what we are eating

I often post pictures on Instagram of things we are working on in the kitchen, and then I usually get a request for the recipe.  I thought I'd feature a few of our favorite spring / early summer recipes starting with the supper tart from The Splendid Table's How To Eat Supper cookbook.  I thought I had posted the recipe before, but when I searched the archives I realized that I just talked about in generalities and posted a link to the cookbook (one that I highly recommend).

I thought I'd make it a little easier for you to whip this up tonight for dinner by posting the direct link to the recipe here, and by telling you how we make it at our house.  (Far less precise.)

When I'm trying a new recipe I always make it "by the book" the first time, sometimes even the first few times.  When I first started cooking on my own (outside of brownie mixes in college), that was my strategy.  Follow the recipe.  I know it's not rocket science, but really reading the recipe - reading an entire cookbook from end to end - is what has worked for me.  I feel like now I have enough basic knowledge to be able to discern a good recipe from a dud before I ever measure out the first ingredient.  There are countless sources of online recipes for any ingredient you can imagine, but that hunt and peck system rarely produces the consistent winners that we return to, time and again.  I find that I need the back story (or the front story) - I like to know why a particular chef champions certain techniques over others, what ingredients they swoon over, what disasters along the way they've encountered and discussed so that I don't have to.

My favorite "front story" might just be Jeni's ice cream cookbook... but more on that later.  Dinner before dessert.  (Usually.)

This supper tart couldn't be easier, and there's no reason not to make it on a weeknight.  It uses a frozen puff pastry, so the only planning ahead you need to do here is to throw the frozen box into the fridge on the way out the door in the morning so you don't have to thaw it when you get home.  If you forget, then put it on the countertop (unwrapped) so that it thaws more quickly while you get everything else together.  Sometimes I'll even set it on a cookie sheet on top of the preheating oven.

The recipe calls for an ungreased cookie sheet, but I started using parchment paper to ease the clean up.  I never bake without my favorite paper.  Never.

 

You'll see two versions of the recipe at the link, but to my knowledge and aging memory, we've only made the grape one.  I do believe that a piping hot purple grape is about the closest thing to heaven I've ever tasted.  On our first anniversary trip we spent a long weekend in Chicago.  I can't even remember the name of the restaurant where we ate dinner, but it was a lovely evening, and the outdoor garden was so beautiful*.  My dinner was some type of pasta with various ingredients, but I distinctly remember the roasted grapes.  I was never so sad to leave an unfinished dish behind, but I had nowhere to keep the leftovers.  Perhaps it's strange that I still remember those grapes a dozen years later, but I do - every time I make this dish.

That will explain why I use way more grapes than the recipe calls for - same for the greens.  This recipe is perfect for those slightly-past-prime salad mixes in your fridge, or for when your grapes have lost their uncooked crispness.  This supper tart will breathe one last breath of life into them, and trick you into thinking that it's perfectly acceptable to take what is essentially a day old salad, put it on layered, buttery pastry dough, drown the nooks and crannies with cream and cheese, and still feel good about your dinner.  And why not?

Preheat the oven (the only weird part of this summery dish is that you have to crank the oven up to an ungodly temperature), get out a very large bowl, and then combine all the ingredients, being generous with the grapes and the greens.  Toss it all with your hands to get the olive oil coating everything else.  The lemon zest is really a key component.  The thyme is negotiable, and a little dried is a fine substitute.

Watch this carefully, and make sure you are cooking it on the lowest rack.  It's going to get really brown on the bottom, but that's the beauty of puff pastry - the bottommost layer will likely just stick to the paper and the other thousand layers will be perfection.  Mind your tongue - cheese pockets and cooked grapes can be hot, but they are oh so worth it.  If you try out any other combinations of ingredients and like the results, do share in the comments.

