spinning into butter

Hello? Is this thing on?

Well! I have a blog! It's been increasingly difficult to find any good time to update, but in the meantime, I present to you a home food project that is so unbelievably easy and satisfying to accomplish it's going to make you feel like a magician. If you follow my Twitter or Facebook you've probably heard me yammering about the weekend after Thanksgiving, but for those of you blog purists out there, I'm talking about making your own butter.

Did you know you can make your own butter? You can! And you don't even need any special tools! Seriously, this is probably just Food Science 101, but butter is just one of those things I have only considered buying from the store in stick form--I'd heard of churning your own butter, of course, but why bother, it seemed (most likely) cumbersome and thankless.  And anyway, who the hell am I, Laura Ingalls Wilder?

Apparently, yes. I tried this two weekends ago, and it was such a fantastic trick, I did it again yesterday. And this time I took pictures!

What you will need:

- One quart of heavy cream (just the supermarket brand is fine)
- One large jar with a screw-top lid
- Some salt

So. Get the heavy cream out of the fridge and let it sit until it comes to room temperature. (This makes the process go faster, I think.) Pour it into your jar. Screw the lid on.

Shake that mother.

See, this is the part where I thought, "What a fun project for the kids! I should get them involved and they too will share in the wonders of food science and creation and it will be so wholesome we'll just be high-fiving and group hugging forever!"

(The reality of it is that Cal shook the jar for, like, five seconds, and when the cream didn't instantly transform into a blob of butter he handed it back to me, told me encouragingly to keep up the good work and let me know when it was ready, before scurrying down to get in his weekend allowance time of frying his eyeballs playing Super Mario Brothers on the Wii. CHILDLIKE WONDER, AM I RIGHT?)

Making butter doesn't take a long long time, but it takes at least 10 or 15 minutes of shaking that jar. And at first, you're going to feel like nothing is happening, because the cream is just going to get thick and a little frothy, at which point it's not going to feel like you're agitating much in the jar at all. (Truth be told--my arms got tired and I took a little break midway through. Probably it would have gone faster with a blender or food processor, but what's the fun in that? In the low-tech lies the fun. WE'RE SHAKING JARS ALL UP IN THIS PIECE.)

Just when you're about to give up and call the supermarket about the DEFECTIVE CREAM that they sold you, the contents of the jar start to...loosen up.  Suddenly your silent thick jar contents will start to sound like sploosh sploosh SPLOOSH and you will look inside your jar to see that lo, butter is separating from the buttermilk.  SCIENCE IS HAPPENING.  Keep shaking for another few minutes, until you get a nice big butter core all teased out.

Pour the jar contents through a strainer, and save the buttermilk if you want (you'll end up with about a cup) to make other things.  What other things?  I don't know.  Things.  Or save it to bathe your prize-winning pig with, like in Charlotte's Web.

Rinse the butter with cold water (cold so you don't melt it) and squoosh it around to get the excess buttermilk and water out.

Mix in some salt if you like.  Or other flavors!  I thought a salt-rosemary butter would be super fancy, but I wanted the kids to eat it and was worried they'd protest against butter with "things" in it.

You'll end up with a tennis ball sized glob of soft, fluffy butter.  Put a lid on it, stick it in the fridge, smear it on everything, unless you're one of those health food nuts that thinks a little butter is going to kill you--in that case, give the container to someone that you hate.

You made butter!

(Yes, that smug feeling afterwards is normal.)

a picture is worth something something

A wordless entry for Joe's birthday (well, mostly wordless), because really, what else is there to say?  Well, except that the kids chose the cake flavor (radioactive strawberry) and the frosting colors (myriad).  COULD YOU TELL?

Happy birthday, Joe!  You're one of the good ones, and we love you.

Edited to add: not achieved through some sort of crazy photo trickery, but indeed those birthday candles are burning with different colored flames. (The effect probably would have looked more dramatic with the lights out, but oh well, maybe next time we'll have our party at night or, at the very least, not in front of a window.)  I figure there must be some sort of inorganic additive in the filament--Chemistry wonks can probably help me with this--but the kids thought it was pretty awesome.

just shut up and cook this thing

That's a charming name for a cooking column, don't you think?  What?  Not so much?

Anyway, today I wanted to share the recipe for this pot roast that I make, because it's something that the kids like, and takes very little active cooking time (although there is a lot of passive cookery--stay tuned) and I think turns out looking and tasting much fancier than it actually is, which is to say: NOT FANCY AT ALL.  Also it freezes quite nicely so, you know, more food for later.

