Shrimp Rolls & Cilantro Dipping Sauce

I made this dish last night after dragging two tired, screeching children around the Upper West Side looking for rice paper so I could make a cold shrimp roll with cucumber, mango and cilantro. I had a hankering and I thought the kids would love it. As you know, we are BIG on the shrimp around here.

It's weird when you go into an Asian grocery and you have to explain what you use to make a shrimp roll. I mean, shouldn't they be explaining it to me? But it turns out, half the people who work in Asian groceries on the Upper West Side are Hispanic and only speak Spanish. And I'll be damned but I couldn't remember how to say rice paper in Spanish.

This all amounts to me screaming "papel de arroz!" over the din of my wailing, unhappy children and about 10 different guys shrugging their bewildered shoulders and saying, "Yo no se!"

So, I changed plans. I shelved the cucumber and the mango and pulled some egg roll wrappers out of the freezer. I went from healthy and fresh, to fried and fatty and awesome in like two seconds flat.


David loved them and ate every one in his near vicinity, including the ones I saved out for his lunch the next day. The girls turned their nose up at them as if I had offered them some kind of liver terrine. Liver terrine with poop on top.

Weirdly, I think they felt the egg roll presentation tainted the shrimp they love so dearly and so, they turned their adorable little noses up at even those. Then, to really rub salt in the wound, they jumped up and down on the couch as if to make it quite clear that they were boycotting dinner and wanted me to know that I had failed to give their little bodies' sustenance. Then, they just pretended I didn't exist.

I got the message.

But you should not listen to my crazy children and make these lovely, crispy rolls with the dipping sauce, which is salty and pungent and gives the rolls just a little kick in the pants. And Lord help, me we all need a good kick in the pants once in awhile.

FYI, I ate the remaining dipping sauce over cellophane noodles at like 11pm while watching the last season of "Madmen" (I'm only on episode 4, so don't tell me) and it was pretty satisfying.

I do believe these rolls would be great cold right out of the fridge the next morning with my ice cold tea, but they didn't stay around long enough for me to find out.

xo YM
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Shrimp Rolls

Ingredients

12 egg roll wrappers
¼ cup vegetable oil (for frying)
1 pound of medium cooked shrimp, peeled, deveined & cut into small pieces. (Not minced. I like a little chunk)
4 green onions, finely chopped (some of the green is fine. It'll add flavor and a nice color)
1 clove garlic, grated
1/2 teaspoon ginger, grated (Go easy on the ginger. Too much will overpower the delicate shrimp)
1 good-sized wad of fresh cilantro, minced (Be generous. Cilantro is a good thing)
Juice of half a lime (I only had a lemon and that worked just fine)
1 tablespoon light soy sauce
A pinch of salt
A pinch of pepper
A 1/4 cup of Panko bread crumbs (this sounds weird, but I didn't have cornstarch and this bound up the shrimp nicely and provided a subtle texture inside the roll)

Preparation

Cook shrimp in boiling salted water. About three minutes or until shrimp just turn pink. Don't overcook. Or if you bought cooked shrimp, feel good that you saved yourself some time.

Combine all the ingredients in a large mixing bowl and mix together with your hands.

Dip the egg roll wrapper in the warm water under the tap, just until it feels pliable and easy to work with. Lay wrapper on your work surface and place about 1 1/2 tablespoons of shrimp filling in the middle of the wrapper. Roll in edges and tuck over sides to make your egg roll. I think this is intuitive. You know what an egg roll looks like, you can probably figure out the best way to wrap it. If not, I'm sure YouTube has 3,000 videos of people properly wrapping egg rolls.

Cover egg rolls with a damp towel until you are ready to fry. Heat oil in a wok (or pan) until oil shimmers.

Working in batches, fry egg rolls until they are golden brown on both sides, about 2 minutes on each side. They cook quickly so keep an eye out. I think it's a no-brainer to say that I stop short at letting the kids help with the frying. Boiling oil in a wok and children makes me nervous.

Remove rolls with tongs. Let drain on paper towels before serving

Cilantro Dipping Sauce

Ingredients

5 tablespoons fish sauce
Juice of a half a lemon (or lime)
1/2 teaspoon of sugar
A splash of sesame oil
A small pinch of salt
A hit of cilantro, finely chopped

Preparation

Combine in a small bowl and serve on a platter next to the rolls, cut on the diagonal and piled on top of one another, with a flourish of cilantro leaves.

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Roasted Onions with Gruyere & Croutons

Dear SaintTigerlily,

Thank you for coming to our "country house" this weekend and blessing us with your urban presence. I hope the carpenter ants and the ladybugs hibernating in the windows didn't bother you too much. Finding bugs in your bed is really the country experience. We just wanted it to feel "authentic" for you.

And speaking of country living, the tutus you hand-made for the girls are absolutely divine, they adore them and they keep asking if you can be their mom, so I appreciate that and all, but maybe next time you should wear underpants under the tutu when you take the garbage down to the road. I mean, you have a really nice ass and the neighbors really liked your vagina showing (You go with that Brazilian, girl!) but you know, this is the country and people are a bit more under-stated, practical...boring here. They like to wear pants.

They keep the beaver under wraps. It's beaver politics. Very sensitive. So for future reference, Tigerlily, pants = good.

And it was good of you to bring Ross and Gillian, Ross makes a mean Manhattan and since he was dolling them out like candy at the party Saturday night, I think we can say that it was a huge success because every grown-up was completely two ass cheeks to the wind by 8pm.


I bet that's why I found the grown-ups and the kids together playing with Playdoh on the kitchen floor at 10pm. I didn't want to mention this before, but the kids thought maybe things got out of hand when the adults started pitching Playdoh balls at them. I mean, they're just kids, not space invaders. Not for reals anyway.