*Edited to add:  Rose Angelis in Lincoln Park was the restaurant.

it matters

I have found in these many years of writing in this space, that there is sometimes a disconnect between the words on this page - the sequence of my "published" life - that is a bit incongruous with the actual reality of my life.  Most weekends I find myself filled with ideas or inspiration for new projects, and I also find myself with more daylight hours to photograph the people and the things around me.  Sometimes I'll start mapping out the week in my head, thinking about the sequence of stories or images or thoughts, and sorting them into various posts and ramblings that I might share.  I've shared this before:  M often watches me and says that I must be "blogging in my mind".  That isn't to say that I plan my days around what I will write about, what I might post.  I have no schedule, no boss here.  No advertisers or sponsors.  No pressure.  But it might mean that I do think a lot more about what I'm experiencing, and how I'm relating to my family or to our home.  It often means I pull out the camera more - something I'm quite grateful for, and something I hope I never stop doing.

Last weekend M and E were out-of-town, camping with E's Girl Scout troop.  While they were gone the little one and I had some grand adventures out of the house and in it.  It was Mother's Day.  I started a new project, I worked on an old one.  I did some massive cleaning and uncovered treasures worth sharing.  I had stories to write, pictures to upload, things to admire and talk about.

Then there are these moments that occur - in the real life, not this recounting life - and I don't know what to do.  Sometimes these are collective experiences that we all share, and sometimes they are very private ones that only a few of us share.  Regardless of the length of their reach, they change the telling.  I question the story, my story.  Do you need to see how I've rearranged my pantry, made my dinner, decorated my cookies, tucked my children into their lucky, lucky beds when the rest of my-your-our lives have been torn upside down in a moment?  When I'm quiet here, it's not because I'm busy.  When I'm busy I do far more things than even fit into the hours of the day, and what's a simple blog post in the middle of the fray?  When I'm quiet here, it's because my story has changed and the words haven't followed the shift yet.  They have to tumble around and get their bearings before they come out across the page.  They need a quiet house (as mine is now) - a weighty silence before they feel ready to emerge.

And then there is this:  maybe it's not my story.  Maybe it's not about me.  Maybe it is another person's story to share, and even if I know them, love them, ache for them, maybe it's just really not about me.  If I share their sorrow with others, their unbearable, unimaginable sorrow, is it just so that they, you, understand my quiet?  Sometimes it helps to do that, to say that I can't bear this on my own or tie enough prayer knots or encourage enough people to care and hope and be there.  And then there are times when I don't even know if it matters because it is such a drop in a bucket with no bottom; not a hole or a crack, but no bottom to speak of, no bottom to hold any of the hurt or the pain or the grief.  There are times (like this time) when it doesn't even feel right to ask; to presume that the bottom could ever be restored.

My sister is helping to plan a funeral this week, for a child, a baby.  Not her own, but like her own.  A baby; and I can't even wrap my words around it so that they don't sound harsh and furious, because the ones in my head really are.  I check in on her, and as she tells me about the service planned, I remember this piece I read here a few weeks ago.  And then a friend mentioned the very same piece, first told on NPR in 2005 by Aaron Freeman, so I revisited it again, reading it slowly, and differently.

.....

You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got. 

And at one point you'd hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her eyes, that those photons created within her constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever. 

And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives. 

And you'll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed, they should not have faith. Let them know that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time. You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they'll be comforted to know your energy's still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you're just less orderly. Amen. 

.....

The first time I read this it was late April, and I smiled when I read it.  I thought it clever and lovely, and even a bit humorous at the end.  The stories out of Boston were still fresh, and it's not that the sobbing and the weeping and the brokenhearted-ness and the grief rocking weren't powerful in this piece - they felt very real to me - but I loved the perspective here.  I certainly can't claim to know Mr. Freeman's real take on (religious) faith, or even his opinion of clergy.  I didn't read his last paragraph as disdain for religion over science, nor did I think he was suggesting that most of us were inviting the wrong officiant to the service, but rather, I read it as the truest, simplest observation of what a funeral is, of what grief is.  We ask clergy or family or friends or any number of people to speak at funerals, and what they say is meaningful and important and necessary.  We speak of the dead, we speak of the journey of grief, we speak of faith and hope and understanding.  

But in those rawest of moments we don't yet need those words.  We can't hear that we need faith to endure, to understand, because we just don't have it right now, we just don't have it.  And if we don't have it - if we don't know where it has gone or if it will ever, ever come back to us, then we might feel that we will never endure, we will never understand.  That becomes the truth, our truth.

