Cookstory: January 20, 2013. Stickin' it to the Blender.

Afternoon

Grilled Ham and Cheese and Grilled Turkey Sandwiches.
The big news in our house: Susannah has discovered peanut butter and jelly sandwiches! Even better: she makes them all by herself! I can't tell you how exciting both of these developments are. (The kid whose monogram is "PBJ," however, still will not eat PB&J.)


Evening

Cider and English Cheddar Soup.
Another recipe from that soup collection that appeared in the recent American Lifestyle magazine, this was a terrific tasting soup. But I made one key mistake in the making of it that completely ruined the texture. The recipe indicates that, working in batches, I should purée the soup in a blender. "Blender ... pshaw!" I thought. "I have a stick blender that is not used nearly enough. Time to give a good workout!"

Either I didn't give the stick blender enough of a workout, or the tool is simply not able to do the intended job. It did not entirely purée the onion, celery and potato, with a result that every bite had tiny vegetable bits in it. Again, didn't affect the taste; just the texture.

This was an excellent lesson in "mouth feel," something that I wouldn't have even bothered paying attention to not long ago. Time to start thinking about the entire food experience! The next time I make this, I will definitely go for the more thorough work of our sturdy blender and hopefully get rid of the "grit."


Penne Rigate with Tomato Sauce and Ricotta.
I probably could have given Piper and Susannah the soup as well, but I wanted to give them something I knew they'd eat, and I wanted something that paired better with the garlic bread, which I'd already decided I was making.


Garlic Bread.
After I made this recently, Piper announced that she wanted to learn how to make it. It turned out not to be the perfect recipe for her: it required her cutting the loaf of Italian bread lengthwise using my new favorite weapon, the 12-inch bread knife I got for Christmas. Piper's conduct around the knives in our kitchen goes beyond respect and well into the venue of fear. Perhaps this is because the family remembers all too well a trip to the emergency room with a small sliver of my left ring finger in a baggie. (A story for another time!) So even though the bread knife (despite its size) is a relatively safe knife to use, I really had to coax her through the slicing.

In addition, the recipe requires roasted garlic cloves to be mashed with a fork with a few other ingredients to create the delicious paste spread liberally over the bread. Sadly, Piper got her "arm strength genes" from her dad, which is to say she has none. Even when we moved the bowl of garlic cloves to a lower surface so that she could get some leverage, she was unable to mash them effectively. I had to step in.

Ironically, after all the excitement about having the garlic bread again, and after she actually *made* it (isn't it supposed to taste better when you make it?), she didn't even touch the bread I put on her plate! Children's palates can be confounding.

Cookstory: January 18, 2013: Family Dinners and TV Trays.

Evening

Eggs, Bacon and Toast. 

A couple of years ago, we (Laura and I) decided to focus more on the family dinner. We found ourselves falling into the ever-so-obvious trap of having more and more meals in front of the television. Because hey, we're tired ... this is easier. It keeps the kids happy. (It's not really easier; it means having to constantly remind them to eat their food because they get distracted by what's on the screen.) Laura gave me Laurie David's wonderful book The Family Dinner for Christmas, at first in the hopes that it would inspire me to cook with the kids more in the kitchen. The book didn't really do that ... but more on kids in the kitchen soon ... stay tuned.

But The Family Dinner did effectively make the case for—or, should I say, remind me—of the importance of the family dinner. And we vowed to have family dinners as often as possible, limiting dinners in front of the TV to only one night a week. We were faithful to the vow for quite some time, though it did mean making a little bit of an adjustment: I had to come up with a much larger repertoire of weeknight meals—quick to make and tasty for the whole family—and while I learned them, the new recipes often meant a much later dinner time than anyone preferred. But for the most part, that has worked out. And though we've probably slipped a bit and watch TV while eating dinner more than the original prescription, we are keeping the family dinner alive and well under this roof.

My mom was also really good at keeping the family dinner going during my childhood. I've heard stories about how intense family dinners can become for many families: heated conversations, arguments, lessons learned around the table. I don't really remember anything like that at our family dinners. They just sort of ... happened. I didn't really connect with my parents in any deep way; they weren't that kind of people. But my memory of the food is that it was delicious. And we would still do our dinners in front of the TV too—exclusively so on those nights when eggs, bacon and toast were on the menu.

Hungry Man salisbury steak. Mouth-watering!

A tremendously important element of that meal was the TV tray. These were ubiquitous in the 1970s and 1980s and stood as an early symbol of the impact of television on our home life: the depiction in print and televisual media of a family or (more commonly) a lonely senior citizen situated in front of the television, slumped over a metal surface holding a Swanson's TV dinner, was quite common. ("Hungry Man" style dinners, which were larger than the "average" dinner, were my favorite; salisbury steak with apple cobbler!) When we lived in Idyllwild in the early 1970s, the TV trays we had were made of a light metal, rectangular and pressed out in a factory that probably ran right next to the license plate makers in prisons. The bottom of the tray had four rubber "grips" into which the legs clipped in. I remember thinking that the floral pattern on Mom and Dad's TV trays were SO much more modern than, say, Grandma Albright's, which must have been from—gasp!—the 1960s!

A similar TV tray pattern to ours.

When we moved down to Pacific Palisades, we got new tables that were more sturdy, with an ovular tabletop made of some sort of quasi-Formica-like finish on them ... dark brown with faux wood grain. I loved these. The surface area was big, the legs were sturdy, in case you accidentally kicked one as you were moving around, or laughing particularly hard at a joke on Happy Days. (Did anyone laugh particularly hard at Happy Days? In truth, I can only remember watching 60 Minutes and World News Tonight with Peter Jennings.)

The exact TV trays we had in the 1980s!

When I started writing this, I believed that TV trays had really become passé, that no one had them anymore. A Google search proved me wrong: WalMart and Costco both carry them, and there is (of course!) a whole market for. I can't imagine owning them anymore. Maybe that's just snooty of me.

These days, for our Friday Night Movie Nights, the girls sit at a very short table perched between the couch (for the grown-ups) and the television. This table came from Laura's childhood home, and I believe it possesses some magic, because despite the girls' amazing growth over the last eight years, they still fit perfectly at this table. Truth be told, I still use it myself on a regular basis, like when I'm cutting up vegetables for a dish. Laura and I balance our plates on the arms of the couch. And yes, take a moment to imagine the wealth of food stains. (Laura hates the couch; she so wants a new one.

Our nights in front of the television still feel very much like family dinners. I'm not advocating for more time in front of the TV, but our watching is very participatory, involving lots of discussions of what we're seeing, the morals and ethics of what is going on, and (in the case of Downton Abbey) much expounding on the finer points of turn-of-the-century English social tomfoolery. The moment they're done with their food, the girls abandon the magic table and curl up with us on the couch, and the chattering continues throughout our viewing. On cold winter nights, I can hardly think of anything more satisfying.

