French lentil chard soup with meyer lemon and ginger

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Chard, lentil and meyer lemon soup

Chard, lentil and meyer lemon soup

    There’s Nothing as Trustworthy as the Ordinary Mind of Ordinary Man.

So readeth a banner on the wall of Lonesome Rhodes. Lonesome himself is on the balcony, raving like a Tom Waits-voiced Tarzan about how the people listen to him, because the people love him, because he is the people and they are Lonesome. He’s playing to an empty house, his own empty penthouse, lonely and cavernous, wrapped in sinister shadows. But his friend Beanie is laying on the applause – loud and often – on a machine that he himself, Lonesome, invented – it applauds him and laughs with him and oohs and ahs at his wise sayings. He starts to sing that he’s ten thousand miles from home, but he breaks off. He’s breaking down.

What is this madness? A face in the Crowd, directed by Elia Kazan in 1957. What a remarkable, odd, oddly contemporary film! It tells the story of Lonesome Rhodes (Andy Griffith), a drifter picked up in a jail by an eager Sarah Lawrence graduate (and all that that implies) played by Patrica Neal. She records him for a radio show on the voice of the common people, called Face in the Crowd. He’s irreverent and folksy. He becomes a star, a personality, first in Arkansas, and then all over the whole country. In New York his show is sponsored by Vitajex, a placebo that he sells as a libido-enhancer (Big Lebowski-esque dream sequence!); the CEO of Vitajex introduces him to a man running for senator, a tepid, aristocratic person that Rhodes sells as a man of the people. The film’s themes are startlingly relevant today: the intersection of commerce, politics and entertainment; the cynicism of the entertainment industry about the intelligence of their audience “Those morons out there? Shucks, I could take chicken fertilizer and sell it to them as caviar. I could make them eat dog food and think it was steak. Sure, I got ’em like this… You know what the public’s like? A cage of Guinea Pigs. Good Night you stupid idiots. Good Night, you miserable slobs. They’re a lot of trained seals. I toss them a dead fish and they’ll flap their flippers.” In the beginning of the film, Rhodes is irreverent towards the company that endorses him and suspicious of any commercial enterprises. He appeals on the air for all of his listeners to help a woman whose house has burnt down. By the end he’s on TV, exchanging quips with his senator about the evils of social security, and thinking of his audience, the crowd, the ordinary people, only in terms of the money, votes, or adulation they can give him. He’s seduced by the idea that he could become one of the elite, that he could guide the thinking of the masses. He’s funded by the Koch brothers of the day, to tell people what to buy, and to vote for the guy who will keep them poor, suspicious, and under-educated. He’s an ordinary person, but some people are more ordinary than others. Of course his career crashes, his women leave him, and he’s back where he started, ten thousand miles from home, and he doesn’t know where to go.

I bought a bag of meyer lemons! Look for them in every single recipe I make for the next week or so! They’re so lovely – sweet, tart, a little piney. I was thinking about french lentils, as one does. I love them, but I always seem to cook them the same way. I decided to try something a little different, and give them a kick with meyer lemons and ginger. This soup was so delicious! Comforting with potatoes and lentils, but very lively, with not just a squeeze of lemon, but the juice of two whole lemons!! Oh yes.

Here’s A Face in the Crowd, sung by Andy Griffith (to the tune of Sitting on top of the World, by the Mississippi Sheiks.

