Life, Love, and Food

Lessons from Sunday Night Dinner

2012-01-29T19:36:00.001-06:00

1) Yes, you can make a raw kale salad with curly kale! It may not be as lovely and delicate as the kale salads made with lacinato kale, but when living in a small town, one must make do with what the market has to offer. I have yet to find lacinato kale around these parts, so until then, it’s curly kale. A little chewy and very green, it satisfied a long-standing curiosity I had about raw curly kale in salad.

2) Russet potatoes are the potatoes to use for oven fries. I have been foolishly misled all these years. No more Yukon Golds as oven fries. It’s starchy Russets from here on out, with their delightfully crispy exteriors and soft, creamy interiors.

Hope your weekend was lovely, friends.

The Art of Cooking for One

2012-01-28T17:26:00.001-06:00

Sarah had a terrific blog post this week about her adventures in cooking for one. I think that cooking for one, as an everyday and unfancy task, is not discussed nearly enough. I know that there have been books written on the subject, but I think I’m more interested in how non-chefs and non-food writers manage to make cooking for one a reality. Those of us who are not food professionals are likely to have a lower threshold for throwing in the towel (literally), picking up our wallets, and walking over to Blue Baker for dinner. For us, cooking is harder—it feels more like work than pleasure. I say that as someone who enjoys cooking. But honestly, I have days when all I want to do is plop on the couch with a glass of wine and some cheese and pretzels and call it dinner.

(Wait. Wine, cheese, pretzels. Sounds good to me! I don’t see the problem.)

I cook at home for two main reasons. The first is that I am a food snob. I use higher quality ingredients than most places around here in College Station, Texas. I like fresh produce, organic food, and nutrient-dense meals. I also like variety in my meals, which can be hard to find as a vegetarian in Texas. The second reason is that in order to afford my food snobbery, I can’t afford to eat out too often. The places where I like to eat around town are too pricy for everyday lunches or dinners. As a side note, I’ll also mention that when I go out for dinner, it’s hard to resist ordering something boozy to drink, and alcohol is expensive. Eating at home means I can either mix my own drinks or I can abstain. For some reason, at home I’m not quite as tempted to drink, though I am becoming quite fond of the after-work glass of wine.

I have two strategies to manage my cooking life. One is to cook in batches so I have good food for my deskbound lunches. The other is a selection of single-serving recipes that I rotate when I want dinner at home with no leftovers.

When I cook in batches, I usually make soup. Soup is, hands down, the best lunch. Assuming you have access to a microwave or even a stove, soup is a warm, comforting, nutritious, and tasty lunch. I usually eat soup with cheese and crackers or bread. To round out my lunches, I add a piece of fruit, and a little sweet, like a cookie. I love soup, and the number of soup and stew recipes in my recipe index is a reflection of my passion for soup.

Other decent options for cooking in batches are casseroles like lasagna, grain-based salads (like this rice salad), and tofu scrambles. I love a good tofu scramble.

My collection of single-serving recipes is something of which I am very proud. It’s also something upon which I am very reliant. While I enjoy the feeling of cooking in batches—it makes me feel secure and centered, well-stocked for future good eating—I’m not always looking for leftovers. Sometimes I just want dinner. Here are a few of my best tricks for cooking for one and only one:

* Eggs. Eggs! What other natural food comes in its own single-serving package? I like to make baked eggs, little savory bread puddings, scrambled eggs, and heavenly eggs. (Okay, on that last one I usually make two servings, but it’s so delicious that I would be depriving you if I didn’t mention it.)

* A good supply of vegetables. I like to have on hand carrots, celery, kale, and onions. I can do so much with just those four vegetables: crunchy raw vegetables as a side dish, a simple soup, braised kale, steamed kale…and as a bonus, all of those vegetables are reasonably good keepers, which is a relief for the solitary cook.

* Fancy sandwiches. Don’t roll your eyes! There are so many delicious things you can do with the sandwich genre: gourmet grilled cheese (don’t forget the mustard!), open-faced sandwiches, quesadillas with a myriad of fillings and salsas, burritos (great for using up leftovers like tofu scrambles or vegetable halvies). I would even put pizza for one in this category. I’m such a big fan of bread+cheese+vegetables that this category alone could feed me happily for months.

Finally, I want to say a word about kitchen gear. I adore beautiful cookware. Yes, it can be expensive, but my feeling is that once you own nice kitchen equipment, it is likely to last the rest of your life. I’ve been blessed with generous family members and friends who have given me kitchenware for birthday and Christmas presents. But I’ve also splurged because to me, an investment in my kitchen is an investment in my health and happiness.

Many single people put off buying nice kitchen gear because they figure they’ll put it on their bridal registry when they get married. My opinion is that unless your wedding is imminent, this is a bad idea. You deserve to have nice cooking tools. Yes, even if you only cook for yourself, you are worth it. Invest in your cooking. Buy a nice set of knives, a nice cutting board, and a few good pots and pans. It makes a difference. I know that it can be expensive to equip your kitchen with high-quality gear, so take your time. You don’t have to replace everything all at once. It’s taken me several years to accumulate the stuff I currently use. Be thoughtful and deliberate.

PS In this post, I’ve focused on the idea of cooking for one, but certainly the ideas here are not limited to solo cooking. The techniques and strategies I use when I cook alone are applicable to larger crowds too, but my main point is that I don’t want anyone to feel that cooking is inaccessible to them because they aren’t cooking for other people. We all deserve to eat well. Knowing your way around a kitchen is a reliable way to make that happen on a regular basis. So happy cooking and happy eating to all of you!

PPS Have any kitchen tips to add? Leave a comment! I love comments.

The Anticipation

2012-01-25T21:32:00.001-06:00

I just ordered my copy of Cook This Now by Melissa Clark, and I can’t wait until it arrives.

I wasn’t going to buy this cookbook for two reasons: I have plenty of cookbooks already and I’m trying to stick to my budget (sorry, January—you were an expensive month). But then my friend a asked me if I’d gotten my hands on a copy of it, and she reminded me of how wonderful Melissa Clark’s other book is. Last night, I stopped by Barnes & Noble just to take a peek at Melissa’s new book, and I was reminded of the most wonderful feeling in the world: that moment when you settle into the couch with a new cookbook and plenty of time to sink into your treasure. I love that feeling of starting at the introduction of a brand-new book; I am practically giddy with excitement over the delights that await me in unexplored pages. And with a favorite author like Melissa Clark the feeling is even better because you just know it’s going to be terrific fun.

Cookbooks really are one of my great pleasures in life, and it hardly seems fair to deny myself such a thing. After all, I’ve taken up wine-drinking, and that’s hardly an inexpensive hobby. A new cookbook will last far longer than any bottle of wine, and it won’t make me tipsy either, not unless it instructs me to open the liquor cabinet and start mixing. I also feel it’s important to support the careers of food writers. It’s tough to write recipes for a living—tough and delicious, but still, it is work and I want cookbook authors to keep doing what they do. While I would like to keep my cookbook habit under a modicum of control, I don’t want to abstain altogether.

Also, just from looking at the January chapter of Cook This Now: Double Coconut Granola? Something about tofu croutons? Yes, please! I’ll have one of each. At Barnes & Noble, I stopped myself from skimming more than a few pages because I don’t want to spoil any surprises or ruin any of the fun of diving into new cookbook pages. So I’m just going to wait, ever so impatiently, for my new book, and I’ll tide myself over by flipping through my old cookbooks for some new recipes to try this weekend.

A Friday List (Only the Best Stuff)

2012-01-20T07:19:00.001-06:00

Friday ahoy! A few things on my mind today:

* A new friend in the kitchen, the lovely Nigella Lawson. Oh, okay, we’re not friends in real life, but her new(?) show, Nigella Kitchen, has episodes on youtube. I like to load a few shows on my laptop then drag it into the kitchen and listen to them while I cook. It’s like Nigella and I are cooking together! Awww, how cute.

* I really cannot get enough of these two albums: The Shepherd’s Dog (Iron and Wine) and The Harrow & the Harvest (Gillian Welch). Such good listening on those two discs. I’m pretty sure I’m repeating myself, but good music deserves to be repeated.

* New things to ponder, navigating a new bend in an old relationship. Ruminating on the nature of love.

* Reading a book that is so, so good I’m afraid to read it too fast because then it will be over! The book is All Things Shining: Rereading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age by Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly. Chrissy wrote this week, quoting Annie Dillard, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” This book is trying to answer the obvious and squirmy questions: how shall we spend our days? And for those of us who have (sort of, kind of) settled on a path, how do we find meaning in the routine and ritual of everyday life? How do we find the sacred amongst the mundane?

This book feels magical to me.

* Solving problems with patience rather than anger. It’s faster and healthier for everyone. Remember that list of money chores I mentioned last week? After a rather focused effort, I’m down to just one item on that list, and it feels so good. Money, I will do right by you and by me.

Weekend ahoy! Make it a good one, okay?

Two for Tuesday

2012-01-17T10:19:00.001-06:00

I have stolen today’s post title from a feature on the local classic rock radio station around here: two for Tuesday is two songs from the same band or artist. I don’t have any songs for you, just a photo and a few tidbits.

Hi! Yesterday was warm and windy; I took an afternoon walk to get away from my computer screen. I’m way too much of a spaz to do a lot of deep thinking when the internet’s temptations are just a click away. So when I need to think, I go for a walk.

Onto the tidbits!

Tidbit the first: I am delighted to be taking part in Amber’s Featured Careers series! We did a fun e-mail interview together, which you can read here if you like. Amber is the voice behind the blog Girl with the Red Hair, and she blogs about lots of fun things in addition to careers, such as marathon training, her journey to a healthier lifestyle, her upcoming wedding, and girly stuff like beauty routines. I had a great time putting together my responses to Amber’s questions for me. Also, if you’re interested in being a Featured Career woman or man, Amber’s looking for more volunteers, so click on over and send her an e-mail.

Tidbit the second: I couldn’t resist a little beauty lift for the old blog here. I think I’m going to try to make a new header, too, but do let me know what you think of the new template. Is it easy to navigate and comfortable to read the text? I worry about these things because I have bad eyes and it drives me nuts when a blog is too much effort to read because the font is too small, the colors work against each other, or the formatting is wonky (why does anyone use center alignment? why?!?).

Sure Happy It’s Tuesday! Make it a good one.

Grant Watch 2012

2012-01-14T10:22:00.001-06:00

Now seems like a great time to give you an update on my life in the lab. Three words sum up what I am doing: reading and writing. I am, with my advisor, writing a grant proposal to be submitted in February, but before I talk about that, I thought I could give you a little insight into how, exactly, academic scientists get money to fund their research. Because you know, those flies—they ain’t payin’ for their own food. Or wine. I present to you Figure 1:

“Merlot? I love Merlot!”

The short answer about who pays for my research is this: you do. If you live in the United States and you pay federal taxes, you fund most academic science research. It’s a huge enterprise: the 2011 budget for the National Institutes of Health was 30.7 billion dollars, and one primary investigator, such as my boss, will often have a quarter or half a million dollars to spend over the course of several years on his or her research. In my opinion, by far the most important thing that research money is spent on is salary. Because even with all the fancy equipment and supplies, who is going to do the research if there’s no one in the lab? Certainly not that guy up there—he’s too busy drinking my wine.

Now, before you get all huffy and puffy about your tax dollars and reckless government spending, let me say this: science benefits immensely from government funding. Here I don’t mean scientists, though that’s true as well, but actual science. Because my research is not being funded by a drug company or someone else who wants to make a profit with the results, the work I publish is far less likely to be biased (or shall I say, bia$ed). I’m not saying that scientists who work for drug companies can’t or don’t do good work, but I think we need to be very, very skeptical of results that come from profit-driven enterprises. Academic science is a place where basic science gets done, and the primary criteria by which it is judged are novelty and quality of the science. Not whether we can make a drug based on this work. Basic science lays the groundwork for all therapeutics, whether behavioral, environmental, or yes, even pharmaceutical.

I work in basic science, which is another way of saying that the research I’m doing has never been done before. It’s groundbreaking stuff, which is one reason why I’m pretty excited about the grant I’m writing. I work with a model system, the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, and I’m especially interested in behavior. As serendipity would have it, I’m studying female sexual behavior in flies, and it makes for all sorts of terrible puns and analogies with human behavior. For example, much like with human females, female flies don’t like it if a male skips the courting and goes right for the copulating. Flies like to be wooed. They also need to be in the mood. If there are more interesting things to do, like exploring a new space, then sex can wait. And it seems they need to be well-fed, or so goes the hypothesis I’m testing now.

I like telling people about my work, and it turns out that while I’m okay at doing experiments and such, I’m really good at talking about science. I seem to be the rare bird in science who actually enjoys the writing—papers, grants, you name it, I want to write it. It’s funny: I could be feeling desperate for my grants to get funding right now, but instead, I’m just loving the fact that I’ve spent most of this week reading and writing. I think I’ve read more in the past week than in the past six months. I feel like I’m back in school! But it’s better than graduate school, because this time around, I kinda sorta know what I’m doing. So it’s more fun and less anxiety.

“Gosh, I really hope we get some grant money so I can spend more time in my cave at work. The sunshine out here burns my pale skin!”

So what exactly am I doing these days? Right now my advisor and I are preparing an R21 proposal, which is a two-year grant from the NIH for innovative and exploratory work. We have a really solid proposal, and I think the science is very interesting, so I’m feeling optimistic about our chances for funding. The R21 is due in February; after that, I’m planning to write and submit my paper and then submit another grant, a postdoctoral NRSA. I had a predoctoral NRSA during my final year of graduate school, and it would be terrific to get 2 or 3 years of postdoc funding in my own name. Though I am writing the R21 (in collaboration with my advisor), the grant will ultimately be submitted in his name, which is fine with me. The NRSA, on the other hand, will be submitted in my name, so as a CV item, it has a bit more prestige. The nice thing about writing proposals for these two grants is that if we are lucky enough to have both of them funded, we can keep both grants. Many, many postdoc grants do not allow a postdoc to have two grants at one time, but that won’t be a potential problem with the R21 and NRSA.

The R21 is coming along really well. I have most of the text written, and I’m starting to work on the figures for the preliminary data that we’ll include in the grant. The grant is due in about a month, so I am relieved that a draft is coming together so fast. It also means (I hope) that I’ll have an easier time balancing grant work with my experimental work because starting next week, I’m going to have a lot more animals available for experiments. Fingers crossed!

And that, my dears, is an update on Grant Watch 2012. I won’t know how well our grant did during its review for another 4-5 months, so please be patient with me. I’m sure I’ll be updating you with good or bad news, but for now, I am feeling happier with my work than I have in a while. It’s true that if neither grant gets funding, I may be hitting the job market for a new position, but if that happens, at least I can say I enjoyed the process. Not a lot of people can say that about grant writing.

(But if you don’t mind, keep your fingers, toes, and eyes crossed for me, okay? Thanks!)

Thursday Up/Down: Nerd Version!

2012-01-12T12:57:00.001-06:00

Yes, indeedy, that’s a real turtle in that photo. I rescued her from a grisly death-by-automobile back in November, and then I tried to take her photo while she hid from me. She’s beautiful, don’t you think? (Matt assures me that this turtle was a she, though we didn’t perform any exams. And I won’t get into how my rescued turtle prompted a conversation about turtle mating and genitalia. Let’s just say male turtles are shockingly well-endowed.)

I’m deep in grant-writing mode this week, so today’s Up/Down post is a rather nerdy version. I want to tell you more about the grant and my work, but I think I’ll save that post for this weekend. So let’s get to the list!

Up, Up, Up!

* Writing. It’s awesome, even when it’s hard. I love it.

* Because of the grant, I have the opportunity now to read a ton of new literature, which has been really fun. I’m learning a lot, and it’s more exciting than doing experiments. Next week I’ll be back to doing more experimental research work, but for now, I feel like I’m back in school with my mountains of papers to read.

* The comment feature in Adobe Reader! I love being able to leave myself notes inside PDFs while I read papers on the computer. It’s also great being able to highlight passages inside an electronic copy of a PDF. Technology, I think you and I are becoming friends.

* Thesaurus.com. Am I the only one who loves looking up words in the thesaurus? The other day, I was looking up synonyms for “aberrant,” trying to see if I could find another way to say “aberrant behavior” in reference to some results. But the options made me laugh: freaky behavior? mischievous behavior? naughty behavior? No, I don’t think any of those options work for grant-writing. But the idea is delightful! Naughty flies indeed.

* Did you listen to this week’s episode of The Splendid Table? There was a great discussion about extra-virgin olive oil, which really exemplifies the point of Caveat emptor.

* I am almost done with my current book, Sex at Dawn, which is terrific because I was showered with new books at Christmas. Sex at Dawn, while fascinating and funny, is also really long. I’m ready to be done with it.

Down, Down, Down:

* Yesterday it was 70-something degrees. Today it feels like 31 degrees. Oh, Texas, could you please pick a season and stick with it for five minutes?

* I have a bunch of money-related chores and errands to do. I hate it when my money makes me do work after I’ve already worked to earn my money!

* I am starting to fear that I lead a very boring life. Or at least it appears boring from the outside. Because I am always thinking about things, it actually feels very busy, almost overwhelming, from the inside, where I live. Which is why writing is really the perfect hobby and occupation for me.

How is your week winding down?

2012, It’s So On

2012-01-08T16:56:00.001-06:00

Can we talk about this photo for just a moment? I really like it and have felt itchy to use it since I took it last March. There’s something ironic and beautiful about the plane’s soaring white streak in the sky next to the red stoplight. That plane just seems so defiant, go-go-GOING despite the stoplight’s instructions. I feel like this photo is a little like a metaphor for resolutions: you’ve got to keep go-go-GOING, even though you will almost certainly find excuses to stop. Soar, little plane! Inspire us to reach for new heights!

In light of my success with resolutions in 2011, I decided to keep my own streak going by declaring a few big goals for 2012. I really do believe that this year is going to be a big one, and I want to set myself up for success and happiness by being very explicit about my plans. I figure that these resolutions are 2011’s gift to me: it was not an easy year, but I made it and now I’m ready to make the most of what 2011 taught me.

Despite my science credentials, I can be a bit hippy-dippy because hey—even atheists and agnostics are allowed a spiritual side, right? On the hippy-dippy side of things (for me at least) is the idea of having a word for your year. I saw this idea on Monna’s blog, and I really like it. A word to inspire, uplift, and move you to action. My word for this year is devotion. I want this year to be about living up to the promises that 2011 hinted at. I want to feel fully, deeply committed to the most important goals, the ones that will require some inspired effort to achieve.

Devotion. It’s a quiet word, a powerful word. It’s about connection, almost an intimacy. I hope it makes me feel strong and capable, unshakeable even. Devotion. It’s a good word for a good year.

I have three major goals for 2012, and they are:

* Publish, publish, publish. This is my work goal. I am writing a grant right now, and I’m anticipating that I’ll be submitting a research manuscript in March. I’m also planning to submit a second grant in April. I consider all of these documents publications of a kind, whether for funding or to communicate my results to the scientific community. I don’t know whether these grants will bring any money into the lab, but I’m feeling optimistic and that’s good enough for now. But my absolute top priority, work-wise, is to publish my research this year. And I think I can do it.

* Peace and quiet. I admitted defeat when it came to conquering my anxiety in 2011, but as I reflected on the nature of that resolution, I realized that for me, managing anxiety is an on-going affair. It’s more like having a chronic health condition than a broken leg: a onetime fix is not going to do the job. This year, I am rededicating myself to my yoga practice and to building time into my day for peace and quiet. I’ve struggled with how best to do this—daily yoga? evenings without the computer? nightly meditation? For this year, I am going to try a 2x2 approach: yoga twice a week where I do a 20+-minute session, and two evenings a week during which dinner is a quiet, candlelit meal. I often read blogs and whatnot during lunch and dinner; this year, I’m going to do less of that.

* Thoughtful consumerism. I don’t talk about it a lot on this site, but I’m a pretty dedicated environmentalist. It’s a big part of my vegetarianism, it’s one of the reasons I don’t have a car (yet), and it guides my daily choices. I believe the sustainable-living, green movement is gaining momentum, slowly but surely, thanks to increased awareness among individuals and the efforts of organizations like 350.org, which is working hard to induce political change that will reduce atmospheric carbon levels.

A huge part of green living is just knowing what your options are. For example, a few years back, people were asking, “Paper or plastic?” at the grocery store, and the answer that came back was neither. Bring your own reusable bags. And now, lots of us bring our own bags with us, which turns out to be not only more sustainable, but it’s also more comfortable. My reusable bags are much easier on my hands or my shoulders when I’m carrying several days’ worth of food home. This year, I’d like to make bigger strides toward green living, and to do that, I’m inviting sustainable-living or green companies to advertise their wares on this blog. I don’t write an insanely popular blog, but I have been around for a while, and I like my little corner of the web. My advertising rates are low, which makes them affordable for small companies, and I love the idea of partnering with small companies.

As part of my effort toward more thoughtful consumerism, if and when I come across good stuff, I’ll try to share my finds with you. And if you find good stuff that helps you live more sustainably, feel free to tell me about it! Together we can make our lives greener and our carbon footprint smaller.

2012, it’s so on. Let’s do this!

And An Unofficial Resolution, Too!

2012-01-06T08:22:00.001-06:00

I feel it would be wrong to jump into 2012’s resolutions without at least giving a nod to one of my unofficial resolutions, a slow tide of change, a gentle makeover of sorts:

I resolved to be a little more stylish. And by “more stylish,” I really mean less frumpy. An attempt to look my age, in the best way possible.

I think it was in late 2010 that I realized that my closet wasn’t quite keeping up with the changes in my life. I was no longer a graduate student, no longer a Midwesterner (at least by residence—in my heart, I will always be a Michigan girl. If you doubt me, I will hold up my right palm, point to the area below my thumb, and tell you that I’m from there, and by “there,” I mean Detroit. Surely you know that your hand makes a perfectly fine map of lower Michigan?), and feeling seriously out of place in steamy Texas. I’ve never been a very trendy person, and that’s fine with me, but my closet and I needed some help to adjust to our new location.

I decided that I could afford to spend some time and money upgrading my wardrobe. I wanted to look professional and a little stylish; I wanted to feel comfortable in everything I wore. I took my time with this little makeover—there was no rush to the mall, no spending of hundreds of dollars at one time. And I’m really happy with how my closet and I are doing now. We didn’t need an all-new wardrobe; we just needed some new pieces (and a good excuse to get rid of the old stuff!). I thought I’d share with you a few of the pieces that have gotten the most mileage since I resolved to be more stylish. I always enjoy reading other people’s shopping lists and wardrobe essentials!

In no particular order…

Scarves! I bought two patterned scarves at Target and wear them all the time. They’re nice for adding a pretty detail to an otherwise basic outfit. They also work well in the warm weather of Texas; I wore lightweight scarves all summer long and rarely felt overheated by the scarf.

And speaking of scarves, I especially like them with my favorite Five Bamboo dress.

I bought two summery dresses from Five Bamboo (you can see my sister wearing the other dress that we both own here—isn’t she cute?) and wore them constantly. Now that it’s cooler outside, I wear them with shirts layered underneath and tights. I worry that the layering looks a bit frumpy or schoolmarmy, but remember, my resolution was to be “more stylish,” not “actually stylish.” So if a little frump falls my way, that’s okay.

Inspired by Tania’s awesome collection of flats, I improved my cool-weather footwear with a pair of black flats. They’re pretty simple, but I love them. And they transition well from hot summer weather (worn with those little shoe liners if necessary) to cold weather (worn with socks or tights).

A blazer! It’s a blazer with a wonderful secret: it’s made of sweatshirt material, so it’s supersoft and comfortable, but it looks classy and grown-up. My mom bought me this little jacket when I was home in September, and once the heat faded, I started wearing it as my “coat.” So many days in Texas are just too warm for heavy winter gear, but they do call for a lighter jacket. I like this one a lot (it’s from JCPenney, in case you were curious).

There are some trends that I just can’t seem to wear, like skinny jeans, which always bunch at my knees, so I’ve taken a deliberate pass on some styles. Likewise, I feel swallowed up by maxi skirts because I’m so short (5’1”) and I have a short torso, so I don’t much on top to balance a long skirt. Plus maxi skirts are too long for bike riding! I’m planning on giving my long skirts away because I just don’t wear them. I’ve been experimenting with belting in different ways, but belting at my natural waist threatens to make my torso look even shorter, so sometimes I belt and sometimes I don’t.

I do have a few items on my wish list still: a shirtdress (adorable and can be worn in a million ways), a black dress with sleeves, some tights in fun and unusual colors. Overall, I’m really happy with my mini-wardrobe makeover and will use it as an excuse to clear the closet of stuff that I don’t wear any more. New clothing in, old clothing out: the cycle continues, as it should.

The Way the Whole Thing Ends: 2011’s Resolutions

2012-01-04T18:19:00.001-06:00

If there’s any music that will remind me of 2011, it’s Gillian Welch’s, so I have stolen a song title for my post. Good thing I didn’t resolve to stop stealing things from other artists in 2011!

Like many of you, I’ve been thinking about 2011, now bundled into a neat package of past tense. A year is, in some ways, a long time. A lot can happen in a year. A baby can go from fragile newborn to sturdy walker in a year’s time. A person can move away, fall in love, get married, get divorced, run a marathon—all in a year’s time. I did none of these things in 2011, though I did run a half-marathon, and that’s exciting, right? In a sense, 2011 was an uneventful year for me. Nothing really BIG happened. And yet, it was a year filled with drama, mostly work-related. It was a year in which I witnessed the unfairness of mortality when cancer snatched an 8-year-old’s life. It was a year of uncomfortable feelings: selfishness, frustration, shame. And yet it was also a year of striving and achieving, of turning 30 and feeling very optimistic about everything.

I feel happy that I survived 2011. Not all of us did.

2011 was also the year that I started to think more deeply about my ambitions. I actually made resolutions! I never make resolutions! I was really inspired by some of the exemplary women I found on the interwebs, Chrissy and Raquelita in particular. (They’ve already posted their 2012 goals, while I’m still putzing around with mine. Check out Chrissy’s here and Raquelita’s over here.) I started to wonder if, in spite of the fact that I am already a happy person, I could be even happier if I declared myself in pursuit of some ambitious goals. It’s hard to gauge something like happiness in any sort of quantifiable way, but I’d say I was definitely rewarded by my goal-setting. Maybe that’s the point: we get out of life what we put into it.

Let’s discuss 2011’s three goals, shall we?

* My first resolution was to cook from more diverse sources: my cookbooks and recipes from friends. I definitely did this, though I didn’t always share the results on the old blog here. I wish I had cooked more recipes from friends, though I did make Amanda’s peanut butter bars, which are crazy good. A few of my favorite recipes from cookbooks include this rice pudding, this black bean soup, and this roasted eggplant recipe. (That’s another thing I learned this year: I do like eggplant! Really, I do! Especially with cheese and tomatoes!)

