Category Archives: recipe

Pistachio ricotta tart topped with greens

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Pistachio tart with greens

Pistachio tart with greens

“You’re probably a year old! You’re not a puppy anymore! Stop chewing up my reading glasses.” “You’re a big seven-year-old boy, stop crying over every little thing.” “You’re nearly eleven years old, learn how to share with your brother!” Yes, I’ve been resorting to the tired parental chestnut of “you’re too old to behave that way,” and this has been my constant refrain of late, generally said with a weary sigh. Of course I realize that my boys could easily answer back, “Well you’re a middle-aged old fool and you cry at stupid things, too.” And Clio could say, “Well, teach me how to read! I want to reeeeeaaad!!” And they would all be right. I read an article recently that examined our changing ideas of how we should all be comporting ourselves at a certain age. People in their twenties used to be considered adults, with jobs and houses and responsibilities and children, and now they’re just roustabouts clinging desperately to every shred of youthful irresponsibility. And by the time we’re fifty or sixty we’re pretending to be thirty or forty. It’s all just one life-long delusional muddle. And maybe they’re right, the writers of this article. They’re probably right. But it’s hard to move through life gracefully, acting as expected at every stage. It’s hard to respond with appropriate maturity to all of life’s frustrating situations. Sometimes it seems as though everybody is constantly struggling not to act like a toddler, desperately trying not to pout or scream about not getting what they want. Some days it is hard to keep from crying over every little thing. Many days I feel less mature than the boys: when I yell at them irrationally or say something petty and childish. They’re very patient with me. From time-to-time I feel that Malcolm is even taking care of me. He saw a biting fly in the car just before I drove off, and he tried to show it the door. When it wouldn’t leave he said, “Mom, don’t get scared and crash the car.” One day, he and I went for a walk and it started to thunder. I grabbed his arm. He said, “sometimes I feel as though I’m the parent and you’re the child.” I laughed until he added, “I hate that feeling.” Sob! Since then I’ve been more careful. I have a lot of fears, but I’m a strong person, and I understand why it’s important for him to know that. And I am a useless lout of a forty-four-year-old ne’er-do-well, and I do go into a sad panic at the thought of growing older. But part of what makes it less frightening and even hopeful is the thought of my boys growing big and strong and funny and wise, the thought of them meandering through life at whatever the going rate is when they’re twenty-year-olds and thirty-year-olds, the thought of them making sense of their own beautiful muddle of time passing.

Deep pistachio tart

Deep pistachio tart

David said this might be his new favorite! I’m very excited about it! For my birthday I got a lovely deep tart pan (thanks mom & dad!). I decided to make a high crust, with a layer of pistachio ricotta custard, and then to sautée some greens and pistachios to pile on top. It worked very well! A nice combination of flavors and textures. You could really taste the pistachios in the custard, which was a treat. The crust is half semolina flour, which makes it very crunchy. I used garlic scapes with the greens, because it’s that time of year, but you could use regular garlic. You could also add tomatoes or olives to the greens if you were feeling fancy. And you could absolutely make this in a normal-sized tart pan or even a cake tin.
pistachio tart with greens

pistachio tart with greens

Here’s I was Born, by Billy Bragg and Wilco, featuring Natalie Merchant. She doesn’t know how old she is!

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Summer squash “jam” with olives and pine nuts

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summer squash jam with olives and pine nuts.

summer squash jam with olives and pine nuts.

Well alright! Wh’apen? Hey ya! Gabba gabba hey! I’m not sure what you’d call these sayings…catch phrases, maybe? But they’re all the titles to some very good songs, and they’re the subject of this week’s playlist. The rules are quite flexible, but what we’re looking for is some collection of words that stands on it’s own in a conversation or greeting, that’s more than just the title of a song. Here’s the start of the playlist. I’m sure there are a million more, but I’m late for work!

This is a good dish for people who are looking for something different to do with summer squash. It’s not just sliced and sautéed, it’s grated first, and then cooked for a while with scallions and fresh herbs, so that it turns soft and saucy, almost like a jam. Then olives and tomatoes and pine nuts are added for a bit of texture and a kick of flavor. This would be nice on the side like a condiment, almost, but I think it’s best on toasts or crackers or spread on crusty bread.