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Curried chickpeas and cauliflower in spicy rich tomato sauce

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Chickpea cauliflower curry

Chickpea cauliflower curry

I’ve been very fascinated by three words, lately, and I’m going to tell you why. These words are poignant, piquante, and pungent. Why do I love them? I love them because they teeter so wonderfully on the edge! They hover between senses, and they could evoke pleasure, pain, or some place that falls between the two! I love the way that, historically, they can be used to describe words, ideas, tastes, smells, expressions, or even hedgehog quills. They’re so keen and vibrant and cutting! According to my (shoddy) research, they all stem from a similar root. (I learned this while sitting on the couch next to Malcolm on a snowy evening, drinking a glass of wine and reading a dictionary. Honestly, what could be better than that?) They’re all the descendants of words that mean “to prick or to sting.” At one time, a piquant was a sharp object, like a hedgehog quill. From 1494, “The herichon…is…armyt…with spines thornys or pickandis.” And pungent described a sharp and pricking pain. From 1617, “The Vrine bloody, the Excrements purulent, and the Dolour pricking or pungent.” Each of these words also describes a flavor or smell that is sharp and piercing, sometimes pleasantly so, sometimes not. From The Canterbury Tales, “Wo was his cook but if his sauce were poynaunt and sharp.” Each word also describes ideas that are sharply or cleverly expressed. From 1661, “No author hat so pungent passages against the Pride and Covetousness of the Court of Rome.” Sometimes the effect of these words is painful or wounding. From 1651, “By some picquant words or argutenesse to put them into choler.” Piquant, pungent and poignant all describe something stimulating to the mind, feelings, or passions. From 1668, “That our Delights thereby may become more poinant and triumphant.” From Jane Eyre, “Besides, the eccentricity of the proceeding was piquant: I felt interested to see how he would go on.” From 1850, “Every amusement and all literature become more pungent.” But sometimes the emotion provoked is so strong as to become painful or unbearable, just as a scent or taste might be too sharp or spicy or sour to be palatable. From 1684, “Intolerably pungent grief and sorrow.” From 1728, “This final Answer threw the King of Portugal into the most poinant Despair.” Everything is connected! Words and ideas have flavor, scents stimulate the mind, emotions and tastes are so wonderfully provoking that it’s almost too much to bear! Mr. Rochester understood this, he describes falling in love with Jane, “…I was an intellectual epicure, and wished to prolong the gratification of making this novel and piquant acquaintance…” I love the idea of anything felt so strongly, both bitter and sweet, as life is, but fully tasted, fully explored, fully felt.

And this was a piquant dish! It’s loosely based on an Indian Makhani recipe. Makhani means “with butter,” and this does have some butter and a little bit of cream, so it’s quite rich. But it also has tomatoes and spices to keep it lively. The cauliflower is roasted separately and added at the end, stirred in carefully because it’s delicate and flavorful.

Here are Jordi Savall and Christophe Coin playing St. Colombe’s poignant Les Pleurs.

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Chard “lasagna” with fennel, roasted reds, olives, and walnut ricotta

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chard lasagna

chard lasagna

One summer, when I was 11 or 12, I fell down a lot. I skinned my knees so many times in one summer that they’re still mapped with scars. I don’t remember being all that bothered by it. At some point scabby knees became normal for me – itching and peeling and catching on my clothes. A few years later I fell off my bike on the way to my piano teacher’s house and I cried for a week. There’s no accounting for my irrationally fervent response, but everything seemed suddenly so fragile and vulnerable and poignant. My boys seem to like falling. When Isaac’s nervous and trying to impress someone he’ll make a silly face and topple to the ground. Pratfalls never fail to amaze! When they’re riding skateboards and scooters, it always seems to me that they’re learning how to fall as much as they’re learning how to ride – it’s an equally important skill. Of course, raising children is a pattern of watching them fall and then get back up again. When they first sit up, and they’re so proud and so happy with their new vantage point, and then they just…tip over. When they’re learning how to walk, and you brace yourself for the sickening sound of hard little head on pavement. Sometimes they bounce back, sometimes they crumple and wail. Malcolm has always loved to climb – chairs, tables, trees, rocks. I could create an extensive photo essay of “Malcolm sitting on top of things.” It was hard to let him go, at first. I remember consciously telling myself not to blurt out “be careful” as he clambered from chair to table. And, of course, that was the exact moment he fell. Mostly I let him go, now, because I trust him to know what he can do. I close my eyes and hold my breath and wait to look till he’s safely on the earth again. I’ve been thinking about falling a lot, lately, for some reason. When I’m running with Clio, or walking down the stairs, I can imagine myself falling, I can almost feel that it’s going to happen, so I go very cautiously. I feel gravity’s pull more. I dream about falling and wake myself with a start, like a newborn. When Clio and Malcolm jump and climb and clamber, it’s not just that they’re young and strong and agile, it’s that they don’t doubt themselves. It never occurs to them for a second that they might not make it. If Clio is behind the tall-backed couch and wants to be on the other side, she doesn’t run around the couch, or get out a measuring tape and calculate the height of the back of the couch, she doesn’t take a few trial hops. She doesn’t imagine what would happen if she wipes out before she reaches the top of the couch. She leaps! When Malcolm scales a giant rock-face, he doesn’t catastrophize about what would happen if he slips, he clambers happily to the top and beams down at us from on high.