Verdict: Resolution achieved!

* My second resolution was to cultivate a more intellectual reading practice. I even made a 2011 Reading List, which inspired me whenever I didn’t know what to read next. I read three books from my list, started and quit a fourth, and read a basketful of books that crossed my path serendipitously. I’ll be taking my reading list with me into 2012 since I only read about a third of the books on my list. But I am very satisfied that I read a lot of interesting books in 2011, and at the end of the year, I got totally hooked on going to bed early so I could read.

Verdict: Resolution achieved!

* My third and final resolution, I must admit, was a failure. But this year did teach me a thing or two about it, so I think there is some redeeming value here after all. I had resolved to begin letting go of my chronic anxiety, which is primarily related to money and career. This year was a hard one for me at work, which naturally made me even more anxious. But I also found that when I was too busy to feel anxious, the anxiety disappeared. I can’t always create the conditions whereby my anxiety lessens, but I do think that having a solid game plan helps. I like meeting my deadlines, even if they are self-imposed.

According to my resolution, I was supposed to seek out external solutions for my anxiety, such as self-help books and yoga. While I did plenty of yoga, I did no research on solutions for chronic anxiety, probably because I was too busy working. That’s a lame excuse, I know, but it’s the truth. What I realize now is that I want my anxiety to just go away. I don’t want to have to work with it, or deal with it, or pander to it. I just want it gone. And that, I am afraid, is asking for a magical solution. I’ll probably always have some anxiety—it’s just the way I’m hardwired. But I do believe that healthy habits help to minimize it, and I’m going to do my best not to let it make decisions about my life for me.

Verdict: Resolution failed but not in vain.

And now, it’s time to consider what 2012 could be…did you make resolutions for 2012, dear reader? If you did, feel free to share them or a link in the comments!

Breaking News

2012-01-02T19:32:00.001-06:00

THIS JUST IN: Panera Bread is coming to College Station! And it’s just down the street from my apartment!

I’m going to be the first person in line on opening day. Oh, Panera, I’m so happy we’ll be together again soon.

PS I’ll be back with a post of real substance later this week. Until then, happy 2012!

A Two-Parter: Refilling the Well and What 2011 Taught Me

2011-12-31T21:17:00.001-06:00

I’m curled up on the couch, with Iron and Wine on the stereo and a blanket over my legs. I have to say, it’s pretty nice to fly home on a Thursday, go to work on Friday, then have the weekend to work and putter at home. Today I shopped for groceries, baked banana bread, caught up on my blog reading, and spent some time working on a grant. And by “working,” I mean largely pondering some questions, but now I’ve downloaded some new papers, so I’m going to settle into my couch with a slice of banana bread and read after I finish this blog post.

It’s nice to be home. But I think it was even better not being home. Even if it means living out of a suitcase for a week, I feel better that I was able to see my family this month. I feel a lot calmer and less overwhelmed by my life, and that’s a feeling I’d like to carry with me into January. There’s something about spending time with kids that feels so grounding and so right, like I’m doing exactly what I should be doing.

Being with my family is always an opportunity to refill the well, so to speak, a chance to share new thing with each other. On my happy list tonight is:

* This Week in Paleo/Latest in Paleo podcasts. My sister-in-law Amanda mentioned to me that she listens to a Paleo podcast while working in the kitchen. She warned me that it’s not very vegetarian-friendly, but still, when I got back to Texas, I had to look it up. I like the Paleo podcasts hosted by Angelo Coppola because there’s lots of interesting discussion about the science of health, nutrition, and fitness. It’s my kind of science talk! Angelo is skeptical but open-minded, and when it comes to how science really works, he knows his stuff.

* New boots for Christmas. I’ve needed new boots for a long time now, so I was thrilled to find a beautiful pair from Santa! And by Santa, I mean my family. Same thing, right?

* My sister’s awesome gluten-free pumpkin chocolate chip muffins, which she makes with my niece (who loves to bake with us). Theresa made mini versions of these for our Christmas brunch, and they were outstanding.

* * *

I am really glad that 2011 is coming to a close. It’s tempting to say that it’s been a shitty year for me, but I recognize that 2011 had a lot of great adventures and successes too. Let’s say that 2011 has been a hard year. I like the metaphorical fresh start that 2012 is bringing, but I’ve been thinking about what 2011 taught me.

I learned that living a thousand miles from my family is not a viable long-term condition for me. I have to move closer to them, preferably within the next 2-3 years. I’m defining “closer” as a four-hour drive, but Amanda reminded me that Chicago is such a cool city that it would be acceptable too. So maybe I’ll move back to Chicago if I can find a job? Or I’ll look for jobs in the Midwest and see what gems I find.

I learned that despite the supposed biological clock ticking in my ovaries, I am in no rush to have children. I feel as picky as ever about the men I date, and for that, I am grateful.

I learned that I am stronger than I realized. I’m in it for the long haul, even if I flounder sometimes.

I learned that I care more about relationships than anything else. Not just romantic relationships, all kinds of relationships: familial, friendly, professional.

I learned that I’m not very competitive any more. I feel much more motivated by the idea of working as a team, to make us the best we can be. I’m not entirely sure what this means for me professionally, but I’m excited to explore it.

I learned that hope can make all things possible. So I’m taking hope with me into 2012.

Happy 2012, my dears. Thanks for sticking with me this year, for all your comments, your wisdom, your advice, and your companionship. Truly, this is the year that I learned the value of community in blogging, and I can’t wait to spend another year with you. Happy, happy new year.

Field Notes from Michigan

2011-12-30T10:14:00.001-06:00

Seven days in Michigan, during which time there was…

* impromptu ice-skating with my five-year-old niece and her daddy.

* pan-fried Halloumi cheese. Crispy, chewy, perfect.

* a 13-month-old who decided that it was time for him to start walking…

* (…but we still heard plenty of thud-thud-thudding as Devin hustled his way around the house on all fours.)

* crustless pumpkin pie, a holiday staple in our family. Both the kiddos approved. The big people did too.

* a visit from Santa Claus, who brought plenty of paleontology gifts for Lydia, the aspiring bone-digger, and lots of blocks for Devin, whose curiosity knows no limits.

* a Christmas brunch, with all the best breakfast foods: frittata, extra-creamy hashed brown casserole, bacon, pancakes, fruit, and coffee spiked with Irish cream for the grown-ups.

* a pizza dinner out with an old friend, with lots of laughing and remembering the days when we were so young and hopeful.

* rambunctious games of tag, with a toy goose whose feet went fwap-fwap-fwap on the wooden floors, a Lydia who giggled the whole time, and a Devin who hustled after his big sister with remarkable speed.

* an easy morning spent with friends and their adorable small children.

* a backyard deer-spotting!

* …and on the eighth day, there was a long day of travel, with one delayed plane, cold leftovers (the Indian food was better than the pizza), some Christmas chocolate, and the achy feeling of leaving my family. But I’m pretty sure it was worth it, for all the fun, cheese, love, and memories. Next time I’m in Michigan, there won’t be snow on the ground and there might even be sandals on my feet, but I’m glad that every year ends with a wintry Michigan and a chance to hit the pause button. 2012, I’m almost ready to welcome you. It’s been a hard, long year, but I’d like to think that 2011 is ending a high note.

On Writing and Keeping the Faith

2011-12-19T11:35:00.001-06:00

These days, I like to start my posts with something pretty or calming, such as this palm tree.

This post has nothing to do with palm trees, but I feel better if I can look at a palm tree. Don’t you? It’s like we’re on a tropical vacation! (Please ignore the grey sky behind the palm tree.) If you want to complement the effect with a cocktail, I recommend this fruity, rummy drink. Yum.

I know that several of you fancy yourselves writers, as do I. Writing is very much on my mind these days because I am facing the daunting task of writing two grants and one manuscript in the next six months. That’s a lot of writing of the science variety, and I’m more than a little nervous of how I am going to get all that writing done while still doing experiments and basic self-maintenance, such as getting dressed every day. But mostly I’ve been thinking about how it is that we, as writers, make something out of nothing, or at least we make something out of a box of random bits and bobs. Whatever gadgets and gizmos that inspire us, we throw in the box. And then we start thinking: how do all these weird pieces fit together? What is the thread that connects these items in a way that would make you say, “Aha! Now I know what that box is for!”

For me right now, it’s mostly a matter of staring at the box (er, my computer screen) and plenty of time spent not staring at the box. I’ve always been the kind of person who does her best thinking while doing something that doesn’t look like work: chopping onions, jogging in the park, laying in bed and trying to fall asleep. When I sit down at the computer, I’ve already written half of what I’m going to say. But what I find really exciting is that I don’t know the other half of what I’m going to say—that’s when the magic happens. That’s when I feel like I am really, truly writing—spinning something from nothing. It’s exciting! In those moments, I can’t believe that I’m getting paid to do this. I have to do a lot of work before I can sit down to write something—and I have to chop a lot of onions—but for a few precious moments, I am getting paid to write. And that’s pretty awesome.

This month, I’m going to Michigan to see my family for the holidays. I’ll be gone longer than I would have planned, had it not been such a headache to book my flights out of Texas. While I’m on “vacation,” it’s going to be a bit of a working vacation because I’ll be trying to make some headway on a grant proposal that’s due in February. And you know what? I’m looking forward to it! I love seeing my family and I love that we’ll have lots of time for morning coffee drinking, ice skating, holiday baking, shopping, and general merrymaking, but it’s also good to take a break from all that togetherness. I live alone, and it can be hard for us hermits to spend days and days with other people without taking a break. My goal is to spend at least two mornings or afternoons at Panera, working on the grant. I figure if I can get 4-6 hours of good, deep-thinking work done on this proposal, then I’ll be in good shape when I come back to Texas and we’re really under a deadline to crank this thing out.

I’m grateful that writing projects are portable in a way that my experimental work is not. I won’t be dragging flies or video cameras with me to Michigan, which might freak out the security people at the airport. Instead, I’m taking just my computer, and no one will bat an eye at my Dell. Most importantly, I’m trying to be as upbeat and positive about these writing projects as I can. We may not have a very good chance at getting one or both of these grants funded, but like I said to my boss the other day, if we don’t apply, we have a 100% chance of not getting funding.

The other thing that I am reminding myself these days is that no matter what happens in the next 6-12 months, I am going to learn a lot. And that is a very good thing. It’s the same thing I told myself in graduate school when I was applying for a grant, and in the end, that situation worked out quite nicely. So I’m going to keep the faith and believe that in 2012, things will work out. I don’t know all the details, but I’m going to keep the faith. Even scientists need faith in something, even if it’s something as ambiguous as the Universe and Its mysterious ways…

Writing friends, how do you keep the faith during the more ambiguous parts of your process? How do you stay calm when your work is giving you reason to freak out?

Perfect Holiday Reading

2011-12-17T09:17:00.001-06:00

My lovely sister gave me this terrific little book for my birthday. I mentioned The Indian Grocery Store Demystified in my Splendid Table post a few months ago, and the book does not disappoint. It’s perfect for geeking out over ingredients and tantalizing descriptions of Indian goodies. Take, for example, this passage about yogurt:

“Yogurt enrichens and thickens sauces, acts as a tenderizer in marinades, is used in creamy dips, or is folded into cooked rice.

“Dehin is a thick yogurt cheese made by straining off the whey in a cloth-lined colander in the refrigerator overnight. This is used to make shirkhand, a dessert that is blended with sugar, saffron, and rose essence and sprinkled with chopped nuts. Similar to sour cream, dehin can be flavored with spices as a dip. Kharis are smooth, yogurt-based sauces and soups. Pachadi are yogurt salads that are similar to raita but have grated coconut added. Mishti doi is the Bengali delicacy of sweetened yogurt set in clay pots and served at the end of a meal.”

Shall I go on? How about a quick description of one of my favorite spices, cardamom?

“The flavor of cardamom is sweet and zesty with a hint of eucalyptus. For subtle flavor the whole pods are added to rice pualos, simmered dishes, puddings, and sugar syrups. It is best to lightly bruise whole pods first so that their fragrance will permeate the dish.”

Maybe you are in the mood for a sweet:

“Mysore pak. A famous South Indian sweet, this is a rich, melt-in-your-mouth, chickpea-flour shortbread. It is made by slowly adding roasted chickpea flour into a buttery, cardamom-infused sugar syrup, then stirring it constantly until it froths. The yellow-ochre mixture is cooled and cut into thick squares. It has a silky-smooth surface, a melting texture, and a rich, buttery, toffee flavor. It is usually garnished with sliced almonds.”

Yum. Mysore pak, you had me at toffee. But what if I’m in the mood for cheesecake?

“Kalakand. This is Indian cheesecake. Creamy bars or diamond shapes are made from a condensed, boiled mixture of chenna cheese, ghee, milk, sugar, ground almonds, and pistachios flavored with cardamom. The cream-colored treat tastes like a cheesecake brownie with a dense, fudgy texture.”

Oh baby. A cheesecake brownies with cardamom and pistachios? Now that I might have to try to recreate at home as an American knockoff. We can do it!

I really could go on and on, but I probably shouldn’t quote the entire book in a blog post. Suffice to say that this book satisfies a deep craving for delicious food prose and a sense of the exotic. I feel transported to a place I’ve never been. And I think sometimes, when we read, that’s exactly what we want: to feel lifted out of our everyday lives and deposited somewhere new and exciting, where our only task is to taste and sniff and explore.

Will I ever visit India? Maybe someday, when I am brave and rich enough to buy that plane ticket. Until then, I’ve got a kitchen and a tiny Indian grocery store near me and an appetite big enough to keep things interesting.

On the Internet, Everyone is a Scientist

2011-12-14T18:59:00.001-06:00

Two things are worrying me these days.

Thing the first. I worry that “friends with benefits” has ruined dating. I’m not a fan of friends with benefits as a way of interacting with men. I realize that FWB is all the rage among the college set these days, and I’d guess that even when I was in college, it was popular, which would explain why I was not the most popular girl on campus. It’s okay—the college kids can have their FWB. But what about us older folks who actually want to date? As in go out with someone, have fun, get to know that person, maybe hold hands if everybody is feeling romantic? I fear that dating is a lost art, that men don’t know how to court a woman without assuming they are in a relationship. I had a good discussion about this with a colleague today, and he and I agreed that even among people for whom life partnership is the goal of dating, it’s important to get to know someone before making assumptions about the nature of the relationship. I’m not explicitly on the market for a life partner, but I would like to date, should I be fortunate enough to meet a nice man. I’m just afraid that even if I do meet a nice man, he will be so clueless about how to court me that I will throw up my hands in frustration and decide that being a spinster is easier than dating.

Take a lesson from the fruit flies, gentleman: you’ve got to court her before you make any lusty moves. Flies who try to skip the steps of courtship are met with a very firm NO in the form of a kick in the head.

Thing the second. I’m doing research these days for my grant application(s), and I’d really like to find some scientific studies that link dieting to sexual dysfunction in women. My search is turning out to be more difficult than I had hoped, but it’s especially frustrating when I run into articles like this piece from “FOXSexpert” Dr. Yvonne K. Fullbright. The article, which is along the lines of what I’m hoping to find, is filled with scientific claims about what happens to a woman’s libido when she loses too much weight, but where are the damn references?!? That popular news piece does me absolutely no good without references, and frankly, I find it rather presumptuous of her to tell a story like that with almost no citations to back up her claims.

The reason that the article bothers me so much is that I think a woman’s libido may shut down far earlier than the point at which she stops menstruating or displays a severe loss of body fat. For me, the whole point of combing the science archives and googling things like “nutrition and sexual dysfunction” is to find a few studies that might back me up here. But Dr. Yvonne K. Fullbright, you are no help to me. No reviewer who is evaluating my work is going to let me cite a FOXSexpert article as evidence.

Is This Thing On?

2011-12-13T20:38:00.001-06:00

Hello? Is anybody out there? Do I still have any readers left after my inexplicable silence?

Actually, I have a really good explanation: everything fell apart. And by “everything,” I mean my computer fell apart and I’ve spent way too much time over the past week trying to restore its health. But I do believe that tonight, with the installation of over 60 Windows Updates and finally, FINALLY, rebuilding my “blogging office” (also known as Windows Live Writer), I feel like order has been restored in my virtual world.

Hi! It’s good to be back. I have missed you and this blog. I say that in all seriousness: one of the most frustrating things of the past week has been the loss of my writing routine. I write for all kinds of reasons: to share, to take notes, to ponder, even to grieve. I think out loud on this blog. I make sense of my world. And it’s been tough not having that outlet, even just for a week, because I had so much to say. Now, after spending hours and hours saving my files, reinstalling the operating system, and installing hundreds—yes, literally hundreds—of updates, I’m just tired.

For tonight, let me say I’m sorry to have disappeared with no warning. I really did miss you. And for tonight, I’ll leave it at that. I’m going to watch Grey’s Anatomy while eating a cranberry-chocolate bar and sipping herbal tea.

Ah, home sweet home.

Meandering

2011-12-05T13:11:00.001-06:00

I wouldn’t say that I’m feeling especially certain or confident these days. I do feel certain that everything is going to be all right, if I can just be patient. And this feeling of mine was echoed in a note from the Universe, who said it so charmingly that I wanted to share:

Have you noticed, how lacking clarity is clarity itself?
How, if you aren't sure about something, that alone has meaning?
Honor uncertainty. It's the seed from which
all-knowingness comes.
Give it time.
Clearly,
The Universe
I'm not sure, but I think you needed that.

Yes, as a matter of fact, I did need that!

I found the Universe’s notepad via an old post of Chrissy’s, whose blog is always worth perusing. I don’t know what’s going to happen next around here, but the Universe says knowing that I don’t know is something. And even chaos, uncertainty, blurriness—these things can be beautiful because they shake you and wake you and make it possible for you to say things you didn’t know you needed to say and do things that perhaps you haven’t done because they weren’t “important” enough to do right away.

I’m embracing the chaos, even as I try to create some order around me. Eventually, the path will become clearer, but for now, we are meandering together.

And So It Starts

2011-12-04T20:35:00.001-06:00

Scenes from a Saturday…

I started writing my paper on Saturday. Writing a science paper is like being in labor for months, or at least it feels like it to me, a woman who has never been in labor with a child. (Perhaps the mothers in the audience will forgive my use of this metaphor.) It requires a lot of patience, attention, deep breaths, and tolerance for uncertainty. Will you find the right words to describe your results eloquently? Can you craft an introduction that is at once snappy, interesting, and accurate? Can you inject some provocative speculation into the discussion without making the reviewers go berserk? It’s all very exciting, the craft of writing. A science paper is simultaneously fiction and nonfiction: it’s a set of data, edited and parsed for presentation, told as a story. Turning science into a story makes it a work of fiction because the process of doing science is never as clean as it appears in publications.

And yet, I do love to write. Even the messy, stop-and-start process of writing a science paper delights my word-loving heart. Even knowing that my paper will get shredded by my advisor, reviewers, and any readers I can rope into reading it* doesn’t subtract from the joy of getting to write professionally, even if it’s on the weekend. I could feel myself hesitating to start writing this paper, but I feel really good now that I’ve started. My goal is to submit the paper by the end of February 2012, which means my advisor needs a draft a few weeks before that, which means I’ll be writing the paper and finishing(?) experiments in January. Which is, um, next month, in case you were curious. Wow. When I put it like that, it kinda freaks me out.

But I’m going to take the writing section by section, and I’ll take the data figure by figure. I’ll write a shitty first draft, if I must. And I’ll make myself a really good lunch because writing, as you know, is hard work. It’s important to keep ourselves well-fed while we create something from nothing.

Have a good week, my dears.

* Want to be one of my readers? Yes? Seriously?!? Hurray! Let me know in the comments or send me an e-mail at lifeloveandfood [at] gmail [dot] com, and I’ll send you the manuscript when it’s ready for readers.

When It Rains…

2011-12-01T21:01:00.001-06:00

…it pours, right? Too many things are going wrong in my life at one time! Today I felt like if one more thing went wrong, I might be reduced to tears and forced to go home and hide in my bed.

But not everything is wrong around here. Like this beautiful candlelight, for example.

And those sweet little kids in the photos behind the candle. The baby, my nephew Devin, turned one on Monday. I can’t wait to see both of them in a few weeks.

But this week, this very week, has been less than awesome. Normally, when I write an Up/Down (+/-) list, I start with the good stuff and then I don’t have much to say for the bad stuff. This week is different. For example:

* My kitchen has ants. ANTS! Normally I’m pretty relaxed about bugs, but not this time. They showed up on Thanksgiving, I think, and I’ve been smooshing them ever since. And I find them cuddled together in an ant-mass in the strangest places: under a sponge, in my coffeepot. Yes, IN MY COFFEEPOT. It was so gross but also fascinating, as far as animal behavior goes. It made me think of the aggregation pheromone that fruit flies release, which helps other fruit flies find them. I wondered if ants might do the same thing, and a colleague at work confirmed that ants do release an aggregation pheromone. Fascinating! That explains why I found hundreds of them in and crawling on my coffeepot.

Animal behavior aside, I’m so tired of the ants. I hope the pest control people are able to take care of this problem because I am seriously outnumbered by the ants. Damn exponential insect reproduction.

* My computer has a trojan, which is mostly just a pain in the butt: unwanted popups, computer freezing, slow processing time. But I’m worried it could destroy my machine, so I consulted a tech-savvy friend, who recommended Sophos/Webroot (thanks, Andy). Wish me luck as I attempt to heal my pathogen-ridden computer.

* And then of course, there is the on-going stress of trying to cope with work and planning for an uncertain future. I’m so happy tomorrow is Friday and I’m working at home this weekend. At least I get the luxury of my couch while analyzing data or writing my paper!

Whew! That’s my Down list, and while it’s only three items, they’ve been sucking the joy out of my life. But today, while feeling grumpy about everything that’s going wrong, I forced myself to think of some good things, something worth remembering, such as:

* A colleague lending me his super-sharp forceps for my dissections. Good tools make lab life so much easier! I even managed not to damage his forceps, which is kind of amazing because I am a klutz. Matt can confirm this for you—but I think he’s lucky I haven’t accidentally given him a black eye.

* Rediscovering Monna McDiarmid’s blog. I “met” Monna a few years back and have perused her blog occasionally ever since. She and her partner recently moved from Bangkok to Japan, so her blog has been ripe with new Japan moments and some nostalgia for Bangkok. Here are two posts I especially like: Preparing for the Flood and Dreaming of R&R in Bangkok.

* “Winterizing” my summer dresses from Five Bamboo. I wish I had a photo of my outfit from today, but let’s just say that a cowl-necked top is a sundress’s best friend in winter. Its pretty color and lovely layers add interest and warmth to sleeveless dresses. (If you’re curious, the cowl-necked top I wear all the time is shown here. It’s useful for hiding, turtle-like, on especially bad days.)

* Gillian Welch. Matt introduced me to this amazing musician, and bless his heart for it. I’ve been listening to her newest CD, The Harrow & the Harvest, at home—it’s haunting and beautiful and dark and honest. You can listen to the whole album here.

* And finally, tomorrow is Friday. Can I get a hell yeah? I thought so.

Happy weekend, dear readers. I hope to be back here on Sunday with something for you to read. Thanks for sticking around, even when I’m a bummer.

On Resilience

2011-11-27T21:42:00.001-06:00

I would like to start this post with a wonderfully calming photo.

There. That’s better!

I’ve been struggling with how exactly I’m going to write this post. We’re going to talk about my career today, like I said we would, because this is a blog about life. Science is a big part of my life—it’s my intellectual passion, my livelihood, part of my identity. Being able to say now that I’m a scientist is so fun. Working as a scientist is very challenging, but I like to think that I’ve done the best I could with what I had. And right now, I’m in a good place, science-wise. Over the past year, I’ve been able to take an observation and expand it into a full-blown project with publishable data and a working storyline. I’m immensely proud of this accomplishment, and until about a week ago, I was feeling very happy with my job—I was convinced that I was well on my way to a publication. I hadn’t put a deadline on this project, but maybe I’d guess that with another six months to a year I’d have a manuscript ready to be sent out for review.

On Friday, November 18, I met with my boss for an unexpected meeting, during which he told me that in about six months, there would be no more funding for my project. I’ll spare you the details of that conversation, but suffice to say that it was an alarming piece of news. I sat through the meeting the same way I sit through breakups: calmly stone-faced. Afterward, I struggled with tears on and off for the rest of the day. I tried to call Matt after lunch, and when I got his voicemail, I got so choked up that I couldn’t speak, so I hung up. Later that day, I called back and left a proper message.

When we finally talked that evening, the feeling that left me most unhappy was the complete surprise of this news. I felt like a fool, assuming that all was well with my project and my position in the lab. I worked really hard to establish my project, and I just felt so stunned that my hard work had led me to this point. I burned with disappointment and anger.

I can’t go into any depth here about my boss’s decision because I don’t wish to make things worse by making accusations on this public site. You only have my story here; he can’t defend himself. And most importantly, I have no desire to burn any bridges. What goes around comes around, right? One never knows what the future holds, and while I’m not religious, I think that it’s not a bad idea to cultivate good karma. So I won’t say any more about why I’m angry, other than that I have now invested two years of time in this lab, and I’d like to see a return on my investment. I may be angry, but I am not bat-shit crazy!

In my line of work, there are two major items that signify success: publications and funded grants. Publications, arguably, are more important than grants because they are the record of your accomplishments: what you have done that deserves notice, praise, discussion. Grants are important for continuing your science, and they indicate that you have good writing and project development skills. At this point in time, my number one priority is to publish my work. I have decided that I don’t care how flashy the journal is in which my paper is published; the important thing is that it is published, preferably within the next 6-8 months. So that is my immediate goal—so immediate, in fact, that I’d like to start writing the paper next month. It won’t hurt to get a good jump-start on it, even if it isn’t submitted until February or March. (In my dreams, it will be submitted by the end of February.)

As for long-term goals, I am in serious thinking mode. I always thought that I wanted to be a professor at a small liberal arts college like the one I attended, but now I’m thinking more deeply about science industry. I am still interested in teaching, training, and pedagogy, but I find it hard to believe that those skills would go to waste in industry.

What I really want from my career is to feel like I am part of a team of equals. Being a postdoc is pretty lonely, and in my lab, I’m doing work that is quite different from what other people are doing. I’m the only one reading the papers in this field, which makes me feel isolated. I don’t like it. In academia, people become stars. I don’t want to be a star—I want to be part of a team. I want to contribute to something bigger than any of us could achieve on our own. I’m wondering if science industry might fulfill that desire of mine.

I also want to spend more of my time working with people, rather than toiling away on my own experiments. I suspect I could be quite good at project management, in part because I’m good at setting realistic goals and keeping an eye on all the moving parts. I’m actually pretty good at multi-tasking on a large scale: planning my time so that today’s experiments get done and so that I’m ready for tomorrow’s experiments. As Matt loves to point out, I am an excellent planner, which I think might make me good at organizing multiple people on a project. And importantly, I tend to get along well with my colleagues; in fact, the best part of both the labs in which I’ve worked has been the people. So I see no reason why I couldn’t teach, train, and supervise other people’s work while contributing to the development of the company’s projects.