Cookstory: January 16, 2013. Everything In Its Right Place; or, Mise En Place as the Metaphor for Life.

Banana Bread. 
One of the first things an experienced cook learns is the importance of mise en place. It's French for "putting in place," or maybe "getting your shit together." It's so typical of me to start the actual cooking  before I've gathered together all my equipment and measured out all my ingredients. And I should know better at this point, after all the times something has been left out—or even times when I'm at a critical point in the recipe with burners revving on high and I discover that I don't have an ingredient. Bush-league chefery. (Yes, I said "chefery." Patent pending.)

It's not that I don't have all the cute little bowls and plates to set out the elements of the meal; it's that I'm just too damned lazy to take the time to do it. Or, I'm pressed for time, as is so often the case on weeknights, between getting home from work and rushing out to a school meeting or a swim practice. But it shouldn't matter: I should bite the bullet and force myself to perform a complete mise en place before I start cooking, or not take on the recipe at all. Especially if it's my first time taking on the recipe.

Now, when I'm cooking something for someone else, shall we say for "public consumption," I suddenly color myself all professional. This loaf of banana bread was for the classroom celebration of Zuzu's birthday. (Don't you love how birthdays regularly extend out for days on end?) So even before the girls were tucked in, I was weighing flour, preparing the loaf pan, taking eggs out of the fridge to get the chill off of them.... And once they were off to dreamland, I had the full mise en place all good to go. Naturally, when I actually take the time to do this, two things happen: a) the recipe comes together very quickly; and b) no ingredient is left out! The most common mistake I make in the kitchen is easy to thwart with just a little planning.

And by the way, it's more than simply setting out your ingredients: for proper mise en place, you have to sit down and read through the recipe. (Reading it out loud is even better, to make sure you're not skimming over anything.) Sometimes, an extra necessary pan will be hidden in the recipe; or sometimes a common ingredient will not be mentioned in the ingredients list at the top but is key to the recipe. (Most often, I find a measured amount of water tossed into the directions.) There is a time and a place for surprises in the kitchen, but I don't like to do that if I'm sharing my meals with those outside my immediate family. (I'm apparently perfectly happy to make those closest to me my lab rats.)

There's something so satisfying about seeing the ingredients all laid out and organized, awaiting the start of assembly. It reminds me of my days training for marathons, when I would get ready for my long Sunday morning runs. The process of dressing for the run—especially the winter runs—would prepare me mentally and physically: I'd actually feel my heartbeat increase before I stepped out into the brisk air. When I'm cooking, if I take the time to do the mise en place, it puts me in the correct state of mind. It makes me understand that this is what I'm doing now, and I can mentally devote myself to the task at hand.

Mise en place: a metaphor for life.

The real problem with this recipe is that I was preparing it for others, so we ended up getting very little of the bread ourselves. Which means I need to make it again, pronto. I've already put more bananas aside to get overripe in preparation for another loaf. Sadly, that's still many days away.

Cookstory: January 14, 2013. A Soup 'Torn Apart'

Monday was Susannah's eighth birthday. We celebrated with a dinner out Sunday at the restaurant of her choice: the Candlelite Chicago Restaurant. Both girls love Candlelite's pizza, they always order Shirley Temples, and most importantly, the Ms. Pac-Man machine on the premises gives ample opportunity to blow a few bucks in quarters.

The plan for the 14th, her actual birthday, was to have dinner at home and then head out to our favorite frozen dessert joint: Lickity Split Frozen Custard in Chicago. If she'd had her druthers, Zuzu would probably have preferred that I knock out some pasta and sauce and leave it at that. But I had already prepared for a particular menu, originally scheduled for the weekend, but since that got away from us, I moved it to tonight.


January 14, 2013

Evening

Parmesan Stracciatella with Kale.
Laura found this recipe in a magazine, one of those canned publications where our realtor inserts his name and picture on the inside page to pub himself up and keep his name in our thoughts. Despite the strong scent of prefabrication, the magazine always has a pretty decent section of recipes, and this quarter they included several winter soup recipes, all of which sounded good. I was particularly interested in this one because I'd tried a different stracciatella recipe before, with lackluster results. I knew I could do better, and the addition of kale (and cornstarch) to this recipe gave me high hopes.

Whole Foods usually has two different varieties of kale: a green and a red. I almost always choose the red because it's heartier with darker leaves, thus filled with more vitamins and Good Stuff™. But for this recipe, all the other ingredients were mild (even the Parmesan; there was a full cup of grated cheese in the soup, but its presence was still subtle). So I opted for the less overpowering green kale.

Stracciatella, in case you didn't know, is the Italian take on egg drop soup. You may have also heard it used as a flavor of gelato, but other than the name, the two dishes share nothing in common. The word stracciatella literally means "torn apart." In the case of the gelato, I guess the torn-apart item must be the chocolate shavings mixed in. In the case of the soup, I'm not sure how the word ties in, unless it's the idea that the ribbons of egg in the soup give the appearance of being torn apart.

I've made it before because the girls LOVE egg drop soup when we get it from our local Chinese joint. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to replicate the ... thickness ... the exact flavor of the restaurant version. I hoped this one might come closer with the addition of the cornstarch, and in the end it did. The presence of "green leaves" in their soup, however, put off Susannah and Piper and they had less than they might have had otherwise. (I put significantly less kale in their bowls, but they still balked.) Nevertheless, this was a far superior Stracciatella recipe to the last one, and it will definitely be repeated, though perhaps with one less egg.


Mozzarella, Tomato and Basil Salad.
When was the first time I had this? I can't recall. I think it was at Edwardo's Pizza, back in the 1990s, when Laura and I first started dating. It's so simple, so good; one of those dishes that proves the adage: the fewer ingredients, the better.

Slices of tomato. Raw Tomatoes on their ownis always a gamble in January. You can't find a good-tasting tomato in the winter. Hell, I'm hard-pressed to find a good one in summer, unless you find some farmer's market heirlooms. How did we get to this place with tomatoes in our world? Was it absolutely necessary to completely sacrifice all taste and goodness just so the fruit can travel hundreds of miles in trucks without being bruised? Is the President working on this crisis? Anyway. I buy vine tomatoes, and then usually let them sit a few more days on the counter before using them. I end up with a modicum of taste.

Fresh basil. One leaf per tomato, or if it's a particularly big leaf, tear it in half. It's important to not overdo the basil: it's going to help the tomato, but it can overpower the cheese. I chose basil instead of tarragon for the baked sole a few days ago (to the fish's detriment) because I knew I wanted to make this soon after. The leaf is positioned in the center of the tomato slice.

