Clean Out The Fridge Pasta

It's been a crazy time. We've been searching for a new receptionist at the clinic, and I seem to be the most computer savvy of the group. Scary, that. But anyway, it falls to me to put the ad in craigslist. A simple part time receptionist job, paying a mere $10 per hour, and I got over 200 responses the first day. After plowing through the first 30 resumes, everyone began to sound alike - all young and enthusiastic and certain that they had what it takes to contribute to our office. "Attention to detail" was often followed by a misspelling. Work history of a month here, a couple of months there.

I began forwarding the ones that sounded like that had at least something going for them to one of my colleagues. I couldn't differentiate on that level - I was drowning in "relevant skills - MS Office, venipuncture (? - I'm an ACUPUNCTURIST!), great ability to communicate, etc." I began paying attention to people who had a background in the arts - at least their resumes were different. And we actually thought we had found someone - a graphic artist with marketing background. But she suddenly realized that she shared a car with her partner and so wound up declining the job.

There is a possibility that we might have found someone. I don't want to get too enthusiastic about this, but one must have hope.

The kitchen is so much easier. Especially before you go away on vacation. You boil some pasta and make a sauce out of whatever leftovers you've got. In this case it was onion, tomato, eggplant and a bit of red pepper. Of course garlic was in there, but I don't consider it to be a leftover. It's like onion or salt - a staple.

I drive to New Mexico starting tomorrow. I decided to take an extra day and go to White Sands outside of Alamogordo. Never been there before, and from what I can tell, it seems like it would be a photographer's heaven. I'll let you know.

Meanwhile, enjoy this Memorial Day weekend. Drive defensively and have fun!

Old World Easter Eggs in San Diego

I live in the best neighborhood. Really - I do! I've never lived anywhere else where I've had such an interesting, diverse and friendly group of people surrounding me. At least, none that I knew. I lived in Manhattan for many years, but when you live in Manhattan, you don't know your neighbors. You might recognize them in the elevator, but you don't invite them over for dinner. Or for coloring Easter eggs.

One of our neighbors has a house here and another one in Colorado. She goes back and forth between the two places, and right now she's here. But she'll be leaving in about a week, so her neighbor invited a group of us over for a drink and to say so long to Patty, our "migratory bird", as she is now being called. As far as we all knew, it was going to be an evening of wine and nibblies. That's it.

But when we arrived, we discovered that our hostess had a more interesting evening planned for us. She's originally from Switzerland, and came to San Diego via Alexandria, Egypt, where she lived for many years. Like all people who tear up roots and relocate elsewhere in the world, she brought certain traditions with her, and one of them was her way of coloring Easter eggs.

We sat around the table in her kitchen, and before us was a bowl of water, in which were all sorts of leaves from around her yard. There were at least 3 dozen fresh eggs for us to use, and a pile of cut up old stockings. Stockings! Remember those? Seems there's a reason not to throw them away - they're useful for all sorts of things, including coloring Easter eggs.

The method is simple. You take a wet leaf and lay it on an egg. Keep any stiff stems on the side away from the egg, and let the wet leaves touch the egg. Use your fingers to spread the leaves out, making sure that the individual elements are separate. When you are satisfied, pick up a piece of stocking, which has been cut in a square, stretch it out and lay it over your egg, pulling the ends together. You will now have an egg, tightly wrapped in a piece of stocking. You may release a corner of the stocking if you wish to re-adjust a leaf, which might have slipped out of place in this process.

When you are satisfied, pull that corner of the stocking back, twist the stocking ends, wrap a thread around the twist and knot it to secure the stocking. The tighter the stocking is wrapped, the less likely it is that the die will get under the leaf. Cut off any extra stocking and thread ends, so that you will have only a very short piece of stocking left and just the tiniest snippet of thread. You will now have an egg, with a leaf (or leaves) stuck to it's side, wrapped tightly in a piece of stocking which has been twisted tightly and secured with thread.

When you've done as many of these as you'd care to do, it's time to die them. The three eggs on the left of the photos up above - the ones that are a kind of reddish brownish color, are died with onion skins. "They hate me in Henry's", our hostess told us. "I just gathered the skins and didn't buy the onions." The other two colors are from natural dies that she brought back from Switzerland. The bright pink color is from something called Cochinille (I have no idea of the spelling) - which is a bug! The dark brown is from a kind of wood. I'm sure you can experiment with local plants.

Eggs were died for at least 30 minutes, and possibly more. After the second glass of wine, no one was counting. We each left with our "nests", and stronger ties to each other as neighbors.

And then I brought them home.........

Does anyone know how to say "This is not a toy" in cat?

Salad days

Remember those currants from the last post? I fell in love with them. Addicted, you might say. Which is funny, because I have no reason to feel addicted to currants.....I mean, why not just plain raisins? But when you add cinnamon and sugar and let them soak? Well, it definitely kicks those puppies up a notch.

So what if salad seems to be all I'm eating these days? (It's not, but it seems to be the only thing I bother to photograph and write about.) We're still having some gloomy weather here, but I'm in one of those "I must have greens!" moods, so salad works for me.......endless variety of ingredients, wonderful contrasts of flavors, all brightened by a zippy vinagrette. Besides, when you're eating by yourself, you don't even have to take it out of the bowl. How's that for easy clean-up?

So this time I marinated some chicken and cooked it on the grill. Someone had given me her home-made guava syrup, to which I added a little soy and some red chili to make a quick marinade. If you don't happen to have a friend who hands you this lovely gift, you can find it at Amazon. Click here for the link.

