As I Recall

So here's the deal - it's Labor Day weekend. The official end of summer. Kaput. Fine. Done.

Labor Day is so bittersweet for me. Here in Charlotte, I'll have another month of warm weather, and then two months of fall weather, and a very short winter - 3 months tops - with no snow or wind chill, or any need for winter clothes. It's not goodbye to summer for me - I'm still pumping the phat summer beats (mainly, Lupe, Lil Wayne, and Kanye). It is what it is.

I went up to Gaston, NC with some friends to visit some other friends. They work at a charter school in the middle of nowhere - thankfully, they live on a lake. Real lake, a very large lake, a lake you can dive into off of the boat, or a lake where the back yard drops into their cove. Their boat is in the dock lift nightly. They have porches, decks, and hideous wall hangings that scream "Florida 1992." (They rent - it's the owner's taste.) We had a large crowd, which meant a lot of barbecue. I felt pretty useless all weekend. Literally, I think I would put most everyone into an ill state if they ate any barbecue prepared by yours truly. I guess it's for the best.

I came home today with the intent to go grocery shopping, but I'm spent. So I'm planning my meals for the next few weeks. I don't have time to go to the store 3 times a week like I use to. In fact, I hardly have time to eat now. So sad, I know.

I'm finding myself very uninspired now. The weather is still warm, but the farmer's market is beginning to look bare. It's too warm for soup, it's too nice to settle for pasta. So what do you eat at this time of year? I've been thinking falafel, pilafs, noodles and cheese, and other things that are "light."

So please, friends who never post, inspire me. And I promise, if I get a good response, you'll see an amazing recipe for black eye peas.

Tortillas!

I made tortillas, and they were awesome.

I've only tried to make flour tortillas twice before, but both times something went horribly wrong. The end product was edible, but not at all what I was going for. I kept ending up with something that had a resemblance to crackers that tortillas should not possess. But this time, they were perfect. They were slightly chewy and soft, and not at all like crackers. Even more miraculous, they might have been the best tortillas I have EVER had. So, I'm a little excited.

It's funny that Angie recently did a post on the blog Orangette because I'm also pretty partial to it, and that's exactly where I got the recipe from. It a pretty simple and standard method, but Molly does a damn good job on detailing her instructions. Now, even I, creator of the Mexican cracker, can make crazy good tortillas.

I served them as fish tacos to the boyfriend and my friend Liz. Liz was a big fan, and I trust her opinion here as she has assured me that her Mexican grandmother made the best flour tortillas that the world has ever known, and I believe her. Of course, I have not reached "abuela standards" quite yet, but I can dream, can't I?

Sadly, I took no pictures of the fish tacos, but they're pretty regular guests at our table, so eventually they will make it up here. The next morning, however, I did photograph the cheese quesadillas I made for breakfast.


I will never buy a tortilla at the grocery store ever again. Not even at the Mexican grocery store.

I get by with a little help from my.... grocery store

This post is all about giving props to Trader Joe's. He's, like, the best. I remember the old days in St Louis, when I was a slave to Schnucks, and Shop and Save (Whole Foods is out of my price range for mass shopping). I have Angie to thank for introducing me to the Joe, and Angie: "Thank you from the bottom of my stomach."

Since, I've had Joe in my life, I've been regularly consuming brie, smoked salmon, edamame, pork ribs, mango lemonade, and lots and lots of wine. Before Joe, these were all wasteful and extravagant on my student budget. Joe is also the only man that I will buy pre-packaged meal kits from. I trust him to make them taste good, and use the packaging necessary to prevent needless preservative overload. He even goes relatively easy on the sodium. He's good to me.

Joe does a really god job on certain cuisines, and I can always trust his Indian and Thai. So, when I first stopped in and saw a package of tuna in a red curry sauce, I lunged. This tuna comes in all three familiar colors of Thai curry(red, yellow, and green), but the red is my favorite by far.

It's a twenty minute meal (beat that Rachel Ray-face) from start to finish, and has become an absolute staple for the little man and I. Boil some rice, stir-fry some onions, garlic and whatever other veggies are hanging about, toss the tuna with those and, voila! Dinner.

This is what it looks like when I'm all done:

Take that and stuff it in your yum-o.

