Iced Coffee. Seriously.

Mission Wake-up.

I know you know how to make iced coffee: coffee and ice. Duh!

But. If you've ever worked in a restaurant, then chances are good that you have served iced coffee so punishingly bad that it made your eyes water, so caustically brutal that it was like being slapped in the face with hydrochloric acid that had been set on fire and then poured over ice. Here's how you make it: throughout your shift, whenever you notice a half inch of coffee scorching at the bottom of a pot, pour it into a large (plastic!) container that you keep under the counter. At the end of the day, pour this sludgy collage of death into the "ice coffee" tub in the walk-in. Easy peasy! (Also, while you're in the fridge, you can dump all the veggie scraps into the "soup" tub that smells like the decomposing love child of pond water and bong water! Yum!)

But the thing is, I think that leftover brew of most varieties makes pretty bad iced coffee, mostly because it's not usually strong enough to man up to all that melting ice. I can't tell if I'm just an innate snob about this, or if I have some kind of iced-coffee PTSD, but either way, I make excellent iced coffee, and I make it fresh, and by the glass.

Here's how. First, fill an enormous and sturdy glass with ice. I use an entire tray of ice. The whole tray. (Did I already tell you about finding an empty ice tray by the sink and asking Ben about it? And he said, "Oh, sorry, I know. I just feel like I'm really bad at filling them--like it's kind of a pain, and water ends up spilling and stuff." He's so innocent that when I said, "Do you also feel like you're really bad at replacing the toilet paper?" he said, "Oh my gosh! I totally do! How did you know that?" I, for one, am really bad at taking our car to get the oil changed and also at changing the cat litter, so I totally understand.)

If I knew I were dying tomorrow, I would use half and half.

Okay, where were we? We've got the ice. Then I half-fill the glass with whole milk, which I think of as the Switzerland of iced-coffee dairy, mediating between the warring countries of evil half and half and righteous low-fat milk. If you use skim milk, you're on your own. (And I mean that literally, because your thigh will not be creeping over onto everybody's chair the way the whole-milk thighs like to. You'd think my thighs would be enough company for each other, but no--they're going to creep onto your chair and try to gossip with your thighs.)

Then I brew very strong coffee (1/3 cup of grounds) directly into the glass. If you are using a sub-sturdy glass, then you might have to worry about the glass cracking from the hot into the cold, but I'm not sure about that.

That's the smell of good news.

Sometimes I sweeten it, and my sweetener of choice is agave nectar, because it stirs in so beautifully and is just the right amount sweet and came from a cactus, so you know it means business.

This is a fake picture because caffeine? Michael "can take it or leave it." Oh, me too! Ha ha. Along with kidney function and blood-gas exchange. You know, either way.

 I am drinking it right now, this very minute.

As evidenced by this colored-pencil self-portrait I just rendered. I seriously wish I could walk around in the colored-pencil effect because it is so much more forgiving of my chins and beard and adult-onset acne and forehead divots than regular Technicolor life is. 

Of course, what I really, seriously want you to do is buy a set of Luminarc glasses and lids because, as I know I've said before, they make the best, most gorgeous to-go cups you have ever seen or used. You just use an X-acto knife to make a little x in the lid so that you can push a straw through (I'm half converted now from glass straws to stainless steel) and you're done. Dishwasher safe and sturdy and--I'm going to try not to exaggerate--I probably save $15 a week by making my own iced coffee at home, which I am seriously happy to do because I so love drinking it this way. (I know that stainless steel is more practical, but I love my glass straws. I still have 2 of the 4 I bought 10 years ago! They're pretty sturdy.)

Plus, because the glass is too big to fit in a cup holder, you get to drive around with it wedged coolingly into your lap--with the added bonus that when you get where you're going, you have a ginormous condensation stain around your crotch, which inevitably makes for a good laugh at important meetings and such!