The rest was easy - assorted baby greens, a small, heirloom tomato, currants, cukes - whatever you've got. The currants worked well with the zesty chicken on the one hand, and a cool cucumber on the other. My dressing was the same as the last post.

Enjoy!

Warm enough for salad...

We finally dried out. It was beginning to feel like Portland around here, with rain, rain, and more rain. Don't get me wrong - my garden was loving it, and I was loving not having to do the work of watering. But it was beginning to wear on me, especially since southern Californians do not know how to drive in bad weather. It was scary out there, trying to get to work every day when people are roaring down the freeway, texting or whatever they're doing other than paying attention, and the roads are wet.

So when the sun came back this past week, it felt good, even if the temperatures stayed cool until 3 days ago. Cool was fine with me, and it helped everyone's spirits.

I was able to get outside and yank out a ton of weeds from my garden, as well as get in some walks. The sunsets have been pretty spectacular with the clouds we had....

And everyone migrates to the beach to watch the show.....

With the cool temperatures, winter squash is still an attractive option, but with the sun out and the temperature inching upward, so is a salad. So I was delighted to find a recipe in Food and Wine which combined the two. Needless to say, I tinkered.......

Ginger Roasted Winter Squash

INGREDIENTS

1. 1/2 cup water
2. 1/4 cup sugar
3. 1/2 cup red wine vinegar
4. 1 cinnamon stick
5. 1/4 cup dried currants
6. 2 1/2 pounds thick-fleshed sugar pumpkin or acorn squash, halved and seeded - I used butternut
7. 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
8. Coarse sea salt and ground pepper
9. One 1-inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled
10. 2 tablespoons crème fraîche - And if you leave this off, no one will miss it and the fat content will be lowered.

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat the oven to 325. In a small saucepan, combine the water with the sugar, vinegar and cinnamon and simmer for 5 minutes, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Add the currants and simmer for 3 minutes, then remove from the heat.
2. Meanwhile, line a baking sheet with aluminum foil. Rub the squash with the olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Using a fine grater, grate the ginger over the cut sides of the squash and rub it into the flesh.
3. Transfer the squash to the prepared baking sheet, cut side down, and roast for about 15 minutes, until the squash starts to soften. Turn the squash cut side up and roast for about 17 minutes longer, until tender; transfer to a work surface and let cool slightly.
4. Increase the oven temperature to 425. Cut the squash into 1 1/2-inch-thick wedges. Lightly rub the foil with oil and arrange the squash on the baking sheet; roast for about 25 minutes, turning once halfway through, until golden and crisp along the edges.
5. Arrange the squash on a platter. Discard the cinnamon stick from the currants and add the currants to the squash. Drizzle with the pickling liquid and crème fraîche and serve.

NOTES

One Serving 226 cal, 7 gm fat, 2.3 gm sat fat, 46 gm carb, 5 gm fiber.

I brought this to a dinner at the neighbors. They were still talking about it the next week!

Greetings from cyberspace

It's been forever, I know. Don't know how that happens, other than birthdays and visitors and presentations and a trip to Chicago in the winter - of course - and then there's the matter of my neighbor. He's learned to cook, you see, and so he's always inviting me to join them for dinner. "Hey, I just made some Chinese style spare ribs!" Or "I'm making a chicken stir fry - wanna join us when you get back from work?" And then the next thing I know I look up and it's March.

Truth is, I've been taking lots of walks, and sometimes even taking my camera. I love to traverse Balboa Park and check out what's blooming in the canyons.

There are these wonderful flowers which look like they're in the pea family...

And, of course, there are the beautiful grasses...........

As well as the man-made structures.........

And yes, I've even been eating. Nothing fancy these days, though I did make some amazing French Toast with a dash of orange oil and some grated orange peel mixed in with the eggs...

And one night I concocted an Israeli couscous dish with some sweet potato, cranberries, onions, some cinnamon and slivered almonds. Very Moroccan, I thought. Very tasty.

And this evening I had friends over for dinner. I've been on a chicken craze recently, perhaps because I haven't eaten any in a while. So this evening I made some chicken coconut soup, or tom kha gai. I've made this before and I've always loved it. I made my own stock using both water as well as organic chicken broth, so it was rich. After removing the chicken and saving the meat, I added coconut milk, a chunk of galangal, some kaffir lime leaves and fish sauce, as well as some lemon grass, which I scored from my neighbor who had bought some frozen from our local Vietnamese supermarket. When the whole thing came to a boil, I turned it down, simmered it and added some sugar and crushed about 3 of those tiny green chilis you get in Asian supermarkets. Always a crowd pleaser, even with one of my friends who doesn't ordinarily like soup.

Also made some chicken curry, and because my friends brought their 5 year old son, I made some spaghetti with a red sauce.

But did I have time to photograph our food before we ate it? No. And that has been part of my problem of late. Either I'm eating at the neighbors house or I don't have time to photograph what I just made. Which is why I've dragged my heals on this blog. But somehow, with the time shift, I feel that I can pack more into a day, including some photography at the end of the day. It's no longer dark when I leave my clinic. Renewal is in the air........

