Winter jam

This town knows how to do winter.
We do not slouch around in our pajamas all day, mourning the light and warmer weather of other seasons. No. We make an effort.
One recent weekend, I met with friends to celebrate three birthdays at Takoma Park’s OliveLounge. We had so much fun we decided to make it a weekly gathering. And we went again this past Friday. I saw two other friends there and the outing turned into dinner. What a great place to hang out! I always see neighbors, the wait staff is good-looking and attentive, and they let us hold a table until all in our birthday party had arrived. But mostly, it’s the gathering of friends that makes this place work.
Some of the folks who gathered this past Friday went on to hear some music two blocks away, at the Carroll Cafe. Another group went to Restaurant Week in Washington, one of the perks of living so close to the city’s border: during slow months (like February) some of the more expensive restaurants give a deal for a week, fixed price for three courses at lunch or dinner. I’d done the same thing for lunch earlier in the week. Yum.
On another weekend, I missed a writer’s meeting in order to get some housework done –but I could also have met my new neighbors, who had an open house to get to know the folks who live around them. The Takoma Park Jazz Fest sponsored its annual Jazz Brawl, for musicians to compete for a spot at the June festival. And on a Thursday night, a blues band was playing at El Golfo, a Mexican restaurant just over the Takoma Park line in Silver Spring. Midwinter Play Day was also that Thursday, with board games, yoga, dress-up, live music and more for kids and adults at the Takoma Park Community Center.
I did get to my hairdressers, Salon Jam, for a Valentine’s Day Art open house, where I saw my friend (and artist) Bobbi Kittner and met a couple artists I didn’t know before. The housewares store, Trohv, had a pop-up coffee shop the same day, with luxurious-sounding coffees described as if they were fine wines – and while "almond and sage aromatics, full body and cherry acidity" isn't everyone's cuppa, I loved sipping along with my friend.
The list goes on: yoga classes at the fabulous Willow Street Yoga; dance performances and classes at the Dance Exchange, and in nearby Brookland at the Dance Place; local bands at the VFW-HellsBottom, where anyone can pull up a stool for $1.75 beer; house concerts a block from my home; community center concerts with international musicians as well as local (in a Community Center that feels less municipal than professional, with new sound and lights for the stage); art shows and openings, also at the community center; everybody-sings events through Carpe Diem, a local ad hoc chorus; weekly open drum circles at the Electric Maid.
The problem with winter is not so much the hibernation that draws us all in – the problem is all this effort to overcome the urge to withdraw is packing our calendars so that the occasional evening cuddled by the fire becomes the exception. Which is not really a problem, after all.
Photo is from the house concerts I mentioned -- and it's by Sam Kittner, yes, Bobbi Kittner's husband. Thanks!

 

Fashion after 50

Skinny jeans are everywhere, in bright colors, like fistfuls of pick-up-sticks with legs in them. Cheery. Fun. Great with boots and bulky sweaters.

I want some.

But my mother’s voice sounds a warning: “teenage grandmother,” she’d say, rolling her eyes when we’d pass a woman (and there were lots of these in Florida) dressed in clothes my mother thought would be far more appropriate on a girl one quarter the woman’s age.

I am not my mother.

So I take a look at my favorite shop (the one with “thrift” in the name), and find two pairs of skinny jeans in what I think are my size. One pair is blue denim, the other black – disappointing, as what I really want are the crayon-colored legs I see in the magazines, but I don’t want to go on a full-out shopping spree, so I settle.

These are pretty ridiculous pants. I have to point my toes to get into them, then pull them up as if they are tights. You could tear a fingernail doing this—even a short one, like mine. Then I have to inch them up my legs. This reminds me of the girls in high school (not me) who would lie down on the dressing room floor to zip up pants they had no business wearing. I was so disdainful of that sort of thing. Fashion. Puh.

I begin to wonder if these skinny jeans are worth the trouble, and whether they’ll look like “they’re painted on,” another of mom’s favorite put-downs, once I have them on over my, well, healthy thighs. Yes, me and Beyonce. I have to tug to get them over my rear end. And then there’s a little adjusting of curves before I’m entirely comfortable.

