A Tiny Update (i.e. Veggie Burger Bites)

My darlings, I did not make anything new last week.

Perhaps I was lazy? It is true that we have a resident bird whose 4 a.m. call mimics the tambourine-playing of an exuberant, arhythmic toddler. I am slightly exhausted. But I do love the early light and sound.

It is also true that I've been making lots of old favorites. These rhubarb-crumb bars, for example. And this granola. These eggs. When I'm not out on my hands and knees, sniffing at the lilies of valley. Or stretching up to catch the too-much perfume of the decaying lilacs. Or closing my eyes to daydream about the bleeding hearts and peonies.

Spring is the season of the cigar-tube "vase"

and the world's tiredest cat.

Anyway. All I have to offer you is a miniature tweak of my veggie burger recipe. And it's simply this: make tiny ones for a potluck appetizer! It couldn't be easier. Just use a cookie scoop to portion out the mixture, then use wet hands to flatten them into patties. Chill if you've got time (so they don't fall apart) or go ahead and fry them right away in a nice big slick of oil. Drain them on paper towels on top of cooling racks, and serve hot, warm, or at room temperature. (I didn't have any cilantro, so I actually flavored these with parsley and chives and lime zest. Yum.)

My parting advise: Read One Good Egg, by my new friend* Suzy Becker. It's an illustrated trying-to-get-pregnant memoir that strikes just the loveliest balance between funny and earnest and irritable and kindhearted. I loved it.

* I have never actually met Suzy Becker. But I would like to. And we did exchange some exceedingly pleasant work emails!

Oh, and one last last thing: We are listening to Packing for Mars with the kids, and it is the perfect level of interesting for all four of us. Lots of delightful details about the very human side of space travel (e.g. pooping, peeing, barfing). I recommend it completely for anyone 10 and over. If you've never read anything by Mary Roach, prepare to be blown away by her wonderfully extravagant style of curiosity.

The Ultimate Kale Salad

Photo of Birdy and kale by Douglas Merriam, courtesy of FamilyFun (where I published almost exactly this recipe but without the breadcrumbs. I'm sorry FamilyFun! I wasn't holding out on you! I just hadn't seen the light).

Things are breaking up a little here, straining at the seams. In the Venn diagram, the circle of my happy, beautiful life is overlapping exactly with the circle of my thrumming fretfulness. It’s lilacs and lilies of the valley and violets, purple-scented perfume breathing into our windows where I lie with my beloved partner, where our thriving children sleep with the rosy blossoms of their faces tipped up into the moonlight. And also my oldest friend has been ill, my heart’s companion of 41 years, and this illness is the hazy double of all the rest of it, the ghost outline of every dogwood tree and Mother’s Day card and meal and thought. I don’t really know how to write about it, except to say that sometimes I feel like I’m living multiple simultaneous lives. It’s not that I don’t love baked beans and great novels and spring and kids, because I do, and this is really my real and happy daily-ness (as it is hers). And also there’s this other thing that I can’t write about, and that isn’t really mine for the telling, that is the dark side of this blog’s moon, if you know what I mean. Also, because she will get better, it seems silly to burden you.

I took this one myself just yesterday!

Anyways. I don’t know why I mention this now, except that I sighed a little existentially as I was uploading this recipe (Kale? So what.). Even though this is possibly the single best recipe I have ever shared, so please, please don’t let my sighing angst deter you from making and loving it, which you should and will! And you’re like, Haven’t I already made your kale slaw before? That one with the lemon? Or that one with the walnuts? And you have, and those were great, they were. But this one is better. This is the new and improved one (Now with new sudsers that actually gets your clothes clean!) that forces me to confess that the others must have been ever-so-slightly imperfect, because of the perfectness.

I posted, and then deleted, the one with Michael's parmesan-grating middle finger fully extended. I am not currently entirely confident about my sense of humor.

The Ultimate Kale Salad

Makes 1 large bowlful

Total time: 15 minutes

This is, currently, my most-requested recipe. I don’t mean to be immodest, but the number of people here for dinner who tentatively hold their plates out, “Oh, just a little for me,” and make the ew-kale face—and then return for an unseemly amount of seconds? Well, it’s a big number. Raw kale salad is, simply, the greenest-tasting thing I know, and it converts everyone who thinks they don’t like kale, because they’re thinking steamed and stinky, and are then shocked and delighted to be served a bright, fresh tangle of salad.