Here’s that playlist again.

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Beet balls (made with semolina and ricotta)

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Beet balls

Beet balls

On the way back from the shore, we passed through long low fields of blueberry bushes, crazed orchards of wildly tangled peach trees, fields of dry golden wheat, and fields of corn, vivid and green, but still only as high as an elephant shrew’s eye. We bought some (obviously not very local) corn cobs anyway, despite the fact that Isaac currently only has one front tooth. The boys sat in the back yard and husked it. The soft pale corn silk covered everything, clinging like spiders’ webs. Today I tried to clear it away, but I couldn’t do it. I stood with a silky tangle of strands in my hand, and I thought that this morning it feels impossible to clean them away completely. But I know they’ll be gone, without my even noticing, they’ll dry up and blow away, or another rain storm will reduce them to pulp and they’ll disappear into the earth. And I thought about the winter, about how in January I’d probably like to find a wispy fragment of corn silk, because it would remind me of summer, but I won’t because it will all be gone. And that’s what summer is like.
Beet balls

Beet balls

Beets beets and more beets from the CSA! I wanted to do something different with them, other than just roasting them. Well, I roasted them, and then I mixed them with a batter of semolina flour and ricotta and dropped them in some hot olive oil. Beet balls! I thought they were delicious, and the boys liked them a lot, too. Light and tender on the inside, crispy on the outside. I flavored them with smoked paprika and a pinch of nutmeg. They’d be nice with any kind of sauce, either to serve them in or to dip them in. A creamy nut sauce, a simple tomato sauce, a pesto, a spicy catsup,

Here’s Yo La Tengo with Season of the Shark from Summer Sun, because we just watched Jaws with the boys. I was obsessed with this song for a while!
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Tacos with broccoli, chard, and kidney beans in chipotle-coconut curry sauce

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Chard, broccoli and kidney beans in coconut curry sauce

Chard, broccoli and kidney beans in coconut curry sauce

I got an iPhone four years ago. In the time since I’ve developed a nervous habit of checking my e-mail every few minutes. I don’t do it while I’m talking to people, of course, or at a meal or a gathering of any kind, but if I’m waiting on line, walking the dog, trying to write, if I’m actually just trying to check the time, I’ll always check my e-mail, too. It feels sort of hopeful and foolish. Any minute now, somebody is going to tell me they’d like to offer me a big advance to write a novel or make a feature film, and obviously they’re going to do it via e-mail, and it’s going to be totally legitimate, and if I don’t respond immediately I’ll lose the opportunity. Yeah. We got new phones, the other night, and now I get a gentle little chime each time I get a new e-mail. This means I don’t need to check!! This means that I know immediately that I got an important message from staples or toys r us or astrocenter (what the hell is astrocenter? Why are they bothering me?). Well, it feels strange. It’s vaguely disappointing, somehow. I no longer have the feeling that I could be getting good news at any time, because I know I’m not. Now I feel much more foolish than hopeful. And all of this got me thinking about mail, and how nice it used to be to wait for real mail from the mailman, and to write real letters, that required time and thought. And then I started thinking about photos, and how precious they used to be. People used to have special ways to keep photographs, little frames and boxes they would carry their one or two precious pictures in. Now we have phones loaded with snapshots. It used to require time and patience to take a photograph. The process was half skill, half luck in capturing the perfect moment. Now it’s all luck, the camera takes care of all the rest, and we can snap a billion shots a day. We have a much higher chance of capturing a randomly beautiful moment. I’ve been thinking about this quote I scribbled in my notebook a few years ago. It’s from René Claire, a filmmaker and writer who worked at the very beginning of cinema. He wrote essays about this miraculous new art form describing how passionately he felt about the direction it should take. He held it as a great responsibility to make films a certain way that would ensure that cinema lived up to its potential. Here’s the quote…

    In this era, when verbal poetry is losing the charm it exerted on the masses … a new form of poetic expression has arisen and can reach every beating heart on earth … a poetry of the people is there, seeking its way.

