Gorditas with roasted salsa and pigeon peas

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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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French cake a week – Gateau au chocolat

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Gateau au chocolat

In which Claire, who doesn’t speak French, bakes her way through the cake section of a 1962 french cookbook. Well! Today was the first day of school. You know I could talk about the ache of time passing, and how fast summers go, and days and months and years go. You know I could talk about regret for every wasted moment this summer, regret that I did anything but play with my boys, or take them places you can only go in the summer – creeks and rivers and wild wooded trails. I could talk about my trip to the doctor with Isaac yesterday, when they did a simple ultrasound of his belly and neck, but the technician let him see his heart beating, and it nearly did me in, with its strength and fragility, nestled in his beautiful rib cage, in his beautiful pale growing body. I could talk about how last night he was up a lot in the middle of the night, worrying about the first day of school and spiders crawling through the hole in his screen, and how I cuddled with him for a few minutes, and liked the feeling of his little hands holding my ears for comfort. But then I needed sleep, so I kissed him and left him whimpering in his bed. And then I had nightmares about leaving the boys to sleep in the basement of a horrible apartment building, while David and I slept upstairs, scared of our neighbors. I could talk about the rich, hot summer passing, and how we long for sharp smoky autumn. But, oddly, I didn’t have any time today, despite the fact that I had seven hours all to myself for the first time in months. So I made a playlist of Antoine Forqueray and Marin Marais, and I’ll let them tell you about it all. This is what I grew up calling Late French Viol Music. It’s from the 18th century. It’s ridiculously beautiful. Wistful, hopeful, like late summer, like autumn. They know about time passing.

This music has always felt like red wine and dark chocolate, to me. Which brings us to our French-cake-a-week. I’ve been trying to do all the simple ones, so this week I did the simple Gateau au chocolat. It’s a lovely flourless chocolate cake. But it does have quite a bit of corn starch, which I found surprising. The cake is extremely simple – and like the last few cakes, it has no leavening, but it got tall and puffy anyway. David said it’s crispy on top, then moist, then cakey. It’s like every good kind of brownie mixed in one cake. I don’t have a bundt pan, so I invented one with a quart-sized souffle dish with a little souffle cup, open-side up, buttered into the bottom. I made a strange looking cake! But lovely and tasty. We ate it with vanilla-flavored whipped cream, but it’s a cake that would be perfect for any of your simple cake needs. With berries, with creme anglaise, in a trifle…

Gateau au chocolat

Marin Marais and Antoine Forqueray, as played by Jordi Savall, the genius.
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French lentil, roasted mushroom tart with savory almond topping

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French lentil mushroom tart

I feel strangely excited, and of course I’m going to tell you why. It has to do with the election. Wait! Wait! Don’t tune out! I’m not going to tell you about my humble beginnings and how I love America more than anybody else does, and I’m not going to ask for a small donation. It’s a little hard to articulate, but I feel genuinely hopeful about this. It seems to me that, in some way, the needs of the people – the very human needs of all the people – is shaping the rhetoric of the election in a way that I don’t remember happening before on this level. (Of course that might be because my memory is full of holes and I’m politically dumb as a bag of flour.) Feminists have talked for decades about the personal being political, which is an idea that I embrace. This election cycle, (as they call it, which also makes it seem human and part of nature, somehow) it seems as though all of the politicians are struggling to connect with us by making the political personal. Maybe it’s the healthcare debate. Whatever your feelings on the subject, I think everybody agrees that healthcare is about us at our most human and most vulnerable. Of course it’s also about insurance companies and corporations, but at its most crucial, it’s about our life and our death, our bodies and our well-being. I think it’s hard not to become emotional when we consider this issue, which makes it difficult to discuss rationally, perhaps, but it’s important for us to learn this form of discourse – to learn to talk about personal emotional subjects. Maybe it’s because times have been so hard for all of us. We’re all hurting, and it makes us more insular, for better or for worse. We’re anxious about our homes, and our ability to keep them. We’re thinking about the food we put on our table. And this election is about women. We’re told over and over that the women are going to decide this election, and that’s forced a (sometimes uncomfortable) discussion about women’s bodies, and women’s work, and the value of that work. Of course, everything’s intimately connected. The “serious” issues of war, taxes, foreign policy – they’re all ultimately personal, they’re about our daily lives, our loves, our families, the chance to follow the path to old age that we all travel together. I always have this feeling, when I listen to politicians talk, that there’s a truth and sense that they can’t tell us with their words, that we hear anyway. Sometimes they try to hide it – when they tell us we need to go to war, with a barrage of words and falsified facts, I feel like most people understand the truth anyway – we know their motives. This year I feel the sense is closer to the surface under the muddle of words – the sense that we’re all in it together, and we’ll learn a way to talk about that.

