Pink of Perfection

After my usual holiday over-doing it, It feels good to board the healthy eating bandwagon. And while it’s probably not the best habit to bounce from extremes (steak, bourbon, gravy to kale, green tea, soup), it does make me very eager for the change. I was stuffed with cookies and cheese; it felt good to alter course.

And perhaps a little surprisingly, it tasted delicious. After my brother-in-law sent me a link to My New Roots, I started seeing this vibrant Danish blog mentioned everywhere. She designed the recipes below, and they’re wonderful.

One of the recurring questions among my friends is, “Why is it so hard to do what’s good for you?” Cause lord knows it usually is. But there’s also a kind of snowball effect once you get going with decisions that affect your well-being. When you feel good, you want to keep feeling good. You begin to even crave the habits that make you feel bright, content, and fluid.

Here’s an example: I spent this past weekend in the first part of an Anusara yoga immersion. Going in, I was a bit terrified of what six hours of yoga two days in a row would feel like. I should have been more concerned about returning to my desk Monday morning and sitting in a chair for eight hours. Come evening, I’d usually rather watch another rerun of Roseanne than put on yoga pants right before bed. But on Monday evening a few pre-bedtime twists was the right choice for me.

The ultimate challenge, I think, is getting from feeling bad, mired in habits, depressed, whatever the current stuckness may be, to finding a spark that can spur a new kind of decision. Many of us tend to force ourselves out of it, but a friend of mine takes a more gentle approach. A change can start with the smallest choice, she says, and we’ll bring it on when we’re ready. I find that comforting. We don’t need to strong arm ourselves into new habits or new eras; it’s not a matter of force, it’s a matter of ease. And when we’re ready we’ll know it. I read a section in a book last night on receptivity that seems fitting:

Receptivity is a practice many people find difficult, because we live in a culture that says things are accomplished primarily through doing. This attitude creates a bias toward knowing, planning, taking action, a kind of predatory attitude toward life––where we decide what we want, focus on it, and go for it at all costs. But how many of us have done this only to be dissatisfied with what we get?  ––The Practice of Wholeness

Being receptive seems to fit beautifully with back to basics and leaning into the life we have now: being open to ourselves, our thoughts, our sense of whimsy, being open to the world around us and the people and obstacles we meet each day, and being open to every joy, quirk, and marvel in the moment to moment moment of the everyday. “We may experience a sense of magic or serendipity––wherein events happen which fit our needs perfectly. Seemingly remarkable coincidences [...] are the result of our receptivity.”

And so back to feeling good, and specifically these recipes. Please, dear heavens, don’t see these dishes or this post as an admonition. If anything, it’s an invitation to be receptive to where you are, wherever you are, right now. If they recipes appeal to your senses at this moment in time, I promise they’re both really lovely. And no one’s saying you can’t eat a little kale slaw before a nice steak, either.

Continue reading “Detox Recipes That Taste Really Good” »

One January, before I was to move into my first apartment, my mom sat me down in the kitchen and showed me how to plan a week’s worth of meals on a budget. She took an inventory of what I liked to eat (bagels and cream cheese, apparently), and listed on a piece of paper what I needed to keep in the pantry, refrigerator, and freezer. Then the lessons on How to Roast a Chicken and How to Bake a Loaf of Bread commenced. Too bad, I thought, as I started writing this. I wish I still had that paper! I peeked inside the recipe box that rarely gets opened, and there it was, folded right it front. (There are some good things about being a pack rat sentimentalist!)

This lesson in economizing has been on my mind of late. I have fallen into some bad grocery-buying habits: buying too many bottles of local milk, small, expensive containers of Icelandic yogurt, and seductively rare ingredients that are used once before finding a home in the overcrowded condiments graveyard on the refrigerator door. The part of me from a line of frugal Yankee dairy farmers wanted to stop being so mindlessly frivolous at the grocery store. And the time-pressed part of me that has an intense job and a busy schedule wanted to get back to basics. It was time for another home ec lesson with mom.

Continue reading “Weeknight Solution: Pork Chops with Spanish Rice” »

It’s always immensely entertaining––and perhaps a tad unnerving––to have any firmly-held ideas of who you are and what you like turned upside-down. Take cooking: I think of myself as a bit of traditionalist. In restaurants, I’ll ooh and ahh over creative twists, but in my own kitchen I’m a straight-shooting classicist. I like banana bread without candied ginger and my cinnamon rolls sans raisins.

Since my very first kitchen, I wanted to master the basics. It seemed like a way to create comfort in my new grown-up life with familiar favorites: roast chicken, chocolate chip cookies, French onion soup. But once I felt confident and had a pocketful of tried-and-trues to turn to, I began to want to stray the course rather than stay it.

And then along came this split pea soup recipe, and I don’t think I’ll be making the classic split pea soup recipe for a long while.

Start with a base of onion, garlic and crushed red pepper cooked in butter. Puree the split peas and stir in velvety coconut milk. Brown butter and season with curry powder. Drizzle spiced butter over your soup and dust with chives. You can see how this would change your mind about a ham hock, can’t you? Have you ever stumbled across a new recipe that made you toss out your old tried-and-true favorite?