Fresh mozzarella. The shape and variety depends entirely on what the market is carrying that day, and this time it was the ovolines, which are a little smaller than ping-pong balls. I slice them in half and position one half  on top of each basil leaf.

Olive oil is drizzled over the construction. Kosher salt. Freshly ground pepper. Perfection.


Garlic Bread.
A couple of years ago, if I wanted garlic bread, I'd buy one of those pre-made loaves out of the supermarket freezer, the ones that are pre-sliced, already have the garlic butter on them and just need a hearty blast from your oven. Then I came across this recipe on ATK's site. It's almost as easy as buying the prefab stuff, so why not make it? Better for you too, I bet. Every time I make it, I wonder why I don't make it more often. Piper wonders the same thing: she is on my case to produce more a.s.a.p., and she's asking for it in her school lunch all the time now.

Happy birthday, Zuzu!

Cookstory: January 11-12, 2013. Just Call Me Eggy McEggMeister.

By the end of this entry, there will be no question that I love eggs. I'd make 'em every day if I believed it was a healthy decision. That is all I've made the last two days, as a matter of fact. Though that wasn't quite the way it was supposed to work out.


January 11, 2013

Evening

Eggs (prepared three ways), Bacon, and Toast.
This is why I'm loving my daughters today: here it was, their Friday Night Movie Night™, and they could watch anything they wanted. A Pixar movie. Yet another lame Tinkerbell movie. (In fairness, the most recent Tinkerbell movies from Disney have fairly high production values and the writing has not been egregious.) Some flick where the animals have been given computer-generated mouths and and deliver groan-inducing quips like a bad latenight talkshow host's monologue.

So what do they unanimously, enthusiastically choose? The two-hour season opener of Downton Abbey. Though it takes a lot longer than two hours to watch it with them: we have to stop and explain things like how the Earl of Grantham lost his fortune, or why Matthew is adamant about taking a pass on his inheritance. But, God bless 'em, they are heavily invested in the show. Not quite 8 and not quite 11 years old. How cool is that?

And what better menu to accompany the wedding of the year but another breakfast at dinner. Nothing too surprising here: Zuzu went with her traditional scrambled egg (largely uneaten, due to a tummy ache). Wanting to go simple, I scrambled mine too. Piper got her cheese omelette. And Laura decided to go for one of her favorite comfort foods: the egg sandwich.

I've had a fun time over the last year \developing my take on the Egg McMuffin. My favorite challenge on this recipe was consistently getting the egg to "fit" on the English muffin. the perfect circle is not the egg's natural shape. We don't mind this so much at McDonald's since nothing there could remotely be described as "natural" anyway. To achieve the optimal egg circle, I purchased a set of different-sized, simple, round cookie cutters, and I chose the one closest to the circumference of the muffin. I coat the inside of the circle with a butter spray and very gently lay it on the nonstick surface. (I feel guilty letting anything metal touch the surface of my nonstick pan, but I don't see any other way to get the result I want.)

After a small amount of butter has melted on the pan inside the perimeter of the cookie cutter, I gently crack the egg into the circle, trying to land the yolk in the center. (That actually happens about 7% of the time.) I salt the egg while it's still in liquid form so it makes its way into the egg. After the edges of the egg have set, the cookie cutter is carefully removed with tongs. The egg is flipped, and I let it cook a little longer than an over-easy egg (call it "over-hard") so that the yolk won't drip everywhere once the eater bites into it A slice of American cheese is laid over the top of the egg (this is one dish where only American cheese works), and once that's good and melty, The whole thing is slid onto the top of one half of a toasted muffin, and topped with the other half. Yum.


January 12, 2013

Evening

Omelettes.
Our closest friends are back from a lengthy vacation, and we took the occasion of Piper's school team's first-ever victory in basketball (Go, Demons!) to get together and catch up on our holiday activities. As always happens, the visit went on much longer than expected, and it was clear that my Italian-themed dinner that I had planned for the family back at our house was not going to happen. (I never even made it to the market.) So Laura offered that if they let us stay, I would make omelettes for everyone. (Our friends thought it was bold of my wife to offer up my services for the meal, but Laura and I thought it was pretty forward of us to invite ourselves for dinner in the first place.) After a brief discussion of filling options and a laugh at the fact that the Baileys were doing eggs for the second night in a row, the two husbands were off and cooking while the wives kept us entertained at the dining room table.

What made this cooking so enjoyable is that I had the rare opportunity to focus on one thing, and one thing only: the omelettes. My friend took care of pretty much everything else. I never have this luxury at home. I'm always having to juggle different parts of the menu at the same time, and everything suffers. (I could never be an Iron Chef.) But on this night, I was able to pay attention to exactly how long to steam the baby spinach (just enough to start the wilting, but no so much that it turned into a limp, yucky mess). I could focus on getting a good, consistent mince for the sweet peppers. I could saute the chopped onion just until the sweetness had been enhanced, and no further.

Most importantly, I could focus on omelette technique. I kicked out seven of those babies, made to order. The goal with omelettes is to get that pan heated just to the point where the omelette cooks through but the exterior does not brown. Also, you do not want to overload the omelette with ingredients—something that most restaurants do. (This tendency, I think, is probably a reaction to the typical over-portioning that American restaurants do. Patrons like to think they're getting a big bang for their buck, and the result is too much food. More on this another time.)

In the case of one omelette, the "customer" requested that it be significantly browned on the outside. But of the other six where I was really trying to nail the exterior, I think I got it right twice. And I was actually happy with those numbers. None of the people served complained. (Piper called it my "best omelette ever.")

I'm pretty egged out now for awhile ... except that the next recipe I'm making is a soup with five eggs in it. But after THAT, I'll be able to get away from eggs for a while.

One of the nicest elements of this meal was the fact that all during cooking (and after, of course), I was able to participate in the conversation. At home, there's usually too much crap on the counter island to feel comfortable inviting guests to come hang while I cook. I'm probably within earshot of the family room, but then the TV is usually on out there. (We don't usually entertain unless it's Thanksgiving or Christmas, and you can bet that the TV is on playing some sort of sports event.) It would be nice if I could find a way to set up the kitchen so that I don't feel so detached from the "party" when I'm cooking. Add that to the 6,488 other items we have on our  "at home" to-do list.

Cookstory: January 9, 2013: Gettin' Jiggy with the Omega-3s

Evening

Baked Sole Fillets with Herbs and Bread Crumbs.
It wasn't all that long ago that I learned a two-part fact about the human body that rather astounded me:

1. We need Omega-3 fatty acids to survive.
2. The body does not have the ability to create any Omega-3 fatty acids.

Part of my amazement has to do with the fact that I am by no means a scientist or particularly knowledgeable about the body. But I am fascinated at the complexity of the human machine, at the fact that it can sustain itself, that it is so surprisingly durable. So it shocks me that evolution would lead us to a place where we have no ability to manufacture an element that is required for us to live.