Since the food we put on our table is an important issue, i’m going to tell you about this handsome tart! It’s actually quite simple. It’s a standard flaky pate brisee crust, with rosemary and black pepper added for deliciousness. On top of that we have a layer of french lentils sauteed in port wine and balsamic vinegar. Lentils might seem like an odd ingredient in a tart, but they add real substance and texture, and their lovely meaty flavor. And the mushrooms are chopped chunkily and roasted, so that when the savory almond custard is baked all around them, it’s almost like a savory clafouti or toad-in-the-hole. If I do say so myself, and I do, the whole thing turned out super-tasty. David liked it a lot, and said it’s a “birthday meal.”

Here’s Women’s Realm by Belle and Sebastian

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Chocolate-saltine-almond balls and french cake cookies

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French cake cookies

Here at The Ordinary, we feel that we are, perhaps, in a rut. As we’ve frequently stated, the task of cooking dinner is one of our favorite pursuits, and we think about it a ridiculous amount, and have a lot of fun doing it, and take great pleasure in eating it when it’s done. Well, we made a bad meal. Not an awful meal, but a strange, complicated and disappointing meal that yielded far more dirty dishes than it merited. We really cannot account for the level of crankiness that ensued. Our team of highly-trained rut-breakers have been doing extensive research to discover a way to take pleasure in the cooking process once again. This research, which seemed tangential at the time, exclusively consisted of a casual reading of Malcolm’s science almanac. Our attention was first drawn to a picture of a hibernating dormouse, cuddled up next to some hazelnuts that were almost as big as it was. That looks nice! But the true inspiration came a few pages earlier in a section called “Disgusting Diners!” I’m not going to tell you about the dracula ants, because they’re really too gross. But there were two animals that I don’t find disgusting at all. They’re really kind of beautiful. One was the star-nosed mole. An odd-looking creature, to be sure. But did you know that the mole can decide if something is edible in 227 milliseconds. Why is this? You ask. Well, it’s because the 22 tentacles on it’s face tell it whether or not something is food. Can you imagine having that sensitive of a tasting system? What would it be like? And, more importantly, would you eat worms and insects, if you did, because that’s what the mole eats, and it seems like a shame. Unless, of course, the flavor of earthworms improves with a more refined ability to taste. The other animal I’d like to tell you about is a certain moth. This moth drinks the tears of elephants. Other moths drink the tears of horses, deer, and even birds. They drink tears!! This kills me – it feels so mythological and lovely and a little disgusting all at the same time. I want to write a story about it! Here’s a bonus fact for you…all of the cattle in the world stand in a north-south direction whilst eating grass in an open field! It’s possible that they’re responding to the earth’s magnetic field. I wonder if the cattle are aware of this fact? I wonder if we, humans, have a similar unexpected force influencing the way that we eat, and what we taste, and we don’t even know about it! So maybe this is all we need – a completely new perspective on the way we actually taste the food, and our metaphorical alignment when we eat it. We need to move west-east.

