Spring green

There are a few new spring-green things around here.

The chives are coming up.

I have a new green bumper sticker (on my green van).

And, unfortunately, there is also a whole lot of green stuff coming out of my kid's nose...

The loaf of meat

The main reason I have never made meatloaf is this:

Gross.

I'm ok when it comes to nasty kitchen tasks when the payoff is worth it, but up until two weeks ago, I had never tasted a meatloaf that justified the gross-out factor of sinking one's hands up to the wrist in squishy meat. The few meatloaves I had tasted were dried out, tasteless hamburger-like constructions. They could have been sawdust loaf for all the good the meat did in the recipe.

All that changed at my book group (a.k.a monthly excuse for gluttony) meeting. We read Empire Falls (terrific book, amazing how Russo manages to incorporate so many depressing subjects into a book that is not at all depressing--and the HBO film version is good, too.) Since a diner figures prominently in the book, the menu was: meatloaf, mashed potatoes, greens, Mexican-ish salad (the kind you might find at a diner), squash casserole, root beer floats and lemon meringue pie. I tell you, we reading women love to eat!

Once again I neglected to bring my camera which is too bad because I would have liked a photo of my transformative meatloaf moment. Halla made a terrific meatloaf from Cook's Illustrated and suddenly sinking ones hands into a bowl of meat gloop didn't seem so gross. Her meatloaf was moist, rich and had a spicy glaze. It wasn't some lame-ass hamburger loaf, but an entity unto itself.

It was so good that last Saturday I decided to clean out the freezer and try my hand at making one my own. I found a half pound of ground turkey thighs and a half pound of ground pork lurking in the back of the freezer so I used them as a substitute for one of the two pounds of ground beef that Cook's calls for. The two lighter meats meant that my meatloaf wasn't as dark and rich as Halla's but it was still plenty flavorful.

After doing the gross meat squishy part, I patted it into a loaf (according to Cook's you want the fat to be able to drain away, so no loaf pan) on a foil covered broiler pan with holes punched in the foil. It went into the oven looking quite tidy:
But did not emerge looking too pretty....

Christ, that looks like something from one of my nightmares.

Some of that ooze in the above picture is the cheese (yes, the recipe has cheese because we all know there isn't enough fat in meat alone...) which seeped out and some of it was just plain meat fat. But you know what? You don't make meatloaf for its looks. After scraping away some of that ooze and putting the tomato gunk on top and broiling it, it was perfectly presentable to be served it on a plate with its dinner brethren--smashed potatoes (lazy person's mashed), broccoli and some greens:

Vintage-style food on a vintage plate--meatloaf really should be eaten off of melamine and this plate boasts my own original artwork circa 1973.

Sarah and Brian and Nicholaus came over to help us conquer the massive loaf of meat and Nicholaus gave it his approval by thoroughly neglecting his broccoli (he's usually a broccoli kinda guy) and having two servings of the loafy meatiness. Then again, we also have a theory that he and Fiona did some kind of weird-ass three-year-old personality switch for the duration of the meal since she gobbled down her broccoli and neglected her meat (and she's usually a meaty kinda gal). We convinced Ian that meatloaf was "a ketchup lover's dream food" and after his usual kvetching he went along with it, particularly with the outright bribe that if he ate it, he'd get some of the fantastic Stroh's Lemon Custard ice cream that the Royal-Pinks brought over with them. (Haven't had Lemon Custard you say? Next time you head to Washtenaw Dairy for a massive scoop of ice cream pass up the chocolate varieties with tons of chunks of stuff in it and go for the purity of the Lemon Custard--believe me, it is fantastic, even for a chocolate lover. Or you can hit Krogers and bring home an entire half gallon of Lemon Custard and stuff yourself silly.)

It is a little late in the season to have discovered a good cold-winter meal, but I do have faith that Michigan isn't going to all of a sudden become weather-friendly and Spring-like. I'm sure it'll throw at least another day or two of surprise snow at us and if it does, I'm ready with the meaty antidote for dinner!