If nothing else, it points out with clarity and humility that—and the touchy-feely, left-coastness of this next statement is not lost on me, so get ready—rather than consider ourselves the "dominant" species, we should instead look upon ourselves as just another piece of this world that must work in harmony with the planet. I mean, here are these building blocks to our survival, and we rely on the lowly fish to supply it to us. Gee, maybe we should, um, take care of their habitat. Or something.

This family gets its Omega-3s largely from two fish: salmon and tilapia. Oh, and shrimp—I love cooking with shrimp. (Except they really can't hold the spatula with their little feet. Ha! But I kid the shrimp. I love you guys.) I'm not sure how much Omega-3 is present in shellfish. You'd think I'd do some research on these posts, you know?

I could eat salmon every day, especially when it's prepared my favorite way: cooked up in a skillet after marinating it in a teriyaki mixture. The salmon, not the skillet. Alas, we're not really in the position to afford salmon every day; and I'm guessing that the "too much of a good thing" maxim probably applies here the same way we know it applies to tuna.

As to tilapia: how much more safe, more vanilla can I go? I mean, tilapia is delicious, but that's because it's only as good as the way it's dressed, spiced, or however you prepare it. Tilapia is the tofu of seafood: it is a blank slate, ready to take on the characteristics of whatever you add to it, rather than daring to be something itself. It isn't the least bit fishy smelling ... but that's because it's barely fish, in the gastronomic sense. I don't mean to slag it so much. I really love eating it. But I also love it because it's so easy to make, and it's really hard to fuck up a tilapia dish.

All of which is to say: one of my goals this year is to find more options for fish, more interesting recipes, more windows to the Omega-3s. Ergo, this recipe, which is from (surprise!) America's Test Kitchen. I happened to rewatch a television episode that included this recipe, and I figured that this was as good a place to start as any.

I paired it with leftover mashed potatoes and parsnips
from the seitan dish the other night. Thank goodness
for the sweetness in those mashed veggies, bringing the
much needed flavor to the plate.

The sole fillets at Whole Foods were disappointing: very puny. But the fishmonger was kind enough to search through the collection on display and find eight of the bigger pieces he had. It was still only 1.3 pounds of fish. Preparation was enjoyable in that zen sense, because I had so much herb-chopping to do, and prepping the fillets and rolling them into their little "packets" was pretty fun.

The recipe calls for fresh tarragon but also mentions that you can substitute basil if you'd prefer. I did prefer that, only for economy: I can't think of another recipe I have that requires tarragon, but I know I can use that basil. So out with the tarragon, in with the basil ... and I suspect that was my big mistake. The finished dish was disappointing. Laura liked it, but I kept feeling like something was missing. I suspect that the basil, in combination with the parsley and chives, simply disappeared. The more bold taste of tarragon (think something along the lines of anise and fennel) would have been useful here to cut through the dish's overemphasis on savory compounds with some sweet undertones.

So the sole dish just felt like it was one sweet ingredient away from being spectacular ... but the lack of that ingredient made it barely mediocre for me. I suppose what I should do is try the dish again with the tarragon, but the truth is I wasn't all that crazy about the baked cod, period. (I love it in fish and chips.) It was a very fishy smelling fish, at least compared to tilapia. (Perhaps it wasn't as fresh as I assumed?) And there have to be some other really spectacular fish dishes out there. So my quest shall continue.

Cookstory: January 7-8, 2013

January 7, 2013


Morning

Grilled Ham and Cheese Sandwich.
For Piper's school lunch. Wrapped in foil. She reheats it in the cafeteria microwave.

Evening

Spaghetti with Tomato Sauce and Ricotta Cheese.
I had to knock out dinner dinner in 15 minutes to get Piper to swim practice. Nothing special here: a strictly utilitarian meal. (Though the sauce has a nice backstory I'll share another time.) I ate standing up.



January 8, 2013

Evening

Sautéd Broccoli with Parmesan. 

This is a standard of mine, which I think I got from the Deborah Madison vegetarian cookbook. It's so simple: cut up a head of broccoli, steam it for 3-4 minutes, then toss it into a sauté pan preheated with olive oil, sliced garlic, and some red pepper flakes. Toss it around in that pan for about 4-5 minutes, and then straight into a serving dish, where you thinly slice parmesan cheese over the broccoli and let it melt a bit before serving.

Near East Pasta.
Another standard. The girls love this, so I often include it when I'm serving a main course that they may not be so crazy about. A delicious quickie on a weeknight.

Both of these items were paired with a roast chicken, which we pick up on a semi-regular basis from Whole Foods on Tuesday nights, when they run a special. We always get the "Oak Street" flavor, made only at this one Whole Foods location and named after the Oak Street Market, the long-departed-but-still-first-in-Evanston health food market. This chicken is the last remaining vestige of that small but venerable establishment that used to live across from the downtown Evanston post office.

A Crice-mas Story

It's Christmas 2010. Susannah and I, we're cruising the aisles of a mall parking lot that, while not packed, is crowded for this holiday season. We have been taking turns picking songs on the iPod: she going with some of her standards (Green Day's "Know Your Enemy," Ben Folds' "Trusted," a Party Ben mash-up of "Chasing Cars" and "Every Breath You Take" called "Every Car You Chase"); me, I'm sticking close to the predictable holiday playlist, which she has little patience for. So it's no surprise that during The Blind Boys of Alabama's "I Pray On Christmas" that she chimes from the seat behind me:

"Jesus Crice!"

This is the first time I've heard my not-quite-five-year-old swear. I suppose I should be grateful that I made it this far without hearing something like this or far worse pass her lips, but the truth is, she's breaking this ground earlier than Piper did: it was only a few short months ago that I heard Peach drop something and exclaim "Dammit!" At that moment, much like this one, I was grateful for my calm-under-pressure demeanor: I didn't react outwardly at all. No shock, no dumbfounded jaw-drop. No, on that occasion, I simply let it go. For two reasons. Firstly, making a big deal of it with Piper would most likely have resulted in "charging" the word and setting her up to use it again in the future. Secondly, because if I tell her to never use "dammit" again, I just know I'm going to look hypocritical the next time we're all belted in the car and some asshole in a BMW tries to turn left from Ridge onto Dempster, even though there are eight (I've counted) "No Left Turn" signs posted, along with a "straight-only" arrow painted on the road.

My approach with Susannah is different, because Susannah's personality is different: she's less likely to seize upon a "forbidden word" and use it to her advantage in the future. She's more interested in pleasing grown-ups, in following the rules. So after I pass through a short period of "detached bemusement," as if I just overheard some other father's 4-year-old take the Lord's name in vain, I give a slow internal count to five and I respond to her cuss thusly:

"Is anything wrong, sweetie?"