Also, I’m usually flexible, I know, but I have lots of picky notes here about trying to follow the recipe as written. There is something so utterly balanced about this, with the rich, salty cheese and the crunchy breadcrumbs against the tangy, garlicky greens. You’ll see. Also, this doubles well—so you should double it. (As shown in the photos below, where I am making lots.)

1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 cup fresh (or frozen) breadcrumbs (Note: if you don’t have any, just put a slice or two of any kind of bread in the blender! But maybe don’t use the dusty cardboard-scented kind from a cardboard can, which will not be tasty here.)

1 healthy bunch of very fresh kale (ideally the lacinato or dinosaur variety, which is sweeter and has a better texture here, but any kind is good)

¼ cup olive oil

1 to 2 large cloves of garlic, smashed, peeled, and finely minced or put through a garlic press

2 tablespoons sherry VINEGAR (Not cream sherry, not cooking sherry. Balsamic or white-wine vinegar makes a good, but not ideal, substitute.)

¾ teaspoon kosher salt

2/3 cup freshly grated parmesan

Heat the 1 tablespoon of oil in a smallish pan over medium heat and fry the breadcrumbs, stirring some, and then later more, until they are very brown and toasty, which will take longer than you might imagine (5 or so minutes). Set them aside in a bowl so that they don’t burn in the still-hot pan.

Wash and dry the kale. Now strip the ruffly leaves off the kale's stems by grasping the bottom of each stem and pulling your hand up it forcefully. Discard the stems. Stack and bunch the leaves together, then use a large, very sharp knife to sliver them as fine as you can. Put the slivered kale in a large bowl. (Any thoughts on the stems? I’m starting to think it’s silly to compost them and that I should either a) not bother stripping the leaves or b) find a great kale-stem recipe.)

Now, in a tiny pan, heat the oil over medium heat and fry the garlic in it until fragrant and just on the verge of coloring (which you will need to intuit, given that it won’t have colored yet!). Add the salt and vinegar, and stir for another minute as the vinegar sizzles furiously and the whole thing foams and becomes outrageously fragrant. Pour half the hot dressing over the kale and toss very thoroughly with a pair of tongs. Then get in there with your hands and massage it until the leaves are glossy and dark. Now taste it, and add more dressing as needed. Stir in the cheese and breadcrumbs, taste for salt and vinegar, and serve.

A little of this, a little of that

Dear Ones, how patient you are.

Radio silence--and that after having to hear annoyingly about how my kids make their own lunch (and with panache, no less!) with little to no information about how children would get to this stage of culinary development. I'm sorry! This comes, you know (or should), after years of teaching them to cook--the kind of teaching where there are great, choking clouds of flour everywhere and Terrifying Knife Experiments, and lots of chaos and tedium. I'm sorry to have misled you. If your children are 2 and 4, then indeed, no, they won't be making their own Chopped-style lunch.

Speaking of: Can I brag? You know ChopChop, the scrappy little nonprofit kids cooking magazine that I'm the editor of? We won the James Beard Publication of the Year award! Can you even believe that? Did I have to crowd-source a cocktail dress on facebook? Yes I did. Did Birdy say, as I was leaving the house, "So. Wait. Sorry. Tell me again! It's just going to be, like, you guys and all the actors that have ever played James Bond?" If only! But I did get my picture taken with Ted Allen, the host of Chopped, to prove to the kids that it was not all lameness and drear.

Okay. Enough with the boasting (but thank you for indulging me).

I wanted to offer some links to things I am loving right now:

This book, which I tore through and couldn't stop reading, even though it's EPIC. And this book, which I am tearing through now, even though it's NOT LONG ENOUGH.

This game, which is like a cross between Puerto Rico and Agricola, but not as hard to learn as either of them. We are addicted to it.

But, for a non-gamer game, we are also loving this small, good-natured word game.

This origami documentary is so excellent.

Also--I've said it before but I'll say it again--this beer.

And this always useful and good cake.

I have two pieces up over at Brain, Child. This, that's new, and this, about Birdy's beloved Strawberry.

A recipe is coming soon. Thank you for bearing with me!

Iron Chef: Lunch!

"Well, judges, here we have Cheese Two Ways: a feta-garlic-toast alongside a cheddar quesadilla wedge, and served with a  peanut-studded clementine salad and pineapple garnish. Enjoy."