The first thing you need when you're cooking this thing is a big pot. Well, no, actually I guess the first thing you need is not to be a vegetarian.  But beyond that, the pot. The best kind of pot is one of those ceramic-coated cast iron pots for slow cooking.  I have (and LOVE) these Lodge Dutch Ovens (which actually has much less to do with farts than it sounds like) because they work well and look great and are many, many times cheaper than the equivalently-sized Le Creuset Dutch Ovens that I assume Lodge is knocking off.  

I should have probably taken a picture of the meat before I started cooking it, but I FORGOT so I'll just tell you that while a lot of "roast" or "brisket" type cuts will work well for this recipe (and are generally on the cheaper side), the one that I've found to work the best has been beef shoulder.  I know, that's maybe too anatomical for you, but just trust me.  Shoulder.  Get a piece that has some good fat on it, it's not going to kill you.

I like to use this dry steak rub on the meat before I get it into the pan.  It's pretty much just a mixture of salt and pepper and dried garlic and red pepper flakes and whatnot, but whatever proportion it's in is good, and I rarely have to season the roast at the end, because it's all flavored up already.

Pour some olive oil into the bottom of the pot and let it get hot.  Like, very very hot.  High flame.  You need it to be hot because they first thing you're going to do is brown the meat.  The whole thing.  Just throw it in there.  (Don't really throw it, slide it in gently.  The hot oil!  Splashy!)  It takes a couple minutes (four? five? I don't know) on each side, but you'll be able to tell when it's done because it's going to start smelling yum.  Like BROWNED MEAT.  

(I told you this was not for vegetarians, right?)

OK, while your meat is browning (keep the lid of the pot on while it's doing that--there's a lot of smoke, and the oil besides) cut up one big yellow onion.  Don't be fussy about it, big chunks is fine, this thing's going to cook down for hours.

Then when both sides of the meat are nicely seared, pick it up with a pair of tongs and just scatter the onions underneath the meat, along the bottom of the pan.  Put the meat back on top.

You have a bottle opener handy, right?  Good.  Pop open a bottle of wine.  It doesn't have to be nice, just drinkable.  (I used this Yellow Tail Cabernet Sauvignon that they had at the supermarket, because it tastes fine and it was on sale for $6.00--don't be scandalized, wine snobs.)  Now go ahead and pour that wine on top, all over everything--maybe about 1/3rd to 1/2 of the bottle.  It's OK if the meat isn't all covered up, it's going to make it's own meat juices (ew?) and the wine is just going to be, like, extra flavor stuff.

Turn the heat way, way down, as far as it'll go almost while still maintaining a lazy simmer.  We have that kind of stove where there's no flame (what do they call it?  Conduction cooktop or whatever?  Anyway, it's the flat kind with no fire) and I don't really love cooking without a flame but for slow cooking it's the greatest, because you can really get the heat down low.  Now to put the rest of the ingredients in.

Here, by the way, is the main reason I make this recipe as often as I do:

We have these two giant rosemary bushes in our backyard.  We didn't plant them, the real grown-ups that lived here before us did, but they're there and they're great.  I usually snip off a 4 or 5-inch stem for this roast and just sort of stick it in there.

Other stuff you can put in (if you like): mushrooms, carrots, potatoes.  I didn't put potatoes in mine because this ends up making a lot of food and I usually freeze half of it for a later day, and you know how potatoes get all mealy in the freezer.  But if you're having a bunch of people over, by all means, cube up some potatoes and throw them in there.  (You might want to wait a few hours before you do that so they don't break up over the long cooking time.)  Also throw in a mess of diced garlic into the liquid.  How much?  I don't know, a big tablespoonful.  Mo' garlic, mo' tasty.

See how pretty?  And then you just sort of cover it up (make sure the lid fits on tightly) and walk away for, like, four or five hours.  Seriously, you don't need to do anything else.  Once in a while (like every hour) you can get your tongs and flip the meat over if you feel like it so the top doesn't dry out, but I'm not sure how much it matters.  The long low heat ends up generating a lot of meaty juice and everything ends up in the liquid in the end.

Again, just make sure the heat is low low low.  You want the liquid to be just bubbling a teeny little bit, but a long low heat is what's going to make the meat tender.  Cook it too hot and too fast and it'll just get tough.  But low and slow and you'll have that kind of meat that just falls apart when you poke it with a fork.  All the better for your edentulous future.