Are we ever going to find a parking space?" she exclaims. "We've been looking for an hour!"

No point in changing the focus to her extremely warped perception of time right now. After I pull into a spot and collect all my Christmas lists together, I purposely don't open her door.

"Sweetie, you probably shouldn't say 'Jesus Christ' like you said it."

"Why not?"

"Well, it's a bad thing to say that way. Kind of like the 'B' word."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

Oh, right: the "B" word. You don't know about that. See, that was the first "naughty" word the girls learned about, courtesy their former-grade-school-teaching grandma. Grace could not stand to hear her first-graders say that something was "boring" or that they themselves were "bored." She taught her students, and later her older grandchildren, never to say these words in her presence, and she continued the tradition with ours. "Only boring people are bored," she says. Peach and the Bean have picked right up on this: on those moments when the words escaped their parents' lips, before we'd learned the new regimen, we would get that gasp and those big eyes that only a child can master, sometimes accompanied by an "I'm telling Grandma!" (Laura and I were thrilled when we found a shirt at The Gap with "Only boring people are bored" emblazoned across the front. Zuzu wears it with great pride.)

At some point late in Laura's pregnancy with Piper, it occurred to me, as it occurs to so many new fathers sooner or later, that I was going to have to severely limit—or, ideally, eliminate—swearing around the house. I liked that I had some time to get used to it, that it would be months before I had to watch what I said. Laura would regularly remind me when I let a four-letter word fly that I was going to have to curtail that. I think she thought it would be hard for me. I think I thought the same thing.

As it turns out, dropping the cuss words from my everyday vocab was easy as pie. Something about being around the innocence of a child brings out the inner Mister Rogers. If you have a heart, anyway. I mean, I wouldn't imagine that Deadwood's Al Swearengen (can't spell his name without "swear!") would mind his mouth in the presence of preschoolers. But I had no problem assuming two identities: I was the sweet-voiced father from sunrise until the kiddies were tucked in ... and then, while they dreamed their innocent kiddie dreams, I became the foul-mouthed oaf on the couch, cursing Ryan Murphy's pissing away of perfectly respectable premises on American Horror Story with his over-the-top hogwash. (For example.)

The duplicity was frighteningly easy. Sure, there were times I slipped up—like the time that Piper shoved a twig deep into the lock of our back door, the only door into our house for which I had a key. The girls got the "full monty" of my secret lexicon that afternoon. But my tongue was clean a good 92.6 percent of the time.

Piper, the oldest, was the first, to learn that there was a different 'B' word that the rest of the world used. This was followed closely by introductions to the "D" word and the "S" word, courtesy some male classmates. It's a pity she ever had to come in contact with other kids her age. But she maintained a good, healthy fear of the words and didn't try to ever use them. As parents, we continued to "protect" the girls' innocence as best we could, carefully choosing media with both appropriate themes and language. (Word of warning: I don't care what commonsensemedia.org says, Back to the Future is decidedly NOT a family movie! At least not for kids 6 and 9 years old. I had not remembered Michael J. Fox's potty mouth!) But Piper is in 5th grade now, and she is coming to realize that adult language is a natural part of the world. She is currently obsessing over the soundtrack to Eastland, Lookingglass Theatre Company's recent production of the 1915 Chicago River boat disaster. It was the first Lookingglass production she saw, and she fell hard for the play, the company, and the story of the Eastland. The musical's lyrics are filled with "shit" and "piss" and "goddamn," and she has handled it all with great maturity. We talked in the car one night about how the language is used for purpose in the play, to establish qualities of characters and to heighten the stress of the situation, when people naturally reach for words that match the emotions they're feeling at that moment.

Still, it's strange to think that these words are going to be part of my daughters' everyday lives soon. I think they are learning the proper respect, the proper "place" for it. And that's really the best we can hope for, under the circumstances.

But part of me still wants to beg: can't we just freeze them at this simple age?

I mean, Jesus Crice.

Cookstory: January 6, 2013: Serving Satan ... er, seitan.

Morning

Cream Of Wheat. 
I just made it for myself, only because I needed to erase the memory of yesterday's salty disaster. Today: nailed it!


Evening

Balsamic-Roasted Seitan with Cipollini Onions.
Before the start of 2013, Laura pointed out that we needed to get back on the "health horse" (uh ... my horrible, horrible phrase, not hers) and start eating better again. We really had gotten way off track, partly due to laziness, and partly due to stresses in our lives that, quite frankly, made it difficult for me to devote the time to cooking that healthy eating requires. Tonight's dinner was a clear attempt to fall back in step.

The recipe (as well as the mashed vegetables below) comes from Peter Berley's wonderful book, Fresh Food Fast. I love this book because the menus are divided seasonally, which makes it easier for me to know going into a recipe that I'm going to be able to find all the ingredients. (For all the cooking I do, I'm still not very good at knowing instantly what's in season and what isn't. This fact, along with my fear of ever going "off recipe" and ad-libbing in the kitchen, makes it hard for me to feel like I really know jack about cooking.)

I do question Berley's definition of the word "fast" in the title: the recipes don't take that long—if you don't count all the prep. Not counting prep time before any actual cooking starts seems like a total cheat. For instance, the cipollini onions in this recipe needed to be skinned, and Berley suggests blanching them for 30 seconds before removing the skins. But nowhere does it mention how long it takes to get those damn skins off the onions.

Proof that I need to work on my food
photography: It really tasted better than
this picture indicates!

Luckily it was all worth it. And it was worth keeping the actual recipe a bit of a secret from Laura. You see, she's not a huge fan of seitan in general, and had I pitched the recipe to her ahead of time, she probably would have talked me out of doing it. Hey—I knocked out that chicken noodle soup for her yesterday; she owed me one. And if one believes the ends justifies the means, the fact is that she loved the food. The seitan was so wonderfully marinated in a sauce that included some of the best balsamic vinegar in the world from a local oil and vinegar shop), and the onions were unbelievably sweet, almost like fruit. This is definitely a repeat recipe.

Garlic Mashed Potatoes and Parsnips. 
Parsnips are another vegetable that proves to be a hard sell in this family (including me). But here's the thing: we're past Christmas, and we have a few months of yucky winter ahead of us. We gotta find some love in root vegetables one way or another, and there's only so much I can do with potatoes and carrots. I really want to expand the winter menu. So, parsnips get another visit.

