This is what summer is supposed to taste like

It has been raining, and now it is getting hot, which means we are in for swamp weather. When the air is too thick to breathe, it is hard to contemplate eating. It is as though every breath of air makes me feel full, so I haven't been doing much meal preparation. But then I get the tummy grumble and realized that I do still have to feed myself.

This evening I looked around and spotted an eggplant hiding behind some peaches in the fruit bowl. I'll confess--this eggplant was a little past its prime due to its skill at hide and seek. But despite its age and less than totally firm flesh, cubing it and roasting it in a hot oven for half an hour made it taste terrific! There was none of that fussy salting and draining that usually bugs the crap out of me when it comes to cooking eggplant yet there was not a trace of bitterness.

If I didn't have a particular gardening curse, I'd be able to enjoy the salad I made for dinner a lot more often. Unlike everyone else in the universe, I can't grow mint well. I have a field of basil and enough pesto already in the freezer to last me until next summer, but my mint plant remains stunted and stingy. Sarah, who gave me the plant, can actually grow mint without soil! She weeds it out of her garden, throws it on some gravel that is underneath a wooden walkway to her house, and a week later she goes back and finds it has replanted itself and is thriving! But I plant it with plenty of light in decent soil (ok so I forgot to add compost this year...) and it just sits there.

Because my mint supply was so minimal I halved the following recipe; this salad is just what I think summer is supposed to taste like--luscious eggplant cubes, crisp red pepper, fantastic just-off-the-vine tomatoes, with enough feta in the lemony dressing to replace all those salts I've been sweating out today. I tossed the eggplant in while it was still warm so there was a nice temperature contrast. The only thing that would have made my light meal better would have been a big glass of cool, dry rose to wash it down, but I have to head out to a meeting at my kid's preschool tonight and I'm guessing wine on the breath might tag me as the sloth mom that I am...so I'll hope that Brian leaves a little of the salad for me to have as a snack with wine when I get back.


Eggplant Salad With Peppers, Mint and Caper-Feta Vinaigrette
from the New York Times, August 15, 2007

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
3 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 3/4 pounds eggplant (any kind, or a mixture), trimmed and cut into 1-inch chunks
3 ounces feta cheese, crumbled (about 2/3 cup)
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tablespoon capers, chopped
1 pound mixed bell peppers, seeded and cut into 1-inch pieces
1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
1/4 cup fresh mint leaves.

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Whisk together the oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper.

2. Toss eggplant with 1/3 cup vinaigrette, reserving the rest. Arrange on a baking sheet. Bake, tossing occasionally, until tender and golden around edges, about 30 minutes. Let eggplant cool somewhat. (It can be warm but not hot enough to melt feta or wilt mint.)

3. Whisk feta, garlic and capers into reserved vinaigrette. In a large bowl, combine eggplant, peppers, tomatoes and mint leaves. Toss with vinaigrette, and serve immediately or within several hours. (It holds up all day.) 4 to 6 servings.

Subversive toile

After sitting through an incredibly dull Medieval Lit class on the Pastoral in grad school, I'm finding my latest craft project mighty satisfying.

Brian asked me to sew a dust cover for our keyboard and I couldn't think of anything that wasn't deadly dull, or too flashy, or something I'd get sick of after a week or two of living with it. But then I saw the toile creations on the blog Historically Inaccurate and knew there was the answer. At first glance this looks totally normal, if a bit twee for my taste:

but then you get a little closer...

and see that the piper is blowing bubbles

and the little dog is smoking a pipe.

It has been a while since I've done embroidery and I've had to pull out a few tangles, but it is coming back to me. I'm loving contemplating these pastoral scenes and figuring out how to corrupt them. My favorite so far is the viper lady (click on her for an up close view of her yellow eyes and forked tongue!):

I can't embroider while watching a movie on TV or reading, like I can with knitting, and the keyboard cover is pretty big so it'll be a work in progress for a while. But I'm getting pretty hooked on this craft and might have to make myself some matching pillows for the couch.

Why did it take me so long....?

I've been kind of pissy in a half hearted way at my local NPR station for dropping the show Selected Shorts from their line up. Not pissy enough to stop supporting them--especially since a friend of mine is a reporter there and I like to think of my $100 going into her paycheck--but I feel a recurring grumpiness on the weekends when they play Car Talk for the 3rd time.