Happy July 4th. I am just catching up on the blog name suggestions now, and I cannot tell you how beautifully known I feel. Also, how beautifully teased. In the best possible way. I am mulling it over and will report back asap, but, in the mean time, thank you so much.

xo

Strawberry-Rhubarb Pudding Cake

We are leaving for Maine in 20 minutes to visit our dear friends from grad school (Yay lobster old friends!), but I need to post this cake because I've made it 3 times in a week. It is the perfect thing to make after you've been trolling around shamelessly for a dinner invitation ("If only we had dinner plans! Alas, alack!") and then your friends says, "Can you come to dinner? Bring dessert." Why yes! Yes we can. It's in and out of the oven in well under an hour. And you can use up whatever gleanings of strawberries and rhubarb are loitering unattractively in your garden, refrigerator, or grocery store--you don't even need as much fruit as you'd expect. Oh, and it's fantastic. Warm and soft, sweet and fruity and tangy and comfortingly cake-like. If you had a grandma who baked cakes, she would bake this cake.

Okay, before I go, I have to say: the blog name suggestions are killing me with their hilariousness and grace. Thank you for being you. "Half as much table salt" made me laugh so hard. But then does it sound, misleadingly, like a low-sodium recipe blog? Because, um, it's not. So I thought, Oh, I could call it Twice as Much Kosher Salt--but then it sounds like a weird Jewy salt blog. Which, um, I guess it kind of is. Weird Jewy Salt Blog! But then again, I was the person holding a newborn who was like, "Is it okay that Ben rhymes with pig pen? Are kids going to tease him?" If you have further thoughts, please keep them coming, and we'll discuss when we're all back in the same place.

The road calls. Tina Fey on the ipod! Amazon is having some kind of promotion where you can get 2 free audio books for testing a special books-on-tape site free for 30 days. Have a wonderful week!



p.s. Cooking with Ben/Birdy at ChopChop will resume next week. . .

Strawberry-Rhubarb Pudding Cake

We've gotten as many as 9 servings out of this, but 6 is better.

Active time: 15 minutes; total time: 40 minutes

Adapted (barely) from Gourmet magazine. This has the spirit of a one bowl cake--even though it's two bowls and a pot. Also, it's not a pudding cake in that eggy way, where there's something custardish lurking at the bottom of the dish--it's more that the cake makes it's own fruity sauce.

1/4 cup water

1 1/2 teaspoons cornstarch

1/3 cup plus 1/2 cup sugar

2 cups chopped fresh rhubarb stalks

1 cup sliced strawberries

1 cup flour

1 3/4 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt (or half as much table salt)

1 large egg

1/2 cup whole milk

1 stick (1/2 cup) butter (mine is salted), melted and cooled slightly

1 teaspoon vanilla

Heat the oven to 400°F. Butter an 8-inch square glass or ceramic baking dish.

Stir together the water, cornstarch, and 1/3 cup sugar in a small saucepan, then stir in the rhubarb. Bring to a simmer over medium-low heat, stirring constantly, then simmer, stirring occasionally, 3 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in the strawberries

Whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, and remaining 1/2 cup sugar in a bowl.

Whisk together the egg, milk, butter, and vanilla in a large bowl, then whisk in the flour mixture until just combined.

Reserve 1/2 cup or so of the fruit mixture, then pour the remainder to the baking dish, tilting to spread it out, and then glop the batter over it, spreading as evenly as you can without disrupting the fruit too much. Drizzle the reserved fruit mixture over the batter. Bake in the middle of the oven until a wooden pick inserted into center of cake portion comes out clean (I just press the top with my fingertip and take it out when it feels springy), 25 to 30 minutes. Cool in the pan on a rack for 5 minutes (or up to a few hours) before serving. Serve with, ideally, vanilla ice cream or whipped cream.

I'm running out the door! I don't have time for photo captions.

But then the photos just seem so plain and boring without them.

And what if you weren't able to figure out on your own that this was rhubarb in a pot?

And that this showed the strawberries added in?

1

2

3

Done!

Good Times

Well hello there, darling popcorn opinionators! I do love you.

And we have a lot to go over today.

Here's the first thing: a lovely reader of this blog offered to design me a header, which she did, and it is gorgeous. But--and it's a big butt--in the header, it becomes very apparent that the name of this blog is Catherine Newman. Catherine Newman! What kind of a blog name is that? I mean, seriously. (Although I kind of like "The Name of This Blog Is Catherine Newman," now that I wrote it! Or "Dalai Mama"--do we like that enough to return to it?) Anyway, we're going to have a name-this-blog contest. Yes? Just put your suggestions in the comments by this time next week (so, Friday, 7/1 2 pm EST). The winner is going to get a book of his or her choosing from amazon. (The "pick your own prize" thing made the winner of that contest too self-conscious, so we're not doing that again!) And maybe there won't be a winner, because we won't decide to use any of the ideas, but there will still be someone who gets a book. (And maybe we'll stop writing in the first person plural, and maybe we won't.)