Saltine chocolate almond cookies

Another good way to break out of food doldrums is to bake cookies with my boys. They’ll say, “Mom, we want something sweet!” And I’ll say, “okay, let’s bake cookies.” And then we’ll plot, fiendishly, to come up with a new way to bake cookies. Yesterday we made these ridiculously tasty saltine, almond and chocolate balls. I love saltines. They’re so simple, but they have malted barley flour in them, which is a subtle but lovely flavor. You don’t bake them, you just melt chocolate and butter and stir it into crushed saltines and almonds. The cookies were fun to make, and they turned out so good – salty, sweet, soft, crispy. I added a touch of drambuie, but you could easily add rum or kirsch or nothing at all. And the other cookies came about because Malcolm and Isaac found some old tubes of colored frosting and sprinkles from christmas-cookies and birthday cakes past. They wanted a simple cookie to decorate. I thought it would be fun to try to apply the french-cake-baking methods I’d learned lately to the cookie-making process. So we didn’t use leavening – we whipped whole eggs till they were pale and mousse-like. Then we added a touch of flour and some browned butter. They turned out very tasty indeed! Simple, but with a mysterious flavor that I’m sure any star-nosed mole would appreciate.

Here’s Lee Perry with Cow Thief Skank, complete with a chorus of mooing cows.
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Spicy zucchini-corn risotto with toasted pumpkinseeds, and Risotto burgers

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Zucchini corn risotto

Happy labor day! It strikes me as funny that many of the laborers in our workforce don’t actually get to call labor day a holiday, so I’d like to take a minute to thank the doctors, nurses, waitresses, cooks, grocery store clerks, gas station attendants, shop clerks…anybody working this rainy monday. I’ve been thinking a lot about work lately, because I’m looking for a job. Oh, I have a job, of course, but I need what they call a “real” job, because, as everybody knows, waiting tables is a completely surreal job. And everybody also knows that raising children doesn’t count as work, it’s more of a walk in the park, really. I’ve been thinking about what defines something as “work,” and it seems to be money. If you get paid to do something, it becomes work. And the more the work is valued, the more money you’re paid to do it. Some things that certain people do for fun, like playing baseball, making music, painting pictures, or writing, other people get paid to do, it’s their job. Some of them get paid quite a lot to do it. They’re very lucky! Sometimes I imagine an alien race drifting down to observe humans as we labor away in our wide array of jobs. I wonder if they would be puzzled to see that certain jobs are rewarded over others. If they’d scratch their bright green heads with their long frog-like fingers to see that, say, the CEO of a company that makes weapons that kill people is given much more money than the nurse that cares for us when we’re at our most vulnerable, scared and, probably fairly sickening, in our time of sickness. I videotaped a remarkable lecture, once. (I was paid to do it! It was a job of work!) The man speaking, and I regret that I can’t remember his name, said that the idea that there aren’t enough jobs, and there isn’t enough money to go around is a myth. If everybody worked the same hours – not a forty-hour work week, but a shorter one – and if we were all paid a more balanced amount for the work that we did…well, we could all live comfortably. Everybody could. That sounds nice to me. I wish it was possible. America has always been a country that values hard work, it’s part of our myth of who we are as a people. We work hard, we’re proud, self-sufficient, we are entitled to certain things, but only if we work hard enough to deserve them. The problem, of course, is that plenty of people work incredibly hard and still don’t get those things. Many of the jobs that require long, unforgiving hours doing work nobody else wants to do aren’t well-paid, don’t come with health insurance, paid vacations, job security, or any benefits at all.

Risotto burgers

Here’s a kind of work I call fun! Making risotto. It’s just the right amount of hands-on stirring and mixing. You feel involved! But it’s not finicky or incredibly time-consuming. You stir a bit, you wander away, you stir a bit more. My pet name for this particular risotto is “taco risotto.” It’s got oregano, smoked paprika, cumin, sage, and jalapenos – so it’s a bit smoky, a bit spicy. The zucchini is grated, so it blends in with the rice. The corn retains its bright sweet qualities. Risottos are soft by nature, so I thought it would be nice to add a bit of crunch in the from of toasted pumpkinseeds, which also bring their lovely and mysterious flavor. And I made some crispy toasted tortilla strips to scoop up the risotto.

The next day I turned the ample leftovers into big juicy burgers, which we ate on buns with tomatoes and lettuce. If I’d had an avocado, I would have sliced that to go along with it.