Focaccia - an old fashioned miracle

I love everything about the kitchen - except for cleaning it, of course. But I love the way my kitchen looks. I love the smells that emerge from it when I'm cooking. I love the feeling I get when I walk into it to prepare food - the beginning of an adventure! I love sharing the food I make with others, and I love the food other people share with me. The sharing of our food is the most basic of all activities. It's what makes us companions - those who literally break bread together.

I think of myself as more of a cook than a baker, except when it comes to bread. I'm crazy about bread! But when it comes to baking, I feel fairly restricted. In other words, I tend to follow the recipe. With cooking, I'll throw in whatever strikes my fancy, but with baking, I don't trust myself.

I have a neighbor who has taken it upon himself to learn to bake bread. He's not someone I would have thought of as a baker - he's a real estate entrepreneur. He can grill meat and veggies, but that's usually about it. However, recently he's decided that it's time to learn a thing or two about baking. Not knowing anything about the science of baking, he felt no restrictions whatsoever, and so he just dove in.

One day he came up to my house and we decided to bake focaccia together. He had made a number of them which he had shared with me, and while they tasted great, they all came out rather flat. I suspected that he wasn't letting the dough rise enough. I asked him to bake the bread, and I'd be his assistant. "Do you have yeast?" I gave him a packet. He heated a cup of water, poured it into a large bowl and added the yeast and a tablespoon of sugar. We sat down to enjoy a cup of tea together.

After about 20 minutes he said "I usually start out with two cups of flour. Do you have a regular cup?" I gave him a measuring cup. He looked at it funny and asked "Don't you have a regular cup?" "You can use that - it's OK".

He put flour into it, but didn't fill it. He dumped it into the yeast mixture and began mixing it with his hands. It was too sticky, so he added more flour. And a little more. "I'll need a place to knead this." I cleaned off the island. "Put a bunch of flour on there." As he began to knead, I kept sprinkling more flour on the island so it wouldn't stick. When it finally got to the right consistency, we cleaned the bowl, sprayed it with oil, put the dough in, then sprayed the top of it and covered it with a towel. "I like to let it rise in the microwave." But my micro wasn't big enough, so I put some hot water in a pan, turned on the oven light, and we put it in there.

He left to do a few errands saying "I'll be back in about 50 minutes or so." About an hour later, I pulled the dough out. It had risen to a light, fluffy cloud. I took it out and flattened it down, adding cheese to the top and folding it over like an envelope. I kept doing this until I had what must have been at least a cup and a half of cheese in there -- maybe even a cup and three quarters. All I know is that by the time I had incorporated all the cheese, it kept popping out the sides. I repeated the spray and cover process and put it back into the oven, with some more hot water.

He came back and asked about it. When I told him what I had done, he said he'd be back in a half an hour. About 40 minutes later I took it out, spread it onto a cookie sheet covered with parchment paper and dimpled it. As I was pouring the oil over the top, he came in with a jar of jalapenos. I didn't have any parmesan to sprinkle over the top, so we had to make do with what we had - some sea salt. I turned the oven on and let the dough rise as the oven was heating up.

This must have been more time than he was used to letting the dough rise, because it came out beautifully - puffy and cheesy, with the bite of jalapeno on top.
About 5 days later I got a phone call at work.

"I'm feeling guilty," he said.

"Why?"

"Because I just made this pizza from that focaccia bread recipe. Remember how we talked about it being right to use as pizza dough? Well, it turned out great. I feel I should share it with you."

"Don't feel guilty, I'll be leaving work in about 20 minutes. I'll come right home."

"Come on over right away - I don't want it to get too cold."

I'm sorry, but I couldn't photograph it first. I had to eat some. He had topped it with artichoke hearts, olives, peppers, and I don't remember what else - if anything. I was too busy devouring it. At least I got this shot before we polished it off.

Farewell, 2010

A trip to New Mexico the week before Christmas obliterated all thoughts of blog posting, of work, of being productive in any way. I arrived as I have so many times before - tired, hungry, and in need of some serious rest. I had only two things on my agenda: the annual solstice party I've attended for over 25 years with my close friends, and a Christmas eve party with a group of people I've known for almost as long. The rest was unimportant.

The weather cooperated. It was cloudy for much of the time -- unusual for New Mexico at any time of the year. The winds were ferocious. One day, we had snow flurries, which prompted me to build a fire in the kiva fireplace in the living room. I sat in front of it all day and read "A Tree Grows In Brooklyn" by Betty Smith. I've known about that book all my life, and if they made a film of it, I probably saw it. But this was the first time I read it, and what a rich and rewarding read it is. It's the kind of writing we don't see much of anymore - subtle and nuanced, rich in it's descriptions, and a story where not much "happens". No shootings, no drug busts, no gangs, no jet setting around the world - just life as it was lived in the early part of the 20th century in Brooklyn.

So I end 2010 with a wish for all of us: That 2011 brings us all the food we'd care to have on our tables, and enough left over to donate to those less fortunate. All the clothing we need to keep us warm in the winter, with enough left over to give to those who have less. And the warmth of family and friends to light our hearts for the entire year, no matter what the weather. May you all have a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year.

Post-Thanksgiving Persian Style Eggplant

Oh, how I wished this looked as good as it tastes, because it actually tastes quite good. It's the walnuts. I know it is. They made everything tan. But when I served this at a potluck recently, people actually went back for seconds.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The potluck: A friend had just returned from a trip to Iran with National Geographic Expeditions. They went to all sorts of places - many of the places that tourists would want to go, and some places up in the north that most tourists never make it to. They visited sites whose history stretches back over 4,000 years. The roots of that civilization run deep.