Selected Shorts is an hour long show where actors read short stories--some brand new, some classics--live before an audience at Symphony Space in NYC. The story selection and the actors who read them are all top notch and before WUOM dropped it, I discovered a number of new authors through this medium.

I'm a little slow here, but it just occurred to me this week that I could see if the show is podcast and it is! Now I can listen to Selected Shorts whenever I get a little break from the small people. Tuesday was a frustrating day of parenting by the end of which I decided that the kids would be better off with a three headed dog as their mother; in fact I think I resembled a three headed dog what with all the barking I'd been doing, but if I really was a three headed dog maybe they wouldn't have ignored all my barking all the damn day long. So I ditched the kids with Brian, put on my MP3 player and went for a long walk while listening to this line up:

James Thurber, “The Topaz Cufflinks Mystery,” read by Isaiah Sheffer
Collected in: James Thurber: Writings and Drawings (Library of America, Volume 90)
Fairy tale, “Tritill, Litill and the Birds,” read by Daniel Gerroll
Collected in: The Crimson Fairy Book, edited by Andrew Lang (Dover)
Edith Nesbit, “Melisande,” read by Christina Pickles
Published as: Melisande (Candlewick Press)

By the time "The Topaz Cufflinks Mystery" was over I was in a different mood entirely--I'd like to see anyone listen to this story and not crack a smile. Once I started smiling I started feeling human again and after an hour of walking and listening, I was able to head back home and actually look on my kids with affection rather than frustration. Isn't that transformative power what good fiction is all about?

Summer tea and toxins

I crave iced tea in the summer far more often than I actually consume it.

Iced tea requires a little forethought--time to brew the tea and then let it cool and an appropriate container in which to store the cooled tea. I'm not so good at that planning ahead stuff but I could probably get my act together if I had the appropriate container available. My big teapot is a gorgeous Wedgewood Blue Willow wedding gift that would get smashed to pieces by the small people if I left it in the fridge.

After much searching for a sturdy yet not hideous container, I found this:

The Frigoverre 1 L glass pitcher containing concentrated iced jasmine tea.

I love this thing. And I love that it was made in Italy and yet only costs $7.50. I'm making the tea super strong so it lasts a while. When I want some, I pour about half a glass, add some ice cubes and then fill the rest of the glass up with water.

What with all the recalls of Chinese products out there, I'm a little paranoid about what I'm buying these days, especially if it will store food. I also bought the 2 L pitcher which I use for the kids orange or grape juice so I won't have to worry about crazy chemicals or lead leaching into their beverages. My kids are weird enough (charming! charmingly weird!); god only knows what a little industrial poisoning would do to them.

We also got rid of all our Nalgene bottles after discovering that they are made with a plastic that leaches Bisphenol A into the water. Don't you love it? Containers that are specifically made as water bottles with nice endocrine disruptors! My kids have been drinking from these for the past few years which probably explains a lot...but now we have replaced all the Nalgene with a combination of stainless steel Klean Kanteen and coated aluminum Sigg water bottles (which, if you aren't picky about the design on the outside of the bottle, you can often get on sale at the REI Outlet.)

I know this is just one step and we'll still be getting Bispheol A from other sources, but at least this is one relatively easy way to reduce our intake.

An excuse to eat crap on August 9

I usually crave gelato rather than Dairy Queen, but this evening will find me lining up for a Blizzard. Today, August 9, is the day that Dairy Queen donates all proceeds from Blizzard sales to Children's Miracle Network. (In our area, that's Beaumont Hospital.)

I've never actually had a Blizzard because I've been turned off by the utterly disgusting Blizzard combo that my husband orders every time we go to Dairy Queen: A mint Blizzard with Heath bars and Reeses mixed in. Yup, mint, toffee and peanut butter--it always makes the person behind the counter stop, squint at him and say, "are you sure?" when he orders it. I tasted it once and never want to taste it again.

Find out if your local Dairy Queen is participating in the fundraising--this web site has a zip code search. In Ann Arbor, that means going to the one on Stadium Blvd (the other Ann Arbor stores aren't participating) or to the one in Dexter or Ypsi.

We'll be having salad for dinner to prepare our bodies for the onslaught of corn-syrup based confections later in the evening.

Strategies for staying cool while still eating

Eat Chlodnik. I think I could happily replace all my body fluids with this stuff. I know many people have the same feeling about gazpacho.

