I am certain that the super-powered seeds Jack’s mother threw out her kitchen window were favas. While some might question the wisdom of trading an entire cow (even if she is old, like me) for a handful of beans, there is real truth to this tale beyond the giants, gold, magic hens and beanstalks of unusual size: legumes can be a delicious source of protein and some varieties are really easy to grow, in the right location.
If you know me at all you have probably heard that I do not like eggplant. These are strong words, because with adequate salt, I really honestly do enjoy almost all food. But having nearly no taste of its own and the texture of either a stiff sponge or a gooey mess, depending on how it is cooked, eggplant does not win me over.
This year I made my desires for Mother's Day known well in advance: no gifts, just a day at home in the garden and a big dinner, cooked as a family. It was delicious, and I got gifts anyway - three of Andy Goldsworthy's books, much loved by my kids after we watched his Rivers and Tides together a week or two back.
Sometimes dinner needs to be fast and furious, and a plan made in haste can go badly awry. But occasionally a crazed forage through the pantry yields exciting surprises, like last night. In this case, Nigel Slater's Indian Inspired Spinach and Potatoes were on the menu (from Tender, my second favorite kitchen garden cookbook), but after dumping my son in front of TV and gearing up for dinner, I found no spinach and only a single potato in the house. Luckily, we had some sweet potatoes leftover from a past CSA box, fresh chard, spring onions and green garlic, all of which remade a semi-traditional take on saag aloo into a delightfully Springy Californian version. For a little extra protein that the kids would eat I warmed some frozen chickpeas with a little bit of curry powder and tossed those on top.
I may sound out of my head when I say this, but I had a great time making homemade gnocchi with my 3 1/2 year old son last week. It was the most enjoyable cooking experience I’ve shared with either of my kids so far. While I like to get messy and watch them engage their senses, I am not an unusually patient parent, so fully enjoying their help in the kitchen doesn't really happen very often. Anyone who has attempted cooking with young kids will probably know what I mean.
Last year I received Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything for my birthday, from a dear friend. It is a big and impressive book and because of its heft and lack of fancy photographs, I lumped it into the same go-to-first category that Irma Rombauer’s Joy of Cooking and Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone occupy at my house.
We came home late from school, again today. I started Sesame Street at 5:00, hoping to have dinner on the table by 6:00 and finished by 6:15, which seems easy enough, since the kids either gobble it down or don't eat at all. Today's scheduled recipe was eggplant curry, using leftover chicken from tuesday's paella. But, I hadn't salted the eggplant beforehand, and now twenty minutes of letting salty eggplant sit and drain into the sink seems like an awful waste of time.
The week we left San Francisco for Tucson, this summer's volume of Canal House Cooking arrived with the mail. You may already know this, but Canal House is my new favorite thing. Besides Nigel Slater, of course. I love its irreverence toward normal day to day life - for those at the Canal House, everything revolves around food. I also love its quick vignettes: trout from a friend of a friend fishing outside the window, a whole essay on why their pal likes to get a buzz on and a few words about Patricia Curtan (illustrator of Chez Panisse Vegetables) and her apricot jam.
My daughter has a dirty mouth. Today at preschool she said "poopoo head". She ran around and around the table. She hid under the table. She ignored her teacher. She was so naughty that the story she wrote was confiscated, and when she and a co-conspirator told a teacher they didn't care about their bad behavior, they lost their show-and-tell privileges.