I love giant chard leaves. It always feels like such a shame to chop them up. So I decided to leave them whole and use them in a sort of lasagna, instead of noodles. I have layers of braised fennel with roasted peppers, capers and olives, layers of melty mozzarella, layers of walnut ricotta, and layers of chard leaves. It turned out very tasty indeed! The walnut ricotta is made with walnuts, olive oil, balsamic, rosemary and honey, and it’s very earthy and good. Nice all together!

Here’s Tom Waits with Falling Down.

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Roasted butternut white bean soup

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Butternut and white bean soup

Butternut and white bean soup

In Kurisawa’s Ikiru, he describes a childhood memory, “Once when I was a child, I almost drowned. It’s just like that feeling. Darkness everywhere, and nothing for me to hold onto, no matter how hard I try.” This reminded me of Sleepy John Estes’ song Floating Bridge. It’s a beautiful, dream-like song, with repeated fragments of memory like waves washing over him – he nearly drowned, he was hid underneath the water five minutes, and when they dragged him out and laid him on a bed all he could hear was muddy water going round his head. And he’ll never forget the memory of people on the floating bridge, screaming and crying. It’s so powerful! So today’s Sunday collaborative playlist is on the subject of childhood memories. It could be of a person, or a food, or a song, or a definitive moment, any childhood memory will do.

And this soup is a bit like a wintery memory of summer. The squash is roasted, which makes the flavor rich and smoky, and the herbs – rosemary, sage, thyme, and tarragon – make it taste like a spring garden. The cauliflower and white beans make the soup lovely and velvety. I thought of this soup as Provencal, for some reason! The herbs, I guess!

Here’s your interactive playlist on childhood memories. Feel free to add anything you like!
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Collards, roasted mushroom and pecan pie with a spicy smoky crust

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Collard pecan pie

Collard pecan pie

Malcolm came home from school yesterday and lay on the couch and wept. I asked him if something upsetting had happened, and he said, no, he was just tired, and he really wanted some pineapple. We’d bought a pineapple on Monday, and I kept telling him it wasn’t ripe, because, honestly, I can never tell! The last time we bought one I prudently waited until it was moldy and disintegrating, just to be sure. So I gave him a dish of pineapple, and I got myself a glass of wine, and he got a blanket, and we cuddled on the couch and watched a dumb show about Merlin. And then snow began to fall, thick and fast – the prettiest snow I’ve ever seen. It sparkled! It looked like crystals falling from the sky and forming an improbably light, even blanket on the ground. And when David came home we went out to dinner. We almost never go out to dinner, just the four of us, maybe twice a year. It’s so nice when we do! I felt so happy being with my family, in our little booth, eating delicious and unexpected food. We always bring a blank book when we go out – the same book each time, and we all take turns drawing in it. We have quite a collection of crazy pictures, and each small sketch transports us back to the good meal we had and the good talks we had. Last night we talked about the things that might have been worrying Malcolm. We talked about a game his whole class plays, and he said that by the end everybody is mad at each other because they’re competing, and that doesn’t feel good. He leaned up against me. Both boys ate with good appetites, with glee, and Malcolm said, “I love food!” And, of course, I love that he loves food. We talked about all the places we’ll travel, when we’ve got the time and money. We talked about taking a plane somewhere with no plans, and just making it up as we go along. Finding a place to stay, finding a lovely restaurant, with little booths, where we can eat strange and wonderful food, and draw in our book, and talk. And then we drove home through a glittering white world to our old warm house. A good night!
Isaac's beautiful landscape from our restaurant book