Loaf of Meaty Goodness
adapted from Cook's Illustrated

3 ounces Monterey Jack cheese, grated on small holes of box grater (about 1 cup)
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 medium onion , chopped fine (about 1 cup)
1 medium rib celery , chopped fine (about 1/2 cup)
1 medium clove garlic , minced or pressed through a garlic press (about 1 teaspoon)
1 teaspoon paprika
1/2 cup low-sodium chicken broth
2 large eggs
1/2 teaspoon unflavored gelatin (powdered)
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
2/3 cup panko bread crumbs (Cook's uses crushed saltines--if you use these instead of Panko, decrease the salt to 3/4 t)
1 1/2 teaspoons table salt
2 tablespoons minced fresh parsley leaves
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 pound ground beef
1/2 pound ground dark meat turkey (thigh)
1/2 pound ground pork

Glaze
1/2 cup ketchup
1 teaspoon hot pepper sauce
1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
1/4 cup cider vinegar
3 tablespoons packed light brown sugar

1. Heat oven to 375 degrees. Spread cheese on plate and place in freezer until ready to use. Prepare baking sheet--cover a broiler pan or a cookie cooling rack with two layers of foil and punch holes in it so fat can drain. Then put pan or rack in another pan to catch drips and prevent your oven from smoking you out of the house.

2. Heat butter in a skillet over medium-high heat, add onion and celery and cook, stirring occasionally, until beginning to brown. Add garlic, and paprika and cook, stirring, until fragrant, about 1 minute. Transfer mixture to small bowl and set aside to cool.

3. Whisk broth and eggs in large bowl until combined. Sprinkle gelatin over liquid and let stand 5 minutes. Stir in soy sauce, mustard, bread crumbs, parsley, salt, pepper, and onion mixture. Crumble frozen cheese into coarse powder and sprinkle over mixture. Add ground meat; mix gently with hands until thoroughly combined, about 1 minute. Transfer meat to foil rectangle and shape into 10 by 6-inch oval about 2 inches high. Bake 55 to 65 minutes. Remove meat loaf from oven and turn on broiler.

4. While meat loaf cooks, combine ingredients for glaze in small saucepan; bring to simmer over medium heat and cook, stirring, until thick and syrupy, about 5 minutes. Spread half of glaze evenly over cooked meat loaf with rubber spatula; place under broiler and cook until glaze bubbles and begins to brown at edges, about 5 minutes. Remove meat loaf from oven and spread evenly with remaining glaze; place back under broiler and cook until glaze is again bubbling and beginning to brown, about 5 minutes more. Let meat loaf cool about 20 minutes before slicing.

Rat melon

Brian and I have been checking out Cute Overload a little too often because last week when we went to Arbor Farms we couldn't resist tossing this in the cart:
That may look like a normal melon, but allow me to give you a sense of the scale:
It is about the length of a three-year-old's tibia. Another bonus: it was only $2 and gets along well with Kermit the Frog.

Brian, always one to push things just a step further, then created this last night:

A rabid-red-eyed rat-melon.

Despite the kids' affection for the mini-melon and my fear that they would take mutilation of the rat badly, they ate some of it (yes, even Ian!). Unfortunately, the taste didn't match up with the cuteness factor--full-size melon tastes a lot better. This one was a little bit over ripe and had a distinctly squash-y aroma. I know, melon is technically a squash, but I don't like to be reminded of its savory sibling while eating it.

There is still a good amount left over which will be transformed into rabid-rat-melon popsicles later today (blenderize them with a little juice of your choice and freeze in a popsicle mold).

It may not seem like popsicle season to all of you out there (especially since we woke up today to find a dusting of snow) but to the small people in this house it is never too cold for popsicles.

My new buddy

I've got a new buddy in the kitchen:
I've been a little slow on the uptake here but cast iron is fantastic! About a month ago I bought an already seasoned Lodge cast iron frying pan from Amazon (you can get them locally at Kitchenport, but Kitchenport is far too dangerous a place for me to enter with a three year old). There has been a buzz about the dangers of Teflon among the avian-owning community (of which I am not a member). Enough food freaks have heard about how Teflon fumes can kill a budgie and started thinking twice about frying their eggs in the self-same bird-killer pan. The NY Times magazine had a funny article by Chef Daniel Patterson whose environmentalist girlfriend made him get rid of all his Teflon pans; his quest to make light scrambled eggs finally arrived at a fairly involved process of poaching scrambled eggs and straining them.