To be honest, I never thought I would consider science industry as an option for me. I loved my college experience, and I do love the idea of being on a college campus as a professor. But I have to say, I’m pretty curious about what it’s like to work in industry, and the good pay isn’t too shabby either...

Stay tuned for Part Two of this story…(yes, I know—it’s another multi-part story on this blog!)

You Lift Me Up

2011-11-23T12:43:00.001-06:00

Dear friends, near and far,

I received some bad news last week about my work future, which I intend to explain here, soon, once I’ve got my wits about me. I’m still reeling from the upset and the disappointment, so I’m feeling rather shy and protective about discussing it too openly. But I’ll get there, in time.

Today, rather than moping and feeling sorry for myself, I wanted to say thank you to all of you, my dear readers and fellow bloggers. Whether you lurk, comment occasionally, or have full-blown on-line friendships with me, I am so grateful to have you here. This blog and I have been through a lot of ups and downs together: graduate school, a very anxious job search, finally finishing a PhD, moving to Texas to pursue new science dreams, and now, enduring a rather uncomfortable phase in my career when I don’t know where I’ll be in a year. Through all that excitement, upheaval, and anxiety, my kitchen has been a constant source of pleasure. Being able to share my love for cooking, eating, recipes, and the joy of feeding others and being fed by others has reminded me to live every day to the fullest. Carpe diem, as Dead Poets Society reminds us.

Friends, you lift me up. Truly. Thank you for your friendships, your comments, your e-mails, your stories, and your beautiful blogs. You inspire me to reach for new heights, to write from the heart, to live every day to the fullest. You make me laugh, you make me think, and sometimes you make me cry. Thank you, thank you, thank you. May you have a joyful Thanksgiving, with a celebration full of love and great food. Carpe diem, tomorrow and every day.

Love,

Rose-Anne

Winner, Winner, Eggplant Dinner!

2011-11-14T20:11:00.001-06:00

I have a few vegetables that are always on my “Maybe” list: beets, Brussels sprouts, and eggplant. I don’t hate any of them, but I also don’t love them either, and I really love many other vegetables. My years of vegetarianism have coaxed my taste buds away from absurd amounts of candy and toward the garden. Now I eat candy and vegetables!

I haven’t done anything with beets or Brussels sprouts in a long time, but eggplant leaped onto my radar again with Nigel Slater’s help. I bought his magnificent book Tender earlier this year, and I kid you not: he devotes 24 pages to what he calls “the big purple shlong we know so well.” It’s hard not to give eggplant another try when Nigel is waxing erotic about it.

I’ve got my eye on a few of his recipes, but the one I tried last night is one of the simplest. I think the simplicity highlights its brilliance. It’s a recipe for baked eggplant topped with a chunky tomato sauce and cheese—fairly standard stuff, really, but the eggplant is baked in lovely rounds that soften into tender steaks without disintegrating into mush. The tomato sauce is homemade: a few tomatoes chucked into a pan on the stove and cleverly seasoned with some chili along with the standard olive oil, garlic, salt, and pepper. Nigel calls for a fresh red chili, but I didn’t have that on hand, so I used some dried red chili flakes. The heat from the chilis is subtle but noticeable in the final dish—it adds a sophisticated flavor that I think is quite welcome in what could otherwise be a very mild, even bland, dish. Finally, the cheese! The cheese is shredded and piled on top of the tomato-decorated eggplant steaks, then everything is baked until the cheese is bubbly and caramelized. As Matt said to me in a recent e-mail, “Fried cheese is always a good call!” Anytime cheese gets a little brown and crispy, I get excited for dinner, and that’s exactly what happens in this recipe.

Winner, winner, eggplant dinner: I think I’ve finally found an eggplant recipe that will make its way into steady rotation in my kitchen. Exciting!

Eggplant Steaks with Tomatoes and Cheese

Adapted from Tender by Nigel Slater

1 medium eggplant

About 2 tbsp. olive oil

Salt to taste

Pepper to taste

4 medium tomatoes, about 1 pound total

1/4 tsp. dried red chili flakes

1 clove garlic

About 1/2 cup shredded cheese, such as Cheddar

1) Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. Slice the eggplant into thick rounds, or “steaks,” as I like to call thickly sliced slabs of vegetable. Place them on a baking sheet, brush with olive oil (I use a pastry brush for this), and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Bake for 20 minutes, or until tender when pierced with a fork.

2) While the eggplant is baking, heat about a tablespoon of olive oil in a skillet. Coarsely chop the tomatoes and slice the garlic, then add them to the pan along with the chili flakes and some salt and pepper (don’t be stingy!). Allow the tomatoes to bubble and cook down into chunky sauce, about 20 minutes.

3) Remove the eggplant from the oven. Top each steak with a generous spoonful of the tomato sauce*, sprinkle some cheese on top, and bake for another 15 minutes. Serve warm from the oven.

* You might have some tomato sauce left over here, but it’s delicious and who can’t use some good tomato sauce in her fridge?

San Antonio for the First Time

2011-11-06T15:33:00.001-06:00

Many months in advance, Matt warned me that San Antonio is a nauseatingly romantic city. Charming, no? One might think that he opposed romance when he offers up descriptions like that! I worried that someone’s shoes would be the victim of too much romance, but I’m happy to report that no shoes were fouled by the remnants of dinner. Instead, I found San Antonio to be equal parts beautiful and fun. It’s a city with a lot of history, but it’s a city that has kept itself relevant by blending the old with the new. It was a wonderful place to enjoy a little vacation, Texas-style.

It was a road-trippy kind of vacation: Matt picked me up in College Station and drove the two of us to San Antonio. It was a lovely drive, smooth and easy, though it was sad and distressing to drive through the wildfire-stricken remains of Bastrop. We arrived in San Antonio in the late afternoon on Sunday, which gave us plenty of time to meander before our dinner reservation. One of the things I loved best about our vacation was that we were able to walk to most of the restaurants where we ate. Sunday night’s dinner spot was just off the riverwalk, so we walked along the river and chatted until we came to a stairway, and poof, we were inside and ready for dinner. The riverwalk was especially romantic all lit up at night, looking gorgeous and inviting. I could have walked for hours, but there was dinner to be eaten.

One of the nice things about knowing and loving someone for a long time is the way that you mold each other to fit one another’s habits and pleasures. On Sunday night, we went to dinner at Il Sogno Osteria, where they serve fresh, flavorful Italian food, and you can watch the action as it unfolds in the open kitchen, complete with fiery oven action. Il Sogno has this antipasti bar where you walk over with a waiter and pick three or five of the items for a choose-your-own-antipasti-plate adventure. As longtime readers may recall, I am a vegetarian, but when I saw the prosciutto, I knew it needed to come back to our table for Matt, who loves all things pig. And when the waiter recommended the seafood salad, I thought it should come back with us too. Perhaps it sounds like I’m bragging, but I feel like in long-term relationships, we show our affections with small gestures. And perhaps Matt and I enjoy the gustatory differences between us: I bring him prosciutto and seafood at the Italian restaurant, he takes me to the vegetarian restaurant the next night.

This hold-the-meat restaurant is Green, which we both loved, and I mean LOVED. I was surprised by how much we liked it! Matt pronounced his barbecue sandwich “the best I’ve ever had,” and I had a very tasty eggplant parmesan sandwich. We had a long discussion about how traditionally meaty foods, like barbecue, can transition into the meatless world, and Matt told me he liked the place so much that he’d come back without me. At first, I was jealous that he would think such a thing—of course he should come back with me!—but periodically he has work to do in San Antonio. So then I felt pleased that I could be the one to introduce him to something new. During much of our time in San Antonio, Matt was my tour guide, showing me around and explaining the city to me. It was nice to add something new to his San Antonio knowledge.

When we weren’t eating, we were strolling along the riverwalk, or visiting the missions, or drinking wine. Matt took me to a lovely little wine bar called Zinc, where we spent a few happy hours before dinner. At one of those happy hours, I was way too hungry not to eat something while we drank, so I ordered the guacamole, which turns out to be quite the show: they bring all the ingredients for the guacamole to your table and make it right in front of your eyes. It was delicious stuff too, with a smoky flavor imparted by roasted tomatoes they mix into all that creamy avocado. It totally hit the spot.

I loved being in San Antonio during Halloween. It was serendipitous that we were there for the holiday and so much fun: we saw a riverboat being driven by the grim reaper, but who knows where he was taking those poor passengers? Elvis was driving another boat, and in the streets, the dark and chattering grackels created a spooky ambiance as they darted en masse from one tall building to another, their calls echoing through the streets. On Halloween night, we walked back from Green and ducked into a Starbucks for after-dinner drinks, then we spent the rest of the evening chatting in a flower garden about movies and on-screen chemistry. It wasn’t very spooky, but it was pretty darn romantic.

What does one call a road trip within a road trip? I’m not sure. But whatever it’s called, that’s what we did on our last full day of vacation. We drove through Texas hill country to Fredericksburg for a dose of quaint, small-town beauty, with a detour into Texas wine country.

Our visit to wine country was very educational for me. For one thing, I tasted port for the first time ever. In fact, I tasted two ports! At two different tasting rooms! And it was delicious—rich as the dickens, sweet, velvety, wow. I liked it a lot. It’s something to be savored in small quantities. I am going to keep port in mind this winter, as I hear it tastes better when it’s dark and cold outside, and you want to be warm and toasty inside.

Matt’s never been too enthusiastic about Texas wines. Texas is a very hot place to be growing grapes—the sun can turn them all into sugar-bomb raisins, which do not make for tasty wine, or so I am told. But all is not lost when it comes to Texas wines! Pedernales Cellars is making some interesting wine, and the panoramic view from right outside their tasting room is stunning. If you’re interested in Texas wines, a wine tasting at Pedernales might be worth the visit, and it’s certainly a lovely drive to get there.

We also visited the new Messina Hof tasting room, partly because the woman pouring our wine at Pedernales suggested it, and we thought, Why not? But I have to say that Messina Hof’s wines were disappointing. They didn’t taste bad, but they all tasted the same. We don’t expect a Merlot to taste like a Cabernet Franc, but I tried both at Messina Hof, and they were remarkably similar. Which, in wine, is a bad thing. So I’d say skip Messina Hof, but do make the drive out to Pedernales. (Though I can, in good faith, recommend Messina Hof’s port. It’s seriously strong stuff, but wow—tasty! Our Messina Hof wine-pourer recommended dribbling it over ice cream or baking it into brownies, and I think both ideas sound mighty fine.)

And now what else can be said, other than the obvious? I loved San Antonio. I loved that I got to see it for the first time with someone who loves it too. Matt and I are already talking about where we’ll go next together—he’s ambivalent about New Orleans for complicated reasons. It’s a complex city with a difficult history, and I’m a vegetarian who may be difficult to feed in New Orleans. But I wouldn’t be opposed to going back to San Antonio. We ate and drank well, we remembered why we like each other, and at the end of the trip, I cried. When you’ve been looking forward to something for a long time, it’s difficult to let it go after it’s over. I’m trying not to be too bummed about the return to everyday life, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t missing the beauty and excitement of seeing a new city. So maybe it’s time to start planning that next trip after all.

Old-Fashioned

2011-11-04T12:45:00.001-05:00

It’s been a long time since I wrote an Up/Down or +/- list. I miss writing them! I do love lists, and I always find that the good stuff outweighs the bad on an Up/Down list.

I’m still getting back into the swing of things this week. Writing a few shorter posts while I’m settling into post-vacation life is a nice way to organize my thoughts. And there’s so much good stuff to look forward to in the next few weeks: Thanksgiving! my birthday! cool-weather layers! Cheers to November and all the fun it brings.

Without further ado, my list! This is the Hurray/Not So Much version of +/-.

Hurray!

* The smell of roasted squash and pan-fried quesadillas lingering after dinner on a Thursday night.

* San Antonio, after much anticipation.

* Thinking about turning 30 this month and not being afraid.

* Catching up on the blogs I read devotedly.

* Getting excited for Thanksgiving-inspired cooking. It’s practically National Food Month, y’all!

* Pears. Dammit, I love pears!

Not So Much…

* Junk mail! I hate junk mail! It is the bane of my existence.

* Fretting about what to do with my finances. I hate money chores. I wish I could delegate this task to a husband, though I realize that it’s better to be knowledgeable about your money, even if it’s knowledge that is reluctantly obtained.

* Kristen Stewart’s acting. She is the worst actress I’ve seen on-screen in a long, long time. Though I will add that I started watching Twilight: Eclipse last night, and so far this movie seems far more interesting than the first two movies. The acting is a little better, and there’s some good tension in the storyline.

What’s on your +/- list today? And happy weekend to everyone.

Refreshed and Returned

2011-11-03T15:36:00.001-05:00

After a really lovely vacation in San Antonio, I am back safe and sound in College Station, ready to dive back into science. It had been a long time since I had an adult vacation, one where the wine is poured early and often. Today I am feeling remarkably focused on work—it’s amazing how a vacation can restore your intellectual faculties! Nevertheless, I have a short list of random thoughts that are noteworthy. There’s never any shortage of randomness around here!

I think my taste buds have grown tired of oatmeal for breakfast, at least in soaked-oat form. San Antonio has left me craving granola. For breakfast, Matt and I went to Sip, a groovy little coffeehouse, because he knows I require breakfast and I’m fond of granola (which he loathes!). But we went there twice for breakfast and there was no granola to be had! So now I can’t stop fantasizing about a bowl of cereal mixed with some granola and topped with milk and maybe some fresh fruit. Yum.

This morning I had no power at home, and I was utterly baffled by the problem. But it did let me put my candles to good use! And there’s nothing like candlelight to make you feel beautiful—it’s like nature’s concealer.

Texas is a ginormous state. It’s easy for me to forget this in my everyday hustle and bustle, trying to be scientifically productive. But how awesome is it to be just a few hours’ drive from Texas hill country, with its sweeping views of rolling hills and ridges. It’s pretty awesome.

Sometimes I think intimacy in a long-term relationship is a paradox. I can be simultaneously charmed and alarmed by the pervasiveness of Matt’s influence on my life: what I read, what I eat, the music I enjoy. The way I think. Am I losing myself in this relationship? Sometimes I feel I know him so well that he is an extension of my heart. And I worry that this intimacy is more fragile than I realize, and I take it for granted.

Then again, if I am as good to him as I am to myself, maybe there’s nothing to worry about.

But I’ll never offer him any granola. And I just smile and laugh when he orders dessert for breakfast. Because it’s kinda cute, right? It certainly makes me want to bake old-fashioned chocolate chip cookies for his next visit.

I like any excuse to bake chocolate chip cookies. Or any excuse to drink wine. Maybe that’s the key to our happiness. We’re just a pair of hedonists.

Yes, I think that’s it.

I’ll be back soon with more to say about San Antonio. Soon, soon. Happy November, all.

Skipping Out of Town

2011-10-29T15:05:00.001-05:00

I can hardly believe it, but today I get to pack my bag for a vacation. Tomorrow I am skipping out of town. Matt and I are headed for San Antonio. I haven’t seen him since June, and that’s when we made up our minds about this trip. Five months is a long time to go without seeing someone you really like, and I am ready to see that man. Honestly, five months is really too long for us, but my schedule gave the illusion that late October was the best time for this trip. It’s okay—I’m a pro at this relationship now. I’m just patient enough to make it work, though I really hope we don’t have another five-month gap between visits!

Today I’m relaxing, packing my bag, and baking cookies. Tonight a few friends and I may be indulging in some autumn fun by visiting a corn maze after dark. I’m excited—I’ve never been to a corn maze! But I’m even more excited for Matt and San Antonio tomorrow. I hope to take some photos so that I can share a few tidbits about our trip, but I plan to relax, really relax, over the next few days. I’m actually going off-line when we hit the road, something that scares me a little bit because my on-line habits are so deeply ingrained in my daily life. But I think it will be good to immerse myself in the otherness of a new place and to reconnect with Matt in real time.

I hope this doesn’t sound too cheesy, but I’ll miss all of you while I’m gone! I will look forward to catching up with you and your lovely blogs when I return.

One last thing before I go: I finally wrote an “About Me” page! I figured that after four years of blogging, I should probably introduce myself more properly. It reads a bit like a CV, and I’m sorry about that, but I am so deep in the trenches of science and the nerdy life that it feels right to me. If there’s something you are dying to ask me, ask away! I’ll add it to the About Me page, perhaps as an inFAQ (inFrequently Asked Questions). Why inFAQ? Because this is a small blog, therefore all questions are infrequently asked.

Later, gators!

Dinnertime Frugality, Performed with Style and Ease

2011-10-27T12:04:00.001-05:00

Allow me to assure you that I have a selfish interest in the recipe list I posted last time. My spending this month has been a little wonky, between adjusting to a new grocery shopping routine, taking my bike to the bike doctor (in theory—it hasn’t happened yet!), and visiting San Antonio at the end of the month. I’m especially excited about that last item, a trip that Matt and I have been anticipating for a good five months. I’m planning to spend a boatload of money on the trip, so I’m pinching pennies before and after to make myself feel better.

But it’s not just about saving money. To me, there is a certain virtue in kitchen frugality that goes beyond the wallet. It’s about making the most of what you’ve got and being grateful for the time and skill that cooking requires. I have a love/hate relationship with discussions about how to save money. Growing up in a frugal household, saving money wasn’t about being trendy or practicing environmental sustainability; it was about keeping us out of poverty. And that’s a scary thought for me—the idea that if we don’t pinch every penny so hard it squeals, we may slide out of the middle class and into the position where money determines our quality of life in painfully tangible ways.

Don’t get me wrong: I think fiscal responsibility is a requirement for a grown-up life. But I like to temper my frugality with generosity, creativity, and a deeper sense of how our spending reflects our values. Food and cooking perfectly capture the intersection of those qualities: I believe you can eat well, really well, on a budget. But you gotta know what you’re doing to make it happen!

Tuesday night’s dinner was a good example of fiscal responsibility in the kitchen. I decided to make mujadara, or something similar to it, but I thought I was out of white rice. I immediately thought of going to the store to buy rice, when I remembered that I still had brown rice at home. Even better, I remembered I had cooked brown rice at home, leftovers from last week. So I took a deep breath, scratched the shopping trip from my list of things to do, and decided that I’d make dinner happen with the supplies I already had at home.

Caramelized onions are essential for the rich flavor in mujadara, but I was short on yellow onions. I decided to make up the difference with other aromatics: a shallot, some carrots, a few stalks of celery. And since I was already tinkering with the dish, I decided to substitute a splash of pomegranate-balsamic vinegar for the lemon. This fancy vinegar (which was only about five bucks for a bottle) is so delicious that whenever I smell it, I want to take a sip straight from the bottle.

The dish came together most deliciously: leftover brown rice, a rummage through the produce drawer for aromatics, a little fancy vinegar to add sparkle to the meal. And the pleasure of spending half an hour putzing in the kitchen, making dinner? That was my favorite part. Money might make you a wealthy person, but I’m pretty sure it’s hearth and home that make my life rich.

Poor mujadara, likely to be voted “World’s Ugliest Vegan Dinner.” It tastes so much better than it looks, I promise.

A Cozy Recipe List to Keep Your Wallet Happy

2011-10-23T15:41:00.001-05:00

After our discussions about budgets and food shopping, I thought it might be nice to write a little recipe list for us.

As a nod both to my vegan readers and to thrifty cooking, all the recipes in this list are vegan. These recipes are among my all-time favorites of all the recipes I’ve shared on this blog through four years of blogging. Though I don’t follow a vegan diet, there’s a lot of crosstalk between vegetarian and vegan cookery; obviously the latter is a subset of the former. I tend to gravitate toward vegan recipes that are heavy on the beans and vegetables—with some rice or bread on the side, a vegan meal can make me very happy.

To keep the ingredients for these recipes very affordable, I stayed away from the pricier items in the vegan pantry, such as canned artichokes or maple syrup. And of course, since the recipes are vegan, there’s no concern about buying organic, local, free-range eggs or milk from grass-fed cows, both of which are expensive (as they should be, in my opinion). These recipes build layers of flavor with not-too-pricy ingredients and a well-stocked spice cabinet.

Happy cooking!

An Appetizer

* Roasted Chickpeas with Smoked Paprika (and I must add that this post is one of my all-time favorites. This time of year makes me very nostalgic for my old life in Evanston.)

Soups and Stews to Keep You Warm

* Black Bean Soup with Rice

* Moroccan Carrot and Tomato Soup

* The Lazy Cook’s Tomatillo, Hominy, and Pumpkin Stew

A Lentil Dish

* Mujadara

A Tofu Dish

* Roasted Broccoli and Tofu

Some Side Dishes to Eat with Your Legumes

* Oil-and-Vinegar Oven Fries

* Nicole’s Mexican Coleslaw

And a Few Sweet Endings

* Vegan Peanut Butter Cookies

* Walnut Wafers (yes, walnuts are an expensive ingredient, but this recipe only calls for 1 cup of walnuts and it makes a few dozen cookies)

Playing Hooky

2011-10-22T11:21:00.001-05:00

I haven’t been feeling well this week. I’ll spare you the bodily details, but suffice to say, it hit me hard on Thursday afternoon, when I wanted nothing more than to take a nap at work, and it followed me around on Friday. Last night I bagged my plans to go for a run, and instead, I curled up on the couch and ate pasta with pesto, chickpeas, and grape tomatoes. Then, for dessert, I made fudge sauce and ate that with chocolate cake. All in all, a nutritious dinner, right? Right. Don’t argue with me here.

On most Saturdays, I head into work in the morning for a few hours, but not today. It’s very rare for me to take a sick day during the Monday-Friday work week; it’s far more common for me to take a day here or there to spend with Matt if he’s in town or if we’ve made other plans. Vacation days, yes. Sick days, no. But in my mind, I’ve taken today as a sick day, so I’m spending a lazy Saturday morning at home. I slept until 9 AM, then dozed in bed for another half an hour. Then I got up and puttered around the kitchen, making my oatmeal and coffee, emptying the dishwasher, and cleaning up the kitchen, which needs more TLC than I’ve been giving it. In a few minutes, I’ll call a friend, make a grocery list, and get myself ready to face the outside world. But it’s been really nice to be at home all morning, with no pressing concerns. I love being at home, but I’m afraid my life for the past few months has been altogether too full, and I’m due for some slowing down, even if it’s just a morning or two.

The thing about working on the weekend regularly is that it can make you lazy. You don’t push yourself as hard during the week if you know that you’ll be working “extra” on Saturdays or Sundays. At least that’s true for me. I certainly don’t regret all the weekend time I’ve put into my job lately; it helped propel my project and it gave me something to do other than worry. I was too busy working to worry!

But this weekend, I think I’ll be staying away from the lab. My hope is that come Monday morning, I’ll feel refreshed and ready to hit the ground running, as opposed to the mediocre shuffling that I performed this week. This weekend, I’m going to make soup and continue updating my recipe index. I’m going to write posts and go for runs and watch the birds and visit the library. Maybe I’ll bake a cake. Maybe I’ll go for a long walk with a friend. Maybe, maybe, maybe…

It’s a weekend filled with possibilities. I hope your weekend is lovely, too, dear reader.

Shop Talk

2011-10-18T19:28:00.001-05:00

I had an unexpected loss this year: my neighborhood grocery store. RIP, Albertson’s on University. We had a good run of it together.

The store’s closing hit me fast and hard: I found out in September that their last day was October 8. Apparently, that particular Albertson’s location was bought out by HEB, which kind of makes me hate HEB, even though they do have an outstanding produce section. I loved having a decent grocery store that was quite literally within walking distance: it was three blocks away from me. It seemed serendipitous that even in Texas, land of a thousand trucks, I, the carless freak, had a grocery store I could visit virtually any time because it was so close. Now I have nothing.

Oh, I exaggerate. I still have options. There’s the hippie food store a bit further down the road from the old Albertson’s, which can be reached easily on foot or on bike. There’s the HEB down the road from the hippie store, too far for foot travel but easy to reach on bike. And then there’s my favorite newly “discovered” option, Village Foods, which can be reached quickly by bus. I’ve known about Village Foods since my early days in Texas, but because of its location and the difficulty of riding my bike to it, I hadn’t shopped there in a long time until this month. I like Village Foods. It’s like a cross between Whole Foods and Albertson’s: they have a small but respectable selection of organic produce as well as lots of other organic products, but they also carry a lot of items one expects to find at a typical chain grocery store. They have what looks like a promising selection of alcoholic beverages, too—I spotted cans of Strongbow Cider, which is seriously delicious cider (and very strong too! I was quite tipsy after a pint at the bar over the summer). The best thing about Village Foods and the hippie store (whose proper name is Brazos Natural Foods) is that they are independent grocery stores, not chains. Indie grocery stores! How terrific is that? I may not be so good at supporting indie bookstores, but dammit, I can do it for food.

The biggest loss I am feeling after Albertson’s closing is that I no longer have the option of popping into the store after work for a few basics whenever I’m in need. No more shopping trips for a bunch of bananas, milk, a can of tomatoes, and a package of toilet paper. Without Albertson’s, I’m being forced to reconsider my shopping habits, to adapt to a new model. It’s now inconvenient for me to go shopping with short lists—I need longer, more comprehensive shopping lists, lists that take into account my ingredient needs for several meals, not just the next thing I want to cook. I suppose I’ve been lucky in that I could shop more or less if and when I wanted—today, tomorrow, next week, whatever. It didn’t matter because the store was so close. But now, to go grocery shopping is a bigger deal because the stores are further away and of the two big grocery stores, only one of them is accessible by bike.

Twice this month I’ve sucked it up: I made long lists, took the bus to the grocery store, filled my cart (a cart! not just a basket!) with goodies, spent a week’s worth of grocery money in one transaction, then called a cab to haul me and my loot home. It was nice, being able to buy as much as I wanted because I wasn’t turning my bike into a mule and loading my groceries onto it. And it was only a little hard parting with some of my dollars for the cab ride.

So I’m adapting. I’m figuring out how to be a more organized shopper. I am still planning to shop twice a week, once at the hippie food store on Saturdays and once at either HEB or Village Foods. Twice a week is a good rhythm for me because I like fresh produce, and with HEB, I can either bike it or cab it, depending on what else is on the list. And on the nights I’m cabbing it, I’m enjoying the option to buy a four-pack of hard cider without worrying about all that glass wobbling with me on my bike.

My kitchen is enjoying it too, this feeling of being well-stocked. Over the weekend, I made a surprisingly good onion quiche (recipe coming soon, I hope!), vegan chocolate cake, and last night I made kale and chickpea burritos. I’m eating well, which is good because it’s only Tuesday and I’m already over budget for the week! Oof. But I think it will all balance out: the pantry is well-provisioned, and I think I’ll only want a few things when I ride my bike to HEB later this week. No cab ride, just some fresh fruit, carrots, coconut milk, and maybe some almonds.