Isaac’s beautiful landscape from our restaurant book

I love collard greens. I love their substantial texture, and their mildly assertive taste. I like to pair them with smoky crispy things. I thought of the crust in this as being almost like bacon – crunchy and smoky with smoked paprika. The pecans added a nice crunch, and the roasted mushrooms brought their lovely savory, meaty flavor.

Here’s Fox in the Snow by Belle and Sebastian.

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Oatmeal chocolate chip cookies with ginger and marmalade

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Oatmeal, chocolate chip, marmalade, ginger cookies

Oatmeal, chocolate chip, marmalade, ginger cookies

Happy birthday, Robert Burns! Surely Burns is another ordinary poet laureate. Born in poverty, mostly self-educated, called “the ploughman poet,” Burns wrote about lice and mice and love and revolution. His poems are simple, honest and direct, but full of music in their words and rhythms. He collected Scottish folk songs, and adapted these as poetry, and adapted his poems as songs. He spoke of the value of simple things and honesty over dissemblance and finery…

    What though on hamely fare we dine,
    Wear hoddin grey, an’ a’ that?
    Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine,
    A man’s a man for a’ that.
    For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
    Their tinsel show, an’ a’ that,
    The honest man, tho’ e’er sae poor,
    Is king o’ men for a’ that.

And he prayed for a time when, the world over, we’d recognize the value of sense and worth, and me would live as equals, as brothers.

    Then let us pray that come it may,
    (As come it will for a’ that,)
    That Sense and Worth, o’er a’ the earth,
    Shall bear the gree, an’ a’ that.
    For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
    It’s comin yet for a’ that
    That man to man, the world o’er,
    Shall brithers be for a’ that.

One of my favorites, which makes me like Burns so much, is To a Mouse, on Turning Up Her Nest With a Plough, November 1785. It’s so sweet and specific, so compassionate and thoughtful, a gentle reflection on the value of all life, the universal anxiety of surviving winter’s hardships, and on memory and anticipation, as well. (But do mice remember? Do they look ahead? They might! We’d never know!)

    Wee, sleekit, cow’rin, tim’rous beastie,
    O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!
    Thou need na start awa sae hasty
    Wi bickering brattle!
    I wad be laith to rin an’ chase thee,
    Wi’ murdering pattle.

    I’m truly sorry man’s dominion
    Has broken Nature’s social union,
    An’ justifies that ill opinion
    Which makes thee startle
    At me, thy poor, earth born companion
    An’ fellow mortal!

    I doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve;
    What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
    A daimen icker in a thrave
    ‘S a sma’ request;
    I’ll get a blessin wi’ the lave,
    An’ never miss’t.

    Thy wee-bit housie, too, in ruin!
    It’s silly wa’s the win’s are strewin!
    An’ naething, now, to big a new ane,
    O’ foggage green!
    An’ bleak December’s win’s ensuin,
    Baith snell an’ keen!

    Thou saw the fields laid bare an’ waste,
    An’ weary winter comin fast,
    An’ cozie here, beneath the blast,
    Thou thought to dwell,
    Till crash! the cruel coulter past
    Out thro’ thy cell.