During the course of this trip, their guide was quite open with them, and they had a chance to ask all kinds of "sensitive" questions. The outcome was not surprising: The news we get in this country isn't the same as what the people in Iran think and feel and know to be true. It's the blind men and the elephant all over again. I don't pretend to have a handle on the truth here, just a great appreciation for some understanding of how the people of Iran view the US - they were overwhelmingly positive about Americans - and how they viewed our respective governments - they felt that the problems between our countries had more to do with government than the people.

A lively discussion followed the slide and video show my friend presented to us. I was delighted to be in the company of a group of people who have traveled widely and who were interested in other cultures and ideas. I was also delighted to be treated to some imaginative food. One woman brought a dish which consisted of lentils, dates, beef and I don't remember what else. I must find out in order to create something in that theme. It was the only other dish which might have been considered Persian. (Just think "lamb" instead of "beef".)

I knew I was going to do an eggplant dish as a compliment to the theme of the evening. And once I understood that eggplant would be my contribution, I immediately thought of combining it with walnuts and pomegranate. Very middle eastern. I searched and found a recipe - I can't remember where - which I followed quite loosely. This is what I copied for the ingredients:

5 Asian eggplants (2lb), or 2 large common eggplants with bitterness removed
6 t Olive oil
1 Medium-sized onion, peeled and sliced
2 cloves Garlic, peeled and chopped
2 tsp Ground cumin
1/4 tsp Ground cinnamon
2 tsp Salt
1 tsp Freshly ground black pepper
1/2 tsp Ground turmeric
1 tsp Crushed red pepper
1 cup Chopped fresh parsley
2 cups Chopped cilantro leaves, plus 1 cup leaves for garnish
1/2 cup Chopped fresh mint
2 cups (1/2 lb) toasted walnuts
1/2 cup Pomegranate paste diluted with 2 1/2 cups water, or 3 cups pomegranate juice
1 t Honey or brown sugar, as needed

And the preparation:

1. Peel eggplants, and remove stems. Place segments of common eggplants, if using, in salted water to remove bitterness. Rinse Asian eggplants, squeeze out water with towels and slice into 1 inch thick rounds.

2. Heat 4 T oil in deep skillet over medium heat. Add eggplant, and saute on all sides about 15 minutes or until golden brown. Remove eggplants from skillet, drain on paper towels and set aside. Add remaining oil to skillet, and reheat over medium heat. Add onion and saute for 10-15 minutes, or until golden brown. Add garlic during last few minutes of browning onions, and continue cooking. Add cumin, cinnamon, salt, pepper, turmeric, crushed red pepper, parsley, cilantro and fresh mint, and saute for another 5 minutes. Remove from heat, and set aside.

3. Grind walnuts in food processor until very fine or sauce will be gritty. Combine walnuts with diluted pomegranate paste and honey, as needed, and stir until sauce is smooth.

4. Pour sauce into skillet. Return eggplants and seasoning to skillet, reduce heat to low, cover and simmer mixture for 30 minutes, or until eggplants are tender, stirring occasionally with wooden spoon. If sauce is too sour, add more honey or brown sugar to taste.

Kitchen Notes:

OK, so I didn't do this exactly. I didn't get to the store which sells pomegranate seeds, but I did find myself in Whole Foods where I got some pomegranate molasses. I've been wanting to experiment with it for some time, and this seemed like the perfect excuse. I think pomegranate molasses has become my new favorite ingredient! You'll need some brown sugar for this, as the molasses isn't all that sweet, but keep tasting it till it seems right.

Oh, and that step #3 above? That's where everything turns tan. I'm thinking that I'm going to experiment next time with some chopped walnuts and adding some pomegranate seeds to make it look prettier. I'll also use some pomegranate juice in addition to the molasses to have enough sauce.

If you try this one and experiment with it, I'd love to hear how you changed it!

Mac-n-cheese for fall

I kept wondering what I was going to do with that second half of the pumpkin. Pumpkin bread kept coming to mind - or perhaps muffins. They'd be great to bring to work. Oh, but I really wanted those pumpkin muffins! But somehow, they just didn't want to be baked. It seemed to me that the pumpkin had other ideas, and it was my job to figure out what those ideas were.

So I thought about it as I went about my days, cooking other meals, reaching into the pantry for other ingredients, and spying that pumpkin, lying in it's bag in the bottom of the fridge.

Just who ARE you, and why can't you just be something ordinary, like bread?
Pumpkin was silent.

I began using the island in my kitchen to cut mattes. Our office has been redecorated with new colors, a new desk and new carpeting. There's a lot of wall space, just waiting for something to go up, and I've got a lot of photos that need to be hung up. A friend gave me a matte cutter, and I've made more trips than I'd care to think about to the art store for mattes. It's been fun, but humbling. My friend who gave me the matte cutter told me that it was simple. It's not. I've yet to achieve that perfectly straight edge, even though I'm using a blade that hooks onto a metal rail, so to speak. But I will get better at this if I keep doing it. I'm determined....

So my kitchen has been used for art projects more than cooking. (It's a good think I make large amounts when I cook -- I'd never survive without leftovers!) Art projects make me hungry, and I find myself snacking. Reaching into the pantry for some dried fruit....or just searching for an idea....

