Spring cleaning

Spring is definitely here and while I do have the urge to do a little sprucing up around the old homestead, the touch-up caulking and painting at the top of a high ladder will have to wait until this damn cold goes away (visions of coughing myself backwards off the ladder come to mind).

Allow me to propose a fun-ish activity which can be done while lolling on the couch (don't you love chores like that?), has tangible results and is one of the few organizing concepts that I have thought up that actually works really well. Organize your recipes.

If, like me, you are addicted to food magazines (Hi, my name is Kate and I have a subscription problem....) you probably have a teetering pile of magazines each of which has maybe two or three recipes that you might actually attempt to make.

Rather than leave the magazines and the recipes hidden like this:

Photogenic basket, but not terribly practical when it actually comes to making dinner...

I'm going to suggest that you invest in a few affordable office supplies and create one binder and two folders.

Into the binder go recipes that you regularly make and that are tried and true:

You can assign one of your daughter's robots to protect your favorite recipes.

and into the two folders go the clipped-out recipes that you think you might want to cook someday.
I organized mine by Savory or Sweet, but go ahead and develop whatever categories work well for you.

Now before you begin this project here is a list of the supplies you need:

• 1 binder

• 1 large pack of page protectors (so you can slide clippings in--no need to retype anything)

• 1 set of binder dividers

• 2 (or more) pocket folders to put your clippings in

Alternatively, if you are really into organizing, you could have two binders, one with the tried and true recipes and one with the yet-to-be-tried recipes. I'm too lazy to organize this thoroughly.

Now grab a sharp pair of scissors and gather together your teetering pile of magazines. Cut out anything that you might be tempted to make and that falls within the realm of a reasonable recipe (the ethnic stew with 23,000 ingredients and specialized equipment you can pass over) and stick it in its appropriate folder:
Once your folder is as packed to the gills as this one is, you know that you need to spend a little time in the kitchen cooking some of what you clipped and deciding whether the recipe is a keeper or not.

If it is a goodie, then find that little darling a page protector of its very own and sort it into your binder. The page protector keeps cooking crud off of the recipe and it means you can just unclip the specific recipe and don't have to have the whole binder out taking up counter space. For sorting, I divided my binder into the following categories: Soups/Salads/Sides, Main Dishes, Baked goods (non dessert--you know, breads, scones, muffins), Desserts. I've been debating whether I should add another section for cookies, because the urge to make cookies is often separate from my urge to make a proper dessert. But for now the cookie recipes are hanging out with the Hot Fudge Pudding Cake recipes (yes, there is more than one tried and true Hot Fudge Pudding Cake recipe in my binder. Wanna make something of it?)
When you are pressed for time, feeling like you can't think of what to cook or maybe just needing a little self-esteem boost that a successfully prepared recipe can provide, you can turn to this binder and find reliable recipes. And if later a recipe that you thought was a keeper lets you down (some recipes have the first-time-good-luck thing going for them and are disasters every time thereafter) you can easily yank it out and put it through your paper shredder.

And when you feel the itch to cook something new, you can turn to your folders and look at what you clipped out. I just opened up my Savory folder and saw perched on the top of the pile a recipe for Tagliatelle with Creme Fraiche and Arugula (from god knows where. Those of you with sourcing issues might have a problem with my organizing system). As I just planted my arugula seeds in my garden yesterday, I'm going to try this recipe when it is time to thin the rows.

I do this exercise about once every four months to liberate the horizontal surfaces in our house from their magazine detritus. Any magazine that hasn't been cut to pieces (maybe just one or two recipes clipped) I take to either the magazine exchange rack at the downtown library or to the magazine rack at the Y. Personally, I love to read a good food magazine while sweating away on an exercise bike. Call it justification for putting all that effort and sweat into going absolutely nowhere.

The mucus blaster

For those of you not currently expelling green gunk from your nose and lungs, the timing of this post may make you scratch your head. After all it is Spring, right? Time to start waxing poetic about watercress soup and the anticipated first peas and asparagus? But I know there are other folks out there afflicted with the dreaded Spring-cold-of-copious-snot and to you I say this "Spicy Hot Chocolate".

We all know that hot peppers (capsicums) make your nose run when eaten in sufficient quantity. And we all know that a good cup of hot chocolate can comfort even the most miserable sick human (provided that the stomach remains stable and thank god this has not been a vomiting sickness or else I would never hear the end of Ian's discussions that throw up shouldn't really be called vomit but chyme. I really don't like being corrected on picky technical terms when I am sick.).

Unfortunately, dairy products can exacerbate mucus formation and when already drowning in the green goo, hot chocolate made with milk and perhaps topped with a blob of whipped cream doesn't sound like such a good idea. However I think I have come up with the hot-chocolate-comfort-vs-mucus-production-conundrum with an antidote.

By combining the following with hot milk (and a little extra sugar because let's be honest, one needs a little extra sugar when sick)
you get spicy hot chocolate and the capsicum from the cayenne pepper actually cuts through any added mucus production that the milk might inspire! Add enough cayenne and you can blast pretty much any nose open (I know, pretty vision, yes?).

My inspiration for this beverage came from this:
Vosges Red Fire Bar with two kinds of chili peppers and cinnamon mixed in dark chocolate. At $6-7 per bar, it isn't a daily indulgence in these parts.

So I've been making myself at least one and sometimes far more than one cup of Spicy Hot Chocolate every day and it has made being sick just a little more tolerable. You don't have to be sick to enjoy this, and being a bit of a junky for spicy food I suspect I'll be sprinkling cayenne pepper into my hot chocolate whenever I get the chance.

Spicy Hot Chocolate

One mug full of hot milk
One heaping spoonful of cocoa or hot chocolate powder (the Ghirardelli sweet ground chocolate and cocoa is my favorite)
Sugar to taste
1/8 t cinnamon
1/8 t cayenne pepper
big gob of whipped cream

Mix together the first 5 ingredients, make sure you stir well. Then top with a poof of cream. Settle back and grab the Kleenex box and let 'er flow!

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.