Here’s a playlist of work songs for labor day.
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Cornmeal flatbread

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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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Lapsang souchong spice cookies

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Lapsang souchong spice cookies

We’ve slept in a tent in the backyard the last two nights. Consequently I feel exceedingly tired and dumb as a rock. Forgive my inability to string words together to form those coherent…what are they called? Oh yes, sentences. We had a nice time, though. Backyard camping! Most of the pleasures of camping, plus hot showers and coffee when you need it. The boys told “cloud stories” with burning sticks. We sat and talked into the darkness – the boys stayed up late, we went to bed early. We all lay in the tent and took turns reading Midnight is a Place by candlelight. This is one of my favorite books ever, and it’s perfect for camping because it’s by turn cold and wet and miserable and warm and cozy…so you really appreciate all the sheets and blankets the boys lugged down the stairs and arranged in a beautiful muddle. We could look up at the stars, and listen to the screech owls and the amazingly diverse and sweet chorus of bug chirpings. In the morning we ate scrambled eggs and toasted bread on our campfire. Malcolm played with a piece of bread as though it was play-doh, stuck it on a dirty stick and said, “This one’s for mommy!” David suggested that he give it to Isaac instead, and toasted two perfect pieces of bread. We went for a hike in the wilds of the other other side of the canal and pretended that we were miles from town. The boys did front flips in the tent all day long, and we all went down for a swim in the river to cool off. And our yard still has the lovely smell of our campfire. These cookies are a tribute to that smell, and to the fact that summer is quickly turning into autumn. Our town is full of fireplaces. When you walk home, some evenings in fall, your clothes smell of fireplace smoke. And I swear some people in town burn cinnamon sticks, because the smell is so sweet and spicy. My friend Diane very kindly gave me a tin of lapsang souchong tea. The scent is wonderful! I wanted to combine that with the spicy flavor of cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and allspice to create a smoky, spicy, sweet late summer cookie. They smelled remarkable, and I loved the taste – but you’d have to like lapsang souchong to enjoy these. I used two tablespoons of tea leaves, and I ground them in the coffee grinder. The boys loved them, but the smoky flavor was a little too strong for the adults, so I’d probably use 1 scant tablespoon next time, and that’s how I’m writing up the recipe!

Here’s 5 am in Amsterdam, by Michelle Shocked, from her Campfire Tapes, with the backup cricket-singers. I had some trouble sleeping in the tent, but it wasn’t so bad being surrounded by my family, staring up at the brightening sky.
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French cake a week – gateau de savoie

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Gateau de savoie

In which Claire, who doesn’t speak french, bakes her way through the cake section of a 1962 french cookbook.
We’re keeping it simple again this week, in our french-cake-a-week division, with a lovely gateau de savoie. This cake is, in truth, remarkably similar to last week’s genoise. The ingredients are nearly identical. The difference is that the eggs are separated, in this cake, this cake has less butter, and the cake is baked in a deep dish. Last week, I went on and on (and on) about how a genoise is like my favorite movie, L’atalante. This week we’ll continue the tradition, because I’d like to tell you about Aki Kaurismaki’s Le Havre. (I promise not to ramble on about how the film is like a cake, but I have to tell you that one of the youTube comments on the trailer is “such a beautiful film, simple and deep,” which could be said exactly of a gateau de savoie, with one word switched.) L’atalante begins in the port town of Le Havre, and the town is (suprise!) the setting of Kaurismaki’s film. Le Havre tells the story of a former bohemian poet-turned-shoeshiner. He’s a man with a simple but pleasant life. But when his wife falls ill and he makes a new friend, his world is gently, subtly turned upside down. The characters are ordinary people; the lovers are older, they’re not glamorous; the story is slow and simple, but it tells of huge changes in the life of an old man and a young boy. The film is beautifully made, all sea-green and rusted red, with a style and grace reminiscent of much older films. Despite the perfectly professional technical quality of the film and the admirable attention to detail, it looks like they had fun making it – in some places it’s as though an old group of friends got together to shoot a movie. Similarly, though the film teeters on the edge of tragedy, and peers into some deep, dark places, it retains a lightness and a wry humor. I’d heard, once, that tragedy ends in death and comedy ends in marriage, and Le Havre ends with the salvation of a marriage. It’s a funny thing, but my reaction at the end of the film was that Kaurismaki was brave to end the movie the way that he did. I remember discussions, back in the days of endless talking, about the fact that comedies could never be weighty or substantial – they could never be great works of art. Only a tragedy could be considered high art; comedies are low, they’re light. I’ve always found that idea troubling. I think it’s actually more difficult to create something happy. It’s easy to be shocking, depressing, degrading. It’s the refuge of juvenile directors to make sad and disturbing films, and express scorn for anything joyful or pretty. And yet real life is a combination of joy and sorrow, of beauty and ugliness, and I admire anyone who can tell a story that shows this, with humor and taste, and just the right amount of sweetness.