And then I realized that I've been looking at the answer to pumpkin's second incarnation all along. That jar with the little elbow pasta, sitting in the front of the pantry..... It's getting dark early, and even though it isn't particularly cold, it's still the time of year where I start looking for comfort food. How about a pumpkin mac and cheese? Never heard of it, but it sounded like it might work.

I started by making some browned sage butter, then added the pumpkin, which I had mashed with a potato masher. And then I grated some sharp cheddar. I bought a package which weighed in at .72 pounds, and I used about half of it. After stirring that into the mashed pumpkin, I added the mixture to the cooked pasta, scooped it into baking dishes and popped it into a 375 oven for about 15-20 minutes. It turned out surprisingly well for something that took almost no time or effort to make. It had a nice balance between sweet and salty, and that hint of sage in the background. The only thing I might tinker with is the idea of throwing in some roasted pumpkin seeds. I think I'd like the crunch...

The dish you see in the photo was given to me by the wonderful Cynthia over at Tastes Like Home. I made a comment on her blog that I loved the serving pan she had in one of her photos, and the next thing I knew she sent me two of them! Is that gracious, or what?

Pumpkin Soup

It's that time of the year again. I absolutely adore autumn!! My biggest problem with living in San Diego is that the weather here is so incredibly temperate the whole year long, that we don't get that achingly beautiful autumn that I remember from childhood. Oh, we have it - but if you live in town you have to drive to the mountains to really experience it. It's only about an hour's drive, but that's different than walking out your door in the morning and feeling it, seeing it, smelling it. And yes, tasting it.

Autumn is winter squash time. Pumpkin time. Oranges and dark, dark greens. I had a large pumpkin sitting on my counter, threatening to rot. I do not, as a rule, let food rot. I love food too much to let it rot. So I cut it in half, scooped out the seeds, put a little olive oil on it and roasted it, cut side down on a cookie sheet.

That stopped the rot. Now I had to figure out how to deal with all this pumpkin. This post is about half of it. The soup half. I've made plenty of squash soups in my life, but I don't believe I've ever made one using pumpkin. But in China I ate pumpkin made with garlic - a combo which intrigued me and which turned out to be drop-dead phenomenal. I have no idea what else went into it, but we all ate that one down in a heartbeat. Anyway, it got me to thinking about pumpkin as having much more value than just as a pie filling. So I decided to go for a soup - with an Asian flare.

Now I had to decide what I meant by an Asian flare. I decided that fish sauce and sugar - two basic ingredients in Asian cooking - were essential. And then there's lime. Since I couldn't decide between Kaffir lime leaves or lime juice, I decided to do both. I threw in a handful of leaves, and at the last minute opted for lime zest.

Chicken stock and low fat coconut milk combined to make a tasty stock. I decided not to puree the soup, but to leave some chunks of pumpkin in it. When I tasted it, it still needed something.... maybe some more salt? I scoured my pantry and spied a bottle of Ponzu. Perfect! A good splash of that and voila! A Halloween-cum-Thanksgiving pumpkin soup, perfect for guests, and rescued just in time before it was devoured by a certain new cat.....What's your favorite way to use pumpkin? I need ideas for Part II!!!

Food in China

With close to one and a half billion people to feed, the Chinese use all available space to grow food. And what food!!! Amid the rice terraces, you'll find plots of taro.
And one day, while hiking through the mountains, we came across this woman washing these huge vegetables in a stream. What kind of veggies? I haven't a clue.Everywhere we went, there was corn. Corn hanging from buildings...

And corn ears being shucked by a local farmer....Was this corn for the pigs or for human consumption? We never found out. But every little restaurant we went to had fresh food which was prepared when we ordered it...
And of course, there were some restaurants we avoided...(if you can read the sign, you'll know why!)
Congee was prepared on the streets the way pho is available everywhere in Vietnam...
And thank God we didn't have to live without chili!!!

It was definitely fall. You didn't have to be on the streets of Manhattan to smell the chestnuts..
But you knew you weren't in Manhattan when you saw the sugar cane...China is a food lover's paradise. It is a photographer's paradise. It's also a high tech and high fashion mecca. There's so much to say about it that I obviously cannot say it all in one post. But I'll leave you with one thought. Consider this:

Beijing is the size of Belgium.

And that's just the capital. One city.

Nothing in China is on a small scale....

To be continued....

China!

I'm off to China! Flying to Beijing first, and then down to Guilin for a photo tour. It's hard for me to believe that after all these years of practicing Chinese medicine, I'll actually be going to "the mother land"!!!

I'll be back in early October......Until then, tsai chien!

Pie Are Squared

I first heard the term "tamale pie" from a friend of mine who gave me the recipe. I've long since lost the recipe, but the concept stayed with me, even through "The New Mexican Years". Admittedly, this bears no resemlance to tamales, but that's America for you. Grab onto a good idea and run with it.

Because I'm an acupuncturist and involved in wholistic health, people who don't know me assume I'm "pure" - or whatever they mean by that term -- that I'm a vegetarian or a vegan. I'm not, although I often eat vegetarian meals and can whip up a pretty impressive vegan meal. But periodically the carnivore in me emerges, and when it does, anything goes.

This week, the carnivore came out. I found myself at Whole Foods in front of the meat counter, staring at a package of buffalo meat. I decided it had been way too long since I'd made a tamale pie, so I grabbed some of it, as well as some Kosher ground chicken. I was off to make "White Girl Tamale Pie". Let's face it - the words "tamale" and "pie" in that order in a sentence = white girl! Sounds to me like something that's more out of Good Housekeeping magazine than out of New Mexico magazine.