And the way Ross and The Boss (Hey, how cute! That rhymes!) were cackling maniacally before pelting them with Playdoh submachine gun fire, well, that might have been a little scary. But other than frightening the children, and undermining their innate sense of security and safety, something we have been nurturing every day for the last 5 years, well, that whole completely inebriated stupor thing worked out for everyone.

That said, you guys are all a hoot and The Fosters had an awesome weekend. I'm including here the "Roasted Onions with Gruyere and Croutons" recipe from Bon Appetite that we made for the dinner party. This dish went nicely with the roasted leg of lamb that the butcher said was boneless but wasn't - butchers lie, they are evil in meaty white coats - and the roasted root vegetables and salad, which I mistakenly dotted with fat lumps of goat cheese, much to the chagrin of the vegans. I really, truly suck at this hostessing, pleasing people thing.

Tigerlily, thank you for prepping all these onions and being a friend in and out of the kitchen. It is so fun and such an honor to cook with you. And to also see how great your tits are up close and personal every morning. They really are awesome natural wonders and seem to stand up one their own without a bra. It's like they are oblivious to gravity and all other rational and scientific forces on earth....um, hope that's not too much in the sharing department.

xo YM
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This recipe from the December 2009 issue of Bon Appetite is easy to make, can mostly be made ahead and is the perfect hearty side dish for a big dinner. Leftovers are also wonderful in frittatas or topped with cheese and bacon on a bagel and fired in the oven. You could totally add this to your Thanksgiving repertoire since you could prep and caramelize the onions the day before and just throw the pan in the oven for 20 minutes before dinner. I bet they're better if you make them the day before anyway.


Roasted Onions with Gruyere & Croutons

Ingredients

12 white pearl onions, peeled
12 red pearl onions, peeled
8 large shallots, peeled, halved through root end
6 large green onions, dark green tops trimmed
2 medium sweet onions (such as Vidalia), peeled, cut into 3/4-to 1-inch wedges through root end
1 large red onion, peeled, cut into 3/4-to 1-inch wedges through root end
1 brown-skinned onion, peeled, cut into 3/4-to 1-inch wedges through root end
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves
1 teaspoon coarse kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
3 cups coarsely torn 1/2-inch pieces rustic bread with crust
1 cup low-salt chicken broth
6 ounces Gruyère cheese, coarsely grated (about 1 1/2 cups packed)
Sea salt flakes or crystals
print a shopping list for this recipe

Preparation

Preheat oven to 450°F. Combine all onions and shallots in large bowl. Drizzle evenly with olive oil, then sprinkle with thyme, coarse salt, and pepper; toss gently to coat. Spread out in single layer on large rimmed baking sheet.

Roast onions until tender and beginning to brown in spots, 25 to 30 minutes. Scatter bread pieces on another rimmed baking sheet. Bake bread until golden brown, 7 to 8 minutes. Cool bread on baking sheet. Arrange onions in single layer in large casserole dish. DO AHEAD: Onions and croutons can be made up to 1 day ahead. Cover onions and refrigerate.

Store croutons in airtight container at room temperature. Bring onions to room temperature before continuing.

Preheat oven to 400°F. Spoon broth over onions to moisten. Scatter croutons over; sprinkle with cheese. Bake until heated through and cheese is melted, about 20 minutes. Sprinkle with sea salt flakes and serve.

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If a Couple of City People Open a Wine Bottle in the Woods & No One is There to See it, Did They Really Open The Bottle?

So, the moral of this post, before I even get started, is "When you buy a house in the country - and you can't run across the street to the bodega to buy a corkscrew or go knock on the door down the hall at 11pm to get your half-naked, nearly-asleep neighbor in his underpants and black socks to open your bottle - make sure you buy a freakin' corkscrew or your only chance of having a nightcap is going to be to lick the rubbing alcohol bottle in the bathroom."

I just had my heart set on a glass of wine. David was not going into to town to buy me a corkscrew. I was too damn lazy to even consider it and I'm afraid of the dark so being outside with all the rabid raccoons wandering around ready to pounce on me was out of the question.

And I was pissed that I actually went to the trouble to buy a bottle and was now only able to stare at it on the kitchen counter. The bottle mocked me.

Then, I had a thought...Surely, we weren't the first people dumb enough not to own a corkscrew. I mean, there are, like, millions of idiots in the world, right?


And this is where You Tube comes in. I search the site for "How to open a wine bottle without a corkscrew" and I learn that there are a bunch of good ways to go about doing this. One of which involves a tree if you are ever without a corkscrew at say, a romantic picnic in the woods, and you're trying to get laid, so going back to civilization will cramp your plans for heavy petting in the bushes.

I filmed this method below which was perfect for middle aged people who just tore out kitchen cabinets and had a bunch of tools laying around. Romantic picnics are for wusses anyway and I prefer to do my heavy petting indoors, thank you. I'm leaving the tree method for you youngsters.

Notice how McGyver my husband is on this video and how excited that gets me. And notice how cool and laid back David is while I act like he had performed a Pope-certified miracle. I showed him the video and he decided that he looked like a complete jerk and he remarked that now that I have this Flip Video Camera, nothing is scared or safe from public viewing anymore.

Er, yeah, something like that, Sweetie.



Did you notice the kids are watching the You Tube Video that taught us this great idea (which I would've linked here but I couldn't find it again)? You can hear it playing on the computer. And since they watched it like 36 times, start to finish, they actually are the only preschoolers in the tri-state area who can now recite all the steps for opening a wine bottle with a hammer and a screw.

My kids are so cool.

Lucy plans on doing a full demo at show and tell. The Mommies at preschool are gonna lurve me now.

And please don't ask me what's on Lucy's head. I have absolutely no idea.

xo YM

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"To Hell with Summer" Seafood Chowder

And with Autumn comes the simplicity and joy of just playing in the leaves...