Next up: please visit ChopChop to see the fabulous Birdy as she Concentrates on Cutting. She took it very seriously.

On the newstands: I have pieces in Ladies' Home Journal and Brain, Child--but I don't think either is on-line.

Okay, that wasn't so many things. But Michael and I did go to the movies last night and saw Tree of Life, and it is long and sad and strange and sometimes baffling, but one of the most visually poetic representations of childhood I've ever seen. I loved it. (Also: Ben babysat! We put $5 in a "game jar" when he babysits, and when we have enough, we buy a new game.)

And finally: a video of us, at a hotel, playing with Ben's defective shocking gum prank. The one that's so shocking it comes with a warning sticker about not trying it if you're old. Seriously. I thought you should know.

Enjoy your weekend.

xo

Dill Pickle Popcorn

Well, good morning!

Did you wake up today craving Lay's Dill Pickle Potato Chips? Of course not, silly. Me either.

Okay, maybe just a little. We bought a bag by mistake and became addicted. And "by mistake" I mean "on purpose." And by "addicted" I mean "addicted." They are so good it's not even funny--like the best salt and vinegar potato chips you ever ate, but with a little hit of garlic and dill. We bought another bag to make sure they were as good as we all thought they'd been, and they were. And it was frankly a relief when they were gone, since we were then able to get on with our lives instead of pondering how soon would be too soon to have another snack.

Pickles themselves are very satisfying to me. In fact, we had a tornado warning last week, which was just totally surreal for an east-coast city kid like me. Really? The basement? "Who was on the phone?" the kids wanted to know, and I had to say, "The town manager. We're supposed to go into the basement." We brought the cat with us and everything, and in the 30 minutes we were down there, we played 3 games of ping pong and ate an entire jar of bread-and-butter pickles from the canning shelf. "This is great!" Ben kept saying. "There's food and ping pong! I could stay down here forever!"  It was almost a little disappointing when the phone rang again, summoning us back upstairs to normal life.

Anyways. Pickles from a jar are still not Lay's Dill Pickle Potato Chips. But you know how it is around here. Debased food obsessions only inspire me! Can I replicate this terrible, delicious thing--but in a healthy format? And the answer, in this case, is a resounding affirmative. Yes, yes, yes!

So it's popcorn, not potato chips, but you love popcorn, right? For one thing, it's crazy cheap. And it's a whole food. And it's got lots of fiber and zero additives. And there's just something so satisfying about buying a jar of popcorn and slipping it into your purse, since the equivalent amount of processed snacks would have you hauling fourteen million giant, puffy bags out to your car.

Plus, and I know you know this is coming, if you get a Whirley-Pop, you will make popcorn every day, because it is so ridiculously easy and satisfying. Every day. Okay, probably more like 275 days a year. Especially during the summer. When we have lots of kids thronging through the house for Socialist Friend Camp. Could there be an easier or more economical way to keep them happily snacking? Of course not.

You're hesitating still. Because you don't like the idea of buying something that only does one thing (although, technically, you could roast raw coffee beans in it too, like my friend Jonathan does). I worried too, when my brother and sister-in-law gave us ours (which they gave us for the sole purpose, I swear, of satisfying their Whirley-Pop Kettle Korn addiction while visiting). But I'm telling you, unless you live on a houseboat, it is worth the space it takes up.

Plus, it's so easy that you can make your kid do it. Here's a little real-time video of Ben making popcorn in the Whirley-Pop for the first time ever! That's how easy it is! Sorry about my relentless muppet-like cackling in the background. . . and for the fact that 3 minutes is a long time to watch someone pop corn, for anyone who's not a blood relative.

One last thing: I find the flavor too distracting for this particular recipe, but in general we have started popping our corn in coconut oil, which makes it taste exactly like old-fashioned movie-theater popcorn in the best possible way. I really recommend it. Do you have favorite popcorn toppings or methods or recipes? Please share.