The concept is easy - Just put a layer of corn tortillas in the bottom of a baking dish. Cover that with a layer of your favorite meat, onion and chili, add some black beans and corn, grate some cheese over the top and throw it in the oven at 350 until it starts to bubble. I use Hatch green chili, but you could just as easily use red chili powder. If you buy a tin of chili powder in the supermarket, it will often come mixed with oregano. That, to me, is not what I mean when I say "chili". Chili is a pepper. It can be red or green, but it's a pepper. It's not a mixture of meat and beans and peppers either - though if you're from Texas it is. But if you're from New Mexico, it's peppers. If it's powdered, it's just peppers. When they ask you in a restaurant "red or green?", they're talking about the peppers - often mixed with onion and garlic.

Anyway, since this is White Girl Tamale Pie, you can pretty much turn it into whatever version of Betty Crocker that suits your fancy. Mine turned out a little too mild for my taste, but I remedied that by adding some chopped tomatoes which I picked from my garden, some more green chili and some diced red onion, mixed together to make my own version of salsa.
I think the reason I opted for turning buffalo and canned beans into White Girl Tamale Pie is because I can't think these days. I needed something that could sustain me for several days without my having to come up with something original. You see, my precious cat disappeared the last day of August. It's been devastating. I've had a number of wonderful cats and dogs in my life, and each is special. But then there was Boo.Right now my hope is that someone took her, because there is no sign of anything else in the canyon behind my house. I've scoured it and today a friend of mine scoured it for an hour and a half. Nothing. I'm leaving for China next weekend. My greatest wish is that Boo will show up somehow before I leave....standing at the front door, complaining.

MFK Fisher Revisited...Or...Pass the Wolf, Please..

The news is a constant source of sorrow. There's seldom a bright spot - it's all about job losses and housing prices falling, and people unable to afford health care, and criminal politicians. And all of that against a backdrop of global warming and unending wars.

So it seemed like a good time to re-read MFK Fisher's "How To Cook A Wolf". First published in 1942 against a backdrop of wartime food shortages, the book was written as a meditation on how to live with grace under the cruelest circumstances. With the wolf sniffing at the door, the most practical response is to learn how to cook the wolf. She speaks of the men and women who cooked and marketed their way though the war who "will feel, until their final days on earth, a kind of culinary caution: butter, no matter how unlimited, is a precious substance not lightly to be wasted; meats, too, and eggs, and all the far-brought spices of the world, take on a new significance having once been so rare. And that is good, for there can be no more shameful carelessness than with the food we eat for life itself. When we exist without thought or thanksgiving we are not men, but beasts."

I consider myself among the lucky... I have a job. Well, I'm self employed, so of course I have a job, and even though business is slower than it's been, I still have work. I've seen the wolf in the canyon below my house. My neighbors have reported it in their back yards. But so far, he has not come to my door.

How to Catch the Wolf

A creative economy is the fuel of magnificence.
Aristocracy, Ralph Waldo Emerson

While I'm not always sure about the magnificence, I know that everyone around me seems to be more interested in the notion that food comes from the earth. Small pots of herbs seem to be springing up in everyone's kitchens or tiny side yards. More people are joining community gardens. When I put my lunch in the fridge at work yesterday, I noticed one of those black plastic, one gallon pots from a nursery, sitting next to the sink with tiny yellow and red grape tomatoes in it. Someone's overflow.

Leftovers have become popular again. I've known people who, for many years, wouldn't consider saving leftovers. At the end of each dinner, they'd toss whatever was left over into the garbage. I always stood there in mute horror as I watched perfectly good food being thrown away. Now these same people, while not always creative with their leftovers, are dumping them back into a container and stashing them in the fridge for tomorrow's lunch.

When I lived in New Mexico, I learned about leftovers. Bob would always cook huge meals, even though there was usually just the two of us. But that gave us plenty of leftovers - some eaten "straight up" (just the way they were cooked originally), and some turned into another kind of a dish - a soup, a stew, a curry. One of Bob's go-to solutions for leftovers was pasta or rice. By sauteing an onion and some garlic, he primed us for a meal. If anyone walked in at that point, there was the inevitable "Boy, that smells good! What are you making?"
These are two variations of my standard leftover fare. There's a rice version with some leftover veggies, and a pasta version (about to be popped into the oven) with some chopped up chicken breast (left over from a barbecue) and the remains of some mozzarella cubed over the top. Both could be considered as being made by someone "living on a war budget", but the addition of herbs (fresh from my garden), and/or chili and some rich cheese, yields - perhaps not magnificence - but surprisingly satisfying meals.

A cool summer brings out the baker in me

While the northeast is sweltering under oppressive heat, we in San Diego find ourselves wondering when summer will begin. We've had May Gray, June Gloom, and July forgot that it wasn't June. Now it's August and the sun is starting to poke out in the afternoon. My tomatoes are still green. The basil is in it's infancy still. I don't have enough sun in my yard to plant corn, nor would the infestation of gophers for the last 2 years make that a wise choice.

So when all else fails, I bake.

I had two friends staying with me recently who, when they saw these loaves come out of the oven, declared them to be "Jesus loaves". Gotta love that -- the Jew bakes Jesus loaves! But they do smell divine as they're cooling on the rack. And they're sourdough, so they're perfect for all manner of things - cheese, French toast, or just dipping in some lovely olive oil.