    That wee bit heap o’ leaves an’ stibble,
    Has cost thee monie a weary nibble!
    Now thou’s turned out, for a’ thy trouble,
    But house or hald,
    To thole the winter’s sleety dribble,
    An’ cranreuch cauld.

    But Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
    In proving foresight may be vain:
    The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men
    Gang aft agley,
    An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
    For promis’d joy!

    Still thou are blest, compared wi’ me!
    The present only toucheth thee:
    But och! I backward cast my e’e,
    On prospects drear!
    An’ forward, tho’ I canna see,
    I guess an’ fear!

lacy cookie

lacy cookie

I’m not going to tell you about vegetarian haggis, because I did that last year. Instead, I’m going to tell you about these cookies. When I was making these cookies, I jokingly called them “Scottish cookies.” They’re not at all really. David’s grandparents are from Dundee and Motherwell, which makes Malcolm and Isaac Scottish, and when I want them to eat certain things, I’ll say, “You’re Scottish, you have to like it.” Amongst these things are oats and marmalade. Remember this joke?

    An English man and a Scottish man are sitting in the pub and the English fellow is teasing the Scot: ‘Isn’t it funny that you Scottish people eat so much porridge and oats? We only feed that stuff to the horses!’ ‘Aye’ replies the Scot, ‘that’s why the English have the finest horses, and the Scottish have the strongest men.’

And, according to my understanding, golden syrup was invented by a Scot as well. So these cookies have all those things. (And the boys did like them, they liked them very much indeed!) The first two batches I made didn’t have enough flour, and I had to literally scrape them off the pan in one big, delicious, crumbled mess of oats and chocolate, all caramelized and crispy. (We ate it all!) Once I’d added a bit more flour, the cookies held together better. They’re still light and crisp and lacy, and you have to let them sit for a minute before you take them off the sheet, and they’re absolutely delicious. They have a real caramelly, toffeeish quality.

A delicious mess!

A delicious mess!

Here’s Jean Redpath’s hauntingly simple rendition of Auld Lang Syne

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Spicy honey ice cream and almond coconut ice cream

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Spicy honey ice ceam

Spicy honey ice ceam

We watched Akira Kurisawa’s Ikuru the other night. It’s so beautiful – mournful and hopeful, discouraging and life-affirming all at the same time, and it seems to me to portray certain tenets of Ordinaryism. In English the title means “To Live,” and the film tells the story of Kanji Watanabe, a middle-aged, middle management bureaucrat.

He works at city hall, a kafkaesque maze of offices, hallways and stairways. Every surface is covered with teetering piles of paperwork, which threaten to cave in and bury the (mostly) men who work there. They keep their heads down as they do their monotonous work, and seem to do just enough to get by. A group of women complain about a disease and mosquito-infested cesspool, and they’re driven from department to department in a sort of hopeless joke that everybody is in on but them. Everybody knows that nobody is going to help them.

Watanabe, a quiet man with huge, expressive frightened-rabbit eyes, learns that he has stomach cancer, and realizes he has less than a year to live. He’s not ready to die, because he’s never really lived. The next few days unfold in great detail – he meets a novelist, and they hit all the nightspots. He meets a young woman from his office who needs his help to quit her job. And then in an odd but oddly effective twist, the film shifts to six months later, and is told in a series of flashbacks by Watanabe’s co-workers.

So that’s the story. And you should know that it’s visually beautiful – full of graceful, thoughtful space and movement. As Watanabe is consumed with self-reflection, as he examines his life, we see him through windows, through waving panes of glass, in mirrors, through gleaming rows of glasses. The film itself has a pale, cloudy light that washes over you in waves as you watch.