See how that goes?  Keep it cooking for a bunch of hours and just leave it alone, mostly.  I made this because I was post-call today and I wanted to take a nap, and that's basically what I did while dinner was on the stove.  I suppose you could do this in a crock pot too, you'd just have to brown the meat first before sticking it in there.  Actual labor involved was, like, 20 minutes. (Not counting going to the supermarket to get the meat--I am not a person who relishes cooking so I used baby cut carrots and pre-sliced mushrooms because why the hell not?)

Look, it's not like Jacques Pepin or anything but it's rustic and homey and people tend to like it, even child people.  Serve it over rice or mashed potatoes (if you don't have potatoes already in it), or do Cal's favorite variation, which is with a salad and those Pillsbury crescent rolls that come in a tube.  Oh, if I loved anything as much as my kids love bread in a tube, I'd probably be a much more contented person.

Enjoy!  Also, are there any other easy (emphasis: EASY) recipes that you can recommend for us to use some of that rosemary?

winter melon soup

One of the somewhat annoying things about this pregnancy (and this has by far been the most symptom-laden of my three pregnancies to date--about which more later, if I feel like whining) is the fact that I really haven't felt hungry for, oh, the past four and a half months. Not that I'm not eating, of course--I am, pretty much as usual. But I just feel kind of generally blergh about the idea of food, and I haven't been really hungry in the classic sense since about the middle of November. I just kind of eat when it's eatin' time, because I know I should, and because my stomach is making noises. These days I'm usually indifferent at best about food before I eat, and then after, I feel kind of bloat-y and nauseous.

Eighteen weeks and counting. This had better be a mighty cute baby is all I'm saying.

I have been craving certain types of foods (this, again, is no different from before I was pregnant, only that I'm paying more attention to foods that don't fill me with a sense of mortal loathing), but these foods are not so difficult to locate in Atlanta. Mostly I've been craving Chinese soups. Real Chinese soups. Not the messes you find in your Chinese takeout restaurants--your MSG-laden wonton soups, your cornstarch-thickened hot sour soups or what have you.  And it's really not that I have anything in particular against takeout Chinese food--it has its place, and I enjoy a mess of greasy pan-fried noodles with beef as much as the next person. It's just a different cuisine entirely.  Authentic Chinese soups--what they in Chinatown call "slow fire soups" (I believe this is the more literal translation--anyone who speaks Chinese better than I please correct if necessary), are a different beast; soups that have been slowly simmering over the stove for hours, if not all day.

Chinese "slow fire" soups are different than Western-style soups in that they are much more broth-oriented. Many Western-style soups (consommé excluded) do kind of straddle that line between soup and stew--the solid ingredients are the focus rather than the broth itself. Chinese soups tend to focus more on the liquid component. You could filter our all the solids and still have an exquisite bowl of soup--clear yet full-bodied. Not to get all medical on you (nor to get you to focus on the common end-point of all ingested foodstuffs) but Chinese soups could well be included in a clears-only diet, whereas most Western soups would be excluded until one's diet was advanced to full regular.

What I decided I wanted to make was a winter melon soup.

(Thankfully, my go-to Asian mart sells winter melon pre-hacked into usable-sized chunks, because I seem to have left my machete in the car.)

Now let's not let the fact that I have never in my life made a winter melon soup, nor the need for a few specialty ingredients deter you. That's what the Internet is for. I skimmed this recipe from Epicurious (which I used more as inspiration rather than explicit instruction, because--stuff a whole chicken's hollowed out organ cavities with matchsticked scallions ham and ginger to make my own chicken broth? How much time do you think I have?) and kind of cobbled together my own recipe out of what schedule constraints and ingredients I could readily get my hands on. And now here it is for you.

I don't really have the amounts precisely because I'm a little slapdash as a cook, but here's what I used generally:

• Winter melon (Dur. May be hard to find in a regular supermarket, but an Asian grocery store should have it)
• One big carrot (to give the soup some easy sweetness)
• Smoked ham hocks (for adding porky fattiness to the broth--the kind I got were frozen but no matter--I used half of the package depicted)
• Chicken broth (I used one carton's worth)
• Water (About 1.5x as much as the chicken broth)
• Ginger (peeled carefully!) -- about two inches worth
• Scallions (one bunch)
• Dried shrimp (about a handful)
• Dried shitake mushrooms (about a handful too)
• Salt

Except for the winter melon, put everything into a pot and then simmer the shit out of it for three hours.

(Seriously, that's most of my "recipe."  LOOK, I DON'T COOK, OK?)