Friends, what are your approaches to grocery shopping? Are you a “shop once, buy everything” type or do you make smaller but more frequent trips? How important is fresh produce to you? How do you integrate grocery shopping into the rest of your busy life?

Steady Rotation, or How I Like to Spend My Saturday Afternoons

2011-10-16T18:42:00.001-05:00

If rice pudding isn’t your thing, how about the easiest peanut butter cookies I’ve ever made?

Yes, indeed, these cookies are my current favorites, in part because the recipe makes a tiny batch, just nine cookies, which makes them very low-key, as far as cookies go. They have a lovely texture too, delicate and a little crumbly. They’re soft cookies, slightly cakey cookies, not snappy or crispy cookies.

I’ve been making them all summer long, ever since I had a hankering to make a peanut butter version of this recipe. I liked that original recipe a lot, but I found that neither the cookies nor the cookie dough keeps very well—they’re best eaten within a day or two. Don’t let that warning deter you too much because really, with such a small batch of cookies, isn’t it easy to make sure they all get eaten quickly? Perhaps a little too easy, yes?

Anyway, the latest incarnation of this small-batch recipe is a peanut butter version which borrows the famous flax-egg trick from vegan baking circles. I like the flax-egg trick! Water, ground flax seed, some light stirring, a few minutes, and boom: gooey egg replacement, ready to be added to your cookie dough. I make up the flax egg before mixing the other ingredients, and by the time I’m ready for the flax egg, it’s nice and gooey and perfect for its task of holding everything together.

I got into the habit of making these on Saturday afternoons. I would finish lunch at home and crave something small and sweet. Baking a few cookies seemed like the perfect small-time kitchen project to officially launch my weekend (which never feels like it starts until after I’ve done my Saturday morning chores). Then I’d make myself a mug of iced tea, curl up with my plate of cookies, and read a book on the couch. Happiness!

Small-Batch Peanut Butter Cookies

Adapted from this recipe

Makes 9 cookies

I have a few variations on these cookies too, which I’ll list below. A good cookie lends itself well to tinkering! If you have any suggestions for more variations, feel free to share them in the comments.

1/2 tbsp. ground flax seed

1 1/2 tbsp. water

1/2 cup + 2 tbsp. flour (I typically use all-purpose flour, whole-wheat pastry flour, or a combination of both. The all-pastry flour cookie is more delicate than the other options.)

1/4 tsp. baking soda

1/8 tsp. salt

1/4 tsp. cinnamon

1/4 cup butter, softened

1/4 cup sugar

2 tbsp. peanut butter

1/4 tsp. vanilla extract

1/4 cup chocolate chips

Nonstick spray

1) Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

2) To make the flax egg, mix the flax seed and water together in a small measuring cup. Set aside.

3) Combine the flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon in a small bowl. Set aside.

4) Cream together the butter and sugar in a medium mixing bowl. Add the peanut butter and vanilla extract, and mix together. Add the flax egg and mix.

5) Mix the flour mixture into the butter mixture until a dough forms. Stir in the chocolate chips.

6) Spray a baking sheet with nonstick spray. Form the dough into tablespoon-sized balls and place on the sheet with about two inches between balls. Use your palm to flatten the ball to about 1/2-inch thickness. If you like, you can use a fork to make those cute criss-cross patterns on the cookies.

7) Bake for 12-13 minutes. Allow them to cool on their baking sheet for about 10 minutes, then remove and eat or allow them to cool completely before storing in an airtight container.

Variations:

* This is really obvious, but sometimes I like a pure peanut butter cookie, so I leave out the chocolate chips.

* For an oatmeal-peanut butter-chocolate chip cookie, I add 2 tbsp. rolled oats along with the chocolate chips.

On Rewards and Rice Pudding

2011-10-15T21:50:00.001-05:00

This is my theory on running and life: you must be your own best cheerleader.

I’m really lucky that I have a lot of kind people in my life. These people are happy for me when things are going well, and they’re bummed with me when things are crappy. Still, I think we owe it to ourselves to treat ourselves the way we want other people to treat us. And that means hushing that inner voice telling you that you can’t, it’s not possible, you’re going to fail, you’re too tired, you aren’t smart enough, you’re lazy, you’re fat, you’re ugly, and on and on and on…as a woman, I often fear that we’ve taken society’s misogynistic messages and internalized them. Why else would women’s magazines feature pictures of impossibly beautiful women wearing bikinis? I think it’s because collectively, we’ve signed off on the idea that it is part of a woman’s duty to be thin and pretty. And I resent this message.

I think we owe it to ourselves to take care of our bodies, to strive for healthiness above beauty. I think about this message a lot, mostly when I have my own tiny moments of body insecurity. Yes, I’m happy with my weight, but I have moments when I ignore the whole so I can dissect the parts: is my belly a little more padded than it used to be? Are my thighs looking heavier? I do this little routine for a few minutes, then I remember: these parts are the same ones that pedaled me to work today, that accompanied me on my run yesterday. This is the body that will carry me to the end of my life, and if it doesn’t mind a little extra padding, then neither do I.

For most of us, our worries about a little extra padding are the fastest way to drain the joy and pleasure out of our days. Life is short. Carpe diem, I say, not carpe diet.

I digress. Let’s get back to this business of the inner cheerleader. My point in talking about bodies and our feelings toward them is that we seem to find it much easier to internalize negativity. I think a critical secret to success is to internalize a positive voice, a kind of optimism that only gets louder as things get harder. It’s a way to stay focused on the prize, to not let yourself be distracted by anything but the immediate goal. Believe me, there is plenty of negativity out there to drag you down, if that’s what you want. But what will lift you up? What makes you feel strong and capable? For me, my inner cheerleader is that source of focused positive energy.

I work in a field where positive feedback is often scant, and it’s something I’ve wrestled with for a long time. In graduate school, I don’t think my advisor ever said a congratulatory word to me when I was awarded a grant or when my paper was finally accepted for publication. I took his lack of praise pretty hard. It made me angry and depressed not to get accolades for achieving things that he and I had been working toward for so long. I felt like he owed me some praise. But now, looking back, I don’t think he did. He owed me his best efforts as a mentor, and I do think he did the best he could. But he didn’t owe me any praise.

Fast forward to this week. On Tuesday, I presented my research during lab meeting. It was an important talk, the first one I’ve given in a long time. I felt like it was a milestone of sorts, an evaluative moment after a long summer of intense focus. And the talk went really well! I put a lot of time and thought into it, and even though I didn’t have much of a chance to practice the talk, I feel like the presentation went smoothly. Afterward, I was quite pleased with it.

But the most important point is this: I did not receive any praise from my advisor. I still don’t know what my future prospects are with this lab—will I be working here next month? In three months? In six months? During the talk, my advisor did offer constructive critical feedback on my work, which I take as a positive sign. But I walked away from that meeting with little more than my own sense of self congratulations.

On a practical level, I do need to know what my options are, career-wise, in this lab. If I no longer have a position here, then I need to hit the job market to find a new one. I will have that conversation with my advisor before the month is over. But for now, I feel satisfied that I did the best job I could, and no one can take that away from me, no matter what happens next.

Sometimes the pat on the back we give ourselves is the one that matters most.

In addition to your inner cheerleader, the other thing you need is carrots. Rewards. A real pat on the back. Or, in my case this week, rice pudding made with Arborio rice and finished with a rum custard sauce.

I’m all about ~~stealing~~ borrowing inspiration, and this recipe collects its cues from three sources: the Moosewood folks; my blogging friend, the lovely Raquelita; and Nigella Lawson. I must be in a rather academic mood for all this citing of sources, but here’s how it worked: last weekend, I made the Rum Custard Sauce from the Moosewood Restaurant Book of Desserts. It’s very tasty on its own, but it really is a sauce, not something you pour into a bowl and eat by the spoonful on its own. (Not that I would do that…at least not without adding some bananas first! Bananas make Rum Custard Sauce healthy, right?) I needed something to go with my sauce, and Raquelita suggested rice pudding, which sounded perfect. I swear, sometimes I think she and I share a brain because I’ve had a recipe for pumpkin rice pudding on my mind. But for a pudding that was going to make good use of the Rum Custard Sauce, I wanted something simpler and more straightforward, and here is where I turned to Nigella Lawson. She’s got a recipe for rice pudding for one in How to Eat, which sounded homey and delicious. I took her basic recipe and tweaked it a bit to fit what I had on hand. The end result was a creamy, delicious, perfect rice pudding—simple and straightforward, just rice luxuriating in a sauce spiked with rum custard. There are no fruits and no spices, so it’s the kind of rice pudding a purist could love.

Risotto Rice Pudding with Rum Custard Sauce

Serves 2, perhaps with a little left over

For the Rum Custard Sauce (from Moosewood Restaurant Book of Desserts)

This eggless custard sauce could not be easier to make: a little light whisking and you’re done.

1/2 cup milk

1/2 cup heavy cream

1/2 cup packed brown sugar

1 tbsp. flour

2 tbsp. rum

1) In a saucepan, combine the milk, cream, and brown sugar. Whisk them together. Heat the mixture over low heat, and whisk in the flour. Stir constantly until the sauce thickens slightly and has no lumps.

2) Remove from the heat and stir in the rum. If you’re making this ahead of time, allow the sauce to cool then store it in the fridge.

For the Rice Pudding (adapted from How to Eat by Nigella Lawson):

3 cups water

2 tbsp. butter

2 tbsp. granulated sugar

1/4 cup Arborio rice

1/4 cup Rum Custard Sauce (see above for recipe)

1) In a saucepan, heat the water until hot but not boiling. Turn off the heat.

2) Melt the butter over medium heat in a large sauce pan or even a Dutch oven (the high sides make for pleasant and mess-free stirring). Add the sugar and stir to combine. Cook for a minute or two, then add the rice and stir to coat it in the buttery-sugary mixture. Using a ladle, begin adding the water, a ladle or two at a time, stirring almost constantly. (I stir frequently, but I find risotto doesn’t absolutely require constant stirring. It’s sort of like baby-sitting—keep an eye and a hand on the risotto [or child], but if you want to wash a few dishes in between stirs, that’s quite all right.) Allow the rice to absorb the liquid before adding the next ladle or two. As you get close to the bottom of the water pan, begin checking the texture of the rice by tasting it. If it’s too al dente for your taste, then keep adding water. I used almost all the water, but I like soft rice. You may prefer yours a little chewier.

3) When the rice is done to your liking, stir in the Rum Custard Sauce. It might look like a lot of liquid, but give it a few stirs and you’ll find that the rice pudding will have a nice, thick-but-not-too-thick saucy texture.

4) Serve the rice pudding warm or at room temperature. Leftovers are tasty tucked into the lunchbox and might be reason enough to double the recipe. Yum!

Secretly and Hopelessly Optimistic

2011-10-13T12:38:00.001-05:00

I sometimes worry that if I go too long without writing a post, my writing muscles will seize up and atrophy. The idea of it frightens me, so I thought I’d better scoot on over here to say hello!

I’m having a good week—a big talk, lunch with friends, listening to raindrops splash against the windows. I do want to tell you more about the big talk, which I have concluded was a success, but more importantly, I want to tell you about the celebratory rice pudding I made the night after the talk. It was good. Next time I’m making a double batch!

The thought that keeps running through my head this week is this: we must learn to be our own advocates. We have to believe in ourselves. But we also have to ask ourselves the hard questions such as: Am I on the right path? Am I making my decisions with intention? Or am I just reacting to external circumstances? I know the recession makes it harder for us not to react to circumstances, and believe me, I am waiting for the economy to shrug itself back to consciousness and start chugging along again.

If there’s anything I’ve learned over the last four months, it’s that we cannot let ourselves be afraid to ask the hard questions. And if we decide that we know what we want, we can’t be afraid to go for it, leaping into the air and trusting that we will land on two feet.

For me, this week marks the end of a long hard summer. It was an important summer that tested my endurance and my optimism. It demonstrated to me that I’ve actually got plenty of endurance and optimism. It also demonstrated to me that a Saturday afternoon nap can fix what ails you, that baking peanut butter cookies is sometimes the answer, and that I am bigger than my fears.

You are bigger than your fears too. I just know it.

Call me a hopeless optimist. It’s hard, in these grim days of shrinking budgets and job insecurities, to be an optimist. But I am. I look around at the growing momentum of farmers’ markets and local business, of people declaring that communities matter more than fat paychecks, of people asking hard questions about values, finances, and happiness, and I just know that we’re only at the beginning of something great. Of something huge. And I want to be there for it and to be a part of it.

Let’s be great together, shall we?

About today’s photos:

* The first two were taken in the Holistic Garden on campus, one of my favorite places to visit.

* The third is a photo of a few of my favorite shirts, drying. I bought the pink one in Michigan a few weeks ago, at a really great thrift store. I just love it. And I’m wearing it today!

Survival Strategies, Part Two: On Wallet

2011-10-09T18:41:00.001-05:00

It’s another multi-part series here on Life, Love, and Food! You can find Part One of this series, On Weight and Worry, right here.

One of my best and worst qualities is that I’m a sponge for other people’s emotions. It’s a great quality because it makes me very empathetic, and quite often I find myself as the unpaid therapist for needy friends. (Matt tells me I should raise my rates, which I think is very sound advice.) It’s a terrible quality because I absorb other people’s anxieties lickety-split, and it can make me kinda miserable. That’s why I have such an affinity for people who are calm and happy—it’s utterly soothing for me to around them. Interestingly, some of my closest friends have also professed to having a lot of anxiety, but I don’t feel their anxiety when we are together, as though the pleasure of being together makes us both feel better.

Growing up, my father had a lot of anxiety about money. Honestly, with five kids, he had good reason to be anxious about money. Somehow, my parents made it work, and we were neither homeless nor malnourished. I did, however, enter adulthood with mountains of fear about money, both making it and spending it. Having spent six years in graduate school, perhaps my anxiety was also well-placed, much like my father’s. But my anxiety is more squirrely than good intentions to save more and spend less. I can get anxious about other people’s money too, to the point where I feel almost panicked by their finances. It’s absurd, really, because how much do we really know about someone else’s finances? Not much, unless we are their accountant or the federal government. Still, my anxiety about money has loomed large for most of my life, and it exhausts me.

As a graduate student, I received a very reasonable stipend. It was more than enough to live on, and I made it my goal to save what I could. I kept careful track of my expenditures, and I was able to save about $200-300 a month, which is not too shabby at all for a student. Of course I wish I’d been able to save more, but I loved what I chose to spend my money on: a spacious apartment; really great food, cookbooks; tickets to Michigan, Arizona, California; birthday and Christmas presents. I had enough money to eat out once or twice a month, enough money to enjoy the city where I was living. I certainly didn’t have enough money to purchase a home when I was in graduate school, but I set up retirement accounts and planned for a good future while living within my means during the present. I wasn’t particularly anxious about money during graduate school because I was too anxious about graduate school itself and what my career prospects would look like.

As I’ve been out of grad school and working, my attitude about money has shifted. I make more money now, and I spend more money too. Some of that spending doesn’t feel optional, such as plane tickets north to see my family. It’s expensive to travel out of College Station. But for the most part, I have adhered to the same budget I followed in graduate school, which looks a little like this for any given month:

* Rent, utilities, and phone: ~$1100-1200

* Food (groceries and eating out): ~$300

* Travel and monthly extras: ~$300

“Monthly extras” can be anything from presents to Target trips to new clothing to bike repair bills. It’s really my catch-all category for the expenditures that appear sporadically. For travel, I usually budget $100 per month for the 2-3 trips I take each year, and if I get a tax return, it goes into my travel budget.

If you do the math, my budget adds up to $1700-1800 spent each month. But during most months, I’m able to keep my spending around $1600. I also have what I call my “Rainy Day Money,” which is basically money that’s been given to me as gifts. Because it was gifted, I tend to use it for treats like a fancy meal at Veritas with my favorite gentleman or a new dress. So I suppose it’s fair to say that I probably spend between $1600 and $1700 a month—the Rainy Day Money gives my budget some flexibility, and it allows me to put gift money to good use by not spending it on boring things like rent and groceries.

A budget, money-tracking, gifts—this is all very rational when it comes to money. It’s rational behavior. But I don’t always feel rational about money—my anxiety lies in wait like a snake in the grass, hissing to itself and ready to rear up when the opportunity arrives. This summer, when I was presented with the possibility of no longer having a job in a few months, my anxieties about money loomed large. What would I do if I lost my job? What should I do right now, in case I lose my job? Should I clamp down on my budget, pinching pennies so hard they howl in pain? Should I start baking my own bread and eating lentil soup at every meal? Should I start calculating the cost-per-meal value of my recipes?

Or…should I take a deep breath and try to consider what’s really important here?

Of course I could have launched a Save Every Penny campaign, preparing for joblessness in the near future. When I tried to think about what really mattered to me, I realized that I needed to do my best to keep this job. Financially, staying in my current job is the right thing for right now. I wasn’t ready to give up on this job or on the projects that I’d been nurturing in said job. I also realized that clamping down on my spending would actually make it harder to stay focused on the job, because I’d be worried and distracted by money at a time when I really wanted to focus on my work.

So I let go, at least a little bit. I bought bottles of wine when I was in the mood for wine with dinner, and I bought bars of chocolate to keep in the pantry for emergencies. On Saturday afternoons, after spending the morning in the lab, I sometimes took myself out to lunch, a little treat for all my hard work. And indeed it was a treat to have someone else make my lunch for me—it made my life a little easier, a little more light-hearted. I thought about this piece by Lauren Slater, in which she writes,

“I've always been a tightfisted misanthrope, someone whose fears—of going broke, of ending up sleeping on the street—made it difficult to buy things for my family and for myself. So for a year, as an experiment, I became a casual consumer, zooming through Target and my other favorite stores, piling my cart high. I bought what I wanted, only to find at year's end that even at my most extreme, I am not all that extreme. I have limits.”

(Scroll down to the second essay in that collection to find Lauren Slater’s piece. It’s worth reading!)

That piece, which I first read years ago, resonated with me. Aha! I thought. Now here is a woman after my own heart. We shared the same fears, the same anxieties about money. And it turned out that the solution for both of us may have been to let go and see what happened when we hit the ground. Looking at my spending journal now, I see that for June, July, and August combined, I spent about $80 more than my usual numbers. When I check my Rainy Day Log, I see that I didn’t spend any of that money, which means all my extras—shoes and new clothes and a dinner at Veritas and on and on—all of these things were noted and accounted for in my monthly spending.

The cost of my letting go was eighty dollars. Eighty dollars! That’s a ludicrously small amount of money considering the chokehold that money often has over my psyche. I am stunned and awed.

I’m also grateful. I don’t like that I inherited my dad’s anxiety about money, but I am grateful that because of that anxiety, I can sit here right now and account for almost every penny I spent. And I know now that buying a few bottles of wine won’t break my budget. Buying new shoes, even a pair that is, arguably, a bit frivolous—that won’t break my budget. Saying “yes” to pleasure more often will not break my budget because I know now that I too have limits. I love an evening at Veritas or even just a glass of wine and a cheese plate as a treat, but I don’t want to go there every day or even every week. Part of what makes spending fun is that I don’t indulge in these bigger treats every day or even every week.

But the peace of mind I feel from this little experiment of mine—I can enjoy that every day. There’s nothing quite as satisfying or humbling as facing your fears and realizing that they weren’t nearly as bad as you thought they were.

* * *

I feel like before I go, I should issue a little disclaimer about this post. By no means am I trying to complain about my money situation, argue that I don’t make enough money, or even claim that I live frugally. I live in a way that works for me. I save money where it makes sense for me (which is why I don’t have a car, even in Texas!), and I spend money the same way. It’s my hope that by sharing specific numbers with you, I can give you an idea of how I budget and what a month looks like in my financial life. But the real obstacle for me, when it comes to money, is my own attitude toward it, and that’s what I’ve tried to explore in this post. I hope that this post will resonate with a few of you, even just a little.

Thanks for reading, as always. I really do have the best readers!

Survival Strategies, Part One: On Weight and Worry

2011-10-02T15:39:00.001-05:00

When you’re facing a lot of stress in life, I think it’s a good idea to develop some survival strategies so that you come out alive on the other side. Over the summer, when I was really in the thick of things at work, I decided to cut myself some slack in two areas where I’m normally very careful about my spending: food and money. In this post, I’m going to talk about how food fits into my life. In my next post, I’ll talk about my wallet.

I love to eat. I love to cook. I love to feed other people. On the whole, I think I have a very healthy relationship with food. I don’t have a dramatic story about overcoming bad habits and establishing healthier routines. As a child, I ate too much candy and cereal, disliked many foods, and my parents worried that I wasn’t getting enough protein because I was never very fond of meat. It turns out that I don’t have a meat-and-potatoes palate like my father’s. I prefer more exotic cuisine: Tex-Mex, Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, Indian. I like spice and heat and beans. Once I started cooking for myself, I was able to develop healthier habits: more vegetables, less candy.

When it comes to weight, food is half of the equation. The other half is exercise or physical activity. As a kid, I didn’t like team sports, but I was reasonably active. For years, my brothers and I had newspaper routes, so every day, we walked around the neighborhood, delivering our papers. Looking back now, I don’t know what our mileage was for those routes, but it was everyday exercise. Despite my junk-food diet, I never had a problem with weight as a kid; I was always rather small and shrimpy.

When I went away to college, I began developing healthier habits. I had more choice in the matter; when you’re living at home with your parents, your choices may be curtailed by their preferences. But in the college cafeteria, I had dozens of choices every day. By the time I started college, I had become more interested in healthy eating: more vegetables, less candy. In my final two years of college, my roommates and I were able to cook for ourselves, and we started to enjoy the freedom of being able to try new recipes and host dinner parties together. It was a lovely time in my life—I think back on those years fondly, remembering all the good food and friends I had.

When I started graduate school in the fall of 2003, suddenly I had total control over my eating and exercise. I was living in Evanston, Illinois, just north of Chicago, within walking distance of three different grocery stores. And walk I did: lots and lots of walking, all over town. In college I had run cross-country, but in graduate school, I adjusted to city life by walking everywhere. I continued to cook healthy meals, becoming very interested in soup. I packed myself lunches to take to school every day, and I learned the importance of the mid-afternoon snack, a habit I still maintain to this day.

Somewhere between 2003 and 2007, I lost 20 pounds. I wasn’t overweight when I started graduate school, but my habits did change: I was walking more and running less. I also started doing yoga and Pilates several times a week. Looking back now, it’s hard for me to say how much my diet changed and whether that was a factor in my weight loss. My weight loss was unintentional and gradual, and it scared some family and friends. It scared me a little bit too: after my family commented on my weight, I noticed that my face looked gaunt, as though its roundness had disappeared along with my 20 pounds. But when I converted my new weight into a value for Body Mass Index, I was still in the healthy range for my height. There were other indicators that my health was good, too, so I didn’t worry too much about the weight loss. Actually, what I did do was loosen up a bit in my cooking. I became more liberal with the olive oil, and I worried less about using fats of all kind in my cooking. I figured that using more fat would certainly make my food tastier, and if it happened to let me gain a few pounds back, awesome!

I tell you this long-winded story because it sets the scene for today. I’m now 29, about to turn 30 next month. I’m well aware of the fact that people’s metabolisms tend to slow down as they age, so I wonder whether I’ll begin gaining weight simply as a function of age. And yet this summer, when I thought about coping strategies, food seemed like a great candidate for dealing with the stress.

When it comes to eating habits, I think people tend to fall into three camps: there are those who restrict their eating (through food choices, calories, or both), those who binge, and those who binge and restrict (usually as part of a cycle). I don’t consider my eating disordered, though if I tend toward anything, it’s restriction. I have a ridiculous love for sugar (see above re:candy), so one of my long-term eating goals has been to eat less sugar. This summer, I eased up on that goal. I decided to enjoy dessert if and when I wanted, and if I was feeling really indulgent, I would drink a glass of wine with dinner and eat dessert. Crazy! I know. But in my mind, I’d always felt like if I was going to eat “empty” calories, I should pick either wine or dessert. That’s advice I picked up a long time ago, and it made sense to me. But for a few months, I had my cake and my wine, and I was happier for it.

I think it’s important to emphasize that I wasn’t giving myself permission to binge or to consume all my calories in the form of dessert and booze. I was still cooking and eating in a way that packed lots of nutrients into my diet: vegetables, fruit, protein, fats from a variety of sources. I still liked my soups and my salads; I was just ending more meals with a little sweet something. It gave me something to savor every day, something to enjoy, no matter how stressed I was feeling. The sweets were a little reminder to try to enjoy my life, right here, right now. They literally added sweetness to my day, and I needed that.

I had moments, of course, in which I wondered if my pants would fit once the summer ended. So far, so good: my favorite pair of jeans still fits! And at my annual appointment with the lady doctor, I found out that my weight is the exact same number as it was last year, which is shocking. But considering the number of Saturday mornings I’ve spent biking to the lab and then doing experiments, maybe it’s not shocking. Maybe I needed the calories to fuel all those Saturdays. Or maybe my body just tweaked its metabolism a bit to burn a few more calories. Who knows? All I can say is that for me, giving myself permission to sip more wine and bake more cookies helped me get through a particularly lonely and hard time in my life. And if that permission results in an extra five or ten pounds on my body, then so be it.

My Splendid Table Notebook

2011-09-26T21:00:00.001-05:00

For those of us who cook, Lynn Rossetto Kasper is our fairy godmother, and The Splendid Table is her magic wand. I adore Lynn’s food and cooking radio program, complete with phoned-in questions from listeners. In fact, I get so many ideas from listening to The Splendid Table that I decided I really needed a way to keep track of those ideas. And that, my friends, is what blog posts are for. This page is my notebook of ideas I’d like to try/remember/share from Splendid Table episodes. It’s going to look like a notebook too—more casual and work-in-progress than most of my blog posts.

I’m going to update this page frequently, adding ideas and links as I find them. If I really love something, I’ll try to write a separate recipe post, and I’ll provide the link to the new post as well.

Oh, and if you aren’t listening to the downloadable podcasts of The Splendid Table, you should be. They’re just terrific.

Happy listening, and happy cooking!

* This sounds really cool: a mail-order knife-sharpening company that even sends you a before-and-after picture of your knife! From the December 29, 2007 episode.

* Lynn’s off-the-cuff recipe for German-roasted nuts, which you make on the stovetop. These sound perfect for steamy Texas days, when only a fool like me turns on the oven. But more importantly, they sound really, really delicious. I’m thinking about making a batch to take on the road to San Antonio next weekend. From the December 29, 2007 episode.

* Roasted pears with fried sage leaves. I am currently looking (listening) high and low to find the episode where Lynn describes how she would make these…

* Lynn’s red lentil soup with (lots of) cilantro and fresh orange, or more officially: Coriander-Orange-Scented Red Lentil Soup. Mentioned on a 2008 episode, I think?