Edited to add: I'm glad you asked about coconut oil. Here's an interesting article on how it turns out to be a really healthy oil after all.

Dill Pickle Popcorn

Makes 8 cups

Total time: 5 minutes

2 quarts popcorn (in the Whirley-Pop, this is a third of a cup of kernels popped in 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil)

2 tablespoons butter, melted

2 teaspoons vinegar

½ teaspoon garlic powder

1 heaping tablespoon finely snipped fresh dill (or 1 teaspoon dried)

Kosher salt and black pepper

Stir together the butter, vinegar, and garlic powder, then add it to the popcorn. If it's still in the Whirley-Pop, then you can turn the handle to mix it all up while you add the seasoning. Stir well either way, then stir in the dill and plenty of salt and black pepper. Taste for seasoning and prepare to become wildly obsessed.

Eaaaasy snackin'

Wait. Now I'm self-conscious. Was it the photo captions that made everyone think I was drunk? I swear I wasn't. Not that I remember, at least. Ha ha.

Popcorn is kind of magical. I wish you could pop beans! I would love that. Can you?

We nailed this pretty much on the first try. If I had vinegar powder, I'd add more vinegar, but you have to be careful about how wet it gets.

Scissors make many jobs easier and more fun.

We made this to snack on during a game, but it was gone before we even sat down to play. Which is not so different, I suppose, from finishing the movie-theater tub before the previews are over.

Abe Linkin'

Good morning to you, from rainy Western Mass. I hope you are all thriving. And that you're in the mood for links.

First up: Ben making chicken salad at ChopChop, complete with priceless gross-out expressions, because he is his mother's son.

Then, for Erin K, some of my thoughts about camping and food:

• This, over at family.com.
• This, from familyfun.com (note the 3 recipe links in the intro paragraph). Actually, this is worth looking at just to see the irate comments that followed, I am now noticing. Gosh, I turn out to be capable of pissing people off in the most unpredictable ways! You cook food in a jar? Fuck you!
• And this, from KitchenDaily.

And, finally, two for Father's Day:

• This piece, which I wrote for O Magazine a while back.
• And this poem, which I wrote for Literary Mama eons ago.

Enjoy your weekend, friends.
xo

p.s. Who wanted to know about the cream-cheese frosting and if it would hold up? It definitely needs to be refrigerated. . . I think it would be good for an afternoon or so, but beyond that could get a little droopy. We froze the rest of the cake and have been eating it frozen, and it is crazy delicious.

Best-Ever Cream-Cheese Frosting

So, uh, as you can see from the one photo taken in the hangover aftermath of a birthday party, I had not actually planned to run this recipe. I didn't take any process shots, or beauty shots, or shots of the gorgeous friend blowing out her many, many, many candles. But, then it turned out to be so crazy good, this frosting, and given that strawberry season is redly upon us, I just had to share.

Oh, don't look at me! I was so pretty last night, I swear. I'm just feeling a little droopy today.

Full disclosure: I don't usually love frosting. (As the birthday girl herself would say, "This is not new information.") And so the fact that I loved this frosting might be taken as a sign that it is not frostingy enough. And it might not be. It's lighter and much less sweet than typical frosting, cream cheese or otherwise, and also there's none of that cloying butteryness that true frosting lovers love. But it would also make an absolutely fantastic dip for whole strawberries (I'm going to serve it that way next week), and it would make a lovely alternative to whipped cream on a strawberry shortcake. Plus, it's just a total joy to work with: fluffy and satiny and easy to spread, and just the right balance of tangy and sweet.

Best-Ever Cream-Cheese Frosting
Makes enough to frost a two-layer cake*
Total time: 5 minutes

1 8-ounce package cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup (or more, if you like) powdered sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup heavy cream

In a mixing bowl fitted with a whisk attachment, combine the cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla. Beat it at medium speed until smooth. Pour the heavy cream in a slow, steady stream while the mixture is whipping until the mixture has fluffed up and can hold a stiff peak, scraping the bottom of the bowl with a spatula occasionally to remove any lumps. Gorgeous.

