn on the stove. You could pack all of it up and take it on a picnic, too. Something simple that doesn’t really require a ton of thought and satisfies all different types of people.

As with life, don’t gobble this down without tasting it.

Roasted Beet Dip With Feta And Aleppo Pepper Crackers

This recipe is the first of a series of dips. Adding this luscious, earthy, subtle, and complex spread to any French Nibbler gets you a double-plus Life Bonus. #SpendYourPointsWisely

Beet Dip Ingredients

4 beets (about the size of baseballs)

Pickling liquid: 1 cup water, 2/3 cup sugar, 1/3 cup vinegar

Peppercorns, a smattering (that’s a measurement)

4-6 sprigs thyme

2 whole cloves garlic, smashed to peel and left that way

1/2 cup toasted pecans

Cracked black pepper

4 ounces Feta cheese (plus more for serving)

2 tsp. champagne vinegar

Olive oil, good quality (Don’t. Skimp.)

Salt

Aleppo Pepper Crackers Ingredients

Everyday Crackers

ADD-INS: 1 tsp Aleppo pepper, 2 tsp sumac

Method

Okay, I lied. You do need to turn the oven on and use the stove, but just once. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Place two beets (washed but unpeeled), two smashed garlic cloves, and one sprig of thyme in aluminum foil. Drizzle with olive oil. Loosely close foil and place on baking sheet. Roast in oven until a fork easily pierces the beets (about 60 minutes). Remove from oven and cool.

Toast pecans using the residual heat from the oven. Place pecans on a baking sheet and place in hot, turned off oven. Check periodically and remove when they taste delicious (this time will vary, but it’s not rocket science. If they taste good, they are done).

While beets are roasting, peel remaining two beets and cut into matchsticks.

For god’s sake, use gloves. #YouWereWarned

Pack beets, peppercorns, and one sprig of thyme into a Mason jar.

In a saucepan over medium heat, bring pickling liquid ingredients to a boil. Pour over beets and let beets cool on the counter. Refrigerate.

Once roasted beets are cool, use a paper towel to rub the skin off the beet. Give up after a while and use a paring knife to peel the rest of the skin off. Cut into large chunks and place into a food processor. Add one (or both) cloves of roasted garlic, roasted pecans, 1 teaspoon of fresh thyme, 4 ounces of feta, and champagne vinegar. Process until smooth-ish. Add some best-quality olive oil to help it along. It need not be baby-food smooth.

Add salt and fresh cracked black pepper to taste, and adjust to your taste. Beets are not all the same, so they may need more or less sweetness or acid, a pinch or two more or less salt.

Remember your quick-pickled beets? Grab a handful of those and chop them roughly. Stir into your beet dip and also serve on the side. Top with more feta and maybe some chopped pecans if you have any left.

Make a batch of Everyday Crackers, using the Aleppo pepper and sumac as add-ins, or just buy some damn crackers. It’s not a contest. You will be fine.

Recipe notes

  • Substitutions: yellow beets or carrots even would work here. Rough carrots may benefit from the addition of honey.
  • You will be able to taste the olive oil, so really, use the best you can find/afford/have in your cabinet.
  • Whip up a batch of Toasted Cashew Hummus and be done with it (and really, the hero to all of your friends or whoever is joining you for dinner).
  • Use your leftover pickled beets as part of the French Nibbler or drape over burgers with goat cheese or in salads with chickpeas.

Tell me: what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

 

Making Dinner: Enchilada Version

The beautiful, beautiful groundwork.

I teach my first yin yoga class at Yoga Tree in Hampden tonight (at 8:15; come join me), and tonight the theme is time. In her book To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf writes the following:

“Let the wind blow. Let the poppy seed itself and the carnation mate with the cabbage. Let the swallow build in the drawing room and the thistle thrust aside the tiles and the butterfly sun itself on the faded chintz of the armchairs. Let the broken glass and the china lie out on the lawn and be tangled over with grass and wild berries.”

No matter where we come from, what race we are, how much money we have, or what our political beliefs are, there is a singular universal truth that unites us: time passes.

As The Child nears the end of her high school experience, I am realizing more the precious and fleeting nature of time. It is hard to move through the world without letting things pass you by; we are so busy assigning stories to what happens to us and thinking about what happened before and what might happen next that we forget the thing that is happening now. Now. Now. Now.

Each second as it passes is gone forever, a kind of tick of history, tangled over with grass and wild berries.

The chance of us missing everything, good and bad, rises exponentially in proportion to our inability to quiet the mind, slow down, and just be where we are when we are there.

Spoiler alert: You are here, so you might as well be present.

The practice of existing in the moment that is happening occurs most often for me on the yoga mat, but it also happens out in nature and in my kitchen. In the kitchen, the difference between Missing It and Being There is most pronounced in the distinction between two seemingly similar concepts: I love to cook, but I hate making dinner.

There is a HUGE difference; making dinner is about getting something done to move quickly onto the next. Cooking, for me, is about creating and exploring and experiencing and being exactly where I am in each moment.

When I make enchiladas for dinner, I open up a can of refried beans, open up a can of artificially red enchilada sauce, open up a bag of pre-shredded cheese, and open up a bag of dry tortillas. The whole thing takes about 30 minutes, from opening cans to sitting down to eat, and it costs less than five bucks to feed four people. They taste good, they are fast, and they get the job done, efficiently and cheaply.

But I finally got sick of doing it that way. Even though I know I can always come back to this when my family is flapping their gaping maws at me, clamoring for dinner and starting to root through the cabinets for the chips and cookies that will fill them up and ultimately leave them “not hungry” when food hits the table, I wanted to see what I could do when I felt like cooking.