* Just for fun: Talking about Faygo pop, a local treat for us Michiganders. I grew up drinking Faygo! My favorite flavors were Rock ‘n’ Rye and Peach. I love how they describe it as “the beloved quirky beverage from Motown” (January 26, 2008).

* The Indian Grocery Store Demystified by Linda Bladholm and Neela Paniz. This book sounds fun, and we have a really cute little Indian grocery store in town (January 19, 2008). I wouldn’t mind a little hand-holding when it comes to Indian ingredients!

* All of Diana Henry’s ideas for what to do with a bag of potatoes (November 13, 2010).

Life, Love, and Food in Michigan

2011-09-25T22:21:00.001-05:00

I often feel conflicted about my opposing dreams. Sometimes I want to lead a full, adventurous, exciting life, and other times I want a simple, earthy, wholesome existence. For example: world traveler versus pumpkin farmer. Or bestselling author versus chocolate-and-cheese shop owner. I wouldn’t say that these dreams are mutually exclusive, but I do feel them tugging me in different directions. I suppose it’s another version of trying to find some balance in my life, of trying to design a life that’s got enough work to feel worthwhile and enough play to feel fun.

During the twelve years that I’ve been wandering from school to school, most of my immediate family has lived in the Detroit area. For twelve years, Detroit has been where I spend my Christmases. It’s where I go to recharge and reconnect, to relax and reconsider. Since the birth of my niece Lydia five years ago, it’s also become my September escape. Especially now that I live in Texas, where September does not resemble the prelude to autumn that is September in the Midwest, Lydia’s birthday has provided a good excuse to fly north and remember what Michigan looks like right before it bursts into the flame-colored leaves of October.

Michigan is a stunningly beautiful state. You don’t hear much these days about how pretty it is, except for those “Pure Michigan” ads, which sometimes make me teary-eyed. But it really is a nice place to visit, with its tall trees, fluffy clouds, melancholy rainstorms, and crisp, clean air. Of course I’m biased because I grew up there, and it feels like home in a way that no place ever will. Despite all that, however, when I go home in September, I’m almost astonished at how gorgeous Michigan is, with its end-of-summer green-and-gold palette and the way the air feels almost magical with fall’s impending arrival. I really love it up there.

Inside and outside, Michigan will charm you with its natural beauty.

Now that we have two little ones in the family, I feel a special obligation to make my presence felt in Michigan. I may be ambivalent about having children of my own, but I am crazy about my niece and nephew. I love them deeply and fiercely, and I want them to grow up knowing me not as some aunt who lives far away, but as an auntie who visited them regularly to play games, read stories, take walks, and spend time together.

The simple part is what we do together. The complicated part is how I get to Michigan: one van ride, two plane rides, one car ride, and eleven hours of transit. I’d prefer to make it one car ride, 30 minutes or less. But for now, I’m in Texas, they’re in Michigan, and transportation remains complicated. Thank goodness I have a PhD.

But it’s worth it—all the planes and cars and hours, the whole damn trip is totally worth it.

We made chocolate-covered strawberries with Lydia for her birthday party. My sister-in-law Amanda commented that the berries she bought weren’t the tiny, flavorful strawberries you find in Midwestern farmers’ markets in the spring, but still, a homemade chocolate-dipped strawberry will amaze you, rich and sweet and a little bit tart, all in one juicy bite. The chocolate-covered strawberries were part of a wonderful birthday dinner, the theme of which was breakfast for dinner, or brinner! Our feast included waffles (with a choice of strawberry or maple syrup—or both for us greedy folks!), a creamy hash brown casserole, frittata, sausage, fruit, and coffee cake. Much contented chewing could be heard inside and out. To wash it all down, we had hot apple cider mulled with the spicy flavors of fall. The cider is an enduring tradition for Lydia’s birthday, and I have to admit, it’s my favorite part.

The week was sprinkled with small adventures too: a trip to a fantastic thrift store, where I found three shirts and relied heavily on my sister’s spot-on fashion advice. A visit to Whole Foods for birthday dinner provisions and a trip to their “cafe” for lunch. Whole Foods is one of those places that I miss so much whenever I shop there. If I’m home in College Station, I can live without Whole Foods, but when I’m in Whole Foods, I think, I need you! I am looking forward to one day living in a town with a Whole Foods because Whole Foods, I need you!

There was also an impromptu hike with my brother and Lydia. It was a gorgeous Sunday, and Lydia was surprisingly enthusiastic about going for a hike, so we made a quick drive over to a little nature preserve-like area and crunched through the leaves and gravel on an old farmstead. There are lovely parks and nature preserves throughout the metro Detroit area, which is one of the city’s charms that I absolutely adore.

There was a rainy day, and a girls’ day out with my mom, and a grilled dinner eaten on the deck the night before I left. There were slow mornings with coffee and sleepyheads. There was the little jailbird (who is not even a year old yet but is ready to conquer the world, or at least sneak into all the places he’s not allowed) who would stand at the baby gate, hands on the bars, looking at us with the saddest face. He broke my heart! You can see how excited he was when we had the back door open while I tried to take a photo or two of the rain.

Devin, the little jailbird, was distracted by the shoes and later by my purple slipper. For Christmas, I think he’s getting his very own shoe. That way he doesn’t have to share his toys with Daddy when Daddy needs to wear his shoes to work.

Yes, I had a wonderful time in Michigan. It was so good, in fact, that one day I’d like to go back and stay. Stay where my family is, where so many of my friends are. I’m ready to return, I think, though I’ll remain in Texas for now because I have work to do here. But one day I am going to put down some new roots in Michigan, right alongside the roots that have been there all along. I’m not ready to do it yet, for all kinds of reasons, but one day I will be.

Until then, there’s Christmas to think about. Stay beautiful, Michigan. I miss you more than you know.

Overwhelmed, but Happily So

2011-09-21T15:45:00.001-05:00

As you may know, it’s a big deal to turn 5 years old. It’s such a big deal, in fact, that one may be inspired to hide behind a pair of red peppers, which were found tucked into a birthday present from Gamma. Birthday Number Five! It’s overwhelming.

I was overwhelmed too. I generally shy away from big group events because they are very intense for me, given my hermit-like tendencies. But seeing my niece surrounded by so much love and generosity at her family birthday party was wonderful. All that love and happiness left me feeling so lucky to be a part of this family, this imperfect family of mine.

I’ve returned from Michigan, after a long day of travel. It was a great vacation, just the right balance of excitement and relaxation, having fun around town and hanging out at home. My vacations often fill me up with so much emotion that it’s hard for me to find my footing afterward, both here on the blog and in real life. It’s hard to know where to hit the “Play” button to resume my regular life. It’s easier at work, I suppose, because I work hard to keep myself organized and ready to jump back into the fray when I return from vacation. But at home, there are piles of laundry to be done, and suitcases yet to be unpacked, and a general sense that I ought to be there, setting up shop again. But in my heart, I’m still in Michigan, still with my family, still soaking up that crisp, almost-fall air. I’m still sipping coffee in the morning, or spicy mulled apple cider in the afternoon. I’m still listening to my baby nephew as he “Brrr-brrr-brrr!”s around the living room, like a little motor boat, pausing occasionally to pull himself up on two feet using whatever’s convenient: the couch, a window ledge, your legs.

Yes, I’m here in Texas, physically, but really, I’m somewhere else altogether. And that’s not a bad thing, at least for a day or two until I get settled back into my routines here. I hope I’ll have more to say about Michigan and family and love soon, but for now, I’m just saying hi.

Hi. Thanks for being here with me, wherever you are. I’m glad you’re here.

Departure Lists

2011-09-11T17:34:00.001-05:00

I feel like I’m bursting with writing ideas for this blog, but at the same time, I’m trying to stay focused on my upcoming trip and all the prep work I need to do in order to leave town with a peaceful mind. I’m finally done with all my trip-related errands (bank, Target, library), and I’ve even stashed a post-trip meal of brown rice and okra in spicy tomato sauce in the freezer. It’s good that my errands are all done and all that remains is packing because I’ve been exhausted this weekend. So exhausted that I felt only a twinge of guilt about watching six episodes of Friday Night Lights in two days (but in my defense, that show is so good!). I started packing today, and though I’m far from finished, I’m feeling pretty pulled-together this week.

In the interest of staying focused on my trip preparations, I thought I’d share a few travel-related lists with you. I like lists, and I hope you do too!

* Packing to wear: lots of clothing that can be easily layered in different ways. After a summer of Texas heat, I think Michigan’s 60-70-degree temperatures are going to feel blissfully cool, but I’m sort of afraid of being cold! So I’m packing smart layers, including my favorite green Five Bamboo dress (as seen here), tights, jeans, some light cardigans, and a few tops.

* Planning transit day meals: I’m going to try to get away with not buying any food on my way up to Michigan. I think we can all agree that airport food sucks, so I’m going to pack minestrone (to be eaten at Houston Hobby Airport before going through security), a big salad, some chopped vegetables, a sandwich, some fruit (dried or fresh—whatever I’ve got), a peanut butter bar (yum!), and some nuts. It sounds like a lot of food, but that will be lunch and dinner, I hope. I’ll probably buy tea and water at the airport—the tea because I like tea and water because it’s absolutely essential. Also, drinking my tea gives me something to do to fend off airport boredom!

* Hoping to read: my new library books! I’m really excited about this set of novels, which you can see above. I love Edith Wharton’s style, and I’ve heard great things about Michael Chabon’s writing. I don’t know as much about Joanne Harris, but Chocolat is on my reading list for this year. In fact, all three authors are on my reading list, but most of these titles are not. What can I say? In my defense, the library didn’t have the Michael Chabon title I wanted (all copies are checked out right now), and The House of Mirth was recommended to me by Matt. Sadly, I’m missing him a lot right now, and it’s going to be a while before we see each other again.

* Ready: for a few days off. It’s been a long, hard summer. I miss my family, especially my niece, and I’m hoping to bond a little more with my baby nephew.

I may be MIA around the blog world for the next week or two, so please don’t be offended by my absence. I’ll be back before you know it, yammering on about how much I love fall and how happy I am about the autumn harvest. Until then, be well, sweet readers.

I’ll See You Soon

2011-09-06T09:02:00.001-05:00

I think it’s hard to write about family without sounding cliché. As Matt once said to me about grammar, “Nothing is more clichéd than grammar, which repeats the same structures over and over again.” Writing about family is a lot like that: I traveled many miles, visited the family, we had a good time, the end! Oh yeah, and isn’t my niece the cutest thing in the entire WORLD?!?

No, seriously. Isn’t she?

But family is far more complicated than that because with family comes family dysfunction. Take, for instance, Christmas Day last year. It was actually not quite the cozy, snow-covered portrait I painted months ago. The day turned out okay in the end, but before that, it featured such heartwarming moments as my brother John storming out of my parents’ house, me saying the f-bomb in front of my parents (not my finest moment, I assure you), and this very funny conversation my sister had with my brother Charlie:

Theresa: “How do you make mashed potatoes?”

Charlie: “One part mash, one part potato.”

At this point, Theresa’s phone died and she burst into tears. I don’t remember why she was so upset that morning, but the whole “one part mash, one part potato” thing pushed her over the edge. Maybe I’m a jerk, but it was one of the funniest stories of that day and it still makes me laugh now, just thinking about it. One part mash, one part potato! That’s my brother, in six words. He makes me laugh.

All of this Christmas Day family dysfunction occurred before the official family celebration began, and I’ll admit, I was pretty grumpy. My family can be stubborn and grouchy, and I’m no different. But it was Christmas Day. Christmas Day! And I was about to spend it with people I love, at least in theory. Even more important to me, it was a Christmas with Lydia and Devin, and I’d like to avoid giving them memories that later they will recall to therapists as they try to undo the psychic damage we inflicted on them on Christmas Day.

So I rallied. We rallied. I apologized to my parents for that little f-bomb that fell from my lips—I was pretty embarrassed by that. They shrugged it off, and I felt a tiny bit better. My sister never quite recovered from that “one part mash, one part potato” thing, but sometimes you just have to let people be grumpy for a while. And John seemed to cheer up once the festivities started—I think he also got a kick out of the whole mashed potato “disaster.”

My point now in recalling our not-so-merry Christmas is that sometimes families have bad days. But we stick together, and we tough it out, and sometimes we escape into bedrooms and call our boyfriends, whose cell phones have no reception out in the boonies, but we leave a message anyway because it’s nice to say Merry Christmas to the people we love.

Families are bigger and stronger than the bad days and the bad times. Or at least my family is, and I consider myself very fortunate that I come from such sturdy, if stubborn, stock. Tolstoy may have written that “happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” but I disagree. Even happy families are complex and multidimensional. A happy family may contain some unhappy members. But I am happy to be a part of my family.

* * *

My sister-in-law Amanda is a great cook, and we do eat quite well at her house. That’s her up there in the third photo, baking with Lydia. It’s funny to remember that at the time of that photo, about a year ago, she was pregnant with Devin, my nephew. Now I hear that Devin has started to pull himself up onto his feet! It’s crazy how fast babies grow.

Last winter, while I was in Michigan for Christmas, Amanda made these amazing peanut butter bars, and it was love at first bite for me. The recipe is pretty similar to these flourless peanut butter brownies, but the addition of chocolate, some tweaks on the salt and baking soda, and a change in baking technique make these bars quite different and very delicious.

While the old brownie recipe produces an almost fudgelike confection, this new recipe makes a chewier treat. It’s a little crumbly in the best way, and the chocolate plays really well against the toasty flavor of peanut butter. These bars get a little darker at the edges, so you have layers of flavor, a savory toasted note and a hint of caramel. They’re so good—I can’t quite capture in words how good they are. But I think the photo below does them justice. I got a little fluffy with my food photos on Sunday, posing this pan of peanut butter bars next to the window in the good light. But I do like how the photo makes me want to dive right into that pan.

Amanda’s Amazing Peanut Butter Bars

Adapted from this recipe for Almond Butter Blondies at elana’s pantry

Makes 24 bars in a 9x13-inch pan

For the peanut butter, I used an organic, “natural” peanut butter, and it worked well. Because the peanut butter gets beaten until creamy, I imagine that any brand would work, including those that require you to stir the separated oil back into the solids.

Oh, and one more note: I bet this recipe would be fantastic with 1 tsp. cinnamon added to the batter. Peanut butter and cinnamon is a favorite combination of mine, so maybe I’ll try that the next time I make these bars.

Cooking spray or butter to grease the pan

18 ounces (2 cups) creamy peanut butter

8 ounces (about 3/4 cup, by eyeball analysis) honey

2 eggs

1/2 tsp. salt

1 tsp. baking soda

1 cup chocolate chips (I used semisweet here), divided

1) Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Spray a 9x13-inch pan with cooking spray or use your preferred method of greasing the pan (butter, etc.).

2) In a large mixing bowl, use a hand mixer to beat the peanut butter until very smooth and creamy.

3) Beat the honey and eggs into the peanut butter.

4) Sprinkle the salt and baking soda over the peanut butter mixture, then beat everything together.

5) Sprinkle 1/2 cup chocolate chips over the batter, then mix them into the batter by hand. The batter will be very thick!

6) Scrape the batter into the prepared pan. Then use your hands to pat it into a layer that’s more or less even. (I find it easiest to use my hands here. For some reason, the batter sticks like crazy to mixing spoons, but it doesn’t stick too badly to my fingers.) Sprinkle the remaining 1/2 cup chocolate chips on top of the batter.

7) Bake for 20-30 minutes at 325 degrees F. The edges will darken, which is okay, but keep an eye on your bars so they don’t burn.

8) Allow bars to cool in their pan on a wire rack. Slice and serve.

* * *

I’ll see you soon, Michigan. You know I can’t wait.

September’s Not to Do List

2011-09-03T17:15:00.001-05:00

On the topic of kitchen resolutions, I’d say I’m 1 for 2: my drying rack has been very busy, trying to keep up with me as I keep my kitchen mess to a minimum. My sink is totally, gloriously empty right now, the perfect prelude to some Saturday night cooking. My freezer, however, has seen few of its tenants move out and welcomed half a chocolate cake this week, my attempt to preserve the remainder of the chocolate raspberry pudding cake. I’m having sort of a hard time figuring out how to deal with the freezer this month because I’m going out of town soon (11 days, to be precise!). I don’t know what to use now and what to keep. I suppose what I’m really lacking is a battle plan: I need a freezer inventory and a list of the recipes with which I’m going to tackle the freezer. Make freezer inventory. There! That’s my next kitchen resolution.

But this month, I thought it important to make some notes on the resolutions I will not be making. Writing a not-to-do list is a bit rebellious, but it’s also very reassuring. And I feel it can be useful for harnessing your resolution energy to make sure it’s aimed squarely in the direction you want to move. I find that I am sometimes vulnerable to the suggestions from other people’s to-do lists and resolutions, such that when someone talks about, for example, quitting alcohol, suddenly the idea that I should quit drinking takes root in my brain. But the thing is, I don’t drink much in the first place! And I like the occasional glass of wine! Writing my not-to-do list is a way of ferreting out all those unwanted ideas and saying to them, firmly but kindly, “NO.” Go ahead, try it: “No!” See? Like I said, it’s very reassuring.

For the month of September, I promise not to:

* Drink less coffee.

* Drink less wine.

* Ride my bike less often.

* Get up earlier.

* Worry about my job and my future.

* Spend less time feeling grateful for my wonderful friends, great colleagues, and good life.

* Feel less loved by the sweetest man I know.

* Spend more time being serious.

* Hurry up.

What are you planning not to do this month?

Late-Summer Kitchen Resolutions

2011-08-29T20:04:00.001-05:00

Even though it was 108 degrees here yesterday, I’m going to declare that we are in the home stretch: summer is almost over.

(For those of you who had to deal with Hurricane Irene, I’m really sorry. Though I live in Texas, we are far enough inland that hurricanes tend not to bother us too much. But to Chrissy and any readers who were stuck inside, or underground, because of Irene, I hope you are okay.)

It’s been an outrageously hot month for us down here: over 100 degrees F for most of August, according to my sources. That’s beyond hot. That’s an inferno, right outside your front door. It’s heat the likes of which I’ve never encountered in the North. I’m living in a firepit. These days, I dream of winter, of an unfamiliar silence during which the air-conditioner doesn’t hum. I dream of cool mornings and hot oatmeal, putting layers under my summer dresses and bike rides that leave me feeling refreshed and not dripping with sweat. I dream of fall, of putting away my shorts and pulling out my tights. I dream of hot apple cider, simmered with spices and ladled into mugs that may or may not be spiked with a shot of rum.

But most of all, I dream of the end of August. And that’s just two days away. I am so happy.

In the spirit of new starts—a new month, a new season—I’ve decided to make two kitchen resolutions to light a little fire under my behind. To illustrate the first, I present to you this rather scary picture of my kitchen a few weeks ago:

Yikes!

I’m not very good at cleaning up the kitchen after every meal. I do some clean-up, but inevitably there are still dirty dishes in the sink when I wander off to do something else. It’s a bad habit, I know, but it accompanies a really good habit, which is cooking at home. Almost all of my meals are home-cooked, so my kitchen sees a lot of action. And I really do love to cook. This weekend, with a soup bubbling on the stove and a cake batter coming together on the countertop, I was just filled with a sense of well-being, of happy productivity. But before my cooking session, I made myself spend a healthy chunk of time cleaning up all the dirty dishes, the ones that started to pile up on me late in the week. It felt good to make that mess go away.

For my kitchen resolution, I’m taking baby steps. Twice a week, I’m going to tackle whatever random mess is in the kitchen sink. I’m going to wash everything until I have an empty sink. Twice a week. It’s a modest goal, but like I said: baby steps.

My second resolution is to work on emptying out the freezer. I have a lot of food that I’ve frozen, such as last year’s cranberries, some very ripe bananas, and okra from Christopher’s garden. I’d like to eat my way through that stash to make room for the fall harvest. Inevitably, I’m going to end up wanting to freeze more cranberries and stash more pumpkin puree away for the winter. I’d like to have room to do that, so I’d better make room now.

I’m happy to report that I’ve already started on the second resolution: I thawed a bag of pumpkin puree from last year. Tonight I simmered a big scoop of it on the stovetop, then dressed it with maple syrup, butter, and a few pinches of salt. It was delicious—earthy and rich and a little haunting. The perfect prelude to autumn, which is just around the corner.

Do you have any kitchen resolutions? How do you keep your cooking space from turning into a disaster zone? Do share your secrets—this messy cook is all ears!

A Humble Little Bowl

2011-08-28T16:29:00.001-05:00

Last night I ate a wonderful, comfort-foods dinner: a vegetable soup, pureed, swirled with yogurt, and topped with shredded cheese, almost like a baked potato in soup form; crunchy romaine lettuce, eaten in pure green form—no dressing, no nothing, just leaves; and a chocolate raspberry pudding cake, a Nigella Lawson recipe that I’d been eyeing for a long time and finally made into a kitchen reality.

To be honest, I thought the cake would steal the show. How could it not? A dense, fudgy cake, rich with chocolate and studded with raspberries, “like glinting, mud-covered garnets,” as Nigella says. I love the combination of chocolate and raspberry. It’s a match made in heaven, with the fruity tartness of the berries cutting through the palate-coating richness of chocolate. But to be honest, while the cake was tasty enough, and while I plan to eat another slice tonight for dessert, I’m not sure I’d make this cake again. Or if I did, I would make some changes. It wasn’t sweet enough for my taste, for one thing. It’s made with coffee, so it’s more like a mocha raspberry cake, and I think the bitterness of the coffee dulls the sweetness. Another thing is that the cake was more cake-like than I expected. I was hoping for a bit of a molten quality, a pudding quality, so I think I’d underbake this a bit, 40 minutes instead of 45 in the oven. The cake was pretty solid at 45 minutes.

Like I said, I’ll eat my cake and not complain because after all, it’s still chocolate and raspberries and oh man, it’s that time of the month when chocolate practically becomes its own food group at my table. But I should mention that making the cake was really quite fun. I got to use my springform pan for the first time (I’ve only owned it for, oh, three years now?), and it worked beautifully: no leaks! And my cake came out easily after its requisite cooling time. Also, raspberries! They’re gorgeous! And this cake features a layer of them, scattered on top of half the cake batter and then covered with the remaining batter. Putting the layers of cake together in their springform pan was my favorite part. Eating the cake was my second favorite part. Washing all the dishes was my least favorite part.

It turns out that the best part of dinner was my rather understated baked potato in soup form. The recipe comes from Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home, a much-loved cookbook with some fantastic soup recipes. I’ve made this soup before and liked it quite a bit, but yesterday, while wandering around the hippie food store, thinking vaguely of dinner and looking at yellow squash, I was reminded of the recipe and decided it would make for an easy, tasty, and soothing dinner. I wasn’t entirely sure I’d be able to remember all the ingredients for a soup I’d made once, but I felt confident that I could improvise if I forgot something. I knew it called for yellow squash, and potatoes, and carrots, and cheese, but what else? Onions? And that was all I could remember.

Which, as it turns out, was enough.

This soup appears like a humble little bowl, but I find it absolutely delightful. The flavors are really well balanced: the starchy mildness of the vegetables, really good vegetable stock, the punchy brightness of yogurt, and to top it all off, the savory melt of shredded cheese. The original recipe calls for stirring the cheese into the soup, but last night, when I was lazy and didn’t feel like shredding an entire cup of cheese, I just sprinkled a handful over one bowl and I loved the effect. I feel like the cheese has more presence when it’s not melted into the soup—it’s more pronounced, with a distinct texture and flavor apart from the soup.

Happy cooking, friends.

Potato-Yogurt Soup

Adapted from Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home (the original recipe is Golden Cheddar Cheese Soup)

Makes 4 servings

2 tbsp. vegetable oil

2 medium white or yellow onions, chopped

2 medium potatoes, thinly sliced (I like red potatoes or Yukon Golds here)

1 medium or large carrot, sliced

1 medium yellow summer squash, halved lengthwise and sliced

1/2 tsp. freshly ground black pepper (I didn’t measure this but used a lot of pepper and called it good)

1/8 tsp. tumeric (a big pinch)

2 cups vegetable stock

1/2 cup yogurt

1/2 cup water

Grated cheese, such as cheddar or jack, for sprinkling on top

1) In a soup pot, heat the oil over medium to medium-high heat. Add the onions and cook for several minutes, until they soften.

2) Add the potatoes, carrots, yellow squash, black pepper, and tumeric to the onions. Cook for a few minutes, stirring frequently.

3) Add the vegetable stock, bring to a bubble, and simmer for 15-20 minutes, or until the vegetables are very soft.

4) Turn off the heat and let the soup sit for a few minutes. Then blend it to smoothness in a blender or using an immersion blender, if you have one.

5) Mix the yogurt with the water and stir to combine. Pour the yogurt mixture into the blended soup and stir. Taste for seasonings (salt and pepper) and adjust if needed.

6) Ladle the soup into bowls and sprinkle the top with shredded cheese. You could also put more shredded cheese on the table and let your guests doctor their bowls themselves. Some people might even reach for the hot sauce, but I think this soup is perfect as is.

On Perseverance

2011-08-26T12:46:00.001-05:00

Today I decided that it’s time for me to write a really honest post about what is happening behind the scenes around here. I want to share my still-unfolding story with you because that’s what writers do: they tell stories, sometimes other people’s stories and sometimes their own story. This is my story.

It’s been a really hard summer. In June, I received an evaluation at work in which I was told that my performance “needed improvement.” I was informed that if my performance did not improve by October of 2011, my position may be eliminated. In a nutshell, I’ve struggled in my research since I started my postdoc in October 2009. My main project, the project on which my advisor and I thought I was guaranteed success, failed to go anywhere. It failed to thrive. I spent over a year on that project, trying to make some progress, but all I got was negative data and frustration. This type of failure is really common in science—it happens all the goddamn time. At the end of last summer, when it became clear that this “surefire project” was becoming elusive, I started working on a secondary project. On that secondary project, I also generated a lot of negative results (which, again, is very normal in science!), but very slowly, I started building a project. I started seeing an interesting phenomenon, one that repeated itself, and I thought, Could this be real?

The new project has had its share of ups and downs, but there was a trickle of interesting data that kept me intrigued, so I continued to work on it. For a variety of reasons, the work on that project was slow, but I kept plugging away at it. The aforementioned “guaranteed success” project faded from my everyday thoughts, but it didn’t fade from my advisor’s thoughts when he did my annual evaluation. Because I had failed to make progress on that particular project, and because my advisor and I had been going through a rough patch, he gave me a really negative evaluation. To be honest, I had been expecting a negative evaluation because things weren’t going so well between us, but still, when I finally held the document in my hands, its words shook me hard and long.

I did what anyone would do: I cried. I got mad, I felt sorry for myself, and I panicked. I talked to friends. Then I got to work: I wrote a rebuttal to my evaluation, using a rational, evidence-based approach in my responses. I met with my advisor a few days later, bringing my rebuttal with me. We hashed it out, quite calmly even, and we came up with a plan for the summer. Then it was time for me to show and prove: show him that I could do the experiments and prove that my project and I were worth our spot (and funding!) in the lab.