* I used the white cake recipe from the back of the King Arthur cake flour box, and it was pretty good.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

xo

Bluebeard

Ben's class has been studying the solar system, and they just presented their independent research by making snacks to represent the planets they'd picked to study. Ben and I layered blue and blue-green gelatin, nice and solid, and then cut planet circles out of it with a cookie cutter. Then, of course, he used the leftover scraps to fashion himself a little goatee.

"Honey," I said, "tell me the truth. Did you pick Uranus just because of the whole anus situation?" And he said, "Not just because." The kids had made travel brochures for their planets, and Ben's captions were classic. "Get to know Uranus!" "Uranus is bigger than you thought!" "A magical trip to Uranus!" That kid can get away with anything.

Check him out over on ChopChop, would you? He's making ranch dressing.

And if you're still looking for good summer reading, I just read this and it was fan-freaking-tastic. So good that when I was trying to figure out my vague feeling of bereftness last night, I realized that I was actually missing the characters. Sad but true.

Have a wonderful weekend, my darlings.

xo

Roasted Asparagus with Lemon and Parmesan

I'm super-duper excited to introduce you to a very special guest today. And no, it's not Maddie with the summer rolls recipe, not yet--though I am working on her, I promise.

It's this pan:

I am a good pan!

This rimmed baking pan, which is part of the USA Pan series. In sum: it is a beast. I simply love it, and I love the cookies sheet and also the muffin tin too. The USA Pan folks sent me all of this amazing, non-teflon non-stick bakewear (typo--but I left it because it made me picture myself wearing one) and although I have prided myself on using whatever rusty old pans in my snobby anti-snob way (What-ever!), I am now fully converted to the amazingness that is the USA Pan. It weighs, like, a million pounds (so don't drop it on your toe). Plus, nothing sticks to it. Ever. And everything browns perfectly--cookies, potatoes, muffins, veggies--becoming neither flabby nor burnt. And did I give you the link already? Of course I did.

Okay. Roasted Asparagus with Lemon and Parmesan. In short: yum. I mean, it's sort of ridiculous to do anything to asparagus, because it's so crazy good already, but this is the kind of recipe I pull out when we're pretty far into the season, and the kids are kind of hitting their limit of steamed asparagus with dip, which is what I make for a solid month before moving along. And they're just crazy good: burnished golden and just a little unctuously cheesy, just a little bracingly lemony, simultaneously rich and refreshing, tender and still crisp. Perfect. The kids and I ate them all in about 45 seconds ("Daddy doesn't love them as much as we do," is how we seemed to justify the omission of saving any for Michael), and Birdy declared, "If I were an octopus with opposable thumbs, I'd give it 8 thumbs up." Does it get any better than that? I mean, assuming there are no centipedes in the house.

Roasted Asparagus with Parmesan and Lemon

Serves 1-4
Active time: 5 minutes; total time: 17 minutes

If there were someone you knew who didn't like asparagus, this might be one of those conversion experiences. I mean, if you don't like something that's roasted with cheese on it, you it just might be a lost cause.

1 bunch of asparagus (I like the nice thick ones)

2 tablespoons olive oil

½ teaspoon kosher salt

½ cup freshly grated parmesan

Juice of ¼ of a lemon

Heat the oven to 450.

Wash the asparagus, trim or snap off the bottoms, then dry them briefly on a dish towel.

Toss them with the olive oil and salt and roast them until they are starting to color and seem mostly tender when pierced with a knife--around 10 minutes (thinner ones may take less time, so you might want to check them at 5).

Sprinkle the cheese over the asparagus, toss again, then roast another 2 minutes until the cheese has turned into a kind of molten golden coating.

Squeeze the lemon over it, taste for salt and lemon, and serve.

Have you noticed how phallic the spring is? Everything shoving all tumescently out of the ground, the trees all smelling vaguely jizz-like? I see why it's the season of lovin'.

I dry the asparagus briefly so they won't repel the oil.

Oiled and ready to roast. I like the pan so much that this photo fills me with affection.

Roasted and sprinkled with cheese. If that doesn't look to you like it's going to be good, then it probably won't be. Me? I am personally salivating. There are probably no other ways to salivate.

Stock footage of Ben juicing lemons.

Ta da! 

I'm surprised any of these are in focus. We were a blur of devouring. 

And then we had smoothies after, for the main course. What-ever.