And also chowder. This recipe will warm you on those chilly days, but is not nearly as heavy as braising something. I'm not quite ready for the heavy winter braising. This chowder will remind you of days with more sunlight and less frost and things that are green, yet, will warm you right to the bone. Just perfect for right after jumping in a fat pile of leaves.

As an aside, I load this recipe with prawns. My kids always ask for extra prawns and if there isn't enough, there's hell to pay. And, as you know, I always avoid the hell to pay.

xo YM


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"To Hell with Summer" Seafood Chowder

Ingredients

6 ounces meaty salt pork, rind removed or slab bacon, and diced
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 medium onions
6 to 8 sprigs fresh thyme, chopped
A pinch of tarragon
1 dried bay leaf
2 lbs small red potatoes, skin on, sliced into quarters
5 cups shrimp stock (See Note 1)
Kosher or sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 lb skinless haddock, catfish, monk fish or cod fillets, preferably over 1 inch thick, pinbones removed (See Note 2)
2 lbs of uncooked, shrimp with shells on (use shells for stock)
1 1/2 cups heavy cream (depending on how thick you want your chowder)
8 chives, cut with scissors into fine pieces
Several handfuls of fresh or frozen corn
2 tablespoons chopped fresh Italian parsley (garnish)
2 tablespoons minced fresh chives (garnish)

1. Cooking Note: Shrimp stock can be made simply from the shells of the shrimp you are using for this recipe. Just add to a pot whole a small whole onion, 2 whole carrots and a few stalks of celery. Sweat them a little in oil and butter. Add shells to the aromatics. Sweat those for a couple minutes. Add a little splash of white wine, if you want. Salt and pepper. Add water. Let simmer - but not boil - for a half hour. Voila! Home-made shrimp stock. Betcha cant' buy that at Whole Foods! I usually make this the day before so I'm not making chowder and stock at the same time.

2. Cooking Note: You can use any combination of your favorite seafood - don't let me box you in - clams, scallops, mussels, lobster, go nuts. Just make sure you know cooking times for the seafood you choose. You don't want a pot of over-cooked shrimp and under-cooked lobster. If you need help with that, ask your fish guy. They usually know.

Preparation

Heat a soup pot over low heat and add the diced salt pork or bacon. Cook until the pork is a crisp golden brown. Use a slotted spoon to transfer the cracklings to a dish, leaving the fat in the pot.

Add the butter, onions, thyme and bay leaf to the pot and sauté, stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon, for about 8 minutes. The onions should be soft and caramelized, but not fried.

Add the potatoes and stock. The stock should cover the potatoes. If it doesn't add water. Bring to a boil, cover, and cook the potatoes vigorously for about 10 minutes, until they are soft on the outside, but firm in the center. Smash a few potatoes against the side of the pot and cook for a minute or two longer to release their starch. This will thicken the broth a bit.

If you feel you have too much broth and your chowder might be too soupy, remove some broth with a ladle to a bowl and set aside. You can always add more to the pot if you need it. If you end up having extra broth, freeze it for your next chowder.

Reduce the heat to low and season with salt and pepper. Add the fish fillets and cook over low heat for a couple minutes. Add corn at the same time. Remove the pot from the heat and allow the chowder to sit for 10 minutes. The fish will finish cooking in the pot.

Gently stir in the cream and taste for salt and pepper. You can refrigerate the soup and reheat later or eat it immediately but I like to let it sit a bit. Just don't stir it a lot or you'll break up the fish. This recipe cannot handle lots of fussing. Just season and leave it.

Add cracklings. Serve with minced chives and parsley, either in individual crocks or in a single pot brought right to the table.

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Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

I cook in Lucy's pre-k class every Monday. Last week we roasted pumpkin seeds. This week we make pumpkin pancakes. Before that, we made meatballs. We cook everything on an electric flat top, circa 1970.

The group, which changes every week, has about 20 minutes to make a snack for all 20 kids and teachers eat, too. The snack will sit 15 minutes before it is passed out. We have a hot pot, electric flat top, microwave and a hot plate to cook on. There is a fridge.

Picture it, six eager 4 year olds gathered round a boiling oil spurting frying pan, and dipping their fingers into raw meat and eggs. It's not a cooking class it's a tragic episode of Grey's Anatomy.

Some things about 4 year olds and cooking:

1. When cooking in a pre-k class you are always just one recipe step away from everyone losing their shit. Believe it or not, just cooking pumpkin seeds in oil and dousing them with salt is like a huge endeavor for a group of kids.

Even though, the temptation is to do something amazing and complicated with the kids, like making head cheese or flambeing something, or adding an extra step like beating egg whites until they're stiff (for pancakes), they can just hold it together long enough to put a few ingredients into a bowl before they start hucking hot, oily pumpkin seeds at each other with spatulas.


2. Kids pick their noses and cook at the same time. They just do. Do not question or leave the frying pan to grab the kid a tissue. Someone will nearly set themselves on fire half way to the tissue box.

3. Most 4 yr olds cannot recognize garlic and onions by sight or smell. No judgments on other people's kids, just sayin' I baffled them with my fresh produce.

One kid was able to identify Worcestershire Sauce as "barbecue", so that's something.

4. There's always one kid... There is definitely one kid in the group that is DYING to touch the hot griddle. DYING. I see her leaning in, putting her face super-close to the oil and dangling her fingers over the heat, sort of playing with the idea of slapping her whole hand onto the flat top.

This is the kid who is going to grow up to have unprotected, drunk sex with rock stars in bad hotel rooms. I kinda love her.

5. Someone will cry. It might be me. In the girls bathroom. It's junior high all over again.

6. Prepare for your kid to secretly hate that your being nice to other people's kids. Or not so secretly, as Lucy informed every kid in the group that she gets to do every step of the dish and do it first because I'm her mom and she's done all this before.