We need someone to tell us - in a manner more certain than certainty itself - that he is still with us, he has changed us, he will continue to shape us, he mattered.   

This all matters - all the ways that we interrupt those particles, the paths we change.  Trivial, it is not; not the curl of a finger, or the wisp of a hair.

delayed gratification

I mentioned awhile back that I had some birthday money burning a hole in my pocket, and so I decided to buy myself a tree.  I don't think I mentioned that we also had a Crate & Barrel credit (some extra bucks we "earned" by purchasing a couch right after Christmas), but we did, and it was expiring early last week.  We skimmed through the catalog, and looked at CB2 and Land of Nod, but honestly, there wasn't anything we really needed from any of those places.  And then I thought Tree.  Planter.  Tree.  Planter.  So I "bought" a planter.  Back up to right after Christmas, when I also made another sizable purchase - the fabric for F's Great Wall of Curtains project.  

Believe it or not, there is a link between these three items.

.....

You may recall that I drew out the fabric decision on F's curtains for ages, and when I finally settled on the perfect swatch out of dozens and dozens, it just happened to be ridiculously expensive.  Even with the once a year, 40% off sale.

Still, I went for it - fabric only - and I decided that I could do the project myself despite the fact that I am terrified of screwing that fabric up.  If I do, it's gorgeous pillows for Christmas for everyone!  Pillows stained with my tears, of course.

I ordered the fabric in mid-January, and paid for it in full.  Gulp.  Seven to ten business days later the enormous roll of fabric showed up at my office with a rather large tear in the plastic bag at the bottom, and a distinctly gritty feeling about the whole the thing.  I took it home that evening and unrolled it to great fanfare in the nursery, and it was absolutely filthy.  Filthy.  The damaged roll had apparently spent a good amount of time propped on end beside a delivery truck, holey end resting in a dirty street puddle.  I know this because the entire bolt had wicked water and grit about 75% up the roll of fabric.  It kind of smelled like wet asphalt and broken dreams.

I could have just called and complained, but I knew they were going to make me bring a pricey roll of fabric like that back in to prove it, so I drove back out to the not-so-convenient suburban (nameless) store where I purchased said fabric, and I unrolled it to great fanfare across their counter.  It was confirmed filthy, and they promptly ordered another roll of the fabric.

Time ticked on and the fabric didn't show.  I finally called the store and they had no clue what I was talking about, so they called somebody that might know, and they told me that the fabric was back ordered til March.  Or maybe April.  Could be May, but they felt pretty sure it was April, and would I kindly call them back to confirm the date closer to the time?

I continued to call once a month, and each time I had to recount the story while they told me I wasn't in their system and was I sure that I purchased it under this name, my name?  When I called again in early May I told them that I was quite certain that they should have the correct name in "the system" because they had no problem swiping that same-named card back in January when I purchased a pretend piece of fabric.

The Emperor has no curtains!  Still!

.....

My birthday in early April brought yet another year to pile onto the heap, and some birthday money.  One of those things is fun, the other, not so much.  I decided to counteract my aging sorrows with a fun gift that is also beautiful and green and perfect for the living room.  I looked around online briefly at local nurseries and ended up calling Rolling Ridge Nursery.  I told them what I wanted and the lady laughed and commented on how popular that tree is, and she'd be happy to track one down for me, but it might take a week or so.  If I wanted more of a plant shaped one, she could help me right away - but I didn't want to coax and prune and tend my way to the gorgeous six foot tall beauty in my mind.  I wanted to bring home a star.

Every week I'd check in to see if they had found anything, and every week the same woman would tell me she had located one, but it failed to show up on the truck.  She told me that this is her favorite indoor tree, but now that it's "in all the magazines" it's impossible to get one.  I feigned ignorance - "Really?  It's in all the magazines?"  By week five I was starting to give up.

.....

During week five I also received an email that my "free" money from Crate & Barrel was about to expire, so it was time to spend the credit or lose a good chunk of change.  The weekend before the deadline M was out of town, so we emailed ideas back and forth to each other to no avail.  There are so, so many cool things from all of those places, and I drool over that Land of Nod catalog every time it shows up on my doorstep, but the girls.do.not.need.anything.  Buying something to be buying something is not my cup of tea.