Running

Wow, summer rolls. O-kay! I hear you! I am on it. Well, actually, what I am is trying to get my friend Maddie on it. Because she makes the best summer rolls I know. Hopefully I'll be back soon with her and summer rolls.

In the meantime, did you want to read over at ChopChop about Ben making really good tuna salad? The last few years have found me hurrying past the tuna in the store, eyes averted, like it's an old one-night-stand I'm confused and embarrassed to run into. So it was good for me to figure out what's what with tuna, safety-wise.

And now I'm off to my 25th high-school reunion! Seriously. I am trying not to get some kind of a last minute Botox/latex-encasement combo. Trying to just hang in there with my baggy old self, not worrying if my thigh has kind of slid over onto your chair with you while we're talking. I'll report back.

Here's a photo of me 26 years ago, at a high-school track meet, getting advice on the 800 from my boyfriend. Sigh.

"You know that part where you space out? And you're singing Rainbow Connection in your head while everyone is passing you? That's when you've really got to kick it in."

Summery Whole-Grain Salad

It was totally Strega Nona. You know, how Big Anthony abuses the magic pasta pot, and the town fills with spaghetti, and then the solution (because Strega Nona studied Dante's Inferno?) is for him to eat it all? That's what it was like. It turns out that if you start with 6 cups of cooked spelt, you are going to be making a whole lot of salad. And then, when you're not looking, that salad is going to grow. So that by the time you bring it to a potluck, it's going to be heaped up over the rim of the bowl. And then after the potluck, during which everyone is going to eat tons and tons of it and exclaim over its goodness, I swear, the bowl is going to be nearly full still. And then by morning the bowl with actually be completely full again. It is a magical mystery grain. Plus, it just sounds so bad. Spelt. Spelt. "I brought spelt salad," I said, to my friend Meredith. And then I added, "It's better than it sounds." "It would have to be," she said. "What's with spelt anyway? Spelt. It sounds like spent. Crossed with smelt." Exactly.

How was your holiday? People asked me when I dropped the kids off at school this morning, and I wanted to say, "Spelt-rific!" (I'm sure I've mentioned to you the 4-H sign we once saw in a barn at a county fair: "Goats! They're goat-rific!") We ate so much spelt salad that it was coming out of our ears, and this was after bringing it to a second potluck! Seriously.  I mean, it was a great holiday, it was. We swam in a friend's pool. We swam at a swimming hole. We watched almost all of this series with the kids (check for it at your local library). I cleaned the kitchen. We played Puerto Rico and Rummikub and Dutch Blitz. I read this, which blew my mind. We tried to figure out how the mosquitoes are getting into the house. We drank beer. We drank blueberry-coconut smoothies. We drank hard cider. We sweltered. We cooled off. We saw fireflies. Really, it was perfect. But boy, kind of grainy.

Luckily, though, the salad really was fantastic: chewy and earthy, bright and crunchy, tangy and fresh, with ecstatic hits of lemon, sweet bites of cherry, and salty bursts of feta. It is seriously well-balanced and delicious, and thank God. Because I'm about to eat the last bowl of it for lunch.

Summery Whole-Grain Salad

Serves 350

Total time: 45 minutes

Oddly, I don't use olive oil in the dressing here, because I like to let the flavor of the lemon really sing out, unencumbered by another strong taste. But feel free to swap anything around, or swap in anything you like better than something else. And feel free to double the recipe if you're hoping to eat this for the rest of your life.

*3 cups cooked whole grains (such as spelt, farro, wheat berries, brown rice, or barley)

8 ounces frozen baby peas, boiled 1 minute, drained, and cooled under cold water

1 English cuke, halved, seeded, and diced

½ of a small red onion, chopped and rinsed under cold water

The juice (1/4 cup) and finely grated zest of 1 lemon

¼ cup vegetable oil

1 clove of garlic, minced or pressed

1/2 teaspoon each sugar and kosher salt

Lots of freshly ground black pepper

½ cup dried tart cherries, soaked in warm water for 5-20 minutes, then coarsely chopped

6 ounces crumbled feta

½ of a 7-ounce bag of arugula, coarsely chopped (or parsley, mint, dill, or a combination, finely chopped)

Put the cooked grain in a large bowl, then stir in the peas, cuke, and onion. Whisk together the lemon juice, oil, garlic, sugar, salt, and pepper, then stir most of the dressing into the grain. Now add the lemon zest, cherries, feta, and arugula, and stir again. Allow the salad to sit for a little, then stir again and taste, adding the end of the dressing and/or more salt and/or another squeeze of lemon to balance out the flavor. Serve at room temperature or cold.