And that's when you realize the problem kid in the cooking class is the one you brought into the world. And so I'm not just cooking with the kids and preventing them from scorching themselves with burning oil or making sure they don't impale themselves on a fork. No, I'm making sure my daughter doesn't go all Kim Jong iI on the more good-natured, better-raised children in her class.

7. There was an episode with cheese... I look away for one second to shut off the flat top after the meatballs are done. To provide a safe environment, of course. I am ever-vigilant.

But I took my eyes off the container of grated cheese. What was I thinking? For one second. One measly second. Next thing, I know 6 little fists have plunged into the cheese, shoving it in their mouths, throwing it in the air. There is a snow bed of cheese on the floor. It is a blizzard. A cheese orgy. There is fighting. Jockeying for position next to the container. Someone is shoved. A herd mentality has formed. One kid slips on cheese and risks being stampeded by the cheese freaks. There are nearly tears. Cooking in pre-k becomes a cage match of death.

Then, the head teacher, Lisa, steps in and in a nano second, order is restored. She shuts off the lights and the kids drop the cheese. They look at her and immediately put their hands on their heads. I do, too. I am in awe of her powers.

I crave that kind of power in the world.

8. I convince myself the teacher thinks I'm a crappy parent... I like to torture myself.

9. I pick raw meat out of a child's hair... Hey, it happens.

10. The kids want me back Well, yes. Of course. But Lisa will be picking cheese out of her radiators until March.

YM
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Roasted Pumpkin Seeds on an Electric Flat Top in a Pre-K Classroom

1. Remove seeds from pumpkins. You'll need two pumpkins for most humans but four if you are providing snacks for 20. Pumpkins look big but some are not so fertile in the seed department.

2. Separate as much pumpkin gunk as you can from the seeds by hand.

3. Take seeds and put them in a nice big bowl and add cold water. Most of the seeds will rise to the top and the gunk will sit at the bottom. Remove with a strainer.

4. I wash the seeds again in a strainer just to get any remaining gunk off. (If there is gunk om the seeds, it will mold over, so you want it off)

5. Spread seeds out over a tea towel and let them dry out overnight.

6. When you are ready to cook them, use a cast iron, regular fry pan or if you are in pre-k, a griddle. Heat pan. Add olive oil. I like my seeds nice and oily, so don't be stingy. Add the seeds and cook them until they start to turn a nice golden brown on one side and tumble them over to cook on the other side. This will take 5-7 minutes.

7. Remove with a slotted spoon to a paper towel. Let the excess oil drain. Sprinkle generously with salt or any other herb, spice mixture you like. Can be saved in a plastic container for a week or so, but are better eaten warm and immediately.

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The Vegetable Soup Rich People Make When They Own A Country House

This scrumptious vegetable soup was one of our first lovely Autumn meals in our new...wait for it...country house. Hooot!

David hates it when I tell people we have a "country house". Right now, he's freaked out and his skin is crawling, but he doesn't know why.

When he hears me talk about our new "country house", he actually cringes and jumps in and explains to people that the house is a fixer upper, a run-down, unloved, ugly thing that needs our undivided attention to reach it's full potential, an investment, something that will eat up copious amounts of our free time. We closed on Monday and he already refers to it as our little "Money Pit".

A few weeks ago, I made the mistake of twittering about "our country house". I was trying to get into the spirit of the country. I have to get into the spirit of the country because, well, I'm from the country and did everything I could to get out of the country, only to marry someone I thought would never leave the city and have him convince me we should be buy a house surrounded by carpenter bees nesting in our siding, an exploding deer population that eat every plant in their wake, nights that are pitch black and have strange eerie scratching sounds coming out of the backyard and no concierge.

That's right. Not one single person down stairs to pick up my packages or keep robbers and murderers from breaking into our apartment.

But I was trying to get into the spirit...


So, I was fantasizing about the gorgeous farm stands loaded with local produce and wine country in New Paltz, where the house is, and The Culinary Institute of America right down the road, the actual green house in my house where I can have a garden year round and grow lemon trees - Can you believe it? Lemon trees - and the amazing light from the cathedral ceilings and the space, the space, the space and the good restaurants and rockin' chefs, and the idea that we might have a yard full of egg-laying chickens next Spring, the scads of grass-fed beef that you can find everywhere and my happy rock climbing husband who is excited about having a house nestled in the Shawanagunks, the best climbing in the Northeast.

And weirdly, we have more sex in the country. Must be the air. But the best thing - no more camping in a tent, so we can be near the nature. Thank you, Jesus.

I was getting excited. So, I twittered about it. The spirit moved me, so kill me.

This prompted a call from David. He actually stopped working to call me from the office and tell me to stop calling it "the country house", lest people mistakenly think we are rich.

So, we've been working on names for the house ever since. How to describe our little "homestead", "shack", "hut", "Camp Foster" without making it sound like we own the Kennedy Compound. We are in New York after all and "country house" is synonymous for weekending in the Hamptons.

But I do this exercise for David. Frankly, I like having a "country house." I look forward to a parade of ants trooping through my kitchen and flying bugs the size of grapes getting tangled in my hair. I look forward to the really gross bathrooms that cry out for renovation and the kitchen tile that is beyond repair. I look forward to the kids having a city life and a country life. City friends and country friends. I look forward to long Sunday Suppers with a full clamoring table in a proper dining room. I dream about designing a gourmet kitchen. I look forward to losing myself in a garden and cussing at the woodchucks.

I just look forward. And despite what our bank accounts look like, we are rich.

I will take pictures at "the Casa" or whatever we are calling the house next weekend and give you a tour. Until then, try this soup, as you say "Good bye" to our lovely Autumn.

xo YM

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There are just enough lovely fall vegetables still hanging around the farmers market now to make this divine soup. There was a similar recipe in Gourmet a month or two but it was for a "stew". I can tell you that we don't eat stew here, the kids will turn up their noses at stew, but they will devour soup. So, I keep my broth soup like, but feel free to chunk it up with tomatoes, if you prefer a stew.

