Spicy fava-roasted carrot puree and caraway pepper flatbreads

Spicy fava carrot purée

We’re hunkered and bunkered down, waiting for hurricane Sandy to stop by. At the moment we’ve got driving rain and fairly wild wind. But we still have power, so I can’t complain. We’re all a little stir crazy, but I’m actually having a nice day. We’re all together, the boys didn’t have school, and we were asked to stay off the roads, so David is home, too. I baked a cake. I made a big pot of sweet potato, red bean, kale and pumpkin ale chili that will hopefully keep warm for dinner if the power goes out, and I’m currently drinking the rest of the pumpkin ale. We’ll sit and draw for a while. I can’t complain!

I’m not up to my usual rambling nonsense, so I made a playlist about storms, floods, winds and rain. I’m open to suggestions for songs to add!

caraway flatbread

And I’ll just tell you quickly about this yummy meal. Loosely based on my understanding of tunisian carrot salads and on Ethiopian ful, this is a spicy puree of carrots, olives, and fava beans (the dried and cooked kind, I used a canned variety) Quick to make, and delicious with these caraway seed flatbreads.

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Semolina cake with bananas and coconut milk (and banana-pear chocolate chip bread)

Semolina banana cake

The first film I ever made was called The Real World. It was about seven hot strangers living together in one house – O! the drama that ensued! I’m joking of course. My first film hit the streets several years before MTV’s seminal reality show. It was, in point of fact, a three-minute in-camera-edited powerhouse of a film. A young man walks down a long, brick path, holding a blue jay feather. He’s obviously delighted with it! He encounters a very tall couple dressed in evening clothes – dressed all in black, and wearing top hats and veils. He shows them the feather. They laugh and point. He feels foolish and drops the feather. And that’s pretty much it. Exeunt omnes! To this day, I find it heartbreaking when somebody is happy about something or proud of an achievement, and they’re teased or belittled. Nothing so sad as deflated enthusiasm! Last night we started watching the documentary Marley with the boys. (So far so good). Malcolm was very impressed and he wanted to wear my Bob Marley shirt to school today. He was so excited about it that he wore it even though it was picture day, and he wore a button-down shirt over it, which he planned to remove with a flourish once picture-taking had ended. I met them after school on this grey and drizzly day. Malcolm looked as dapper as ever in his tweed cap and plaid skater’s jacket. After about half a block he said, “I’m never wearing this shirt to school ever again! Everybody teased me! They said it was a girl’s shirt!!” Ouch. He didn’t seem that upset, but I felt like crying. We caught up to some friends of theirs. Isaac said, “Everybody teased Malcolm’s shirt.” Their friend said, “What! That’s Bob Marley, he’s the coolest guy ever. He wanted peace! Anybody who teases you for wearing a Bob Marley shirt is an idiot!!” Huzzah! I felt like crying all over again, and giving their little friend a big hug! I think we should invent a super hero that travels around the world being glad to see people, and noticing when they’re proud, and giving them little pats on the back for their achievements, and admiring their treasures.

So…we had some overripe bananas. I’d just made a sort of traditional banana bread last week, with pears and chocolate chips. It was delicious! I don’t have a picture, but I’ll give you the recipe anyway. I wanted to try something different this time. So I mixed semolina flour into the batter, which gave it a lovely texture – large crumbed and dense, but light and delicate at the same time. And I flavored it with cardamom and ginger. And I added a half cup of coconut milk, which gave it a lovely creaminess and flavor. There’s no actual coconut in the cake, so it’s quite a mysterious and subtle flavor.

Here’s Bob Marley with Rastaman Live Up! Don’t be afraid of the wolf pack!
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Gorditas with roasted salsa and pigeon peas