Necessity Laziness is the mother of invention. Because here's the thing: I can get through a week of making school lunches, but just barely. In the cartoon version, the green, palm-swaying oasis of Saturday would be, like, three feet from me, but I'm stuck in the desert of Friday morning, parched and ragged and clutching empty lunch boxes without a single idea left in my head. I will manage to eke out one final lunch (Cheese and crackers? PBJ tortilla?) before collapsing.

Only then, to my everlasting horror, the children seem to expect to eat lunch during the weekend also.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" I don't say. But here's what I do say: "Iron Chef lunch!" This is a contest that the children organize entirely on their own, whereby they are allowed to use anything in the house (leftovers are fair game) to make lunch for themselves and each other. Sometimes they seem to have a time limit ("10 minutes left!" they call to each other) and sometimes they don't. Sometimes they judge each other (amazingly, it is always a tie) and sometimes they don't bother, although there is always much discussion of presentation and flavor. Sometimes they have friends over and break into teams. Sometimes there is a mandatory ingredient everyone needs to use. They appear to have intuited that if they cover apricot jam with honey and rainbow sprinkles and call it lunch then the authorities will be brought in to shut down the entire operations, and so they prepare reasonably wholesome meals. And the grace! The flair! The utter stylishness with which they accomplish this! I cannot recommend enough that you let your kids have at it. But you have to be prepared to leave them alone, or I think that the whole thing won't work. Even if it means that they garnish toast with croutons or think that a salad needs "just a weensly more pickles." Plus, you maybe have to watch a little bit of awful tear-streaked food-contest TV first (you can do this on Hulu).

"Judges, I present you with Red Grape and Dill Havarti Crostini, with cashews, mint, and a strawberry vinaigrette."

"Judges! Enjoy this Cheese Plate. Garlic toasts, digestive biscuits, brie wedges, and house-spiced olive oil."

Ben and a small friend add the finishing touches to their Cheese Two Ways "platings."

Meanwhile, Birdy and her friend (and Strawberry) figure out how to glamorize leftover rice.

Which they do successfully. "Here we have a Peanut Rice Salad, with a peanut vinaigrette, roasted peanuts, dried cherries, and a cilantro garnish." It was crazily good.

Checking In Belatedly

I know your thoughts, like mine, have been with Boston and the runners, with the lost and the bereft. It's so sad in every way. I cried watching the celebration after they captured the surviving suspect: I understand the relief, of course, but my God--he's just a kid. It's beyond imagining, that kind of radical alienation from the most basic framework of compassion and fellowship. And then, of course, you must think of all the people, all around the world, who live with violence woven into the fabric of their every day. We ourselves are bodily unharmed and--thank you for thinking to ask--Michael was not running. 

I am posting a meal idea later today. Just checking in for right now, sending love.

xo

Baked Beans for a Barbecue

Hey. We never said we were trying to win Beautifullest Side Dish. Lay off.

Despite the fact that, some nights, it is all I can do to put Pizza Toast on the table, I love to have lots of people over for dinner. I really do. And as soon as the weather is nice, I like to make burgers and veggie burgers and huge salads and a ginormous pot of (cheap and cheerful) baked beans. Everybody loves them (by which I mean "most people like them pretty much"), and they're great if you're actually too lazy to make veggie burgers, because then you still have a protein to serve the vegetarians! (Sleazy but real, folks.) Also, if you got a pressure cooker like I told you to recommended, this is a very quick and effortless recipe. Otherwise, this is a very time-consuming and effortless recipe, and one that I'm not quite as sure about.

I am not sure why the beans look so weirdly lacquered here. 

A few notes: despite the unconscionable amount of sweetener, these are just about right. Less sweet than many canned varieties, but still familiar in their smoky sweetness. I'm sorry about the sugar. It's kind of the baked-bean thing, but you can eat all your beans unsweet the whole entire rest of the year. Also, I'm sorry about the liquid smoke. You'll feel like you might as well be ashing your American Spirit right into the pot, but it really adds the perfect smoky flavor, I've found. You can substitute smoked paprika or chipotles, but be mindful of the heat potential if you're serving heaps of potentially bean-eating wimps kids. Edited to add: I forgot to mention (thank you, readers, for reminding me!) that the only reason you need to add something smoky here is the absence of bacon. How the mighty have fallen! A year ago, I would have been like, "Chop a pound of bacon and fry it. Fry the onions in its rendered fat." That's what you really should do, if you can.