Long Term Planning

Today is my last day before I begin my second year of teaching. It's a very bittersweet feeling; I know what is ahead of me and I am ready for the challenges, yet I am still clueless most of the time. To put this in "Olympic Perspective" - I finished the 50m breaststroke in mostly a doggy paddle, and I'm taking on the 100m butterfly. But I digress, this is suppose to be about food, not my obsession with Ryan Lochte.

I went grocery shopping yesterday and realized that I need to start packing school lunches. There is a certain quality of lunch:quality of day ratio I'd like to share with you. This theory started last year, when in the depths of despair sometime in mid October (I was eating carrots, yogurt, and a bagel for lunch), Alex shared with me the necessity of a good lunch. A good lunch makes a great day. A mediocre to bad lunch makes a terrible, horrible, no good very bad day.

The key to a good lunch is planning. Well, also ignoring all of the "Ms. Woike WHAT IS THAT?!?" comments you hear at the table. Last year I did a pretty swell job of making sure I had left overs for lunch. However, I don't think this is enough planning. Sometimes I eat with friends and there are no leftovers, some nights I go to the Penguin for a soy dog, and some nights I just simply don't care for what I ate.

Now here's a side story: I am slightly obsessed with Molly Wizenberg's blog Orangette. All of her recipes are just so dang simple and look so dang terrific and 95% of the ones I have made have been just so dang amazing. The other 5% were my own dang fault. She has a flair for french cuisine. I'm not talking duck confit - I'm talking warm lentil salads, beet tarts, open faced scrambled egg sandwiches with leeks - rustic, yet delicious.

One of my favorite postings has her formula for lunch: Bread, Cheese, Soup/Vegetable, Fruit. Wonderfully simple, easy to plan, and 75% portable (as in, I can walk around the lunch room and reprimand the demons as they taunt one another with sporks, ketchup packets, and milk cartons). I love bread. I love cheese. I love soup/vegetables. I love fruit. I only worry about when my farmer's market closes, I will be out of luck. But I have an Earth Fare I am willing to investigate.

I don't know what made me think of all this this morning. Maybe it is the steady rain, the falling temperature, the eager dog, wanting to tear through the nice weather, but his reluctance to get wet (what a wimp). Or maybe it's the fact that I am faced with developing my first unit plan today, in addition to finishing my long term plans for the year. I'll start by planning my first lunch, and sharing my favorite Molly Wizenberg soup recipe. That is a start.

My First Lunch
Multi-grain Country loaf bread
Hummus (No cheese, but it is Morgan's hummus recipe)
Roasted Fingerling Potatoes
Tomato


Chick Pea Tomato Soup with Fresh Rosemary
from Molly Wizenberg's blog Orangette

2 cans of chick peas (no need to be a purist and soak your own)
3 tbsp olive oil
2 cloves of garlic
2 sprigs of fresh rosemary, roughly 3 inches long
2 cans diced tomatoes (tricky here, use a 28 oz can and a 14.5 oz can)
a pinch of sugar
a pinch of salt
a pinch of black pepper
4 cups vegetable stock (if you make your own, props. if you use bouillon, I understand.)

Heat the olive oil in a soup pot over medium heat. Add the garlic (peel, crushed, chopped) and the rosemary (needles removed from stems, rough chop). Heat for a minute, then add the tomatoes, sugar, salt, black pepper, half of the chickpeas (drained, of course), and the stock. Bring to a boil over high heat, then reduce and simmer for 20-25 minutes.

Remove the soup from the heat and cool for 4-5 minutes. Place in a blender (this is key in soups, as I mentioned before - food processors do not get the required texture for blended soups - use a blender!) and puree in batches, returning it to the pot. Add the additional chick peas, and bring soup to a warm temperature. Serves 6, or 4 hungry people.

Hosting: not for the faint at heart.

You know you've got it bad when the mere thought of making dinner for a crowd of people gives you that rush of giggles, kinda like a grade school kid on their birthday. Tonight my roommate and I are hosting a "community dinner" - TFA loves to force upon us these hosting opportunities for new corps members. But frankly, I don't mind the opportunity to force people to eat my food. After all, this is the South, and they have to be polite.

A year ago, I had to attend all of these awful dinners. Well, only two were awful. One dinner was hosted by a group of girls who were in the corps ahead of mine. Very nice, but very bland "mexican food." I felt bad for just not enjoying it. The second dinner took place at a ridiculous home in Old Money Charlotte. They served fajitas on a white table cloth. I am guilty for splattering a little on it. I also got stuck next to the matron of the home, which probably made it worse for me. Not to mention that they invited their awkward banking son, and hosted only females. He took time to speak to each one of us, almost as if we were auditioning to sit next to him for dinner. I felt weird all around.

