childbearing hipster

Wild Man Vintage

Trying on a vintage Lilly Pulitzer, which I'm not buying. But: wool!
Lilly! $26! Fits! It is a perfect storm of rad. But I would never wear
it, only curate it. I am trying to create boundaries for myself.

New baby cousin in my arms

Molly and Daisy, having been demoted to a tie for second cutest, race
slot cars in the background.

Lawrence, KS: Molly shows off for cousin Stef

Tortilla Española

Tonight's dinner was an eleventh hour choice based on a few factors:

I have potatoes.
I have a bunch of fresh eggs from a recent visit to check out our friends' chicken setup.
I didn't bother to thaw any meat, so it needed to be Vege Night.

Tortilla seemed obvious. And I figured it would be easy, although I've never made it.

I chose this recipe, but there are a million out there and even though I followed this one I should have taken the advice to make it more eggy, as most of the other recipes I checked out do. But for description of the process, this is great. And it's hard to screw up eggs and potatoes. I used another couple of eggs to make some aïoli and then added a few herbs and spices (celery seed, paprika, lemon zest) to some ordinary Heinz ketchup as another option.

To my utter shock and delight, the kids not only ate it, they devoured it. So much for having leftovers for breakfast, but at least I have my first grand slam home run since I don't know when.

Half-Birthday Soup

Our preschool has a tradition for kids whose birthdays fall during the summer: they schedule a "half-birthday" celebration on a school day so the kid can get the full cupcake passing experience.

Molly knows how to read a calendar, and figured out that today is her half-birthday. I agreed that we would mark the day by allowing her to plan a dinner, subject to my approval, which I would prepare in her honor.  I was surprised by her choice, and gratified because it shows how far she's come with trying new foods and how much my persistence at teaching her about nutrition has paid off.

Her requested menu: Tomato soup, bread, and Caesar salad.

I made bread yesterday--a simple French boule, cut with some whole wheat flour and a little flax meal. The Caesar was part of our farmer's market haul last week--tiny crinkly leaves of gem lettuce and fresh Parmesan, and a homemade dressing with a squirt of anchovy paste (man, was I glad to find that at the local Italian deli/market. I just wasn't sure what to do to add that dash of authenticity to my Caesars, other than plan a whole week around things that had anchovy in them so I could justify opening a can. Turns out they come in jars, too--who knew? I never pay attention to the preserved fish aisle).

Her favorite tomato soup is the kind that comes in a carton, specifically the tomato-roasted red pepper soup. I decided to make it from scratch instead, in my crock pot so I could run around and ignore it all day, and here's my creation. Enjoy.

Molly's Half-Birthday Tomato and Roasted Red Pepper Soup

Place:
28-oz can of tomatoes with liquid
2 cups stock
6 oz jarred roasted red peppers
1/2 lb yellow summer squash, cut into 1" chunks (for extra secret hidden goodness)

into crock pot and cook on low for 5-6 hours.

Puree (I used an immersion blender), and thin with milk or stock as needed. Finish with cream and season to taste.

Later in the summer I would make this with fresh tomatoes, and possibly roast them first in order to bring out the sweetness (I actually dropped a bit of brown sugar into my soup to offset the tang of the canned tomatoes, although the sweetness of the peppers and squash does some of the work there, and the cream does most of the rest of it). I didn't season my soup at all but for a little pepper, as the stock I used was made from an already heavily-seasoned roast chicken, and left out onions for the same reason--had I used commercial stock or stock made from a totally unseasoned bird, I probably would have wanted the flavor of onion.

I chose yellow squash because they'd hide nicely and because I didn't want to have to peel them, but zucchini would work fine too.

A nice touch was that by thinning and finishing the soup with cold milk and cream, I brought it down almost to a temperature where the girls could eat it right away, saving myself the trouble of having to wipe up splatters of blown-on soup.

This made enough so that everyone had two bowls, and I was able to freeze about half of it for a future meal.

The half-birthday girl approved.

Lately

Lately, I've been making some stuff.

I've made some good progress with bread: adding a dollop of wheat gluten makes every loaf a little fluffier, and I have gotten some great results with brushing my crusts with egg whites--so much so that in lieu of wasting eggs, I've just started buying cartons of egg whites.

Mostly though I've been making socks. I hated sock knitting the first time I tried, but now I'm liking the process and the way it allows me to learn new techniques without having to make something big.

This was my first real pair of socks--I call them Sockamole, because they remind me of my favorite way to make guacamole (avocado, salt and pepper, minced red onion and lots of lime). They took me a few weeks in bits and pieces, and the original pattern is Sara Morris's "Slightly Twisted Sock" (pdf here), which has mock cables at cuff, heel flap, and along the toe seam. So much fun. The yarn is Noro Sock, which is expensive but worth it.

Then I tried my hand at a two-needle sock, in worsted weight (so, more of a slipper sock, but they fit under my Dansko clogs), and learned to read a chart. I was not a very quick learner: I had to tear the sock out several times before I gave in and learned to trust the chart and just follow it as written. Even with all the false starts, they only took a couple days and I strongly recommend them as a quick one-ball project (Cinderella Sock at Knitty.com)

Now that I know how to Trust The Chart, I went ahead and started a sock I've been craving for a while--a thick elaborately cabled kneesock from last fall's issue of Interweave Knits, the Tyrolean Stocking (pattern can be downloaded here for $5.50).