So I got to work, and I worked hard. I was in the lab seven days a week, trying to crank it out. I’m still in that phase now, though I’d say things feel more optimistic to me than they did three months ago. One thing that I decided against doing, even though it would have been reasonable to do it, was launch into a job search. I thought long and hard about whether I should just find another job and walk away from this one. There were two good reasons not to start a job search right away. The first and best reason is that I liked my project. I still do. And I wanted to give it my best shot to see if I could build a story out of it. The second is that four months is not a lot of time in the research world. Blink and four months will have passed. If I really wanted to give my best effort in the lab in those four months, I couldn’t be distracted by looking for jobs elsewhere. I had to focus.

In June, immediately following my evaluation, I was a wreck: angry, anxious, scared. I don’t think I’ve ever received such negative feedback on my work. It was demoralizing and upsetting, even if I didn’t agree with all the specifics of the evaluation. I’ve always been a hard worker and a high achiever, but now I was facing a boss who was telling me otherwise. And the thing is, he wasn’t totally wrong. I had been struggling in my research. I had been unlucky. And I was frustrated with that. But never before had an advisor come down so hard on me. It rattled me.

I took my time, processing the aftershocks of the bad news. Perhaps it sounds like I was overreacting, but consider this: in my life, my work is huge. It’s my livelihood, of course, but it’s also part of my identity and my pride. I moved 1100 miles for this job, giving up all my local friends and comforts as well as easy travel back to Michigan to see my family. I made huge sacrifices for my current job because I thought it was worth it. And now here it was, crumbling beneath my feet, despite my best efforts to make it work.

But here is the amazing thing: after giving myself time to feel however I happened to feel, I have arrived at a better place. Research-wise, I feel optimistic about the future. More importantly, I feel at peace about whatever happens. I may still lose my job (or as I like to say, because it sounds better, “my contract may not be renewed”), but I know that I gave it my best effort. That’s really all I can do. The only way for me to guarantee that my experiments will yield a particular result is for me to fake the data, which is not a strategy I endorse. For me, recognizing that all I can do is perform the experiments patiently and thoughtfully was a huge step toward making peace with my situation.

Is my situation still anxiety-provoking? Yes, absolutely. Not knowing whether I will have a monthly income in November does not make me happy. But for now, I’ve chosen to focus on what I do have, which is a few more months in this job. After that, we will see what happens.

Either way, everything is going to be okay. That much I know.

Here’s a photo to illustrate my research interests. Any guesses?

Lucky Me

2011-08-24T12:10:00.001-05:00

This is Part Three and the final installment of my rambling little essay on love. You can find Part One here and Part Two over here.

I fully intend to finish this essay series before the end of August because I need to make sure you still have access to good summer produce! Today we’re talking melons, but before that, let’s talk about friends and the food they cook for us.

I’ve waxed poetically about Matt’s cooking before, but his recipes remain elusive. He cooks intuitively and delightfully, which makes watching him cook quite the pleasure. We don’t really cook together any more, which would make me sad if I hadn’t decided to just accept my role as audience member when he’s in the kitchen. I think part of loving someone, especially for a long time, is accepting them: their temperament, rhythms, and habits. Matt and I do a pretty good job at this with each other. Part of how Matt operates is that when he cooks, it’s mostly a solo operation. It’s certainly possible that my small kitchen has something to do with this; it might not be as easy for him to handle the small space. My friend Amutha, who is a scientist like me, pointed out that when you work in labs as we do, you get used to sharing small spaces with people. You perfect the art of dancing around other people. It’s fitting that Amutha and I have an easy time sharing my kitchen, but Matt and I tend to segregate: he takes over the kitchen while I eat snacks at the kitchen table and occasionally play sous-chef (“Can you rinse these tomatoes?”).

The last time we had dinner together, I very slyly convinced both Matt and Amutha to cook dinner for us: a tag-team effort between two of my favorite cooks. They agreed easily; it probably helped matters that the two of them get along quite cheerfully, and we like to keep the red wine flowing in the evening. The menu was Spain-meets-India: Matt made a refreshing gazpacho packed with produce from that morning’s visit to the farmers’ market. Amutha made a channa paneer, if I may be so bold as to call it that: a heavily spiced dish of chickpeas and fried cheese, made magical with Amutha’s spice kit. Matt and I both knew we’d be eating well that night when we heard Amutha was bringing her spice kit over to my place. Oh yes. And finally, as a palate cleanser, Matt assembled plates of melon and prosciutto for the meat-eaters; for me, he swapped out the prosciutto and instead dressed the melon slices with fresh lime juice and chopped mint.

As he chopped vegetables for the gazpacho, Matt nudged me to get out my camera and document his gazpacho-making. And it was quite lovely, too, all the layers of summer vegetables, piled on top of one another in a rainbow of garden beauty. Knowing that Amutha would be making a spicy Indian dish, Matt borrowed a note from the subcontinent’s raitas and went heavy on the cucumber so the gazpacho would complement the richness of Amutha’s dish.

But the gazpacho would not have been gazpacho without a judicious handful of raw garlic and a generous pour of olive oil to give it body. We’re not talking vegetable smoothie here; we’re talking gazpacho.

The red wine must have started working by the time Amutha arrived, as I have no photographic evidence of her efforts at the stove. But I know this much: nobody cooks Indian food more deliciously than an Indian. I love watching Amutha cook, the way her hands move so gracefully through chopping, seasoning, and cooking her food. She has her own little kitchen dance, swaying from chopping board to frying pan to spice kit. And her food tastes like nothing I’ve eaten before. I mean, it tastes like Indian food, but it’s better than anything I’d had in an Indian restaurant. To say that I like it would be an understatement. I really, really, really like it.

When Amutha finished her channa paneer, the three of us sat down to dinner and had one of the loveliest evenings in recent memory. Matt and Amutha have so many little habits and preferences in common that I say they are like two peas in a pod. I certainly wouldn’t have guessed that Matt would find his counterpart in an Indian woman, but it’s true and hilarious. They both prefer red wine over white, evenings to mornings, hot weather to cold, and both have a way of making everything they do look easy. They also have a shared affinity for people who are a little more outwardly emotional, people who don’t have the cool-as-a-cucumber act down pat. I find this last similarity fascinating, perhaps because it speaks more deeply to a similarity in temperament which shapes their attraction to other people.

And lucky me, they put up with my shenanigans. I am hardly cool as a cucumber most of the time, but sometimes I’m mellow as a melon. Since that evening, I’ve been preparing cantaloupe the way Matt did for me: with mint and fresh lime juice. I’ve also started adding a pinch of salt, a move inspired by the prosciutto, whose saltiness plays so well against cantaloupe’s sweetness. It’s a deeply refreshing recipe (hardly a recipe at all, really), and I thought you might enjoy it as much as I have.

Matt’s Melon with Lime and Mint

Serves 3-4 as a side dish

1 perfectly ripe cantaloupe melon

A lime

Kosher salt to taste

Fresh mint to taste

1) Chop the melon into bite-sized chunks and place in a large bowl. Chop the lime in half and squeeze some juice over the melon. Sprinkle some salt over the melon.

2) Wash, dry, and chop the mint. Sprinkle some chopped mint over the melon, then toss everything together. Serve immediately or tuck in the fridge to save for later.

Weekend To-Do List

2011-08-19T12:24:00.001-05:00

* Update blogroll. I’ve been on the fence for years about my blogroll. It’s not exactly a reflection of the blogs I like to read, and I’d like to make some adjustments to it. To be really honest, I’m going to remove some of the really popular blogs which don’t need any promotion from me (like the healthy living blogs) to make room for lesser-known but very lovely blogs. Also, if you have a blog and you think I’d enjoy reading it, tell me about it in the comments! I’d love to find more blogs written by people who are neither professional bloggers nor writers—in other words, people like me, who have a day job that has nothing to do with food or blogging.

* Update recipe index. The index is so out of date that it frightens me. It’s going to take me a while to catch up on all those recipe posts!

* Plan dinner menu for Saturday’s dinner with upstairs neighbor. I’m thinking chili and cornbread.

* Pick out a tart pan to add to my Amazon wishlist. My sister has been pressuring me lately to add more items to my wishlist, though I’d like to point out now that mesquite flour has been languishing on my list for nine months now. I added a few Iron & Wine albums to my list because I can think of nothing better than an evening in the kitchen with Iron & Wine keeping me company, but this post over at rachel eats reminded me: this tart needs a tart pan!

* Make more basil oil. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it, but it’s a delicious decision to make!

* Read Dreaming in Hindi while relaxing on the couch. I’ve been reading this book for a while now. It was a little slow in the middle, but I think we’re picking up speed toward the end and I’m feeling eager to finish it.

Happy weekend, friends!

Let’s Talk About Peppers Today

2011-08-18T21:42:00.001-05:00

With apologies to my friend Ammie, let’s talk about peppers today. Ammie hates peppers, and I feel like I’m leaving her out. Maybe next week we should talk about pie? Ammie loves pie.

On the subject of bell peppers, Nigel Slater writes,

“Without heat—from a grill, an oven, a cast-iron pan blackened with age—there is little point to the pepper. Raw, green, and unripe, its waxy, plastic skin and lack of obvious juice offer little but crisp nothingness. Refreshing, yes, but somehow an imposter in a green salad; an annoying intruder in a Bloody Mary; an unimaginative addition to a rice dish. Wherever it appears, the raw green pepper seems uncomfortable.” (from Tender)

Hmm. It’s an interesting take on bell peppers, but I think I’ll beg to disagree. I think a side of crunchy bell pepper slices can be rather nice next to a gooey, cheesy main course, such as a grilled cheese sandwich, a creamy bowl of soup, or an indulgent pasta. Their “crisp nothingness” can be a lovely palate cleanser, a little vegetal mouth freshener between bites of something rich. And perhaps I’m just fond of raw vegetables because they’re so easy: a little knifework and they are ready to eat.

But Nigel does have a point about the alchemy of bell peppers and heat. When the two come together, something wonderful happens: crispy becomes silky, and something both brighter and deeper emerges out of the bell pepper. The flavor is pulled in two different directions, which I think is why roasted red bell peppers are so beloved by foodies. I’m actually not the biggest fan of them myself, but I was intrigued by a recipe in Tender in which Nigel calls for baking red bell peppers with tiny tomatoes, with both vegetables lightly dressed in salt, pepper, and olive oil. After a blast the oven, the roasted vegetables are dressed with basil oil, which is so simple and so sublime that I demand you make it before the end of summer: fresh basil and olive oil, buzzed to a cheerful green puree in the food processor. This stuff is amazing…AMAZING! Nigel’s recipe will make more basil oil that you probably want or need to dress your peppers, and I’ve been using the remaining oil in all sorts of delicious things: dribbled on fresh mozzarella(!), mixed into fat pearls of Israeli couscous, as a dip for crusty bread.

As you can tell, I’m rather fond of the basil oil. The peppers were good too. Ammie, it turns out there is something in this post for you after all!

Nigel Slater’s Roasted Red Peppers and Tomatoes with Basil Oil

From Tender by Nigel Slater

Serve 4, with appropriate accompaniments, such as a nice cheese offering and some good bread

Nonstick spray

4 large red bell peppers

16 tiny tomatoes, such as grape or cherry tomatoes

Olive oil for drizzling

Salt and pepper

For the basil oil:

1/3 cup olive oil

Fresh basil to taste (I used one of those little 2/3-ounce packages from the grocery store and liked the looseness of the resulting basil oil, but you could certainly use more basil if you like)

1) Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Spray a large roasting sheet with nonstick spray. Slice the peppers in half lengthwise and remove the seeds and white membranes. I sliced off the stems too. Lay the peppers, cut-side up, on the roasting pan.

2) Halve the tomatoes, then divide them among the peppers, placing them inside. Sprinkle some salt and pepper over everything, then drizzle a little olive oil over each pepper half.

3) Roast the peppers for about 45-50 minutes, until the peppers have softened and the tomatoes are collapsing.

4) Make the basil oil: place the olive oil and fresh basil in a food processor, then buzz to make a puree.

5) Serve the peppers with the basil oil, either drizzling some oil over each serving or letting each person add basil oil to taste. Save the leftover oil and use it anywhere and everywhere. Or just call me up and I’ll come over with a loaf of bread to take care of that leftover basil oil.

Friday, with Up, Down, and a Little Visual Nostalgia

2011-08-12T16:46:00.001-05:00

A year ago…

…working at home, riding the bus, taking self-photos, enjoying the water lilies.

Lately I’ve been interested in looking back through my photos from last year’s summer, particularly the ones that I never shared on Flickr. I don’t spend a lot of time on this blog looking into the past; I tend to be a very forward-looking person in general. It takes some effort for me to reel myself in from events that haven’t happened yet, and my constant anticipation of things to come is a major source of my anxiety. So it’s refreshing to look back for a change, to see what caught my eye and what I liked when I was a year younger.

It’s funny that to my eyes now, last summer seemed fun and lighthearted, at least when I see it as a collage of photos. When I think back to what was happening on the ground here, last August was the first indication that this job I’d accepted was not turning out the way I had hoped. August 2010 was unpleasant because it started to shake the foundation upon which I was building my future. Those rumblings have continued, but a year later, I feel much more at peace with not knowing where and how I will be employed. Right now, there is a certain comfort in not worrying about it, not yet at least.

For now, I remain focused on my immediate experiments and the day-to-day chores. I’m actually feeling really bogged down with daily responsibilities right now, to the point where I wish I could have taken today off from work to deal with my empty refrigerator and the dirty dishes in the sink. Is that a lame set of reasons to take a day off? I’m also feeling generally tired and a little worn out today. I could have used a day to relax and catch up on my non-work life.

But I do what I have to do, and what I have to do these days is work. I have to keep my eyes on the prize, which, in theory, is another paper. When I think about my work like that, I do feel a little better about days like today. And the fact that today is Friday makes me feel like some rest is not too far away.

I’m a little grumpy today. Perhaps you could tell? I’m sorry about that. Let’s lighten things up a bit with another Up/Down list. I’ll try to make sure the Up side is long enough to cheer us both up.

On the Up side of things, we have:

* Friday Night Lights. I’m watching season 1 of this high school football drama. It was a little depressing and slow at first, but the storylines are picking up speed now and I’m enjoying it very much. Plus, Matt Saracen reminds me of my high school boyfriend, which is kind of adorable.

* Rocking out with Tom Petty while working at my microscope. I spend a lot of time in front of a microscope these days. When I was writing my PhD thesis, I had a playlist called Thesis Rock, and Tom Petty was an important part of that list. He’s good for lab days.

* Pulling together today’s lunch out of random bits and bobs in the refrigerator. I had no leftovers to use for lunch, except for a bit of rice and a tiny bit of chickpea salad. It was depressing. But then I dug through the produce drawer and found half a cucumber and a third of a tomato. Combined with the chickpea salad and some jack cheese, sprinkled with some Herbemare, and tucked in a spicy flour wrap, my vegetables made for a tasty little main course for one. I’m pretty pleased with my fridge raid! That being said, I need to cook tomorrow!

* Postdoc happy hour tonight! Since I’m eating dinner at happy hour as well, let’s hope there is something reasonably tasty and nutritious for vegetarians on the menu.

* Peanut butter chocolate chip cookies. I need one right now, which means I must bake more of them ASAP.

On the Down side of things, we have:

* A job that doesn’t offer as much flexibility as I would like. Sometimes I just need a day off, but it’s hard to make that happen because of the patterns within my work schedule.

* Being a tired, grumpy postdoc. Blarg.

* Needing a vacation! And then having to wait another month for that vacation.

* I was pretty bummed to learn a while ago about Borders going bankrupt. The cookbook section of the Evanston Borders was a very important place for me during graduate school. This piece, published in The Stranger, makes me even more sad for bookstores and book lovers. But it’s insightful, well-written, and worth a read, especially if at one time, you loved Borders like I did.

* * *

Happy weekend, my dears!

Even Without a Gay Husband

2011-08-11T12:33:00.001-05:00

Some of us are, shall we say, visually challenged. Not only are my eyes something like 20/200 (which is terrible, terrible vision! I can’t even read the words I’m typing!), but my interior decorating skills are so poor that Matt has said he feels like he is staying in an asylum when he visits me. The white walls, the beige carpet, the lack of art—it’s just too much for him. He likes bold, daring interior spaces. My apartment is a little too calming for him.

But you know, I’m a high-strung person, and I find the white walls soothing. I wouldn’t mind having more art, or even some color on the walls, but with my transient postdoc lifestyle, it’s hard to justify the investment of time and energy in this space that I’m renting. I felt the same way when I was a graduate student, knowing that I was very likely to move to another city within a few years. Decorating felt a little pointless—a waste of time and money, especially for impecunious graduate students who are short on both!

Last weekend, I was sitting at my kitchen table, eating lunch, messily, as usual, when I spilled my soup on the tablecloth. It was a mess that required a change of clothing for the table. Normally, I’d reach for another tablecloth because I always use tablecloths, just like my mom. But that day, I wasn’t in the mood. I wanted something different. I’ve always liked the look of table runners on other people’s tables. (These are the sorts of things I think about when I read food blogs: table runners.) I have a circular table, and I didn’t think table runners worked with round tables. The geometry doesn’t seem quite right, like the linear shape of a table runner against the curviness of a round table do not match. Despite all this, I decided to experiment, and I came up with this:

and this:

I overlapped three of my square cloth napkins to create a makeshift table runner, and I really like how it turned out! The bright colors look so cheerful against the polished wood. The effect seems very summery to me.

Not bad for a visually challenged postdoc, eh? Maybe I don’t need a gay husband after all.

On Love and Cookie Dough Truffles

2011-08-07T20:55:00.001-05:00

I’ve been known to bake in August, much to my mother’s horror. August, in Texas, is what I like to call “the indoor season,” for obvious reasons. I don’t spend the entire month indoors; I still get outside for bike rides and the occasional and quite literal run to Starbucks for coffee beans, but in summertime Texas, the outdoors don’t entice me like they do the rest of the year. So I spend my time nesting and cooking, waiting out the heat until the cooler days of fall saunter into my life.

I realize that it’s kind of stupid to have the oven and the air-conditioner running at the same time. I feel dollar bills slipping through my fingers, money seeping out of my apartment on a breeze of baked granola and artificially cooled air. To my mind, the best strategy is to not think about these things too much because summer is an awfully long season where I live, and it would be a shame to deny myself treats like Roasted Tomato Soup or Crunchy Brown Sugar Granola. I do tend to avoid turning on the oven at every meal, and I eat a lot of leftovers, so I’m not a complete spendthrift about my energy consumption. But the smart Texas cook turns to a different set of appliances to survive the summer: a food processor and the freezer.

I mentioned long, long ago that I would tell you the story of my little food processor. Back in the Stone Ages, I dated K, who lived in a lovely condo but had no real drinking glasses. All of his water cups were those giant plastic ones, which was so strange to me because he seemed like a grown-up, but here he was with frat boy kitchen supplies. He needed grown-up glassware, so for Christmas, I bought him a set of drinking glasses. They were very heavy, and I lugged them from the store to the L to my apartment, where they sat, gift-wrapped, until K broke up with me in March. I was deeply disappointed about being dumped, but I was pissed—PISSED!—about those damn drinking glasses, which I would now have to lug back to the store to return.

I was so angry about the stupid glasses that I was filled with superhuman strength as I hauled them back to downtown Chicago. I stepped up to the return counter, and the clerk asked, “Is there a reason for this return?” I answered, “They were a gift for someone, but I’m not giving them to him now.” The clerk, bless his heart, said, “He must have been a jerk,” as he ran my return through the system. He handed me my receipt, and I realized that the best way to make myself feel better about having been dumped would be to buy myself a present with K’s returned gift! I’d been thinking about getting a food processor for a while; I had a new cookbook that called for a food processor. So I bought myself a little Cuisinart Mini-Prep Plus. The Cuisinart and I have now been together for far longer than K and I were together, and I daresay that we’ve been happier together as well. In June, as I watched Matt making gazpacho using the Cuisinart, I thought about the ways in which our old lives intersect with our current lives. Not only did K help bring me and the Cuisinart together with his returned gift, he helped bring me and Matt together because it was through dating K that I realized how desperately I needed to be with someone who could listen, empathize, and love in ways that didn’t come naturally to K. To this day, I think that dumping me is the nicest thing he ever did for me. Life is funny that way.

The Cuisinart and I have shared many moments together in the kitchen, making pesto and chickpea patties and now, cookie dough truffles. I first found a recipe for these unbaked dough balls on Oh She Glows; since then, I’ve tinkered with the recipe to come up with something I really love. Since the end of my Specific Carbohydrate Diet experiment, I’ve had bags of almond flour moping around my freezer, unused. Swapping almond flour for the cashews in the original recipe seemed like a great opportunity to use up the almond flour before it went bad.

In my first batch of truffles, the only swap I made was almond flour for cashews. Since then, I’ve dropped the oatmeal because I felt it made the dough gritty, subbing in more almond flour; lowered the salt; mixed up the sweeteners; and experimented with different chocolates. But every version has been delicious: the dough, though (usually) vegan and relatively nutritious, tastes decadently rich and the texture is very similar to a traditional chocolate chip cookie dough. It’s really kind of remarkable and a nice trick to have up your sleeve if you are into alternative cooking, such as making vegan or gluten-free treats. I’ve probably made these truffles half a dozen times this summer, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I make them just as often in this final month or so of summer. They’re too easy to make!

Below is my favorite iteration of this sweet, along with a few notes to help you play with the recipe to your heart’s content.

Cookie Dough Truffles

Adapted from this recipe on Oh She Glows

Makes about 12-14 truffles

A few notes, just for fun:

* I’ve made versions of this recipe with honey and maple syrup; they seem pretty interchangeable to me.

* You could use a pinch or two more of the salt if you like, but I think I’m happiest with 1/4 tsp.

* I think this could easily be made gluten-free and grain-free by substituting a different flour for the pastry flour. Perhaps coconut flour? Or you could try going up to 1 cup almond flour and adding a bit of flax egg. If I went that route, I’d start with 1/2 tbsp. ground flax mixed with 1 1/2 tbsp. water.

* My other favorite version of this recipe uses half of a Chocolove bar of Orange Peel in Dark Chocolate. The orange peel is so delicious and adds this wonderful crunch to the truffles. They are addictively good! Consider yourself warned.

3/4 cup almond flour

1/4 cup whole-wheat pastry flour

1/4 tsp. kosher salt

2 tbsp. granulated sugar

1 1/2 tbsp. honey

1/2 tbsp. water

1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

1/4 cup chocolate chips

1) In a food processor, combine the almond flour, pastry flour, salt, and granulated sugar. Buzz to combine.

2) Add the honey, water, and vanilla. Buzz to let the ingredients come together into a doughy consistency.

3) Add the chocolate chips, and buzz to combine them into the dough.

4) Scrape the dough into a small bowl. Use your hands to shape the dough into bite-sized balls. Tuck them into a container that you can seal tightly, and store them in the freezer.

Right on the Money

2011-08-06T14:39:00.001-05:00

Dear readers, I have good news! The roasted tomato soup is a winner! I’m actually writing a recipe post! Hip hip hooray!

I confess that I was not as enthusiastic about this soup the night I made it. The original recipe makes a chunky vegetable soup that you ladle over toasted garlic bread. While that sounded good in theory, I opted out of the garlic bread part and found that the chunky soup was just a little too rustic. Normally, I’m all about rustic cooking, but there were too many tomato skins and seeds for me to be thrilled about this soup. I was, in fact, so distracted by the texture that I barely considered the flavor. I’m sure it didn’t taste bad, but it needed help.

The last roasted tomato soup I made was a Roasted Tomato and Black Bean Soup. That soup blew me away with its complex flavor. It was rich and spicy, robust and so perfectly balanced that I crave it now, just thinking about it. I was hoping for a similar experience with the Italian-style roasted tomato soup on Sunday night, but instead I slunk away from the table, disappointed and pouting.

Thinking back to the black bean soup, I decided to experiment by throwing the roasted tomato soup leftovers into the blender and buzzing it to smoothness. I also felt hopeful that a few days of resting in the fridge might help the flavors to coalesce. After all, there was no reason why a soup with roasted onions and tomatoes, half a cup of roasted garlic, and a generous handful of fresh basil should be anything less than terrific. (Yes, you read that correctly: HALF A CUP of roasted garlic. It was insane. It was incredible. You must try it.) While I was prepared for my predictions to be wrong, as they often are, for once, I was right on the money. After a patient zhuzh in the blender, the soup was transformed. Gone were the distracting textural issues; in their place was a deep, wonderful soup, like the best tomato sauce you’ve ever had but even better. Even knowing what was in the soup, I found it hard to tease apart the flavors—they’d melded into something singularly delicious, something perfect for slurping from the spoon and dipping my bread into. It was ambrosial, this roasted but now chilled and blended soup. I highly recommend it, and the bread too, if you can find it. I bought a loaf of Blue Baker’s Italian Loaf, and it was wonderful. But really, I think any good sourdough or savory artisan bread would be nice with the soup.

Roasted Tomato Soup

Adapted from EatingWell

Serves 4

2 medium or large onions, sliced

2 tbsp. vegetable or olive oil

1/4 tsp. salt, plus more to taste

1/4 tsp. black pepper, plus more to taste

20 ounces tiny tomatoes (I used grape tomatoes)

1/2 cup garlic, peeled and coarsely chopped (yes, half a cup!)

3 cups vegetable stock

Generous handful of fresh basil

1) Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F.

2) In a 9x13-inch pan, toss together the onions, oil, salt, and pepper. Roast for 18-20 minutes, until the onions start to brown.

3) Stir the tomatoes and garlic into the onion mixture. Roast for another 18-20 minutes, until the tomatoes start to collapse and the onions have browned some more.

4) Scrape the roasted vegetables into a soup pot. Add the vegetable stock, bring everything to a simmer, and turn off the heat. Let the soup rest for 10 minutes or longer.

5) Add the basil to the soup pot. In a blender, working in batches, puree the soup to smoothness. Taste and add more salt or pepper if needed.

6) Serve, either warm or at room temperature.

It’s Random, I Know

2011-08-02T13:18:00.001-05:00

May

June

July

Today I share with you three random photos from May, June, and July, in that order, from this year. Apparently I like taking pictures of tree branches.

There is a shortage of good, functional pens around the lab, so whenever I find an abandoned pen, I snatch it up and make it mine.

I have no interior decorating skills. None. And I wish I had a husband with a gay man’s interior design skills!

I wonder if I can poach the nectarines that are refusing to ripen into something that does not feel like tennis balls.

I like seeing spiders around my apartment because I assume they are busy eating the insects in my apartment!

I often feel guilty about not being able to read the work of much-praised writers. But then I think, How much work should my pleasure reading be?