My last dinner was at a lake house in South Carolina (which, is like, 10 minutes from Charlotte - but much like the Illinois side of the river: very dirty). The family made a veggie lasagna and a salad. Simple, but really good. Also, they were just good hosts. At the end of the meal, the husband and wife sat us all down around their fireplace and shared with us stories upon stories about life. I enjoyed myself immensely, despite the fact that I was in South Carolina.

So I am hosting. Well, my roommate and I are hosting together. But I am the one giddy about the meal. I've been flipping through books, blogs, and newspaper postings for weeks. The other day I suggested we discuss the menu, and she just gave me a look like I am a nut. But I was serious!

I have a problem remembering that not everyone enjoys food like I do. I see no problem with balsamic vinegar, black lentils, endives, etc. But I guess other people do. You can see the struggle - I want to make something of substance, but I need to keep it low key. Frustrating, beyond all belief. More people should be like me.

Here is my menu, with a few alterations to be made within the process of cooking it:

• Chilled Velvet Corn Soup
• French Bread Crostini with Sun Dried Tomato Pesto
• Fingerling Potatoes with Chives and Parsley
• A Gigantic Garden Salad: walnuts, goat cheese, roasted cherry tomatoes, a light vinaigrette, etc.
  
• Blackberry Crumble Bars

Essentially, I'm wasting my time by posting this and not cooking. But it'll all get done, I imagine. I just hope people other than me like it.

She's a Rejecter

Last weekend I tried to make a cold soup. It wasn't just any cold soup - it was a raw soup. I find the idea of eating "raw" to be intriguing, and possibly enjoyable. When I was a vegan, I felt a lot better after I finished a meal. Also, I thought "If Gwenyth Paltrow can do it, so can I!"

Raw soup is probably code for "baby food." It was butternut squash, apples, tahini, and a few spices. I chopped them, blended them, and even added cold cucumber for some 'crunch' in my presentation. And I still had baby food.

But I love the idea of cold soups! I have trouble finding acceptable cold soup. Riddle's has a strawberry cold soup that tastes like melted strawberry yogurt. My favorite tapas restaurant here in Charlotte, Las Ramblas, has a gazpacho with great taste - just too much like salsa, and not enough "cold soup."

This morning I clicked on the NPR homepage to find, lo and behold, a special on cold soups. My favorite looking one is the velvety corn soup - it looks like it takes minutes. But! I read the corner tips on making cold soup - don't use a food processor. This was my mistake. Perhaps that's what gave my raw soup it's "baby food syndrome."

Then again, it could've been because it was raw soup. Just a thought.

I have a crush on David Lebovitz

Have you read David Lebovitz's blog? It's pretty much amazing. He's incredibly witty and easy to read, and everything that I make from his recipes turns out like heaven. I think I'm in love. He's also blogging from Paris which allows me to further romanticize him.

I also feel some sort of kinship with him when he spends a paragraph or so ranting about the way things are done in France. Anyone living in a foreign country ends up having more than a rant or two about the iniquities imposed on them by these bloody people they're living with. It's how we seem to deal with cultural difference.

I mean, you're totally surrounded by people who have different childhood references than you do, eat different things, speak differently, and often have different values. The frustration has to go somewhere, and so I also bitch occasionally. What to do?

However, when it comes to my favorite American in Paris' recipes, there is no complaining from anyone. I take this poor man's instructions and twist them to fit my meagre kitchen equipment and lack of experience, and still the end result is always wonderful.

I made his jam tart recipe as dessert for a friend's barbecue.





I used a glass pie dish (horrors!) of the wrong size, but it still turned out well, just stayed quite a while longer in the oven. It also wasn't quite as pretty as his, but I decided that my tart was "elegantly rustic" and it still managed to elicit a few oohs and aahs from half drunken twenty-something year olds.

As noted in his post, you can use just about any jam you want. I used an old jar of pumpkin butter from Trader Joe's. With a little vanilla icecream on top, it was amazing. I'm yet to try this with a fruitier jam, but I think it would work, probably a little like dressed up Nutri-Grain bars I'm thinking.

Just try it. It's really easy, and absolutely unscrewuppable. What more can you ask for?