Fine: I peeled the carrot, cut the ginger into discs and cut the scallions into four sections, but seriously--that's about it.  Oh, but look at this cool thing I got at the Asian mart (it's not an Asian implement per se, but they happened to sell it there for super cheap):

Maybe you can't see it too well from the shadow of the pot lid, but it's this little permeable metal basket for broth-making ingredients. I wanted to flavor the broth with the scallions and the dried shrimp*, but I didn't want to go fishing them all out at the end either, because my goal was a nice, clean soup without a lot of bits floating around in it. So this basket seemed like a good option, almost like a giant version of those things that people use when they want to use loose tea instead of teabags.

Anyway, simmer the shit out of it. Salt the broth to taste, but don't get too crazy with the salt unless you want to RUIN EVERYTHING. After three hours, take out all your ham hocks and your little basket of scallions and dried shrimp--they've done their job, now they can go, because they are ugly.  I guess a purist might filter the broth through a fine mesh to get it really nice and clear, but what am I, Martha Stewart?  Just leave it, it's fine.

Cut up your winter melon (not including the peel, also get rid of the seeds and stringy stuff) and cut it into nice spoonable sized chunks. Add to the broth and simmer for another half an hour or so, or until the melon gets translucent and velvety.  I also added a little bit of Napa cabbage at the end because it seemed contextually similar and something else to soak up those nice soupy flavors, but you don't have to--it's not really a classic interpretation.

(I have seen some other recipe variations which included cilantro, which while I admit might improve the presentation--the palette runs somewhat monochromatic--also kind of defeats what to me is the essential appeal of winter melon soup.  I think of this soup the way that Ruth Reichl once described mushroom soup, which is that it is smooth and easy and comforting with no sharp edges to jar the palate.  I like cilantro, but it doesn't belong in every damn thing, people.)

Dish it out.  Serve with white rice.  Or put the rice and the soup right in the same bowl, like I do.

It's eatin' time.

How about you all? What easy ethnic comfort foods have you guys have been able to recreate reliably at home without too much fuss?

* I substituted dried shrimp for dried scallops, because even at the Asian food mart, there were no dried scallops to be found. Perhaps at a different market, or in Chinatown--a urban neighborhood which, so far as I am aware, Atlanta lacks. I do recall there being a jar of dried scallops in the fridge at my house during most of my childhood, and though they looked like ugly little dessicated eraser nubs, I can attest that the flavor is quite good--very salty and savory and jammed with flavor, like fishy Milk Duds.  Dried shrimp is a decent substitution though, or at least so says Ming Tsai, noted Chinese person who cooks stuff on the teevee.

the view from below

What I didn't tell you before because it seemed premature (poor word choice) was that during my 12 week ultrasound to measure nuchal lucency, my OB told me that he was "90% sure" that the fetus was a boy.

"Can you really tell that early?" I asked, trying to see the screen better.  I saw what he was looking at, but from my (admittedly imperfect) memory of embryology from medial school, I thought that at 12 weeks gestation the unmentionables were simply classified generically as a "genital tubercle," with no real differentiation between male and female, blah blah blah something Wolffian and Mullerian ducts, blah blah.  (I never said I didn't remember the words, I just don't remember what they mean or are.)  Anyway, the OB said that was basically right, but sometimes one can get an indication one way or the other from the angle of the genital tubercle, uh, protuberance--and in his own, anecdotal, completely not scientifically rigid experience, he has a track record of being able to call the gender from the 12 week ultrasound about 90% of the time.

At the 16 week ultrasound this last week, he looked around a bit, looked at my chart, and asked, "What did I say it was going to be the last time?"

"You said it looked like a boy."

"Huh."  He angled the probe this way, then that.  (Thing 3 was angled weirdly, legs all criss-cross applesauce).  "Well, I think I may have...hmmm.  It looks like...huh.  I think I was wrong.  I think it looks like a girl.  See that mound here?"

(I did not see the mound.)

"Usually this mound here means...oh wait.  Here's a better picture.  I think...I think I was right the first time.  I think it's a boy.  Usually I can get a better picture than this, though, at 16 weeks...Usually it's like, KABOOM, you know?"

"Kaboom," I echoed, obligingly.

"Huh.  I wish I could see better.  But I think it's a boy.  Let's say 99% sure it's a boy.  But I'll save that last 1% for next time, when we do the anatomy scan."  And then I forced him to look at the head and heart and the diaphragm and the guts to make sure they were all properly septated and in their proper areas (it's a little early to do the full anatomy scan, but major anatomical badness we could probably see, though thankfully nothing ominous presented itself at this point).

So, we are left with several possibilities.

1.) It's a boy, a fact that will become KABOOM, in your face (ew) obvious once the testes actually descend from their Spring Training Camp in the peritoneum.  (Yes, now is an appropriate time to scream the word "GUBERNACULUM,"--I for one have been waiting for years to use that word in its correct context, as opposed to just, you know, saying it randomly just because it sounds awesome.)

