Pink of Perfection

When for awhile you exist in the land of bounteous buffets that offer your heart’s desire — say, on vacation at a resort or on a cruise or at a Sunday brunch smorgasbord — you learn quickly what you would eat when handed the world on a plate. My husband gravitates towards steak at every meal: steak and eggs to start the day, steak and french fries at noon, and ribeye for dinner, juicy and rare. I, apparently, just want to eat homemade tortilla chips and fresh, spicy, pico de gallo. Plate after plate, at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, it is one of my most favorite meals. Add a paloma and I’m in heaven.

But the thing about Brooklyn tomatoes in December? Not looking so hot. In fact, it would be an exercise in disappointment to try to recreate the luscious flavors of a ripe tomato-filled pico de gallo. But a girl who needs her fix and is willing to make compromises will perhaps look around to see what’s in season and will find apples — tart, sweet, and crisp. I served this apple pico de gallo alongside sliced rare steak, black beans and rice for a meal that satisfied needs of both husband and wife.

When meal time comes, what do you crave again and again? Cheese and crackers? Peanut butter and saltines? Big salads? Soup and bread?

Continue reading “Non-Equatorial Pico de Gallo” »

At first, I held Thanksgiving responsible. Who would make a grocery store run for perishables that will sit in an apartment crisper when they know four days in the country are ahead of them? Perhaps I bragged too much about my ability to s-t-r-e-t-ch a food dollar over the weekend. As we walked out the door, my mom thrust a brown grocery bag into my hands filled with cheese, crackers, wine (”that’ll take care of tonight”), four cans of tuna, a box of whole wheat penne, 5 clementines and a bag of chocolate chips.

Then, upon returning from the long holiday weekend, I was taken hostage by a cold. My days filled with sleeping and The Up Series, there was hardly time or energy to make it to the grocery store. I did find some mangy looking celery — my first site of greenery in days! — which was thrown into a garlicky chicken soup for the patient. But my desire to make use of what’s at hand has gotten, well, a little out of hand. Adults do not eat repeated dinners of elbow macaroni and butter unless they are nursing a broken heart or feeding the blues.

My devotion to pantry suppers started quite valiantly, I must clarify, with this lovely brown rice risotto. I snagged a 1-ounce bag of dried mixed mushrooms when I saw them at Trader Joe’s for cheap. When you’re watching your pennies, dried wild mushrooms aren’t usually a good bet (they can be priced sometimes between $4-7!), but if you do see them on sale or at a discount store, they’re worth having on hand for nights when you don’t want to brave the grocery store but are feeling too together for a bowl of elbows and butter…again.

Continue reading “Pantry Supper: Wild Mushroom Brown Rice Risotto” »

When Sarah and I lived in New England and luxuries were few and far between, our mom took us to lunch at a little cafe with a slate patio at the Bennington potter’s yard. My sister, having discovered the glory of sweet and savory combinations early in life, ordered the potter’s lunch: a hot turkey, Vermont cheddar, and sliced apple sandwich served with whole grain mustard on thick, peasanty bread. Could there be a more satisfying 5-minute lunch? I doubt it.

I heated mine up in a skillet and ate it on the porch while admiring the deep navy plumage of a magpie knocking around the back yard. Then I went inside and googled Beatrix Potter. Did you know that Miss Potter was an expert mycologist, who identified the the symbiotic relationship between lichens and fungi and lectured at the London School of Economics? But more than that, I find it heartening that she had to self-publish (so much for that dirty word) the first edition of Peter Rabbit, after being rejected by six different publishers. She, as they say, sure showed them. Bon appetit! –Katy

hot buttered rum would be right at home here
image via Retrofuture

One has to be in a particular sort of mood for hot alcoholic drinks. Usually, I’d rather pour a glass of red wine, slip off my shoes, and sit by a fire, but hot buttered rum keeps purring its siren song in my ear.

The idea first popped into my head following an afternoon in dusty bookshops. With cold fingertips, we finally pushed open the door into a tavern with Christmas lights in the window, only to discover it wasn’t a hot buttered rum-friendly establishment. Instead, we drank a Yuenglings and listened to tales of their french fries being the best in the county.

But the next day, after a long walk in the slanting light of the afternoon, geese overhead, the hot buttered rum was still tempting me. Back in my mom’s kitchen, I pulled out a stained copy of the Joy of Cooking. The recipe couldn’t be simpler or more warming. I shared a cup over four games of Pente and lost every one. And I don’t think the rum can take the fall for that.

Continue reading “Post-Thanksgiving Cure: Hot Buttered Rum” »

image via retro renovation

Something tells me you dear readers share my deep and abiding love for Thanksgiving. On Sunday, window shopping in a fancy food shop with a friend, I suddenly got an anticipatory thrill so moving I hopped a little. Not up and down, but just up, once.

Thanksgiving wasn’t always my favorite holiday, but it became so when I was about 14. The day took on a hodgepodge element that made it more unpredictable party than overstuffed family function. My sister brought seemingly-glamorous (to a 14-year-old) college friends home, cousins in their 20’s would take the bus out to the country wearing black leather jackets, carrying cheese plates, and with a friend or two in tow, a fix-up could well be in the works, and a to-the-death game of Trivial Pursuit was a sure thing.