And then I thought about a planter!  M loved that idea, and I knew it was perfect because one day my tree might really come home and it would most likely be planted in a black, plastic pot.  I ran over at lunch to the store and was instantly greeted with around thirty planters to choose from.  Ugh, decisions. 

I resisted the urge to buy the beautiful gold planter, although I loved the color and finish.  I also loved some of the larger, minimal concrete planters, but I was determined to pick out something that my store credit could cover.  And then I saw the perfect planter for my tree - tall, simple, and in a nice matte black that will fade into the background and not upstage the tree (It's the tall one).  It also reminds me of our future fireplace, color and texture-wise.  It tapers slightly at the top which is a nice detail, and it was also the same amount as my gift certificate so it was meant to be.  I purchased it and then we waited for word from "the back" that they had located one.  No luck.  It's back ordered til late June.

.....

So early last week I was sort of lamenting the fact that I keep handing over money for items that never seem to show up - sometimes even months later.  What was more frustrating, at least about the fabric, was that I was the one continuously following up, and every time I would call it was like starting from square one with my explanation.  I was feeling a little annoyed by the whole process, and starting to wish I had all my money back rather than just waiting on fabric and trees and planters that never show up.

And then Friday they showed up!  (Except for the planter, but that's fine.)

So now I have fabric - and any delays on this project now are mine only.  

And now I have a tree, and it's absolutely perfect in the living room, even though the corner where it will reside is stuffed with items for a possible sidewalk sale (if I can get up the nerve and manage the time - both seem doubtful).  I'm a little nervous about caring for this tree - it was not inexpensive - but it looks so great in this room, and really softens the edges of all the crisp hard lines in the room.  It will grow as high as we let it grow, so pruning and watering and protecting it from drafts (honestly?  how to do that when the source of light is a 128 year old single pane window with a heat / ac register below it?) are all in our hands, so we'll see how this goes.  The internet is so magical in the way that you can search for care instructions for any plant imaginable and manage to find one hundred different (and conflicting) ways to water it correctly.  The planter will eventually come and we'll transplant it into its permanent home.  The curtains will get made, and F will stop complaining about how bright her bedroom is at bedtime and find another stalling method.  And the tree will go to the ceiling, and now I'm wondering where the heck we'll even put a Christmas tree this year.  Unless it's a fiddle leaf fig.

on celebrating (and tolerating)

On Sunday:  F's scrunched up her nose in concentration as she tries to recall the name of the holiday.  All morning long she's been discussing the day and how we're going to celebrate it, except she never pronounces the word "celebrate" correctly, and it comes out in a slightly different form each time, ellerate, ahlerate...  Now she's muttering under her breath a list of holidays that she knows aren't right.

Easter?  Valentine's Day?  Ugh, mom, what IS today?

Moth... I start to say and it's enough of a hint, so then she yells:

Mother's Day!  Yes, that's it!  Mother's Day!  Today we tolerate Mother's Day!

saturday morning in the garden

This morning F and I met up with two friends (one big, one little) for breakfast and a stroll around the garden.  It was a Saturday morning with sun!  And warmth!  And a gentle breeze!  And no rain!  So we were just a little giddy about being outside among the flowers.

The last of the tulips...

...and the high point of the azaleas.  

And of course, the iris.  F found a leaf along the way and used it to point out every single flower I should be studying and photographing.  I love this photo because it perfectly captures her way:  the confident leader, a little bossy with the pointing and demanding, and looking over her shoulder occasionally to make sure we are all doing exactly what we are supposed to be doing.

She's also a bit of a running-ahead-blur these days, and climbing on everything.  If I had a nickel for every time I asked her to please, not climb, could you stop climbing, get down from there now, I'd be a wealthy, wealthy lady and I'd spend it all on beautiful chairs and a personal gardener.

One place she did not climb was here (thank goodness), but you could see the wheels turning while she watched.

And - my favorite pincushion gardens were going in!  They embody the perfect amount of obsessiveness that I admire in my foliage displays.

It was a lovely day to be here - let's hope this is the start to many, many more perfect Saturdays.