*To make 3 cups of cooked spelt, I boiled 1 ½ cups of spelt in plenty of salted water until just tender (around 25 minutes), and then I drained it well and put it back in the pot with a dish towel under the lid to let it steam and dry out for another 10 minutes.

It looks so innocent here, like maybe it's not even going to be enough! You don't understand at first what you're dealing with. Kind of like, Oh, Amityville seems like a nice place to live.

Ingredients from Trader Joe's.

The lemon situation.

At first I thought this bowl was going to be big enough. Kind of like how at first, in Poltergiest, they thought that a burial ground was a good place to build a housing development.

I had to switch to the biggest bowl in the world to mix it.

But it looks delicious, doesn't it? It really was. Er, is.

Birdy loves, loves, loves the spelt salad. But What's that on her face? you're wondering. Whenever I cut her hair, she puts some cut hair on a piece of tape and makes herself a little mustache. It cracks me up, even though it's a little Hitler-ific, if you know what I'm saying.

Lucky

I already know I'm lucky. And yes, it is because I find a lot of four-leaf clovers, I'm pretty sure. I really do. But also, take a day like today, when I am just a total Crabby Crabberton, arguing with everyone: with Ben because he's packing for a school camping overnight and insists on locating a hairbrush "because it's on the list, look, here it is, on the list, and it doesn't say optional," even though he has never once used a hairbrush in his life; with Michael because if there are sweets in the house, he eats them, as if sweets present the mandatory task of eating them until they're gone, even if the person in the house who never eats sweets might suddenly want a cookie; with Birdy for laughing popcorn all over the kitchen floor in a way that seems somewhat unnecessary to me. I know what you're thinking: That poor woman--what a horrid, horrid family. Believe me, I was thinking the same thing. And then I complained somewhat listlessly about how everyone was fighting with me, and Ben, the dimpled Ben, came over to say, lovingly, "Um, Mama? In the Venn diagram? You're kind of at the overlapping middle of all the fighting, if you know what I'm saying."

What would I do without that kid? That kid who has a new recipe testing for Twice-Baked Potatoes up over at ChopChop. Please go read it, would you? (That was a very Mr. Rogers request, wasn't it? Neighbor.)

Have a wonderful weekend.
xo

Don't even talk to me about how the lilacs are already brown and withering outside. Stupid lilacs. I was mad at them too.

Strawberry-rhubarb Crumble

Here's our rhubarb.

Don't try to freeze me! I am super-insulated.

 What's all that grey fluffy stuff? Why, it's blown-in insulation. Blown-in insulation that has somehow blown out and filled my garden, or what's left of it. Sigh.

Have you ever done anything like insulate your house? It is just such a grown-up thing to do that I can't quite wrap my head around it. "We're spending thousands of dollars," I complained to Michael. "And there is no air travel involved." I know it's smart, it's eco-groovy, it's money we'll recoup in x number of years, and we'll save x amount of energy, have x fewer ice dams, etc, and that's great. I was glad to do it. But the fun factor is perilously low. Save up for months and months so you can treat yourself to a noisy hose full of newspaper pulp! A noisy hose manned by 5 noisy young men over the course of 2, no actually 3, well I guess it's really going to be 4 days, but not 5 days, as long as you can do the paperwork at 5:15 on Friday. No, 5:15 A.M.--we have to get to Holyoke by 6. Kill me.