And now to the Ordinaryism. From the first, Watanabe is established as an ordinary man. Nothing about his life is glamorous or even all that interesting, until we learn that he’s going to die. And here’s the beautiful extraordinary ordinary part…in his search for some understanding of what it means to live, he doesn’t become a less ordinary person, he doesn’t have a fling with a celebrity or go on an extravagant shopping spree or hang glide over a volcano. (As he might do in a Hollywood film.) He goes back to work! Back to his same job. He finds his way after spending some time with the young woman who recently quit her job. She represents life to him. She’s brimming over with it, she laughs, she chatters, she eats. (Everywhere they go, she eats her food and Watanbe’s as well, because he has no appetite. I love the fact that her hunger and her obvious enjoyment of food is one of the things that marks her as bright and vital.)

      • “…somehow I was drawn to you.” He explains to her. “Once when I was a child, I almost drowned. It’s just like that feeling. Darkness everywhere, and nothing for me to hold onto, no matter how hard I try. There’s just you.”
      • “What help am I?”
      • “You – just to look at you makes me feel better. It warms this – this mummy’s heart of mine. And you’re so kind to me. No; that’s not it. You’re so young, so healthy. No; that’s not it either… You’re so full of life. And me… I’m jealous of that. If I could be like you for just one day before I died. I won’t be able to die unless I can do that. I want to do

    something.”

    .”

And do you know what she does that makes her so happy and glad to be alive? She works in a factory! Making toy rabbits. But she loves the toy rabbits, and she says that while she makes them she feels as though she’s playing with every baby in Japan. She tells him he should make something. And that’s when it all becomes clear to him, and he goes back to his job and pursues it with a passion, and uses his office to make something good. Because, like everybody else in the world, he’s been extraordinary all along. As Martin Luther King Jr. said, “No work is insignificant. All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.”

almond coconut ice cream

almond coconut ice cream

Holy smoke! I’ve gone on so much longer and more tediously than I intended! I apologize. I would like to tell you about these ice creams though. I was seized with a desire to make ice cream, as one usually is the coldest week of the year! I wanted to try something a little different. The first ice cream is sugar free. It’s made with honey!! I’ve made honey ice cream in the past, but it had sugar, too, and this one doesn’t. It does have cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, allspice and cayenne. I thought it was so good! It had such a lovely hot and spicy zing to go with it’s cool creamy sweetness. The second ice cream had no eggs. Instead of a custard, I thickened the milk by cooking it down, the way one would make dulce de leche or ribadi. I also cooked it with ground almonds and coconut, and then I added a bit of cardamom. I thought it was lovely as well. It had a nice texture, with the coconut. I might try the same method again without the coconut and almonds, though, just to see how it turns out!!

Here’s Takashi Shimura (as Kanji Wantanabe) singing Gondola No Uta in his haunting voice.
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Spinach, apple, avocado bisque with ginger

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Spinach apple soup

Spinach apple soup

It’s cold here! (Sigh, is she talking about the weather again?) Yes! Yes I am, but I’m not the only one! It’s news. The Guardian UK (online US edition) has a story on their front (virtual) page about how cold it is where I live! It has a slideshow of pictures of coldness! But I have to say that I’m okay with this little cold spell. Every winter we get one or two weeks of below-freezing weather, and I’m fine with that. Let me tell you why. First of all, I stay in bed from just after Christmas till late May, so it doesn’t really affect me at all. Second of all, as Jon Stewart said just this morning, it’s irrefutable proof that global warming is a hoax – the fact that it’s cold, today, where I live. And if you need further proof, it’s cold today where Jon Stewart lives and where I live! These are the facts! Actually, I do like a very cold spell in winter, as long as it’s shortish. It feels cleansing. The summer after a mild winter always feels extra swampy, with larger stranger insects, and more germs flying around. And extreme cold feels surreal and other worldly. It feels like a reminder that the world and everything in it is so much vaster than our human understanding, and so far beyond our control. These cold spells always remind me of Faulkner’s Wild Palms, in which Charlotte and Harry strive to escape conventional morality and propriety “They had used respectability on me and…it was harder to bear than money. So I am vulnerable in neither money nor respectability now and so They will have to find something else to force us to conform to the pattern of human life, which has now evolved to do without love – to conform, or die.” The city in winter “herds people inside walls,” so they take a job in a mine in Utah, in a winter so severely cold that their underwear freezes like iron ice and their breath freezes like fire in their lungs. The landscape is wild, the people they meet are wild, and “…now they had both become profoundly and ineradicably intimate with cold for the first time in their lives, a cold which left an ineffaceable and unforgettable mark somewhere on the spirit and memory…The cold in it was a dead cold. It was like aspic, almost solid to move through, the body reluctant as though, and with justice, more than to breathe, live, was too much to ask of it.” It’s elemental, and it has stripped them down till they’re raw and vulnerable, and seem to have only each other in the world. Which was what they wanted, but more than they bargained for. “Excuse me, mountains. Excuse me, snow. I think I’m going to freeze.”