So, this soup is lovely, completely vegan, and deliciously simple. I gave you some ideas about vegetable quantities and such but really just go nuts at the farmers market and pick veg that looks good and that you like. Then, eyeball the quantities. Like zucchini? Add more. Despise eggplant? Leave it out.

Just enjoy this last taste of Fall.

The Vegetable Soup Rich People Make When They Own a Country House

* 1/3 cup olive oil
* 2 onions, chopped
* 2 celery ribs, cut into slices
* 3 carrots, cut into slices
* 4 garlic cloves, chopped
* 1/2 cup water or chicken broth
* 4 fresh tomatoes, chopped
* 3 handfuls of green beans, trimmed and cut pieces
* 2 red bell peppers, cut into chunks
* 2 small zucchini, cut into slices
* 1 smallish eggplant, cut into chunks
* 3 medium boiling potatoes, peeled or un-peeled, and cut into 1-inch pieces


Heat oil in a pot over medium-high heat until it shimmers. Add onions, celery, carrots, and garlic and cook until pale golden, about 10 minutes. Add eggplant and water and cook, until eggplant is slightly softened, about 10 minutes.

Stir in tomatoes and bell peppers, then reduce heat to low and cook, uncovered, stirring occasionally, 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, blanch green beans in a saucepan (about 3 minutes). Remove with a slotted spoon. Bring water up to a boil. Do the same with the zucchini and remove. Bring water to a boil. Add potatoes and do the same. Drain and remove.

Add all the blanched vegetables to stew and simmer, stirring, until all vegetables are very soft, about 15 minutes. Season with salt and pepper.

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The School Year is Kicking My Ass (Part 1 of 2)

I didn't realize that I had been living this life of luxury. This is my life before Lucy started school. My life after school started is in the following post. Note the differences.

My Life Before Lucy Started School

5:00-6:00: I get up early and write, either my stuff or for a client. I mean to exercise, but that never really happens. So by the time the kids wake up, I feel fat and sedentary but accomplished. I have purpose. I am woman. I roar a lot.

7:30: I do the dishes from the night before, clean up kitchen. Prep David's lunch. Start prepping hot breakfast for everyone and everyone likes a different breakfast, so I'm prepping three completely different breakfasts, not including my own, which is caffeine and whatever anyone else doesn't eat and I can scrape off the plate with my fingers.

8:00: David gets up, showers. I poach eggs for him. I start a load of wash.

9:00: Kids start getting up. Lucy first and then Edie more toward 9:30. They transition from bed to couch and ease into their day with some cartoons. Maybe they are still dirty from the day before, who knows.

David eats poached eggs, sprinkled with salt, herbs and a nice cheese, whatever we have on hand. Lucy eats egg whites cooked in butter and sprinkled with salt and chives. Edie eats sausage, usually wrapped in a paper cone so she can hold it in her hand and eat it like a lolly pop while standing around.

10:00: David leaves for work. I hand him his lunch, which is usually leftovers reconfigured from the night before, with a salad, usually spinach and lots of vegetables, goat cheese and walnuts. The kids finish up breakfast, kiss daddy good bye and we start our day.


The rest of the day: Well, we live like kings. We usually spend the next two hours bathing. Really. There is playing in the bath, lots of bubbles, swimming in the tub, hair washing a couple times a week. It's an extended affair almost always that involved laughing, smiling, tears when shampoo time took too long or sap dripped into our eyes. There was so much emotion. It was a microcosm of life

Then, there is play with friends, our house, other people's houses, or at fun public places. When it's hot we are outside, in pools, in sprinklers on playgrounds. When it's not nice or too cold, we stay inside, usually with friends and cook, play games, eat and hold impromtu parties.

We do whatever we want. Whatever little thing pops into our heads. We feel like making meatballs, we do it. We take three hours going to the store and picking out ingredients and then, bring them home and with everyone sitting on the counter, we dive into the piles of meat and make the best freakin' meatballs ever. They rock. We are the stuff of legends. And the house is a mess from stem to stern, most days, but these are the days of bliss and we never care.

We don't have meal times or formal meals. We eat out of the fridge when we are hungry. There are always healthy snacks on the bottom shelf of the fridge within hands reach of a kid. Most days the kids eat some kind of home-made soup for lunch. We are soup people. My kids are soup people. Sometimes we spit in the wind and decide lunch is gonna be guacamole and chips. We surround ourselves with towers of books to devour, and dig in until the bowl is empty and our fingers are covered in salt and guac. Who the hell is gonna tell us otherwise? WE ARE FREAKIN' KINGS. The total boss of us.

4:30: I prep dinner, if I hadn't already prepped it in the morning. The kids watch a little TV while I'm in the kitchen. A way to unwind. I am so ahead of myself. My fridge is full. The kids are nourished, happy, relaxed. I have dinner ideas in my head way ahead. I am improvising, creating more technically-advanced recipes, really stretching myself from a culinary perspective. I'm chopping like the Ginzu knife man and little shards of carrots are flying all over my kitchen. I'm freakin' Martha Stewart on steroids. Only nice. And not as pinched.

5:00-7:00: I take the kids to the residents terrace in our building with the monkey bars on it. Every parent in the building with small kids hangs here at the end of the day. We drink a beer and watch the kids play and reconnect. It feels like home here to the kids. They know every child and adult intimately.

7:00: David comes home and hangs with the kids on the terrace while I make dinner. Usually whatever one is prepped and ready to go. We eat together either on paper plates on the terrace with wine in paper cups, or at home gathered cross-legged around the low coffee table in the living room, picking off each others plates and over-lapping each other with stories of the day. After dinner, the kids fall into bed late, exhausted, happy, dirty. David works. I write stuff. And even with our laptops in front of us, we watch DVD's of Dexter and Lost and The Office and manage to chat, cuddle, re-connect. And we also have sex, but you probably realized that.