I was a little worried about the entire head of garlic in this recipe, but its presence was surprisingly mild in the final dish. I'm figuring this was due to the cooking method: boiling, rather than sautéing, which would have intensified the garlic. I slipped up when I "undermashed" at the end, for fear of overworking the vegetables and making the texture too tough. I ended up with a couple of chunky pieces of parsnips, and the bites that included those chunks brought on a stronger, uneven taste. Other than that, this side was surprisingly yummy, especially when combined with the sauce from the seitan dish.

Well, the kids wouldn't agree. I gave them a small amount of the mashed veggies (I didn't even try them on the seitan dish), and they immediately spotted the "different" taste. "This isn't like the mashed potatoes you usually make," said Zuzu. "These taste like green beans," said Piper. Well, "green beans" made no sense ... but I finally fessed up to the presence of the parsnips, and ended up having to solemnly promise that I wouldn't make THIS kind of mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving.

(But it was still delicious. Really.)

Cookstory: January 5, 2013. Encroaching on the Mom-In-Law's Territory

Morning 

Cream of Wheat.
I can make one serving of this perfectly. If I'm lucky, I can pull off two bowls and it will still be passable. But when everyone in the family wants cream of wheat, I have to roll the dice and hope I can make four servings in one pot. This sounds like it's a question of simple math, but I always screw up the proportions. Part of the issue is that the Bob's Red Mill "Creamy Wheat" cereal label doesn't give clear instructions for four servings, and it's not as simple as quadrupling the ingredients for one serving. As you increase the milk, the amount of wheat you use lessens. And cream of wheat is one of those things that really needs the right proportions or it goes to hell.

Today, I over-salted. Laura was kind enough to eat it anyway; my kids have no need for such propriety. Overdoing the brown sugar in it helped offset a little. But really, it was not, as dear Alton would say, "good eats."


Afternoon

Sandwiches all around.
For Laura and me, the classic grilled turkey with cheese.

For Zuzu, a simple ham sandwich: bread, mayo, ham, no grilling.

For Piper, her new favorite: a grilled ham and cheese. Her kiddie taste buds, lacking the proper sophistication, prefer American cheese over cheddar. She'll come 'round.

Patent pending, so don't even think about
laying claim to my genius.

I've always been bugged by the fact that sandwiches with meat and cheese have all the meat on one level and all the cheese on the other. It's a strange thing to care about, because once you've taken a bite and begin to chew, everything is mashed together in your mouth anyway. Maybe it's the "Virgo" in me to obsess about such things. So I put together Piper's sandwich a specific way: on one slice of bread, I lay one slice of cheese, off to one side. Next, the deli-style slice of ham, folded in half so that it fits perfectly across the entire surface of the bread; last, more cheese, on the opposite side of the bread surface from the first cheese slice. The second slice of bread tops it. This allows the cheese to be spread across the entire sandwich, ensuring cheesification in every bite, while the ham is, in some way, in the true center of the sandwich. I'm oddly proud of this.


Evening 

Hearty Chicken Soup.
Let me make this perfectly clear: my mother-in-law makes the best chicken soup in this family. No one touches it. It's the best. So why would I chance my standing in Sowatsky-Bailey-World by trying my own version? At first, the decision made sense: it was planned as the first dish for Laura after her shoulder surgery in December, before Grace had returned with the girls from St. Louis. Laura needed comfort food ... chicken soup is the ultimate comfort food ... ergo, I would conquer it. But Laura opted instead for white bean and tiny pasta soup, and this recipe was postponed. Which meant that now I had to cook this with Grace a mere seven blocks away! Did she sense it? Even smell it? Did she somehow feel virtue flow out of her at the moment Laura took her first bite of a chicken soup not made by her own mother's hands?

I'll let you know when I have the guts to tell her what I did.

The recipe came from America's Test Kitchen, and had a couple of twists: the stock was made with ground chicken, the theory being that all that extra surface area allows for additional chickeny goodness in a much more efficient manner than the more traditional boiling of a whole bird. Then, to add to the heartiness, several leaves of Swiss chard are added at the end of cooking.

Mum(-in-law)'s the word.

This one was a complete success. The soup had a great deal of flavor, and the chard really knocked it out of the park. Piper and Zuzu liked it, though of course any "green stuff" in their bowls was deftly side-stepped. We'll definitely be doing this again, but not before enjoying the leftover soup over the next few days.

Now to the true challenge: do I offer Laura's mom a bowl next time she visits? At least I can tell her—in all honesty—that as yummy as this soup was, it still doesn't match the taste of her superior soup.

Cookstory: January 4, 2013. Breakfast For Dinner!

For a long time now, the Bailey family has had a tradition of "Friday Night Movie Night." I look forward to it every week, and not because it signifies the start of the weekend. (Rathole: Do you remember college, when "the weekend" technically started on Thursday night? Or even, sometimes, Thursday afternoon?) Also, not because of the movie. My daughters usually choose the entertainment, which means that it's usually crap, or something we've seen a billion times, or both. I can't make them pick Finding Nemo every week, I suppose, and Laura won't let me show them Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or Inglourious Basterds. ("No risk, no reward, beeyatch!" Yeah, that argument doesn't get me very far.) So, another straight-to-BluRay Tinkerbell flick it is.

But that leaves me the opportunity to focus on the real fun for me: the "breakfast for dinner" concept. For all the hoidy-toidyness of modern-day gastronomy, this simple idea remains one of the best. When I was a kid, I'd try to talk Mom into eggs and bacon at suppertime as often as possible. It wasn't until I was a parent myself (and the head chef) that I realized the meal is a nice break for the grown-up as well.

The pros:

1. I almost always have all the ingredients in the house already, so no extra grocery shopping needed.
2. I can do this dinner on auto-pilot. No recipes—I can just coast.
3. There are so many ways to do the eggs that I can easily please everyone with a custom-made meal ... and it doesn't take that much longer to customize.

Plus ... it's freakin' eggs and bacon! With toast and the condiment of your choice! For dinner!


January 4, 2013

Afternoon

White Shells and Cheddar. 
For the girls. Annie's brand ... the only kind they'll touch. For some reason, they both prefer white cheedar to the orange. Not that I would ever encourage them to eat flourescent orange-colored food.


Evening

Eggs.

Recently, "breakfast for dinner" has been extra fun because Piper has discovered the glory of the omelette. I've worked on my omelette technique for a few years now, picking up tips from Julia Child, Alton Brown, and various ATK resources. The only filling PJ wants is cheddar cheese, but I still work on perfecting the omelettes exterior. I think the French consider a perfect omelette to be one cooked at a low enough heat such that the butter does not brown the outside at all. I prefer just a little browning. Either way, close attention must be paid, making sure to slide it out of the skillet and on to the plate in time to keep the outside nice and moist, letting the carryover finish the job on the inside.

I had the same as Piper tonight.

Zuzu: a single egg. Scrambled. Period. Every time. No browning. That would be yucky.