I'm too lazy for all that rigmarole before I'm fully caffeinated, so I thought I'd try the old fashioned non-stick pan: seasoned cast iron. It may not be the greatest pan for scrambled eggs (I still risk the Teflon for my slow cooked creamy scrambled eggs), but for pretty much every other cooking task for which I used to reach for a non-stick pan, I now use the cast iron. Fried eggs, pancakes, chicken paillards, grilled cheese sandwiches, so far nothing has stuck to it. I was concerned that the garlic loaded chicken would lead to garlic flavored pancakes the next morning, but a soak in hot water and a soap-less scrub with a brush got out any offending odor or flavor.

The only downside is the weight. The pan lives on my cooktop even when not in use because it is so damn heavy I fear I will brain myself if I keep it up on the high shelf where I store my other pots. I also bought a silicon tube-like thingy to slip over the handle so I don't inadvertently fry my palm when the pan is hot.

Last night my new buddy helped me to make dinner:
I finally got around to making the kafta recipe from January's Gourmet magazine. It was good, though I advise anyone who thinks about making the kafta to abandon the grill and cook the kebabs under the broiler. I started these on the grill and after losing about a third of the quantity of each meat stick to gravity and flames, I very carefully eased them off of the grill (one big spatula and a pair of tongs) and onto my broiler pan. I think if I had stuck with the grill we each would have had one mere morsel of meat and the rest would have fallen to its ruin. How the hell you are supposed to get a ground meat mixture to stick to skewers I do not know. Maybe bamboo skewers would help, but I only have metal ones.

The kafta flavor was really good--the right amount of spice, herbs and pine nuts to highlight the lamb without overwhelming it. I was underwhelmed by the zucchini chunks that the recipe included. They were marinated in a lemon-olive oil mixture and were supposed to be grilled too, but as I had run out of skewers I popped them in my new buddy and cooked them on the stove top. The skillet cooked them up perfectly with nicely browned sides, but the flavor was just too bland next to the assertively spiced kafta.
I altered the yogurt sauce that goes with the kafta and made it more like a tatziki sauce with grated cucumber instead of chopped mint. Mint would be nice when I have a big tuft of it growing in a pot on my deck, but the effort of tracking down mint in March in Michigan I deemed not worth the effort. I also put only a teeny bit of garlic in the yogurt sauce so that a small girl would eat it and eat it she did--she tried pulling the whole bowl over to her place and digging in with her spoon. It took a bit of convincing that the yogurt sauce was to be shared by everyone at the table.

Next time I make the kafta I'll probably skip the zucchini, rice and yogurt sauce and serve it with hummus, good pita bread and a romaine/tomato/cucumber salad tossed with lemon, olive oil, salt and sumac. And hell, maybe I'll try and pan fry the meat tubes in my new buddy and skip both grill and broiler.

the garment that divides us

You are either a poncho lover or a poncho hater. I don't think I've ever met someone who is on-the-fence about said garment. I have always lumped myself in the "hater" category but I now have to qualify my position.

I now declare that I hate all ponchos that don't have green monsters on them.

I am officially in love/covet/envy/want-it-want-it-want-it NOW mode with this poncho.

Bumpy cables

Because I have the attention span of a flea and because I got a really good deal on the yarn, I started yet another knitting project, this time making bumpy cables:
At first I thought the bumpy (seed stitched) cables were kind of creepy, like they had sprouted pimples or something. But I'm growing fond of them. So far I've messed up the cables and had to redo them twice, which is a pretty good run for me. I don't often make cabled stuff because I don't have that attention-to-detail sort of personality and will knit along happily and then look back and realized I've twisted one cable (usually way at the bottom) the wrong way. Much cursing then ensues.