Of course, it’s not that cold here, and (hopefully) the cold spell won’t last for long. But in the meantime, we’re eating a lot of soup!! This is a bright, flavorful smooth soup, with spinach, apples, avocado and lots of ginger and lemon. It’s the sort of soup you feel might stave off a cold, and it tickles nicely in the back of your throat. When I’m feeling poorly, I have a warm drink of honey, lemon, ginger and cayenne, and all of those ingredients are to be found herein! I used a combination of spinach and arugula, which added a peppery flavor.

Here’s Tom Waits with Cold Cold Ground. Beautiful! Frozen weather makes people act strangely, I tell you!

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Summer-in-winter pizza with pesto, sofrito, chickpeas and artichoke hearts

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Pizza with sofrito, pesto and chickpeas

Pizza with sofrito, pesto and chickpeas

You wouldn’t believe the vast system of pantries we have here at The Ordinary. It extends for miles, beginning above-ground, with spacious, sunny rooms lined with floor-to-ceiling windows. And then it tunnels under to form a vast network of cellars, ice houses, larders, butteries, and spences. And the shelves are lined with bottles and jars. Those in the light of the windows glow like stained glass. Those in the darkened cellars shine with their own internal light. In each bottle and jar – a perfect distillation of a moment from each season from the year. We open these, as needed, to help us navigate the year as it unfolds. When you’re melting in summer, you can uncork a clear, cold, cleansing january day. In winter, we have a vial containing the cool-warm smell of a June morning. We have a whole room stocked with falling things. A jar of late spring’s flower petals – confused, whirled in a tangle; a summer sun shower; autumn leaves, curling to the ground; and a soft, quiet, gentle December snow. Each one will serve to remind you of what you’ve seen and felt, the fragrances and tastes that you have known, and each will remind you as well of the cycle of the seasons which will bring each moment inevitably back upon you. In one room, of course, we have flavors…ripe plump tomatoes, bursting with the hot sunny abundance of August, refined into a flavorful paste. Bunches of basil, sweet, sharp, and intoxicating, concentrated into one pure flavor of summer. And that’s what we used to make this pizza.

pizza with sofrito, chickpeas and pesto

pizza with sofrito, chickpeas and pesto

What? You think I’m waxing hyperbolic? You think this is why I earned the name “hyperboClaire?” Well, it’s totally true!! Every word! Okay, so I’m really talking about the sofrito and pesto that I made with our over-abundance of tomatoes and basil at the end of the summer. I froze them, and at the time I thought…in the middle of winter, this will make a welcome meal! And then the power went out for ten days, and I was worried that they didn’t stay frozen. But they seemed frozen! And our kitchen felt very near freezing through the time. And we ate them on this pizza and everybody seemed fine!! I also added chickpeas and artichoke hearts. I have long loved artichoke hearts on a pizza, and chickpeas on a pizza – well, it just sounded good to me! And it was good! They got all roasty and flavorful. If you happen not to have frozen sofrito in the summer, you can easily make it from a can of tomatoes (Spanish-style sofrito! Recipe to follow). And pesto can be bought in most grocery stores, if you don’t have that lying around in your feezer!! Anyway – this was a good pizza. It did taste like summer, and reminded me of golden afternoons spent picking tomatoes and basil. Very welcome indeed as the temperature plummets.