It’s easy to feel down and discouraged about the overwhelming barrage of messages and photos and news and information that we receive every single day, whether we like it or not. It’s easy to regret the days when a letter or a photograph was a rare and precious thing. It’s easy to be sad about the bloated, disappointing state of American film. But maybe it’s better to think about this new endless procession of snapshots, which capture an instant, are taken in an instant, and are shared in an instant, as a form of poetic expression available to most, and capable of reaching every beating heart on earth. Equal parts hopeful and foolish.
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We have tons of chard from the farm, which makes me very very happy, because I love chard. I decided to try something different with it, and cook it in a chipotle coconut milk sauce. It turned out really tasty! I added broccoli and kidney beans for substance, and lime and spices for flavor and brightness. We ate this with basmati rice, warm wheat tortillas, and a fresh salad made of avocado, cucumber and tomatoes, but you could eat it just with rice or any other grain you like.

Here’s Photo Jenny by Belle and Sebastian

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Asparagus and pecan tart

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Asparagus and pecan tart

Asparagus and pecan tart

Last week I inattentively read an article in the Guardian UK about a mother who left her three very young children to do stand-up comedy 100 days in the row. She cited an article by a woman who said every mother should only have one child in order to achieve her full professional potential (or was it creative potential? I’m losing points for comprehension and retention on this one!). She also mentioned a response by Zadie Smith who said, Well, Tolstoy and Dickens had dozens of children each. The whole exchange seemed so strange, to me, so judgy and self-righteous, that I heaved an exasperated sigh and forgot all about it. Until last night when I couldn’t sleep, of course, and the conversation went round and round in my mind like a squeaky hamster wheel. The comedian’s oddly-humorless article pretended to disparage anybody who would leave their small children at night, but she was obviously very proud of herself, and expected us to ignore the fact that it would be absurd for anybody to do 100 stand-up shows without a night off, regardless of how many children he or she had, and (if I was being ungenerous I might say) we can only assume this gimmicky trick was meant to hide the fact that she’s not all that funny. And I hope nobody made this other writer feel bad about having only one child, because I can’t understand why you’d write such an article unless you’re feeling defensive (although I haven’t read the article!). And I hope Zadie Smith doesn’t feel excessive in having two children, and I hope she realizes that Tolstoy and Dickens are pretty bad examples of successful working mothers, but that she herself might be a very good example, because she’s written some remarkable books. The comedian seemed to suggest that it’s impossible to achieve professional or creative satisfaction without sacrificing your marriage and your sanity, at least sacrificing them enough that you can write a book about the experience. And she made a big point of saying that it’s perfectly fine if you stay at home all the time with your children and have absolutely no ambition outside of their needs, in the most condescending and contradictory manner possible. Well I find the whole conversation frustrating! Of course having children is going to cause you to sacrifice some of your time and alter your ambitions, but it’s hardly the only thing that will! I could blame the boys for the fact that I haven’t made a movie in over a decade, but that would be foolish of me. I made two features films before I was thirty, and they cost a lot of time and money, and although I’m proud of them and glad that I made them, in any practical reading of the situation, they failed. That’s discouraging! That makes it hard to muster the energy and optimism to make another. Let alone the money. And you can’t forget about the money, because films are expensive. I could blame the fact that I don’t have a flourishing professional career on the boys as well, but we all know that started much earlier, with my inability to network or sit at a desk for eight hours or behave myself in an office setting. Oh, and my determination to make feature films instead of concentrating on a practical career! The truth is that it’s all very hard. And I’m very lucky, I had a lot of opportunities and support. Plenty of people work at night without a break because they have to to keep a roof over their head. Plenty of people have jobs that don’t allow them opportunity for advancement or a satisfying creative outlet. Whether you have children or not, it’s hard to get ahead, it’s hard to do all the things that you want to do, it’s hard to find time for yourself. And the truth is that there are plenty of people that manage to work things out, that have a few kids, and work full time at a job they find fulfilling, or write novels and make films that they feel good about. I always think of Agnes Varda, who joyfully, humorously, poignantly, put all of these challenges into her work, and made it stronger and more appealing in this way. When she was pregnant, she made short films, not about being pregnant, but informed by the process. Her films seem are full of life in the best possible way–full of her life. And now she makes movies with her children–they’re in her films, they shoot her films. I’m determined to do this with my boys, to soak up some of their creativity and imagination and wit, all of which makes any time I’ve given up to care for them well-spent. Showing them the movies and books and pictures we love, sharing music with them, watching them experience the world through their eyes is the best inspiration I can think of. For me it all comes down to thinking of life as a process and a balance, and trying to notice and understand everything, even though this is impossible. To try to make all the ordinary things as beautiful and creative as possible, so that you don’t sit around waiting for the right moment to do your great work, so that you’re always working on one big great rolling series of works. You let it all in, and you process it, and you find some way to share it, if you need to, you find a way to speak it or draw it or film it or sing it or tell jokes about it. And that’s how I feel about that.