2.) It's a girl (unlikely, I think, which is probably good, because we were already expecting a boy and when Target had a huge sale a few weeks ago I got a bunch of boy-flavored onesies, for like, a dollar.  When Cal was first born I was determined to find only gender neutral clothing, because, like, gender role stereotyping is bad!  See also: votes for women, step in time!  But soon I realized that outside of a very limited selection of green-or-yellow newborn items, no one makes gender neutral kids clothing; everything is either, like, a screaming pink onesie with scalloped neckline and rhinestones spelling out "DADDY'S LITTLE PRINCESS" or a hyper-blue onesie reading "MOMMY'S FAVORITE QUARTERBACK," embroidered with, like, a football and a rifle or something.  Anyway, my point being, it's probably not a girl--a fact that might disappoint some but for me and Joe, at least, was admittedly something of a relief.)

3.) The final option, which crossed my mind, and which I will sum up with the following story.  Back when I was a Peds resident, we used to write notes or call consults in this little glass-walled closet known  as the Resident Work Room (the term "room" was generous--for those who similarly trained at Babies Hospital, as we were known at the time, this was back when we were still working primarily out of the old hospital building, which looked like a sanatorium and still reeked faintly of cholera and The Black Humours).  Anyway, sometimes we would stick things on the walls of the resident work room--mostly they were boring things, like schedules and reminders, but sometimes there were funny things, like notes or dictations gone awry.  One such dictation was from an abdominal and pelvic CT of an infant (maybe it was a plain film), and either the radiologist had a very heavy accent or the transcriptionist was tired that day.  The final line of the dictation was highlighted in yellow, and read, "DIAGNOSIS: UMBIGUNOUS GENITARIA."

Anyway, Thing 3 looks good.  And it's looking with increasing certainty like we're going to be living in a live-action version of Alvin and the Chipmunks.  (To be clear: Cal is Simon, Mack is Alvin.  Joe and I, of course, play the role of Dave Seville on alternating nights, please check your programs for last-minute substitutions.)

*          *          *

Usually it wouldn't have taken me that long to write the above entry, but this morning I was peeling some ginger (I am attempting an experimental new recipe for Asian-esque short ribs--if it turns out well I will post the recipe here, otherwise let's never speak of it again) when the vegetable peeler slipped and instead of taking the skin off the ginger, took the skin and 1/4th of the nail off my left index finger.  Look, usually I'm more careful in the kitchen, but ginger!  It's so bumpy!

Anyway, the good news is that it didn't ever hurt that much (strange how little it hurt, actually, juxtaposed against how disgusting it looked) and it's on my non-dominant hand.  However, the bad news is that my left hand is also my laryngoscopy hand, so I guess I'll be intubating next week with one finger sticking out, like I'm a dainty madame or something.

the price of admission

The cooking lesson today was a success.  The avocados ripened in time (if you missed my blow-by-blow on Twitter: basically, I had a clutch of rock-hard raw avocados 24 hours before The Great Guacamole Mash, and hey, putting them in a paper bag with a few bananas and apples really worked!) and the kids had fun mooshing and tasting and everyone made glorious mess.  I would have taken pictures, but I think getting lime juice on my iPhone would have voided the warranty.

Of course, the trade-off was that, in order to ensure I could make it to Cal's cooking day, I was on call the night before.  Probably there are jobs where you could arrange to go to your kid's school the next morning without having to stay up in the OR the night before, helping take some other kids' gangrenous appendix out...but that's not my life.  Not that I mind.  At least it's rarely boring.

So anyway, I'm pretty tired today.  Still.  Worth it.

flavor of the week

Well, it's that time of year again. Haven't I done this before? Like, a couple of times?  I know that this kind of thing is part and parcel of the school experience for kids these days, I'm sure as hell glad I didn't have any "Person of the Week" type stuff when I was a growing up. I was super shy and I had all this anxiety about speaking in front of the class and performing and just generally breathing in public. If I had to present some posterboard about myself in front of everyone, I probably would have just cried the whole time. (I think I cried every day at school for the entirety of first grade, as a matter of fact.)

Cal's a little older now, so we just kind of gave him free reign with the poster, handing him pile of markers, the posterboard, and a pile of loose pictures that we had lying around from Christmas card season. Have at it, Cal. Of course I think that 80% of the things that my kids do are magical and delightful (75%?  Fine, 68%) I do find it particularly adorable that for his own Person of the Week poster, of the nine pictures he chose for the poster, fully seven of them are of Mack. Which proves that though the dialogue in this house seems solely to consist of:

"Stop it!"