But once they’re on: they look good. They feel fine. I like them. My boots go over them without looking like I’m trying too hard, with jeans tucked into my boots, as if to say, “look at my boots!” I check for muffin tops: sigh of relief. It is a little dicey if I squat down to pick something up – these particular skinny jeans could be higher-waisted and that would be good – but other than that, they’re great.

The second pair doesn’t fare as well. They’re also skin-tight, in a good way, but only up to the knees. Then there’s a lot of extra fabric and a funny gap at the top in the back. Plus, the fabric feels chintzy. They remind me of the jeans your mother wants you to buy – usually Wrangler, as I recall – that are just not cool at all, but you can’t explain how they are uncool. Something about the stitching, or the cut, something invisible, only to be felt.

Still, I have one pair of skinny jeans. I feel like I’m 20 again.

Mom, that’s not a teenager. Plus, I actually own a pair or Wranglers. And I like those, too.

 

Grandma Jean's coleslaw

I came home tonight with no particular plan for dinner, other than what I could dream up in the car on the way back from dance class. I decided on my old stand-by, grilled cheese and tomato. But since I was out of salad greens, I had to be creative if I wanted something besides carrot sticks on the side. I had to make due.

Turns out I am good at this, probably the result of frequently avoiding the grocery store: if I can make something work from what I already have in the pantry, I will.

Tonight’s side veggie came from an old piece of red cabbage and a carrot. That’s really about it. I was going to shred the vegetables and then improvise a dressing, maybe throw some mayonnaise and lemon together and call it coleslaw, but then I thought of the Southern cookbook Ann gave me a few years ago – I’d just baked cornbread from it, and I figured it would have a good coleslaw recipe as well.

The book, The Gift of Southern Cooking, is by Edna Lewis and Scott Peacock, and though they contribute to it at least equally, mining their southern childhoods and subsequent journeys into all things culinary, it’s the only cookbook I have by Edna Lewis, and I think of it as hers.

According to the New York Times, Miss Lewis (as she was known) was the first to elevate southern cooking  beyond its “knee-slapping, cornpone image.” She was born in Freetown, Virginia, the granddaughter of a freed slave, and wound up bringing her kitchen traditions to New York society through restaurants and cookbooks. She became the doyenne of southern cooking, widely respected and admired by top chefs and glitterati. She died at age 89, in 2006.

I love this book. It really is a team effort; Peacock, it turns out, was so close to Lewis that he lived with and cared for her in her final years, and they were widely known (again, according to the Times) as “the odd couple of southern cooking” – she, an elderly, African American widow and he, a young, white, gay chef. The coleslaw recipe is his, developed when he was chef for the governor of Georgia in the 1980s, cooking for countless political barbeques. I know this because the story is included in the book: The bits before the recipes are at least as good as the recipes themselves. In addition to the provenance of the coleslaw, the explanations and stories turned me from disdain over lard, to wondering where I can buy some; and convinced me that I should make the homemade baking powder, to avoid that occasional metallic taste in my muffins and biscuits when I use the store-bought variety.

The recipes here are solid. I can vouch especially for the lemon chess pie and the biscuits, I am charmed by recipes like “cat’s tongues” cookies, red-eye gravy and chow chow, and I want to bake my way through nearly an entire chapter on cakes.

Tonight I found another reason to love this book: coleslaw. This one involves a cooked dressing, just like my Grandma Jean’s. Hers was finely shredded, and so is Peacock’s (though I have to admit, mine strayed far from the actual recipe, and I just shredded it coarsely since I was hungry and didn’t want to spend a lot of time on it). The dressing is heavy on the vinegar, too, a trait that puts me right back in the kitchen at Bixley Heath, the street in Lynbrook, New York, where my grandmother served my family Sunday dinners when I was small.