I've finished the whole leg of one sock and am midway through turning the heel and when both socks are done, the plan is to dye them with Kool-Aid, but I'm also taking a break from it because the sock yarn I ordered with some of my birthday money came, and I owe my sister about a million presents.

So, here's what she's going to get when they're done (Hey, Sis!).  The yarn is in colors that just scream her name, and the pattern just happened to be from last year's Beltane issue of ¡TheAnticraft! and it was Beltane when I cast on, so I call that a sign. Vinnland socks, making progress:

There's something very funny to me about the fact that right this moment, I'm making stock in the crockpot, the dishwasher is washing my dishes for me, my bread is rising in a machine--but I'm making socks from scratch.

Happy Birthday to Me!

Dinner: New York Strips à la Dug, potato-cauliflower Dauphinois à la Jamie Oliver (less nutmeg next time, it was a tad noggy, but still delish) and sautéed Bright Lights chard with lemon.

Also, homemade strawberry ice cream.

Oh, we could have gone out, but that meal would have cost us forty bucks a head not counting booze, and when I eat, I always count the booze. I can't see a thing wrong with making my own birthday dinner.

During dinner I leaned over a couple times to crank the ice cream maker, and it occurred to Molly that "You can make anything by yourself if you just have the ingredients, you don't have to go out and buy it already made".

Wait till I bust out the pasta maker. It's going to blow her mind.

Dinner, Thursday, Lazy Woman Style

Two new things tonight!

Number one: Cream of Zucchini Soup. I was just chatting with some friends about zucchini and its ubiquity and how by the end of the summer you won't answer the door when a zucchini-growing friend knocks, but right now, it seems perfectly cool to eat it every day.

I thrifted a neat-looking crockpot cookbook the other day and this recipe was the first one that jumped out at me as I flipped through it. So super easy: a pound each of zucchini and peeled potatoes, cut into 1" pieces, a chopped onion and a couple cloves of garlic (sauteed in butter before adding them to the crock) and four cups of vegetable stock. Four or five hours on low, and then you can puree it right in the crock if you happen to have bought a stick blender at a garage sale last weekend. Add a half cup of cream and season to taste before serving, which you can do hot or cold. I've already tasted it and I think the kids will go for it.

 

(as with most of my crockpot dishes, half of this will be packaged for freezing, before the cream is added, so it can make for a quick lunch or emergency dinner within the next couple of weeks. I have a big crockpot, might as well make the most of it!)

Number two: Ice cream! Well, frozen yogurt anyway, because the yogurt needed to get used up. I also thrifted a $7 ice cream maker. I was kind of looking for an electric, but this is a Donvier manual model which is better, because shouldn't we have to work for our food at least a little bit? And this isn't really work, it's just cranking it once in a while and remembering that the inner cylinder has to be pre-frozen before you can make anything. I was going to make strawberry frozen yogurt, but in a fridge mixup the newer strawberries got eaten before the older ones, and the older ones didn't make it. Nobody likes fuzzy frozen yogurt. 

Top Chef 4/16: "Tailgating"

You know, seriously: what is it with this season? None of the chefs are particularly compelling. The jerks aren't jerky enough, the hot guys aren't hot enough, and nobody has cooked anything that makes me go "Oooh, I want that". I can't even really remember anything anyone's made, and I can remember a few dishes from each previous season. And the elimination competitions have been giant catering affairs, no serious high-end cooking. And how heavy are the edits this season? It's worse than it's ever been.

This week's Quickfire was about pairing dishes with beer. My immediate thought: carbonnade! It's an amazing Belgian stew of beef, onions, and a good sturdy beer (Chimay, Newcastle, even Guinness works). But it's not a quick dish, especially if you're thinking you'd hand-make some egg noodles to serve it over.

So in the interest of time, I'd do frites. Not just regular potatoes, but sweet potato fries as well. And I'd whip up a couple of fun dipping sauces. Yes, the idea is wholesale ripped from Frjtz in San Francisco, but my personal judges would be pretty happy to get the yum without the long-ass drive.

The Elimination Challenge was to prepare food for a tailgating party (again, dude, with the giant catering affair that has little connection with haute cuisine!). And I'd make five-spice chicken wings with cilantro dipping sauce, because they're AWESOME and I haven't made them in a while and man, I need to put that on my next menu plan. I do half of them without the cayenne, so the kids can handle them.

I'd serve a little slaw of some sort, with a rice-wine vinaigrette (one of my dirty pantry secrets is this wok oil that is flavored with ginger, garlic, and other seasonings--I love giving ordinary salad a bit of an Asian twist using this instead of olive or vegetable oil in a dressing).

And of course, I'd pair it with some Tsing Tao.

Top Chef 4/9: "Elements" (Better Late Than Never)

Between being busy and not being particularly compelled by this season yet, I am only just now getting around to watching last week's episode. When will these people get interesting? Whither the Marcels and Stephen Asprinios of yesteryear?

The quickfire challenge this week was the famous blindfolded palate test, this time pitting ingredients of high and low quality against each other and asking the chefs to determine which is which.

I'd fail so miserably at this one. I'm just not experienced enough with high end ingredients. But every night is a sort of blind palate test in our house, because I'm constantly putting things in front of my family and just expecting them to get it over with.

The elimination challenge required each group of chefs to create a dish that represents one of the four elements: earth, air, fire, water.

Do you think I could get away with making one of those flowerpot puddings? What better to represent earth? And while doing a dessert on Top Chef is always a little risky, it's so high concept that it just might take me all the way (if you keep in mind that my judges are four feet tall).