Gorditas

So it’s the first week of school. I ventured to the CSA this morning to pick some vegetables – easier, quicker, and much less fun without my boyish entourage. On the way home, I heard a man on the radio talking about raising successful children by teaching them grit and character. (I realize that I am very badly paraphrasing the words of this man who sounded both reasonable and intelligent, and I apologize.) His words really struck home, as we send the boys back into the uncertain waters of a new school year – by turns bright and clear and uplifting, and dark and murky, full of fascinating silt and weeds. They learn from it all, of course! I think it must be impossible for a parent to hear somebody talk about this subject without turning it back on themselves. Am I doing enough to teach them grit and character? How do you even do that? What the heck is grit? What’s character? Secretly, part of you thinks, “Of course I’m doing a good job! Just look at my brilliant boys!” And part of you thinks, “My god, I’m failing completely, they’ll be gritless and lacking in character and scarred for life!” Somebody phoned in a question about I.Q. and academic success – assuming a correlation between the two, and the man said that in fact self-control was more important than I.Q. in determining academic success. Oh dear! I thought…parent-teacher conferences for both boys tend to run, “Your son is so smart and creative, but he’s just got too much energy/he calls out too much/he can’t focus on the assignment…” Sigh. We hit a strange patch last year with Malcolm, when his first “real grades” report card came out, and it was very different from the straight s+ report cards of years gone by. Oh dear! Well, this is when it always helps to take a step back and widen the picture for yourself, and think about the meaning of “success” and how varied and subjective it is. (Of course I want my boys to be successful in every accepted conventional sense, of course I do – life is so much easier that way!) But when you ask the boys what they’re good at, what achievements they’re proud of, they’ll say: jumping off of things, finding an antique bottle in a creek, drawing dragons and robots, running very fast, climbing steep hills. They feel good about these things! And, honestly, any of them can lead to every kind of success, if they’re not discouraged. And I’m glad that they like writing and reading, too, and that Malcolm’s favorite subject is math. They both love school, and that makes me feel very lucky and very happy.

Roasted salsa

And, of course, they’re good little cooks!! These gorditas were very fun to make, and even more fun to eat! I have to thank the proprietess of Hot Spicy and Skinny for drawing them to my attention, when she read of my struggles making tortillas without a press. I’m not sure if I made them authentically. I sort of combined a bunch of different recipes that I saw, and I used a combination of butter and olive oil rather than lard. They turned out so tasty! Crispy, chewy, flavorful. We split them in the middle, but it might have been easier to pile the peas on top, or even break off pieces and use them like naan. The salsa is the result of my preference for roasted garlic, onions and peppers over raw. I decided to roast everything (well, broil, really) and then mix it all together. It’s yummy! Smoky, a little sweet, a little spicy. You can use any combination of sweet peppers and hot peppers that you happen to have on hand, and you could easily use onion instead of shallot. And the pigeon peas match their earthy meatiness with bright sweet corn, tomatoes and cilantro. We ate everything mixed together, with basmati rice and grated sharp cheddar.

Pigeon peas and corn

Here’s Expectations by Belle and Sebastian.

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Cornmeal flatbread

Cornmeal flatbread

This may come as a big surprise, but despite the fact that I’m the lady authoress of a vegetarian food blog, and that I celebrate the ordinary in food, art, and life, and that I’d like to redefine “success” to rate compassion for people and animals over financial gain (wouldn’t you like to see a sort of “world’s wealthiest” list of people who are kind to their dogs, rather than people who have accrued a lot of money?) – despite all of these factors, I’ve never interned for Paul Ryan. I know! Weird, right? We’re a perfect match. Consequently, I’ve never read any Ayn Rand. I have, however, watched some youTube videos of interviews with her, which, I think you’ll agree, makes me something of a modern day expert. I must confess, I’m very puzzled. I cannot fathom why anybody would espouse her views. She seems like a sad and dangerous sociopath, to me. This is my highly nuanced and expert view. It just doesn’t make sense to me that anybody would admire her, and that those people would achieve what we now know as success, in politics or life. I’m befuddled, because I hear a lot of people very angrily shouting about self-reliance and criticizing the poor and unfortunate. I hear it at my work, where the very loud angry people would go down and sort out those clowns in Washington, if they could get off their bar stool. I hear it in clips of debates, in which people yell, “let him die!” I see it on Fox news, which they watch at work sometimes. But I’ve never really seen it in the actions of individuals. Most people I know are kind and charitable. Everybody loves It’s a Wonderful Life! People like helping other people – it makes them happy to do it. They join together to help people who have had an accident, or fallen on a patch of bad luck. This is all people, regardless of nationality or political identity. Sure, there are bullies – there are insecure people who beat up on others because they feel bad about themselves, but nobody admires them. They might consider themselves strong, and the people they abuse weak, but few people would agree with them. When Rand said that weak people don’t deserve to be loved (which is a tiny part of a clip that I saw, in my extensive youTube research), you have to feel sorry for her. Because we’re all weak, sometimes. Everybody is. But surely nobody is more weak than the person surrounding herself with hate and scorn and self-interest, and cutting herself off from compassion and kindness.