The recipe is simple, really: equal parts vinegar and sugar, boiled together for 3 minutes with a little salt; to this you add some Dijon mustard and half the amount of oil as vinegar, then the dressing gets added to the vegetables – Peacock calls for cucumbers with the cabbage, but I used carrot to stretch what little cabbage I had (and I had no cucumbers). There’s also a little cream and sour cream to finish the dish.

I think of Grandma Jean’s coleslaw with “cold cuts,” a favorite short cut for lunch or a casual dinner at her house. It also makes me think of her potato salad, which we called “German potato salad,” though I’m not sure why. She was actually Scottish and Irish.

As such, she would probably find it pretty funny that I now think of this pair of southern cooks as her compadres in the kitchen.  I love how cooking unites all kinds of people. Maybe she and Miss Lewis have found one another in some sort of culinary afterlife.

Thanks, Ann, for this book. As you can see, it’s a winner in more ways than one.

 

Photo is by John T. Hill, and ran on the cover of Lewis' book, The Taste of Country Cooking.

 

The return of the crockpot

 Since the prospect of someone (like this fine gal to the left) greeting me at my own front door with a martini and the smell of dinner cooking is slim to none, at least in the foreseeable future, I’ve discovered the next best thing: the old crock pot.

Really.

I unearthed this from my basement yesterday when I had to run off to yoga class, but the beef stew wasn’t finished cooking. I couldn’t leave the burner on to finish the stew while I was away, but I knew it needed more time to simmer. So I (literally) dusted off the crockpot that’s been sitting in the basement for eight years, slopped the unfinished stew into it, turned the dial to “high,” threw a lid on it and left.

 

I wasn’t sure the pot actually worked – so I did wait around for long enough to be sure it didn’t explode and cause a fire, and that it did heat up and not sit there, broken, on the counter, with beef stew cooling inside it.

But all systems seemed to be in working order. And when I came home from yoga class, I opened the door and voila! The sumptuous smell of dinner cooking greeted me (albeit without the martini). The stew was bubbling away, and it turned out to be delicious: tender beef chunks, sweet carrots, tender potatoes, all flavored with garden herbs and tomatoes and onions cooked so they melt in your mouth.

Now I’m going to google around and try to find other ways to use this wondrous tool I’ve resurrected. I’m hoping it will work for black bean chili, or maybe a lentil-based Indian stew. Are there revised crockpot cookery books out there that update an old trend, the way books about canning and knitting made home-making hip and cool again? I’ll find out. Or maybe write one myself.

Yoga class beef stew

Yes, it’s probably not very yoga to eat animals, but this was free-range, antibiotic-free, hopefully well-treated beef. And I’m grateful I could buy it for that undeniable red-meat craving I cannot seem to shake.

Approx one pound stew beef (it’s the cheapest cut in the case!)

Olive oil for the pot
1 large onion
3 or 4 carrots, chopped
6 or 7 small potatoes, peeled and chopped
A handful of fresh rosemary (I actually used a 7-inch sprig that had been drying on the countertop), chopped
A handful of fresh sage (again, this was sort of drying out on the countertop), chopped
1 can chopped tomatoes
Water
Salt and pepper to taste

Rinse and pat dry the beef. Heat olive oil in a soup pot. Add beef, brown on all sides, turning each piece with tongs, as needed. Add onion, cook until onion begins to soften, stirring occasionally. Add the rest of the veggies and herbs, give it a stir and let cook up to five minutes. Add the tomatoes and enough water to almost cover. Bring to a boil.

    At this point you could either
1) skip yoga class and keep cooking the stew for a couple of hours -- either on top of the stove or in the oven, with a lid, at about 300 -- or
2) cook it for as long as you can, then change into yoga clothes, dump the stew into the crockpot, and leave it for about two hours more.  
3) Third option is to go ahead and bring it to a boil, then transfer it to the crock pot and follow the instructions that come with the pot -- or look it up on a website that is more thorough in the crockpot category than mine. I like this one, as it has veggie options as well as meat.

For the martini, you're on your own.