See? Life of luxury. Now, compare to my life now...(see next post)

xo YM

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The School Year is Kicking My Ass (Part 2 of 2)

This is part two of my life continued from the post above:

My Life After Lucy Started School

5:30: I'm up. Some days I have to move the car on the street. I get a "Vente black ice tea, no water, no sweetner" at Starbucks when I am too lazy to make it myself.

6:15: I write for a bit. I drink my tea.

7:00: I make Lucy's lunch. This lunch thing is a bit like a science experiment. My credentials as a serious cook and food blogger are meaningless here. Just because she eats it at home, does not mean that she wants me to pack it artfully into her bento box and send it to school.

And every day as I labor over the contents - fresh carrot sticks, slabs of mozarella, a little bin of pistachios, home made pizza magarita, stir fried rice, linguine carbonara - I take silent bets about how much of it she will eat. It's like my own soap opera inside my head. What will she like better, the panko crusted fish bites or
the edemame? Will she snub the farfalle with peas or will she send back an empty box? Oh how the sight of a nearly empty box makes my heart soar, although I never let on, never show that any of this matters to me. I ask her matter-of-factly and she tells me in the same matter-of-fact voice. It's like a game we play.

The pressure of it all is excruciating.

Everyday after we get home, I search the bag and see what was eaten and what was left. It always surprises me. The thing I think is going to be a winner, is the thing left untouched. And vice-versa. Scientists will find a cure for cancer before I figure out what my kid loves to eat for school lunch.


7:10: I wake up Lucy. And usually David. I carry Lucy's mumbling, raccoon-noise making little body to the sofa where she watches Pink Panther episodes until she drifts into near consciousness.

7:15: I poach David eggs but the timing is sometimes off because he's in the shower or out of the shower or I hand him the eggs when he is trying to put one leg into his underpants. Sometimes he is so rushed and behind schedule, he has to eat while putting on his socks. Sometimes he just looks at me and silently lets me off the hook without making him breakfast. I love him for this.

7:15-7:45: We are dressing. I am chasing Lucy around the house with a brush and pony tail holders, which leads to an exhaustive negotiation about the hair. How much I brush it, where I brush it, can I brush it while she is laying on the floor and bouncing her head up and down? I say despicable things like, "Mary in your class has beautiful hair. I'm sure she sits with her mommy for a long time getting those pony tails just perfect." Ugh. When I hear myself, I want to slap myself across the face.

Lucy also uses this time to share with us how much she doesn't want to got to school and how her life would be much more improved if we just let her stay at home and watch unlimited hours of Wow Wow Wubzy.

8:00: Sometimes Lucy is dressed, hair combed, usually I'm fishing clothes out of the laundry to make that happen. But she hasn't eaten her hard boiled egg or her "lightly toasted bagel with butter" - which is exactly how she orders it and if you give it to her even medium toasted, because maybe you're busy and doing 10 things at once and you leave the bagel on a little too long, she will limply toss it back on the plate and ignore it nearly into non-existence.

Sometimes Lucy's eaten her egg but the back of her hair is rolled up into a ball of snarls so thick it projects out of the back of her head like a poltergeist. Sometimes she is half dressed and putting her shoes on on the bike as David is taking off, but her hair is reasonably combed and I have popped a bagel into her hand, which she probably finishes while whizzing down 125th street in the bike seat. Sometimes she doesn't eat at all. And I don't feel even a smidegeon guilty for that because well I'm just happy to get her out the door before I morph into one of those ugly, screamy moms.

8:15: I clean the kitchen. Maybe write some more. I pick up and mutter that I live with gypsies and how all I do is clean. Seriously, I'm reduced to muttering.

Rest of the Day: Edie wakes up. We play. We read. I examine her poop and declare that they look like meatballs. Or green snakes eating malted milk balls. Some days we meet people and go to zoos, museums and other engaging public places. Edie and I walk two miles to Lucy's school to pick her up.

Two days a week, I walk two miles to drop Edie off at her school. On those days she breaks the record for a three year old who can say "I don't waaaanna to go to shcool...I don't waaaaana to go to school...I don't waaaaannnna to got to school..." so many times that I consider enterng her into the Guiness Book of World Records. Then when we get there, she clings to me as if I am handing her over to ax murderers only to be running wild and laughing with a bunch of kids five minutes later, as if I was erased from her memory.

3:00-4:00: I pick up kids. Make small talk with other parents. I usually embarrass myself when I learn that my kid is the only kid who didn't get any books from Scholastic because I never submitted the order form, and I didn't submit the order form because the check book disappeared and I have not been able to find it, so I kept saying I would do it on-line, but of course that actually never happens, so there you go...crappy parent amid a sea of people getting it right. Or at least this is what it feels like.

We return home on the bus, carrying 15 pounds of groceries I forgot to buy earlier, because I am no longer a long-term planner. I am a grasper of straws, trying to get a handle on the schedule, always a step behind. Always a quart of milk shy in the fridge.

I hop on the bus with my grocery bags, an arm-full of toys, a stray shoe, a double stroller a four year old who is pissed and cranky after a full day of behaving nicely in school and a three year old who just wants to be home and is not afraid to tell me 100 times in succession.

One day last week, I broke down and bought the girls little bags of Gold Fish (You know how much this kills me. See? School is helping me abandon all my principles) thinking they'd have a better bus ride home. I left the bus with the floor strewn with goldfish, parents shaking their heads and both kids sobbing because I wouldn't let them eat Gold Fish off the floor.

4:30: I make the kids take a bath. They holler about having to shampoo or do any kind of basic hygiene maintenance. I stick wet kids in front of TV and make them dinner. I become a cliche. The TV is my babysitter. I stare into the fridge hoping I had the good sense to prep something in the morning (sometimes) or figure out how to simply make something awesome on the fly before the children's stomaches explode in unison.