Asparagus pecan tart

Asparagus pecan tart

Speaking of babies and creativity, I made this tart for the baby shower of my sister-in-law and her wife, who are two of the most creative people I know. They’re constantly busy, and they’ve made pregnancy part of their beautiful creative process–they’ve expressed their joy and anticipation so solidly that it glows, and I’m sure all the moments of their daughter’s life will be caught and held, with wonder and love. Yeah. Well, this tart has a pepper pecan crust, and a mild yet flavorful filling of asparagus, spinach, a bit of thyme, and some sharp cheddar. It’s pretty easy to put together, and has a nice combination of green and nutty flavors.

Here’s Who Feels it Knows It, by the Wailing Wailers, just because I love it.

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Goat cheese and avocado purée

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Goat cheese and avocado purée

Goat cheese and avocado purée

I got a ukulele for my birthday! I’m crazy about it! It’s so pretty and sounds so nice. But Claire, I hear you asking, how can you possibly have time for this in your busy schedule? How can you possibly fit in one more thing that you’ll do very badly and amateurishly and that will in no way further your “career?” Well, I’ll make time! I’ll shuffle around all of my other dilettantish pursuits. In point of fact, I’m very very happy about my ukulele. It has such a lovely sound…as David said, it’s sad but hopeful, and as my friend Blimpy said, even the minor chords sound cheerful. It’s wistful and melancholy. And I’ve been playing guitar badly for about 25 years (I can still only play about five chords), but ukulele feels brand new to me, and it feels good to learn something new at my advanced age. It makes my brain feel more nimble and limber. That’s right, limble and nimber. So today’s Sunday interactive playlist is ukulele songs! Simple! And I promise to learn each and every song that anybody suggests.
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This dish is simple, too. It was incredibly easy. I’m not sure what to call it. A dip? Goat cheese guacamole? A sauce? You could eat it with any kind of chip or cracker or smeared on bread or with the saltine nachos my boys invented or with roasted vegetables or with fresh vegetables. It’s soft mild goat cheese mixed with soft mild avocado with fresh chives (from the farm) and lime juice. You could add other flavors if you like…chopped tomatoes or cumin or cilantro or jalapenos, but we liked it simple, like this.

Here’s a link to the ukulele playlist.
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Savory cake with tomatoes, mozzarella and olives

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Savory cake with olives, tomatoes and mozzarella