Of course, I loved the kids desperately--the kids who were insulating our house. I loved the way they took every opportunity to use the expression "blow your house," catching each other's eye and smirking because of course it was going over my head because, ew, I'm like 100 years past my oral-sex prime, unless my teeth have already fallen out, and then, well, maybe they're intrigued. I loved eavesdropping on their conversations ("And she was like, man, right? And I was like, that's some serious shit." ) which was easy, given the volume at which they tended to speak, and I loved listening to them sing along to the radio. If it sounds like I'm being facetious, I'm not. I hated the noise, noise, noise, noise of the actual work--the banging and sawing and drilling and prying and the hose, which was like a writhing, screaming, cellulose-spitting dragon. I hated the mess, the disruption, the pictures falling off the wall, the frightened cat, the ladder planted first on my herbs and then on my flowers, the expense, the holes cut into the wall and ceiling, and the fact of people working in my house, which gives me the feeling that I'm hosting the worst party ever! It was so boring and difficult, and all she served was coffee and donuts! But I loved the kids, and I couldn't stop tending to and fretting over them, and trying to make sure that they loved me best of all the boring middle-aged ladies who are constantly fretting over and tending to them. Which, needless to say, I do with the grace and smoothness of Edward Scissorhands. Those poor guys. One of them fell down the stairs with a vacuum cleaner, and I made him sit on the floor and hold my hand until I was convinced that he was okay and that I wasn't having a heart attack. And I actually overheard them gossiping about my peonies. "What are those, roses? The pink ones? They're huge! They're seriously nice, right? I told my ma about them."

Wait, why am I telling you this? Oh right! The rhubarb. Not sure how it would fare, buried in insulation, I decided to pick a bunch of it and make a crumble. And here is the crumble. Did you make the cherry-apricot crumble last year? Well, this is similar, only it's rhubarb and strawberries, and, therefore, it will make your jaw ache, in a good way, just thinking about it. The filling is perfect--tangy and rosy, sweet and fragrant and just barely vanilla-scented--and the topping is absolutely magnificent in its crunchy, buttery, brown-sugary way. You can't not like this. Plus, with your new-found gratitude on account of, phew, the rapture not occurring, you'll love it all the more.

Strawberry Rhubarb Crumble

Serves 8

Active time: 25 minutes; total time: 1 hour

Feel free to make this with 6 cups of rhubarb and no berries, which is my preference, although I'm not sure it's widely shared. "That's great," Michael said, as I was prepping the strawberries. He said, "I'm sure lots more of your readers will make it because of the berries," thereby offending me and my devotion to rhubarb. Although it is really, really, really good this way too.

Ingredients

For topping:

3/4 cup flour

3/4 cup brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt (or half as much table salt)

1 stick salted butter, very slightly softened and cut into 12 pieces

For filling:

4 cups of rhubarb sliced into half-inch pieces (Just over a pound)

2 cups sliced strawberries

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup white sugar

¼ cup flour

Heat the oven to 400. To make the topping, use a fork to mix the flour, brown sugar, and salt together in a medium-sized bowl. Now add the butter, and toss to coat it with the flour-sugar mixture, then take off your rings and use your fingertips to rub the butter into the dry mixture. This is a messy but not unpleasant job: you’ll be lifting handfuls of the mixture up out of the bowl, then gently letting it fall through your fingertips as you rub it lightly together. Eventually, you’ll have a bowl of what looks like damp, clumpy sand: squeeze fistfuls of this topping and then crumble them lightly so you end up with a bowlful of pebbly clumps of varying sizes. Put it in the refrigerator while you prepare the filling.

Toss the rhubarb and strawberries in a large bowl with the vanilla extract, sugar, and flour, then pour it all into a glass or ceramic baking dish—something larger than a pie plate but not quite as large as a lasagna pan. There will be some flour and sugar on top that looks like it’s not joining the party, but don’t worry about it. Top the fruit evenly with the crumble and bake in the middle of the oven (put a baking sheet underneath if bubbling-over looks likely) for 35-45 minutes, until the crumble is deep brown and the fruit is bubbling up at the sides. Serve warm with vanilla ice cream. Eat leftovers cold for breakfast.

These stalks were s ginormous that 3 of them yielded 4 cups sliced. Don't you love their scarlet party dresses?

Tell me your jaw isn't aching looking at this picture.

Ben, slicing strawberries with our strawberry slicer. More on this soon.

The filling, ready to be stirred up.

And ready to be topped.

Like so.

And here it is, baked. We were with my parents over the weekend, and my mum made a rhubarb-apple crumble with oats in the topping, and it was ridiculous, it was so good. Ellie, my English cousin, went so far as to call it "brilliant," which it was.

Oh, that really is lovely.

I couldn't resist sharing Ben's rhubarb expression.

Strawberry's hiding so we won't make a crumble out of him.