I apologize for getting nearly political here. I know it’s not the place. But I feel quite upset about this, so I’ve got to talk about it! You know what’s comforting? Flatbread. Making it and eating it. I made this flatbread with some cornmeal, some thyme, and some mozzarella. I thought it was delicious. A nice crispy/chewy texture. They’re not cheesy, exactly, but they have a nice flavor of cheese, and it helps to make them less dry. The boys loved it, too. We ate it with grilled vegetables, sliced tomatoes, spicy fried potatoes, and a big big salad. It’s not hard to make, but it is one of those pleasant do a little bit all day long types of dish. It was nice fresh with dinner, and nice the next day toasted with scrambled eggs.

Here’s Billy Bragg with The Milkman of Human Kindness
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Moroccan spiced chickpea, tomato and pepper stew & couscous, & semolina bread

Morrocan chickpea stew

Malcolm wanted to go to the river. Isaac didn’t. It’s not the first time this has happened. After another epic struggle, we persuaded Isaac to walk down with us. As we walked, Malcolm declared that he was an outdoors swimming animal, and Isaac was an indoors curl-up-in-a-nest-of-fur-and-feathers animal. We laughed, cause it’s funny and it’s sort of true. But I felt uneasy. We try very hard not to label the boys a certain way. Not to say… Malcolm is a man who does this, and Isaac is a man who does that; or Malcolm’s good at this, and Isaac’s good at that. Because when somebody decides that you are a certain way, you can get stuck. I find it interesting, and a little frightening, how readily people take to a certain description of themselves. The boys like being defined in certain ways. We all do…everything’s such a confusing muddle, and it makes it easier if you have a semi-solid notion of yourself from which to make sense of it all. As an example…Malcolm is the boy who will try any food, Isaac is the boy who refuses to taste a thing. This is a thing that’s been decided, and Isaac is almost proud of it. But it’s just not true! In fact, I’d go even farther to say that the idea that children like bland, pale foods, and we should start out feeding them tasteless things, and trick them into eating anything else, is also, just not true. We fed tiny Malcolm oatmeal and yogurt and bananas. Then, one day, on a whim, we gave him orzo with pesto on it. Who turned the lights on? Flavor! Strong, sharp flavor! (Tiny little pasta that squishes through your fingers and drives the dog crazy when you scatter it ont the floor!) I think all children like strong flavors – Isaac likes olives and goat cheese – he always has. They both love capers, which they call flavor dynamites. We just have to give them a chance to try these things! Tapenade baby food, anyone?

Isaac eats a chickpea

So when I made this Moroccan-spiced chickpea stew, Isaac refused to try it, because that’s what he does. Then I gave him a chickpea. He ate that, and helped himself to more. I gave him an olive. He ate that, and spooned a few more onto his plate. By the time the rest of us had left the table, I looked out the window and saw that he’d pulled the whole serving plate toward him, and was eating everything together, hungrily. So we’ll take Isaac swimming, and Malcolm will curl up on the couch with a good book.

The stew was really tasty, and it’s a good way to use up all your tomatoes, zucchini, and peppers, if you’re sick and tired of ratatouille. It’s not authentically Moroccan-spiced, of course. It’s just that it’s a pleasing mixture of savory spices and herbs, and “sweet” spices and herbs. And the bread! Well, I’d been reading fascinating accounts of Moroccan flatbread, that generally contain semolina, and are folded into all sorts of beautiful fashions. I decided to play around with these ideas, but in one big loaf. It turned out very nice! With a lovely texture and flavor – crumbly, chewy, and satisfying. If you don’t feel like doing all the crazy folding, you could just shape it into a nice round, and leave it at that.

Here’s Peter Tosh’s beautiful I Am that I Am.