So I'm trying to train myself to stop and look at what I've done fairly regularly so that I catch mistakes before I've gone on too far.

I do really love this yarn--it isn't some fancy schmancy fiber--just Paton's Merino that I got on sale at Joann.com. But it is soft and springy and very red. I'm making the sweater pictured below (I bought the pattern at Elann):
and yarn for the entire sweater cost $42 (and that includes shipping--the yarn was on sale for $5 for a 100 gm ball and I had a 20% off coupon). And for once, I am actually using the yarn that is called for in a pattern and I'm following the pattern rather than making lots of changes. I was quite tempted to do some modifications, particularly to all the seed stitch panels, but finally decided that a) I kinda like the pattern as it is written and b) I'm sick of dealing with all my "I'm smarter than the pattern" blunders (see all the damn mistakes I made on that Ribby cardigan). It is humbling, but true--I am not smarter than the pattern. So I'm actually going to try and complete this sweater by (gasp) following the rules!

Undies in a bunch vs. Knickers in a twist

Depending on which side of the Atlantic you are from I've either got my undies in a bunch or my knickers in a twist about Zadie Smith's new book On Beauty.

Unfortunately, after reading this book, I don't think Smith would recognize the incongruity of an American uttering the latter phrase.

I'm hardly in the first to comment that Zadie Smith has a tin ear for American English (though I didn't know about the problem before reading the book)--go look at Blue Pencil's wonderful post dissecting all the mistakes in just the first few pages. Also, there are a number of readers' reviews on the book's Amazon page that detail other inaccuracies.

Shall I tell you what triggered my editorial instinct? Not food mistakes (for once) but clothing, an area in which I am hardly an expert since I live in jeans and t-shirts (a friend expressed surprise recently when I wore a shirt with buttons). But even such a non-clothes horse knows that you don't call a turtleneck a polo-neck and a tanktop a vest when you are writing in the point of view of an American character. Another gaff that had me snorting with laughter was when a group of rappers was offered "a crate of beer" rather than a case of beer after a performance.

Smith's editors should be scolded in a big way for letting this many mistakes through; Deb (aka Blue Pencil) pointed out that Smith thanks numerous editors and copy editors all of whom should be dope-slapping each other to bits now.

The inaccuracies aren't merely linguistic--Smith may have spent some time at Radcliff, but she has no clue how the American university system works. There were so many red flags that yanked me out of the story. It would be too tedious for me to list them all (though please do feel free to e-mail me and we can have a big old bitch session together). I am still wracking my brains as to why Smith set this at an American university and not a British one. I don't see how this book was improved by hauling it to this side of the Atlantic and I can imagine it having far fewer errors if it was set in an environment that Smith knows better.

And now, on to the actual story. In the moments that I was able to turn a blind eye to all the distracting errors I tried hard to get into this book. Smith says in her opening note that the book was "inspired by a love of E. M. Forster" and that she wanted to "repay the debt with hommage." Oh dear. I love Howards End and clearly Smith does too, but I don't think that I should re-write it.

Unlike Forster, almost none of Smith's characters are complex or sympathetic--most are pretty despicable. The only character who did retain the subtlety of the original was Charlene Kipps, the mother figure based on Mrs. Wilcox. Unfortunately, she also appears on the fewest number of pages. Forster manages to make his characters have unappealing sides to their personalities--no one wants to go cuddle up with Mr Wilcox and one could accuse Helen Wilcox of being bullheaded--but they are not so caricatured that one would dismiss them outright. But spend an hour in a room with Monty Kipps or Zora Belsey? No thank you.

Also, when does paying hommage to one's favorite book merely revert to laziness? Smith lifts scenes almost word for word from the original. The two most glaring examples are the scene with the Kipps family after the mother's death in which they reject a handwritten note bequeathing a family painting to Kiki (in the original Mrs. Wilcox writes that she would like Margaret to have Howards End) and the scene at the railway station in which Mrs. Kipps wants to take Kiki to see a painting at another house and is intercepted by her family (Mrs. Wilcox wants to take Margaret to Howards End and similarly is intercepted by her family). Reading these two scenes made me extremely uncomfortable and embarrassed for the author (Smith, not Forster). Did she really have nothing new to add? Was it necessary to "borrow" every aspect of the scenes?