The roasted tomato soup from Sunday night was not as good as I hoped it would be. But tonight, I’m going to find out if a few days of chilling in the fridge have brought out the best in my soup. We all need to chill sometimes, right? Why should it be any different for food? I’ll report back with the results and a recipe.

I’m sure this one is obvious, but I’m having trouble writing recipe posts. Perhaps it’s a case of the summertime lazies?

Fresh, Calm, Pretty

2011-07-31T17:57:00.001-05:00

Scenes from a Sunday at home…

Today is my first day away from the lab in over three months. I would say it’s my first day completely off from work, but I did some work this morning (shhh…). How nice is it to work in pajamas, at home, relaxed and happy! It’s very nice. I wish I could work at home more often.

It’s been a really lovely, slow day. I made vegetable and rice soup for lunch, listened to Iron & Wine and Gillian Welch on the CD player, and walked very slowly to the grocery store for some provisions. I spent quality time with Nigel Slater, reading the chapter on pumpkins and winter squash in Tender and dreaming of the cooler days to come. I swear, I want to cook everything in that chapter, from the pumpkin pangrattato with rosemary and orange to the sausages with pumpkin mash to the pumpkin laksa to the pumpkin scones. Everything sounds delicious and hearty and filling—all my favorite qualities about food.

I also gave this blog its first makeover, and I’m really happy with the results! The new look feels fresh, calm, and pretty to me—all things that I’d like to be, quite frankly, though usually I’m frazzled, anxious and sweaty. But maybe the blog can inspire new levels of patience and serenity in me. If you’re reading through Google Reader or a similar medium, I encourage you to click on over here and check out the new look. Let me know what you think!

Right now I’ve got a roasted tomato soup resting its heels on the stovetop, and if it’s any good, I’ll tell you about it soon. I know I promised you a recipe yesterday, but how about we compromise and I’ll post a recipe sooner rather than later? I bet at least a few of you are like me—you read blogs as much for the beautiful writing and photography as for the recipes. I also read blogs because I like to check in on my blog friends to see what they are doing. On that note, I’ll end by saying hello, happy Sunday, and have a good week! Next time, we can meet in the kitchen, with tomatoes, ready to cook.

Five Bamboo, Thank You!

2011-07-30T19:04:00.001-05:00

My dear readers, perhaps you will indulge me just one post about my closet. I realize that in theory, this is a food blog and in theory, I post recipes. In fact, I hope that the very next thing I share with you, after this post, will be a recipe because I still like food. I’m sure you do too. I even have something in the oven right this minute and it’s smelling really delicious. I hope the taste lives up to the smell! If it does, I’ll tell you about it soon.

Today’s post is a story about my closet, my transition out of graduate school, and a sweet little company in Seattle called Five Bamboo. Two years ago (give or take a few months), I started a new job and a new phase in my professional life. For the first time, I was a professional, a professional scientist. I jumped into my new job with gusto, embracing my new status as a postdoc. My closet, however, was still that of a graduate student who liked to shop at thrift stores and who liked to save money. It was also the closet of a woman who lived in the Great White North, where it’s winter six months a year. I had a pretty awesome collection of sweaters, and I was a pro at wearing layers to keep warm.

Then I moved to Texas, and suddenly, a closet that had once seemed perfectly satisfying was lacking some oomph. I needed more warm-weather clothing that was stylish, work-appropriate, and made me feel good when I wore it. While wandering around the internet, I came across a style blog, then another one, and another, and I landed at What Would a Nerd Wear, who told me about Five Bamboo. One visit to their website, and I was sold. Or a dress was sold. To me. I’ll tell you more about that in a minute.

I fell pretty hard for Five Bamboo because they offered me two things I wanted: beautiful clothing that feels good to wear, even in the hottest days of a Texas summer, and responsible consumerism. I’ve written before about Five Bamboo’s sustainably made bamboo fiber clothing. Now, after several months of wearing and washing their clothes, I can say that the pieces I’ve bought are in regular rotation in my closet, and they are holding up well.

Today I thought I’d share a few photos from my Five Bamboo collection, as a way to say thank you to a wonderful company and to encourage you to check out their stuff.

That’s actually not me, wearing that orange dress. This lovely is my sister, Theresa, and she’s wearing the Elusive dress in papaya. I also own this dress and love it. When I wear it, I feel a bit like a creamsicle, in the best way. I love how Theresa added blue accents to the dress—the combination looks very fresh and summery.

Okay, this weirdo is me. Here I’m wearing the Artemis dress in applewax green, which is the first piece I bought from Five Bamboo. This summer, I’ve really gotten into scarves, and I love how the yellow scarf plays against the green dress.

Here I am again, pretending to be a chic model. Most of my outfit is from Target, but underneath my white cardigan I’m wearing a shelf tank in raspberry red. When I ordered the Elusive dress, Five Bamboo sent me the tank as a thank-you for mentioning them on my blog, and I was really touched by the kind gesture. I’m not the kind of blogger who gets much in the way of free stuff, so it’s a thrill when it does happen. I wasn’t expecting it! I also wasn’t sure how I would wear this tank, but I love how it came together here, a bold splash of color to tie together the pale cardigan and skirt. Also, these photos were taken in front of one of my favorite modern buildings on campus, which happens to be a great place to take self-portraits.

And finally, this is what I’m wearing today. I bought the flowered top ages ago at Marshall’s, but I was never quite comfortable wearing it because it’s too loose in the top. Finally I figured out that I could wear a close-fitting tank underneath and let the flowery top be loose and flowing without worrying about spillage. Here the shelf tank is providing coverage and support and a little bit of complexity in the form of an additional layer. I’m happy with how this turned out because now I can wear a blouse I always liked, in theory, but could never wear in practice!

And now, I must turn my attention to matters of the belly. Happy weekend, everyone, and do hop over to Five Bamboo’s site to check out their awesome goods!

Summer Is…

2011-07-27T22:14:00.001-05:00

…fresh basil straight out of Christopher’s backyard garden, turned into a pesto for pasta.

That pesto was no traditional pesto, not by a long shot. My kitchen is running out of certain staples right now, and I’m teetering on the edge of overspending on groceries this week, so I decided to make do with what’s already lounging in the cupboard. I buzzed the basil leaves with fantastic olive oil, grated Parmesan cheese, salt, pepper, and a half cup of frozen peas that I thawed by dropping them into boiling water for a minute or two. Christopher’s basil is incredibly flavorful, almost pungent in its strength, so the peas helped to mellow the basil while adding some bulk and nubbly-creaminess to the pasta sauce.

As you can see above, I tossed the sauce with farfalle pasta (along with another half-cup of peas) and topped it with more cheese. The result was delicious: fresh and summery, yet comforting in its starchy familiarity. Things feel really busy over here this week, so it was nice to spend some time puttering in the kitchen without putting in too much effort. Really, the basil did all the work for me. I just tried to treat it right.

Hope summer is treating you right, wherever you are.

Great Writers Steal: Seven Links from the Archives

2011-07-24T20:21:00.001-05:00

I was tickled when Chrissy tagged me for the seven links meme. Just tickled! I like memes, but I am rarely tagged because I’m not a very social blogger. On-line me is like real me: I have a handful of good friends, but otherwise I’m rather hermitlike. At least I’m not as bad as Nigel Slater, who said,

"I understood that if ever one wanted to live with someone you cooked for them and they came running. But then it is my idea of hell these days, living with someone. The idea of sharing your life with someone is just utterly ghastly. I know why people do it, but it's never a good idea.”

Yikes! You’d think that a hermit like me would appreciate his sentiments, but I’m not quite jaded enough about the people I love to describe our time together as “ghastly.” Yikes.

But I digress. The seven links meme is a look back into a blog’s archives to name blog posts that fit seven categories. As I was thinking about the years I’ve spent writing this blog, I realized that my posts tend to fall into one of two categories: the food-focused recipe posts or the reflective personal posts. There’s a lot of overlap, of course, but lately I’ve been doing a lot of personal writing in which food makes appearances but is not the primary focus.

Given this bifurcation in my writing efforts, I’ve decided to do two versions of this meme: a personal post version and a food-and-recipe post version. Today we’ll start with the personal posts.

* My most beautiful post is Two Tales of One Soup. That soup, and that post, were the beginning of something really special, and they both came straight from the heart. Matt’s graciousness in allowing me to write about him, and us, is something for which I am very grateful.

* My most popular post is, according to StatCounter, On Bravery, Wine, and Romance. But I’m giving the second-place prize to Where the Apple Trees Grow, an essay about Michigan and my family and which received a whopping eight comments! (Okay, four of them were from me. Don’t judge.)

* My most controversial post is Saturday, with Generosity, Hope, and the Color Green, in which I mouth off about marriage and declare myself queer. At the time, I wondered if the post would alienate my readers, but my hope was that it would spark a dialogue. My readers were silent, so I have no idea what effect the post had on people who know me only as a blogger. With other friends, I’ve been lucky enough to have some deep and meaningful conversations about relationships and reproduction. In the year or so since I published that post, I’ve arrived at a softer, more nuanced position with regard to marriage, but I maintain my blissful ambivalence about having children of my own. It might be enough for me to be an auntie and good friend without being a mother. Though my niece Lydia did once say to me, “I your bee-bee!” I can live with that!

* My most helpful post is…helpful to whom? I do not know how to answer this question, especially with a readership as quiet as mine. (It’s okay, quiet readers, I still like you.) If I have to make a choice here, I’d say that Sexy, Messy, Homespun Love is a helpful post for anyone interested in making cooking a part of a stay-at-home date night routine. For me, on a very personal note, Where the Wooden Spoon Rests was a good post to help me come to terms with my friends becoming parents. It’s not always easy being a friend to parents, but I think it’s worth the effort. It’s also worth the effort to cultivate friendships with non-parents so you don’t go insane after watching too many episodes of Thomas & Friends or Wonder Pets! [Caution: noisy links!]

* A post whose success surprised me is One Piece of the Puzzle, a post that was written as part of the Tandem Posting Project with my friend Ammie. We were writing about gender that week, and after the post was published, a friend of mine sent me an e-mail to tell me that the post was “universally appreciated.” We live in a world where gender is often used as a weapon, and it’s really unfair and unfortunate. If my post touched just one other person or helped one reader feel a little more at peace with the gender issues in his or her life, then I feel I have done one good thing with this blog.

* A post I feel didn’t get the attention it deserved is Circles. That post was a good-bye love letter to Chicago, the Midwest, and my family as I got ready for my new adventure in Texas. The fall of 2009 was a sad season for me, a season of endings.

* The post I’m most proud of is the next one that I’ll write! What an impossible question. Even after four years of blogging, I still feel that writing is its own reward, and whether the end product is good, bad, or boring, I can never regret the effort behind the blog.

Following Chrissy’s lead, I’m going to tag some of my blogging friends to see which seven links they’d choose.

1) My lovely friend a of still life. a has been on a blogging hiatus for a while, but she’s an incredible writer and I’d love to read her thoughts on (can it be?) eight years of blogging. Wow.

2) Shannon of the ever-creative, ever-cooking Tri to Cook. Corn ice cream? Wasabi truffles?!? Shannon’s kitchen adventures are unbelievable. I’d love to be invited to her next dinner party!

3) Raquelita of Historiadora on the Run. Raquelita’s posts are fun, inspirational, yet down-to-earth. She runs multiple long-distance races a year, keeps lots of balls in the air as a busy academic, and somehow finds time to keep writing her blog. Kudos, Raquelita!

4) (I would tag Kate O. of Effing the Ineffable, but Chrissy tagged her first, and Kate posted her seven links here. Go read ‘em!)

Have a good week, everyone!

PS Want to join the seven links fun? Consider yourself tagged, and leave me a link so I can check out your blog!

Up, Down, and All Around

2011-07-21T18:37:00.001-05:00

Greetings, my darlings! I’m getting a little hooked on these Thursday lists; it’s a nice way to look back at my week and pick out the highlights. And that’s really the way it works: I pick out the best stuff easily and quickly, but the un-best stuff is harder to put my finger on. I’m grateful for that, the ease with which I remember the good stuff and forget the bad. It helps that I’m reluctant to dwell too much on things like work stress or the heat, which are fairly constant for me right now. I have so many good moments and people in my life, and I like to remind myself of them.

Let’s do this!

On the Up side of things:

* Being open to uncertainty, to possibility. Feeling ready for what’s next.

* Writing. It does something magical for me, even if the only one reading the words is me.

* Serendipitous photo opportunities. I love rabbits! They are furry, adorable, twitchy, nervous little creatures, which makes them terrible subjects for photo-taking. But sometimes, as you can see above, it works out. Hi, Fluffy!

* Peaches! The peaches this summer have been very, very good. Peaches and nectarines are my favorite summer fruits (though I am, of course, reluctant to choose), so I am especially happy when they are particularly good.

* Working on recipes. I’ve got a black bean dish in the works and a cookie recipe I want to share here. I like having ongoing projects—it makes me feel productive and optimistic.

* Phone calls, long ones and short ones, with good friends. I really do have the best friends.

* The public::bookstore blog and in particular, this gorgeous post.

Looking Down on things:

* Feeling insecure this week about things that are pretty darn solid. Matt blames it on the full moon. Perhaps this is really an issue of transferring anxiety about one area of my life to another? Do you do this too? Or am I just crazy?

* {SPOILER ALERT!} True Blood keeps killing my favorite characters! First Longshadow from way back when, now Franklin. Franklin made me laugh. I’m gonna miss that crazy vampire.

* Patience. I need more of it.

Have a good weekend, dear readers! I wouldn’t mind spending my weekend sipping a cocktail in a garden with this kind of beauty:

Gorgeous, no?

Of the Essence

2011-07-20T18:11:00.001-05:00

These are the days, aren’t they? These days that sit in the heart of summer, the days that are bursting with heat and sunshine and the earth pulsing with life. These are the days of summertime produce, fresh-picked and juicy and in need of nothing more than a few quick strokes of the knife, a drizzle of olive oil, and a shake of salt and pepper.

These really are the days.

We’ve had a little bit of a cool spell here in Texas, meaning that it feels almost pleasant outside. I’m enjoying it, this temporary reprieve from stifling triple-digit temperatures. It may be temporary, but I’m growing accustomed to enjoying temporary pleasures, such as full-time employment. Have I mentioned that I may not have a job in October? Yes, it’s true. I’ve been avoiding the subject here for a while, fearful that saying anything would mean that I’d have to say everything. In addition, I’ve been too busy actually working to say anything coherent about my work life. But I’ve decided that I’m tired of secrets; I wanted to tell you the truth. I won’t divulge the gory details, but I will say this: after weeks and weeks of anger, tears, anxiety, sweat, frustration, and working my tail off, I am at peace with whatever happens. Job, no job, Texas, no Texas: I’ll be okay. I still have a PhD and plenty to offer professionally, so I know that I will be okay. And knowing that I will be okay has loosened the death grip that worry had on my heart. It feels a little bit like that day I sat in a garden, contemplating my future when the truth dawned on me like so many clouds parting to reveal the sun: everything is going to be okay.

But that’s not to say that things are going to be easy, especially if and when it’s time to leave College Station. I have an uneasy relationship with this town. I don’t love it. It’s not really my kind of town. Maybe that sounds snooty or condescending, but it’s the truth. I’m a city girl, and College Station is not my idea of city. Chicago is my idea of city, or Austin, or any place with farmers’ markets and urban hippies and Whole Foods and queer folks and intellectuals and single people over the age of 25. College Station is a little lopsided. It’s college students and families, a place run by white men for white men. I work here, but I’m not sure I belong here.

It will be with mixed emotions that I say good-bye to College Station, which I am sure I will do sooner or later. But it will be with real sadness that I say good-bye to the few good friends I made during my time here. The friend I will miss the most is my best local friend, Amutha. She’s a good one, Amutha, with a big heart, a bright mind, and a great sense of humor. We’ve grown close since I moved here, and I treasure our friendship, which we’ve built slowly but surely, over hallway talks and shared lunches and the occasional homecooked meal.

A few weeks ago, I invited her over for dinner. She e-mailed me, “What should I bring?” I wrote back, “Salad? Or your favorite summer vegetable recipe? Or surprise me :-)” She showed up with ingredients for one terrific little summer salad, which I wanted to share with you today. Perhaps you, like me, are into chop-and-mix cooking during these long summer days. It doesn’t get too much easier than a six-ingredient salad in which three of the components are lime juice, salt, and pepper. Can you say easy-peasy?

Out of her bag, Amutha pulled a cucumber, a yellow bell pepper, an avocado, and a lime. She peeled the cucumber, then sliced it into juicy little disks. The bell pepper was quickly transformed into bite-sized pieces. Using a spoon, she carved the avocado into chunks, scattering it over the cucumber and bell pepper. Finally, she dressed the salad with a squeeze of lime, a few pinches of salt, a quick grind of black pepper before gently tossing everything together.

Easy-peasy.

The combination was phenomenal: juicy, refreshing cucumber; bright, crunchy, herbal bell pepper; and cool, creamy avocado. The lime juice added a sparkle of lip-puckering acid, and the salt and pepper rounded out the flavor palette. I took one bite, and I was hooked.

So I made it again this week, and I’ll make it again next week too. It’s so easy and so good, healthy and satisfying and the essence of summer. It won’t be nearly as good once cucumbers and bell peppers are out of season, so like all pleasures, this one is temporary. But it’s so worth it.

Amutha’s Summer Salad

Serves 2-3 as a side salad

Amutha told me she also makes an all-green version of this salad by swapping the bell pepper for celery. To a celery-lover like me, it sounds great, so I can’t wait to make that variation too.

1 large cucumber, peeled, quartered lengthwise and sliced into disks

1 large yellow bell pepper, diced into small dice

1 medium or large avocado, cut into bite-sized chunks

Half a lime

Salt to taste

Freshly ground black pepper to taste

1) In a large bowl, mix together the cucumber, bell pepper, and avocado. Squeeze some lime juice over everything, then toss to mix.

2) Sprinkle a few pinches of salt over the vegetables, then add a modest grind or two of black pepper. Toss again and serve. Leftovers of this salad will keep for at least a day or two if refrigerated. I think the lime juice helps keep everything tasting fresh.

Thursday Up/Down

2011-07-14T20:55:00.001-05:00

I should be figuring out how to use Skype right now so that it’s all ready to go for a work thing tomorrow, but you know, I feel like goofing off. I think it’s important to have enough time in your day or your week to play or explore or daydream. Or write self-indulgent blog posts, if that’s your thing. I haven’t had nearly enough time lately to goof off! And it’s making me feel dull. To cheer myself up, I thought I’d write another Thursday list, +/- or Up/Down style. I wanted to write one last week and never got around to it, so this one feels overdue in my head.

On the Up side:

* It’s almost Friday! I have to work (again) this weekend, but my workload won’t be too heavy (I hope), and I’ll (probably) have some time to relax.

* I discovered a holistic garden on my side of campus. I’m totally smitten with it. Do you think the gardeners would mind if I moved in?

* Four words: True Blood, Season Three. Two more words: on DVD. This season is, quite frankly, scaring the shit out of me, but it is so, so good.

* I treated myself to some new books from Amazon, and they arrived today! On the coffee table: Tender by Nigel Slater, which looks gorgeous, delicious, and inspiring. On the night stand: The Kid by Dan Savage. Dan may be a gay man and a little too snarky for my taste, but I still think I have a crush on him. He makes me laugh out loud, which is the best way for anyone to make me fall in love with him.

* I’ve started taking a shadier and more scenic bike route to work when I ride, and it really makes for a lovely morning. This route is slightly less direct, but I feel like it’s worth the extra time.

On the Down side:

* Oh, the heat. I know it’s cliché and boring to live in Texas and complain about the heat in the summer, but I feel like the heat is creeping up into the temperature range that makes it almost impossible for me to bike home from work in the evenings. I am so counting the days until October.

* I’m doing this experiment at work these days that makes my fingers ache as though they are arthritic. Also, I may be going insane from spending too many hours in front of my microscope. My labmates are urging me to take a “microscope-free” day, but I can’t! I have data to collect!

* * *

I’d better go figure out this Skype thing. Happy almost-weekend, dear readers!

On Bravery, Wine, and Romance

2011-07-11T19:46:00.001-05:00

This is Part Two of a little rambling series about love. If you missed Part One, read this first!

Oh, nostalgia. How easily it paints over rough and crumbling bits of the past. How deceptively it makes the past look happy and carefree, like so many halcyon days spent frolicking in the sunshine. It’s easy to rewrite the past, and maybe that’s for the best. Whatever pains we endured, we know that we made it through to the present moment.

I remember now what the hardest part of being with Matt is: the part where I’m not with him.

It’s funny because now I’m so accustomed to the rhythm of our relationship that I almost want to make a phone call to myself, circa 2007, to say two things to her. “You should totally go for it with Matt! And it’s okay to miss him because he’ll miss you too. He’s worth it, and you’ll get used to being with him and not being with him. That rhythm, for you, will seem normal eventually. I know it seems really crazy and impossible, but it’ll be great. Trust me.”

When he visits me in my little town, it’s like I get to go on vacation for a few days, and I love that sense of being able to relax and enjoy what this town has to offer. Postdoc life, it seems, is a life devoted to work. Weekends without work? I don’t remember what those are. I miss those weekends. Because he works all the time, Matt understands my life and the relentless demands of work that I’m facing these days. When I tell him that even during his visit, I’ll need to go to the lab to collect some data, he doesn’t roll his eyes or make a face to express his displeasure. Instead, he does what he always does and says, “Hey, that’s cool. I’ll just go read while you are working.”

I know it sounds like such a small thing. But to have someone believe in you, really believe in you, is almost like having a superpower. I wrote to him this week, telling him that I was feeling overwhelmed with the most recent twist in my research, and he wrote back, “I know that you can do it.” His relentless positive cheer and support is the perfect antidote to the anxiety that’s telling me I can’t do this.

So I soldier on, bolstered by the support of a ridiculously confident man, and when he comes to visit me, I scale back my weekend workload so that we can spend some time together, in person, a rare treat. Matt visited me last month, a week after one of the worst days in my working life, when the dust and the debris had barely begun to settle. I told him he was brave, coming to visit me at such an awful time, and he said he was sorry he couldn’t have been there for me when things fell apart the week before. I felt bad for him, because as much as I wanted to have a fun, relaxing weekend with him, I wasn’t sure it was going to happen because I was so wrapped up in anger, fear, and worry.

Our visit was a little bumpy at first, and it was all my fault. There were tears, and disappointment, and a bottle of expired wine. (The wine was actually Matt’s fault, his first ever fail when picking wine for us to drink! It’s good to know that even he-who-has-more-confidence-than-Barack-Obama fails every once in a while.) We ended up ditching the bad wine and heading over to Veritas, a beautiful and charming wine bar and bistro just down the road from my apartment. I really like Veritas, but it’s a tad pricey for my budget, so I go there less often than I’d like. But that evening, though we had dinner reservations elsewhere, Veritas was the perfect place for happy hour. We shared two glasses of wine and a plate of stinky cheeses, and I fell in love with Matt all over again, even though he tried to poison us both just minutes before.

Maybe it was the wine, or maybe it was the way that going to Veritas reminded me of a special evening we’d shared in that bistro last summer, but I felt like someone had pushed my reset button and I could finally, finally relax into the weekend. After Veritas, we hopped in the car and drove to Bryan for a nice dinner at Madden’s, where the food was good but not great. My salad was terrific and totally delicious, but my entree was so-so and too spicy for my taste. (I blame the jalapeno pesto. And maybe I should have known better?) They did have a pretty big menu, so perhaps I didn’t hit the dinner jackpot and should try my luck again. But to be honest, at that point, good-but-not-great food was fine with me. I was perfectly content to sit at a table with my favorite carnivore, sipping wine and enjoying our date and feeling more like myself with every passing minute. Because as much as I may be unruffled by the time we spend apart, I like it more when we are together. That’s what romance is to me: time spent together, hoping for emotional and physical intimacy. It’s so simple but so hard to get right. It can’t be forced, but it can be planned, a little bit, and then we just have to smile and dive in.

I’m so glad I took that first plunge.

Stay tuned for Part Three of the essay that goes on and on!

No Time to Waste. Time to Eat Cherries.

2011-07-07T12:48:00.001-05:00

I have a true story to tell you. A few days ago, I realized that I had not eaten any cherries this year. I panicked. I wondered if I had completely missed cherry season because I’ve been so distracted by the blueberries and the peaches. I grabbed my shopping list, wrote “Cherries!" and hoped that I wasn’t too late.

And thank heavens! Fresh cherries, so plump and shiny and perfect, are still elbowing the peaches and blueberries at the market. I brought home a two-pound bag of fresh cherries last night and immediately adjusted my dessert plans to include cherries. Because when it’s high summer, we have no time to waste. We must make time to eat cherries before it’s too late.

So that’s my story. What goodies have been filling your fruit basket lately, friends?

Above is the sunset I saw last night. Lovely, isn’t it?

Pizza for Busy Days

2011-07-06T22:06:00.001-05:00

Pizza! It may be man’s greatest invention ever. I discovered recently that pizza is an excellent solution when you have to feed meat-lovers and meat-abstainers, but you still want to share a meal rather than have separate dishes for the two groups. I admit that when it comes to family-style meals, I am not a huge fan of separate options for the vegetarians. To me, it takes away from the cozy, communal quality of the meal.

Pizza, with its ability to segregate ingredients on top of the same pie, is the perfect communal food. It’s delicious and endlessly adaptable for different palates. It’s a fun homemade dinner option for the cook who can never make the same thing twice, because not only are the toppings of pizza infinitely flexible, but there is also a wonderful array of crust options. I’ve told you about two pizza dough recipes in the past, a traditional recipe (with whole-grain options) and an almond flour pizza crust, both of which are great. But because I am a curious cook and because I am susceptible to the promise of a shiny new recipe, I tried a new pizza dough recipe this spring. And I liked it. The recipe comes from someone else who is always stockpiling new recipes to try, Deb over at Smitten Kitchen. She has an incredibly useful page about making great pizza, and what caught my attention about her dough recipe is not that it seemed better than all the other ones out there but that it made enough for a pizza that served two people. It seemed like such wonderful simplicity—pizza for two, or pizza for one with leftovers for the next day’s lunch. How perfect for us single cooks!

However. I can’t really say anything about Deb’s recipe because I didn’t follow her recipe. Typical, right? I can never leave well enough alone. I had a packet of this pizza dough yeast lurking around in my cupboard, and I wondered if I could pull the old switcheroo to make a fast, weeknight pizza crust using the Smitten Kitchen recipe. The answer, of course, is yes. Or is it? Was this another episode of “Watch Rose-Anne Eff Up Her Dinner”? Maybe the crust was gummy and weird, or maybe it was flavorless and disappointing? Should I stop trusting my instincts and start following the damn recipes, for heaven’s sake?