Give yourself a break

I made a kick-ass minestrone soup the other night, and instead of beating myself up for not making homemade bread, or biscuits, or cornbread to go with it (why do I think this is necessary when I’ve already made the soup?!?) I bought already-baked cornbread at Whole Foods. This was not cornbread mix in a box, to make at home. It was pre-made, wrapped in plastic, good to go, ready for the table. It even had little jalapenos in it.

It was great.

Why do I so often think I have to do everything by hand in order to make the meal perfect, truly homemade, really authentic? It’s not like my mom didn’t pour pre-made dressing on canned pears and iceberg and call it a salad – a salad that I really liked. And there are plenty of great people who use cream of mushroom soup for casseroles and box cake mixes for desserts on a regular basis. How about those parents who buy packaged cookies and disguise them as freshly baked for the school bake sale? You do what you gotta do.

Except I don’t. Instead, I’m the person who wants to make homemade versions of “store-bought” treats like Hostess Cupcakes and Ho-Hos. I have to make my pie crusts from scratch, as a matter of principle. I feel like a hero if I can turn out something from my kitchen that I’ve kneaded, stirred, rolled, whipped or roasted myself.

Usually I love this. Except when I don’t.

There are times when I look up and it’s way later than it should be for the start of some cooking project or other. Times when I run short of energy or incentive or inspiration. Times when I need to give myself a break.

For those times, I’m learning that in addition to loving the satisfaction of having made it myself, I can also love the shortcuts that make life just a little easier. That cornbread, for instance. It was delicious. 

 

p.s.: This photo is not "homemade," either, I took it from a web site that's even more committed to doing everything yourself than I am. Check it out, these kids are shucking and grinding the corn with a hand crank before they make the bread! Farm to Table.

(Homemade) Minestrone Soup

2 teaspoons olive oil

1 medium-sized onion, chopped
1 tablespoon or more dried oregano (thanks, Simeone, I used some I dried from your mega-harvest!)
4 garlic cloves, minced
3 cups yellow squash, chopped
3 cups zucchini, chopped
1 cup corn kernels (I use frozen, great to have on hand)
3 cans chopped tomato (or 4 cups fresh)
5 to 6 cups veg broth (yes, I make my own! Whenever you’re cutting up veggies, just throw the trimmings (like onion ends, chard and collard stems, celery leaves, carrot stubs) in a Ziploc and keep it in the freezer, adding to it until there is enough to cook up. Then put them in a pot with plenty of water, a cut up onion and maybe a stalk of celery or a carrot, simmer for a while (an hour?), then drain all the veg out, pour into carryout containers in one-cup increments, and freeze. I like to pop out the frozen cup-size chunks and store them in Ziplocs for whenever I need ‘em. If you’re really thinking, you’ll defrost them early in the day – if not, just zap in the microwave. Of course premade is also TOTALLY FINE)
½ to 1 cup dried pasta – I like penne
1-2 cups cooked white beans (yep, I do ‘em from dried. Sometimes. Or just use 1 15.5-oz. can of pre-cooked)
1 bunch fresh chard, chopped (you can use spinach if you prefer, I happened to have chard on hand)
Salt and pepper to taste
Parmesan or Asiago cheese, shredded, for on top

    Heat oil in a soup pot (love my Dutch oven) and add onion. Sauté until soft. Add oregano and garlic, sauté a minute more. Stir in the rest of the veggies, except for tomato, until tender.

    Place 3 cups tomato and 1 cup broth in the blender, process ‘til smooth. Add tomato mix to pot, stir in remaining tomato and broth, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat, and simmer 20 minutes.
    Add pasta and beans, cook another 10 minutes or until pasta is done. Stir in chard, salt and pepper.
    Ladle into bowls and garnish with cheese. Serves 8.

Not your mother's grilled cheese

Grilled cheese always makes me think of my mom making me lunch. It was my favorite: Velveeta from the big, long box, Wonder Bread from the package with the balloons on it, and sliced tomato, served beside a bowl of Campbell’s Condensed Cream of Tomato Soup. I sound like I’ve just stepped out of a 1960s food advertisement.  