One reason I'm spending so much time dissecting my reaction to this book is that I really loved Smith's first book, White Teeth, which dealt with race, class, and gender politics in a way I can only describe as graceful and light (despite the weightiness of the topics). Her characters in that book were so warm and alive and complicated. Now I want to go re-read both White Teeth and Howards End to rid my mind of this impression of Smith and to reclaim Forster's story from Smith's version, which unfortunately became more parody than hommage for me.

Note to self

Staying at home and indulging in, say, $900 worth of massages, wine and babysitters, would be a better way to get through winter (and the school break) than to spend that money on airfare.

We had a dickens of a trip to visit Brian in AZ (he's on a two-week work trip). Silly us, we thought it would be "fun" to break up the daddy-drought and go someplace sunny for a few days of Ian's school break. Both kids got sick (again). Ian was screaming in pain from pressure in his ear on Saturday (we drove to the top of a small mountain and the change in pressure triggered it) and then Saturday night (and Sunday night and last night too) Fiona spiked a fever. She's a mess--hasn't been eating, won't take Tylenol (every night she and I have a massive wrestling match to get her fever lower including sticking her in a bathtub of cold water--you could hear the screams for miles--but at least after that she took her damn medicine.)

To add to the "pleasure factor" of our (ha!) vacation, our flight out on Wednesday evening was delayed 4 hours--they boarded us, pushed away from the gate, went back to the gate, got us off the plane, put us back on the same plane, pushed away from the gate again, went back again, got us off the plane and then finally put us on a different plane. All after the kids' bedtimes. We finally got to AZ at 4 AM (their time--6 AM here) and Ian was so exhausted he promptly threw up.

Yes, the sun was shining and both my kids looked like little moles squinting up at the sky and complaining about how bright it was. There were moments between bouts of sickness where things went ok--a trip to a science museum, a 4 hour playground visit where the kids were overjoyed to be playing outside--but all in all, a vacation I'd prefer to forget.

God it feels good to be back home where they can scream without waking up an entire hotel and there are lots of videos with which to placate them.

Beverage news and memories

You may (or may not) recall that last October Ami and John brought over three affordable bottles of wine for us to drink and decide which one they should buy a case of for their bonfire.

I have some excellent news: my favorite of the three they brought
is on sale at a ridiculously cheap price at Arbor Farms. They have it for $4.99 a bottle plus you can get another 10% off if you buy 6 or more bottles which makes it $4.50 a bottle. That's cheaper than some bottled water! So I went and bought a case and now we have a house red that will help us get through the rest of the gloomy months. It's a punchy Syrah, not terribly complex, but able to stand up to common fare like, spaghetti with red sauce or, Mexican chocolate cupcakes...

On another beverage front, Jam Faced's recent post about tea got me thinking of my own addiction. Go look at his post for a beautiful photo of what looks like my ideal cup of tea. It is in a lovely bone china cup, to start with. It also looks strong and milky and has a perfect tea biscuit to nibble on while you sip.

The photo and post hit a raw nerve since for the past two weeks I've been out of my favorite tea and have been trying to find a substitute. Unfortunately I'm addicted to Peet's English Breakfast blend which I can only get via mail order. I order it a pound at a time (and a pound is a LOT of tea) but somehow I thought I was on my second to last tin rather than the last one so I went through a period in limbo land. If I was more organized I would have placed the order right away but in between the chaos and, oh, let's see, the chaos of my life with the two rug rats I would forget daily to order the tea and then remember daily at tea time when I was faced with inadequate substitute brown brews. Finally I propped the empty tin on the keyboard of the computer so I would remember to place the order the next time I got on-line.