This is what I can do, and the difference is astonishing. Homemade beans, homemade enchilada sauce, and homemade corn tortillas. I stopped short of homemade cheese, although I have done that and don’t doubt that would be a delicious (and fairly easy addition). It’s hard to know which part about this I like more; I don’t love beans (and they are no fan of me), but I didn’t have the usual…reaction to this dish. And the enchilada sauce is complex and subtle and comes at you with layers of flavor and just a little tiny bit of spice.

There is something about making this simple, humble dish that takes literally most of the day to prepare that forces you to slow down. Even the flavors reveal themselves slowly, unfurling over the tongue like a flag.

When you feel like cooking, skip the cans and make these. The recipe makes enough sauce and beans for two 8″ x 8″ baking dishes, so make one and eat it, and make one and freeze it. I made homemade tortillas, too, but the recipe I used is proprietary to the person I got it from and I am not at liberty to share it in public. It’s hard to go wrong with a Rick Bayless corn tortilla recipe, but you can also just buy some if you like. You don’t need a tortilla, press, though, and there is definitely something meditative about making tortillas. Why not give it a try?

Bean and Cheese Enchiladas

Start with the beans. They take four hours to cook, so you have plenty of time to make the sauce while they are becoming their beany delicious selves. Better yet, make sauce and beans one day, let them rest, then cook the tortillas and assemble on the day you want to eat.

Ingredients

Refried beans

2 cups pinto beans

Olive oil (for frying, about two tablespoons)

One large onion, large diced

5 – 10 cloves of garlic (I used on the 10-clove side of things)

1 teaspoon onion powder

Salt to taste

Enchilada sauce

4 dried ancho chilis

4 dried guajillo chilis

4 cloves of garlic, unpeeled

10 cherry tomatoes, or two medium-sized plum tomatoes, roughly chopped

One medium onion, roughly chopped

1-2 cups chicken or vegetable stock, warmed

1 teaspoon cumin

1 teaspoon marjoram

Olive oil

1 tablespoon maple syrup (or honey or agave)

Method

Make the beans: Rinse and pick through the pinto beans, discarding rocks or discolored beans. Cover with water in a large pot and bring to a hard boil. Boil for 20 minutes, then drain, add more water, bring to a boil, and boil for another 20 minutes (this helps reduce the chances of gastrointestinal issues, IYKWIM). Reduce the heat and cover. Cook beans for four hours.

As you near the end of the bean cooking time, heat olive oil in a large frying pan over medium heat. Add onions and cook, stirring occasionally, until they begin to caramelize (about 15 minutes). Add whole garlic cloves and continue to cook, stirring, until onions are deeply brown, very soft, and garlic is also soft.

Drain beans (reserve a cup of bean liquid) and add to onions and garlic. Sprinkle beans with onion powder and salt and cook, stirring, for about 15 minutes. Use a potatoes masher to mash the beans, onion, and garlic into a texture you like. If the beans seem dry, add bean liquid and continue to cook. Taste, season with salt as necessary, then set aside. These can be refrigerated overnight or frozen for later use.

Make the enchilada sauce:  Toast the dried chilies and garlic in a dry cast iron pan or on a flattop grill. You are looking for them to soften, puff up, and begin to char (not too much or your sauce will be bitter; see Recipe Notes).

Place toasted ancho and guajillo peppers in a bowl and cover with hot water. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and set aside for at least an hour (or two or three).

Once your garlic skin begins to char and soften, peel the skin and let garlic cool.

Place garlic, tomatoes, and chopped onion in a heavy saucepan over medium heat. Cover with stock and bring to a boil. Cook at low heat until tomatoes, onions, and garlic soften.

Retrieve your chilis from their now-dark soaking chili water and remove the stems. Place chilis in a blender and use a slotted spoon to add the garlic/tomato/onion from the stock. Add cumin and marjoram. Allow these to rest and cool briefly while you reduce the stock with the chili soaking water.

Add chili water to the stock in the saucepan and heat. Bring to a rolling boil and reduce heat. Cook at a low boil until the sauce is slightly reduced. This step is not necessary but will concentrate the flavors even more.

Add some of this reduction to the vegetables in the blender and blend. Continue to blend and add chili water until you get the consistency you would like, and then blend until smooth. You may not use all of the chili water/stock.

Final, and most important step: Heat two tablespoons of olive oil in a large frying pan, and carefully pour the blended enchilada sauce into the pan. This will splatter, so have a splatter guard (or some aloe) ready. Cook the sauce at a pretty good boil for about five minutes. You can add chili water/stock as needed to maintain the consistency you like. Remove from heat and stir in maple syrup.

Let come to room temperature before using. I like to cool it overnight to allow the flavors to really come together.

Assembly: Place a solid heaping tablespoon of refried beans onto a tortilla, then roll and place in a greased 8″x8″ glass baking dish (or a rectangular one if you like). Really wedge those babies in, and continue until you have used all your tortillas or are satisfied that you have enough to feed your people. Pour about a cup and a half of enchilada sauce (or more if you like them juicy – I do) evenly over the tortillas, and top with shredded cheese of your choice (totally inauthentic, but I am a Colby-jack fan. Sue me. It’s delicious.).

Cover with aluminum foil and bake in a 350 degree oven for 15 minutes. Remove foil and bake until cheese is brown and bubbly. Serve with sour cream and extra hot sauce if you like.

Recipe Notes

  • Enchilada sauce can turn out bitter for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is over-toasting the chilis. If this happens to you, you can remedy it by adding a bit more sweetener or even adding 1 teaspoon of baking soda. I recommend adding sweetness, not baking soda.
  • To freeze a pan of enchiladas, assemble all the way up to baking, then wrap tightly. When you are ready to cook them, defrost and then cook as usual.