"No YOU stop it!"

"No, YOU stop it!"

(continue ad infinitum or until I intervene with some suitable distraction--TV, snack, Ketamine dart, louder yelling, what have you)

...the kid really does love his brother.  How gratifying.

I'm on call tonight, which means that tomorrow I'll be post-call and therefore able to go in to give that "cooking class" that I'd mentioned before.  You guys had given me so many good ideas--I was originally going to go with vegetable dumplings, because I figured it was different and culturally relevant and fun, what with the dumpling skins and whatnot.  But then I was looking at the ingredients on the dumpling skins and I remembered that there's at least one kid in the class who is gluten-intolerant (not that it'll kill him or anything, but he does get a pretty bad rash).  So in the interest of making the activity fun for everyone, and minimizing the unknowns (I also realized I had no idea what kind of heating elements, if any, I would have access to--very Top Chef Quickfire Challenge) I decided to go with something simple and easy and healthy.  Healthy-ish.

Cal and I made a test batch yesterday (what, you don't think I would go in cold, without practicing, do you?  If so, you don't know me very well--before the Oral Boards, I took a test drive to the exam location at least three or four times, and it was only ten minutes away) and it turned out pretty well.  We even put jalepeños in--turns out they're not really that spicy if you scrape the seeds out.  And if some kids don't like guacamole (Cal doesn't like avocado himself, but he does enjoy guacamole) I got, like two giant bags of chips.  KIDS LOVE CHIPS.  Except for that no-gluten kid.  I will just give him a spoon and a bowl of guacamole.

(Hey wait, I'm looking at the poster again, and I think Joe helped him cut out the Statue of Liberty figure.  Cheater!)

the joy of cooking

So don't laugh, but in a few weeks I have to go into Cal's classroom to give a cooking lesson.  Me.  Giving a cooking lesson.

I KNOW.

I didn't volunteer for it, exactly, but Cal's going to be "Person of the Week" at the end of March, and each Tuesday, a parent of the Person of the Week has to come in and give a cooking lesson in which the kids can participate, and which teaches something about the basics of measurement and timing and...I don't know, hygiene?  Anyway, I'm one of the last parents in the class to come in for this cooking lesson (I was originally scheduled to do this in October but I couldn't accommodate it into my work schedule on such short notice so I traded with someone else) and I have no idea what to cook.  The other thing is that I think everything that seems easy and reasonable (little pizzas, smoothies, muffins, what have you) have already been done, like a thousand times over.  Could I still just do another smoothie?  Sure.  But I want it to be special!  I want to impress the five year-olds!  They are the arbiters of cool!

So here's what I know about the cooking thing.

1.) It has to be a preparation process in which the kids can meaningfully participate.  And for clarification, this is a kindergarden class of 23 kids.  No high flame wok grilling of vegetables fine-diced on the spot, in other words.

2.) It has to be something involving measurement.

3.) Actual cooking with heat can be involved, although it doesn't have to be.  For instance, if I were going to make pizzas (done, done and done by, like, three other parents) there's an oven in another building where I could take them after assembly.

4.) No nuts.  There are all these nut allergy kids in the class and I want them to live.

5.) Nothing too hard to do.  By necessity, I will be post-call that morning (it's the only way I can get the morning off without actually being on vacation), and I fear my fatigue-addled mind might not be able to handle more than, say, five ingredients.

Does anyone have any cool ideas?  I mean, I guess I could just make cookies or something, but I'm sure that's been done before too, and then all the other wholesome moms will think I'm poisoning their kids with refined sugars and whatnot.  Why can't I be a wholesome mom?  You know, like randomly incorporate bulger wheat into things.  Or someone who knows what agave nectar is.

Actually, I don't want to be a wholesome mom anymore.  Someone just tell me what I should make that the kids are going to love.  Make me into a classroom hero, guys.  The comments section is open for ideas.

food glorious food

Joe texted me this morning that Cal woke up tired and out of sorts, complaining about some vague thing or another, but since he didn't have a fever and manifested no objective signs of illness, it was off to school for him anyway.

Fifteen minutes later, I got another text that Cal barfed in the car, and so it was back home for him for a day of this:




Couch napping, fluids, episodes of "Planet Earth" narrated by the esteemed Sir David Attenborough. (I know this is yet another example of forcing upon my kid things that I loved as a kid, but Cal enjoys the natural sciences and hearing David Attenborough speak still puts me in a happy place of meditative Zen. He knows so many things about biomes!)