Gateau de savoie

So, this cake is deep, and light, and subtly sweet. Because of its simplicity it makes a nice base for other flavors – for fruit and cream, or compotes, or liqueurs or syrups. The directions require you to bake it in “un moule profond.” That’s right, a baking dish deep and full of meaning. I don’t have a wide selection of cake pans, so I used a quart-sized souffle dish – about 6 inches wide and 3 inches deep. It worked perfectly! The recipe suggested that you make a ring of paper to help contain the batter, and I did, but it wasn’t really necessary. The recipe also stated that you could use the “parfum” of your choice, and suggested vanilla, fleur d’orange, lemon zest. I chose a bit of vanilla and a bit of rum, because that’s what I had. When I made the genoise I couldn’t resist adding a bit of salt, but I didn’t do that this time, instead I cheated by using salted butter! The cake has very little butter, though, which contributes to its lovely lightness. The recipe also says that you can substitute starch for half the flour. I assume they mean corn starch, but I didn’t have any, so I went for the all-flour option.

Here’s Mr McTell Got the Blues, by Blind Willie McTell, used to nice effect in Le Havre.
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Roasted eggplant stacked with french lentils & chard and Malcolm’s spicy sauce and Isaac’s carrots & capers

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Eggplant, chard, and french lentils

Here at The Ordinary, we’ve developed a new secret serum to make your cares and worries melt away. After a great deal of research that involved many bottles of wine, a few dark-and-stormy-mojitoes (that’s rum, ginger beer, mint and lime), and the occasional cup of mint tea and honey, we have learned that we were searching in the wrong direction altogether! We are, at this time, prepared to unveil our secret discovery. It turns out, the answer is toad pee. Not taken orally, of course, but applied to the hands. Here’s how it all came about.

Let us say, hypothetically, that a mother might have an incredibly cranky day. She might find herself in a foul mood, unable to get anything done that she needs to, and faced at every turn with sassy, rude and constantly needy children. (Not you or I, of course, we’re speaking of an imaginary person here.) Let’s say this mother’s throat hurts from so much yelling, and she feels terrible about it, because obviously, it doesn’t work to yell, or she wouldn’t be doing so damned much of it. Let’s say this bad mood continues even when the boys spontaneously and beautifully break into a rendition of Shake Your Tail Feather at the exact same time as she sees a goldfinch in a puddle shaking his tail feathers. Let’s say this bad mood continues while she makes dinner, and gets worse after when she’s folding stupid laundry. And then the whole family decides to go for a walk. They start down a nature trail. It’s very dusky among the trees, even though it’s barely eight o’clock. Everything is green and bright and glowing in the evening light. Somebody says it’s a good time of day for screech owls. So the whole family tries to call them by imitating their wavering downward cry. They scare off every living thing for miles. It gets so dark they decide to leave the trail, and they walk up into the park. The oldest son says let’s walk over and look at the river. The dad says, “It’s a Magritte sky!” And it was! Pale as day above the trees, but the branches and trunks are black and shadowy, and across the river the lights of cars and buildings shine as if at night. The world is shifting, as they watch, from light to dark. They pass a giant elm tree – it would take all of their arms to circle it. And suddenly there are toads everywhere! Everybody catches at least one for each hand. The cranky mom is smitten! A toad pees on her hand, and she doesn’t care. The feeling of the tiny toad hands brushing against hers, and the soft toad nose butting against her palms as it tries to push its way out makes her so happy that she doesn’t mind anything any more. They walk over to the bridge, which is surrounded by bright sky but stretches into blackness, suspended between day and night. And then they hear the screech owls crying deep in the dark pool of trees.