Laura has been in a soft-boiled state of mind for awhile. (I'm talking about the way she likes her eggs cooked, dummy.) This was another technique I've had to perfect, and I have pulled off some really nice, creamy yolks, but timing has continued to be a crapshoot. Tonight I tried to consciously come up with a method that would work without my having to rely on any sort of timer: I placed two eggs in a pan with enough water to cover, and then as I prepared other parts of the meal, I kept an eye on the pan. When the water hit full-boil, I got out another bowl, added two cups of ice cubes, filled with water, swirled it around. By then, it was time: I immediately spidered the eggs into the ice bath. A few minutes later, I took 'em out—soon enough that the ice had stopped the cooking but the eggs retained suitable heat for eating. I removed the top 1/4 to 1/3 of the shell, placed the egg in the cute little "baby chick" egg holder, and served. Nailed it.


Turkey Bacon.
The girls love "normal" pork bacon, but they have to get that elsewhere. Laura and I don't eat pork products. I can't stand to see food thrown away, and any leftover pork bacon would have to be pitched ... ergo, we enjoy turkey bacon. Luckily, I recently figured out how to cook it so that Piper likes it. Well, I didn't figure it out; my friend Alex did, on a visit. She cooked the bacon less than I did, leaving it moist and soft. Piper scarfed it for the first time. She eats my bacon every time now, but not without reminding me: "It's good, Dad, but not as good as Alex's."

Toast.
Using the 365 Organic brand multigrain bread. Just butter for the girls tonight. Lemon curd (a Christmas stocking gift to myself) on both Laura's and mine. Piper didn't touch her toast, for some reason, which gave Laura a bonus piece of toast (after she added more lemon curd).

(By the way: the girls won't touch the lemon curd, because it has the word "curd" in the name. Laura and I have chosen to not tell them the ambrosia they're missing out on. All the more for us.)


Tea: Irish Breakfast. (For dinner!)


Movie: Blu-Ray version of National Treasure. One of Piper's Christmas gifts.

Cookstory: January 3, 2013

More notes on the continuing development of this project at the end of this entry.



After that busy first day, I didn't have to cook at all yesterday. Special shout-out to the ZuBean for her suggestion of pizza for dinner. God bless Mommy, and Daddy, and Lou Malnati.


Evening

Sweet Ginger Tofu with Soba Noodles.
Piper commented: "You must really like this tofu recipe, because you make it a lot."

"Actually," I said, "I'm not a particular fan of this. But your mom likes it. So yeah, I do make it a lot."

That response got a scrunchy-face from Laura. I thought she knew that I don't dig this dish, which came from a Peter Berley vegetarian cookbook that was one of my first purchases when we started a decade-long vegetarian period. Laura really loves it, and so this is definitely one of those go-to, "happy wife = happy life" weeknight recipes.

It's simple enough: the tofu bakes for 45 minutes in a bath of tamari, rice vinegar, mirin, honey, toasted sesame oil, fresh grated ginger, and garlic. A healthy slab is served over soba noodles, with some added sauce.

Tonight's version featured a loud, unmitigated disaster, which thankfully was unrelated to the food. I remove excess moisture from the tofu by cutting it into four slabs, wrapping the pieces in a clean dishtowel, placing a cookie sheet on top of the bundle and placing heavy weights on the cookie sheet. My weight of choice for years has been two filled Brita pitchers next to our sink. I had difficulty balancing the pitchers on the cookie sheet tonight, so I cheated them a bit toward the wall on the countertop, in case they slipped off. Shortly after I turned my back, there was a terrific crash that almost sent me through the ceiling. The pitchers had fallen to our tile floor, depositing at least a gallon-and-a-half of water across the surface. One pitcher was shattered. The other, as I found out later, had enough of a crack across the bottom that it too had to be thrown out. An expensive mistake. Piper assisted with the mop-up, and I'm ordering a new Brita from Amazon to the tune of $30+. (We'll go with just one pitcher now; two was an unnecessary luxury.)

Other than that, the meal went according to script. As you can see from the ingredients in the "marinade" (nothing truly marinates before cooking commences), it's a very savory dish. Or, to be more accurate, seriously umami. For all the importance umami plays in cuisine, this is just too much of a good thing, which for my palate is a bad thing. (Sudden thought: what if I squeezed a lemon wedge over the finished dish for a little springlike brightness in January? Good idea or bad idea?) By all measures, this is a winter recipe: everything about it feels heavy, and I desperately need something sweet to balance it afterwards. (Tonight's sweetness courtesy of leftover cranberry cream scones.)

I have found one thing to improve the dish: I changed brand of soba noodles. The Eden Organic brand that Whole Foods sells are 40% buckwheat, and that wheat taste just adds to the heaviness of the dish. So I make a special trip to Evanston's Sea Ranch, where they have a small but "efficient" Japanese grocery section that sells the Hakubaku brand of soba. I don't know why, but they are SO much better, and really take this dish up a notch and make it more palatable for the non-Lauras in the household.


Common Dinner Salad.
I'm really struggling with salads these days. That's a discussion for another day.


Chicken Nuggets.
Whenever I cook something that I know the girls will detest, I turn to either chicken nuggets or beef hot dogs for them. This tofu recipe definitely falls into that category of "too much" for kids. One of the important things I needed to remember when I became a parent was how much more intense everything tasted when I was a kid. Seasoning that may be okay for grown-ups I'm serving will likely be too intense for the children. So while I usually insist that the kids try the food we're having, I also don't want them to go hungry. Color me soft.

The chicken nuggets I bake are uncooked and frozen -- Bell & Evans brand, purchased at Whole Foods. The breading is light; no bizarre ingredients. So while they fall into the "parts is parts" variety of processed food, they are less, uh, manipulated than other similar products one might find. And the girls love them.



Beaucoup thanks to my friends who read the first entry in this project, gave me encouragement, and some constructive criticism. Based on that feedback, I'm going to walk back one statement I made in the first entry: that I'm adamantly anti-food-photography. My resistance to pics grows out of my process and my perfectionist tendencies when it comes to photography. (Read: The food-related photos I generally see on the Internet seem better than anything I could pull off myself.) But I'm going to give it the old college try, with the understanding that a) I may bail on this at any time, and b) every photo is going to look like it was shot on the same countertop with the same plateware, so it's probably all going to look bland anyway.

Also, while I'm not necessarily going to write out the recipes here in the blog, I will link to some recipes when there are Internet versions available.

Cookstory: January 1, 2013

I have an idea. I have no idea if it's going to work. But I've always thought that a blog would be a good place to work something like this out. 