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Zucchini-corn-basil soup and herbed semolina biscuits

Zucchini corn soup

When last we’d left our intrepid explorers, Claire was yelling at Malcolm and feeling bad about it. CUT TO…several days later. Claire’s walking home from work. She’s tired, and if we’re being honest, she’s a little cranky and discouraged. Suddenly, through the shifting crowd of tourists, she sees two beaming faces bobbing towards her. It’s her boys! Isaac stops at the corner, and leans cooly against a lamppost; Malcolm charges across the street and nearly knocks her over with the force of his hug. Back in their paint-peeling, disordered, yet charming home, Claire makes a quick and delicious dinner. Then she and Malcolm set out to get a cup of coffee and a quart of milk for their breakfast. The air is cool and sweet, it’s a peach of an evening – a perfectly ripe, sweet, peach of an evening. So they take the long way, they walk down to the tow path. Malcolm says he wants to swim, but the air is like water, and it feels good when he flaps his arms like wings. Claire loves him so much she could cry, at that moment, but they walk along the towpath, both flapping their arms slowly like big strange birds. They meet friends who had a beagle that died the same week Steenbeck did. They have a new beagle puppy, who’s boundingly happy. They all seem happy, and they remark that Malcolm is almost as tall as Claire. “I know!” she replies, “and he’s only ten!” When Malcolm and Claire reach the main street, the shop is closed, so they keep walking. Somehow, Malcolm catches Claire’s hand…and holds it! Claire feels as though she’s caught a rare, sweet toad, that might jump through her fingers. This won’t happen much longer, she knows that. On the way home, they pass a boy they knew when he was Malcolm’s age. Now he’s a teenager, a big, lanky, laughing teenager, walking with his friends. Malcolm eyes them appraisingly. In the house, David and Isaac are playing a game with bug-inscribed tiles. Claire passes through the house to the backyard, because the air is so delicious. She listens to the katydids and the whirring evening insects. David joins her, and they hear a screech owl. He calls to it, and it calls back. They watch the day change into night, they feel the summer change into autumn. The boys come out, and Isaac curls up in Claire’s lap, his smooth cool/warm skin glowing milkily in the dusky light. They don’t want to go inside, they want to listen for the owl. It’s hard to make them go to bed, at this moment. CUT TO…

Herbed semolina biscuits

But wait a moment, you’re asking yourself! What was the quick and delicious dinner that Claire made? Well, I’ll tell you. It was a soup with zucchini, corn, scallions and lots of basil. Malcolm said it tasted like winter, and David said it tasted like something we’d eat in winter to remind ourselves of what summer tasted like. And we had biscuits made partly with semolina flour, with fresh sage, thyme, and oregano, and freshly ground black pepper in them. Isaac loved the biscuits. Everyone else liked everything together.

Here’s A Tribe Called Quest with Excursions. “I said, ‘Daddy, don’t you know that things go in cycles.'”
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Lemon-caper roasted potatoes and the best bread I’ve ever made

Lemon caper potatoes

Here at the naive political philosophy department of The Ordinary, we are sick and tired of worrying about money. And bills. And not having money to pay bills. We suspect that we are not the only ones who feel this way. We have been applying ourselves to solve the problem.

Here’s how it will go… Everybody will work very hard doing what they love, and they will have as much as they need to live comfortably. We trust that everybody will love to do different things, so the jobs should be nicely distributed. If somebody feels that they don’t love any kind of work, they will go to school for a time until they figure it out. Education should prepare you for a career by helping you discover your passion, and that’s how it will work.

The crappy jobs that nobody wants to do will be divided evenly by everybody, and performed a few hours a day or a few days a week – whatever is necessary and pleasant. Everybody! These jobs generally involve serving people, caring for people, or cleaning up after people, and when everybody has to take a turn at them, we will all develop a love and respect for humanity that will humble and elevate us. You cannot buy your way out of this.

In this way, we will reconsider our societal notions of what is valuable, and of what is successful. If you isolate yourself with more riches than you can use, and accumulate more things than you need, you will not be admired, you will seem foolish. Children are taught not to be greedy, not to want more than everybody else, and we will remember these teachings as adults. Everybody will look into their own heart or soul or stomach – wherever they make important decisions – to decide what they need, including, of course, things that don’t seem strictly necessary, but give pleasure or inspiration. So you might say to yourself, “I would like a half pint of castelvetrano olives, but I don’t think I need an elevator for my car.” This is our plan, and I’m sure you can see that it is the essence of pragmatism, and that it will be extremely practical to implement, and will go off hitch-free, and that nobody can quibble with it in any way.