Cook anything that needs to be cooked at night. Want to make a salade nicoise for dinner tomorrow? Boil up the potatoes, eggs, and green beans at night when it is cool and leave them in the fridge to be accessed tomorrow. Heck, if you have a strong attic fan, like my friend Lea, bake a quiche at night.

Pretend you are someplace where it doesn't feel like a swamp outside and have a picnic for dinner at your dining room table. Buy some good stinky cheese and salami and loaf of crusty bread; uncork a bottle of red, slice up a few tomatoes and cucumbers. Make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the kids. Eat fresh peaches with ice cream for dessert. Let the kids draw pictures of ants on a big sheet of paper and spread it over the table for authentic atmosphere!

Get someone else to feed you. Drop hints to your friends that it is time for them to invite your family over for dinner. Let them heat up their kitchen!

Don't forget that many stouts and porters are rich in B vitamins. Drink your dinner. Or you could be all healthy and make smoothies, if beer-for-dinner isn't your style.
Employ your grill. If you can stand to be out in the swamp air for just a few minutes, make grilled shrimp. They take about 2 minutes per side to grill when threaded on a skewer. Or make a beer can-chicken which cooks almost entirely untended so you can stay in the air conditioning.

But using grill does go with this warning: do not, I repeat, do not leave food untended on high on the grill to run upstairs and break up a fight between your kids. Let them throttle each other. If it sounds like there will be blood to clean up, turn it to low before you sprint for the stairs. Otherwise you will return to this:

Look, I made charcoal briquettes out of sweet potatoes.

Lesson: don't panic

For the love of god, do not make that chocolate zucchini cake I mentioned I was going to try. Dis-Gus-Ting. I wish I had done a little research and looked at more recipes before baking it. The one I made was dense, and oily and totally flat in flavor. I cut one wedge of it, ate about 3 bites and dumped the rest of the (huge) cake in the trash.

Chocolate and Zucchini has, appropriately, a much more palatable sounding Chocolate Zucchini Cake or this recipe, from the Simply Recipes blog sounds decent. I don't know what I was thinking when I made the lousy version--I think I panicked in the face of the zucchini onslaught and just went for the recipe that used the most zucchini.

I did make something good with a substantial portion of the rest of the zucchini lurking in the kitchen, but don't have photographic evidence. (Yes, lurking. If you pick up a dish towel and find a zucchini hiding underneath it, I think it can be accused of lurking.) I made some zucchini feta pancakes with a dilled tatziki sauce and they were terrific; so terrific that we ate them all before I laid my hands on the camera. I'll definitely be making them again and I'll try to write down the recipe (I was improvising and hope I can repeat it) and take a photo before they are all gone.

The onslaught

The produce is starting to flood in from my garden. After this week's heat, there were four huge zucchini to greet me when I went over to my garden (which is located in my Mother-in-law's backyard since she has direct sunlight and our yard has lots of shade). I swear they were tiny when I last checked them four days earlier. I have a promising recipe for chocolate zucchini cake which might mean I can actually sneak some zucchini into the small people (it looks especially good for using up the huge zucchini that might be too spongy for sauteeing--the recipe calls for 3 cups shredded). They are too suspicious to eat zucchini bread, but the cocoa powder should cover up any green flecks in the cake.

There were also more beans in my garden than we could easily consume in a meal or two, so I decided to take the opportunity to make some Dilly Beans.

What? You have never heard of Dilly Beans? I don't know where my mom got the recipe, but I remember munching my way through a whole jar of these when I was 8 years old and a bit of a salt fiend. They are semi-crisp, sour, salty, spicy, long pickles without any of the potential excessive slipperiness factor that homemade cucumber pickles sometimes fall into. Dilly Beans are great along side a good sandwich or laid out in a bowl for snacking with beer. I also am looking forward to trying them in a martini instead of an olive--I think the little kick they have will be a nice complement to the gin.

One could conceivably can these things with a real hot water process so they are shelf stable. I'm way to lazy for that, so I just make enough to store in the fridge.
Here are my beans, packed and ready for their hot vinegar salt brine.

The recipe looks nicer if you have pint jars, but I only had two big quart jars on hand, so the beans are a little wadded up in there. With the pint jars you can get your fingers down to the bottom to arrange them so they are all nicely lined up and vertical. But really, wadded up Dilly Beans still taste fine.