I'm interested in a sort of food blog, but not one where I share recipes (at least not regularly) or take gorgeous pictures of the food I make, or otherwise try to show my prowess as a chef or baker. Rather, I wanted to journal the food I make every day, talk about who it was consumed (and by whom), and what was working for me, both from a gastronomic and from an emotional place. The idea is: If I step up to the stovetop, if I'm making anything more complicated than, say, tea or a bowl of cereal, I'm going to talk about its preparation. 

I'm not sure yet exactly how this will work, or what conversational threads/digressions will hold this all together. But let's see what happens with this notion. If anyone happens to read this and has feedback, I'd be very interested to hear their thoughts.




January 1, 2013

Morning 

Irish Oatmeal (or Steel-Cut Oats). My first time stepping up to the stove in 2013. It was going to be just regular oatmeal—something I could knock out in order to get back to watching the Tournament of Roses Parade—but Laura expressed an interest in steel-cut. I prepared it for Piper, Laura, and myself, but I also made a small bowl for Susannah, who needed to at least try it. The label on the container said you can make it with water or milk, and I always opt for the richer taste of milk. In this case, I was trying to be mindful of the calorie count, so I opted for 2 cups of water and 2 cups of milk. Which sort of irked Laura, who was hoping to have it prepared with just water. I over-salted a bit., but this didn't seem to bother Laura, who scarfed it down. Piper announced that she really liked it but wasn't hungry enough for a full bowl. Zuzu said she "didn't really like it." I finished off both of their bowls. I mean, I'm the dad, right?

Afternoon 

Grilled Cheese Sandwich. For Zuzu. It was basic, no tricks: multigrain bread, usual brand of American cheese (Horizon Organic). Overheated the skillet slightly, resulting in one side of the sandwich getting a little too browned for Susannah's taste. Thus I resorted to my usual trick: I toasted the second side less and then served it to her with the less-toasted side up. She ate almost all of it, and I finished the crusts as we watched the Northwestern Wildcats play in the Gator Bowl.

Grilled Turkey and Cheese Sandwich. Laura's standby lunch for the last couple of years, it seems like. I used her special "healthy" bread (a Brownberry brand, darker brown like a whole wheat, but with other stuff in it), spread with mayonnaise and honey mustard. Just one slice, cut in half. A slice of Jarlsberg light cheese also broken in half, with each half on each side of the slice. Two pieces of deli-style turkey, folded over. Assembled and grilled (in the same skillet with and at the same time as the grilled cheese). Post-grilling, it's microwaved for exactly 18 seconds, which provides just the right meltiness for the Jarlsberg. (Jarlsberg does not melt as quickly/well as the American cheese.)

Chocolate Almond Biscotti.  I wanted to make something I'd never made on New Year's Day, and I'd been promising Laura since forever that I'd try to replicate her favorite brand of biscotti (Irene's) at home. (Irene's is $6 a box at Whole Foods; this was an economical decision.) I found the recipe on the Internet after I couldn't locate a recipe Laura found for me months ago. This one was much simpler than the lost recipe. What the two have in common is the use of only egg whites—an important aspect of the biscotti for Laura.

Of course, first time out, I made a huge mistake (a "tradition" as old as any other New Year's day tradition of mine). which I realized only as I was rolling out the dough for the first bake: I had left out the sugar. Having used the last of my eggs, as well as any remaining time before I had to start dinner, I took a chance and put the dough back in the bowl, poured the 1-1/4 cups of sugar over it, and then went about working the sugar into the dough. I had little hope this would work, but after a few minutes, the dough worked itself out, getting sticky the way the recipe said it would. Rolled out a second time into two cylinders on the cookie sheet, I pushed them flat with the heel of my hand and baked them. I had to pick up Piper from a playdate, so I had Laura remove it from the oven.

By the time I got back, it was time to get into dinner, so the rest of this recipe wasn't finished until after dinner was prepared. By that time, the two biscotti loaves had completely cooled. I cut them into proper cookies, laid them out on the second cookie sheet, and baked them for another 30 minutes. (The recipe said to only go another 15 minutes, but when I checked after 15, the centers of the individual biscotti pieces were still too cake-y, so I kept going.) Laura, Piper, Grace, and I tried them, and everyone approved: a fine first effort. Different from Irene's biscotti—more fudgy, and probably sweeter too. (Note: cut back 1/4 cup on the sugar next time.) But overall, a success.

Evening 

Hoppin John. Our traditional New Year's meal for many years now (back from before we were married). While I was cooking it, my brother Ian texted me, saying his girlfriend needed the recipe too, so I emailed it to her from the iPod. It was comforting to know that the same recipe was being made somewhere in Texas at the same time.

Everything went right with this recipe this year. (A good omen?) (Or maybe a bad omen?) I love the yellow onion in it. I used canned black-eyed peas that I'd picked up a couple of weeks ago, to ensure that there would still be some left. I've used frozen peas in previous years, but I prefer canned, which somehow stand up to the long cooking time and don't get too mushy. I remembered to get the rice done early. I discovered too late that I was out of ground allspice, and I didn't have the energy or time to bother grinding up allspice berries in the spice grinder, so instead I substituted Chinese five-spice. I know, I know: it's not the same thing. I thought it would be an interesting option. (I was right. A small chance to take, as it's only 1/8 teaspoon anyway.) As usual, it took a helluva lot longer to cook off the liquid, but I allowed for that this time. Also remembered to salt and pepper to taste—a step I had forgotten the previous two years when I made this same meal on the same night.

I was very happy with the end product, when properly dressed with the condiments (scallions, fresh diced tomatoes, shredded sharp cheddar, and sour cream). Can't wait for the leftovers on this one. Every time I make this, I wonder why I don't make it more often over the course of the year. Even got Piper and Zuzu to try it. Piper liked it; Zuzu was diplomatic.

Collard Greens. More New Year tradition. I used the Deborah Madison vegetarian cookbook to take care of this one, using elements from two different recipes, incoporating brown butter from one for flavor, and hot pepper sauce from another for .. well, for heat. Madison says that collards can withstand a lot of salt, and I took her at her word. Uh ... these collards couldn't handle that much salt. But it was tasty nonetheless; the pepper sauce actually helped to cut against the oversalting.

Corn Bread Muffins. Dr. Oetker's mix. I like this so much, I haven't bothered making cornbread from scratch for years. Everyone in the family loves these muffins. Susannah had a wonderful time licking the bowl and spatula. Grace didn't understand why Zuzu doesn't like the finished muffins as much if she liked the batter so much; has she really forgotten how much better any batter is than its finished baked product? l mean, that's universal, right? One other note: substituted milk for the water in this recipe too, like in the oatmeal that started the day. Bringin' it all around, baby.

That was a lot of cooking for a first day, which makes me very happy, but which meant that I didn't get as much writing, reading, or NU work done. Cue "There's Always Tomorrow" from your favorite Rankin/Bass animated Christmas story.