Malcolm’s spicy tomato sauce

Well, I have no idea who that cranky mom was, but one thing that always makes me feel better when I’m irritable is cooking with the boys. The other night I had this whole meal planned out. Planned out to the last little pine nut, I tell you! And as I stood slicing my eggplant, Malcolm ran in determined to make a sauce with shallots, peppers and tomatoes. Okay, I said, that sounds good. Then Isaac jumped around saying, “What do I get to make?” What do you want to make? I asked. He peered in the vegetable drawer. “Carrots,” he replied, “And flavor dynamites.” He smelled a few spices. And these…(he had thyme, sage, smoked paprika and turmeric lined up.) Well, okay, I said, let’s get cooking. Malcolm’s sauce has cumin, smoked paprika, cilantro and fresh basil, so it’s a bit like Moroccan chermoula. As for the eggplant – I keep making it the same way, and I decided to try something a little different. I sliced it thicker, and cooked the slices slowly so they became quite soft. Then I stacked them with french lentils, made my favorite way, and with chard sauteed with golden raisins, garlic, and pine nuts, which is one of my favorite things to eat on the planet, and a slice of mozzarella. Delicious with Malcolm’s sauce and Isaac’s carrots and a salad. And some rosemary focaccia, which I made in 1 1/2 hours! All time record! I should note that the boys arranged their food and took the pictures themselves.

Isaac’s carrots and capers

Here’s The Five DuTones with Shake Your Tail Feather.
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Zucchini, green pea, feta, & mint paté and zucchini with tarragon and hazelnuts

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Zucchini green pea feta paté

It can be hard to stay cheerful when you’re a waitress. Many restaurant patrons are as needy and particular as toddlers, and they’re not always nice about making their needs known. I slip into horribly bitchy crankiness sometimes, as a mom and as a waitress, and it feels awful. On a good day, however, there’s a real joy in feeding people – even if it’s just the humble job of carrying their food to the table. People can be so endearing when they eat – the way they arrange their food before they put it in their mouth, the gestures they use to share with others at their table, even the particular care they use to get their order exactly correct can be as sweet as it is irksome. I like to see people eating together: some have so much to say they forget to eat, and others are either so comfortable together or so awkward they may not say one word through the meal. This weekend I worked with a very young woman, very quiet, very nice. An older couple came in and sat in her section. The man asked his wife what he wanted to drink – he’d forgotten. His wife knew (we all know! He gets the same thing every time.) The waitress came back to write up the order, and she said, “I love them!” Every little thing they said, the way that they knew each other so well they could finish each others’ sentences, all of it was making her so happy. I know what she means! I’d been feeling cranky about humans, that morning, but her love for this couple made humanity seem pretty wonderful. It reminded me of Alyosha, (still reading The Bros. K! Still reading) who says we should “…care for most people exactly as one would for children…” He’s trying, though he he doesn’t feel he’s altogether ready in himself. Sometimes he’s very impatient, and other times he doesn’t see things. I know what he means, too!

Well! We’re still getting tons of zucchini, and I’m trying to love that, too. Here are two ways to prepare it that both use herbs from our garden. One is simple, one a little more complicated. The paté being the latter, though it’s really not difficult to make. I’m calling it a paté because it’s nice on toast or crackers, but we ate it one night as a side dish, and it was good that way too. Feta, mint and peas seem like such a natural combination – so fresh and sweet and salty, all at the same time. This paté has some almonds in, which gives it a sort of country-paté texture. In the simpler dish, the zucchini is sautéed briskly in butter till it’s nicely browned but still has a bit of crunch. It’s mixed with garlic, tarragon and some toasted hazelnuts. A nice side dish!

Zucchini with tarragon and hazelnuts

Here’s King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band with Workingman’s Blues

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