Savory cake with olives, tomatoes and mozzarella

Have you ever discovered a wonderful new way to start a story? Cause I have, and I’ll tell you about it. Did you see? Did you see what I did there? I asked a question and then I told you that I’m going to answer it for you! Where did I discover this ingenious new rhetorical method? Why, in the piles and piles of paper Malcolm brought home on the last day of school, of course. I love going through all the boys’ papers. It’s so funny to see their odd ideas and their mad doodles. Sometimes I think all of the little notes and drawings, which are probably dire signs that they aren’t focussing, are my favorite part of their work. And I love to learn what they’ve been thinking about–that Isaac’s major interests this year were bats and his big brother, and that his heart murmur makes his heart have an echo, and that makes him feel special. Malcolm’s writing journal is a treat. It’s a chaotic pile of ripped pages and tiny pictures of his favorite recurring character, a fez-wearing fellow named madman. But it gets neater as it goes along. The writing is more even, the stories are longer and more carefully formed, but the spelling is as erratic as ever, which is definitely a sign of genius, right? Towards the end of the journal, all of the stories start with the “Have you ever…? I have, and I’ll tell you about it” pattern, which I actually love. I’m never going to sit around worrying about how to start a story again! This technique, so confiding and conversational, pulls you right into the story. My favorite of his essays begins like this. (Spelling and grammar have been cleaned up to ease comprehension.) “Have you ever had a favorite window? Cause I have and I’ll tell you about it. It is a green window that has a radiator next to it so when I look out I am warm. Speaking of looking out, I always see a white parking lot or [unintelligible] normal [trails off here]. I feel happy Jumpy when I look out that window…” And that’s pretty much it. It’s an unfinished work. I love it though, and I’m going to tell you why. First of all, I love windows in literature, and in photographs and films, and I’m proud to think of Malcolm joining this fine tradition. Furthermore, I know which window he’s talking about, and I like it too. I like to think of Malcolm, warm in his room, looking through the cool green window with his big green eyes, watching the world go by. I like that he feels happy-jumpy, whatever that means. Malcolm is a boy who will go anywhere with you. He never needs persuading, he’s ready and out the door in a flash, and I like to think about him sitting there thinking of all the places he’ll go. And funnily enough, I’d made a little film of this very window as part of my series of small videos that I’ve told you about in the past. They’re like Ozu’s pillow shots without the film all around them. “I started making short, static videos. I gave myself some rules…they had to last about a minute. I couldn’t change the frame. The sound would be whatever naturally occurred for that minute. I focused on leaves, or water, or shadows, even dirty dishes in the sink. The sound generally involved my children yelling for me and trying to get my attention, which was an idea that I liked a lot. It captured my life at the time (and to this day.) There was nothing brilliant about the videos, but I liked the way that shooting them made me think about how long a minute lasts, how hard it is to be quiet and still, how my life sounded, how pretty small things could be.” One night about a month ago, when we were putting the boys to bed, I was very taken with Malcolm’s green window. It was a cooly glowing spring dusk, and the light in the room was warm and creamy, and the light outside the window so cool and evening-blue green.

Because my birthday is in June, it has become a tradition to make a dinner of bread, tomatoes, mozzarella and olives. Just to sit and snack and have a slightly nicer bottle of wine than usual. This year, because it’s a sweltering and humid 95 degrees every day, I thought it would be a good idea to bake something. But I wanted to retain the basic idea of tomatoes, olives and cheese. I’m savory-cake mad at the moment, so I made a yeasted, herbed chickpea flour batter, and then I piled fresh tomatoes, herbs, mozzarella and castelvetrano olives in the middle, and then I baked it all. Delicious! We had it with tiny boiled potatoes from our CSA and some bright sauteed pattypan squash and asparagus. The boys liked it, too, because it resembles pizza. I actually left the batter in the fridge over night, but you could just do an ordinary afternoon-rise, if you like.

Here’s Brianstorm, by the Arctic Monkeys, which is Malcolm’s favorite song.

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Drambuie cake with crystallized ginger and chocolate chips

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Drambuie ginger cake

Drambuie ginger cake

For as long as I can remember, David has liked to collect shards of pottery and porcelain. He’ll find small pieces of pots and plates in creek beds and river banks and tree roots, and even in the dirt in our backyard. Sometimes they have patterns painted on or worked right into the clay. Sometimes they have a little curve to them, and you can try to guess at the form of the pot from whence they came. Last time we were at our local antiques flea market, we came across a fellow selling a whole box of shards of pottery and porcelain. David said that it struck him as funny that he would never buy a shard of pottery, no matter how nice it looked, but if he’d found one, he’d never part with it. Well! Predictably, I love this. So often we value something, we consider it valuable, because somebody has set a price to it. A painting is only worth thousands or even millions of dollars because some art dealer has decided that they can persuade someone to pay that much money for it. This is true of practically everything around us…we’re consumers, and everything has a price. It’s like some absurd sort of game with nonsensical rules in which we all agree to accept abstract ideas of worth and to give meaning to meaningless numbers. Sometimes, though, there’s more joy in finding something or making something–even if that thing is imperfect or incomplete, Maybe especially if that thing is imperfect or incomplete, because you can imagine the rest of it, and when you imagine something it’s completely yours. When you think about it this way, when you think about how precious a small shard of pottery can be, it’s like tearing away the scaffolding that holds up the whole ridiculous system, so that we can understand that nothing is better for being bloated with money, and that maybe price is not the best way to assess value.