I got the recipe from Peter Reinhart's book "The Bread Baker's Apprentice". The recipe goes on for 3 or 4 pages - and that's after you've gotten your starter (barm) going. So there's no way I'm going to post that here....I'd be up for the rest of the night. But I DID bake a sourdough bread and posted the recipe a couple of years ago. You can read about that here. The picture I took of that one was stunning......I must find that book again!

Mission Valley Acupuncture is now on facebook! I hope some of you stop by and have a look. My posts are about health, but of course, that includes food!

Trouble came and went...and then we ate

My transmission died on the way to New Mexico earlier this month. I was heading east on the freeway, about an hour from Tucson, when I noticed white smoke coming out of the back of my car. I don't understand white smoke. I just knew that when I pressed on the gas, the engine revved up but I didn't go any faster. I checked the temperature gauge and it was normal. I drifted over to the side of the road and manage to coast part way up an exit ramp and stopped on the side. There was a car stopped in front of me.
I pulled my cell phone out and searched for my AAA card. The man in the car ahead of me got out, walked back to my car and told me to pop my hood. I did, but didn't pay much attention to him. I was busy trying to find the phone number for AAA outside of California. Turns out that this man was truly an angel sent to help me. It took over 45 minutes for the AAA man to figure out where I was, even though I was on an exit ramp on a major freeway. The man from the car waited patiently while I tried over and over again to explain to AAA which exit I was on and where it was. The man from the car checked my oil level and fiddled with who knows what before heading back to his car. I noticed him moving stuff around in his car, making room in the back seat. That's when it dawned on me that he was making room for my luggage.
"Where are you going?" he asked me, when I finally got off the phone.
"Tucson".
"So am I. I'll drive you to where you need to go."

When the tow truck showed up, they asked me where I wanted my car towed. How should I know? I told them I wasn't familiar with the area and didn't have a clue. They suggested a Pep Boys in Casa Grande - the closest town. At 6:30 on a Saturday night, I didn't have a choice. I transferred my luggage to the man's car, got in and he followed the tow truck to Casa Grande. After the men pushed it into one of the bays, the man from the car told them "You treat this woman right. Be good to her." They told me they'd diagnose my car the next day.
I got back into the man's car and off we went to Tucson. The logical side of my brain told me that I might have been nuts getting into a car with a stranger, but my heart told me that this man was good and wouldn't harm me. My heart was right. He drove me to my friend's house in Tucson where I always spend the night on my drives to New Mexico. We fed him some dinner, and when he went to leave, he took my hand and said "It was nice meeting you, even under these circumstances. The only thing I ask is that you pass it on to someone else who is in need someday."
Transmissions do not get repaired on Sundays, so I wound up renting a car and driving to New Mexico. That meant that I had to leave for Tucson on Friday morning in order to drop the rental car off and get to Casa Grande before they closed for the weekend. I followed my friend back to her house, spent the night, and drove back to San Diego the next day.
Now, the transmission saga meant that I didn't make it to New Mexico in time to join a couple of friends of mine who drove out a day ahead of me. We were all going to stay at my house and I was going to show them around. They only had a slightly long weekend, while I was supposed to be staying a week. When I got back to San Diego, they were at my house, waiting for me. I drove up and they came out to help with my luggage. All of my stuff was moved inside by the three of us in one trip. This might sound normal to many of you, but for me, it was heaven sent. I didn't have to do everything myself - what joy! And when I got inside, they had a glass of wine poured for me, and dinner was ready.

We started with a chilled melon soup:
My friend Darren sauteed an onion and some shallots until they were past translucent, added some sugar, thyme, and a healthy dose of fresh ginger. Then he added the "meat" of a whole honeydew, some thinly sliced white potato and some chicken stock. After it came to a boil, he simmered it for about 5 minutes and stuck it in the fridge to chill. The food processor churned it into soup, and after straining, he added some sour cream.

Heaven.

And them we moved on to the salad.........
Endive, sliced thinly, white anchovies, ruby grapefruit and shaved Parmesan. He didn't use the tips or the bottom of the endive - just the center part...and then dressed the whole thing with white balsamic, olive oil, dijon mustard, salt and pepper. After tossing and draining it (reserving the liquid), he arranged the slices of grapefruit over the top, squeezed the membrane of the grapefruit into the dressing and drizzled it over the top.

It was, in fact, over the top.

And then came the clams.........

After sauteeing shallot, garlic, sweet onion and fennel in olive oil and salt, Darren added the clams and covered the pot. He cranked it up to high to get them going. When they started hissing, he threw in a glug of cognac and finished it with some fennel leaf.

If trouble had to come my way, it came in the kindest, most gentle way I can imagine. I'm so grateful for the help I got on this past trip. There was stress involved - yes. But I was taken care of too, at every step of the way. How lucky is that?

Fourth of July with Flag Cake

So this is what my sister does when she isn't celebrating major birthdays. Is there any wonder that everyone loves her?

I hope you all had a spectacular Fourth! I celebrated at a neighbor's house, where there was wine and food and even some live music! Everything paused at around 9pm, because from my neighbor's deck we could see the fireworks display over the bay. It's coordinated with music which one of the local radio stations plays. And when it was over, the trio that my neighbor hired began playing again - some original songs as well as some oldies. And the best part was that I could walk home, without having to fight traffic.