Luckily I was on call last night and able to get home early to the kids (there was no mystery where Cal got his bug, as Mack was basically pooping water for the past two days) and so this seems like as good a time as any to share my recipe for congee.




Let's make it clear that I cannot cook, though I do have a limited catalogue of mostly one-pot comfort food wonders that I tote out once in a while when the occasion calls for it. Congee is basically a Chinese rice porridge, and it is very simple to make, because in it's most stripped down form, it really only requires rice and water. You probably want it to have some, you know, flavor though, so usually I will do some variation on the below.

(Also let's be clear that calling this a "recipe" is perhaps generous, as I do not measure anything--consider it more of a rough blueprint, as most of the ingredients listed below are added to taste.)

At minimum, you will need:

- Rice
- Some form of clear liquid (I use a combination of water and chicken stock)

In what proportions? That is debatable. I think it somewhat depends on what kind of rice you use (I prefer an Asian new crop rice) but the closest I can come is one part rice to nine parts clear liquid. It's going to seem like too much clear liquid when you start boiling, but believe me, it is not--in fact, you may find yourself adding another can of chicken stock at the end if your congee ends up too thick.

Also at minimum, you need:

- Some ginger (at least a good, thumb-sized chunk, sliced)
- Scallions (Trader Joe's sells them as "green onions," which so far as I can tell are the same thing)
- Salt and pepper to taste

That's really all you need, but if you want to get fancy (or perhaps overly baroque in your opinion--I don't know if you're a congee purist) you can also add:

- Mushrooms of some sort (I got those baby Bellos--probably shitakes or those dried mushrooms they have at the Chinese People Grocery Store are better and more flavorful but it'll work with what you have)
- Peanuts
- Some kind of animal protein (I put in two frozen tilapia filets--they cook and get soft and then flake apart into smithereens, so it's really more of a fish chum infusion by the end than actual fish chunks. Alternatively you could use chicken or whatever.)

Put all the ingredients in a big pot. Use a big pot, because like polenta, this stuff grows. Put it on high until it starts to boil, and then put the heat all the way down. Simmer the shit out of it for two or three hours, until the rice breaks down, stirring occasionally. Like I said, you may need to add more water at the end, depending on how thick you like your porridge. Save the scallion tops (they are edible) and slice them for a garnish on top if you're so inclined.




Serve rice gruel to your kids like some cruel Dickensian orphan master. Tell them to eat it, it's good, and stop complaining that it's weird, they're half Chinese for chrissake. (You can probably skip that last part.)

fancy feast




I was just getting dinner ready for the kids, but something about how this looks on the plate makes me think of those pictures depicting all the wholesome ingredients inside a bag of dog chow.




(No, there is no actual point to this entry.)

wherein i lower the bar a little more for us all

I get asked a lot who does the cooking for my kids (the first most common question is who takes care of my kids during the day when Joe and I are at work, to which I am tempted to answer: the TV) (actually we have a nanny) (a human one, not just a euphemism for the TV) and while I will occasionally give some bullshit answer about doing some cooking on the weekends and trying to have a lot of fresh fruit around, the real answer is that without Trader Joe's, we would all be dead.

I don't mean to turn this into an ALL REVIEWS, ALL THE TIME blog, but I know many of us are busy, and though most of us probably cook better than I do (all my "cooking"--I used that term loosely--must be able to be completed in a single pot or saucepan or else I am simply not interested), I just wanted to review some of the new things I've tried at Trader Joe's that the kids like. Maybe this can be a recurring blog topic--I know they had a similar segment on some of the earlier episodes of "Jordan Jesse Go!", but while those segments were used to comedic effect, these reviews are deadly serious.

(DEADLY.)

The other thing is that I know Trader Joe's has the sometimes annoying, usually revitalizing habit or rotating certain items in and out, so there's usually one or two things that I happen across in the frozen or ready-made aisle that I would like to try, though I'm not sure if I'm willing to take the risk. I am risk averse. So anyway, I'll review some of the new products that I tried and liked, you can reciprocate in kind in the comments section, and so we will all prosper.

Mainly, my main considerations when shopping for food at Trader Joe's are this:

1. Will the kids eat it?
2. Can it be prepared in under ten minutes? Preferably via microwave? I will skillet things and suchlike, but my nanny is even less cook-y than I, so if I'm not the one preparing (read: heating up) dinner, it's got to be microwave, toaster oven, or, you know, vichyssoise.
3. Can I at least pretend that it has some nutritive value?
4. Does it cost $10 or less? (Luckily almost everything at Trader Joe's is $10 or less, so the answer is usually yes.)