Baked Beans

Makes tons (10-20 servings)

1 cup of purchased barbecue sauce is a good substitute for the ketchup, molasses, vinegar, cloves, and liquid smoke—although I confess to liking the flavor better in the more-ingredients version. Still don’t hesitate: the beans are delicious that way.

4 cups pinto beans (about 2 pounds) (Navy beans are traditional, but my devotion to big, succulent pinto beans knows no limit.)

3 tablespoon kosher salt (divided use) (or half as much table salt)

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 onion, chopped

6 cups water

½ cup ketchup

½ cup molasses

2/3 cup brown sugar

1 tablespoon white vinegar

¼ teaspoon ground cloves

1 teaspoon liquid smoke

1 teaspoon dry mustard (I like Coleman's)

1 teaspoon garlic powder

Put the beans and 2 tablespoon salt in a pot and cover them with water by a generous 3 or 4 inches. Bring to a boil over high heat, then turn the heat off, cover the pot, and leave them to soak for approximately an hour (a little more or less is fine!). Drain the beans.

Heat the oil in the bottom of your pressure cooker*, and sauté the onion over medium heat until soft and golden, around 8 or 10 minutes.

Add the drained beans to the pot, along with the remaining 1 tablespoon of salt, the six cups of water, and all the rest of the ingredients. Stir well. Seal the lid, bring the cooker to pressure, and cook at steady, low pressure for 35 minutes. Turn the heat off and allow the pressure to release on its own.

Now take the lid off. The beans will seem too liquidy and fall-aparty, and you’ll think you’ve overcooked them. Fret not! With the lid off, simmer the beans over low heat for 30 minutes to an hour, until the beans firm up (oddly, they will) and the liquid gets nice and thick. Taste and adjust the seasonings (if they don’t taste robustly delicious, consider adding more salt, vinegar, or sugar). Serve.

* If you don’t have a pressure cooker (which you really should have, if you’re at all serious about beans), try this method instead, based on one in The Joy of Cooking:

Soak the beans, as above, but don’t add salt and don’t drain them. Instead, after an hour, bring them back to a boil over high heat, then reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer for 45 to 90 minutes, or until the beans are creamy but still intact. Drain them gently.

Now sauté the onions, as above, in a Dutch oven (or another lidded oven-safe pot), then add the beans, 3 cups of water (instead of 6) and the remaining ingredients (use 1 ½ tablespoons kosher salt). Bake in a 250 oven until the liquid is thick and the beans are delicious: 4 to 5 hours. Taste for salt and other seasonings.

This is a nice, inexpensive way to make a huge side dish.

I like that the garlic powder turned away at the last second--so coy and mysterious!

Beans soaked and drained.

Half these onions were destined for the veggie burgers. It was kind of a twofer situation.

This is the watery stage, when you'll be despairing. No worries! They'll boil down nice and thick.

Why the librarian looked at me funny. . .

What? Fuck you, stupid fucking woolly little polar bear. You suck.

It's that kind of week

Every day I say to myself, "I can't. I cannot make another dinner ever again. We'll have to go out or order a pizza or sit in the sealed garage with the car engine running." And every day I manage to pull myself together and pull dinner (not literally) out of my ass. We are out of whole-wheat pasta and out of canned beans and I have used almost all the root vegetables and the bags of frozen corn and frozen peas; I have one jar left of pickled beans and I can't think of a meal to make out of wild grape jam, even though, yes, there's still tons of it. "I really should shop," I say, and then don't. Last night we ate eggs and toast and clementines; the night before last we had (frozen) corn chowder and popovers; tonight we're eating tempeh bacon and roasted turnips and salad. It doesn't sound bad, and maybe it's not, and I do pride myself on making something out of nothing, but boy I am so sick of cooking with pantry dregs. Sigh. 

If you're my mom: Everything's totally fine! If you're a local friend: You should definitely invite us over for dinner.

This was dinner. No! I'm kidding! There's about to be an explanation.