In keeping with the practicality of this post, we will give you two recipes at once, and both will be for practical things – bread and potatoes. This bread is the best bread that I have ever made! All the other loaves have been preparation for this bread. It is crispy, it has a big open grain – it has holes! It’s chewy, and tasty. I nearly killed my food processor making it!! I’ve been experimenting with wetter and wetter dough, these last few months – to the point that it became very messy to knead with my hands. I was thrilled to get my food processor, because I thought I could use it to knead the dough. It worked, but at some point it seized up! There was a bad smell of burning. The dough was stuck in the food processor, the blade wouldn’t move, the container would not be budged! I scraped all the dough out into a bowl, and everything worked out in the end. I must have left it too long. The other recipe is for a medley of different types of potatoes (from our CSA!) We have red-skinned, white fleshed, golden fleshed. We scrubbed them, cut them in half, boiled them briefly, combined them with olive oil, oregano, capers, olives and lemon juice, and broiled them. Perhaps the most delightful and unexpected part of this recipe is that the capers (or flavor dynamites, as my sons call them) got crispy. Crispy! They’re delicious.

Best bread I’ve ever made!

Here’s The Velvet Underground with Beginning to see the Light. Some people work very hard, but still they never get it right. Ain’t it the truth?
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Zucchini corn bread

Zucchini corn bread

I’ve mentioned in the past that bird watching was a big part of our courtship. These days it’s mostly sitting in the backyard with our coffee before the boys get up, watching the sparrows and squirrels. But it’s nice to know there’s still a busy world going on above our heads. We might not be able to stop and look for a long time, but we can still hear them, and know them by their song. Once, many years ago, I asked David what kind of bird I would be, if I were a bird. He said maybe a warbling vireo. If you’re not familiar with a warbling vireo, I’ll tell you that it’s a small, green & grey bird known for its song, which is delivered in “…long melodious warbling phrases.” Heh heh heh. If there’s a warbling vireo around, you know it, because they never stop singing! They have a lot to say! Perfect, right? It’s a sweet bird, and very nice to be compared to. One of the qualities I admire in David is that he’s very economical with words. That seems like a rare quality in our loud world. Everybody’s talking and texting and making noise, and not listening at all. He doesn’t talk incessantly, but when he does talk, he says just the right thing. The right words at the right time. He’s very witty, but he doesn’t need everybody in the room to hear him. My boys think he knows everything, and it does seem that way at times, but he doesn’t need to tell you that he knows everything. (Like I do! If I know the answer I’ll be in the back of the room with my hand in the air saying “Ooh ooh ooh, call on me! Call on me!”) And when he does nice things for people, he doesn’t need them to know that he’s the one that did them. He doesn’t need anyone to know! I love that. So if he was a bird, maybe he’d be a veery. They don’t talk much, but when they do you want to hear them, because they have a remarkable song.

David really liked this zucchini bread! It’s basically a corn bread, but because corn bread can sometimes be quite dry, I added a grated zucchini to moisten it up. (And, let’s face it, it’s zucchini season – they’re going in everything!) I added a little brown sugar, some cinnamon, and a pinch of cayenne. I think it turned out quite well! A little sweet, with the mysterious flavor of corn, and just enough cayenne that the flavor sort of pops in your mouth. It was also incredibly easy to make – you can mix it together in minutes.

Here’s Talib Kweli’s beautiful Talk to You.

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Banana, lime & coconut bread