OK, first up, this turkey bolognese sauce:




Look, I have that Prego sauce in a can too. (Yes, I know it's easy to make your own spaghetti sauce, shut up already, Racheal Ray, GOD.) But sometimes you want a little protein in there so your kids don't get kwashiorkor. Also, meat sauce tastes good. Plus, pasta and kids = success. I got this turkey bolognese for the first time last week. Three days later, I went back and got three more boxes for the freezer. Guys, it's good. And it's frozen, so you can keep it for months, ready to unthaw and spoon over your fusilli or what have you at the drop of a hat. Put some fresh parsley over it if you're fancy like that--I'm not, but I do appreciate that this sauce has a somewhat finer flavor than your usual prepared pasta sauce, which is usually just like a can of Hunt's tomato sauce with lumps in it. It's also not too salty, a major fault of many other brands of prepared pasta sauces. You can probably get four to six kid-sized meals out of this serving of sauce (depending on how big your kids are), or feed two hungry adults.

Next up, this beef bourgignon:




(How do you say that anyway? I've been pronouncing it bore-zheen-YON, but then I kind of mumble it in case I'm saying it wrong so no one notices that eight years of French class in my formative years taught me nothing.)

I know what you're thinking. Red wine sauce? Kids won't eat that. I had the same concerns, so I just got one figuring that if the kids hated it, at least Joe and I could eat the remainder. But it actually isn't that red-winey--actually much less so than the beef shortribs that TJ's occasionally pedals in the refrigerated ready-made foods aisle, but which Cal LOVES--so I think that on the kid front, it's highly palatable. It also doesn't come with quite as many giant meat chunks as depicted on the box, and with somewhat more sauce (which, as mentioned, is not winey but still very meaty) so it becomes quite an ample meal spooned over noodles or rice or potatoes or what have you. I would consider cooking a side vegetable--the only identifiable vegetable I saw were pearl onions--but overall, I was impressed with this entree. Maybe four meals for kids, depending on how much starch you serve it on top of. I know it's probably supposed to be two adult servings, but I could easily finish this whole thing myself if I was really hungry.

Finally, not a new product, but an old standby in our household:




Look, I'm not going to pretend that this is healthy. It's not. It's elbow macaroni and a lot (A LOT) of cheese. But kids like it. Serve it as a side, save some for leftovers, and it won't be overkill. We always have a box or two lying around for emergencies. At least it's better than that powdered orange stuff. Pro tip: after you heat it up in the microwave for six minutes, give it a stir, and then (if you're kids aren't howling for blood because they're so hungry Mom OH MY GOD SO HUNGRY MOOOOOOOM) stick in in the toaster oven on toast for another few minutes. Gets a nice crust.

What do you like at Trader Joe's? And more importantly, do your kids like it? I got these new curry panang sticks there this past weekend, but I'm under no illusions--that one's for me.

because I'm right, that's why



Ever since the dawn of time, I have had a problem with how Joe slices his bagels. See, quick poll: what would you say is the safest way to slice a bagel? Probably to lay the bagel down flat and move the knife horizontally through it while stabilizing it from the top with the flat of your palm, right? Or if you have a sturdy enough bagel, maybe prop it up on its side and slice straight down towards the cutting board. Or else get one of those crazy bagel cutters that Sky Mall keeps telling you to buy.




What's the wrong way to slice a bagel? I HAVE OPINIONS. One wrong way, one dangerous way, in my opinion, is the way Joe does it, which is to hold the bagel in his hand, with his fingers wrapped around each side like a taco shell, while sawing the knife directly into his palm.





My argument is that regardless, he should probably be more careful with how he wields a knife. But especially as a plastic surgeon, whose very livelihood is dependent on the precise control of his hands, he should damn well be wearing chain mail if he's even thinking about sawing a blade directly into his palm, or better yet, slice the bagel like a safe human being. Joe, on the other hand seems to think that intention is the key to causality and that bagel knife misfire is outside of the range of possible outcomes, because what is he, and idiot? I counter that, idiots or not, most people who cut themselves probably did not intend to do so, and that bagel-related lacerations are probably the scourge of the ER and likely one of the most common kitchen injuries. To which he responded--what is that thing that kids do, where they put their fingers in their ears and start singing loudly so that they don't have to hear you? That.

Anyway, feel free to weigh in on this debate, which while it has been raging in our household for years, though it has unfortunately had zero effect on how Joe chooses to slice his bagels. Maybe a little tour of the ER on a Sunday morning would have more impact. Or a quick tour of his disability insurance premium rates.