Continue reading “Split Pea Soup with Brown Butter, Coconut Milk & Chives” »

Is it just me, or is it as hard to properly eat this time of year as it is to get dressed? One day we’re bundling up in our down coats and craving spaghetti and meatballs, and the next day the scent of hyacinths is in the air and we’re craving big, fresh salads. It’s a shape-shifting season. You got to be ready to roll with it (as much as you just really, really want to wear your new sandals).

That’s why I like this soup, which features one of my favorite ingredients in the world: lentils. The red variety falls apart and becomes velvety soft, but the whole affair is brightened with spring greens and puckery lemon. I like to think of it as a marriage of opposites for this strange period of season-straddling: hearty warmth meets vibrancy and light.

Continue reading “Red Lentil Soup with Spinach and Lemon” »

Now, I’m no Italian donna. I grew up on tomato sauce in a jar and spaghetti cut with a knife. So I’ll freely admit up front that I’m no bastion of Italian tradition. Be that as it may, I do know that a bowl of pasta e fagioli is one of the most comforting dinners on earth, even for a Scotch-Irish girl like me. Homey and rich without being heavy, this is a supper that fills the house with good scents and makes you really feel like you’re doing something for your own good. Ideally, a mother would make this and bring you a bowl on the couch, along with a cup of milky sweet tea or a glass of wine and ask if you’d like a blanket or need the pillows behind your back rearranged. But as is, just made and served by you, it is still a comforting wonder.

Let us not overlook that the comfort comes not just at the end, when you’re leaning over the bowl and lifting a spoonful of fragrant broth to your lips. It begins at the cutting board, when you are standing there chopping (hacking?) away at carrot, onion and celery. I find that’s a good a way as any to dissolve the anxieties of the day.

Continue reading “$5 Dinner: Pasta and Bean Soup” »

Sometimes I’m a guest on radio shows about various lifestyle topics I feel really passionate about, like how to live a life that feels luxe without breaking the bank. Recently, I was on a show talking about saving money on groceries in November. The segment idea was based on the cost of the holiday meal itself. Many hosts are spending the equivalent of their entire monthly grocery budget on a single meal. And that means having to get by with less than usual on the rest of your meals this month.

Some people know that terrified let’s-rub-two-pennies-together-and-call-it-dinner feeling. It is an insistent, heavy stress to not know where how you’re going to get by. This weekend, when my own future looked uncertain, these old familiar feelings came rushing back, as dogged and insidiously intimate as ever. It’s as if your normal thoughts of are now overlaid with a pertinacious sense of dread. Worry trails you everywhere. On a walk in the park: The yellow leaves sure look pretty. How am I ever going to pay the rent? It’s an unrelenting downer of a companion.

But I had the feeling that the radio host I was talking to had never been in this situation. He couldn’t understand being so low on money that you choose to make your own wholesome, homemade bread with pantry ingredients instead of buying a supermarket loaf for $3.99. His version of roughing it was a grocery store rotisserie chicken. He had probably never chosen dried beans over canned; the necessity of that choice for some was lost on him.

And that’s fine, in a way. I wouldn’t wish the feeling of grocery store poverty on anyone. To worry constantly about money is to lug over your shoulder a sack of bricks that you have to carry everywhere; it immediately affects all aspects of your quality of life. But I did feel, talking to this fellow on the radio, that it is a real badge of honor, and an important life skill to know how to still make your life feel beautiful, your home cozy, and your relationships nurtured with no money. It involves a little creativity sometimes, and often a bit of extra elbow grease. But to know how to create something out of nothing is to feel armed with the sense that you can provide for yourself and the people around you no matter what. And that’s a feeling I wish on everyone.

Continue reading “$5 Dinner: Spaghetti with Pepper and Cheese & Spicy, Lemony Broccoli” »

I have you to thank for this one. When we got to talking about the foods of our childhood, so many of you mentioned tuna noodle casserole. Growing up, this wasn’t a staple in my house––tuna macaroni salad, on the other hand, is another story––and I’m not even sure I’ve ever had this piece of Americana. So when you were all waxing poetic about your memories, I started to feel a little left out. How different would life be if I had grown up on this casserole classic? One wonders. One really, really wonders.

So I made this for supper on Wednesday night. It was creamy and comforting and a great bolster for a cold, already-dark-at-5pm evening. I washed it down with a malty Blue Point Toasted Lager, which I don’t think I have to tell you was the perfect accompaniment.

If budget weren’t such an issue, I would love to try this again with artichoke hearts, red pepper, and scallions. You know, fancy it up a bit. But with pocket change and a husband in favor of a low vegetable-to-creaminess ratio, this version did the trick. (“I could eat this every night,” he declared. “Even without the tuna.”) Besides, I’m not sure a gussied-up version would have put me in touch with such an illustrious and storied culinary tradition. I’m glad to have now joined the club.

Continue reading “$5 Dinner: Tuna Noodle Casserole” »