I do, however, have two words of advice, and one of them's a compound word: butter-toasted breadcrumbs. They are making everything delicious right now, even the scrappiest salads and pastas and beans. I keep a huge jar of them in the freezer, and whenever I have stale odds and ends of good bread, I grind them up in the food processor and add them to the jar. Then they're available for any of your breadcrumb needs, but my favorite is to fry some in butter (add a clove of garlic if you like) until they're nice and crispy, which takes longer than you might imagine, then use them to top pasta, kale slaw, even a bowl of soup that needs a little crunch.

That's it. Except for Iota, which is an incredibly tiny and fun game, like a cross between Set and Qwirkle. It is a new favorite around here.

xo

Raw Broccoli Salad (With cherries! And parmesan!)

He was already wearing that green sweatshirt, I swear! (Not that I wouldn't have art-directed him into it.)

 I am so totally not a raw-food person. If you say the words “raw cashew crust” to me, for example, I am not going to want a bite of your pizza, and I don’t want any sprouted-sunflower “brownies.” Plus—I think I may have mentioned this before—I had a raw-food housemate in Santa Cruz who alternated chewing grains of brain rice, which he soaked overnight, with chain-smoking Marlboro reds. “Maybe cook your food and quit smoking?” I suggested, and he (fair enough) gave me the finger.

 

And yet. And yet, once I fall in love with something raw, the cooked version starts to seem off to me, debased. Sushi is a great example: raw salmon is, to me, the epitome of silky, luscious perfection, after which a piece of cooked fish suddenly tastes like the oily smell of cat food. Likewise, once we started eating kale raw, in the salad that this one is based on, cooked kale started to seem so limp and sulfurous—like all its vim and vigor, its robust green kaleness, had gone up in steam. And now broccoli.

 

I’m not saying I’ve given up my crack addiction. But a funny thing happened: we were testing an idea I’d had for ChopChop (it will be in the summer issue), whereby kids try out four different cooking methods with the exact same ingredients to better appreciate the fact that how you cook something really affects the way it tastes. Our ingredients were broccoli, salt, olive oil, and lemon: we roasted the broccoli, we sautéed it, we steamed and then dressed it, and we tasted it raw—with the oil and salt and lemon, still—just as a control. And, to my incredible surprise, the raw won my kids over. “But doesn’t the roasting really bring out the sweetness?” I asked them, and yes, it did, they could see that. Steaming brought a clarity of flavor, sure. But they just really liked the freshness and sweet crunch of the raw vegetable—the same way they’ll more happily eat a carrot right out of the ground than a cooked one. “Also,” Ben noted sagely, “I used the really good olive oil.” It was true; he did. But still.

And so I made this salad, in which the broccoli, like ceviche, is sort of cooked a bit by the vinegary dressing and turns bright green. It is completely delicious—garlicky, sharp, tender, crunchy, and vibrantly green-tasting—and, if you’re afraid, quite unlike the large, punishingly raw florets that might accompany the ranch dip at your work functions. The cherries add just the right amount of sweetness and chew, while the cheese contributes a little funky, salty richness. Yum.

"Honey, you don't have to eat all that--I was just faking it out for the photo." "I know. But can I?" (As seen on That's Incredible! Vegetable-Eating Children.)

Raw Broccoli Salad

This salad is great after an hour and even better the next day. Lightly fried sliced almonds are a delicious addition. My family has decided to hate walnuts, but they’d be good too, as would something like fried garlicky breadcrumbs. Be sure to cut the broccoli small so that it gets well coated by the dressing. And please note that the recipe calls for sherry vinegar--not sherry or cooking sherry.

2 pounds broccoli

½ cup olive oil

3 large cloves of garlic, smashed, peeled, and finely minced

4 tablespoons sherry vinegar (or wine vinegar or balsamic vinegar)

1 ½ teaspoons kosher salt

1 cup freshly grated parmesan 

2/3 cup dried tart cherries (we get ours at Trader Joe’s)

Cut the broccoli into very small, but distinct pieces. I cut the crowns off the stems—but very close to the stem, so that they fall apart, or can get pulled apart, into very small florets. Then I peel the tough skin of the stems and chop the stems fairly fine. Put all the broccoli (except for the peels, which you can toss out) in a large bowl.