Thankfully, this week the tea arrived and this afternoon I sat down to this:

The ingredients for a happy afternoon Kate

In the Peet's-free interval I tried two teas that I don't remember being as bad as they were: Taylors of Harrogate Imperial Tea Room (loose leaf) and Twinings' English Breakfast (in--ugh--tea bags). I was not a girl raised on snooty tea; "tea" when I was growing up was plain old Typhoo tea leaves. We stuffed boxes of the stuff in our suitcases (along with many packets of McVities Plain Chocolate Digestive Biscuits) every time we visited the relatives in England. I thought Typhoo was downright wonderful stuff compared to the Lipton that was served everywhere else.

The Taylors was strong, it had that going for it, but there was no bouquet. And the Twinings tea bags--weak brown water. Yes it had some caffeine, but no taste. I really don't remember becoming such a tea snob, but I think Peet's has ruined me--their tea is whole leaf (not the broken crumbles of Typhoo) and really has a flowery bouquet. It isn't super strong but that can be dealt with by adding an extra spoonful to the pot.

Now that I have the Peet's in hand, I have been attempting to come close to my memory of drinking the ideal cup in front of my Granny's coal fire in her 18th C farm house up on the Yorkshire moors. I know, this is a vain quest since there are so many elements of my daily life that lack the atmosphere of the memory, but a girl has to dream and I dream of tea.

I even bought some Thomas Organic Creamery Creamline Milk the other day (once I got my Peet's supply) which is from local pasture-fed Jersey cows, is non-homogenized and low-temp pasturized--about as close as I am like to get to the milk my Granny had delivered every morning. It helped, but I fear that the ideal cup is beyond me simply due to the vividness of my memory. So I'll keep looking back at Jam Faced's post and keep on dreaming.

I did experience a positive memory moment this week by re-reading Joan Aiken's The Wolves of Willoughby Chase; it was a quick and pleasant trip back to the past. After the first few chapters it became abundantly clear why I loved this book as a kid: there is a headstrong heroine who can't keep her temper and there are nice descriptions of food.

By page 17 I was seduced by "a box of chocolates about a foot square by six inches deep, swathed around with violet ribbons" and a little further down the page "a confectioners' paste board carton filled with every imaginable variety of little cakes--there were jam tarts, maids of honor, lemon cheese cakes, Chelsea buns, and numerous little iced confections in brilliant and enticing colors." Mmmmmmm. Must go track down little cakes to go with tea.

Kid-Lit

In the past two days, I've read two of Kate DiCamillo's kid books and the one pictured to the left is fabulous.

There are appealing characters who are remarkably complex especially when you take into account the economy of the writing. But the prose isn't simplistic in the least and does not talk down to kids. The author uses words like "perfidy" and tells you if you don't know the word to go look it up. And the plot moves along quickly but also knows when to slow down so that the experience of reading it isn't breathless.

The illustrations, by Timothy Basil Ering, are also beautiful. I can't say I'm the greatest fan of having illustrations in books that aren't strictly "picture books" because often they don't jibe with the prose (I read a horrible edition of some Trollope novels last year which had the most hideous illustrations and completely ruined the spell the prose would cast) . But Ering renders DiCamillo's story perfectly; it is a treat to turn the page and see one of his beautiful, smoky drawings.

I also read DiCamillo's first book, Because of Winn-Dixie. It was ok. The southern voices were done well and again, there was an economy to the story, nothing superfluous or excessive. But I can't say that I found the plot or characters that interesting. I'll definitely be reading The Tale of Despereaux to my kids (I think Ian is almost ready for it) but I doubt I'll read them Winn-Dixie.

DiCamillo's books might be directed at a slightly younger audience than I have been craving so next up I'm going to revisit a favorite children's author: Joan Aiken. I loved her book The Wolves of Willoughby Chase when I was a kid--I must of read it 10 times. It turns out that this book was the first in a series dubbed The Wolves Chronicles so I checked out the next book in the series Black Hearts in Battersea. I am hoping that a re-read of Wolves and this next book turn out to be as good as I remember. I just noticed that Nixie Knox has Wolves on her recommended books side bar and since I like (or, let's be honest here, love with an unreasonable passion) many of the other books on her side bar, maybe my adolescent self had decent taste (in books at least) after all.