We don’t usually drink much besides wine with dinner or an occasional beer with punjabi mix, but every once in a while we’ll invent a strange and delightful drink. Usually this involves ginger beer, because we love ginger beer. Recently, we tried ginger beer and drambuie. It was really good! Sweet but refreshing, with a nice kick to it. I added some fresh lemon to mine, because I like everything with lemon. This cake was inspired by that experiment. It’s flavored with drambuie and a little powdered ginger, and it has chopped crystallized ginger mixed into the batter. It was really good! Oh yeah, and it has chocolate chips, because everything should have chocolate chips. The second time I made it I glazed it with a mix of powdered sugar and drambuie, but that’s not pictured here. I made the cake in my smallish deepish new old French cake pan. You could make it in a normal 8 or 9-inch cake pan, and it will be just as good, but flatter. And it might not need to cook as long.

Here’s Belle and Sebastian with For the Price of a Cup of Tea.
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Golden beet and pine nut purée

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Golden beet and pine nut purée

Golden beet and pine nut purée

It’s my birthday!!! AAARRGGHHHH! And I’m only telling you this because…I’m telling everybody! I’m like a little kid when it comes to birthdays. Except that I’m not, really, I’m the exact opposite. I overheard Isaac telling Malcolm, “Mommy doesn’t want it to be her birthday,” which as a birthday-obsessed seven-year-old is a concept he can’t fathom. It’s not the birthday itself I have a problem with, of course, it’s the getting older part that’s hard, that’s putting me in a blue mood. I was thinking the other day that I might come across as a somewhat cheerful, hopeful person, here at The Ordinary. In truth, I’m a moody old cuss. I’m discouraged by the strangest slightest things. And it might seem like I’m a patient mother, but I yell at my boys more than I thought I ever would, and I’m short-tempered with them sometimes even when they’re sweetly trying to get my attention to tell me nice and funny things. Sometimes I just want some quiet to think my own thoughts. Sometimes I just want to look out the window. And my boys don’t like all the weird food I make, though they are almost always kind enough to taste it. They don’t always eat healthy meals, sometimes I just let them drink sugar water, not because they’ve persuaded me that they’re part hummingbird, although I might believe that, but because I’m powerless to stop them because THEY DON’T LISTEN TO A WORD I SAY! And I do genuinely want to love and care for all people, like Alyosha says to do, but I have a noisy foul-mouthed inner misanthrope fighting to get out. I do honestly believe that success should be measured not by good grades or a big salary, but by how happy you are with what you do, day-to-day, and by the way you make your life as creative as possible in all the small moments, and how you notice and remember everything. But I get in foul moods when all I can think is “everything I’ve ever tried to do has failed.” And where am I going with all of this downwardly spiraling self-pitying birthday confessionalizing? I dunno. I think I want to tell you that I woke up this morning and my foolish birthday blue funk had lifted. I feel sanguine and hopeful. I have a lot that I want to do–small things and big big projects, and I feel excited about trying, whether or not they get done. I feel happy about thinking about them, even just thinking about them. I feel good about writing, just writing, whether anybody reads it or likes it doesn’t matter, I feel good about putting thoughts in order, and stringing words together, and surprising myself with all the odd phrases that come out of my constantly surprising mind, which you think I’d know better after 44 years of constant company. Last night in the car I had thought myself into a despondent mess, and Isaac said, “Mommy!! Guess what? Somebody’s being born, somebody’s being born, somebody’s being born, somebody’s being born, somebody’s coming home, somebody’s coming home, somebody’s coming home, somebody’s coming home, somebody’s sleeping, somebody’s sleeping, somebody’s sleeping, somebody’s sleeping…all over the world, right now!” And this morning Malcolm gave me a birthday letter that began “Have you ever wondered how the earth was created, God or science?” and ended, “P.S. Are crab apples edible? Because Charlie likes them and I want to try.” In the face of all of this blissfully cheerful existential information, How can a person stay cranky for long? Well, she can’t, and I won’t.