Now, in a small pan, heat the oil over medium heat and fry the garlic in it until fragrant and just on the verge of coloring (which you will need to intuit, given that it won’t have colored yet). Add the salt and vinegar, and stir for another minute as the vinegar sizzles furiously and the whole thing becomes outrageously fragrant. Pour the hot dressing over the broccoli and toss very thoroughly with a pair of tongs. Stir in the cheese and cherries, taste for salt (and, while you’re at it, for vinegar and oil), then cover and allow to sit for an hour at room temperature. Stir, taste again, re-season, and serve.

Gratitude, for the millionth time

I am a little bit at a loss for words about your response to last week's open letter. This heart-stoppingly aggressive thing happened to us, only the net result was, crazily enough, buoyantly positive. Because not only a) did I get to see Ben angry for the first time ever, but then b) by the time we were in the car, he was already laughing that the whole thing had been worth it for the good story we'd be able to tell. (Plus, the next morning he said, brushing his hair, "Now I don't even want to trim my split ends!") And also c) the wagons circled fast and tight. And d) our people near and far, known and unknown to us, expressed their empathic outrage in, literally, hundreds of ways. Thank you, oh thank you. 

And as far as the questions about the guy and what his problem was or might have been, his problem was--to put it plainly--masculinity. Although Birdy, when I was saying aloud, in response to a particular strand of comments, "Is this guy autistic? This guy's not autistic--this guy's an aggressive dick!" Birdy, maddeningly fair-minded Birdy, said, "But Mama, isn't your whole point that you don't know who people really are, what their whole story is, just from looking?" Such a pain in my arse, that kid.

And what, my darling girl, would our yelling friend have to say about *your* particular style of self-presentation? 

With love and gratitude and the promise of the regular good stuff soon, like tasty vegetables and holiday crafts, I swear.

xo

An open letter to the guy who chased my son out of the men’s bathroom after mistaking him for a girl

I just want to start by applauding your decision to shout at us right off the bat. “She was in the men’s room! Your daughter was in the men’s room! A girl in the men’s room!” For one thing, how else will we learn? For another, how else will we be covered in spittle? Plus, I think it’s good, if you see something unexpected, to proceed with violent certainty rather than with, say, wonder or even doubt. Like the time I found that slightly darker O in my bowl of Cheerios and freaked out because I knew for sure that it was a wheel from the landing gear of a miniature UFO that was going to abduct me and probe my anus; if it were cereal, it would look like the rest of the cereal. Likewise, if you see a doll with short hair, even if it’s lying next to a pair of scissors, you should think, “Ew. When did Ken’s boobs get so big?”

It made sense, too, to continue to insist that he was a girl, even after he calmly explained that he had been in the men’s room because he was a boy. (“It’s Ken! But Ken has boobs!”) And your distress over imagining that a preadolescent girl saw your man parts—“I was naked in there! She saw me naked!”—makes such an important point about the prevalence of peeping-Tommery in young girls, and the ways that middle-aged men are vulnerable to them.

To answer your question, “Are you its mom?” more unambiguously: Yes. But you’re smart to ask, because maybe the whole family is a transgendered house of mirrors and I’m really “its” dad! (Last laugh—i.e. my having it—alert!) Certainly, though, it made a lot of sense to imagine that I had colluded in the perversion of sending a girl into the men’s room because, after all, what parent doesn’t want their daughter to be in a tiled room full of urinating men?

In conclusion, thank you for your valuable input. I can only hope that my son will leave behind his girly days of placid confidence and grow into somebody as manly as you—with the kind of balls it takes to scream at a child in public.

yours truly,

Its Mother

Contest Winner / Daylight Savings

You guys, I had to reread through my contest announcement to see if somewhere I had, by mistake, asserted that the contest’s subtheme was Catherine Newman Lovefest 2013: “Only the most doting and affectionate comments will be considered!” Maybe you just sensed that I was thinking that? I love you too, so much.

Drum roll . . . random number generator. . . 157!

Stacey5:05 PM

Pick me! Must read the profanity-laced, potato-peeling scene!

I only put in from 1 to 216 because I subtracted my own name, one of dale’s comments and, one of Beth’s comments, and, yes, my good friends at Zuupdesign. As always, the winner--Stacey, I'm talking to you--should email me (address at right!) with (his or) her address.