And tomorrow I get to sleep in..........;-)

Finishing a Video, Focaccia With Pine Nuts, Mushrooms

While digitizing the family's history is the larger project, the more pressing need has been to finish the digital slide show for my sister's upcoming birthday. I finished it last nite. My plane leaves at 8am tomorrow morning. This will be a brief post.

This has been an amazing learning curve. While my hobby has been taking photographs, putting together a digital slide show involves all kinds of knowledge which - as an acupuncturist - never comes into play in my life. But they say that one way to keep your brain young is to challenge it. I guess in that case, I've lost about 5 years in the last two months. Challenge? I'll say!! I am now aware of hidden corners of the digital world - such as formatting for DVDs and limitations of various programs. My eyes have become redder and my bottom has become squarer from sitting in front of a computer for so long.

But in the end, it comes down to the results. And I must admit to being pleased with the results. I'm glad I learned as much as I did with this, because it will make the next project flow more smoothly. There are photos going back to the late 1800s, and a few from 1900 and 1901. I've learned to be a ruthless editor, and to be obsessed with getting the right image to be on the screen at just the right moment in the particular song.

And through this whole process, I've managed somehow to tear myself away often enough to socialize with friends. And for me, that always seems to involve food. (I pick my friends carefully too!) So when I was invited a few weeks ago to a friend's party, I jumped at the chance to make this focaccia bread again. I had made it before and loved it. It's amazing how long a single focaccia can sustain you. Especially when you spend your days and nites in front of a computer!

To see the recipe, click here. The only difference is that this time I made it as a rectangle and topped it with caramelized onions, sauteed mushrooms and pine nuts.

Project Update and Lentil-Quinoa Salad

"Could it be that it was all so simple then........Or has time re-written every line?" I look at the photo above and think - "both". It was much simpler then, in the sense that there were no cell phones, no computers, no internet, and I'm pretty sure that when this picture was taken back in 1938, there was no television either. I don't know when TV came into popular use, but I think it was after 1938. So life was simpler. It took a long time for news to reach us. In 1938 there was a war going on in Europe, and the images of that war reached us via newsreels, which were shown in movie theaters. Radio existed, of course, so people here heard the news, but it was all so far away. Until, of course, it reached us at Pearl Harbor in December of 1941. But back in '38, it was still a distant war on another continent.

Life was simpler then because we didn't think it was necessary to stay in touch every day with everyone of our "friends" on facebook. We didn't need to answer the phone while we were driving. People wrote letters by hand and mailed them. There were times and places where we could be alone, or with our families, and if people wanted to talk with us, they'd have to drop by. My aunt used to drop by on her way somewhere, and leave a steaming hot apple pie in our kitchen, admonishing me to let it cool first before eating it. My uncle would stop by every Sunday to do the New York Times crossword puzzle with my mom. My grandparents, seated in the center of the photo above, would stop by on Sundays and take my older brother and sister out for a ride in their car. It was called a Sunday drive, and people used to do that for pleasure.

Or has time re-written every line? There's an uncle and an aunt in the photo above who later divorced. There's another uncle in that photo who caused a huge rift in our family, which has fortunately been healed by the cousins. The youngest blond girl, seated on her mom's lap above was the first to reach out to heal the rift. We never speak of what happened back then, because we have different understandings. But when we are children, we hear from our parents what has happened in our families, and so naturally she would have heard a different story from her parents than I heard from mine. And over the course of time, we have all come to the conclusion that we would rather have family than be right.

My current project is almost complete. I am waiting for a few more photos from a woman who knew my sister when she was in her 20s, and who had photographs of her from those days. (We didn't have cell phones with cameras back then, so photos were not taken as often.) Last nite I learned that I have a program on my computer that will take my slide show and convert it into a DVD which can be played on a DVD player. It wouldn't have occurred to me that this would be an issue until a colleague of mine mentioned it because she had made a slide show for her dad on his 80th birthday. That's when she discovered that there was more to it than making a digital slide show on a computer. There's the final step. She also told me that I should have the final product in more than one format, since it's possible that what works for me here might not work for me on my sister's equipment.

Delving into my family's past, going through all of the photos of us through the ages, has made me even more keenly aware of the beauty of simplicity. I don't want complicated or fussy. I've never been drawn to it, but I'm even less interested, if that's possible. I'm so grateful that I love to cook. I'm so grateful that I'm not a fast food person. It's a throwback to an era when food was made at home, and we brought it with us when we went anywhere - from school (lunch boxes), work (brown bags or lunch pails, depending on your job), or to the beach (soft coolers with ice). I consider it normal to eat fresh food, as do the readers of this blog and all of your readers as well. We have been the exception for a long time.

I made this lentil and quinoa salad to bring with me to work. It lasted for days, freeing me up to concentrate on making a slide show for my sister's upcoming birthday.
My husband used to say "start with what you've got in the fridge." As long as you've got a well stocked fridge, this works well. I learned back in those days to keep a pantry and fridge well stocked, so I had almost everything I used in this salad - quinoa, lentils, cherry tomatoes, garlic, vinegar and olive oil. I had a necessity for arugala that day. Don't know why, but sometimes these things just happen. Whole Foods is a short distance from my house and provides me with a small amount of exercise when I walk there. I have parsley and mint growing in my garden. So what I ended up with was a kind of variation of tabbouleh, but slightly more substantial with the addition of lentils. Since both lentils and quinoa cook quickly, this dish was a breeze to put together. A lot easier than a slide show, but satisfying, and simple. Because these are the good old days.