Nah, that would be too easy! And the pizza crust was great. It was a little crispy on the outside, chewy on the inside, and thoroughly delicious. Flavorwise, it tasted the way a pizza crust should taste: like really good bread. My position on pizza is that the flavor of the crust should be good without overpowering the toppings. In this sense, the crust should be more neutral than the sauce, cheese, and any other goodies that are lucky enough to grace your pizza. In the photo above, I topped my pizza with the usual suspects (sauce and cheese) along with thinly sliced zucchini and a few dabs of ricotta cheese. I ground some black pepper over the whole thing, popped it in the oven, and out came a gorgeous pizza for two.

Busy-Day Pizza Dough

Adapted from this recipe on Smitten Kitchen

Makes enough for the perfect pizza for two

For the flour, I like to use about 1/2 cup whole wheat or white whole wheat flour with 1 cup all-purpose flour. I don’t want my crust to be too heavy, so that’s why I don’t use more whole wheat flour, which can make baked goods and breads dense and heavy.

And about that wine: I think it adds a little extra flavor to the dough. I always keep white wine on hand for cooking, and I recommend that you do too. Even if the wine has past its prime for drinking, it will still work well in cooking as long as it isn’t ancient. If the wine actually tastes foul, then it’s over the hill—don’t use it! Open a new bottle, or just use water instead.

1 1/2 cups flour (see note above)

1 tsp. salt

3/4 tsp. pizza dough yeast, such as Fleischmann’s Pizza Crust Yeast

1/2 cup lukewarm water (not too hot or you’ll kill the yeast!) plus a little more if needed

1 tbsp. dry white wine

1 tbsp. olive oil

Cooking spray

Cornmeal for sprinkling

1) In a medium or large bowl, mix together the flour(s), salt, and pizza dough yeast. Add the water, wine, and olive oil, and mix everything into a dough.

2) Lightly flour a countertop, dump your dough on top, and knead for a few minutes until the dough feels smooth and moist without being extremely sticky. I have a habit of overflouring my dough, so I say err on the side of letting the dough be a little sticky. If it feels too dry, sprinkle the dough with a little water and knead it into the dough.

3) Using the bowl in which you mixed up the dough, spray it with cooking spray, place the dough in it, and cover it with a plate or plastic wrap. Set it aside for a few minutes.

4) Preheat the oven to 500 degrees F or the highest temperature your oven will allow. Spray a large baking sheet with cooking spray and sprinkle with cornmeal. Prep your pizza ingredients.

5) Lightly flour a countertop, or use your previously floured spot, and roll out the dough to your desired thickness. Move it to the prepped baking sheet, and top the pizza with your toppings. Bake the pizza for 10-11 minutes. Serve hot or warm.

Just Following Orders

2011-07-04T19:25:00.001-05:00

I’m sure all of you will be thrilled to know that I have made excellent progress on my weekend to-do list. There’s a batch of soup cooling its heels on my stove now. Last night, after going on a photo walk at dusk, I laid in bed with freshly painted toes (not covered up, of course—those nails needed to dry!), reading Dreaming in Hindi and feeling more relaxed than I have in weeks. It was wonderful. And perhaps most importantly, between Saturday and Sunday, there were three chocolate egg creams, but only two of them were enjoyed by me.

Recipes for egg creams always catch my eye, and I always think the same thing: I want one! Unfortunately, it took years to turn my wanting into sipping, because I’m easily distracted and I’d forget about egg creams until the next time I saw a recipe. But thankfully, Melissa Clark and her cookbook put an end to my flaky pattern, and the chocolate egg cream is working its way into my regular dessert and snack rotation.

This recipe is really two recipes in one: a recipe for thick, deeply chocolatey syrup, and a recipe for the chocolate egg cream. I think it’s nice to have very basic recipes, like syrups, under your belt so you know you can always make a homemade batch of syrup as long as you have sugar, cocoa powder, vanilla, and a sly bit of salt. You also need water, but I’m going to assume you always keep that on hand. I know I do.

The syrup is a simple stovetop job that you mix together and let bubble away gently for a few minutes until it becomes thick and glossy. Assembling the egg cream is even easier: simply measure, pour, and stir. And if you’re really feeling wild and crazy, you don’t really have to measure, though I do because I am compulsive like that sometimes.

You know, they say that chocolate milk is an excellent beverage to drink after a work-out. Since a chocolate egg cream is basically chocolate milk made fizzy with club soda, I’d have to say that a chocolate egg cream seems like an even better post-work-out option. It’s reasonably nutritious, assuming you eat dairy, and it’s got a nice balance of sweet and salty to replenish blood sugar and all those lost electrolytes. If you don’t like or can’t eat dairy, I bet you could make an excellent vegan chocolate egg cream with almond or coconut milk. And the homemade syrup below is vegan, so you can still get that deep chocolatey flavor from your own efforts.

(Can you tell I’ve been reading vegan blogs and running blogs lately? I thought so.)

Happy 4th of July, my dear readers! May your egg creams always be cold, fizzy, and perfectly refreshing.

Homemade Chocolate Syrup

From In the Kitchen with a Good Appetite by Melissa Clark

I’m not sure on the yield of this recipe because I’ve never poured my syrup into a measuring glass to check. Let’s just say it makes enough for a bunch of chocolate egg creams—more than six, probably fewer than twelve?

1 cup water

1/2 cup sugar (I use vanilla-infused sugar here for an extra boost of vanilla)

2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1/4 tsp. kosher salt

1 tsp. vanilla extract

1) In a medium saucepan, bring the water and sugar to a boil, whisking to dissolve the sugar. Whisk the cocoa powder and salt into the sugar solution. Reduce the heat so that the mixture is simmering, and let it continue simmering for about 5 minutes.

2) Remove from the heat and stir in the vanilla.

Chocolate Egg Cream

From In the Kitchen with a Good Appetite by Melissa Clark

Serves 1 (multiply as needed!)

3 tbsp. Homemade Chocolate Syrup (see recipe above)

3/4 cup milk

Fizzy water (club soda) to taste

1) In a tall glass, stir together the chocolate syrup and milk. Top with fizzy water. Use a long-handled spoon to stir together briskly to make the fizzy water foam a bit.

2) Drink immediately. Repeat as necessary.

Almost immediately after taking this photo, I spilled my egg cream all over the coffee table, the rug, and the carpeted floor. What a terrible end for the egg cream! And what a pain in the butt to clean up! Some days I really hate being a klutz.

Weekend To-Do List

2011-07-02T20:07:00.001-05:00

Many people do not realize how flexible an academic’s schedule can be. Most people who are in teaching posts (aka professors) don’t have a boss who keeps tabs on them at all, so they are free to come and go as long as they show up at their meetings and teach their classes.

However and unfortunately, I am not a professor. I am a postdoc. I don’t teach at all, and I devote 95% of my time to research. My schedule is flexible, in theory, except that I am under the gun to crank out oodles of manuscript-quality data as quickly as possible. I’ve been really busy and stressed out lately, so it is absolutely delightful that tomorrow, I have almost the entire day off. I’ve been so productive lately that taking the day off sounds like an excellent way to reward myself. I do have to stop by the lab to take care of two quick things, but other than that, the day is mine. I have no meetings on Monday, and my data are organized, analyzed, and up to date. I’m (almost) free! Free from work! Suddenly I’m a lady of leisure. A very organized lady of leisure—so organized, in fact, that I thought it necessary to make a list of my weekend to-dos.

* Paint toenails.

* Take a couch cruise and read Dreaming in Hindi for a while. (Couch cruises, by definition, can’t be done hastily.)

* Take a photo walk.

* Drink a chocolate egg cream. I made the syrup tonight; now I just need to run to the store for some fizzy water.

* Call my brother (who didn’t call me back last weekend).

* Finish watching The Stepford Wives. Matt suggested this movie to me after hearing about my research on female sexual behavior in fruit flies. Let’s just say there’s something distinctly Stepford about one of my assays.

* Make a batch of soup. You know how I feel about soup…

And finally, the most important item…

* Sleep late! There’s nothing quite like sleeping in to give you a reprieve from the effect of chronic stress.

Happy weekend, my dears! What’s on your to-do list for the holiday weekend?

Book Report

2011-06-29T13:08:00.001-05:00

I’m feeling very organized today, having just renewed all my library book loans. We have a terrific library on campus here, and I like to visit it often. The library sits right in the middle of the main campus, where the humanities types hang out. In my experience, the science buildings, especially the older ones, tend to have an ugly industrial feel to them, and there’s always a lot of traffic from a steady stream of delivery trucks. Humanities buildings, while not always gorgeous, have at least a few nice aesthetic touches, making them feel less like factories and more like places of higher learning. In a science building, it’s easy to forget that you are in an academic setting, especially when you encounter the stereotypical scientist who refuses to mutter hello and can’t make eye contact with anyone in the hallway. Science is a social freakshow, which is why I am grateful to escape to the library side of campus whenever possible.

I’ve been picking out my library books using my reading list. I finished The Age of Innocence and Trespass, both of which were excellent. Edith Wharton and Amy Irvine are wonderful writers who know how to spin words into an engaging, lyrical, and sometimes heartbreaking story.

I tried to read The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, but my heart just isn’t in it right now. Recently, my life has been overwhelmed by work, and reading about science is not appealing. I need my leisure reading to be a little escape from my work life, so I have veered off the reading list path and into a book I found serendipitously. I was in the library looking for Arrow of the Blue-Skinned God and could not find it anywhere, even though the library catalog said it was available. But! While I was wandering the shelves of India and Indian literature, I found Dreaming in Hindi by Katherine Russell Rich, which is the story of the author’s adventures in learning Hindi. I just started reading it a few days ago, and the book has sucked me into its pages. Russell Rich is a talented writer: funny, observant, curious, and introspective. Because I am spending so much time in one place right now—no trips for me until September!—it’s nice to read a book about something as exotic and faraway as India, with the story told from an American’s viewpoint.

If this Indian theme keeps up, next I’ll be combing the cookbook shelves for a good Indian cookbook. Too bad my friend Amutha hasn’t written a cookbook because she’s my favorite Indian cook! Why do all the best cooks in my life store their cookbooks in their brains?

Quesadillas Between Friends

2011-06-27T21:38:00.001-05:00

Perhaps it was a foreshadowing of my crazy idea to move to Texas in pursuit of science, but I have always been a fan of Tex-Mex cuisine. I’m not sure what defines Tex-Mex precisely; I think of it as an amalgamation of tortillas, spicy salsas, inventively seasoned meat and beans, corn in ground and whole form, and cheese. Lots of cheese. Oh, and deep-fried avocadoes—holy moly, those are good. I know the deep-fried avocado can make you stop, take a deep breath, and check to see that yes, your heart really did just skip a beat. It’s kind of an insane idea: Let’s take the fattiest fruit we can find, dip it in batter, and bathe it in more fat! But before that, we’re going to stuff it with fat in the form of cheese! A deep-fried avocado isn’t everyday food (at least I hope it’s not), but it’s worth having once in your life. I’ve had it a few times now, a crispy, cheesy specimen shared with three others at a tiny table in a crowded Mexican restaurant, and let me assure you: it’s worth it. Do it so you can tell all your friends you’ve eaten a deep-fried avocado, which is sure to inspire shock, awe, and maybe even a little admiration. And if you and I ever cross paths and you brag to me about deep-fried avocado adventures, I’ll give you a high five.

Avocadoes aside, I love Tex-Mex food in many of its incarnations, but my very favorite way to do Tex-Mex is at home, with my own well-worn pots and pans. Good food is as much about taste as it is about texture, and Tex-Mex is delightful in both ways. (For evidence, please consider the above-mentioned deep-fried avocado: crispy, creamy, gooey, all in one messy little breaded package.) I draw the line at deep-frying avocadoes at home, but I’m very happy to whip up a quesadilla or two for something that’s crispy, creamy, and gooey without the vat of used oil to clean up afterward.

I used to be devoted to one and only one way of making quesadillas: fried in oil inside a skillet. But one evening, a chilly winter night not too long ago, I was shown that once again, butter is better. Matt was visiting, and, as is his habit, he took over my kitchen to cook us dinner. On one side of the stove, he cooked onions and peppers until they were silky and sweet; on the other, he melted lumps of butter in a skillet. Into the butter he laid fresh flour tortillas, purchased from the tortilla factory down the road from me. He warmed up the tortillas, letting them luxuriate in their buttery puddle, and then he layered those onions and peppers followed by big handfuls of cheese. Matt is not one what might call a “restrained” or “health-conscious” cook. He’s in the kitchen for one reason and one reason only: flavor. And oh my goodness, those were some of the best quesadillas I’ve ever had. I know I’m spoiled, as is everyone who gets to eat his food, but you and I can both steal his quesadilla trick: cook them in butter, or a little butter plus oil if you like.

The other thing you need to know about cooking quesadillas on the stovetop is that you shouldn’t be too afraid to crank up the heat to let those tortillas get crispy and a little black. We’re not aiming for completely burnt here; just a little burnt to add another layer of flavor and good crunchiness.

After learning about Matt’s secret butter trick, I happily adopted it for my quesadilla nights until a few weeks ago, when my friend Ammie told me how delicious the quesadilla recipe in Melissa Clark’s book is. When we catch up on the phone, Ammie and I usually compare notes about what we’ve cooked lately, and she’s been on a roll with In the Kitchen with a Good Appetite. She is showing that book who’s boss. I’m so proud of her! The quesadilla recipe, she explained, uses a broiler method to cook the quesadillas. I should add here that Ammie has a long-standing fear of the broiler, and she’s very brave to consider cooking anything under the broiler after a traumatic experience with asparagus.

Quesadillas under a broiler? I was intrigued. I could see how it might work—the broiler would crisp the tortillas and even burn them a little bit, providing that much-loved hint of charred flavor. And compared to the stovetop method, the broiler would make things easy easy easy: just throw the quesadilla on a baking sheet, slide it under the broiler, set the timer, flip when you hear the beep beep beep, and slide it back under the broiler for another minute or so.

Out comes a crispy, creamy, gooey quesadilla, which you can then slide onto a pretty bamboo cutting board and slice into quarters with a sharp knife. Take it to the table and sit down to a dinner of hot quesadillas, green salad, and maybe a cold glass of white wine.

It’s what summer should look and taste like.

Apple Crumble, Hold the Oatmeal

2011-06-26T21:56:00.001-05:00

I know I’m a Type A personality. I’m a planner, detail-oriented, and punctual. I hate it when other people are late. I like to do the same things at the same time each day. I eat the same breakfast every day, a steady theme made colorful with variations, swapping winter’s oranges for spring’s strawberries for summer’s blueberries. But I swear, despite all this Type A business, I have a pretty strong hippie undercurrent. I have a freezer stuffed with various whole-grain flours, a pair of hippie sandals on my feet, and the occasional desire to tell the man he can bite me as I ride off into the distance in my VW hippie bus. I believe in civil rights for all, marriage for those who want it, and that morality and justice are not the same thing.

But most of all, I believe in apple crumble.

Okay, maybe I don’t believe in apple crumble more than civil rights. That would be silly. But I do believe that those of us with hippie tendencies like to pile our fruit crumbles high with oatmeal, and that is the point where I am about to diverge from classic hippie cookery. In my past, I have enjoyed oatmeal-gilded crumbles, such as this simple blueberry one, which I think would benefit from even more of that delicious, streusel-like oatmeal topping. Blueberries get along well with oatmeal. Apples probably do too, but hear me out on this one: an oatmeal-less crumble, especially one that’s packed with two kinds of nuts, rum-soaked raisins, and big tender bites of apple, is a revelation.

It’s not just the rum talking either, though giving raisins a boozy bath does infuse this dessert a little bit of a rum raisin ice cream feel, especially if you eat it with good ice cream. Which you should. (Ammie, my dear, I hope your ears just perked up when I wrote “rum raisin.” I blame you for introducing me to the addictive combination of raisins, booze, sugar, and cream. Help!) This apple crumble is really one of those magical recipes where each part, each delicious component, is present and accounted for, flavor-wise, but the overall effect is so much better than a simple sum of parts. We’ve got apples for the base (duh), walnuts for crunch, almond flour for a softer nutty crunch, butter for richness, sugar for sweetness, and salt for that wonderful savory undercurrent that supports any good dessert these days. The original recipe started in Nigella Lawson’s How to Eat, but I’ve taken enough liberties with it that it feels like my own. Not that I’m particularly possessive about recipes and adaptations, but I’m just saying that I really like my version of her recipe.

I find that making this crumble is a wonderful way to spend a weeknight evening—calmly peeling and chopping the apples, soaking the raisins, squishing my fingers into a bowl of flours and butter to make the crumble topping. It’s enough of a project that I can let myself sink into the preparations, but it’s not so overwhelming that it feels like too much after a day at work. But the best part is definitely the part where I make myself a little bowl of crumble with a scoop of vanilla ice cream to gild the lily. The combination is ambrosial, delightful, and so very delicious that it justifies buying apples instead of blueberries in June. No, scratch that. You should buy apples AND blueberries. Yes. June is a month to indulge yourself in fruit and fresh food. And like every other month of the year, it’s a month in which you can bake this apple crumble.

Apple Crumble, Hold the Oatmeal

Adapted from How to Eat by Nigella Lawson

Serves 4

Vegans, feel free to substitute Earth Butter or another vegan margarine for the butter here. I can’t imagine that it would be anything but completely delicious as a vegan dessert.

3 tbsp. rum

2 tbsp. raisins

1/2 cup flour

1/4 cup almond flour

1/4 tsp. salt

4 tbsp. (half a stick) cold butter

1/2 cup walnuts, chopped

4 tbsp. granulated sugar, divided

4 large apples

Nonstick spray

For serving: vanilla ice cream, optional

1) Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

2) In a small saucepan, heat the rum gently over medium heat. Take the rum off the heat, add the raisins, stir them around a bit, and let them soak while you prep the rest of the recipe.

3) In a medium bowl, mix together the flour, almond flour, and salt. Dice the butter into small dice, add it to the flour mixture, and use your fingers to rub the butter into the dry ingredients until you get a rubbly, shaggy pile. Stir the walnuts and 3 tbsp. of sugar into the flour/butter mixture. Stash this bowl in a cold place—I usually tuck it in the freezer because my fridge is always way too full to find room for a mixing bowl.

4) Peel and core the apples, then cut them into chunks about 1/2-1 inch in size. Put them in a medium- or large-sized saucepan with the rum, raisins, and remaining 1 tbsp. sugar. Stir everything around a bit, then cook over medium heat for about five minutes, stirring or shaking the pan once or twice.

5) Spray a 9-inch pie pan with nonstick spray. Pile the apple mixture into the bottom, then top with the flour mixture. Place the pie pan in the oven and bake for about 25 minutes. The crumble topping should be golden brown and your kitchen should smell amazing. Remove from the oven and serve warm or at room temperature with a scoop or two of vanilla ice cream on the side.

A Thursday List

2011-06-23T21:53:00.001-05:00

My blog friend Chrissy used to write these great lists on Fridays. She would list the ups and downs of her week (+/-), and I always thought it was a fun bird’s-eye view of the week. These days, I feel terribly behind on my ambitious blogging plans; I have approximately 685 posts that I’d like to write, several of which I’ve already started. But I really enjoy spontaneous blogging too, the kind that happens because you are inspired, so you sit down, pull your thoughts together, press “Publish,” and voila! A fresh new post, happy and shiny and filled with whatever was rolling around in your head at that moment.

Ta da! Let’s do this.

The good stuff:

* Rain! Cooler weather! And during the week of the summer solstice no less! It’s a Texas miracle!

* Green dresses from Five Bamboo. I could live in this dress for the next five months. It even has pockets!

* Glee on Netflix. So fun, so cheesy, so ridiculous, so awesome. I am hooked.

* Crazy squirrels. Hey, we all get hungry sometimes.

* Rediscovering my Heather Nova CD. Between this and Glee, it’s like I’m back in high school again, minus all that angsty crushing on the guy who never did return my teenage love. I hear he’s a doctor now…but so am I! Ha.

* Things calming down at work after a few weeks of chaos. I am busy busy busy, but it’s not quite so overwhelming.

The not-so-good stuff:

* A boring lunch on Wednesday. I am such a ridiculous foodie that a boring lunch will get me down.

* Mystery produce that turned out NOT to be tender green beans. Instead, I bought tough, stringy green bean imposters. Does anyone know what these are?

Happy almost-weekend, groovy readers! May your lunches be exciting and your crushes love you back.

A Little Too Easy: Thoughts on Love

2011-06-21T15:51:00.001-05:00

Matt has a funny relationship with this blog. Or at least I think he does. On second thought, maybe “funny” isn’t the right word. Maybe it’s wonderful. As you may have guessed by now, or as you may remember, his presence on this site is almost completely limited to the text. That’s not because he’s hideously ugly, or because he’s extremely shy. He’s rather attractive (says one rather smitten and therefore biased woman) and he is definitely not shy. But he does like to keep his private life private, which could create a conflict of interest between the two of us. I write about him, and us, quite frequently. And Matt, gracious and generous man that he is, lets me. Not once has he howled in protest that I shared too much or offered too much of his private life for public consumption.

As I’m sure is quite obvious by now, I like writing about him and us. I learn a lot from him, and I like to share what I’m learning with you. By writing about our romance, I get to savor those moments again, and it keeps the memories fresh for me. I realize that time changes our memories, and a written account is flawed in its own way too, but now, more than three years after we started seeing each other, it’s such a pleasure for me to be able to read what I wrote about us in the earlier days of our relationship. Time changes our memories, but more importantly, it changes us. Having some sense of what we were in the past is a marvelous thing. Some couples take lots of photos of their adventures together; I try to write them down so that I can remember us, so that I can love who we were and who we are becoming.

Things are a bit different for us now that we live within driving distance. When I was in graduate school, it was always plane tickets and flight itineraries, with time breathing down our necks as our visit gently became past tense. Those were exciting days: those new romance days; those giddy, I-can’t-wait-to-see-him days. I loved those days. Those were the falling-in-love days. We had a different rhythm then. Usually, Matt would visit me, flying in on a Friday and leaving on Sunday. We cooked more of our meals at home; our visits were humbler affairs, once he/I/we had arrived at our destination. We would often pop out for lunch or tea, we liked to walk along Lake Michigan into downtown Evanston, and we’d usually go shopping at Whole Foods for wine and dinner provisions. Matt would offer to carry the groceries, which was a sweetly chivalrous act, and he never complained about my lack of a car (or lack of money either). Sometimes we’d ride the train together back to my apartment after our little downtown excursion. I remember there was one time, early in our dating relationship, when he was visiting me during the bitter cold days after Christmas. I had no internet at home—such a Luddite I was back then!—and he needed to check his e-mail. We boarded a train to go to a cafe downtown, and I sat in the window seat. He sat down next to me, very close to me, on the attached two-person seats, and blamed it on his bulky bag, heavy with a laptop computer. It was a silly, sweet moment, sitting so snugly between him and the window. It was the sort of moment that feels just right in a new romance, a sign of affection and intimacy and playfulness.

Part of me misses those old days. Things felt less certain between us, but maybe that uncertainty made our time together that much more exciting. I knew I liked him, I knew I liked him A LOT, but I didn’t know what that meant. So many relationships are built on the premise of commitment, and he’d already said to me, earnestly, “I am committed to you.” I believed him. I even knew, deep down, that I was falling for him before we started dating. So when we actually did start dating, I didn’t know what to do with myself because all the pieces had fallen into place, and that was, oddly enough, confusing. I think it was confusing because we think of dating as a time when we figure out how we feel about that person—what our sense of commitment and compatibility feels like. If those things don’t need to be deciphered, then where’s the dating puzzle? Maybe that’s just it: Matt came into my life as a self-explaining puzzle: “Here I am! Now let me tell you how I operate.” So many men are mysterious creatures that require frequent conversations over wine with girlfriends to figure them out. Matt was blissfully easy to love and to understand.

Perhaps he was a little too easy, which is why it felt uncertain in the first place. Love can’t really be this easy, can it?

Actually, yes, it can, with the right person and if you are ready for it.

Stay tuned for Part Two of this rambling essay!

Saturday Lunch, Simply Done

2011-06-18T17:01:00.001-05:00

I have this basic belief that whether or not you cook, you have to eat. You simply must. Or at least you should, because food is good for you! All those generations of grandmothers can’t be wrong, right? All those women who have given life to so many children—I think they were onto something. Eating is good. Food is life.

A lot of my cooking is of the non-recipe variety, and I’ve been enjoying the chance to share with you my lunches and dinners that are assembled using the cookbook in my head. I have blatantly stolen that idea from Matt, who also has a cookbook in his head, which is handy when you find yourself in a kitchen in College Station, Texas, with the urge to make Spanish food. You flip through your mental cookbook, pull out recipes for gazpacho and a little melon appetizer, and you get to work. I love watching that man cook, even as I sigh and grumble to myself that I will never again be able to share with you a recipe of his because they are all in his head. Such is the price one pays for cooking and eating with a man who is so adaptable to his circumstances that he tells me I can move to Nova Scotia and he’ll still visit me there. And with the way that I am fantasizing about cold weather and cozy cooking these days, let me tell you that the urge to fly north is hard to ignore. This polar bear, the one talking to you right now, is melting in the triple-digit heat we’ve been blessed with as of late.

But I’m making do with what Texas has to offer right now. June is tomato season in Texas, and last weekend, Matt and I bought an estimated three pounds of tomatoes, just because I couldn’t get enough. I’ve been working on that bumper crop, and for lunch today I topped toasted whole-grainy bread with a mayonnaise-mustard spread and coarsely chopped tomatoes which had been sprinkled with salt and pepper. No olive oil today because of the mayonnaise. It was nice—the crunch, the creaminess, the drippy juiciness of it all. One could almost live on tomatoes and bread, with the right arsenal of condiments and seasonings to mix things up properly.

Alongside my toast, I ate some very crunchy celery sticks and a scoop of chickpea salad. That salad was assembled last night, a mélange of chickpeas, a homemade honey-mustard dressing, finely diced red onion, and shredded pepper jack cheese. It’s a riff on Molly’s famous chickpea salad, which for some strange reason I don’t like—I think the Parmesan doesn’t work for my palate. It’s odd, I know, but one must respect her own palate.

Finally, when coming in from the heat, I require something cold in a glass to sip while I contemplate lunch. Today I made a simple vanilla-banana malt. I love a good malt, and this one was very good indeed: a large frozen banana, a cup of milk, a tablespoon of malt powder, and a few drops of vanilla extract. Buzz to smoothness in the blender, and you’ve got a sweet, creamy, healthy milkshake. It’s amazing to me what a tablespoon of malt powder can do to make a blender drink seem really indulgent. I’m not a big ice cream person, but I love shakes and malts made with frozen bananas because they offer a thick creaminess and luscious sweetness just like ice cream does. My malt was enough like dessert that I passed on a brownie, even though I’ve eaten one after lunch for the past two days. A little chocolate is like putting a period at the end of your meal: this lunch is done.

And for today, so am I. Happy weekend, everyone!