Here’s Summertime by Jimmy Smith.

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Pumpkin bagels

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Pumpkin bagel

Pumpkin bagel

There comes a point in every chef’s life when he or she understands that it’s all about the journey, that the process is more important than the product. Yes, they’ve been telling us this for years, and now it suddenly all makes sense. Invariably, this moment occurs when the chef’s ten-year-old son says, with a beaming smile, “This is so much fun!” while they make pumpkin bagels together. That’s right! Malcolm and I made pumpkin bagels. I was somewhat anxious at first about the outcome, especially after tipping in the better part of a bag of flour. “What if these don’t turn out? What a lot of ingredients I’m wasting.” Then along came my sous chef, who cheerfully agreed to wash his hands twice in hot soapy water, and then helped me punch down the dough, and form it into balls, and poke holes in it, and shape it into bagels, and put them in a water bath, and time them in the water bath, and take them out of a water bath. Good times! Malcolm has been so sweet lately. I grumbled about my stomach-ache and he surprised me with a big hug. He shared his red licorice shoelaces with me, and I didn’t even have to ask. I get so distracted with chores and nonsense that I forget to spend a lot of time with the boys, and he hasn’t been letting me do that lately. He made me cuddle with everybody on the couch to watch a movie. And he made me play a video game with him. Listen to this – this is how well he knows me!! Each of us controlled an airplane floating over an island with castles and caves and such. We were supposed to be shooting each other, but he said, let’s just fly around. So we did! We just flew around, exploring the terrain, at a nice leisurely pace. We were in split screen, and sometimes we could see each other, and the computer would encourage us to fire on each other, but we’d just drift along, seeing the sights. I worry so much about Malcolm. He’s ten, but he acts like such a teenager sometimes. They all do! All the ten-year-olds. (It wasn’t like that when I was a lass.) I want him to stay sweet in a world that doesn’t always value sweetness, especially in boys. I want him to stay interested in interesting things, and not succumb to pretending to like what other people think is cool. I’ve seen him with older boys who thought it was funny to hurt birds or bugs or other animals, and I want him to be strong enough to know better. It’s a powerfully powerless feeling to lie awake in the middle of the night, thinking of all that my boys will have to go through in this world, all the ways they’ll have to prove themselves to themselves, all of the convictions they’ll have to form and keep. It would be easy to panic about it, because there is no instant solution. But it’s probably better to remember about the pumpkin bagels, about the journey – the process, not the product. You put every good thing you have into it, you have fun as you go, you remember the lessons you’ve learned, and you trust in the quality of the ingredients. Because, guess what? The bagels turned out absolutely delicious! David declared that they were the best he’d ever eaten. And when we ate them with curried chickpea and cauliflower, nobody said, “what a weird meal.” They said, what an American melting-pot of a meal, and said they went well together! And the boys have taken bagels and hot chocolate for lunch all week, to warm them in this freezing weather.

pumpkin bagels

pumpkin bagels

I’ve always wanted to make bagels, but assumed they’d turn out stodgy little rock-hard lumps. I’m glad I tried, because it was so easy and worked so well that I think I’ll make them myself from now on. I’ll whip up a batch at the beginning of each week. I decided to make pumpkin bagels because, obviously, everything is better with pumpkin. You could spice them any way you like. I wanted them to be versatile, not definitively sweet or savory, and so I chose to season them with a pinch of nutmeg and a pinch of allspice. Cinnamon seemed like too obvious a choice, so I left it out, but I know they’d be good with cinnamon, too. I like them precisely as they are, though! Toasted with a generous layer of melty butter. Take that, 11 degree weather!!

Here’s the Menahan Street Band with Make the Road by Walking

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