Beet greens with golden-beet pine nut sauce

Beet greens with golden-beet pine nut sauce

Golden beets, man. They’re pretty! And so darn tasty. We got some more from the farm, and I recently went on a ridiculously indulgent birthday shop and bought pine nuts and all sorts of other pricey items. So I decided to make this golden beet and pine nut tarator sauce. It’s got grated toasted beets, sage, rosemary, pine nuts, garlic, and a bit of balsamic. It was very tasty and surprising. Moreish, as the British say. We dipped fresh sweet peas in it, and crackers, and then I mixed it in with sauteed beet greens. It would be good with roasted vegetables, or tossed with pasta, or as a dip for chips, or any other way you can think of using a creamy flavorful sauce.

Here’s Big BIll Broonzy, who has a birthday today, too, playing Hey Hey, which I know I’ve posted before, but, hey, it’s my birthday!
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Kale and new potatoes with hazelnut tapenade

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Kale, new potatoes and tapenade

Kale, new potatoes and tapenade

Here at The Ordinary’s technological institute for the technological advancement of the study of technology, we are hard at work developing a new technology. This technology is being tested by people who test things–doctors and scientists and engineers, and other officials in lab coats and safety glasses. And it is being approved. We can guarantee that four out of five men in lab coats approve, and we can further assure you of 98% effectiveness. Not 100%, because that would be pushing it too far, and we would obviously be insulting your intelligence, and we don’t want to do that. All of this is top secret, of course, but I am prepared to reveal to you that the technology that we’re developing is, in fact, anti-anti-idiocy technology. We’ve noticed that everyone else is using technology, so we’ve decided to do so as well. Anti-aging technology, pore-refining technology, odor-blocking technology, super-absorbency technology for blood and sweat and urine, anti-anxiety technology, to help you handle all of your newfound apprehension about aging and stinking and sweating, about being human and imperfect. DO THEY THINK WE’RE MORONS? Do they think that if they slip the word “technology” into their advertisement we will believe that their product will miraculously turn back time? Yes, yes they do think we’re morons, but the truth is actually more cynical than that. They know that we know that their product won’t work, and they know that we’ll buy it anyway! It’s just one of a vast network of well-funded lies that we’re expected to accept. Like the fact that a Tom Cruise movie is worth spending millions of dollars to make or even ten dollars to see. Everybody knows that money would be better-off spent elsewhere. Well! Everybody knows about the wrinkles, too. Everybody knows we need to hide the wrinkles around our eyes. And recently I learned that I need to be anxious about my eyelashes, because they’re thinning, apparently. But I can take a pill for that, which definitely probably won’t cause depression or death, which would both obviously be small sacrifices in exchange for long thick eyelashes. And just this week I learned that there’s a new technology that might give me younger looking eyes. Eyes!! I think they mean actual eyeballs, and I’m all afluster, because I’d never even thought about being anxious about how old my eyeballs might look! Here I’d spent my whole life not thinking about them much at all, and just foolishly walking around looking at things with them, mindlessly watching the world through them, never suspecting that they were aging along with every other part of me! The horror! The absolute horror! Sadly, our anti-anti-idiocy technology will not give you younger or bluer eyes, although we’d be happy to tell you that it will, if it makes you feel better about buying it. With our new streamlined goggles, you’ll be able see more clearly, you’ll be able to see through the lies. You’ll be able to recognize when somebody is trying to make you feel like crap about yourself so they can sell you an ineffective product. You’ll know that the fact that we have magazines that make money by promising hideous photos of celebrities without their makeup says something much more depressing about the magazine and our culture than the poor idiotic celebrities. You’ll know when somebody is expecting you to act like an idiot for their financial gain. You’ll see past all of that nonsense to see that you are fine. You’ll see that truth is still there and still worth looking for. You’ll look out on the world with eyeballs of any age, and you’ll be joyful, because it’s your world.

Kale, new potatoes, and tapenade

Kale, new potatoes, and tapenade

What? More kale and new potatoes? Didn’t we just have that? Well, we did. But the kale from our CSA is so tasty, and I like it so much with soft little new potatoes. And I’ve been thinking for a while of mixing some vegetable in with tapenade the way you might with pesto. Kale and potatoes just make sense, because they’re hearty, and their flavor, though delightful, is not overwhelming. I made the tapenade with hazelnuts, capers and smoked paprika, so it has a strong, bright, smoky flavor, which went very well with the kale and potatoes.

Here’s I’m Beginning to See the Light by the Velvet Underground. “I met myself in a dream
And I just wanna tell you – everything was alright.”
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