Things have settled down a bit over the years as attendees have grown up and coupled off. Sebastian makes a mean green bean casserole, my mom’s mashed potatoes are inspired, and there’s usually almost as much stuffing on my plate as I want. This year my sister is being held hostage in Montana. For the first time, I can’t count on her bloody marys and bold accessorizing. But two of my favorite eaters are driving up to sit at the long table, and I bring with me not a boyfriend but a husband. After the fast-paced flurry of a wedding, it will be good to sit down and have long chats with friends and family over a slice of pecan pie, a midnight bowl of mashed potatoes and gravy, and a glass of wine or five.

What’s Thanksgiving at your house like? Do you host? Is it friends, family, or both? A somber affair or an event where someone always dances on a table? Music for the table dancing after the jump…

Continue reading “Countdown to Turkey” »

tater tot turkey casserole

I blame the weather, as well as my pocketbook (and the fact that I just used the word “pocketbook” should prepare you for the retro flavor of this post), but all I want to eat are casseroles. In the past week I’ve hauled out Fanny Farmer and our two favorite 70’s cookbooks. I made something called Tomato Macaroni Pie on Monday and have been dreaming of something called Beef Noodle Skillet. This from the girl who served duck breast on a weeknight?

But casseroles have so much going for them: they can be elegant (just call it a gratin), they can be healthy (if you insist), they can be cheap, and the leftovers reheat beautifully. For the past hundred years, women carrying Pyrex dishes into church basements knew as much. When you don’t grow up with potlucks and hot dish and you take physics instead of home economics, you find yourself learning these things backward. I was drawn first to the glamour of making pâté and shaking martinis than the art of putting three square meals on the table each day. But eventually, because of that pocketbook, you come around.

• King Ranch Chicken
• Apple, Leek and Butternut Squash Gratin
• Hamburger Stroganoff
• Chicken Tetrazzini
• Tamale Pie
• Mediterranean Tuna Noodle Casserole
• French Baguette Casserole
• Cauliflower, Bacon, and Potato Casserole
• Scalloped Potatoes with Ham
• John Wayne Casserole (corresponding reading material)

A friend of mine who has recently received an Adult Dose of Life’s Bad Stuff met me for a cozy fall cocktail a couple of weeks ago. We sat in the wooden booths of my favorite neighborhood bar surrounded by walls of white subway tile and settled in for Real Talk. The buttered rum (her) and apple-gin-maple-syrup cocktail (me) quickly got us in a chatty groove. I was coming off a time in life so happy, I burst into tears every time I recounted details of it, and my friend was coming off a time so trying, she too burst into tears. At this particular moment in time, toasting our friendship in low candlelight, our lives could not have been more different.

But my friend is kind of a genius of perception and she found the common thread: we both felt blessedly lucky to have support. For me, having friends and family from different times in my life and points on the globe descend on one backyard to toast to a solemn vow made for a wedding day of magic. For my friend, her friends and loved ones were laboring on her behalf — behind the scenes at times — to make her life run a little more smoothly as she passed through some serious turbulence. “If I’ve learned one thing this fall,” she said, “it’s that we get what we need.”

I wonder if we need the kick in the pants life serves us sometimes–the tests of our mettle, the challenges of our character. I prefer, more pleasantly, to believe that life knows when we need to see an adorable child or step into a short line at the grocery store. But there is some comfort in knowing that whether we’re served treats or tests, we are always only getting what we can handle. It is hard to see the need in brushes with death or extreme poverty or hunger, but maybe it’s in there somewhere. I’m still trying to figure it out.

What I’m sure of, though, is that upon returning from my honeymoon, I needed to meet with a group of strangers on a Sunday evening in November in a cozy brownstone to drink red wine and talk about Mad Men. I needed a book club — had wanted one for years — but at exactly the right moment, there it was: a roomful of smart, accomplished women who wanted to talk about literature and eat cake. My kind of girls.

Continue reading “Classic Pound Cake: Book Club Tested, Book Club Approved” »

Last week might as well be dubbed my Discovery of 1,000 Duhs. First, there was the accidental delight of greek yogurt stirred into lentils. And after 27 years of half-hearted trying, I finally understand the thrill of video games. Which just goes to show that an idea only has to be new to you to bear the great flush of being groundbreaking. And isn’t that a load off since there is, as they say, nothing new under the sun. With that in mind, I now present to you something new to me: fallen leaves as place cards at your next party.

This particular “no, duh” idea didn’t occur to me until I was walking home from the stationery shop — really wanting hot chocolate for the second time in a week but trying to resist –when my attention was diverted. I crossed paths with a perfect-looking ginko leaf, exotically formed and vibrantly yellow. What could I use these for, I wonder?

I learned the hard way that you cannot make leaves into keepsakes of any kind unless you press them between the pages of your heaviest dictionary or they will curl up hideously and become brittle. They are in the process of decomposition, after all. Still very much infatuated with the idea after my initial fail, however, I went out into the drizzly rain on the afternoon of the party, the hood of my jacket pulled up, and carefully considered leaves on the wet sidewalk. I see myself as someone who takes her time, who notices the small beauties of life. But scoping for leaves really slows you down and literally brings your focus to the ground level. The usual thoughts that pop up when you are going through the motions of familiar, routine activities don’t have room to take root. Looking for leaves, there will be no anxieties about what’s going on next week, next year, and how you’re going to scheme your life from point A to point B. I’m not saying you won’t get weird looks, but it’s a heavenly little meditation to bring you into the present moment.