Actually, I still love grilled cheese -- it means I’m home – working, usually, but in my own kitchen, taking a break from the deskwork, able to take a few moments to put together lunch.

This is not my mother’s grilled cheese, but it is good. Really good: fully of gooey smoothness against whole-grain heft with a bright hit of fresh tomato and, sometimes, some other veggie tucked in between the bread.

The transformation from Velveeta to, well, healthier (and tastier) starts with the obvious: whole grain bread. Even though the little girl in me is still in love with the Wonder Bread commercial that told me it “Builds Strong Bodies 12 Ways!” and then showed a child magically shooting up a yard stick, getting older and taller instantly! Sadly, Wonder Bread is processed until all the nutritional value of the wheat has been sucked out of it, then supplemented with vitamins that are harder to digest than the original vitamins, minerals and fiber in the raw product. Go figure.

I also go for real cheddar cheese, instead of Velveeta, which is perhaps the poster child of all processed foods. Labeled “pasteurized processed cheese food,” it was a squishy, orange block of something that felt like a cross between butter and cheese, and it was super creamy with a great melting quality. A step away from Cheez Whiz.

I use sharp cheddar now, and mix it with goat cheese to get that same, melty, Velveeta affect. It also adds a more complex flavor  – as if grilled cheese needs complexity.

I’ve kept the sliced tomatoes just as they were in Mom’s grilled cheese, and they really make the sandwich, cutting  the rich cheese and bread combo with a burst of tangy freshness. Once, when I was out of tomatoes, I used leftover mustard greens I’d sautéed at dinner the night before, and the bite they lent was an unexpected and delicious substitute. Thinly sliced apples can work, too, but make sure they’re crisp – mealy ones are just a disappointing substitute that makes me wish for those tomatoes after all.

If I’m lucky, I’m serving up this re-invented grilled cheese with soup, but not Campbell’s, with its corn syrup and mystery “flavorings.” Instead I like a homemade squash soup, or maybe potato or beet. Something thick and rich. I’m still looking for a favorite.

Hold on loosely

There's nothing like a bike ride to shake off the torpor of an all-indoors day, especially in winter. Just before the light is gone (it fades so quickly this time of year), I bundle up, pump up my tires and take off into Sligo Creek Park, trusting that the dim halo of light carved by my bike light will be enough when dusk turns to dark.

There’s something edgy about riding a bike in the dark: You can’t quite see what’s in front of you, but it just keeps on coming. Shadows disappear with the light, erasing dips and ridges on the bike path. To compensate for lost vision, my other senses crank up the volume. I feel the trail, rather than see it, and ride in ready-set-go mode, my body raised slightly off the bike seat, just enough above it so the bike seems to take on a life of its own, moving under me with the slightest of guidance. I clip along fast, exhilarated by each curve and bump, pavement speeding beneath my tires.

And then a hiccup in the trail sends me flying.

It’s my loose grip on the handlebars that saves me: there’s enough give so the bike jostles underneath me without taking me with it, enough control so the bike is still there for me when I regain my balance. I keep my momentum, stay upright – and land hard back on the seat. Ouch. But also, wow. And wheeeee! It’s like surviving my own personal (and very small) roller coaster. I keep pedaling down the trail, laughing at the surprise.

And I think about hanging loose, being flexible, rolling with the punches. If I’d been more rigid, followed the “hold on tight!” advice I’d probably have given my kids, I’d have jammed my wrists and very likely toppled over, scraping my knees, cranking my 51-year-old bones around, maybe worse.

Lesson learned.

Eventually I turn around to head back home, still congratulating myself on my flexibility, considering how a balance of control and quick response and adaptability is relevant not just on the trail but at work, in the family, at home. Then, wham! I go flying off the seat. Again. Same exact bump in the trail, same flight, same hard landing. Same recovery.

 

Next time I'd like to land more softly. I guess I have something more to learn.