Banana, lime, and coconut bread

In which Claire goes on and on about a word she has a crush on.
Today, friends, we’ll be extraordinarily etymological. I love this word: “selah.” It’s a word of ambiguous history and meaning, and the mystery only adds to its beauty. It’s a Hebrew word found frequently in the psalms, but it’s also a word in modern Arabic and Syrian Aramaic, and I’m fascinated by all of the ideas about what it might mean. (I haven’t done very scholarly research on this, but when you’re dealing with ambiguous words, precise meanings and careful citations are not desirable, I think, and in my case, they’re just not possible, because my brain is a vague and muddled place!) The psalms (also a lovely word!) were apparently sung and accompanied by music, and it’s possible that the word “selah” was a notation to the choir master, possibly to take a break in the music, to pause and reflect on what’s been said, to change the rhythm to signal a change in thought or theme. It also means to lift up, or hang, or to measure. So perhaps it means the person singing the psalms should lift up their voice, in pitch or volume. Of course, things were measured by being lifted and weighed against something else, so that’s part of the meaning, as well. (I wish I could express my thoughts more clearly – Isaac is having a distracting and inexplicable melt-down about strawberry chewing gum. He never gets to do what he wants! Never!) Back in the day, when I was in school, I read a lot of feminist film theory, and I found it very thrilling. It was difficult to understand, but it was frequently about language, about the language of film, and the language of vision, as well as the language we speak with. I think the authors used purposely obscure language, but I found this funny, it was a sort of joke, and it was a pleasure trying to decipher their meaning. Many writers spoke of the necessity of using the spaces between words or between shots to tell the story. To inhabit the silent moments to tell a more interesting story than the words or actions could tell. That’s what “selah” reminds me of – at least as I understand it. It’s about the words that have come before – it gives them more meaning and value, because you’re measuring them, and pausing to think about them. But it’s about the pause itself as well. I can picture meaning hanging in the air, floating just above our grasp, before it’s set down again and we can reach it. Apparently in Arabic and Syrian Aramaic, the word means “praise,” and specifically praise beyond expression or understanding. It’s a word to describe what can’t be described in words!!

Of course, I came to the word through The Ethiopians’ song The Selah. Because “selah” is also a word used by rastafarians. It gives weight and importance to the words that have come before, and it “seals them up.” I love the Ethiopians for their sweet voices and sweet melodies, and I love that I can’t always understand what they’re saying, which makes them mysterious and full of meaning. It’s funny how when the meaning is obscure or indefinable, it feels more like somebody is talking to you, or expressing your thoughts. Selah!

If you’re like us, and you’re having a hot patch of summer, all of your fruit is ripening faster than you can eat it. So you have some extra mushy bananas. Here’s a banana bread with tropical overtones for our tropical heat wave. It’s flavored with ginger, lime, and coconut. It’s very subtly sweet, and the ginger and lime add a little zing. Yes, it’s too hot to bake, but we’re baking anyway, because we can’t not!

Here’s The Ethiopians’ The Selah

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French lentils with roasted beets and walnuts

French lentils and roasted beets

When I was a kid, people used to say, “that was beat.” That meant it was bad. I’m not sure if this was specific to where and when I grew up, or if it was more of universal phraseology, but it was quite prevalent amongst my peers. (When I was even younger, people used to say “feeling crunchy,” when somebody was put down or proven wrong. I’m fairly sure that was specific to my middle school! Ooooooh, feeeeeeling cruuuuuunchyyyyyy…”) So, if something was beat, it was bad. To use it in a sentence, “That party was so beat, because the music was beat, and the people were really beat, too.” I’ve decided to make it my life’s work, my raison d’etre, to bring the phrase back, but as a description of a good thing, and changing it slightly to “beet.” “That party was so beet, man, I never wanted to leave! My job is so great, it’s roasted beet. Awww, they’re my favorite band of all time…they’re golden beet.” Maybe I shouldn’t have been thinking about this before bed, because I had a dream about beet brickle, which I think we can all agree I shouldn’t try to make. I also thought of this recipe, which turned out deeeeeelicious. Totally beet. It’s got french lentils cooked with a little red wine, orange juice and balsamic; it’s got lovely little roasted beets and shallots; it’s got toasted walnuts, for crunch; it’s got fresh basil, sage, and tarragon, for spring-herb-garden-deliciousness; and it’s got tiny cubes of mozzarella, which get nice and melty when they hit the warm lentils.

Crusty bread

We ate it with some fresh black pepper bread, and I’m extremely excited about it. As you know, if you’ve been following along at home, I’ve been trying for some time to make a crispy-crusted bread that doesn’t have a dense crumb. I wanted big airy holes inside. Well…I think I’ve done it! I left the dough very very wet and soft. It was messy to knead, I tell you. And I let it rise the last time, in the pan I baked it in, for well over an hour. Oh boy!! Look at the airy crumb on this baby! It’s soooooo beeeeeeeeeeeeet!

Crusty bread

Here’s LL Cool J (and Adam Horowitz!) with I Need a Beet

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