Meanwhile, while I am loving the bright evenings, I must complain that the time change is killing me softly this year. I am so tired that all I can talk about is tiredness, and how the tiringness of mornings and afternoons makes me really tired, and also how tired I am and feel. AND NOT ONLY THAT (sigh), but if you have the kind of insomnia that means you wake up at 4 every night to read for an hour, the time change means that now you’ll wake at 5, which means that an hour later it’s 6 and there’s no time to go back to sleep. 

The cat is also very, very tired. He’s like one of those Salvador Dali clocks, melting onto every surface. Or like Tom, after he gets run over by Jerry driving a steam roller, and then he slides down the stairs.

ALSO (almost done) it’s nice that it’s not so cold, but then the heat doesn’t kick on, so then while you’re reading in bed at 5-really-4, your shoulders are freezing. Did I ever tell you about Michael’s solution to the conflict between my cold night shoulders and his accessible-boobs requirement? How he cut out a groping window from the front of a long-sleeved shirt of mine? I know. He’s a problem-solver.  

The Cassoulet Saved Our Marriage: Give Away!!!

My sweet vegetarian girl's birthday dream dinner. Seriously. "Oh my God, you got white bread! Mama, thank you so much!" "You're so welcome, Oliver Heidi Birdy!"

Oh my darlings, thank you for sobbing down memory lane with me your sweet birthday wishes for Birdy. It really has been a decade, and so I am wishing you a happy anniversary, and I remembered to get you flowers, they just didn't come yet. Look out your front door, in May. That blooming tree? That'll be from me!

In real life, the cover is not pixelated at all. In fact, it is exceptionally lovely and boasts the fancy detail known in the business as "spot gloss." But don't take my word for it!

Meanwhile, if I told you that I secretly think of food as an idiom for love, you’d roll your eyes, I know. It’s about as secret as the fact that I drive with Scotch tape on my forehead to prevent squinting wrinkles, i.e. not very secret. The Cassoulet Saved Our Marriage: True Tales of Food, Family & How We Learn to Eat is, therefore, my perfect book. Because every story in the collection understands that food is always so much more than food: the way we put it on the table or don’t manage to put it on the table, or the way we love it or (!) hate it, or the way it stands in for memory, like Proust’s madeleine, only more like Proust’s buffalo chicken wing or Proust’s macaroni and cheese (or Proust's blackaroni and cheese, Deesha Philyaw’s name for her family’s heart-stopping take on it). Also, the book has recipes.

Somewhere is a picture of Birdy with sweet potato in her hair, but this isn't it.

I am proud to have a story of my own in this anthology, “Talk with Your Mouth Full,” about dinner-table conversation, including current goings-on as well as a bit of reminiscing from the sweet-potato-hair days. I am also proud to be in such ridiculously talented company. I have to tell you that Karen Valby’s story, “The Hunger Shames,” actually made me cry three separate times (page 133, page 137, and, when you turn the page and see that the recipe is for Doro Wat, page 138—if you’ve got the book handy). Or this, from Jen Larsen’s story, “Food Hater”: “‘Some people cook food,’” is what my mother should have said, followed by, ‘instead of shaking and baking, or hamburger helping, or cranking open a tin can of carrots and boiling the stuff inside until it can be used as spackle for the cracks in your heart.’” And Phyllis Grant’s story, “Recipe,” which includes Step 3: “Lean over the sink to peel potatoes. Say fuck fuck fuck fuck over and over again. Try to untangle depression from fatigue from clumsiness from failure. Remind yourself that sleep deprivation is a form of torture.” (Who is this Phyllis Grant? I wondered to myself. I see she has a blog, dash and bella, I said to myself. Ah, I notice she has 11 bazillion readers! I really have my finger on the pulse. Of a tortoise.)

10.

I actually don’t know why I started singling stories out. They’re all so absurdly good, and the editors, Caroline Grant and Lisa Harper, are just the loveliest people in the world. So you should buy the book. But first try to win it here! That’s right. Simply type in a comment to enter. I’ll pick a winner at noon (12 EST) on Friday. Good luck! Thank you for playing! xo

10

O knees upon knees! O elbows upon elbows! Birdy is 10: diminished, but beloved still. This March light! The light of her downy-headed emergence. She is the girl of my dreams.

Happy birthday to all those new ten-year-olds out there. So glad we're not still on babycenter together, weeping about the nighttime and the daytime and our nipples tugged out past neighboring zip codes. Unless you're back on babycenter because you have a new baby. And then I am too envious for words.

Yours, gratefully.

xo