I'll use some of the extra dill I have left over from the beans to make my favorite summer soup, Chlodnik, which also uses up 4 of the beautiful sweet cucumbers that I picked today!

Dilly Beans
This makes 4 pint jars and assumes that you will NOT do a boiling water bath so will store the finished product in the refrigerator.

2 pounds green beans, trimmed
1 tsp cayenne
4 cloves garlic
4 heads of dill (or good sized wads of fresh dill)
2 1/2 cups water
2 1/2 cups cider vinegar
1/4 cup salt

Blanch the beans for about one minute in boiling water then cool rapidly in ice water to prevent further cooking.

To each pint jar, add 1/4 teaspoon cayenne, 1 clove garlic, 1 head dill (or a generous amount of fresh dill).

Pack the beans lengthwise into the jars, leaving 1/4 inch of head space.

Combine remaining ingredients and bring to a boil.

Pour, boiling hot, over the beans, covering the beans. Put on and tighten the caps--carefully! The jars are hot hot hot!

Let cool down and then refrigerate.

Store for about 2 weeks to develop flavor before eating.

Dilly Beans will keep for 2 or 3 months in the refrigerator before losing their crispness.

Poetry and knitting

If you appreciate both of the above subjects, you must head over to today's post at A Fuse #8 Production. The poem is by Susan Ramsey (Fuse #8's mom, who I vaguely seem to remember lives here in Ann Arbor) titled "Mariah Educates the Sensitive." The poem makes me want to pull out my stash and dig my wrists into woolly goodness!

Flight

While many people think of summer as a leisurely time to tackle long books, the opposite is true for the majority of the women in my book group. Summer is a pretty crazy time, especially if you did what I did this summer and scoffed at the cost of day camps and decided that "Mommy-Camp" would be just as much fun and cheaper (I did send them both to camp last week--Ian full-day and Fiona half-day and man was it nice to have a little break from each other). Coming up with interesting stuff for a 7 and 4 year old takes a hell of a lot of time and energy, so a good, fast moving book is always appreciated.

Flight, by Sherman Alexie, was a really wonderful book which was also really fast read. Zits is a really compelling character--funny and perceptive, but wild and scary in the way that only a lost adolescent can be. This mix makes the massacre at the bank all too easy to understand. Without Zits' voice--bewildered, funny, smart, hurt--the book could spiral into a depressing soup of the worst humanity has to offer: oppression, deception and violence. But instead, throughout the time travel incidents, Alexie manages to show Zits' longing for contact and trust, while never dropping the defenses and suspicions of a damaged adolescent.

The group all agreed that the relatively happy ending helped a lot and we could have seen a totally different ending plunging the book into despair. But Zits' sharp sense of humor kept it from feeling too sentimental when things do seem to work out.

We also had some interesting questions about what we guessed was the writer's process. Ami and I felt that the book might have come in a rush and wasn't cut much from draft to draft; the voice felt so pure and consistent, I could only imagine Alexie inhabiting this consciousness for a finite period of time to keep it from being watered down. But Meagan thought the original manuscript was probably4 or 5 times the length of the book, with many more time travel incidents, and then Alexie pared it down a great deal. Obviously, we don't know the answer to these questions, but it was fun to talk about the process of writing and not just the product.

Food-wise there wasn't a lot to go on--a couple of references to gloppy oatmeal in a foster home and a guy picking through a garbage can for food. Zits' quest is about his identity as half Native American and half Irish so we figured that was an open ended invitation to focus on the bounty of summer and go with a kind of local, fresh vegetable and fruit based cuisine. And here is what our groaning table looked like:
Counter clockwise from the top left--trout and wild rice with ginger, scallion, sake sauce, tomatoes stuffed with goat cheese, olives, pine nuts, basil and bread crumbs, calabacitas (summer squash and roasted chilies sauteed with sharp cheddar), a salad with lots of peppery arugula and beets, pasta salad and a bowl of cherries.

And not pictured on the table is the sweet corn and hominy chowder:
and the peach black raspberry crisp:
It was all fabulous (of course!) and we ate and drank a lot of wine until the mosquitoes descended (though it was nicely mosquito-free for most of the night).

The next book we plan to read is Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky. I read the book back in January and loved it, but haven't had anyone to talk it over with and there is lots there to talk about.