One kid hits the the other one just as I am covered to my elbows in egg batter and panko. Or they come in the kitchen demanding to help, which was great when we lived our life of luxury, but these days I am fighting the clock. So I stop making dinner to make them a healthy snack, give them two knives and a tomato and tell them to go at it. They eat the healthy snack and butcher the tomato while I finish cooking.

It's a game show. A sick, twisted game show.

They mess up and destroy either the kitchen or another room while they are cooking or waiting for more food. There is probably tomato on the wall. Within the hour, without much supervision, it looks like we live in one of those houses on the show "Hoarders".

5:30: We eat. Without David. If the kids wait to eat with David, they will not be in bed or able to settle until 10. We tried this. We can't do it. Sadly, family weeknight dinners all together are out. We become a statistic.

6:30: David comes home. There is re-newed energy. They bounce on beds. They make a deeper, more refined mess, with more tiny toys and little parts strewn everywhere and a much more gripping attention to destruction. If there is a pile of clean folded laundry somewhere, they will knock it to the ground and use it as their "dance floor".

6:45: I pour myself wine. A big honkin' glass of wine. I feed David and pour him wine too. We de-brief about the day, everyone chiming in about stuff that happened to them. The kids hang onto him while he eats and as if I didn't feed them at all, eat off his plate for a second dinner. We defy the statistics and end up eating together after all.

7:30: Books. Brush teeth. As of this post, Edie has gone two days without brushing her teeth. I've taken away all sweets, treats and chocolate milk. Still, I hand her the brush expectantly and she shakes her head and says "I no want any chocolate milk anymore." I consider that I need Super Nanny to come to my house and straighten us out.

8:00- 8:45: Bed. Let me just put it this way: You know how on TV, the really pretty Mommy leans in to her child's room, the child is laying still under her tucked in blankets, Mom winks, says "Love you, Muffin", shuts off the light and quietly closes the door? Um, well that's not us. Our bed time is a mixture of cajoling, threatening, soothing, kissing and ultimately after much stalling and asking "Why? Why? Why must I go to bed?", we get two snoring, beautiful kids.

8:46: There is quiet. Weird, really.

9:00: David is working on his laptop. We kiss, cuddle. Adult talk. Watch Lost on the Roku box when Edie hasn't stolen the remote and stashed it in an obscure, never-used Hello Kitty bag in the back of the closet. I work on my laptop, returning e-mails, reading blogs. David and I send e-mails to each other even though we are sitting right next to one another. We look up periodically and laugh about something, remind each other of a task, tell a funny or stupid story. Sometimes we make love. When we aren't comatose.

I have about an hour, maybe two, or maybe none at all, before I fall into bed completely exhausted.

I miss my life of luxury. But...eh, this is a life, still and all.

xo YM

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Gourmet

I just wanted to say a couple things about the closing of Gourmet Magazine.

First, what is most sad is that people who love their work and depend on their paycheck, no longer have either. That is the real tragedy here.

Second, Ruth Reichl seems like a very cool lady - talented, passionate, tough, a smart cookie and the very opposite of a food snob. I'm pretty sure she will land on her feet.

Third, I was going to let my subscription to Gourmet run out. True.

I have cooked many recipes from Gourmet, posted some of them here and most have been lovely successes, but I felt that Bon Appetite, with its adventurous, tasty but manageable recipes and short, creative, but scan-able articles with the cool layout just met my needs more.

I agree with my neighbor Kian at Redcook that Gourmet's beautiful photography and long rambling travel pieces were luxurious, gorgeous and lush. They were relevant, for sure. Maybe the best in the business. But frankly, these days, I barely have time to scan an article or read a page at night before my head slams into the pillow, much less lay on my sofa with my feet up and delve into the riches of a food excursion to Bankok, complete with recipes that take so long to prep and make that I would have to hire a babysitter and program 20 hours of Wonder Pets onto my DVR just to make it happen.


Bon Appetite is just a better solution for people who are excited by food and cooking and eating, but don't have all weekend to hold up in their kitchens making 32 different flavors of jam. I love jam, mind you, I love making jam, but the family will throw spatulas at me if I disappear into the kitchen making something they can't eat for lunch.

If Conde Nast had to let one go, better it be the old icon, instead of the re-vamped upstart. They are merely responding to ad sales, subscription numbers, a changing media business, a morphing food culture, and demand. You can't really blame the boys in Conde Nast accounting for not being sentimental.

Fourth, make no mistake - the death of Gourmet is not an indication that food culture is being dumbed down by people who throw their "cooking made easy" dishes on the table on nights when they aren't microwaving the Gorton's Fish Sticks or pulling a "Kids Cuisine" TV dinner out of the freezer. Those people aren't reading Bon Appetite or Gourmet anyway.

But this might be a sign that not everyone who loves to cook, eat and enjoy food has to prove their kitchen prowess by languishing in the kitchen for hours at a time while their husbands bang the secretary and the kids zone out to Xbox. Unless you are Thomas Keller or a professional chef, food isn't the end. It's the means. At least for most of us with families.

My cooking is partly about fulfilling myself, being creative, expanding my culinary experience and cooking techniques, making more and more from scratch, and occasionally getting some feedback that makes my head swell, but it's mostly about feeding people. And feeding people isn't the thing of long, gorgeous, spiraling articles and otherworldly photography.

It's real, immediate, no nonsense, unfussy and right now.

It means I need almost constant inspiration with very little time to cultivate it. When I need information and inspiration, it must come quickly, succinctly and pack a wallop.

It means making the most of my time in the kitchen so I can cook amazing, tasty, healthy, do-able food, constantly introduce new ingredients, herbs, seasoning, tastes and textures, make many processed food items like broth and sauces from scratch, make a bunch of people with disparate preferences happy and still have the energy to clean up, wipe the flour off my face and have two minutes with my husband and kids (or maybe even to myself) before I have to herd everyone to the bathroom and throw everyone in bed. And do this, sometimes more than three times a day.

See? No time for long rambling magazine trips to street markets in Thailand.

So, there is a part of me that is sad that Gourmet has hit the skids. Sad, mostly for the people who worked there and are now trying to figure it all out for themselves. But mostly, I feel like Gourmet is just another cautionary tale for media that doesn't have sense enough to know when change is upon them.

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Kale Chips

This is exactly the kind of dish that my friend Lara, who is a vegan, describes as "the kind of food that you would laugh at me for eating."

And she's right. I do like to mock the vegans. I have to because I now am surrounded by vegan friends. I must have done something very bad in my former cooking life because now most of my best friends are vegans.

These people, incredible, loving, wonderful people that they are, have no real appreciation for my short ribs or pork belly or pork cracklins or for that matter, lobster with drawn butter or a great hunk of aged cheddar or Saint Andre or just a humungous knob of butter in just about any sauce. In fact, they are repulsed by it.

What? Repulsed by butter? I don't get it. How is it even possible that people don't like butter? Butter is the definition of awesome. It says so in the dictionary. And bacon. Don't get me started on bacon. I'm flumoxed.

But yet, I love these people and so, I have been trying to perfect my vegan kitchen repertoire. Because I didn't actually have a "vegan kitchen repertoire" and because if I didn't get one, we'd never be able to eat together. As much as I want to, saying, "I have a box of saltines in the cupboard for you to munch on" doesn't make for good friendships.


So, here's what I found out about veganism...you need to use a lot of olive oil (fat) and salt to make it taste good. If you see "fat free vegan recipes" out there, run for the hills. They will taste like communion wafer. Unless you don't have a very good palate and then, I suppose you'll put anything in your mouth.

And I think as a general rule, you should stay away from "fake foods" if you are a vegan novice (like me) fake bacon, fake cheese, fake butter. It's like some foreign land of products that you - as a non vegan - will have no idea how it shapes up in a recipe. And fake bacon is just wrong anyway. On so many levels. It's blasphemy, really.

My strategy has been to just do wholesome dishes with good fresh ingredients and just use what you are allowed to use from the pantry. But it feels a little like cooking in some game show where they give you a bottle of ketchup, a head of iceberg and 2 bunson burners and ask you to whip up a gourmet meal for six dignitaries from Sweden.

This is where kale chips make their entrance. I'm not a huge snacker, as you know. Snacks generally set off the carb-meter around here and most of you remember that David is generally opposed to carbs and I'm pretty sure that pumping your kids with organic crackers is still pumping them with crap even if it's organic crap.

That said, I also do not want to eat a snack that's not really a snack, but just boring, healthy leaves cloaked as a snack, with some hippy telling you how awesome it tastes and how good it is for you, but it really tastes like cardboard and dandelions. My taste buds are all over that kind of deception. When I do snack, I want it to taste great.

I am surprised - gobsmacked even - that a snack made of kale can actually taste good. Our friends Chuck and Corey, vegans of course, fall all over kale. They would french kiss the kale if they could. They don't try to disguise it in their cooking either or hide it in a sauce. They just put it right out there. Big buxom heavy leaves in their pasta, for instance, for all to see. Not one ounce of kale shame in that family. Their two fantastic kids age 4 and 2 inhale the stuff as if they've sprinkled it with chocolate and unicorn dust.

This is the exact opposite of me - I have kale shame. I see kale as a dark, hairy, unwieldy, bitter monster with a weird after taste that I hope never finds it's way into my farmer's market basket, for fear it might choke out anything delicious in the kitchen.

So, I have tried to find some love in my heart for kale and it has happened with kale chips. The preparation is easy. And the snack-pay-off is high. These taste great. Just rip the leaves into jagged shreds, coat and bathe them in olive olive and salt. (I do believe the kale is just a means of transport for the oil and salt, but still...) And bake for 10 minutes on a flat baking tray. They crisp up so beautifully it is surprising and they are so light in your mouth that they nearly disappear into a whisper on your tongue.

Tomorrow, I will make these for Lucy's pre-school class for their snack. This will be real test. Will 20 four year olds eat kale chips as if they've been given a bag of potato chips? We'll see. Lucy hasn't even been able to bring herself to try these yet.

But Lucy's teacher asked me to bring in a kale leaf for Charlie the class guinea pig, so I'm guessing if he'll eat it and half her class will try it, so will Lucy.

Lucy might not model me, but she'll surely model the guinea pig.

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Kale Chips

Ingredients

1 bunch of Kale
olive oil
salt

Preparation

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Tear kale off the heavy stem. Rinse well in water and dry as best you can with paper towel. Rip the leaves into jagged pieces. Each of these will be a "chip". They need not be perfect. They can be a variety of sizes and shapes.

Put the kale in a bowl. Pour in some olive oil - eyeball it, a glug or two - and get your fingers in there and work the oil into the leaves until they are all shiny and covered. Add more oil if necessary. You don't want them wet, but definately glistening and tinged with oil. Sprinkle with salt and toss gently to evenly coat the leaves.

Lay the kale pieces out on a baking tray. They should not be over-lapping or they will steam instead of bake. Each should have it's own little place. Put tray in oven and bake about 10-15 minutes or until the kale is crisp.

Best if eaten warm but not necessary. Try not eating the entire thing.

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What I Miss Most About Summer...

Twilight. Sunset falling across the fountains at Columbus Circle. Warm, magical, anything-can-happen air. Little girls so free that they abandon dresses and shoes and cares. And dance. And think of nothing but their release, their bodies moving like wild, jungle butterflies. With the city wrapped around them. And David and I smiling at them nearby. Close, but not too close.

And all of us content, thinking nothing but happy, free, warm, fleeting thoughts.





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